Twisted Pinwheel

Alright, poison.

You haven't made a serious study of toxic flowers, but there were a few mentioned in the textbooks.... none of them are immediately obvious in this field, though, and the majority of the class is just going with a basis of 'these are pretty' as they ravage the delicate balance of wildflowers and weeds. You consider that and start walking.

You know of at least one place where there's a poisonous flower. Or so you heard. Tracking that down will clue you in on what you're looking for.

You follow the swearing to a purple-haired girl with a red face.

"She should be expelled, the brat!" purple seethes.

Her invecture is agreed with by a girl with short red shonen-hero hair with matching shonen-hero scarf and...

"Did you paint a shuriken into your afro?" you're forced to ask. That can't be natural.

"It's a peeeerm!" the girl howls back.

That's not what you asked and you swallow your disgust with the afro-girl.

"Whatever." you sigh. "I hear you have poisonous flowers. Hand them over."

"Why should-" shonen hero starts to say, confirming that she has them and drawing your attention to her hand.

You step forward and pivot around her, that wrist caught. A little bit of pressure from your thumb opens her fingers with a squealing spasm, and you pluck them away from her grip.

"Yoink." you say simply, and turn.

You're just in time to see your field of vision become overwhelmed by Purple's fist, and feel a wet crunch as your head rocks backward, nose broken and eyes stinging.

The fuck is wrong with you today? You're zero for two on countering cheap shots, and that is bullshit. Honestly, though, purple seems sort of shocked herself, though you can't tell whether it's that there's blood all over your face now or that you're unmoved by just taking the hit. Taijutsu of some kind is probably her focus?

"And now, the shitstorm." you say, eyes blazing and whirling.

Thirty seconds later, you've thoroughly proven that you can beat the crap out of these girls three on one, they're moaning on the ground and clutching sore spots. Meanwhile, you crunch your nose back into place, wincing slightly at the pain, and examing the slightly crumpled flowers more closely.

"Crap." you grunt, tossing them aside. "These only have poison in the root system."

"They what." Purple snaps, somehow standing again and with her eyes blazing.

"Not that I'm not impressed, but shouldn't you be pissing yourself with blood right now?" you ask. You're pretty sure, after all, that you just did a number on her kidneys.

"And shouldn't you be fixing your make-up for your shift at work? Your tea-house only opens after six, so you don't have much time after school lets out."

That's cute. She's insinuating you're a thinly-disguised whore. She's all bark and no bite, but cute.

You did not expect to accidentally meet someone you liked today. Even if it is only a little. She doesn't like you, of course, but that's more in line with what you were going for. You can't do anything about how the clan sees you, flip flopping between upholding you as a prodigy like the clan head's elder son and trying to forget that you're more of a visible prodigy than his younger, but this is outside the clan walls. The Uchiha still have influence, but if other people dislike you it's on your own merits and actions and not because you're a part of an infamous ninja clan and they feel like they have to at least pretend.

Besides, you prefer being disliked anyway. It's more satisfying.

"Listen, idiot, you think I'm looking for poison for no reason? We're being tested." you say instead of anything else running through your mind, deciding that you are going to back your personal conclusion on this one to the hilt.

"On how well we can arrange flowers." Afro girl says, slowly.

"That too." you say, waving a hand idly as you wipe the blood off with your other. "You don't seriously think that's all, though, right? Some flowers also have uses for medicine or assassination...."

You trail off, shaking the blood off your hand, and then stalk without a word to a little patch of something that's caught your magic eyes.

"Suzuran!" you say, and are pleased that the other girls recognize it. Pretty and deadly, you don't touch it with your bare skin. Even drinking water that's been in a vase with suzuran in it has killed the unwary. Purple's jaw clicks firmly shut as all three put a hand over their mouths, the hell is up with that. "But anyway, we're being tested to see if we have interests in traditional kunoichi fields other than spying and looking pretty too, you know. You might want to find something interesting yourself."

Satisfied, and seeing that nothing else is jumping out at you particularly on the basis of being poisonous, so you shift to flower language to finish up. Suzuran accompanied by a pair of orange lilies and a white anemone... 'My vengeance will be truly sweet'.

Sensei smiles slightly and takes your sprig of flowers with a napkin, but doesn't comment on it. You guess she's just going to make a private note for the academy files.

That done, handouts that nobody seems interested in actually reading are handed out, and class is dismissed.

Nobody else is reading their papers that you can see, but you only need to flip through yours once and slowly skim to acquire the information. Starts off with a lecture in print about proper behavior for academy students, so you can understand the lack of interest, and moves on to suggest that tutelage will be pretty hands off. There are requirements that every candidate for genin must be able to reach, and the instructors will help you reach them, but it seems like they aren't obligated to go too far out of their way, either.

In counterpoint, there's a note that as academy students you are allowed to use the shinobi libraries to some degree, and in smaller print that you're allowed to learn whatever E-rank jutsu or theory you want on your own time. Anything higher than that is restricted, and you can't get at it just by flashing a student identification. You guess that makes sense. And that aside, trying to pull off something too far out of your league probably means that they can note your cause of death as stupidity.

You stretch, and consider if you really want to head back to a house that's either empty or has elders waiting to shame you for letting, while they wouldn't put it in exactly these words, clanless scum with no particular quality or advantage get the better of you twice in one day.

Then you saunter off to the library, where you can linger for a while and force any lectures to happen on your own schedule.

Since it's a ninja library, most of it is for ninjutsu. Not all, though. You wave disinterestedly at one of the keepers.

---

[ ] You could go with the traditional favorite and read about the ninjutsu. There's one to sharpen your pencil, one to tie shoelaces, one to... most E-rank ninjutsu are like that, and the academy tests on the three basic and 'best'.
[ ] Maybe look at Genjutsu. You haven't figured it out yet, but you're supposed to be able to use your eyes to cast strong illusions. You haven't figured that out yet, though, and who would expect you to use entirely unrelated genjutsu?
[ ] Not much you can do with Taijutsu without a teacher, but you can at least glance through the theory and some basic kata, even if the instructors are only going to test on konoha standard.
[ ] Weaponry isn't really going to be covered in class at all, though, aside from throwing practice. If you want to get physical, that might be a better plan.
[ ] Seals? Those make the boom tags, right? You like you some 'splosions, yes you do. Looks like instructions for actually making a standard exploding tag is forbidden to academy students, which is unfair, but all the theory-stuff is just right there.
[ ] It looks like half the Icha Icha series is stashed in between anatomical medical scrolls. Restricted for purchase to age 18 and up, but fuck the police, you know them for a guarantee to be dicks since they're family or you can maybe just actually review anatomy in both the medical and 'stab here' sense?
[ ] ??