Villainous [Hitoshi Shinso X Reader]

[Chapter 1]: Nothing

It has been four years since that fateful run-in with the Pros. Not once had it ever occurred to me at the tender age of seven just how drastically a life could change.
How quickly our minds could be swayed and our worlds could collapse around us... Especially not the speed at which our perspectives could shift from the darkness and into new light.
Yet, here I was.
Eleven-years-old, the daughter of the most notorious villain known to Japan's underworld, freeing a middle-aged man who had been caught spying on my father's organization from captivity.
A lot of things have changed.
"Go," I whispered to the fearful man.
He was glancing shiftily from side to side with obvious skepticism. Sweat rolled down his temples in rivets and his shaking fists continued to clench and unclench at his sides after hastily rubbing them on his slacks.
I rolled my eyes.
"If I wanted to kill you, I would've done it by now." I deadpanned. "So go," the toe of my shoe nudged gently at the back of his calf. "Before I change my mind."
His eyes were conflicted, seemingly contemplating his odds and the legitimacy of my claims. However, not even a moment more of hesitation and the man was spinning around, sprinting out of the heavy door without so much as a single spared glance. I sighed.
"A 'thank you' would've been nice," I grumbled.
After releasing so many ignorant captives out into the unforgiving world, most would have expected to receive at least one measly sentence of gratitude by now. I never did.
The thought of it was always appealing—being recognized for something so marginally good, it almost made me feel like I could be a good person, like I could be a good hero—but I knew it would never happen.
I was the daughter of their nightmare, after all.
Plagued by gloomy thoughts, I walked over to the dingy, leather couch in the corner of our temporary hideout where I proceeded to flop down onto my stomach.
All that was left to do now was wait. Father's wrath would be upon me soon.
Closing my eyes, I allowed a piece of a fading memory replayed in my mind too many times before to drift through my tired conscious. The promise. I remembered every little detail as if the words were physically seared into my brain forever.
They were always there, echoing around in my head like a mantra off the walls in a hollow room. As crazy as it drove me, the lingering hope I had felt when those words were first spoken to me that day was the only thing keeping me alive. My only lifeline.
And I'd be damned if I let it out of my clutches so easily.
We won't let anything happen to you ever again.
A scoff slipped past my lips despite myself at the memory. I shook my head. So much for that...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     An incessant banging startled me from my restless sleep and I groaned, aggressively scrubbing my groggy eyes. Hazily, I sat up.
     Immediately, a cloud of dust puffed up around my body. What looked to be chunks of plaster were covering me. It was so potent that when I began hesitantly wiping it off, I sneezed.
Curiously, I began peering around my surroundings.
     There were craters punched through the walls that looked to be created by supernatural forces. I presumed that those were the by-products of whatever had been producing the loud noises.
Furniture was flipped and broken, debris continued to fly. The door was torn right from its hinges and pieces of splintered wood scattered the floor as the dust began to settle.
     Had I not been safely situated on the couch I had fallen asleep atop of a few mere hours beforehand, I would have assumed that this room was the aftermath of a natural disaster. It looked as if a tornado had ripped straight through it.
The lights were still too bright and my mind was muddled from sleep, so it took me a moment longer than it should have for me to process where I was and what was happening. A moment too long that would inevitably reveal the course I was about to be unceremoniously thrown down into motion.
My own naivety prevented me from realizing the severity of the events unfolding right before me.
     I continued to glance around, lingering on particularly unsettling parts of the destruction. There was a gaping hole smashed directly above my head.
     Finally, my gaze wandered to the corner of the room. I stiffened.
The instant my eyes locked with those of my cold, calculating father, I snapped right out of my sluggish stupor.
"What. Have. You. Done?"
     I paled, rigid as a board, praying that maybe if I just willed it to happen, I could disappear into the floor.
     No such luck.
He never allowed me the chance to answer his question. There was no denying what had happened, no sweet-talking my way around it, and we both knew that. There was no point in wasting time.
Through the halls I was dragged, kicking and screaming, by the collar of my shirt. I choked as it dug into my throat.
     This wasn't new to me. I knew that even if I clawed at his hands until my nails were bloody and broken, it would do me no good as he barely felt pain at all—sinking my teeth into his flesh was just as useless.
A large, metal door was swiftly rising up into view as I twisted around on the cool tile floor to see where he was leading me. Upon seeing it, I writhed harder in his grasp. As always, my attempts were pathetically ineffectual—I continued to thrash about anyways.
The door slammed open with a bang against the wall behind it. He blew it inwards with nothing more than a flick of his wrist.
     I began to panic.
     Out of my peripheral vision, I caught the gleam of a small indent where the knob of the door cracked against the once smooth cement.
     The lights were piercing.
     Incidentally, so were my screams.
     Father was quick to discover the man he had captured was released. He was even quicker to realize who had done it.
     I hit the floor hard as he tossed me carelessly into the cell. There was barely time for me to roll onto my elbows before he was sliding the deadbolt into place and descending upon my much smaller stature.
     My teeth were grit, eyes boring holes into the shadowy figure before me. He bestowed a pair of scorching hot pliers like a trophy as he twirled them menacingly in his palm.
     But he couldn't shake my resolve.
     I wouldn't let him see me cry. I wouldn't let him break me.
     Never again.
     "(Y/N)," he said disapprovingly. "You're beginning to make me angry with your antics..."
     There was a heavy silence—then I spat.
     With practiced composure, he wiped away the saliva from his face. His posture was misleadingly calm, but his eyes were blazing with an abrupt new desire for murder.
     "Fuck off." I seethed.
     Suddenly my head was recoiling from the solid impact of his hand against my cheek. Reflexive tears prickled at the corners of my eyes, but I was quick to swallow them.
     There was no time to recover because   searing flames were suddenly being meticulously drawn across my cheekbone. I yelped.
     It wasn't long before the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes began to blur into hours until I lost track of time completely.
     By the time I could catch my breath again, three of my toes were bent at odd angles, I was bleeding from multiple gashes, and patches of my skin were bubbling and peeling away from third-degree burns. Where the flesh of my hands should've been, sticky, crimson blood began beading up to the surface instead. I tried weakly to wipe them off on my shirt, but my clothes were filthy and shredded which made it impossible to do so.
     I inhaled shakily.
     "Why do you insist on disobeying me?" Father asked with false hurt in his voice. "I've given you everything you could ever ask for. I don't want to hurt you..." The back of his hand stroked my swollen cheek. I flinched away from his touch and his eyes hardened. "You could save us both so much needless suffering if you would just get over this rebellious, teenage melodrama you've acquired."
     "It isn't rebellion," I hissed. "It's morality."
     My father chuckled darkly. "Mortality? Since when do you have morals, child?" His voice lowered conspiratorially. "You weren't so morally sound when you were eating the souls of your enemies."
     I cringed as he began to reminisce longingly. "You were such a precious child. Truly remarkable..." With deliberate leisure, he wedged the red-hot pliers beneath the nail of my index finger, successfully eliciting another blood-curdling scream from my lips. "What changed?"
The room was spinning in and out of focus, the lights fuzzy and dull. It was all I could do to muster a response.
     "My mindset." I snapped, panting heavily from the pain.
     Soon I found myself praying for the bittersweet release of death. At least then, I'd be safe.
     However, I was no stranger to the Underworld. The souls that I commanded through my quirk would be absolutely pissed at me if I decided to pop off and die—after all, they'd never get to see the light again.
     Thinking about my quirk only made me more frustrated. I wished that I could summon them now, beg them to free me from this pain, but Father was blocking my quirk.
     A thin sheen of sweat had already formed a layer over my entire aching body. It stuck the ragged pieces of fabric that used to be clothes to my battered skin. My throat was bloody and raw after the hours of torture I had already endured and my skin was bruised and broken.
     I felt my soul tearing apart inside of me.
     Still, Father just sighed as if my words were a minor inconvenience to the grand scheme of things.
"Pity."
     "Isn't it?" I bit back.
He shook his head. "You are to do as I say."
I lifted my chin defiantly. "And if I don't?"
His eyes raked over my small form, sizing me up. "As you wish. I guess we'll have to do it the hard way."
     The tremor that had taken hold of my body was evident, I could see it in the quirk of his mouth. We haven't already been doing it the hard way?!
     "There are things much worse than torture in this world..." He chuckled. The sound was so sinister that I could feel goosebumps racing up my spine. "Just know that your own stubbornness is what brought this upon you."
My eyes turned to saucers as he stepped towards me, hand on his belt.
     "What are you doing?" Despite my best efforts, I could hear my own voice begin to wobble, tone laced with thinly veiled hysteria.
"What I should have done a long time ago," his hand was suddenly fisted in my hair, jerking me close to his face. "Putting you in your place."
     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     Nothing was ever the same after that.
     My body was no longer my own and my life was never mine to begin with. I felt vacant, void of anything at all.
     Time dragged on at an agonizing pace. The days began to take their toll on me and I could feel myself slipping away; slowly, at first, and then all at once.
     After each excruciating defiance, every refused order to abandon the morals I had instilled within myself, my heart grew weaker.
     My body wasn't doing much better, either.
     The eyes that stared back at me in the mirror were not those of the fiery girl I once knew, but those of a beaten stranger. They were sunken, rimmed with deep, bruise-like circles and my sharp bones began to jut prominently from beneath my ghastly, paper-thin skin.
     But I never gave in; no matter what he put me through, I had an iron-will. I refused to cave.
     The torture wasn't even the worst of it. No, I could handle the physical trauma. It was the irony of it all that truly began to break me.
     Time and time again, I fought to protect those that I was meant to destroy. Time and time again, they never returned the favour.
     I lost everything for a society that didn't care about me.
     Then finally, the day came. I broke.
My father had delivered me to an abandoned warehouse, lifeless and covered in blood. My clothes were ripped, my body exposed—and the men were already there waiting for me.
     He, himself, had violated me in unspeakable ways time and time before, but the feeling of hopelessness never left me. Even stranger was the sense of betrayal I felt at the notion that Father had offered me up to a lowly group of criminals so easily.
     I laid there in the dirt, face bruised and lip split. Even with the pain of my broken wrist crumpling beneath my sickly frame and the sound of the people I had never seen before closing in around me, I didn't move.
     There was no reason for me to do so.
     I was a hollow shell, practically dead already. What was the difference if I stopped fighting? If I finally succumbed to the gods' wills and allowed myself to embrace the awaiting arms beyond the boundary?
     Tears slipped down my face. Only a few at first, but before long they were gushing out in salty streams that blended seamlessly with the grime marring my skin.
     Nothing. Absolutely nothing.