The Red Spider Lily

Outskirts of Konoha (Mami Hyuga's Point of View)

"Stop right there Mami Hyuga!" A furious voice shouted.

With that, she was surrounded by thirty Hyuga Clan members, both male and female. Most of them had headbands indicating that they were of the branch, while five were from the main family. Out of these five, she only recognized two, Kisara and Hisoka Hyuga.

Kisara was the head wife of the Clan Head. Even in her old age she was beautiful with her peppered long black hair, white pupiless eyes, and brown Kimono.

Next to her was Hisoka, a lithe man with long brown hair, white pupiless eyes, and a brown haori over a white kimono. Like Kisara, he was also a member of the main family, though not from the Clan Head's line. Over the past decade, he was the one tasked with monitoring the status of the Hyuga Clan's prize.

"L-let me go K-Kisara. I won't go back there." She shakily stuttered, trying to overcome her fear of the situation.

"I'm afraid I can't do that. My husband wouldn't be pleased if you disappeared, especially with his new children." Kisara callously stated, gazing at the woman as if she were an ant.

"Shouldn't you be helping me!? Don't you want your husband back!?" She pleaded, trying to get the old fossil to see reason.

"Mami, you don't understand. You've never understood what loyalty meant. All of us would lay down our lives for the clan. The individual members are secondary, the village is secondary, even those of us at the top are secondary. The clan is all the matters, and your children are its future, the future core of the main branch. Just as Kamui is to the Uchiha, your children will be to the Hyuga." Kisara stated, her ice-cold tone shattering any hope Mami may have had for a peaceful resolution.

There was a pause at her words. Slowly, Mami's desperation faded into disbelief. Then, rage took its place.

"You have the nerve to call me selfish after everything I've done for the clan? You live a life of luxury…. wanting for nothing…. and you have the nerve to question my loyalty!?" Her voice started soft and quickly crescendoed into a furious shout.

Hearing the furious breeding mule in front of her, Kisara's expression didn't change. Instead, she just shook her head in pity.

"This conversation is pointless. Men, get her." She coldly ordered.

With that, the clansmen surrounding her lunged forward with their highest speeds, clearly not wanting to take any chances.

["I'll do my best to assist, but there's only so much we can do with the power you can currently access."] the voice in her head commented.

'Thank you.' Mami mentally responded.

With that, her byakugan activated, sending a shockwave that blew away the Hyuga closest to her while pushing back the rest; veins protruded from her eyes more prominently than any clansmen in recorded history. This was one of the traits she inherited from the voice. Her byakugan was only one in name and appearance. In function, it was so much more.

With that, she gazed into the eyes of the four members that looked the strongest, causing them to pause in place. From there, the group descended into chaos. The four Hyuga members threw themselves at their comrades in a fury, catching two members off guard who quickly perished at their former comrades' hands.

Mami herself was stuck focusing chakra through her eyes and blasting people away. Occasionally, she would mind control someone and have them join the other mind slaves in attacking their comrades. The problem was that she was limited to only a few at a time and the effects only lasted 20 seconds. Aside from that, she couldn't do much else. This chaos went on for about five minutes before she heard a furious despair-ridden roar.

"No!!!" Hisoka shouted from his position. His favorite consort, who had accompanied them on this mission, had just been stabbed by one of their own comrades. This bitch killed his woman.

"I'll kill you" He roared, launching the most powerful air palm he could, regardless of the surrounding Hyuga members.

Caught off guard combined with her non-existent combat experience, Mami was launched outside of the encirclement. Normally, this would be a blessing. There was just one problem; her kids fell off mid-way.

When Mami noticed their disappearance, she panicked. Using her Byakugan, finding them was quick. As soon as her eyes focused on their position though, her heart dropped. They were battered and bruised; her son even looked like he suffered a fractured skull. The fact that they were even alive was a miracle.

"No. No. No!" Mami screamed, doing her best to rush to their position.

Before she could make it though, an explosive kunai got there first. It's thrower, an enraged Hisoka with a deranged expression marring his face. If it were anyone else, the surrounding clansmen could have stopped it, but this was Hisoka, a main family member. He could kill most of them on the spot if they did that. The main family members that could intervene were all stalled by controlled members or just not in a good position to do so.

A large explosion rang out, scattering the nearby clansmen. So far, a third were dead by this point. The thing keeping the rest alive was Mami's lack of battle experience and technique.

"What the hell Hisoka!? Our mission was to retrieve the kids alive!" Kisara shouted in disbelief, not understanding what possessed the man to do something so stupid. She simply couldn't comprehend why he would kill the clan's future over something as trivial as the loss of a loved one. Then again, love was a foreign concept to her.

"Damn the kids! I need to see this bitch suffer and Aiko needs servants in the pure land!" He roared with fury, not at all caring of the consequences they'd all experience when the head found out.

Mami was silent, too shocked to say anything. Her eyes lacked focus, her barely noticeable pupils dilating repeatedly at the sight. Slowly, she stumbled to the detonation site, hoping, praying to any Kami that would listen that her kids would be alright

She received no answer.

Instead, she saw pieces of charred flesh she barely recognized. Her babies were dead, blown to pieces by the Hyuga Clan, by Konoha, by this world. They were never given a chance to grow up, dying at the hands of these animals, these insects.

['These insects dare murder MY children!']/ 'These insects dare murder MY children!' The two thought as one, their personalities bleeding into one another.

A sigh could be heard coming from Kisara.

"Alright, the village has already been alerted, so we don't have much time. Let's get this whore back to the compound. Enji, go ahead of us and tell the clan head what's happened here. Use the tunnels to avoid detection." She ordered, receiving a nod from the branch clansman.

With his marching orders received, he took off to inform the clan head.

A few moments later, one of the main family members grabbed Mami and started picking her off the ground. Her face looked lost. There was no sorrow, no fury, nothing. There was only a sense of loss.

"Alright Mami, let's get you back. The faster we get back, the less angry the head will be." He coaxed, gently trying to persuade the girl to come along easily. Truthfully, he didn't like this whole situation. It was wrong on every level and the outcome proved that in spades. That said, the clan came first, and he had his orders.

Before he could get her all the way up though, his body ruptured, a bloody flower staining the ground scarlet.

"What!?" the Hyuga clan members backed up, not understanding what just happened.

"Mami! What the Hell!?" Kisara roared in fury and fear.

"I'll… you…." They heard her mumble.

"What?" Kisara unconsciously asked.

"I'll make you pay. Every single last one of you" She forced out, her eyes radiating an unquenchable hatred, while everything else assumed a hauntingly calm demeanor. "Insects." Though her words weren't loud, they echoed in everyone's ears like an angry deity.

What happened next stunned all of them. On her forehead, a slit appeared, opening to reveal a greyish-purple eye with multiple concentric rings spanning out from the pupil. There was no sclera, just a single pattern across the whole eye.

Once the eye revealed itself, every clansman there felt the weight of a mountain rest on their shoulders, forcing them to a knee. The eye radiated a power that announced her status as a god, as one above the insects in front of her.

"Ack!" They cried as they tried comprehending what just happened.

"It's funny. Just a minute ago, your noses were touching heavens…." Mami's hauntingly steady voice trailed off. "Now, they'll be as the dust."

"What is this?" Kisara asked, her voice trembling in fear as she recognized the extreme danger she was in. She along with everyone there, tried with every fiber of their beings to escape their suppressed state. They failed.

"This…. is the end. You wanted me to be the future of the Hyuga Clan? Fine. I don't mind. There's just one caveat. If I am to be its future, then the past must disappear." With those haunting words, the group shivered. This was not the same scared woman they had intercepted at the start of this confrontation. This was someone else, something else.

"Wait!" Kisara cried, causing Mami to pause and glance at her, her eyes boring into the Matron as if gazing into her soul. Kisara pleaded her case, "Why don't we let you go. That should make you happy, right?"

Hearing Kisara's plea, Mami paused. Then, she started to chuckle, which quickly crescendoed into maniacal laughter. It was an earie sight, seeing the girl laugh, tears of blood streaming down her face. After a few moments, they saw something even stranger. Two brown rabbit-like horns grew on the sides of her head.

Slowly, Mami's laugh died down; the result being a deadly silence.

Then, it happened. The area around them exploded into a field of bones. Screams bloomed into existence as the kneeling clansmen were pierced by bone spikes the size of trees. For some, it was one, for others, it was more. Some spikes even exploded into projectile fragments upon contact. Eventually though, they all rose, revealing a thick central spike they all connected to. In the end, the clan members became bloody decorations on a giant spider lily painted red with their blood. The only exception to this purge was Kisara, who had wet herself in the crippling fear she was feeling.

"P-P-Please don't—" Kisara stuttered out, trying to figure out the best way out of this situation.

'This was supposed to be an easy capture. How can someone with no training do all this? What happened to her!?' she thought, not understanding where they went wrong. She didn't understand why Mami wouldn't be proud to bear the main branch's future, the future of the clan. It should have been an honor.

Mami coldly interrupted her, "Don't. Let it be known. You will serve as my messengers and this monument will toll the warning bell. The Hyuga Clan, the ravenous insects responsible, will disappear from this world soon enough. Once I've become strong enough, I will make it so. Whoever tries to stop me will meet the same fate. No exceptions." She stated, her voice maintaining the steady tone she'd adopted.

With a quick motion Kisara's eyes couldn't follow, her neck was seized by the monster's pale hand. Slowly, she was carried to the stem of the bone flower.

"Pl…se." Kisara tried pleading one last time, mustering every effort to escape the hand clamping down on her throat.

It didn't work.

Willing her chakra to obey, Mami slowly pushed the struggling clan matron into the bone stem; she went in like it was quicksand, merging with it. Finally, when all that could be seen was Kisara's face twisted in agony, Mami stopped. With this, the matron could die with honor as the centerpiece of this beautiful art piece.

Looking at the sight before her, Mami didn't smile, nor did she express much of anything. The only signs of emotion on her face were the still streaming tears of blood.

["Is this the path you would walk?"] The voice asked, noticing where Mami's current mindset would lead.

"Is there any other I could walk? Is there any other way after what they did?" She asked monotonically, not caring that she was talking to the voice out loud.

["Not one that I've taken. As you've seen, only by breaking their spirits with force will people allow you to be happy. Their greed, their insatiable hunger for power won't let them do otherwise."] the voice commented with an uncharacteristic aggression, internally noticing how much of her personality bled into Mami during this encounter, not realizing that the reverse was also true.

"Agreed. Now, how do I get out of here? I'm still not fast enough to run away from the approaching shinobi." She asked.

["Don't you already know?"] the voice asked.

"I guess so." With that, Mami's third eye shined in a bright light as she stated, "Yomotsu Hirasaka." With that, a black rift materialized before her. Before stepping through the portal however, she gazed in the direction of the largest concentration of her children's flesh and willed another rift to appear beneath that section of land, swallowing those pieces up. She would be with her children again, one way or another. Finally, she stepped through her own rift, leaving the scene a bloody mess.

Seconds later, a host of Shinobi came upon the bloody scene, Minato Namikaze among them.

His eyes widened in profound shock at what he was seeing. A Red Spider lily made of bone bloomed above them. The blood that painted it dripped to the ground like gentle rain.

"What is this…?" He and everyone else whispered. Cries of shock ringing out by the dozens of approaching shinobi forces.

Minato's first thought was to blame Orochimaru. After all, the man had been seen with the dead bone pulse, the bloodline limit responsible for this, and was known to be planning an attack. The face sticking out of the stem proved that theory incorrect though. Whoever did this must've had a personal vendetta with the clan, and it wasn't a simple grudge; it was a deep hatred with its highest members if this face was any indication. Orochimaru would never do this. He was not a man who would express his hatred as symbolically as this.

"Hiashi…what has your clan done...?" He muttered, failing to see how something like this could've happened so close to the village.