Sakuragachamon!

Pt1: Forehead, Scarhead, girls can't leave it alone!​

Ninja education introduced, during the fourth year, a class I hadn't been expecting. Kunoichi class.

Womanly-girl-ninja studies.

If we were older, I'm sure it would have things like seduction or something distasteful like that. Because we were nine at our oldest, it was about paying attention without looking like we were paying attention and artisan or homemaking skills that would have us go by undetected and underestimated. To civilians and to most lower ranked ninjas, that was.

Our teacher had given us a good example. She'd asked us to try and remember the face of the last woman with a stroller that we'd seen. Naturally, we couldn't. I, like many others, couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a stroller. Then she'd used Henge no Jutsu and turned into a very familiar woman. We'd been struck dumb. It had been the best lesson we could have had on awareness.

Suzume-sensei was kind of awesome like that, even if I disliked her classes. I did not like having to play into the sexism inherent in society.

To be fair to Suzume-sensei, she'd also never singled me out, neither for my behavior, nor for my appearance. She'd occasionally talked to me in the halls to encourage me to try harder in her class, but I think she'd realized that my focus on taijutsu to compensate for my deficiency was my priority. I couldn't say the same thing about the students.

Girl on girl fighting had become very common. Perhaps it was the start of puppy crushes and the sudden crunch in our numbers. It definitely had something to do with Uchiha Sasuke.

The kid, the only survivor, had returned to school with a blank face and even more drive. He was traumatized and surely angling for either revenge or survival. And, in the eyes of nine year olds, he was very, very cool. Good-looking, strong, mature for his age and, I believe, some part of most girls saw him and went 'I can fix him'.

I was already kind of bullied in a quiet way, just nasty comments here and there. I didn't care or have time to care, so it mostly went over my head. But now, when everybody was looking to eliminate the competition... Puberty was going to be so not fun.

Which brought me to today and Suzume-sensei's very useful class on makeup. The usual suspects weren't even bothering to pipe down in front of the teacher.

"Can't hide a forehead that big." "It's not like she'd be useful, anyway." "Muscle-head." "Target-face." "Ugly."

Chicks dig scars, I felt like telling them. Especially shounen-protagonist type scars. I showed it off to the world, since I liked having my hair out of my face, and rarely had it untied. The name-calling would probably hurt if, you know, I didn't have most of the maturity of a twenty-something person in this tiny body. It was just very, very annoying.

"Fuki, do you have anything you want to say to the rest of the class?" Suzume-sensei's voice rose above the usual chatter, killing it dead.

I suppressed the urge to sigh.

Put on the spotlight, Fuki tried bravely to defend herself. "W-well, Sensei, we, I was just wondering how Sakura would manage to disguise herself since she has that huge scar!"

Suzume-sensei was expressionless as she motioned for me to approach her. I resisted the urge to plod as I made my way to the front of the class and sat in front of her. She winked at me, then told me to close my eyes. The pass of the brush was soft as she expertly applied and worked the pigments onto my face. Her hands were steady but strangely, not very calloused. Ah, I thought, maybe that was one of the things that could give away a kunoichi.

"There, done." She said and turned me around to face the class. Oohs and aahs broke out. I didn't need a mirror to tell me that my scar had probably vanished as if by magic. I reached for a mirror anyway. My face was smooth but otherwise entirely unchanged. The cross-shaped starburst that made shallow divots over my eyebrows was gone. I couldn't see how she'd done it. Makeup magic. "A skilled kunoichi doesn't need genjutsu. Makeup is just as effective a tool as a shuriken."

"That almost makes me want to be good at these things like you, Sensei." I told her. She shook her head at me. "Can I have my face back, this is a bit weird." I'd never seen my forehead unmarked in this body. It was really weird.

It seemed to quell the idiots in the room, so I counted that as a win.

"Sakura looked so happy, she was going to cry." "Maybe she thought somebody would finally find her pretty." "Don't joke around, who'd kiss a scary face like hers anyway?"

For about five minutes past the bell. Okay, that was enough, the lesson clearly wasn't sticking. I stopped, marched over to the four girls snipping and crossed my arms, saying. "Do you have a problem with my face?"

Fuki and Ami seemed taken aback. Kasumi rallied. "Yeah, I do. Your mug is just too ugly. How about you quit and go running home?" Then she smirked, pleased with herself, and crossed the line. "Not like you have a mama to go cry to."

I blinked. Orphan jokes. Of all the things. My jaw worked as they laughed. Several insults came to mind, but I was just a bit too shocked they'd actually dared. I didn't have any strong feelings about being an orphan. I'd grieved my past family years ago. But Haruno Sakura... she deserved better. Mebuki and Kizashi deserved to be missed.

"Oh yeah, I have a problem with your face too, you round-shit, pug-faced, onigiri-head. Fart-hair." I improvised. "How about you look in the mirror sometimes, huh? Guess the mirror is just going to tell you to fuck off before you break it with your uglyness in your heart. You bitch ... cow."

I wasn't good at improvising. But I knew more swears then all of these kids combined.

"You, you..." Kasumi had actually taken a step back. Her face colored red. Everybody in hearing range was gasping.

I put my middle fingers up. "How about you go cry to mommy, fuckface."