Extended Summary:
In a world where ninja are twelve or thirteen when they start ninja training, instead of eight or nine, three girls and one woman stand out.
Each girl has their own set of problems at the beginning of their ninja training...
Yamanaka Ino is one of the wild, crazy, popular "mean" girls a la Lana Del Rey's "This Is What Makes Us Girls." She's also a bully who looks down on those less popular than herself. She has a horrible relationship with her stiff, proper mother, and her father doesn't know what to do with her anymore. Her so-called "friends" don't really act like her friends at all, she drinks and has sex often, and some new drama is always popping up in her life.
Haruno Sakura is being raised by a single civilian mother who doesn't understand her desire to be a ninja. She hides a lot from her mother, including the fact that she is picked on and bullied by many of the more popular girls at ninja school, including her ex friend Ino. She is a nerdy, skinny bookworm with a huge forehead who spends a lot of her time feeling like she's "not good enough." The only thing she has in common with Ino anymore is their shared crush on the cool, rich, and handsome (though emotionally unavailable and snobbish) Uchiha Sasuke.
Hyuuga Hinata has been ousted from position of clan heiress by her little sister, and her father and older cousin have told her in no uncertain terms that she is a huge disappointment to her family. She is depressed and deeply suicidal, cripplingly shy and horribly timid and basically friendless. The only bright spot in her life is her crush on the class clown and rebel from the bad section of town, Uzumaki Naruto - and he doesn't even know she exists.
Meanwhile…
Mitarashi Anko, a young woman in one of the most elite ranks in the ninja forces, seems like she has it all. But on the inside, her life is a mess. Her mentor and lover Orochimaru betrayed her and the village and ran away, leaving her for dead; her romantic life is in shambles; her apartment is a mess; she drinks too much; and everyone in her village mistrusts her because of fears that she will betray her village and turn missing nin like Orochimaru. But Anko is tough as nails and she tells it like it is, and the leader of her village thinks she might just be the best thing for three young kunoichi first starting at the Ninja Academy…
Because…
The Hokage has a problem. His kunoichi are becoming cannon fodder. Not motivated by war, taught by male teachers, surrounded by male peers, most of them either drop out or become obsessed with some boy or another - stalking, going on fad diets, and ignoring their training. The Hokage suggests having women teach women and men teach men, but the council, against this, insists he give this idea a test run first, on one team. A team of all women, training together at the Academy level, then coming together again at the Genin team level. So the Hokage agrees. And he sends Mitarashi Anko to privately tutor Hyuuga Hinata, Yamanaka Ino, and Haruno Sakura. Hey, he figures. If they can make it, anyone can.
The Kunoichi Three
1.
One of Yamanaka Ino's friends was pregnant. This was made more complicated by the fact that she and her friends were only preteens.
"I took a pregnancy test," the girl sobbed, mascara running down out of her beautiful eyes. "It came back positive."
"That's what abortions are for," said another girl in their group, scowling, hand on her hip.
"Do you remember who the father is?" Ino asked. They'd all gone out drinking last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. A lot of sex happened at these parties, and sometimes you just didn't remember who with.
No one complained. Sneaking out of your house late at night and going to parties like that meant you were popular.
The girl shook her head, overwhelmed. "No," she said, "I don't remember. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Well, when you figure it out, let us know," said the lead girl, and she kept walking. Everyone else followed her. The pregnant girl stared after them with wide, betrayed eyes.
Ino looked back over her shoulder, and felt guilt, despite herself. "If you ever need help with anything, give me a call," she told the pregnant girl, and the girl nodded gratefully.
"Getting weak-willed, Yamanaka?" the lead girl asked as they kept on their walk to the Ninja Academy, where they were first years in training.
"It's not her fault it happened," said Ino.
"It sure as hell is. That's what birth control is for."
"You know as well as I do birth control doesn't always work."
The leader sneered, beautiful and cruel. "Whatever," she said.
Ino knew the score. She'd expected it. Never come to any of your friends with anything personal or confidential, because they'll make fun of you and then tell everyone. That was how it worked. And if you showed pity or compassion for the less popular? Expect to get made fun of. Then get back at the girl who made fun of you and rip her a new one at the next available opportunity. Oh, and the last rule? Guys always came first.
The ins and outs of popularity.
They arrived on campus and passed by Haruno Sakura - skinny and nerdy with a large forehead, her arms full of books and a childish ribbon through her hair - in the hallway. "There she is, look, it's Forehead Girl!" the lead girl crowed, gleeful. "What's up, Forehead Girl? You gonna try to impress Iruka-sensei again? Got a hard on for the teacher, have you?"
Haruno clutched her books, giving that ridiculous little pouty frown. "You're just jealous because your grades suck," she muttered sullenly.
The girls shrieked with laughter - Ino included. "What about me?" Ino asked smugly. "I have some of the best grades in our year, Haruno - just like you. The difference is, I'm not a freak."
Haruno looked at her with betrayed green eyes, ducking her head so that her pink hair fell in front of her face. That one, Ino knew, had stung - because Haruno Sakura and Yamanaka Ino used to be childhood friends.
Then they'd gotten a crush on the same guy, and Ino had gone the popular route, and Sakura had gone the straight-A bookworm route. Sakura was the one who had broken it off. "I don't think we can be friends anymore," she'd said, frowning firmly.
Ino told herself that hadn't stung. She also told herself she didn't pick on Haruno out of some sense of vindictiveness. If Haruno didn't want to be made fun of, she thought, she should conform - she shouldn't be such a weirdo. And she shouldn't go after Ino's guy, Uchiha Sasuke, who was so far above Haruno in popularity there was no hope for her anyway.
Uchiha Sasuke was cool, rich, and handsome. He belonged with Ino.
Speaking of Sasuke, he was passing by in the hallway on his own way to class. Pale, dark-haired, and lithely muscular, he was the classic dark pretty boy. Ino would do anything to fuck that.
"Sasuke-kun!" she squealed, hurrying over to him and rubbing up against him. "How are you today? Want to eat lunch together?"
Sakura's eyes widened and she hurried over to be with Sasuke as well, to get his attention - "Sasuke-ku -!" she started - but one of Ino's friends tripped her and she collapsed ungracefully, books and papers flying everywhere. There were sharp, high-pitched giggles. "Nice, Forehead Girl," said Ino, smirking.
Sakura's face had turned to flame, and tears filled her eyes. And what filled Ino was not guilt - that was what she told herself quite firmly.
Sasuke gazed distantly at the whole affair, contempt filling his expression. "Stay out of my way," he said quietly, pulling out of Ino's grasp, and in that same emotionless way he did everything, he continued on down the hall.
"See you later, Sasuke-kun!" Ino called brightly after him. Someday, things would be different. Someday, if she was good enough to him, he would notice her.
Ino continued on down the hall, and her friends followed her, stepping over Haruno with some mutters of, "Clumsy freak," and "See you later, Forehead Girl." Ino could feel Sakura's humiliated glare on her back all the way into the classroom.
Classes passed by in a blur, lunch amid a large knot of popular boys and girls, Ino picking at her salad. (All the kunoichi who really wanted something from a guy didn't exercise much and were on diets - even nerds like Haruno and that weird shy, silent girl Hyuuga. Looking properly girlish was essential.) Ino parted with her friends outside campus, who grinned and said, "Meet us outside the grocer's at eleven tonight. Feel like going swimming?"
All the girls laughed. They knew what that meant.
So that night after her parents had gone to bed - after a mid afternoon phone crisis in which two of her friends were pitting themselves against each other in the ultimate drama - Ino put on a bikini bathing suit underneath her clothes and snuck out the window, leaping, silent and cat-like, to the ground. She met her friends outside the grocer's and they went to the biggest hotel, picking the fence lock, jumping the wall, and sneaking into the pool area, where they took off their clothes and jumped in, laughing and splashing, giggling.
But someone must have seen them, because soon enough they heard the alarm go off on the lowest floor of the hotel, and one girl screamed, "RUN FOR IT!"
And, shrieking with laughter, still in their swimwear and soaking wet, they sprinted out of the hotel and down the street. Half drunk guys wolf whistled as they passed, they could feel the police right on their tails, they ran as fast as they could, ducking through back alleys - but the police were trained ninja, and at last they had them surrounded.
Which was how Ino ended up in a bathing suit, a policeman's hand around her arm, on her parents' front doorstep at one in the morning. Her bleary-eyed parents stared disbelievingly as the policeman read off from a sheet of paper:
"Yamanaka Ino. Found at two rowdy parties that had to be broken up. Several counts of minor shoplifting. And - oh, look, you've broken into the hotel before." The policeman looked up flatly at her parents. "You're both respected ninja. But Yamanaka-san, if this keeps up, we may be forced to send your daughter to juvenile detention."
Panic filled Ino, choking her. Juvenile detention?!
"Come on, it's all just fun and games!" she protested.
"Maybe to you, Yamanaka Ino. But we are forced to take these things seriously," said the policeman, still hard to read. Ino scowled.
She was brought back into the house by her parents, the front door was closed - and it began.
"What is the matter with you?!" Her mother, stiff and uptight and proud, was always the one to yell at her. "Did you hear what he said?! Juvenile detention?! If you couldn't only become a ninja in Konoha village, I'd have sent you away by now! I am ashamed to have you as my daughter!"
"Nothing like the shame I feel having you as a mother, I can assure you," Ino grumbled, crossing her arms. Her mother had been just like Haruno, and Haruno would grow up to be just like her mother, she could tell - in a bathrobe and a hairnet, her face lined and her hair up in a bun, yelling at her child for going out and having a little fun.
Her mother's face reddened. "What did you just say to me?!"
"Ino," her father sighed, looking tired, "I just don't know what to do with you anymore." Ino turned to him in betrayal. She had always been Daddy's little girl - until recently, it seemed, her father had always been on her side.
"You guys just don't get it!" she cried, tears filling her eyes. "This is the only way I can get anyone to like me! I just - I don't -" She didn't want to be unimportant. Ignored. "Ugh!" And she stormed up the stairs to her bedroom, throwing herself down on the bed.
Haruno Sakura gathered her books together that morning for school and headed out the door.
"Sakura! Don't you want breakfast?" her mother called after her.
"No, thanks, Mom, I can't be late!" Sakura walked down the steps.
"Sakura, their policies against tardiness are way too harsh! Please think about what I said yesterday!" her mother called after her.
"Okay," Sakura muttered sullenly. In her head, she was ranting about her mother, but she would never be that honest outwardly about how she was feeling. Inner Sakura was angry a lot. Outer Sakura never did anything about it. Being properly feminine was important.
Sakura wasn't eating breakfast because, like many other kunoichi in her class, she was on a diet. She had to look good for Sasuke-kun, in the hopes that he would notice her. Her mother did not know this. Her mother also did not know that Sakura had no intentions of following her advice to drop out of ninja school - Sakura's mother was a single-parent civilian, and there were many things she didn't understand, including Sakura's desire to be important and make a difference as a powerful ninja.
She felt dread the entire walk to school. Sure enough, in the hallway, they came across her: Ino and her posse. They all had swished hair and perfume and short skirts, and Ino was the queen of swished hair and perfume and short skirts, with her platinum blonde hair, perfect porcelain skin, bright blue eyes, and gobs of makeup. She was popular and she was from a powerful ninja family - she was everything Sakura was not.
Unfortunately, she was also a raging bitch.
Sakura braced herself, only defending herself in mutters, as the popular girls laid into her. Inner Sakura wanted to punch their lights out. Outer Sakura did nothing of the kind. Then they tripped Sakura on her way to talk to Sasuke, hoping he would be kind to her. She smacked against the floor, books went everywhere, and she just lay here, tears filling her eyes, humiliated.
Sasuke-kun saw the whole thing, and the cold contempt on his face was clear. He continued on down the hall.
Then Sakura got a B on a test, when she'd wanted and expected an A, and between all the events she was upset for the rest of the day.
By the time she got home, she felt tired - she always felt tired, and not in the good way.
"How was school?" Mom asked from the living room.
"Fine," Sakura muttered, going upstairs to her room. It was horrible! It's always horrible! Inner Sakura screamed. But Mom didn't know - Mom didn't know about the bullies, or about Sasuke, or about the obsession with As. Sakura rarely told her mother anything.
She spent the rest of the night bent over her books, studying furiously. Sometimes she spent so long stressing out over grades it gave her stomach cramps. See, Sakura was well aware of her myriad insufficiencies - her huge forehead, her skinny lack of curves, her nerdy obsession with books and grades, her lack of the kind of charm and wit and fearless sexuality Ino had. It was why she'd broken up her friendship with Ino - envy, plain and simple. But Sakura thought that maybe, if she was perfect enough, if she was smart enough, that could all go away.
And maybe she could be good enough for the popular kids, and for Sasuke-kun.
Hyuuga Hinata was not allowed to cry. This, she understood.
A tiny little pale figure with short dark hair and wide silvery eyes in boyish dark clothes, she knelt before her ninja clan head father, bowing. "Father, I am off to school."
"Do not be a burden to anyone this day, Hinata," her father intoned sternly. Her older cousin Neji sneered, as if to say, Fat chance of that, and her little sister Hanabi joined him.
Hinata didn't think her mother would have looked at her that way, but her mother had died years ago.
Hinata knew what they meant. She was the eldest child of the clan head, and was originally supposed to have been clan heiress, but she was not proper by any Hyuuga standards. She was too shy and timid, cripplingly so, afraid of fighting, afraid of not fighting, afraid of hurting anyone, afraid of doing nothing.
Her performance anxiety meant that she never did well in Hyuuga clan spars. Her cousin and her sister called her weak; her father constantly told her how disappointed he was in her. That she got perfect grades in the Academy was not enough - there was always something she could do better.
Eventually, he had proposed a spar - Hanabi vs Hinata - to see who would be clan heiress. Hanabi, despite being years younger, had won. Hinata just hadn't been able to hit her, too afraid of hurting her. Hinata still remembered lying there on the mat, sore everywhere, mortified and humiliated, after the fight was over.
And even then, she had not cried. Hyuuga did not cry. It was a rule.
"Yes, Father," she whispered now.
She walked to school alone, sat in a corner at the back of the classroom, talked to no one, ate lunch alone. No one wanted to talk to Hinata. She was too reserved, too shy. She spent most of lunch picking at her food and watching the class clown and rebel from the bad side of town, messy blond-haired Uzumaki Naruto, throw spitballs and slingshot pebbles at passing people from up in a tree. He was loud, confident, kept trying even when he did badly - he was everything she wasn't.
She had a crush on him, but was far too shy to talk to him. He didn't even know she existed.
She walked home from school, performed poorly at the clan spars as usual, had dinner in dejected silence, and then retreated to her room where she contemplated suicide. She was sure no one would miss her, if she died. That the world would be far better off without her. She had no friends, her father would still have his perfect heiress, and her cousin Neji would insist that it had been fated the weakling of the clan would end up this way all along.
Not even Naruto-kun would miss her.
Mitarashi Anko seemed like she had it all.
This was what she told herself early that morning, as the latest in a long string of guys left her apartment yelling that she was a bitch, as she threw a frying pan after his stupid fat head and then collapsed with a sigh at her kitchen table, pushing a pile of shit out of the way and pouring herself a drink.
Mitarashi Anko was an attractive, curvaceous woman who had purple hair tied up behind her head in a hair clip, wore fishnet armor, short skirts, leg armor that made her shoes look like boots, and a trenchcoat. Mitarashi Anko was of one of the highest ranks there was in the ninja forces. Mitarashi Anko was tough, powerful, cool.
Mitarashi Anko's life was a gigantic fucking mess.
For the thousandth time, she cursed her former Sensei Orochimaru - a legendarily powerful ninja, who had been her teacher and mentor, then her lover, and had then betrayed the village and left her for dead. She cursed him for the wreck he had left in his wake: the drinking problem, the messy as shit apartment, the long stream of lovers, and the stupid goddamn seal that reminded her of him every time she undressed and looked in the mirror.
That complete fucking asshole. Her dearest wish was to plunge a kunai right through his stupid goddamn heart.
She finished her drink, and then she saw the bird arc past her window. "Fuck," she said distinctly.
The Hokage wanted her.
"Ready for duty, Hokage-sama." She saluted somewhat sarcastically, at attention, in front of his vast gold-gilded mahogany desk. The Hokage was a tiny old man in red and white robes, with wood pipe and goatee. Calligraphy scrolls hung around his office, most of which he had made himself, and a small side door in his office led to a mini library.
"Anko," he said, "I have a mission for you. It's an unusual one."
Anko raised an eyebrow, curious despite herself. "Go for it."
"I have a problem, Anko," said the Hokage, his hands steepled. "The kunoichi that the Konoha Ninja Academy churns out are becoming cannon fodder. Without a war to motivate them, taught by male teachers, surrounded by male peers, most of them either drop out or become obsessed with some boy or another - stalking, going on fad diets, and ignoring their training. I have suggested having women teach women and men teach men, but the council, against this, insisted I give this idea a test run first, on one team. A team of all women, training together at the Academy level, then coming together again at the Genin team level. So I agreed.
"You're my Jounin sensei."
Anko's eyes widened in disbelief. "You mean - you mean I can't even test them, I just have to take them on?!" She just failed all Genin teams she got - that was her default way of handling the situation. Be as cruel to them as possible, have them drop out as ninja.
She liked her way. It was safe.
"That is correct," said the Hokage. "The girls are Haruno Sakura, Yamanaka Ino, and Hyuuga Hinata. I would like you to spend a day observing them covertly before you take them on as private students, which is why I called you in so early."
"Hokage-sama… in case you hadn't noticed… I'm a blunt, tough-as-nails bitch," said Anko, pained. "And my private life is kind of a mess. You really want me teaching preteens?"
"Yes. I think, in this case, you are exactly what they need," said the Hokage evenly. "What's wrong? You are a self-proclaimed feminist. Do you not like the idea of an all-women team?"
"Well, yeah, I like the idea, but… Are they all as fucked up as I am?"
The Hokage merely smiled.
Great. Sometimes she had a feeling that old man was secretly evil.
Anko did spend a day hidden under a minor genjutsu, observing the three girls. The police officers didn't bother her, and she them. Everyone was afraid Anko would defect like Orochimaru had, which was why she didn't have many friends, but sometimes this fear and distrust worked in her favor - nobody fucked with her.
And Anko's conclusion was that these three girls were a complete fucking mess.
Geez, she thought, we have a lot of work to do before I can even start teaching them the ninja arts.
Anko could also see what the Hokage meant. The system hadn't quite gotten to this youngest class of girls yet, but Anko could see stirrings in them - the way they glued themselves into little groups and giggled at passing boys, their either lack of self-confidence or lack of interest in the more physical skills the Academy was teaching.
Anko could see part of this Umino Iruka's problem - he was moving too fast. He was teaching these children the skills of being a ninja, but not the mentality behind them. It was briefly glossed-over in the ninja rules every child needed to memorize, but what good would learning rote be to a ninja out in the field? And he certainly had no ability to teach the girls about any of the aspects of being a female ninja. The girls might have had a female role model in their kunoichi arts teacher, but Anko sat in on one of her lessons and she was a civilian whose efforts seemed half-hearted at best - she would teach girls to pour tea gracefully and call it teaching tea ceremony, or would teach girls to pick flowers in colorful arrangements and call it ikebana.
Neither act was the point of tea ceremony or ikebana. It was like finishing school without the finishing. And the idea that only girls could learn these arts was completely ridiculous - in other parts of the world, men could, and did, learn these supposedly feminine arts as well.
And there was nothing at all about Zen, which was at the heart of so many skills of both being a ninja and being a practitioner of - she practically gagged at the term - "female arts."
She hoped there was at least something in the kunoichi arts curriculum about important issues like sexual seduction, rape, periods, and how to make up for the female body's weaker form, but she had a feeling her hope was in vain.
What were the council members who ran the Academy thinking? It was like girls didn't matter - and girls were at least a third of the ninja forces, one half in some classes! Anko, as a female Jounin, was highly indignant.
Yes, Anko definitely needed to take charge of at least a few girls in this class. And she knew just how she was going to do it.
First, they needed to fix some problems.
The next morning in Umino Iruka's first year Academy class, he had an announcement to make.
"Students," he said, smiling, "I have something very special to tell you. Three of our girls have been chosen to be taken out of the Academy and instead personally, privately tutored by a Jounin. The three girls are Haruno Sakura, Yamanaka Ino, and Hyuuga Hinata. Will you please stand?"
The girls stood, all of them stunned, for different reasons. Who on earth thought they were exceptional enough for private tutoring?
Several boys were glaring at them enviously, including their respective crushes, which didn't help matters.
"Your Jounin sensei will be -"
Just then, a blur burst through the classroom window, shattering glass everywhere. A cloth sign erected itself in front of Iruka-sensei, and Anko stood proudly, arms crossed, in front of it. The sign said: AMAZING SENSEI MITARASHI ANKO IS HERE!
Anko always went by the "faking confidence" route when she felt unsure of herself.
"Team Kunoichi!" she cried, raising a fist. "Come with me!"
The girls weren't sure which was worse: that they would have to learn in close quarters with each other, or that their new Sensei was apparently certifiably insane.
Anko led them out of the Academy and stopped in the front courtyard.
"I'm Mitarashi Anko," she said, turning around, "and I'm your new Sensei. I already know who you three are, no need to introduce yourselves."
"Sensei!" Ino said immediately, heatedly. "Why do I have to learn alongside these losers?! Why can't I stay with my old friends in the Academy?!"
"No one wants you here, Yamanaka, so get lost." Sakura glared.
"Oh, that's rich, coming from you, Forehead Girl -"
"Please stop fighting -" Hinata murmured, squinting her eyes shut, hands over her ears.
Anko sighed, staring from the bickering Ino and Sakura, to Hinata who was doing a marvelous impression of a frightened turtle. I'm not drunk enough for this, she thought.
"Hey! Y'all! Shut the fuck up!" she barked. All the girls turned to look at her uncertainly.
Anko gave a vicious, evil grin. If she couldn't fail these girls, she was going to make life damn hard for them. They were about to be in for a rude awakening.
"We have work to do," she said quietly.
The girls swallowed nervously.