Yuji Itadori POV
The blood spheres rotated slowly around my fists until I began to compress and tighten it. The surface tension of each sphere pulled inward until they weren't spheres anymore but something a lot thinner.
My fists unclench as I extend both palms out.
"Piercing Needle," I had created a sub-variant of the piercing blood technique just to see if it would be different from an sphere.
The blood needle left my palm at a velocity that put a clean hole through the streetlight post to my left.
Rynosuke was already sideways but the needle still managed to clip his shoulder and he spun with it rather than against it, using the impact's momentum to close the distance between us.
His fist found my sternum before I could move.
The air left my body in one violent gasp and I was airborne for a moment. The city tilted sideways, and then the wall of the building across the street introduced itself to my back.
I hurriedly dropped and got my feet under me before I hit the pavement.
Using my remaining blood spheres, I reshaped them into needles and fired them off like I had done earlier.
Yet somehow that inhuman body managed to still dodge between the needles. However, the third needle caught him across the cheek and opened a cut.
Rynosuke stopped touching the wound with two fingers.
Then the skin at the wound writhed. The tentacle-tissue beneath it responding to the contact with my blood the way a salted slug responds to salt. Pulling back from it, the healing that had been fixing his cheekbone back together earlier was now struggling.
Unfortunately not enough blood had went in for me to make him explode from the inside.
"Huh," he said, "so your blood's poisonous that's going to be really troublesome man" he complained.
'I had a hunch with Daisuke but now I can confirm it.'
I pushed off the wall and closed the distance, leading with a mana-coated left hook to make him drop his guard, and when his forearm came up to block. I dropped my elbow and drove it into his unprotected ribs with everything I had.
The crack was audible.
He folded around it.
I jumped up due to my small size and grabbed the back of his head with both hands and then drove my knee upward into his face.
The tentacles exploded outward from both arms in an involuntary spasm and two of them found me before I could clear the radius. One wrapped itself around my left forearm and the other caught me across the throat squeezing it tightly.
"GAHH!"
I shakily got two fingers of my free hand into the tentacle at my throat and forced a small cut.
My blood made contact with the tentacle tissue.
The reaction was faster than before. The tentacle contracted violently pulling away from my blood.
The pressure on my throat released for the half-second I needed to get my chin down and break the grip entirely.
The one on my forearm tightened instead but much like I did before I cut the tentacle on my forearm with my thumbnail and fed it a concentrated dose.
It let me go with a sound similar to that of a rubber band snapping.
Rynosuke stepped back two full paces, both arms pulled in close "stop being so annoyingly uncool brat!" he exclaimed.
"No, no I don't think I will," I replied with a smug grin.
With that I proceeded to crystallize the blood inside of him and make his limbs blow up.
"AHHH!" he roared the limbs slowly regenerating use the mass tentacles in his body.
Nasty if you ask me but still I didn't let it distract me and continued with my on slaught.
.
.
.
For the next approximately ninety seconds of our fight I was winning.
My blood manipulation gave me a range advantage that his tentacles couldn't easily close without paying for it, Divergent Fist for close up attacks that caused him to stagger every time, and his healing was now running slower for each time a tiny bit of my blood made contact.
Suddenly though Rynosuke just stopped mid-motion, completely still for exactly one second, and when he moved again the speed differential between us had approximately doubled.
The first hit I didn't even see.
I only knew it had landed because the street was suddenly at a different angle than it had been and my left ear was ringing in a high continuous tone.
The second one I saw coming and blocked with both forearms crossed.
The impact drove me backward eight meters, heels cutting channels in the asphalt, and my forearms were numb from mid-elbow down when I stopped.
The third one I didn't manage to block in time.
It got me in the ribs on the right side and I felt two of them crack "ARGHH!!" I clenched my teeth with tears welling up in my eyes.
I hit the pavement on my hands and knees.
A small whimper leaves my lips until I feel the pain vanish after a few seconds and my ears stopped ringing.
Rynosuke lifted me up by the collar.
I got both hands on his wrist and fed a tiny bit of my blood into it and he dropped me immediately with a hiss "why you little shit!" he cursed shaking his hand.
He proceeded kicked me from the side while I was getting up. I rolled with it and came up bleeding from my eyebrow and Rynosuke was already there though giving me no time to recover.
His elbow found my jaw and I was on the ground again.
His foot came down toward my spine and I rolled to the right. A split second later it cracked the pavement where I'd been.
I then rolled left and came up but he was already there again. His fist caught my shoulder and spun me until I crashed into a parked car door-first. The metal caved inward around my back.
"URggh!" I coughed heavily while hanging there for a second, embedded in the car door
My blood was dripping from my eyebrow onto the asphalt.
I shakily began to shape it only for Rynosuke to step on the dripping blood grinding it into the pavement.
The contact made him curl his toes inside his shoes which released a small sizzling sound yet still Rynosuke didn't move his feet.
"I want to ask," he began.
Rynosuke crouched down to my level, one hand braced on the crumpled car door beside my head.
"Do you know what I thought when you came smashing through that shutter?" he questioned, "I thought oh, here's the exterminator! Here's the brave kid from the story who chases the monsters off," he tilted his head, "like in one of those movies where the good guy wins because the script says it should."
He shoved me further against the car door making me grit my teeth again.
"It's honestly completely naive," Rynosuke continued in a tone of contempt, "you damn, stupid, little brat. You brought your determination and your reasons and you seriously thought those would help you here," he clenched his fist tightly, "this isn't some sort of superhero movie. This is real life. Not some kind of fight to fix what's wrong or save what's left. All it is, is just me and you doing what's natural for us."
'Just what the hell of a point is this psychopath trying to make,' I mentally thought.
"Your fragile justice," his voice grew hasher, "that thing you're running on. Saving people without thinking about it," something shifted across his face, "you know what that is to me?" he leaned down slightly, "it's nothing more but instinct. I kill without really thinking about it. You save without thinking about it don't you? Or rather at least try to."
'Wait...is he trying to imply-'
"You and me, Yuji Itadori," he continued, in a tone dripping with delight "are exactly the same! I kill because it's what I am. I mean just think about it," he straightened up, "have you ever stopped to count how many of those 'kids' you killed? How many parents you made lose their only child?!"
'How...how..how the hell does this monster have the audacity to say any of this?!'
'We're nothing alike! NOTHING!' I mentally roared
A smile spread on Rynosuke's face "that's okay Itadori you don't have to tell me...after all I don't count any of my kills either."
He drew back punching me right from the car door and sent me far into a building that caved in the moment my back came into contact with it.
A last second manipulation of reinforcement lessens the blow as I shakily began to stand back up. The newly made wounds healing up again.
Rynosuke walked toward me without hurrying.
"Face it Itadori Yuji" he spoke with a widened grin "you are me!" he roared with immense joy.
My eyes widened "your wrong..." I whispered making him pause, "you're wrong! YOU'RE WRONG! YOU AND I ARE NOTHING ALIKE YOU DAMN MONSTER!" I dug more into my mana core causing the ground underneath me to explode with cracks.
A familiar malevolent red colors my mana again.
Black marking crawled up from my wrists and up towards my face.
The world in my eyes sharpened to better details and located on Rynosuke's chest was that same unfamiliar colored orb just like how it was with Hiroshi and Nanamin.
"I am going to chop you up like a fish," my voice came out much raspier and slightly harder, "RYONOSUKE!"
The man frowned "ooh come on what hack-level bullshit are you pulling out of your ass this time Itadori Yuji!" he exclaimed unleashing a wave of tentacles from his arms.
A familiar instinctive feeling comes over me.
It was the similar to when I first used blood manipulation.
My hand rises up with a harsh horizontal flick "Dismantle," I calmly intoned.
A small invisible slash sent one of Rynosuke's arm's flying off.
-end of chapter sixteen-
Alright so just to clarify here a Yuji's dismantle here is weaker then Sukuna's right now. Similar to how it was in cannon JJK. But anyways we'll have one more chapter with Rynosuke vs Yuji before Rynosuke goes for a tactical withdraw from the fight and some other stuff I'll keep hidden for now.
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