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Girlhood is a casualty of birth. This they all know, even as children. It is also a privilege; girls are precious in these times. Low birth rates demand enough women to bolster the strength of the village. They’ll be necessary later, so they’re allowed a measure of autonomy. They need to be stronger than their contemporaries, stronger than each other in order to survive.
Shinobi get their genin sensei. Kunoichi get apprenticeships.
Hinata asks for Mitarashi Anko. They are as opposite as opposite could be, but Hinata needs to learn the cathartic power of her own rage, and Mitarashi has anger to spare.
There is no beating the kindness out of Hinata, but there is a girl with blood in her teeth, finally allowed to recognize that she has been neglected, ignored, abused, hurt. And there will be a teacher, allowing her to feel her pain. To twist it, to use it. To be fierce as the lions she will one day wield on either fist.
After the invasion, Tenten asks to go to Uzushio. Shiranui Genma is assigned to go with her. They’re two of the only people in Konoha who know fuinjutsu. Tenten built her Twin Dragon Scrolls from her own research, her own nights awake in the restricted sections of the library; stepping barefooted on the sands of Uzushiogakure makes something lock up and loosen in her stomach.
Shiranui has a good sense of humor, and he knows his way around a pair of senbon five times as well as Tenten does. He asks her more questions than he answers, sets her loose on the unfamiliar terrain and teaches her how to survive. He teaches her the Hiraishin; Tenten makes it better. Before, Tenten was a distance fighter; after, she’s a theorist, a strategist. An intellectual. An assassin.
Ino requests Yuuhi Kurenai. The mind is a fragile but terribly strong thing, and the genjutsu specialist understands that just as well as the Yamanaka do. Kurenai makes a genjutsu specialist out of Ino, makes it so she doesn’t have to throw her mind into someone else’s to trick them. Teaches her how to gather information without putting herself in as vulnerable a position as her clan techniques do.
Kurenai teaches Ino patience. How to lay an illusion over and under and around five others, to trick someone else’s mind into revealing the truth to her. She teaches Ino how to read people; body language, body odor, facial tics, clothing, hairstyling. She teaches Ino the importance of aiming; the importance of striking. She teaches Ino to stop hesitating.
Maito Gai is recommended to Sakura. He terrifies her, to be frank. He’s terribly excitable, but when she finally remembers that Sasuke isn’t watching, she lets herself be exuberant, too. Sakura needs to be reminded that she’s a weapon; that her prettiness is not her only weapon. That she is not a thing to be thrown between two unstoppable forces; that she is a force herself.
She’s behind Lee by degrees, but she learns. She’s been too worried about being a pretty girl, a nice girl, a demure girl, to realize that she can wipe the floor with anyone when it comes to hand-to-hand. She eats up every fighting style Gai puts in front of her. When she learns how to open the First Gate, she realizes that she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. Sasuke included.
Sakura grows up. They all do. They only get one chance at these apprenticeships, one shot at making themselves perfect vessels for new generations of shinobi. One shot at being important enough to get pulled back from the frontlines to be broodmares. One shot at being too important to be a broodmare, too necessary to be anywhere else but on the front lines.
Grilhood is a casualty of birth; there is no perfect scenario. They do not win, if they are battle fodder, or if they are kept pregnant by the village system that binds them. No matter where they end up, they must be strong. They cannot waste the resources the village has poured into them. They cannot afford to.
So they grow up. Maybe it will be enough. With the coming war, it will have to be.