An Oni's Deal

Zetsuko's plan to disrupt the facility's power, and ultimately defeat the ones who tormented her, began with the facility's power supply. It was electricity which powered her restraints, powered **** devices, and that was the key to keeping the facility running after all. She had found the the room where she could cut off the most power by following the facility's heavy duty electrical cables around the facility. Then, she intentionally damaged parts of the facility to **** the humans to send maintenance crews, so as to create opportunities to steal the tools she needed. Gloves that could offer some protection while working on the electrical components, pliers that'd let her get to shielded wires, a saw capable of cutting through heavy duty cabling, and various other tools to let her do things like rip open electrical panels.

Those tools, in turn, allowed Zetsuko to experiment. She learned what wires shut down power to different parts of the facility, how long it would take them to repair the damage she caused, and most of all, how to destroy the wires safely. The **** she had endured became useful, as she knew exactly how much shock she could take, and how long it would take her body to recover. Unlike humans, she wouldn't take long term damage from these shocks, but she still had to ensure she wasn't knocked out if she wanted to avoid capture. By watching what the humans did to fix electrical equipment, and some careful experiments with different tools, she was able to figure it out. This phase of experimentation concluded when she destroyed one of the big cables without hurting herself, and took out power to over half the facility. Zetsuko knew then how to take out the rest.

All the while, it wasn't only electrical equipment Zetsuko learned how to break during this phase of experimentation. The oni had learned that even when fed, healed up, and at max strength, she couldn't take on all the human patrols on her own. The human patrols were too numerous, too well armed, and more reinforcements arrived at the facility in regular intervals. However, as she picked off ever larger patrols, she learned how to even the odds. Guns were a major help, especially as even as a young teenager, the oni could use weapons that humans struggled to carry, and could absorb far more recoil. It was why the heavy weapons the humans brought to bring an end to her only strengthened her further, as she could use them far better. But the real lesson she learned was how to manipulate the humans. Zetsuko learned who to kill to cause the most disruption, who to hurt that would **** even the coldest of their number to aid them, and even who could make a good hostage when she needed to escape. The oni was learning how to bend and break the very bonds between humans, just like they had learned to break the courage of so many yokai.

With all of this knowledge and tools in place, Zetsuko just had one last piece to move into place in order to execute her plan to overpower the humans in the facility. She needed to liberate the remaining yokai to rise up against their captors when the power went out. Most of them had been moved out in response to her escape, but there were a few they hadn't been able to move yet, and that was something she sought to exploit. Their will had been beaten out of them, by **** and starvation, but she would fix that. What she knew was that she needed to take away the advantage in numbers humanity had once and for all by growing her own numbers.

Zetsuko remembered the first creature that she liberated from the humans quite well. It was a forest troll named Sollix, judging by a name tag on his neck, who was from a different land than the oni had come from. This forest troll had a massive amount of musculature, bones hard as stone, and teeth capable of cracking open bones, all within skin that was patterned to blend in with the kind of lush forest that was all too rare in their world. On top of all that, the forest troll regenerated, just like her, and so should've been able to withstand pain. And yet Sollix had somehow been so brutalized by his captors that he flinched whenever a human raised their voice. Liberating him proved to be a process of experimentation, as she would cut off power to his restraints, and then try to figure out how to get him to move. Her rage at humanity was useless, for Sollix hated his captors but that didn't make it seem possible to defeat them. Nor did showing that he could escape his restraints work, because he was still in the facility, still surrounded by electrical lighting and concrete walls, far away from his natural environment.

At first it made Zetsuko enraged with Sollix. Why could he not withstand the pain that she did? He was even tougher than her, why couldn't he act on it? Why couldn't he overpower these barbaric weaklings who were only threatening from their gadgets and guns, most of which couldn't even damage him? But she then figured out the key to liberating him. She demonstrated how pathetic the humans really were by breaking them, and not just through ****. When she showed the forest troll that normal humans ran at her very presence, he paid more attention to her. When she made a man beg to live, that did even more. So she terrorized the humans in his presence, over and over again, until they ran at the sight of her, and once that happened, she got him to leave with her.

With Sollix, Zetsuko was almost unstoppable for human patrols. As long as the oni was quick to kill any human with a weapon capable of threatening him, the forest troll could do the rest, by eating or otherwise smashing opposing human troops, and forcing the rest to retreat. With this reinforcement, and with the steady thinning out of human patrols, she was in a place to do real damage, but she also knew she was running out of time. The humans running this facility, at some point, were going to blow it up or otherwise stop using patrols against her in favor of some other harder to counter method. Hence, she moved to the final phase before she shut off the power.

The remaining yokai were a mixture of goblins that had been about to be shipped out, nekomata on their last legs, tengu with clipped wings, and, to Zetsuko's disgust, other oni who had been beaten down too much to resist. They all had the same question: Why should they listen to her? What did she have to offer them except more ****? All she had proven was her ability to kill humans, not to lead them to something better. Even if they could, somehow, take over the facility, what would that actually get them?

So Zetsuko pivoted to another tactic, and tapped into the stories her mother told her, of the time that humans were on the backfoot, the once natural order of things, and most of all, a promised prophecy where humanity would be destroyed. It wasn't a story that she believed like she used to, but it was the only way to motivate them to escape with her, to join her in **** against the humans in the facility. So she wove a tale about how, someday, nature would strike back, and the yokai who were brave enough to break their chains would get to recreate the paradise they once had. They could take back their rightful place, but in order to do that, they had to break free of human confinement. Every time she ripped humans apart with her bare hands, or even just made them flee in terror by her very presence, she provided the proof that they could be beaten. Steadily, she recruited the goblins, nekomata, tengu, and other oni, assembling them into an army capable of taking over the facility.

At what felt like the last possible moment, Zetsuko put her plan into action. The oni had seen a suspicious number of people trying to leave the facility, and knew then it was time. She cut off power to the entire facility with a single well placed blast, so as to avoid getting killed by electrical shock or arc flashes from the resulting explosion. The facility's doors closed, as they were designed to in the case of a power outage given all the creatures inside. That had the effect of turning the facility into a prison for the very humans who had built and staffed it, something she took immense advantage of.

The rest of the yokai went through the facility and massacred the remaining security. They succeeded because Zetsuko had given them the basics on how to use weapons beforehand, and because the facility's staff were exhausted. The oni's campaign of power outages, escalating ****, and prisoner liberation had ground down the staff's morale, which made it much easier to pick off the remaining resistance and then round up the remaining humans to be placed in the prison block they had shoved so many creatures into before. Once the humans had been locked up, Zetsuko made a simple deal with the yokai. She could still remember every word of it.

"What I'm about to do here will be horrific," Zetsuko said. "My thirst for **** is too high, and I've never known humanity to be anything more than a scourge which poisoned the air, or which killed my parents through starvation. However, you do not deserve to see me become even more of a monster. I will do onto them as they did to me, and to you. So anyone who wishes to do so is welcome to leave."

In the end, the only creature that stayed with the oni was Sollix. Like her, he wanted to see humanity suffer, and Zetsuko suspected that his **** had broken the forest troll on a level that was never going to get better. The rest of the yokai fled through the duct system, or otherwise through emergency exits they had identified before enacting her plan. She didn't know if they were going to get far, and given the relentless pace of human development, where they would even go. But, they would at least get a few days of freedom outside the endless, never ending encroachment of human society. Besides, Zetsuko indeed didn't want anyone to see what she was about to do in retaliation for everything she had gone through, that they had gone through. Even if it would be satisfying, there would be no going back from it.

Once everyone had left, Zetsuko went back to the prison block, and looked over the selection. She was relieved to see The Doctor among them, as he was the one that most needed to suffer. The rest were a mixture of medical researchers that hadn't fled the facility yet, administrative staff who couldn't get a transfer, and security who had been too worn out to put up a fight. Despite how many people had fled, she recognized plenty of the remaining staff besides The Doctor. That was a fact which pleased the oni greatly...

Felix felt sick. Zetsuko had just shown him her imprisonment in a **** facility to garner sympathy, but inadvertently revealed how monstrous she could be. They hadn't even gotten to when the maximum level of **** was going to happen, but he had seen what she had been taught. She was raised to believe that humans were savages that should be dominated by oni, and that human civilization should be destroyed so they could never exert their power over anyone, including arguably themselves. And the worst part was, everything Felix had seen only supported her worldview.

The first time she met humans they tortured her, and several other yokai for no discernible purpose. Science shouldn't require sadism, and yet, these humans, including the one calling himself the Doctor, had chosen that path. It didn't matter what she encountered afterwards, of the humans that proved more loyal and less bigoted, because the lesson had sunk in too early. Perhaps individual humans could be trustworthy, but her viewpoint would be that humanity as a whole needed to have its technology stripped from it and its number thinned out. There was no possible argument Felix could muster that would convince Zetsuko otherwise. Logic had no hope against a viewpoint born of an experience like that.

"Don't look so down Felix," Zetsuko whispered in his ear. "We're now at the part where I get vengeance and made an actual sociopath suffer."

That statement was followed by a highlight reel designed to show much the oni had learned about inflicting pain. Zetsuko and Sollix, worked together to inflict pain on the level they had endured with only the emergency power available to them. Sharp instruments were used to inflict various type of grievous wounds, and the threat of fire was introduced when one of the former guards tried to rebel. But this physical pain was only the surface level of what the oni had in mind for her human captives. It was a piece of her true plan, which was to make them feel helpless.

Early on, Zetsuko, calling herself Z, teased that she would let one person go, but in practice, that was just a trap. Felix could see how the oni kept narrowing the possibility of obtaining escape, and what her prisoners would have to submit to in order to escape. With the help of Sollix, they ran through every single test that had been done on them, or at least all the tests they could do when stuck on emergency power. They broke bones, slashed skin, exposed people to fire, and so on. Results of these tests were announced with a tone meant to mock The Doctor, and everyone else who had treated them that way. All the while, Zetsuko kept a careful eye on how people responded, and calibrated based on that.

An example of this calibration was how Zetsuko chose to respond to someone praying. It was a man Felix had recognized from earlier as one of the people who had moved the oni, administered punishments, and otherwise had been another cog in the machine of the facility's ****. So when she found the man praying in secret, with a rosary she hadn't seen before, the response was swift and brutal.

"I am now your god, not whoever this Christ figure is," Z screamed as she ripped the rosary from the man's hands. "If you are to live and see anyone you ever care about again, you pray and beg TO ME!"

What followed was the oni grabbed the man, shoved him against a wall, and then drove spikes into his arms. Zetsuko then left him up on the wall, punishing anyone who moved to remove him, and **** all the other human prisoners to watch him bleed to ****. The lesson was simple: The only way out was through Z, not a deity from a human faith. She reminded the group that if rescue came, the oni would kill them all. If there had been any doubt about that threat, it had been destroyed by the things she had done to them.

During this period of ****, Zetsuko figured out The Doctor was a sociopath. He didn't respond to punishment the way the others did, no matter how painful. While she was furious with this revelation, she realized that made him the perfect control for the oni's **** experiments. She could try punishments out on him versus someone without his particular condition to learn how they would react. From that, she could further hone how to manipulate groups of humans, and even turn them on each other, just like the humans had turned the yokai on each other.

It was with that knowledge Zetsuko set the final part of her plan in motion. If she couldn't make The Doctor feel guilt, or respond to punishment, she would take the one thing he always had over the yokai: Status. She had heard humans complaining about how if he hadn't insisted they finish experiments in the facility, they could've gotten out before Z captured them. It was that resentment she chose to build on, and turn into a perverse game. If the humans either humiliated The Doctor, told a fact about him that he would never reveal, or tortured him, they would earn points towards freedom.

What followed was the final descent into torment as everyone else betrayed The Doctor in rapid succession. They revealed that his real name was Greg Alito, that he was a career climber noted for being an expert at breaking yokai, that it was rumored he had stolen research, and most of all, that he was **** to makeup for Zetsuko's escape. He had refused to clear the facility with chemical weapons or explosives because he was too **** to makeup for his mistakes. It was the same reason he had been too slow to evacuate the facility, or even to get out all of the other creatures in time. He was cornered and ****, which made him do things that were foolish.

Every time one of these things was revealed, the oni would give the human who did it a reward, whether that be more food, or the opportunity to leave their prison cell. Sollix kept an eye on them, and prevented them from leaving the facility, but these privileges were still an immense upgrade for the human captives in question. Those rewards drove them to greater heights, but Zetsuko realized she was also seeing all of the frustration they ever had from this man's behavior boil over as they tormented him. Those with the strength hurt him with any implement the oni would let them have, or would even beat him with their fists if they could get away with it. The ones who couldn't hit him instead just spat on him, and then mocked him, saying his **** was compensating for inadequacy in bed, or that he could never get a woman to stay with him without ****.

All the while, Greg Alito tried to put on a face of invincibility, and to not crack under pressure. He failed at the sight of a power saw that Sollix had found with a little bit of charge left, and cried when all the other human prisoners laughed at him. In that moment, the physical and psychological **** merged into one. That was just perfect because Zetsuko saw that the humiliation from his former subordinates hit much worse than the physical pain did. Not because he cared what they thought of him, but because his status had been stripped from him, and outside of his material possessions, that was the thing he most cared about. His torment became so great that he'd tried knocking himself out to avoid it. But all it accomplished was signaling to the oni that it was time to wrap this up. When Felix heard the words that followed, he knew what the outcome would be, but that wouldn't make it any easier to watch.

"I said I was only going to let one of you out," Z said while circling the remainder of the humans. "I've decided to be more generous. All you have to do to leave is to kill him. But a quick stab won't suffice. You all tortured innocent creatures for no justifiable reason, in some cases to ****. You are going to use everything you've learned doing that on him, and make him have the slowest **** possible."

To Felix's considerable relief, Zetsuko left after telling the human prisoners that. It was the last thing she told them that night, but had told Sollix to watch. The forest troll didn't need much encouragement, given how much he hated the way the humans had treated him, and Greg Alito, as The Doctor, was no exception. This respite, as the oni hadn't seen the ****, proved illusionary, as she did see its aftermath the following morning. To say the man had been made to suffer was a massive understatement, as his corpse looked like it had been run by a train.

"You've done it," Z said. "Let me escort you to the exit, and let you out."

In this instance, Zetsuko was telling the truth. However, that turned out to be for ulterior reasons, as when she opened the exit blast doors, from a safe distance, and the humans tried to walk out... they were all gunned down. In that moment, the oni chose to explain some things to Felix.

“I later found out my escape came from a religious terrorist group targeting the facility for harboring yokai,” Zetsuko whispered to Felix with the soft, calm voice of a mother. “The irony of my escape coming from those that hate my kind is not lost on me, nor that they killed those I had chosen to free. I even felt bad for them, and still do in a way. Not as much though as who I failed."

That admission made Felix feel sick, as did the revelation of who she failed. Despite Zetsuko's best efforts, she was not able to get Sollix out of the facility. They did manage to get out a different way, but the forest troll still ended up getting killed by an opposing vehicle. The oni was unable to help him, and could only watch helplessly as his body was burned by those who surrounded the facility. It was another manipulation, but Felix couldn't help but cry at the fate of the forest troll.

"Did the rest make it out?" Felix asked. "The other yokai? Or did they all die as well?"

"I don't know Felix," Zetsuko's reply had a profound sadness he had never heard from the oni before. "Even if they escaped the facility before the religious nuts showed up, it's unlikely that they would've been able to make it in the wild. There were few places for these creatures to hide in the face of human encroachment after all."

The memories wrapped up soon afterwards with Zetsuko fleeing off into the distance, presumably at some point joining the Yakuza, and living her life up to whatever point Harem Hotel had taken her. "The real reason the facility hadn’t had a break out before me was because they usually tortured the will to resist out of the yokai before an opportunity presented itself. Their real security was built on the lack of will and fear of pain that came from ****, Felix. It was withstanding agony that let me overcome that."

This last quote didn't comfort Felix. It only drove him towards a question that had bothered him since they began watching. "Why do you tolerate me? I know it isn't just because of Harem Hotel, you could've been far more violent if you had chosen to be. You can **** me whenever you want under the rules. When you had power like that before, you used it without any hesitation."

"You don't have any pride Felix," Zetsuko explained. "You have some now but you don't try to resist my rules. Besides, I don't want to wipe out humanity, I just want to put it back in its place. You being naked all the time is wonderful, because I never have to check to see if you have weapons, or similar that I don't know about. On the flip side, you're in the perfect state to give me pleasure."

The answer felt like a slap in the face. Felix had gained true power with his onomancy, and had used it on the oni before. Despite that, Zetsuko still viewed him as so pathetic that she didn't hate him the way she hated other humans. It also reinforced the real reason she had shown him these memories, which was a marketing pitch. Without her saying a single word, he knew what that pitch was.

"Look at how I hurt these people Felix. Look at how when I was so young, I got them to hurt each other, and how I broke someone incapable of shame or guilt. If you do something for me, I'll do the same to Austin White. I'll isolate him, turn all of his powerful friends against him, and ensure that he will never be able to hurt your mother again. Don't you want me to do that? Don't you love your mother enough for me to do that?"

That pitch was reinforced by the next set of memories focused on Zetsuko's path to adulthood. Really though, it was more of an almost contextless clip show, showing different parts of the oni's life in rapid succession. It showed how often she recruited humans to kill other humans, and how she divided groups of opposing people against each other. That skill allowed her to enter an organization like the Yakuza, despite how bigoted it could be against creatures like her, because she could play different parts of it off each other in order to climb its ranks. Other memories showed her on missions where she had to kidnap powerful men, or where she weakened such men by finding a point of vulnerability and exploiting it. It could be someone they held dear, or something that just gave them status, but the end result was the same. Zetsuko was, as a mercenary, pitching to Felix her credentials for breaking Austin White, and protecting his mother. And the worst part was that, as wrong as he knew it was, he wanted to take that deal.

He wanted Zetsuko to use everything she had learned over the course of her long life to break Austin White. He could've told himself it was to protect his mother but that would've been at least a partial lie. It was because he felt like had the perfect life, except for Austin White. That if the man who abused his mother was gone, and not just eliminated, but truly swept out of his life, the life of his mother, and everyone else who mattered to him, it'd be perfect. It was unbelievably selfish, and yet... was it? The legal system had already failed his mother, and he had seen up close how justice could be denied because those in power found it inconvenient to punish the guilty.

"I know what you're thinking Felix," Zetsuko whispered. "You know that if I graduate, I can protect your mother from Austin White in the past. But you want to know the cost of my services. And it's simple: You have to get me get out of this place, and to do that, you have to impregnate me."

The words hit Felix like bullets. What would he choose? What could he choose and live with himself? He would either give his first child to a monster, who would be raised to be just like her, or he would betray his mother, and be yet another person who failed to reign in Austin White despite having the power to do so. The choice was impossible...