Title: Sexy no Jutsu
Disclaimer: Nuh-uh.
Rating: PG ( K+ ) – for pervy pubescent thoughts and brief mentions of nudity.
Spoilers: How can I spoil anything that hasn't actually happened?

Summary: Part of the "Lifelong Love" series. "The purpose of this week's assignment," Iruka began, standing before his class of Cadets with a straight back and a smug expression. "Is to learn how to disguise yourself as the opposite sex." Implied SasuHinaNaru.

It gets more interesting from here...


Part Two: Guidelines

Sasuke slumped down into the nearest seat, dragging Hinata down with him. She squealed a little as they landed on the bench with a hard thump, but otherwise made no complaints about Sasuke's domineering actions.

"Damn!" he heard a spite-filled female voice say from somewhere behind him.

Another one shared the same sentiments. "Hinata got him...no fair."

"And I was looking so forward to showing him the shrine I made in my closet, too..."

The last comment made Sasuke shiver. It had been a near miss, to say the least. If he had hesitated only a few more seconds, one of those delusional harpies could have grabbed him and...and...well, what could happen after that was something that made Sasuke nauseous simply imagining.

"Um...S-Sasuke...san?"

Sasuke inclined his head slightly to look at his partner, who was sitting a little closer to him than was absolutely necessary. Deciding it was best if he pretended not to notice, Sasuke replied with a simple, gruff, "What?"

Hinata winced as if he'd slapped her across the face. "Uh...y-you're kind of hurting m-my wrist..."

Belatedly realizing that he was indeed still holding her wrist – and squeezing it, too – Sasuke dropped it as if it were a poisonous snake. In his relief at grabbing the only suitable female partner in the room, he must have forgotten to let her go. That had to be it.

"Sorry," he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest where they belonged. As he did so, Sasuke pointedly looked away from Hinata, declaring silently that the conversation was over.

Hinata seemed to take the hint and grew quiet herself, accumulating another point in Sasuke's favor. He could see himself hating her less and less as the project wore on if she maintained the don't-speak-unless-spoken-to attitude that Sasuke found himself growing quite fond of.

"Does everyone have a partner?" Iruka called out across the class, raising his voice so as to be heard over the noise.

"I don't," came a sullen voice from the other side of the room. Sasuke leaned around Hinata to see Naruto raising a slack hand above his head for Iruka to see, glowering at the pair beside him as if they had teamed up to kill his puppy. Sakura returned his glower with a triumphant raspberry and clutched Kiba's arm tighter, despite his attempts to shake her off.

Iruka looked around the room a couple of times, counting students and checking for anyone else left without a partner. Finding none, he called out, "I guess we're going to have to have a group of three. Who's willing to let Naruto work with them?"

There was a lot of restless shifting, but no volunteers. It seemed that, as usual, Naruto was the odd man out. Served him right, in Sasuke's opinion, for being such a moron.

A soft, shaking voice from perilously close to Sasuke's ear spoke up on Naruto's behalf. "Um...h-he can w-work with us, Sensei."

Smiling brightly, Iruka scribbled something down on his clipboard. "Ah, thank you. Naruto, you'll be part of team three with Sasuke and Hinata."

— — —

'I never should have let go of her hand,' Sasuke thought, shooting a bitter glare at his male partner at the opposite end of the table. Naruto replied by pulling down his lower eyelid with a middle finger and sticking his tongue out. 'If I had known she was going to let the dobe onto our team, I would have sat on it.'

School was finally out for the day, giving the students of Iruka-sensei's year seven class ample opportunity to meet up with their teammates and get a head start on their projects. Instead, most of them headed to their individual homes or friend's houses, griping and complaining as they walked about the enormous workload that awaited them over the weekend (why do today what isn't due 'till next week?)

Only two teams resisted the lazy pull of procrastination and remained on campus to begin work on their reports. Immediately after the bells had rung to signal the end of class, Sakura had dragged an unwilling Kiba into the library, demanding rather than requesting that he forget saving their work for another day.

Team three – against Naruto's will – had chosen to meet outside in the courtyard instead and sat at a previously unoccupied picnic table in the shade while they went over the sheet of printed guidelines provided by Iruka. Naruto sat at the far end of the table, well away from Sasuke, moping and grumbling under his breath.

Doing his utmost to ignore the dobe (who wasn't really paying any attention to him or Hinata, either), Sasuke read aloud from their objectives sheet:

Transformation no Jutsu: Group Project

Due Date: Monday

The idea behind this project, as I have explained in class, is to master the ability to transform into the opposite gender. To do this, you will not only need to understand the subtleties of the Transformation Jutsu previously learned in class, but also the differences between each gender. In order to do this, you and your partner (who should be of the opposite sex from yourself) will need to perform the three objectives below.

1 ) Use the Transformation Jutsu to create carbon copies of each other, paying close attention to the physical characteristics specific to your partner as well as their gender. (It is not necessary to perfectly transform anything beneath your clothing! A superficial transformation will be fine.)

2 ) You will walk around Konoha as your partner to determine if you are able to properly imitate their gender-specific qualities. As you do this, your partner will be utilizing the concealment and spying techniques learned in Unit Three to both track your progress and keep a diary of it. You will take turns transforming and recording and the diaries will be turned in to me for credit.

3 ) You will deliver a joint oral report in which you detail your findings and demonstrate your transformation to the class.

Grading Rubric:

You will each be given an individual grade as well as a group score. The chart below details what each step is worth.

Transformation – 25 percent
Diary – 25 percent
Oral Report – 50 percent

Additionally, you will each fill out a grading sheet on your teammate so that I can properly tally your individual scores. This will enable me to know who did what and how much each partner contributed to the overall success of the project.

Please do your best!

Sasuke finished reading and wrinkled his nose. The project sounded stupid, to say the least, and the group grade worried him now that Naruto was a part of his team. If the dobe messed up his chances for an A...

"Why are we outside, anyway?" Naruto whined, gazing longingly in the direction of the school building. Apparently, he hadn't been paying even the slightest bit of attention to their assignment details, focused as he was on the shadows flitting to-and-fro behind the glass of the library windows. "Aren't people supposed to study in the library?"

Sasuke, his already weak patience wearing perilously thin, growled at his childishly pouting teammate. "Not that you would know anything about this, dobe, but a person can study anywhere as long as it's possible to concentrate. And, no, concentrating on some pink-haired harpie doesn't count."

Naruto turned on the bench and slid one of his sleeves up past his elbow, menacingly revealing his bicep. "Don't call Sakura-chan a pink-haired harpie!"

"Would you prefer 'annoying girl with the abnormally large forehead,' then?"

"That's it!" Naruto shouted, pushing up his other sleeve and leaping to his feet. "I'm gonna kick your ass, you bastard!"

Sasuke narrowed his eyes and remained seated, chin resting delicately on his hands. "I'd like to see you try."

"Why...you...!"

"St-Stop!" Hinata, the third, forgotten member of the group, squealed, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands fisted near her mouth. "D-Don't fight, please!"

Realizing simultaneously that the girl was both right and absolutely horrified, Sasuke backed down with an annoyed "Che." He looked away from his group members, focusing on nothing in particular in the distance.

Naruto, however, wasn't about to let the argument drop. "Oh, so you're scared, then? I guess Hinata-chan just gave you the perfect excuse to be lame and sit on your ass, didn't she?"

Sasuke did his best to ignore the jibe, but he could feel his hackles rising again in spite of his forced self-control.

"N-Naruto-kun...please...," Hinata pleaded, getting off the picnic table bench herself to place herself between her group members. She looked as petrified as Sasuke had ever seen her from his pretending-not-to-watch standpoint. "L-Let's start working on our p-project. W-We shouldn't f-fight like this..."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sasuke could see Naruto push (well, more like gently guide) Hinata out of his way so that he could face Sasuke again. The dobe put his big, grinning face right up to Sasuke's and jeered, "That's it, isn't it? You're a big chicken who uses a girl to get out of his fig – "

Naruto was silenced momentarily by a fist colliding with his teeth.

Hinata screamed and hid her eyes, but the fight was already over. Sasuke had won, easily, and Naruto had lost, pathetically.

Naruto brought his hands up to his mouth and began voicing his agony in a voice more loud and obnoxious than usual. "Auuugh! You bashtard, that wreally huwrt!"

"N-Naruto-kun!" Hinata cried, leaping backwards and out of Naruto's way as he started thrashing around on the grass.

With a victorious smirk, Sasuke said, "Serves you right, dobe."

After bestowing upon Sasuke a horrified and disappointed look, Hinata dropped down to the ground to administer aid to the wildly-flailing Naruto. Sasuke felt the irritation welling up within him again as she did her best to help while avoiding getting hit herself with either one of his elbows or knees, all of which were flying in random directions as he screamed in agony.

She tried pulling his hands away from his mouth so that she could see the extent of his injuries, but he rolled out of her way, allowing the blood to gush freely from between his fingers. "You ashhole! You bwoke my mouf!"

Hinata winced as Naruto cursed, but tried valiantly again to help. "Please, l-let me see, Naruto-kun..."

Naruto ignored her in favor of complaining more loudly than ever. "What if you knocked my teef out, huh? Shakura-shan will hate me!"

"N-Naruto-kun...," Hinata whispered softly, slowly withdrawing her hands to her sides. She began wringing them with what Sasuke assumed was indecision and biting her lip with obvious anxiety.

"Hmph," Sasuke snorted, grabbing the guideline sheet off the table and stuffing it into his formerly discarded bag. He just didn't have the time or inclination to deal with this stuff. "I'm leaving," he announced, throwing the strap of his bag over his shoulder as he stalked away from the bloodied scene.

"W-Wait, Sasuke-san!" Hinata called after him, her voice muffled by the distance between them.

Sasuke ignored her and didn't even deign to look back. He was through with idiocy for the day.

In an uncharacteristic display of temper, Sasuke snarled angrily and punched a hole in a random tree near the school gates. Shoving his hands (one of them throbbing with ignored pain) deep into his pockets, he muttered, "Girls are really annoying."


Authors Notes: Okay, the second installment of "Sexy no Jutsu" is complete. There should be two or three more to come, making this a FiveShot instead of the originally anticipated Two or ThreeShot. Sigh.

Also, another project revolving around this fic could potentially be in the works soon, but I'll save any details about it until I've got confirmation of it. Not to worry, though; I'm sure I'll know something concrete by the end. Everyone cross your fingers and wish really, really hard!

Oh, and in case you're interested, the Authors Notes in Part One have been edited. Just so you know.

Up Next...Part Three: Step One

Oh yeah, un-beta'd. I did go back and self-edit, though.

. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .

Love can be black and white. SasuHina.