Hey guys! You're probably wondering how the hell I can upload so fast. My answer is: MAGIC. No, just kidding, I just want to make my limited, but growing readers, happy. I'm aiming for ten reviews for Masks, if possible.

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN KINGDOM HEARTS OR ANY OF ITS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES AND CHARACTERS!

I just own this story. Enjoy!

A pair of strong, warm arms wrapped around me and lifted me off of my bed. That would be Mom, I thought through my drowsy consciousness.

She never let the alarm clock wake me up. Instead, she would carry my carcass downstairs and set me down in front of my freshly made breakfast. This was, you guessed it, another reason she was awesome.

So I was duly shocked when she not only brought me into her room, she dropped me down into the bathtub. In seconds I was stripped naked and shivering in the cool morning air of the house.

"What are you doing?" I spluttered as she dunked my head into the water, then mercilessly scrubbed it with a bar of soap.

"Dolling you up," she smirked. "Unquote."

"You heard Kairi?"

"No, but I would be a poor detective if I didn't figure out what you two girls were talking about. And yes, you DID look like a boy in last year's pictures!"

After a thorough bathing, in which every square inch of my skin was sterilized, Mom dragged me off to her dressing table. I was kicking and screaming the entire time.

"You'll never take me alive! NEVER!"

"Oh, shut up," Aqua growled as she slid a new shirt over my head, nearly suffocating me. Mom somehow managed to push a skirt over my thrashing legs.

"I can do this myself, you know!" I yelled.

"I don't trust you," Mom replied, combing my wet hair. "Aqua, the hairdryer?"

"Got it," my sister replied. She promptly applied it to my tortured tresses, making sure to blast every strand.

Next I was forced to endure my hair being styled. Aqua and Mom briefly debated over twisting my hair into a bun or a beehive, but eventually settled for keeping down. I was outraged.

"Mom, I'm just a freshman!"

"And?"

"It's five in the morning!"

"And?"

"I DON'T WANT MY HAIR STYLED!"

"And?"

My hair now perfect, the two traitors Mom and Aqua hauled me towards the single most feared room in the house for me—the makeup closet.

Since there were three women in the house, a medium-sized closet had been set aside for use as a communal dressing room. It was just big enough to house chairs for all three of us.

I stared with wide eyes at the massive array of makeup before me. Lipstick in every color of the rainbow, towering stacks of rouge, mountains of nail polish bottles, great pyramids of mascara, and other feminine decorative items loomed menacingly.

We started with the mascara. Not much was needed to fully draw out the shine of my ice blue eyes. Next, Aqua painted my fingernails while Mom layered pink lip gloss onto my lips. They worked together to apply the rouge, shading my cheeks a lovely shade of vermillion.

Finally, they stepped back and observed their hard work, nodding in approval.

To any casual observer, I looked like a porcelain doll of a girl. To anybody who knew me, I was scarred for life and a total emotional wreck. It was all I could do to not curl up in a dark corner and cry myself to sleep, mostly because if I did I would have to be re-primped.

All told the process took around two hours. On the short trip to school, Aqua put me in a headlock to restrain me from ruining my hair on purpose.

Once we got there, I drew a lot of admiring stares and quite a few whistles, but no looks of shocked recognition. Xion, who normally got to school about when I did, was the first to realize who the heck the unknown girl was.

"Namine! You're beautiful!" she gasped. "How—how—what did you do to yourself?"

"This was done against my will in a POW camp," I replied sarcastically.

"Did you do it for the boys?"

I nearly throttled her for that.

As we waited in our homeroom, the first to arrive (as usual), Kairi and Sora came in. Kairi was the first to react.

"Who's that?" she asked, confused.

I bit back a scream of exasperation.

"Namine?" she said, wide eyed.

Sora, that lovable dimwit, just stared at me until Kairi shook him and dragged him off to their seats.

Riku arrived third. He was confused that another girl was sitting in Namine's usual spot.

"Who are you—NAMINE?" he gasped, shocked by my transformation.

I hung my head in shame.

That's pretty much how other people reacted to me for the rest of the day.

For the sake of obviousness, all the other girls in my school who cared or were forced to care about Picture Day had primped, too. But none had done it as well as Mom and Aqua had.

English and Japanese class blurred past, and at lunch I brooded over my sketchbook as Xion and Kairi gawked at me and debated about how Aqua and Mom had gotten me to look like this.

Their spirited discussion came to an abrupt stop and I looked up from my sketch of the school in surprise.

There stood Larxene, the queen bitch of Radiant Garden High School.

Remember the cheerleading captain I yelled at? This is the demoness herself.

"Soooo…the he-she got itself dollied up, hmmm?" she drawled, hands on her hips.

"Jealous?" I replied coolly. It took all of my will, and then some, to not just start insulting everything about her.

"How could I possibly be jealous of you? You're so ugly, not even Aqua could fix you up," she smirked.

As a sophomore, Larxene had idolized Aqua, whose position the former was now in. In fact, pretty much everybody in the school had worshipped my popular older sister. That she basically derided Aqua's abilities in decorating me was a gigantic insult to me.

I could have taken that, but her choice of words had also targeted Aqua—and to me, that was unforgivable. I could barely keep a level head, and even then I had to set up a mask of indifference.

"You're even worse," I retorted.

"I know you are, but what am I…"

She was actually going to use that ancient comeback? Wow…

"You're stupid."

"I know you are, but what am I…"

"You're a slut, a whore, and an utter, utter bitch."

"I know you are, but what am I…"

At this point I could barely keep from laughing at Larxene's creativity, or lack thereof.

Xion, on the other hand, exploded. "And what makes you think you have any right to insult Namine?"

Larxene pointedly ignored her.

Xion took a threatening step forward.

"Ooh, scary…" Larxene mocked Xion without even turning.

Xion raised her fist and charged.

At this point Riku and Ventus intervened, dragging the enraged girl away from Larxene.

"Cool it, Xion!" Riku shouted. She struggled, lashing out at him and Ventus.

Ventus wrapped his arms around her neck, choking her into tranquility. He let go after Xion began to turn blue. She stumbled out of Riku's grasp, coughing and gagging.

Larxene smirked again and strode away to her gang of cheerleader cronies.

At last, the moment of truth had arrived. I would now see if Aqua and Mom's efforts at prettifying me had paid off.

Aqua had told me that there hadn't even been such a thing as Picture Day at RG High until the principal, who had previously commanded a middle school, decided to test if a Picture Day would be popular among students and parents alike. It turned out to be a moderate success, popular enough to rate it continued years after.

I sat on the stool, trying to balance in the uncomfortable pose and smile like the photographer decreed. Over the course of two minutes I managed to fall twice despite my best attempts at avoiding it. Yeah, I'm a klutz.

Finally the hell spawned procedure was over, and I was free to flee.

I charged towards the door, totally forgetting that there were five stairs leading up to the stage.

"Whoa!" I shouted in fear, frantically windmilling my arms as I fought tooth and nail to keep my balance on one foot.

I shrieked as I began to lose my balance. As a last ditch effort I desperately grabbed at the line next to me.

My hand caught nothing but empty air.

I just closed my eyes and braced myself as I fell over, waiting for the impact…

But it didn't come. After five seconds, I wondered why the hell I hadn't fallen yet, and opened my eyes.

It turned out they were less than two inches away from an adjacent pair of twinkling topaz eyes.

They were very attractive eyes, set in a ruggedly handsome face, whose lips were a hair's breadth from my own…

AND WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING?

Embarrassed, I jerked away from the guy. I knew I was blushing, but I hoped that he would mistake it for the rouge.

"Close call," he observed. "Nearly missed you."

"S-sorry," I said shyly. "And thanks."

I noticed he had a very muscular chest, wondered what it would feel like against my body, and jolted back to reality.

Get your mind outta the gutter, girl! I mentally hissed at myself.

"It's no problem," the guy replied, grinning. "My name's Vanitas. What's yours?"

"N-N-Na-Namine," I stuttered again.

"Namine," he mused. He grinned again. "A beautiful name for a beautiful girl."

My cheeks burned for the second time in a row. "Thank you," I said with a smile of my own.

We stood there awkwardly for a few moments. Vanitas was the first to speak.

"Okay, I'll talk to you later, alright?" he said.

"Sure, talk to—" I began, but by then he was gone.

"Dammit," I muttered, without knowing exactly why.

Exactly what the hell was going on?

It's called sexual attraction, Namine. Hehe.

I really hope my portrayal of a girl was accurate. Not being one, I had to base it on other stories with first-person female protagonists.

Special thanks goes to ., who wrote "Black and White", one of my favorite stories on the site and an inspiration for "Masks".

Also, I know the torture scene looks a lot like melonsaregreat97's "Tomboy to a Girly Girl" Chapter 6 makeup scene. In my opinion, her rendition of such an incident is LOT better than mine.