DISCLAIMER: The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed below are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Naruto characters are Masashi Kishimoto's intellectual property. I own nothing.

WARNING: Peeps with real potty mouth.

Maybe this is where her story was supposed to start. Then it wouldn't have been as confusing.

But she didn't want this episode to be her centrepiece, nor does she intend her story to revolve around it. She never chose this life. Never wanted it. She didn't want to leave anyone in the dark: friends, family, classmates, sister; but the necessity grew as her sins piled up one by one.

But some days, she tries to forget she hated everything that happened. With constant practice, she calmed anxiety by telling herself she can't run to anyone for help and bother their stately lives. Ultimately, she only has herself to rely on.

Marvel DC. Stands for Marvel Debt Collector.

It wasn't Hinata's idea. Lee was into American comics and always acted as though his word was the law of Team 3108. No one put him up to it, but he takes lording over Chouji and Kiba up a notch so they always leave him be rather than slashing each other throats. Though, the newbie Hinata brings in the most money. Asuma, the main boss in the Shiga district of the Twin Lion Fist Group, would say subarashii, subarashii—marvellous, marvellous—as she piles stacks of collection on his desk. That was where Lee got the idea.

However, Marvel DC was a grave misstatement. If Hinata were to be politically correct, Marvel E would be more apt.

Marvel Extortionist.

How she wounded up in all these, it all began winter of her first year in senior high, well into becoming a second year at spring.

She knew her father's shipping business hadn't been doing well. His benign nature rounded him as a pushover and was often more than not, erred on the side of caution when raising profits—that is on the losing side. While his studious nature had made him do excel in academics during his youth, her mother had been the one with the most business sense. But during Hinata's third year in middle school, a lung disease took her mother's life and in its stead, a life insurance benefit to her father's bank account. He assured them the money would sustain getting into any expensive school they want and all the necessities. Her father's naive integrity was what later brought his failing.

She had taken the bus home one afternoon, and the first thing on her mind was to put her judo uniform in the washing machine. Her grandmother anathematized it but her mother encouraged sports that motivated strength and discipline rather than delicate feminity.

The gate was left open. Hanabi's shriek made Hinata dash inside to find men in suits moving out their appliances and furniture. One of them pulled at Hanabi's hair and shoved her t the sofa. For the first time in her life, clearl felt the shape of her heart as it throbbed; how it was to be truly petrified and speechless out of fear.

Men surrounded Hinata and with their cursing mouths, informed they're taking every property her father has. He could no longer pay his debts, they said, since he crashed somewhere as he answered their call and had his spine broken. As added consequence, since they're pretty faces, she and Hanabi will be taken to prostitution to pay for the remaining amount.

Hanabi clawed her way out but the tall stocky man grabbed her skirt and dragged her back to the sofa saying she'll be punished in ways stated in vulgarities for wounding his face. As Hinata watched stock-still at her sister struggling, their stinky hands touching her face, and their curse words overwhelming her ears, something unknown snapped. A dark, monstrous Pandora box had been inside her all this time, long suppressed by her grandmother's lectures on how a lady should act. In reality, she was a beast roaring with all her might, snarling profanities she didn't know she could ever say as she crushed their pipes and poked at their eyes. They bruised her face and busted her lip. Yet the drive for murder so foreign but so much her own spiked her veins and sent her thrashing and biting hard on their fingers as they crushed her to the floor. She didn't care what she looked like; she didn't care for dignity or humanity. All she cared at that moment was twisting their necks, breaking their spines, and taking their warm, beating hearts out their chests.

Their leader figure came downstairs in shiny black leather shoes from the bedrooms. That was the first time she saw Asuma. As her body shook trying to break free, her vision seeing red all over, with his hands stuffed in his slacks in a relaxed manner, he gave her a wry smile.

"Marvellous, marvellous," he said. "I never would've known this is a true Hyuuga." It was then he decided he had other uses for her.

While her classmates enjoyed summer vacation in the beach, skiing in the Alps, or maybe fine dining at Burj Khalifa's top floor, she was getting better at extorting "territorial fees" from business owners, thriving and struggling alike, in Team 3108's designated area. She felt her soul getting darker and darker every time she goes home afterwards, and while her father's long-time friend Doctor Hiruzen knew about the loan sharks, he didn't know what she had been doing at Shiga. He offered paying her father's debt. She told him it was already paid off with her mother's life insurance benefit. She lied.

While her parents' savings over the years had all been spent, probably attempts of her father to save her mother's businesses failing one by one with him at the helm, the life insurance money stayed intact in her father's bank account. She knew why he chose to borrow money instead of using what her mother had left them, deemed his choices stupid, but she could only break in tears at the hospital when he couldn't talk or open his eyes..

He grew up an orphan and never belonged anywhere nor did he think he owned anything. When he married, he took his wife's surname in favor of the Hyuuga family's grand affluence, though, he was shamed everywhere. Still, he chose to keep their small family intact and tried to keep his dwindling business afloat, instead of relinquishing custody of his daughters to their rich grandmother. Surely, if their grandmother knew what happened, she would, without a doubt, leave their father to rot to death.

Because her father chose to protect their family, though later ruined, Hinata promised to do the same. She afforded him premium hospital care, kept her and her sister's school lives as usual while taking part-time jobs for daily miscellaneous expenses, and at the end of the month, collected money which people didn't owe. The Twin Lion Fist Group was never leaving her. Asuma's claim over her father far exceeded what they had in the bank, and in spite of the increments she paid, it constantly grew with an interest scheme that permitted anyone to sit on their couches for a hundred years and still have money coming in every month.

Police? Anti-Organized Crime Law? The Twin Lion Fist Group could bypass it all. She was never going to get done.

Her wake-up call came at the knowledge of Asuma running an underground fight club betted online below Ground Zero which was a common nightclub on the surface.

She hadn't considered it at first but her conscience could no longer bear it when Team 3108 began collecting higher territorial fees. There was a Chinese man named Fu who owns a small convenience store called Gentle Fist which always struck Hinata as paradoxical. He always handed them payments with both hands, shrinking and shivering. But that night, he kneeled in front of them and looked at Hinata in the eye—her skull mask on—and laid all his money in front of them.

"These. All I have," he said in his broken Japanese and wept. "Money for medicine… My mother sick. Hospital. Dying…"

"Hey, feeling generous today, old man!" said Kiba, picking up the bills and coins. "Can't understand your yappin' but this I do." Lee opened a can of energy drink while Chouji took five packs of potato chips, and the three of them casually went out the store.

Hinata couldn't move a foot out. She froze on the spot taking in the image of the pleading man, his sallow cheeks sagging, his narrow eyes sunken and gray. "Don't you have mother? You don't understand?" he asked, his voice thinning and brittle. His words were gentle fists that sent hot tears dampening her mask.

"Marvel, dude," called Lee, putting a hand on his hip, exposing his gun. "Lay it low on the poor gramps, will ya?" He laughed. Feeding Albatrosses from the nearby sea countered with their shrieks. "Looks like he's gonna fucking piss… Good stuff," he referred to his canned drink. He took out his gun and fired at the direction of the noisy birds. "Power of youth, you bastards!"

Truly, what is the power of youth? She clenched her fists and vowed to change the situation.

"Get me in your fight ring," she told Asuma. His pregnant girlfriend, a former bar girl, had the easy life painting her nails. Hinata would sometimes wish their child never gets born. Not to parents like them.

"Stick to collection, girly," he said.

"I know the fights are fixed."

Asuma looked up from his porn magazine and scoffed. "Do you even know how to look like you know how to fight?"

"Try me."

She beat Lee who was disoriented after knowing for the first time she had been a girl. From then on, Lee, Chouji, and Kiba continued collection and bet their monies while she fights on the rink in the presence of hundreds every last Sunday of the month. The upside of it all, in her Hinata Hyuuga self, she had tipped the business owners, including old man Fu, who to bet on online in the deep dark web. As Team 3108 extort thousands of yen, those people could make twice or thrice as much.

If she wrote a memoir, she'd entitle it Angst. Each page would be dripping with anger and frustration, fighting against the almost impossible circumstances.

That was until Sasuke Uchiha.

He was a remnant of a warm, happy life which now seemed so far away. After he came back, though they hadn't exactly parted on a good note, she was going to pretend as if everything had stayed the same, but by a twisted turn of misunderstood events, she twisted his arm, he cursed at her, she unintentionally cursed back, and everything went downhill from there. He was a devil incarnate and she unleashed the monster within.

He wasn't supposed to know that side of her. No one from the bright side of her world was supposed to know.

From the first chapter where she lay hopelessly on the carpet in his room, to the time she brought him home, she knew she made the biggest mistake. She tried not to entertain the thought, but as the last Sunday approached, she could no longer ignore the nagging feeling she was taking him to places he wasn't supposed to go. It bogged down on her conscience to be bringing someone who only knew the world above, to the dark side of things, as though a vicarious representation of herself.

Sasuke Uchiha was the first, and hopefully, the last person to cross both sides, to know the whole spectrum of who she is: he used to call her Angel Princess; the previous week, after thirteen years, he demoted her to witch. Aptly so. Though, bringing him to Shiga didn't feel as terrible since he's a queer jerk. Not that he deserved it, but she didn't feel as sorry had he been Hanabi or any of the girls in class, as they rode Ground Zero's elevator leading underground.

"Fudge. Chocolate farting fudge. Are we going down?" Sasuke tensely mumbled, and held on the low bar for dear life while hugging the potato chips. "Take me out. Seriously. I'm gonna lose your curry." The LED arrows and numbers indicated they were going up. Sadly, he was right. "Hinata… Hyuuga… Marvel DC whatever. I-I'm not going to ask anything specific. For now." His was breathing hard. "There were red lights." He gulped loud. "And. A-and g-gyrating naked women. On poles… Are you in a cult? Are you offering me? For sacrifice?"

The most reasonable conclusion, thought Hinata. Secretly, it was mildly pleasurable watching him suffer, his legs spread wide, his dark eyes bulging out in full-blown panic.

The elevator pinged and the doors parted. Roaring cheers made the ground shook. At the center of the teeming arena was a fenced octagon ring where a muscled man was being choked by another bulkier woman, both in flashy wrestler masks.

Asuma's fight club has only two rules: don't kick and don't bite your opponent. Everything else is allowed.

The announcer's voice blasted through the speakers declaring the winner and the whole place exploded. TV screens installed on every corner flashed eight figures which then shifted to polls of percentages per country. Gambling here involved big global money.

She brought Sasuke to the break room where Kurenai was putting her daughter, Mirai, to sleep. While Asuma was unchanged, Hinata observed the former bar girl had been keeping her nails plain for the baby's sake. Kurenai tilted her head as she handed Hinata her outfit.

"Who's he? Your boyfriend?" she asked, her red eyes blinking curiously.

Hinata rolled her eyes. "Never thought I'd hear the same thing in Ground Zero… He's a new recruit. Mute. Don't ask him anything."

Keeping their distance at bay within the twenty-three meter threshold (which was, thankfully, more than enough for her to move around the ring so long as he stayed on the isles), she left him on the battered leather couch with his junk food where he sat unmoving like a statue, to dress up and begin warming up exercises in the other room.

Past half an hour and she was almost done. She placed a hot towel on her bare face and inhaled deeply to keep her limbs and muscles, relaxed and limber. Hinata had been doing image training when Lee's voice interrupted her.

"What's this, Marvel?" he said.

She heard rubber soles squeaking against the concrete floor and a few more footsteps followed in. Hinata lifted the towel to see Sasuke being shoved and passed around like a ball by Lee and Chouji.

Hinata kept her face neutral. "He's my new recruit. I'm just showing him around."

"Who said you could bring in a new guy?" Lee scowled, pushing Sasuke to Chouji. "The fucker's pissing me off. Can't even say his fucking name."

"The fucker," echoed Chouji as he grabbed Sasuke by the hoodie, whirled him and hauled him back to Lee. "Saw him eatin' chips one by one. Right then I knew he's a phony. Get rid a him, Marvel. He's a phony, I tell ya."

If there was one thing she learned from dealing with these guys, it's that she can make them believe practically everything. "He can't answer you. His mother calls him Bakasuke. Got his tongue sliced on the underside when he was thirteen," she said. "Plus he's kind of a retard."

At the news, both men stopped their harassment and Sasuke's shoulders dropped as though his soul had left him. Chouji offered a hug and a handshake.

"Sorry for judging you quickly, man," he said. "Never judge a book by its cover." Inclined, Sasuke took the plump man's hand, and Hinata could see Chouji intentionally flapped the sides of his blazer stretched to the limits, to show his pistol on the side. "Why's he wearing a mask? Is he a she like you Marvel?" Chouji suddenly put his hands over Sasuke's chest. "Flat to nothin'. Guess you're a bastard."

"I've got nothing on this dude," interrupted Kiba. "I'm just here to say I'm done casting the bets. And the Boss says hi. We raised our territorial fees so there's more at stake. Boss says make good of it."

"Since when did I haven't," said Hinata.

People raved at the rookie Marvel DC. But underneath the mask, she was always petrified. Some opponents exude raw power. Just like now. While Asuma had her matches fixed, some punches are controlled while on rare occasions, bruising to the bone. Most of the time, she gets out the rink unscathed, but this time, with her opponent holding a grudge of some sort, the match ended with a sprained wrist and sore arms…

"Stop that," she whispered to Sasuke, going out the mobbed arena. He was breathing into the potato chip bag like it was a paper bag. "What are you doing?" He stayed silent which was keeping in character. She noticed, though, that Sasuke tended to do badly in tight, crowded spaces, looking like he'd drown every single time.

Upstairs, on Ground Zero's second floor, Hinata met Asuma, thick stashes of money spread about his table while his other men ran cash over counting machines.

"Seven hundred, that's all," said the man. He sported a thick beard, his voice bass and robust. "All in all, that makes you thirteen percent paid, girlie."

The paid portion had been the same as last month. Did he actually think she doesn't keep count? And knew for a fact the properties they seized including her father's company had consisted for more?

"Thirty percent?" Hinata struggled to keep her inflection at bay.

"Thirteen," said Asuma, focused on counting a stack of bills, ashes falling down his tobacco.

"Exactly what I said. Thirty."

Asuma gave her a deadpanned look that said stop kidding. "Thir-Teen. You're not so poor you can't clean your ears, are you?"

Hinata bit the inside of her cheek. "Kiba said they charged higher territorial fees this month. Why is my share the same?"

The boss pushed his cigarette on the ashtray, his forehead creased in deep lines. "Look, I'm kinda busy here, girlie. You don't want me mad, do you? I'll explain this as calmly as possible." He smiled. "I paid four hundred to your opponent, that's fucking why you cunt! If you're so stuck up on your share of the money other people had worked so hard to collect, let's get you to lose next month."

While Hinata kept her placid façade, she was vehement. "No. Let me win," she said. "Marvel DC's consistency will raise the stakes even higher. I know you have other clients entrusting you with their money. I'd rather increase my share that way."

"Good thing you know. Who's that behind you?"

"My relative. A new recruit."

"How sure am I you're not bringing a spy?" Asuma's armed men surrounded Sasuke.

"I bet on it with my shitty life, Asuma. Don't fucking test me."

Two meters less. Yet, Naruto still didn't appear. It doesn't matter now. Sasuke had seen everything.

The boss chuckled. "I like that look in your eyes. Though you're all bark and no real bite, Hyuuga."

How he mock her. One call to the main family and she could have her debts paid; even possibly causing fatal damage to the Twin Lion Fist Group. She could have Asuma begging for his life like a worm. But she won't do it.

Just before they went out into the normal busy sidewalks with the normal crowd of people with normal mothers and fathers buying their normal children cotton candies and normal students hanging out over flavoured drinks with shopping bags bundled on their arms, Hinata removed Sasuke's mask and took his hoodie jacket off, doing all these with just one hand.

"What the actual fuck, Hyuuga," Sasuke said. He stared at her defiantly.

"Let's not curse anymore," said Hinata, tiredness creeping in her voice.

"Are we going to pretend nothing happened?"

"That's because nothing happened." Hinata went out of her coat and pants, since she wore shorts underneath, and dumped everything inside her bag. "Now you know why I've been trying to summon Naruto. You shouldn't be with me Sasuke Uchiha."

"How much do you owe him?"

"None of your business," she said flatly.

"How much?!" he asked louder. Hinata had never seen him worked up like this. It wasn't their usual bickering. He was seriously angry this time. Taking a deep breath, he raked through his hair in frustration and said: "I can withdraw the funds from my bank tomorrow. Or if that's not enough, I can have Shisui arrange something for me."

"Are you pitying me right now?... Don't," she said, her softer volume drowned out by the claps of a street musician's audience. "That's the worst thing you could ever do." She could see the rage in his eyes begging for a verbal outlet, but he couldn't say a word.

The singer by the sidewalk sang in a melancholic husky tone, strumming clear, lonely chords on his guitar:

Through red memories, I can only say thank you…

Da-da-da-tei... Ooh, My heart breaks every day,

So I say thanks just to keep you away… Bayo...

Hinata set out to find a pharmacy to buy pain killers, leaving him downcast in the alley. Maybe it's a good thing he'll have something other than video games to think about. Life's not all fun and games…

Frantic footsteps followed behind. Sasuke tugged at her sprained wrist, pulling her to him. She winced. "Let me go."

"Did you actually expect me to be okay with all that?" His grip tightened, sending the pain shooting to her elbow.

"Ow! Seriously, Sasuke, I injured my wrist!" He finally let go and she nursed her limb. His dark eyes were fixed at her, seemingly lethal and steadfast she had to stray a glance somewhere else at the appliance store posting 50% Off! in big bold letters by the entrance.

"Hospital. Now." His firm, authoritative tone shook her.

She looked at her feet and then at the watch: 0.4567. "Who are you to tell me what to do?"

"Why does everything have to be so hard with you?" He took a step closer and she went a step back.

0.3456... 0.2723...0.0860

Hinata raised a brow at him, staring up as he glowered inches above her. "Speak for yourself," she said, but his determined expression was unchanging. It scared her. He oozed with overwhelming concern she couldn't process how to react. She could feel the heat in the space between them compared to the lukewarm air brushing her back. "I-I'm used to this. I'll just wrap a band around it and it will heal by it—"

Her Morning Mood ringtone pierced thorough the city noise. Sasuke was prepared to retaliate, but she raised a hand to stop him and rummaged her bag for her phone.

It was the hospital where her father was confined. They have never called once. There wasn't any reason to. Her heart suddenly thumped hard.

"H-Hello?"

"Good evening, Miss Hyuuga? Your father had woke."

Unbelievable. "Thank you… Thank you." She gulped in a shaky breath, her eyes misting warmly. She was going to the hospital after all.