Hanabi woke up with blood in her pajamas one day, only months after the deal with the Kyubi. She'd aced human biology along with everything else she'd ever done, so the event was not quite the personal horror it might have been, though the textbooks hadn't quite prepared her for how yucky she felt. The Hyuga domestic arrangements being what they were, the entire clan knew within hours.
She was not at all prepared for the reaction of her family. It was like the morning after she'd made a deal with Kyubi all over again.
I will return when she first bloods.
Oh. Oh yeah. That.
Her father kept her home that day. She was no longer a member of the clan, and yet it had been made clear to her that she was still considered family. So she drank herbal tea and waited. Read a little. Ran through her forms.
And again the next day.
And the day after.
Lacking any real reason to keep her around any longer, she was sent back to school on the fourth day after her first period.
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"She must be sealed."
"Are you a fool? The Kyubi would kill us all!"
"Indeed. Breaking a deal with a demon, or causing one to be broken, is not a wise decision."
"Nevertheless, she must be sealed. I can think of many reasons a demon such as Kyubi would want an unsealed Hyuga girl, and none of them are good for the clan."
"It said it had no interest in her as a sexual partner. And it did not return when she had menarche."
"It said it had no interest in her while she was underage. We all feared that it was simply waiting for menarche, since she has drawn blood in combat already, and many times since, but when you think about it, what does the Kyubi care about?"
"Death."
"Destruction."
"Quite so. We could keep her here and forbid her from killing anyone, but I have no doubt the Kyubi would work around that eventually."
"While I agree that letting a demon have an unsealed daughter of the main house can only bring disaster, I fail to see how enraging the Kyubi to the point it kills our entire clan is any better."
"Sometimes you have to betray the clan to serve the clan."
"…no. That's insane."
"What else is our purpose? We are old. Redundant. This is our last chance to be of major service."
"He has a point. Why should we lose all, when we can give all? I'd rather not sit around and watch whatever new horrors the demon conjures while my arthritis gets worse."
"Are you honestly proposing that we betray the clan? That we have our names stricken from the records and our ashes scattered in the wind, forever in dishonor?"
"Yes. The demon's plans must never succeed."
"We will die screaming."
"And yet, she must be sealed."
"…do I at least get to tell Hiashi what I think of him before I die?"
"That seems only fair."
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Hiashi looked down at the branch elder, a third cousin once removed, he believed, who bowed low before him, as befitted his position.
"You may speak," he announced.
The old man opened and closed his mouth several times in succession, working his tongue in a mouth suddenly gone dry. Then, after a deep breath, he straightened as much as his bent spine would allow, and looked Hiashi in the eye.
"It has been an honor to serve under you, Hiashi-dono. But there's one thing I'd just like you to know before I go."
Hiashi closed his eyes and nodded.
"You're a jerk, Hiashi. A complete kneebiter." And then the old man turned and walked out of his lord's presence for the very last time.
Hiashi stood there with one eyebrow raised, the Hyuga equivalent of jaw on floor amazement and shock.
Well. That was unexpected.
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The first thing Hanabi did when she got home from the Academy was carry her bag full of scrolls and books to her room. Because of chakra limitations and the rules the family had instilled in its members to deal with privacy, Hanabi did not use her byakugan inside her home. She was trained to use other senses to always keep watch, but given the branch house guards and the human limitations on exactly how many hours a day someone could be paranoid, she was not always as diligent as she might have been.
A pity, since the three old men who suddenly assaulted her as she slid open the door to her room were quite past their prime, and if she'd just paid more attention to the faint, cloying smell of mothballs which seemed to hang around one of them she would have been fast enough to evade, gain distance, and use their branch seals against them.
Bony hands, arthritic but calloused and hard with use, grabbed her wrists and pinched the nerves with a spike of pain. Large feet, flat from many years of running, pinned hers to the ground. Her very breath was stolen with a sharp juken blow to the chest and a lighter tap on her throat.
Hanabi was disabled and rendered mute in less than a second.
"Hurry, we won't have long.," one of the branch elders hissed as she was unceremoniously dumped on her bed. "Hiashi-dono will return soon and we at least want to get away from the compound before the Kyubi finds us. His rage will not be precise."
One elder climbed on top of her and pinned her down with his full weight, her hands at her side.
Other girls in her position might have first reacted with a fear of rape, but not Hanabi. Her arms strained as she tried to reach up and protect her forehead, rage and shock warring within her system. How dare they, how dare they!
The other two elders pulled out a bent wooden tool with a single needle sticking out of it at a right angle, and the other uncapped several jars of unguents that Hanabi knew, when mixed with chakra in the recipient's flesh, would turn green.
Her voice was coming back already, and she groaned faintly as she saw the needle dipped in the first component.
The man on top of her spoke quietly.
"Listen, girl. We're just like you, now. We've betrayed the clan and been cast out. But we still have our duty, as do you. You must be sealed."
"Nnnnuuuh," she protested, shaking her head back and forth, but her ears and hair were seized in a grip like iron.
"If you're lucky, getting sealed will invalidate the contract, and you will owe Kyubi nothing. Try to think of that. And… one last time, forgive us, Hanabi-sama. You were always the brightest star of the main family. We apologize for our rudeness."
The entire side of the house was pulled away and casually tossed aside.
"I don't think an apology is going to be sufficient in this case," Kyubi told them seriously.
If ever there was a way for a hundred foot tall demonic fox with ridiculously long ears and nine tails each twice as long as it was to look unhappy, this was it.
Hanabi rolled her eyes wildly, looking at the Kyubi.
You said you could prevent this. We had a deal.
Kyubi shrank down into the form of a teenage boy in a fox print kimono and strode forward, every move speaking of barely contained rage.
"I gave my word that she would not be sealed," the young man said tightly, his fists clenched. "ARE YOU TRYING TO BREAK OUR DEAL?" he roared.
Hanabi thought, at the time, that the world had exploded. Never had she felt such rage, such power, such a will to kill. Later, she realized that the world hadn't exploded, but the three men holding her down certainly had, covering her in a fine spatter of blood and lymph, but otherwise leaving her unharmed.
Her bedroom was not so lucky, the things closest to the men simply bursting into flames and disintegrating from the force of the Kyubi's rage, and things farther away being smashed into splinters in the resulting explosion. The entire house was shaken off its foundations and pushed backwards nearly six feet.
Across Konoha, birds took flight, frogs hid at the bottom of pools, dogs howled, cats screamed, babies cried, and people cowered in terror, for the Kyubi was back in all its rage.
Hanabi marveled at the Kyubi's power, and yet it flowed around her, leaving her untouched and unharmed.
After all, she would not have made a deal with a being who would casually hurt her. Anything and everything had its limits. She knew it, and the Kyubi knew it as well.
It took some moments for the Kyubi to calm down, only to immediately fly back into a, fortunately briefer, rage when it realized that the humans that had dared to try and break its deal with the girl had been killed far quicker than what would have truly quenched its anger.
There were no more people around it was allowed to kill. The three humans had been declared missing nin and traitor, misguided adherents to a path that would have destroyed their entire clan in their efforts to enforce the status quo on one rebellious girl.
Hizashi had been quick to point that out, with supporting documentation, when he had approached the Kyubi in its cave and woken it with news from Hiashi that rogue elements had staged a plot to seal Hanabi against the Kyubi's wishes.
Hizashi survived the experience. He supposed he owed his brother a coke.
"FINE. I suppose I owe you a favor for alerting me to this foolish attempt to break a demon's word."
Hiashi bowed before the demon, currently a thirty foot tall fox sitting in his yard growling aimlessly. Hanabi sat to one side, the same distance from both of them.
"So what is your desire? A summoning contract? Long life? Your enemies' hearts?" The Kyubi's eyes narrowed with a shrewd intelligence, suspecting that Hiashi might have arranged all this just so he would owe the man.
"You owe me no favor. This, I did for Hanabi," Hiashi replied after a moment.
The Kyubi's head jerked up, as if stun by a fly. It had not expected, or even considered such a response. Everyone wanted something from it. Everyone.
"Nevertheless, I owe you a favor. I cannot break the contract with your daughter, but anything else in my power is yours to have." It paused. "Once."
He raised his head again. "Very well then. I ask that any favor you owe to me be passed to my daughter, Hanabi, with whom you have a contract with. Though she is no longer of our clan, she is still my daughter."
Kyubi cocked its head sideways and looked at him, for a moment startled out of its rage. It blinked, then snarled. Orchids, lovingly tended by Hyuga gardeners, withered and died.
"It is done." The vulpine head turned to regard Hanabi. "What favor would you ask of me?"
Hanabi blinked. Thought for a moment, then bowed towards the Kyubi. "I will consider it and let you know."
Kyubi barked a fox laugh, and then was simply gone.
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"You planned all this," Hanabi stated, looking at her father as she docilely followed him back to the ruins of the house. It was not a question.
"Yes."
"Why?" That one question had nagged at her ever since the three elders had grabbed her. In her heart, she knew her father was behind it all, at first, believing that he had decided she must be sealed after all, then, realizing that he had arranged for her rescue at the same time.
Hiashi paused.
Hanabi did as well.
He turned, then knelt, putting himself eye to eye with her in a way he hadn't done since she was a very young child, when he would hold her up and look her in the face.
"My daughter, my beloved daughter, I would have sacrificed more than you could possibly imagine if that was what it took to arm you with the one weapon the Kyubi is vulnerable to."
She stared at him, her pale eyes unblinking, missing no detail of his face.
"The human heart," he said simply.
She hesitated. "I do not understand," she admitted.
He patted her head awkwardly, then suddenly changed his mind and pulled her into a hug. "Neither does he, Hanabi-chan," he said, suddenly holding her at arm's length, his eyes searching her face for understanding, eyes that glimmered with unshed tears. "For all his power, for all his knowledge, for all his rage and his cunning, neither does he. Learn this lesson well, my daughter. It is the last thing I can give you."
She blinked, very slowly, then inclined her head. "Thank you, Father." She nearly choked on the words, though formal lines had always came easily to her.
He released her and climbed to his feet, regaining his composure with dignity and grace. "You must leave now. Speak to no one. Go to the Hokage's tower, he will be waiting for you with orders and a new posting far from here. Congratulations on your graduation from the Academy, the youngest allowed in two decades. Your duties await, genin of Konoha."
"Yes, Father." She bowed low, then did as she was bade. Her banishment was complete now.
"Always remember that your family loves you," Hiashi whispered as she ran to meet the Hokage.
She left destruction, death, and heartache behind her, carrying with her only the clothes on her back, dishonor, and the precious insight her father had arranged for her to see into the way the Kyubi could be beaten at its own game.
She also gained something else, something else even her father didn't know.
Hanabi now understood something of just what the Kyubi wanted from her in return.
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"Welcome, fools and fuck ups, to your new posting in Hell," their jounin-supervisor announced with sadistic glee as the wagon train, loaded down with supplies and guarded by weary chunin who'd managed to either be barely competent at their duties or extremely proficient at pissing off superior officers, or both, as well as one newly minted genin unsure of her place in the new world.
The new world consisted of a half ring of buildings built along the rim of an enormous crater in the ground more than a mile across. Anko's moniker of 'Hell' was appropriate enough, as the bottom of the crater was completely obscured by smoke, and the stench of sulfur and brimstone lay heavy in the air, while everything was coated in a light dusting of ash. Faintly, just at the edge of hearing, Hanabi almost thought she heard screams of agony coming from the bottom of the pit, but surely that was just a trick of her imagination.
"I'm Anko Mitarashi," she continued with a mocking bow, which displayed cleavage the discouraged, weary men didn't bother to appreciate. "I'm second in charge to your new lord and master Kakashi, Jounin-Commander of this shithole. He's the laid back one, I'm the one that actually gets shit done. You can call me bitch behind my back, I don't mind, but if you say it to my face I'm taking your balls. Or ovaries, whatever." She paused, getting a good look at Hanabi. "Wait, why is the Hyuga prodigy riding in on the fuck up train?"
Hanabi was waiting for this. She had her order scroll ready, and passed it over to Anko. Loudly, so everyone within earshot could hear plainly, she spoke. "Because I dishonored my clan by making a deal with Kyubi so I would not be sealed into the branch family. I am no longer Hyuga, I am a traitor to my family and bound to serve the Kyubi's will, also, I am protected by the Kyubi's will. Meanwhile, I am a genin of Konoha, and I am reporting for duty, Mitarashi-san."
"Holy shit," Anko breathed, reading the orders, then again, because she didn't believe it the first time. She stared down at the tiny little ex-Hyuga girl in sheer amazement.
Hanabi, her introductory speech complete, stood patiently, not flinching under the shocked stares and mutters her announcement had caused.
"Okay, yeah, I can see that you belong here, now," Anko admitted, rolling up the scroll and storing it in one of the pockets of her duster. "Welcome, then, to the village founded by the Kyubi itself, The Village Hidden in the Smoking Hole in the Ground!"
As if on cue, the wind shifted, bringing a fresh wave of sulfur and brimstone, and now, more clearly, screams could definitely be heard coming from the bottom of the crater.
As an aside, she added, "On official paperwork it's still called The Village Hidden in the Clouds, though. Something to do with appeasing the Lightning Daimyo. We just call it Hell."