Honestly, I'll say that I was a bit surprised at the lack of reviews I received for my first chapter. xD I'd been aiming for five at least, and got four. I keep telling myself that it's okay, that I shouldn't expect much. It's only my first story, and it was just one chapter. However, being the overachiever that I am, I was just wondering, are my abilities as a writer inadequate?

Either way, I sincerely hope you enjoy what you read.

And if I owned Naruto, would I be writing FANfiction about it?

Review corner!

Moonlight0101: !! Yes! I've read it! 8D My story is not based off of Memoirs of a Geisha, as hard as it may be to believe. I don't remember much of it, since I read it when the book first came out. I only remember the main things. ): Anyway, I'm updating right now, so I hope you continue to encourage me! Even though I'm a tad confused since your profile states that you dislike SasuSaku. xD Hope you have a great summer too!

smartalec729: Thank you! I need to go back and edit the beginning. I think that a lot of people didn't bother reading past the beginning because they thought she was dead. Haha. Sakura-chan shall forever dominate in my stories! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

SunriseHorizon: The girl at the beginning was Sakura. Tenten and Sakura were performing in a play, and Ino and Hinata were playing background music on the sanshin. xD And thank you! I wanted to write a story with a different kind of beginning instead of the whole "The sun was shining" thing. Please enjoy this update! And by the way, I love your penname.

Tennie-chan: Thank you. I hope this chapter satisfies you!

Sakura's dancing skills were definitely unmatched by anyone other than Tenten.

She was swift and fluid; every movement of her body was connected, almost unhumanly graceful. Her very presence on a dance floor simply demanded attention whether she wanted it or not. Every man and woman in the room had their eyes transfixed on the famous blossom.

"Tsunade, you've got yourself quite a student there."

The aged woman diverted her eyes from her student for a while, only to land upon the small, beady ones that belonged to her long time friend, Jiraiya, who sat beside her. She took a sip of her sake.

"I'm lucky, that's for sure," she whispered, casting her gaze upon the dancer once more. Jiraiya, too, returned his eyes to the pink haired beauty on the stage.

"So what do you think of the plan?" he asked, keeping his stare fixated upon Tsunade's apprentice.

She finally put her cup down, thinking for a long moment.

"I'm not sure."

"What are the chances of it working, then?"

"I'd say about fifteen percent, judging from what you've told me," Tsunade calculated, swirling the contents in her cup around before downing it all in a few slurps. She'd never been a quiet drinker.

Her old friend smirked. "What's stopping you then?"

"Oh, nothing at all. It's just the fact that they might absolutely hate my guts for it afterward. Other than that, I'm completely fine," she commented, reaching for another bottle.

Jiraiya grabbed the bottle of addicting liquid, pulling it out of her reach.

"They all need and deserve it."

She glared at him. "I know."

"Then think the plan over some more."

"I thought about it enough."

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "I don't get it. You want what's best for your kids, I want what's best for mine. I honestly don't see why you're not going to carry out with this pl-"

"I never said that I wouldn't do it," she interrupted. Her comment left a look of shock on his face. She continued.

"Listen to me. I made Ino, a completely girly wuss, climb trees and abandon her wardrobe for a whole month. I forced Tenten, the tomboy, to put make up on and dress up every day for a month. Hinata, practically a mute, was shoved into the wonderfully talkative world of Ino... for a month. And Sakura? I made her talk about her family every day, for a month. A single month is all it takes to change everything. I happened to use the first month each girl was here to break them."

Jiraiya lifted a brow. "Break them?"

Tsunade nodded. "Well, more of... making them face their fears. But the problem is that I don't know how much time we'll need for this to work. I'm guessing around three months. However, I don't think I can let them avoid work that long."

Jiraiya stared at the ceiling, swirling the cup in his hand at a slow speed. They stayed quiet and watched as Sakura finished the dance that so many had requested of her.

He suddenly spoke. "They're still going to hate you if it doesn't work," he said, absentmindedly reaching to his side for the sake bottle he'd taken from Tsunade, only to find it missing. He quickly turned his head around to face his friend, who held the bottle in her hands rather triumphantly, pouring its contents into her cup.

She smirked, her amber eyes glowing with the anticipation of a new challenge.

"Never stopped me before."

"And then, after I finished pouring sake in his cup, he started feeling up on my ass!" Sakura's friends hysterically laughed as she gave them a recap of her adventures that night. They sat in a circle on the floor of their shared room, playing with each other's hair or doing someone's nails.

"So what'd you do?" Tenten managed to gasp out between giggles.

"Well, being the 'oh-so-gentle' geisha I'm supposed to be, I asked him to remove his hand from me, of course."

"Oh, please, go on," Ino urged her friend to continue.

"The guy was a complete bastard! He starting smiling out of his drunkass mind and said 'I like my hand where it is, baby. Actually I'd like it to be somewhere warmer, wetter.' So he starts moving his hand to my thighs..." At this point, Hinata was covering her face with her hands. Ino protested quite loudly at her actions. ("I'm doing your nails, Hina-chan, and I don't have super steady and musical hands like yours, so hold still!")

"I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed his hand and twisted it under the table. He left me alone afterward," Sakura triumphantly finished. Hinata heaved a sigh of relief.

"If I had been you, Sakura-chan, I probably would've cried," the Hyuuga girl said, removing her face from her hands. (Ino was quite happy after she'd done this.)

"Hinata, Hinata," Ino clucked her tongue at her friend. "That's what long nails are for." She held up her hands for all of them to see. Yes, indeed, Ino's nails were long, healthy, and manicured to perfection.

"Ooh, do mine next," Sakura insisted.

"Sure, almost done with Hinata's here. What color?" Ino asked, finishing up the decals on Hinata's fingers.

"Red, black, and white. If we happen to have gold in that box, that'd be nice too."

Ino checked the girls' box of nail lacquer. "Yeah, we have gold."

"Colorful as usual, right, Sakura-chan?" Tenten teased. She was working on messing with Ino's hair. Tenten suddenly frowned. "You have lots of split ends, Ino-chan," she said, examining the ends of Ino's hair.

Ino's periwinkle eyes widened. "Oh my god, no. No. No. You're joking." She quickly put down the nail brushes she was holding and grabbed her locks out of Tenten's hands. Upon finding that her friend's observations were true, she began wailing. Tenten gave the blonde a sympathetic smile.

"It's okay, Ino. It's been a while since you got a trim anyway. I'll do it for you, okay?" Ino grudgingly nodded and handed Tenten a pair of hair scissors from the box.

"You should have just punched him, Sakura-chan," Tenten joked as began trimming Ino's hair. The blonde almost started crying when she saw the ends of her hair fall on the floor.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Trust me, I seriously would have if it wasn't for that fact that about a dozen other men were in the room. Tsunade was there too. She'd kill me if I did something like that. Anyway, I'm tired of talking about my own night. Hinata, how'd your night go?" Sakura lazily asked as Ino began working on her own nails.

"Uh, you know, just the usual stuff," she shyly replied, staring at her drying nails. "There were a lot of people there, and Shizune-san was entertaining there too."

"Really?!" Tenten asked excitedly, moving over to unpin Hinata's shoulder-length bluish locks.

"No split ends?" Ino asked.

"Ino, your jealousy is showing," Sakura teased.

Tenten examined Hinata's hair more closely. "Nope," she said, pulling back with an air of satisfaction. "None at all." Tenten had a thing for putting things in a symmetrical order or having everything she owned as shiny and healthy as possible. An example of this would be her hair buns. If one of the buns was slightly off, Tenten would fix it until it was exactly the way she wanted it. Hair ends were no exception. When she found a split end, she'd immediately cut it off.

"How's Shizune-san doing, anyway?" Tenten asked.

Shizune was a pretty woman with short black hair and pale complexion who had also been Tsunade's apprentice. She left Tsunade's okiya two years after Sakura had joined their family to move into her own apartment, with her danna.

"Shizune-san's doing fine. Oh, and she says hi to you all too. Actually, she might drop by this Sunday to visit," Hinata gleefully announced.

"She's getting hitched soon, right?" Sakura called out from her comfortable place on her futon.

"Yeah, to her danna, some guy named Kakashi," Ino answered, her gaze fixed on Sakura's pinky nail. Where is that damn gold bottle? she angrily thought, fingering through the box for the elusive color.

"I hope he treats her well," Hinata mumbled.

"If she's marrying the guy, he should be pretty nice. We are talking about Shizune-san, of course. The lady has been set on true love ever since Ino and I met her," Tenten pointed out, scrambling over to check Sakura's hair.

"Eh, good point," Sakura mumbled.

"Hinata-chan," Ino called out, "if your nails still aren't dry, there's a fan in the box somewhere. And Sakura, what do you think?"

Sakura held up her hands in front of her face. Her green eyes reflected her satisfaction. "They're great, Ino. You're a nail genius." Ino glowed at the compliment.

"Dammit, Sakura-chan, how is it that you always have such perfect hair?" Tenten groaned jokingly. Sakura's hair would be the object of any hairdresser's or wigmaker's fantasies. Tenten, of course, was happy with her friend's hair, since it embodied most of the perfections Tenten prized. It was also the subject of one of Tenten's main challenges in life; she called it Operation "Find Something Wrong With Sakura's Hair Other Than The Fact That It's Pink".

"Not my fault," Sakura noisily retorted. "I use the same brand of shampoo and conditioner that you all use. The only difference is the scent." Sakura enjoyed using shampoo that had a delicious fruity scent containing cherry, coconut, and vanilla essence. Ino's choice was a mixture of lavender, lily, and rose. Hinata liked her plum blossom and champagne set. Tenten had an orange essence and brown sugar combo.

"Either way, it's amazingly gorgeous," Ino sulked, putting away all her nail supplies back into the box.

"Stop complaining and look at yourselves," Sakura sighed. "Your hair isn't any different than mine, other than hair color. It's made up of dead skin cells. Dead is dead. There isn't really a difference unless you're thinking of zombies." Her three friends laughed at her strange logic.

Hinata snuck a look at the clock. "It's already 10:57 P.M. on a Thursday night, guys. I'm going to bed and yes, Ino" Ino opened her mouth to say something, "my nails are dry."

Tenten finally stopped examining Sakura's hair and stretched. "Yeah, I'm going too." She crawled over to her own futon and slipped noiselessly into the covers. "Night."

"Billboard Brow, I'm signing out too. Are your nails dried, and dried well?" Ino demanded. Sakura mock saluted her friend.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Luck be with ye, lad," Ino sleepily saluted back and landed with a loud 'thump' on her blue futon.

Sakura inched under her own black and red covers and snuggled into the comfortable blankets. "Night, everyone," she called out, reaching to turn off the lights.

"Night, Sakura-chan."

And the room went black.

"Morning, girls." Tsunade quietly greeted, opening the sliding doors as noiselessly as she could.

The girls remained asleep.

Tsunade tried one more time. Clearing her throat, she said again, this time more loudly, "Morning, girls."

Her students were out cold.

Dancing? A plus. Singing, A plus. Ikebana, A plus. Music, A plus.

Getting up in the morning? F minus.

How can it be that my four prodigy students are good at almost everything except waking up? Tsunade miserably asked herself. She shouted, "GIRLS, GET YOUR LAZY ASSES OUT OF BED."

Startled, all the girls slightly jumped, except for Ino, who jumped so high that she fell out of bed. They turned their heads toward their master, rubbing their sleepy eyes. "Oh, morning, Tsunade-sama," Tenten yawned out before crashing back down, already fast asleep. The rest of the girls, however, reluctantly rose from their previously comfortable positions (well, all except for Ino, who had been on the floor) and shuffled their way to the bathroom. (Ino might as well have crawled there. The girl was a zombie in the mornings.)

Tenten's morning that Friday definitely did not come out of a storybook.

"For the last time, Ino, hand me the salt, dammit!" Tenten shouted.

Ino stuck her tongue out, clutching the small bottle containing Tenten's favorite flavoring closer to her. "Nu-uh. You chopped off two whole inches of my hair last night! I'm not about to let you have what you want!"

"Ino, your hair was seriously that damaged!" Tenten angrily pointed out. She made a desperate dive for the salt shaker. It didn't do much, seeing as Ino was across the round table.

"Two inches! TWO, Tenten! My hair doesn't grow as fast as Hinata's or Sakura's! It'll take me a year to grow it back out!"

"So your choice of punishment for me is the absence of sodium in my food until you decide that your hair's long enough again?!" Tenten shrieked, standing so abruptly that her chair flew back.

Ino stood up with just as much force. "That's right, bitch!"

"Ahem." Tsunade tried to interrupt the fight as subtly as she could. Sakura calmly read her magazine, and Hinata took a quiet sip of her soup.

"Do you want another two inches of your hair to be flushed down the drain?" Tenten glared at her blonde friend.

"Do that and I will rip one of those cute little buns on top of your head off," Ino threatened.

For the third time that morning, Tsunade cleared her throat, only to be ignored. Again.

Tenten stepped closer to the table. She narrowed her eyes as thinly as possible. "You. Wouldn't. Dare."

"Oh, yes, I would, dumpling head," Ino evilly murmured. Somehow, the two of them had managed to get away from their seats. They were now standing next to the table, in front of each other, glaring with an intensity that Hinata liked to call 'Max Rage'.

Since Ino was too busy glaring at Tenten, Tenten moved her hand and slowly grabbed the salt shaker, while keeping her eyes fixed on Ino. The glaring contest was suddenly broken. Tenten rushed back to her spot and poured as much salt as she could into her soup.

Ino blinked, trying to register what was going on. "TENTEN!" She charged over to her friend's side, trying to reach over the bun-haired girl's shoulder for the container. Tenten continued to dump the flavoring into her breakfast, smiling maniacally.

Ino was about to retort when Tsunade, who had felt that she'd been ignored long enough, shouted, "INO. TENTEN. CHAIRS. NOW." The two of them meekly returned to their seats. Tenten didn't stop with the salt though.

Tsunade massaged her temples. This absolutely cannot be good for my skin.

"Girls, I mainly woke you up at eight this morning because I need to have a... chat with you, if you'll call it that."

Her four students stopped eating their breakfasts for a bit to look at her.

"A... chat," Sakura slowy said, looking up from her magazine, as if to clarify that it was really what her teacher had just said.

"Yes, girls. A 'chat'."

Ino burst out laughing. "Tsunade-sama, nobody uses 'chat' anymore unless it's on the computer or something." A sharp glare from Tsunade shut Ino up quickly.

"What is it that you'd like to... 'chat' with us about, Tsunade-sama?" Hinata politely inquired, taking a long sip of miso soup.

"Ah, yes. Well, I've realized lately that while you entertain, some of you girls are being... 'felt up' is how I think you call it." Ino and Tenten tried to cover their giggles.

"I think you all need to be prepared to defend yourselves against, you know, more aggressive clients, unless you want to end up like that poor salt shaker over there." Tsunade motioned toward the containter, which was almost empty. She closed her eyes in thought for a little while.

"So, I've come to a decision."

Tsunade's eyes fluttered open, determination illuminating the amber irises. Her next words were the cause of a few interesting reactions.

Ino's tragic hair trim was long forgotten.

Hinata's soup bowl was abandoned.

Sakura dropped her magazine.

Tenten even ceased raping the salt shaker.

"Girls, it's time for you to learn the ways of the ninja."

I hope that this chapter was better than the last! Reviews are deeply appreciated.

OH! I was also wondering if you guys want me to start sticking in Japanese words in here. I'm worried that I might confuse readers though, because I actually speak Japanese with an arguable proficiency. Please let me know if you think this is a good idea! :D

I'll update in a week or two. Until then, please continue supporting me!

Thank you for reading my story!