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The body is too big. It's too tall, limbs too long, too thick, too strung through-and-through with power. Yuta's shaking with it, the strange chthonic hum of the blue cosmos threaded through his limbs constricting his heart and pouring out his eyes that swallow and gasp in equal measure, thump-thumping heart that's been stalled for just a little too long, stuttering like it's a limb that needs badly to be stretched and Yuta chokes on it then, new body curling forward and in on itself, heaving up old blood and watery brown bile that Ieiri-shishou wipes away with a tsk-tsk, we don't have time for this Okkotsu-kun.
The body is too big. His gait is clumsy, legs too long, he's used to making shorter strides; he didn't think it would be this hard—it was only a few inches! He remembers being able to look his cousin in the eye, always. He didn't think a few inches would make such a big difference as he stumbles around on Gojo's long legs, trying to learn how to walk all over again, because he's a newborn in this old body and he doesn't have time for this.
Either you die when your technique runs out, or you're stuck in Gojo-san's body. He's dead either way. The body on the table, his body, his eyes, his split belly and useless legs and arms are all behind him, dead, already growing cold; he would have been dead anyways, only kept alive by Arata's strange technique and Rika bleeding her own cursed energy into him, a dry suck that kept taking and taking until he quickly reached his limit and warned Ieiri if they were going to do something, it would need to be now as his vision tunneled and the remaining limbs he could feel rapidly began to go numb.
So he's dead either way, and he's never going to see Maki again, we're worried about you. It's better she doesn't see him like this, wobbling towards the exit as fast as these strange too-large too-long legs can carry him with everyone's eyes burning a hole in Gojo’s back.
Once alone he wastes a few precious seconds catching his reflection in a passing piece of stray metal, forehead stitched and eyes red where they aren't blue, straining and stinging—he's in Gojo-sensei's body he's fucking walking around in his cousin's body like it was a new costume and he can't even figure out how to pilot this thing right, can't understand all the bright lights shining around him in gleaming fractle-streams, surging and stewing, bursting kaleidoscopic auroras and auras in a massive chorus of split light all around him.
Maybe he'll just keel over and die right here, useless, unable to comprehend the awesome power he's stupidly attempting to control. He's stuck both of his fingers in an electric socket and expected the power to flow from one hand to the other in a complete circuit, hubris.
He told everyone he was willing to throw away his humanity for this, he would be the monster that lived deep inside Gojo-sensei, the monster Sukuna let run amok and he would let himself run amok and then—
And then and then and then—
Sukuna would be dead. Somehow. He would be. He’ll figure it out.
There's a headache brewing behind his eyes, stabbing into him. Icepick. He raises his hands and—and—
These aren't his hands.
His hands have calluses from his swords. These aren't his hands.
His vision is starting to blur—he's wasting too much time. Maybe by the time he gets to the battlefield he'll be totally unresponsive—if he made it there at all. The lights are penetrating his skull, ice jabbing under his eyelids and stabbing up through the roof of his mouth right into his brain and he was going to die in a body that wasn't his and then and then and then—
There is someone else in this empty hallway with him. When he looks around he sees no one, head swiveling violently in search of color—real color, not the bright bursts of light constantly egging at the edges of his vision—but he sees no one but himself. He's alone, and yet there is another presence, lingering just beyond his shoulder, right at his back.
It feels familiar.
He has to keep going. He has to get out of here. He has to get to the battlefield before his time runs out. Gojo-sensei could teleport—he could teleport, he could distort space and be there in seconds—
The more he walks the more he gets the hang of it. He makes his steps just a bit wider, and then he can go faster. Faster, faster, a pressure on his back as if he were being pushed forward and then he's out of the building. Now he just needs to, to—
Concentrate. Yes, he needs to concentrate. Back to Shinjuku. He's already wasted too much time, he needed to get back to Shinjuku. Yuta closes his eyes against the glowing auroras all around him and thinks of Shinjuku. He tries not to flinch when reality collapses around him, when hands come reaching for his innards, for his heart and head and lungs, trying to pry the brain that slithered from his breathing corpse into Gojo's breathless vessel, prepped and waiting as a sacrifice of old. That's what all of this is about, isn't it? Who's willing to sacrifice more? Jujutsu has always been about give-and-take, give-and-take. There was a cruel balance to it all, like a binding vow, what are you willing to give, in order to receive?
Anything. He’s amalgamated himself with his cousin; If Gojo-sensei is gone, then who else will be the 'monster'? If no one else intends to be then I will! Maki had looked so heartbroken, Kusakabe stricken. Inhumane, the second-year instructor had called it. But that's what we always were, weren't we? The strongest are always the monsters, in the end. It's just easier to pretend you aren't when there's someone in front of you, taking up that definitive lonely title, The Strongest, capital T capital S. He can feel it in the arms of this body, the raw power humming just beneath the surface. He felt it in his own, with everyone else's techniques sparking at his fingertips. But where would he have gone, if he decided to go AWOL? Everyone he loved was here. What would he have done? He spent so much of his life feeling small, and powerless. He didn't want other people to feel that way.
That's how it had been, watching Gojo-sensei lose all on his own. Small, powerless, and suddenly he's fifteen years old again and he's been cornered by a few boys several years older than him in an unused classroom that no one was going to check. He can't meet their eyes, but they certainly try to meet his, and the first one that jerks a hand out towards him loses it, his wail and Rika's own cry of delight melding into one.
Isn’t that what all of this is for? Someone has to be the sacrifice so that everyone else could go free. Gojo, body cold and lips blue as Ieiri sewed him together, a vessel prepped and ready for when Rika reached for him and grabbed pieces, and Yuta didn’t even know she was capable of crying—big fat tears splashing on his face, keeping him awake as he choked on gobs of his own hot metallic blood, realizing through the pain with a bolt of deep horror through his chest, where are my legs, I can’t feel my fucking legs—the halves of his body barely connected by shredded spinal chord and a strand of intestine. Sacrifice your soul, sacrifice your body. First fiery rage when he saw Maki’s shattered body laid at his feet by Geto, now with cool resignation. This was his idea, after all. He has only himself to blame as he offers himself up to experiment with unknown outcome.
And now he's in the ruin of Shinjuku, in a body that's too big, in the same place he and Gojo-sensei both died. Maybe he'll die here again. There's a presence just beyond his shoulder urging him forward.
And then he’s face-to-face with Sukuna once again. And he knows, laughing maniacally, “I didn’t realize how far you’d be willing to go!”
There’s a presence, featherlight finger-like touch against his arm, under his elbow as he curls his fingers in the familiar inter-lock of his cousin’s call for his domain, coaxing his arm higher like a dance teacher adjusting their pupil’s stance.
Yuta knows what to do.