Ficlet: Kunoichi
Another Other Side Ficlet, sorta. In a way. Maybe it deserves to be called 'Dark fic." It's being maddening, not knowing where to slot it.
Kunoichi
Kunoichi classes make the other boys laugh. Flower lessons, they call it, cooking class. Little blonde Megumi colours and hits them, but the other girls say nothing. They blush and hide their faces, and Yayoi-sensei says even less, letting the girls file past her and nods to Gatou-sensei and leaves him with the boys who laugh and sneer.
"You are kunoichi," she says, in the small room with small windows, a place that ought to be dusty but isn't. It ought to be bright, because the windows face the sun, but somehow the wood swallows up all cheer, leaving it thin and wan. Little girls fidget, ten years old and eager, and Yayoi-sensei looks at them and feels blank. Little chubby faces who would grow up into spare polished blades. She marks them off into groups, who would live, who would go where, who wouldn't survive.
Yayoi is nearly forty but she has experience and knows.
For example: Kurenai is too-tall and gawky, even at ten, but she has piercing eyes. She needs only the right mannerism and then she might kill with less than a word, just a look. Her limbs are too-long, she crouches, and Yayoi snaps at her till she sits up straight.
For example: little feral Anko has the mouth of a tiger-cub, wailing constantly for attention, and the claws of a panther. She's never still, but with the right teacher, she'd have the speed of a striking cobra.
Yayoi has no patience for flower-arranging. Not in a world that needs bodies to fight, needs them to steal. Because stealing is everything, right now, money, information, life, and these girls are her weapons, the weapons of Konoha, and they will be sent out into the world in less than a year because the Council had been dissolved and the Hokage had ordered the age limit to be lowered.
But she teaches them that. Watches them play with flowers, till she strikes their hands and show them how to insert wire into the stems, poison dipped and sharpened, to arrange one's sleeves so that needles might slip out of wrist pouches and poisons pour from clever seams.
She will have them for less than a year, and by the end of four months, she tells them they must find a boy, any boy, rid themselves of a cumbersome detail as soon as possible. Because the enemy would take delight in taking it from them, these men from Earth who have the hearts of stone and the leers of demons, and they nod at her, eyes not-wide.
She has taught them well.
And at the end of eight months, they don't play anymore.
They are kunoichi.
Kunoichi
Kunoichi classes make the other boys laugh. Flower lessons, they call it, cooking class. Little blonde Megumi colours and hits them, but the other girls say nothing. They blush and hide their faces, and Yayoi-sensei says even less, letting the girls file past her and nods to Gatou-sensei and leaves him with the boys who laugh and sneer.
"You are kunoichi," she says, in the small room with small windows, a place that ought to be dusty but isn't. It ought to be bright, because the windows face the sun, but somehow the wood swallows up all cheer, leaving it thin and wan. Little girls fidget, ten years old and eager, and Yayoi-sensei looks at them and feels blank. Little chubby faces who would grow up into spare polished blades. She marks them off into groups, who would live, who would go where, who wouldn't survive.
Yayoi is nearly forty but she has experience and knows.
For example: Kurenai is too-tall and gawky, even at ten, but she has piercing eyes. She needs only the right mannerism and then she might kill with less than a word, just a look. Her limbs are too-long, she crouches, and Yayoi snaps at her till she sits up straight.
For example: little feral Anko has the mouth of a tiger-cub, wailing constantly for attention, and the claws of a panther. She's never still, but with the right teacher, she'd have the speed of a striking cobra.
Yayoi has no patience for flower-arranging. Not in a world that needs bodies to fight, needs them to steal. Because stealing is everything, right now, money, information, life, and these girls are her weapons, the weapons of Konoha, and they will be sent out into the world in less than a year because the Council had been dissolved and the Hokage had ordered the age limit to be lowered.
But she teaches them that. Watches them play with flowers, till she strikes their hands and show them how to insert wire into the stems, poison dipped and sharpened, to arrange one's sleeves so that needles might slip out of wrist pouches and poisons pour from clever seams.
She will have them for less than a year, and by the end of four months, she tells them they must find a boy, any boy, rid themselves of a cumbersome detail as soon as possible. Because the enemy would take delight in taking it from them, these men from Earth who have the hearts of stone and the leers of demons, and they nod at her, eyes not-wide.
She has taught them well.
And at the end of eight months, they don't play anymore.
They are kunoichi.