Sukuna’s Isekai Adventures 2

Things had changed.

He was not just talking about the guarded stares and looks he was getting from his fellow residents of this particular spot in the Narrows.

It was also in the way he could interpret it. A man looked at his mother as she helped the other women wash clothes, and with a glance from his third and fourth eyes positioned diagonally on his face, he was able to decipher the meaning behind the look.

Lust.

He turned his full form to the man and stared. And like a deer that had suddenly found itself with a knife to its neck, the man froze and slowly turned his head to meet him. His face shifted, muscles twitching as the emotions changed.

Fear.

He recognized this one better, and the presence of it stirred something in him. A hunger that he found himself willing to indulge. Another man walked past, one of the men who had taken to keeping guard over their small camp.

It had been years, and he was not certain about what he had done or how long he had done it, but seven years after that day, they still feared him.

When Sukuna’s attention switched to the man, he found himself focusing on the spots on his body where the skin was thin, the meat and muscle scarce, and the bone weak.

Places where the man could be relieved of an appendage or two with ease. The man also froze once more, turned to stare back at him, and upon realizing it was Sukuna staring at him, he hurried his pace instead of confronting him.

Sukuna knew he had changed; it had not been a gradual thing like he somehow knew it should have been. It felt like he had been a five-year-old boy with no true train of thought a day ago, and then suddenly he woke up as an older man with all the mixed-up and mismatched experiences that went with such growth.

The thing he found that held the greatest similarities was his position and the smell. The smell of desperation filled with suffering and poverty. The smell of weakness and fear. The smell of hopelessness.

He hated it. He found himself grinding his teeth hard as he watched everything go by. The poor and downtrodden men and women, walking with nothing to look forward to. No dreams or aspirations to aim at.

Five years and he was still stuck here, sleeping and waking up with an oblivious mother and a scared population of homeless dregs. He could feel something beneath his skin, deeper than his muscles, bones, and blood. Something that crawled and flowed beneath his confused physique. Yet that was not the only confusing thing he had been forced to suffer through.

That remained another itch at the back of his neck. A desire he could not decipher, a hunger that no amount of food he had eaten could ever satisfy. Even more than the insects that crawled beneath his skin, this urge to do something was his greatest problem, yet somehow he knew he was holding back. And the itch had been growing worse as he grew older. Yet...

It was too early.

His attention was drawn to the population of this small hovel. It had been growing lately. A new inhabitant here and there. People that did not quite look at him with the same fear the original residents did. Yet they were as spineless as they were.

That was where he was different. His notably different physicality aside, he had something they didn’t. He had his memories. Memories and thoughts that changed him even if he did not truly understand them. They showed him that he was better than this. Greater than this. He had a spark.

Those were the things that fueled him, and he found himself thinking. Plotting. Uncaring about how unusual it was for a child to be doing such. He already knew he was not a child. He was something else. He had proved it once. He was going to do it again.

A hand dropped on his head, and his body moved. He jerked away and pivoted on the spot before lashing out with one of his hands.

Instead of the blood spray, split-apart appendages, and screams he was somehow expecting, he simply stared into the unimpressed yet obliviously happy face of his mother.

“What is my little Sukky doing? You’re going to catch a cold standing underneath the snow.”

What was that, he wondered with a frown. Ignoring his mother’s words and instead focusing on the instincts he had felt. They had been coming faster since that day five years ago. He knew what should’ve followed: death. His mother’s own, and despite how something in him wanted to shrug it off, he found it impossible to.

Somehow he had stopped himself from doing something he knew he could do. Deprived himself of destroying the woman in front of him. Strangled the urge. Two warring instincts, that brought his attention back to his hands.

He looked up at her after realizing her ramblings had quieted, and she stared at him with fear and worry in her eyes. So with an instinctive need to please her, he replied with a shrug. "I'm fine."

Before she could reply, he heard a shout in the distance. A distraction very much preferred to speaking with his mother about how he almost killed her. He was moving immediately. Fur-lined coat hanging on his shoulders and trailing behind him.

It didn't take him long to reach the source of the commotion.

"I said where is the old bear!" The voice was followed by a thud that he easily identified. Sukuna continued to walk closer to the light of the campfires that marked the entrance to the camp.

One of the older men who served as a camp guard was rolled into himself on the floor as another man, this one with a darker skin tone and red-rimmed eyes, kicked at him furiously. Behind the dark-skinned brute were two other men, with knives tucked between the bands of their pants as they looked at the beatdown in front of them with smirks on their faces.

The commotion the brute was causing was drawing attention as more people, other inhabitants of the alleyway, began to leave what they were doing as they focused on the scene. Some of the more fit, or in the cases of residents of the dark alleyways of Gotham, less malnourished, were already bristling up in anger.

Meanwhile Sukuna felt something stir within him as he watched the scene unfold, but it wasn’t the mixed fear that gripped the useless bystanders, nor the indignation simmering in the weaker residents. No, what he felt was something far deeper, far older, far more primal.

“He stops paying tribute. For five goddamn years. Does he think just because we got caught up in the gang war and got our noses bloodied, he doesn’t have to pay what’s owed?” Every word was punctuated by a resounding thud as the brute continued to kick the downed man.

Each kick ignited a fire in Sukuna, his heart pounding heavily in his chest. He could feel it now, a rising tide of something dark, a need. That itch, as his feet dragged him out of the shadows and into the light cast by the fire. He cared nothing for the man being beaten, nor for the cowards who stood by, fury etched on their faces yet paralyzed, doing nothing but watching.

Then there were those with fear in their eyes, stuck between the urge to slink further into the shadows of the alley and the twisted need to witness the violence. But the worst of them, the most revolting, were those who stood frozen, their very essence reeking of weakness. Disgusting wretches, barely above maggots. At least maggots squirmed when in danger.

“The Burnley Slashers might have been pushed out of Burnley and forced to take refuge in the Narrows, but that doesn’t make us the same.” The brute’s final word was punctuated by a blow so hard it sent the old man rolling to a stop at Sukuna’s feet.

The brute stood there, hands on his hips, panting heavily, the effort of the beating taking as much from him as it had from the man now sprawled at Sukuna’s feet. Something had drawn him to this moment, though he couldn’t fully grasp what. But as the body lay still at his feet, Sukuna felt a change come over him.

This wasn’t like the change from seven years ago. No, this was a realization, a moment of clarity. The violence he had just witnessed was the culmination of a truth he had always known but never fully understood. Power. That was all that mattered. Unbridled, unchained, unrestricted strength to impose one’s will. That was what the brute had done to the other man—pummeled him into the ground for one simple reason: because he could. It felt as if Sukuna was relearning the fundamentals of life as he absorbed the scene before him.

"Now do I have to beat another one of you useless fucks before you tell me where—Holy shit!" The voice said, but it suddenly felt far off, like the owner was speaking from behind a door. Sukuna's attention was fixated on his feet.

The spray of blood on the ground from a kick that had torn the man’s lips open. Shattered shards of teeth soaking in the piss and rainwater that pooled around the alleyway. Blood seeping from the dead man’s mouth, and drifting towards Sukuna’s bare feet. The man’s lifeless eyes stared up at Sukuna’s cold, bright, and uncaring gaze.

Sukuna found himself disgusted.

"What the hell did they feed you, you weird bastard." The brute said, oblivious to the dark smiles and the side-eyed looks from the rest of the residents of the narrow alleyway as he walked toward the pink-haired boy.

The sight of the man’s broken body, the blood, the brutality—these were things that spoke to Sukuna. Elements that made up his core. The scene awakened something in him, not care or concern, but a raw, primordial need for violence. To taste blood in his mouth as he spilled another person's own. The feeling of a bruised knuckle, the sensation of bones, will, and dreams breaking beneath his fist.

He hungered for it. What he had witnessed was not a murder or death; it was a revelation, a reminder.

A hand grabbed at his head and forced him to look up. His four red eyes were greeted by the sight of the brown, yet red-rimmed eyes and a horrendous stench that came the moment the man spoke to his face. His eyes watered from it, yet Sukuna did not blink.

"Yeah, if they're really breeding freaks like you here, then we need out of this alleyway as soon as possible, before we get infected right?" the man said as he turned his head away from Sukuna to look at his flunkies, who let out matching laughter with him.

Sukuna was taller and bulkier than he should be for his age, even if he had never worked out a day in his life. He had simply laid back and been fed as if he had been unconsciously preparing for something.

He was aware of how different he was. He wasn't the only child in this corner of the Narrows. He was barely twelve, a pre-teen by any standards, even if he was not quite aware owing to his upbringing in the Narrows. But he understood his physicality was already abnormal.

So what did it matter that he was already five and a half feet tall and heavier than most of the slum’s residents when he already had four arms, four eyes, and an extra mouth where his stomach was supposed to be, complete with teeth and a tongue?

The man who had his hair in a vice was barely an inch or two taller than he was, yet the fact that Sukuna was forced to look up at him in any way vexed him in ways that the pre-teen could not put into words. How dare the stupid brute's head be raised so high?

Sukuna moved to fix that.

It was a simple act. He did not think or plan, his body simply moved. He sent his right foot lashing out in a strike so heavy that the sound of bone splintering rang out like a shotgun blast and ended the laughter that had echoed in the alleyway. Everywhere was silent because suddenly the man was below him.

The brute sent a confused look at his mangled leg. The white bone of his shin was sticking out the back of his calf, ripping muscles and sending blood spraying with its exit.

This time, Sukuna was the one looking down on the brute as the man's hands drifted down from his hair to grab onto Sukuna's fur-lined coat. The man had been sent to a knee, as he continued to stare down at the mess of what used to be his right leg. Then the realization hit him just as the pain did, and the man screamed.

"Ahrghhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Sukuna was struck by the epiphany that a single knee was not enough for him, even as he loomed over the broken man like a dark shadow. Four crimson red eyes stared at the crown of he man’s head yet Sukuna was struck with the though that it remained too high for his preference. Instead of acting immediately, he soaked in the screams the man was letting out. The air was thick with the scent of fear and dread, mingled with the acrid smell of piss coming from the shattered figure before him.

He could feel a malevolent smile tearing its way across his features. A smile that was present on the fanged maw just beneath his rib cage as he relished and soaked in the euphoria and joy that came upon him from the simple act. He found himself getting one step closer to understanding that itch.

A/N: I'm impulsive and spontaneous. A tablet of ibuprofen after this then off to bed. Hope you enjoy it.