DISCLAIMER: I don't own Naruto, and I'm turning 16 next March, so I've still got a while to go!

Author's Note: This one is shaping up to be either a four or five part series, but I don't know for sure. I work on this one for fun when I don't feel like working on "James of the Hidden Leaf Village" (which, by the way, has no correlation to this story. I'm still the main character, but other than that this has nothing to do with "James of the Hidden Leaf Village"'s story. Seperate story, same characters!) Enjoy!

Part One: Calm Before the Storm

I was finally turning sixteen. The number that was a landmark for all teenagers. I didn't really know what to think or do, but I wanted to do something, so I invited all of my Genin friends over to my house for a birthday party. It was only appropriate for my sixteenth birthday, I thought.

No one had ever told me that the preparations beforehand was so boring. I'd never thrown a party anywhere near this big. Thankfully, Ino apparently had, and she helped me through a lot of it along with Sakura, and surprisingly enough, Shikamaru helped out too (probably only because Ino dragged him along, but you take what you can get.)

Finally, the day had arrived. I got out of bed and had a pleasant, quiet breakfast of pancakes, coffe and eggs at 9:00 The timeframe was that the partiers could stay from noon 'till midnight, until you don't want to party anymore, or as long as their parents allowed them to be out. Ino and Sakura would be here about an hour earlier for some help with some last-minute preparations, so I could just enjoy the quiet for a couple of hours before things started to get rowdy.

Someone knocked on the door at about 10:45. I got up from my couch, walked to the door and opened it. Ino was standing outside with a couple of baskets. "Hope you don't mind, James, but I brought my own food." Ino said.

"I couldn't care less," I said to her with a smile, "Come on in! You're earlier than I expected."

"Yeah, well, you always have to impress your customer!" Ino said cheerily as she walked in.

"Last time I checked, I wasn't paying you, though I probably should for all you've helped me out with." I turned around to look at my decked-out interior. A lot of people had chipped in to get this to happen: Kiba lent me his pool table AND his air-hockey table, Naruto brought over some PlayStation 2 games, Hinata got all of the balloons, Ino, Sakura and Shikamaru helped greatly in decorating and organizing, Choji brought a vast majority of the food (which was to be expected), Rock Lee brought a load of games (Including Apples to Apples, Risk, Life, Monopoly, and some of the other standards), and Tenten brought weapons of all kinds (for the Wack-a-Clone game she wanted to play.) In fact, the only ones who didn't really help out were Neji and Shino, but that didn't really matter to me.

I'd invited all of my friends, all Genin from Teams Seven, Eight, Ten, and Gai-sensei's team. "Sooo…" Ino started, "You gonna say anything to Hinata today, hmm?"

"What the- no!" I said rather loudly. I could already feel my face getting hot. "At least, I don't plan on it."

"Riiight."

"I'm not!" The thing was, I had a huge crush on Hinata, but I knew she had an equal-sized crush on Naruto, so I didn't have anything like that in mind…

…Okay, so maybe I did just a really little bit, but I wasn't about to make a move or anything!

"Sure, whatever!" said Ino teasingly. I knew she enjoyed this a lot; she always took pleasure in teasing me about my crush on Hinata, and this wasn't anywhere near the first time, either.

"You know what-" I was about to tell her that Sakura was right in calling her a pig all of the time, but the door knocking interrupted me. I glanced at the clock that read 10:58. That has to be Sakura. I opened the door, and sure enough, Sakura was standing outside.

"Hi James!" she said.

"Hey, c'mon in!" I said to her.

She walked in, looked at the interior and said, "I really think this party's ready to get started! The place looks great; just how we left it."

Sakura and I were best friends; we'd gotten along together ever since I first met her so well that her and I were as close as brother and sister. She had no trouble helping out with decorations when I asked her.

It'd started to get a little cloudy outside, and I was worried that it might storm. I didn't check the forecast, so I had no idea. Thankfully, the rain hadn't come down yet at noon, when the first knock on the door came.