The Heart-Pounding Prison Life of the Atrocious and Cruel Great Criminal Benya Tomiri (2)
***
But truly, alas, those happy days did not last long.
For the first three days, I was content to laze about in the most extreme form of indolence—lying flat, eating, sleeping, and rolling around, checking my status window or goofing off on the gallery. That was all it took.
The problem was the very moment day three ended and day four began.
"Wake up, Prisoner 219591!"
"Huh?"
"Disgusting wretch—prisoner and you can't even be bothered to dress properly! Wearing nothing but that!"
"What?"
Out of nowhere, a guard in black clothes began barking at me through the door like this—me, who was just rolling around on the prison bed, goofing off on my phone.
Well, if it had stopped there, I could have given them the benefit of the doubt—'Ah, some overeager bastard, huh'—and brushed it off with a shrug and moved on.
But incredibly, the longer time went on... how should I put it?
For reasons beyond my understanding, the 'treatment' was getting worse and worse, completely unlike what the users had told me.
I'm not joking. According to what the users had said, it shouldn't have been hotel-level luxury, but at the very least, a user wasn't supposed to have any real hardship.
It started with that nameless guard, and then other guards began throwing open my cell door and conducting invasive interior inspections at will.
They picked apart my attire, which they'd never commented on before, confiscated my robe, forced me into a scratchy, coarse prisoner's uniform.
Beyond that, they slyly adjusted the temperature and humidity of my cell, making me savor a subtle, lingering discomfort.
Watching the treatment deteriorate so abruptly, I could feel myself going blank with bewilderment.
...Strictly speaking, I suppose this is what a *real* 'prison' is like...
Worse still, those guard bastards kept sneaking touches of my body,
and finally they messed with my food. What was supposedly my meal came out drenched in some unidentified, rancid-smelling liquid, and the sheer disgust of it made me skip meals entirely.
----------
So why does it feel like you're all trying to corrupt me into some degraded femboy, serving me every conceivable form of sexual harassment and bullshit hazing?
You rotten vets, did you lie to me?
You said WWE, but in reality you're grinding me down with goddamn boot camp drills
----------
"These absolute sons of bitches are playing games with my food."
From anyone's perspective, this had clearly gone beyond 'WWE' territory, and the other users' reactions made it plain they sensed something was seriously wrong.
So around this point, I began to feel that things had gone thoroughly, irreversibly sideways.
***
But the truth was, the situation being royally screwed up didn't end with the fact that what Benya was currently experiencing wasn't WWE—it was UFC.
To start with the basics, the past three days that had made everything seem like WWE were, in reality, nothing more than a 'delay' caused by various internal confusions within the Milano System government that had left them unable to process things in time.
Here's the problem: whatever else you could say, as Benya had seen in the gallery some time ago, the universe held four (plus extras) great powers.
Setting aside the Earth Alliance, which tended to confine its activities largely within its own territory,
and the Babel Cult, even more closed-off in disposition, the Milano System government's allegiance inevitably had to fall to ACIC.
Which meant: the three days of meetings had been busy ones, and the unintended WWE posture had simply been tacked on in the meantime.
But once those three days passed and every issue was resolved, the result came down:
-"We can't just let a little cub that's wandered into our den slip away."
-"Extend the detention period to the legal maximum, and set treatment to the barest minimum."
-"She's a Consul of the Demonia Empire with such a frail body—we don't need direct torture. Just enough misery in daily life to break her into submission."
The ACIC-aligned Milano System government would maintain the barest veneer of neutrality on the surface,
while inwardly hatching and executing a strategy to 'educate' Benya—a member of the Demonia Empire, toward whom they harbored no small undercurrent of resentment—and pressure her into joining their side.
That said, there were a few critical problems here. First of all, taking measures like these was nothing new by this universe's standards.
Accordingly, the parties who had drafted this plan had wanted, above all, to keep everything contained within 'WWE' bounds.
Their design was a modestly genteel structure guaranteed to cause no future complications: slightly adjust the cell's temperature and humidity to weaken her condition, then gently nudge her chain of thought in the direction they desired.
But ACIC-affiliated organizations had a characteristic flaw—a structure of 'subcontracting the subcontractors, and subcontracting them again'—and when that got layered onto this scheme,
it wasn't a mere three or four layers of outsourcing. The people actually carrying out the orders were, in practice, some seven or eight layers deep.
So naturally, the 'gentle, edgy, and appropriately measured approach' the System government's leadership had envisioned went right out the window.
The 'executors' ended up being genuine lower-class scum living hand to mouth—day-laborer guards, no, wait.
More precisely, near-refugee garbage hired *by* the guards—and that was how this catastrophe came to pass.
And here, at this point, it bears repeating:
These 'auxiliary arms' of mine weren't augment parts or prosthetics—they were, quite literally, 'parts' of my body, grafted on and brought along as-is. As mentioned before, they revealed a rather cyborg-ish nature, capable of doing things like injecting chemicals internally.
Which meant that everything Benya was experiencing now—being assaulted despite her hamster-tier physical strength,
the molestation, the culinary sabotage—was all being exposed in real time to Ilena and the rest of the staff at the Milano-V branch.
And the result...
KRA-KOOOOOM!!!
"How dare these rotten System government bastards insult Lady Benya in such a manner!"
"......"
"Ilena, this—this situation absolutely cannot be allowed to pass, Assistant."
"Correct!"
"Haaaaah... it seems we've been taken far too lightly. To do such a thing to the Doctor, such a..."
-Click.
Having grasped the situation, Ilena and the rest of the Demonia branch organization on Milano-V concluded, under Ilena's judgment, that they could not simply stand by.
Temporarily setting aside their usual obsequious deportment, they resolved that the time had come for a full-scale—and thoroughly justified—period of 'armed struggle.'
Moreover, they had legitimate partners in this: Chairman Lime Pedro Heisenberg, who through their rightful partnership had risen to head of the frontier city union of Milano-V, along with the allied cities under him.
Add to that the residents and mayors of the satellite zones and the planets Milano-IV and VI, who had weathered the Red Scourge incident thanks to the Demonia branch.
And finally, the mercenaries and security firms who had been hired, paid, and blissfully sucking on easy, sweet money—so long as the Demonia branch didn't hog all the profits from this affair.
To make sure everyone understood the hardships (?) Benya was enduring, a touch of censorship was added, and Ilena and her admin-soldier friends spread everything across the internal intranet.
Then, roughly several days later.
That is, about a week after our Benya had gritted her teeth and held out in a near-hibernation state of endurance, weathering everything from that hazing with the fragrance of night-blooming flowers to the assorted lower-scum acts of molestation—
KRA-KOOOOOOM!!!!
-"Long live Demonia!"
-"Long live Benya!"
-"Free Doctor Benya!"
-"Free her! Free her!"
"This is bad—large-scale violent protests have broken out across the entire Milano System."
"What? Why on earth?"
"It appears... information regarding Consul Benya Tomiri's prison conditions has leaked."
"Even so, it shouldn't have escalated to burning everything down like this?"
"...We have evidence materials here, and what took place far, far exceeded what we originally planned."
"What on earth could it have—...Oh. ...Oh. ...You son of a bitch."
The President of the Milano System government, who had intended to milk the Demonia affiliation at a leisurely pace while staging a modest WWE-style show,
took in the protests setting the entire System ablaze—and, upon learning the true scale of the 'persecution' of Benya, which had unfolded in a manner wholly unlike anything they had envisioned—
immediately buried his face in his hands and began cursing up a storm.