Naruto pocketed the 3,000 ryo cash prize he'd gotten from Awesome Assassins from Across the Five Great Nations, but the usual thrill he would feel whenever he won a game had long since faded and his mouth tasted like black ash.

As he and Jiraiya walked through the crowded marketplace of another village, his head swirled with images of Hinata giving Menma a peck on the cheek, Hinata getting a piggyback ride from Nori, Hinata marrying Wakame, then Hinata going on a honeymoon with Kikurage.

His mind, unbidden, spun a fantasy of Hinata surrounded by all of her harem friends in a ramen broth hot spring, thick steam covering up everything and everyone.

"Shijimi-kun, Aonegi-kun!"

Hinata laughed as two of her numeous concubines playfully splashed her with broth. "We need to wait until everyone else comes!"

The ramen hot spring was big enough for fifty people.

Hinata. HinaHarem.

Love Polygon.

All of them seem to have long, childhood associations with Hyuuga-san.

That didn't even make sense! Hinata didn't have any childhood friends. He knew that because he was there to see how some idiots used to bully her for her pretty, pretty eyes. She would look away whenever he looked at her. She would look away whenever anyone would look at her. She used to sit all by herself in the classroom, on the playground, during lunch. No one was even there to walk her home.

Just like him.

Who was this...this Menma anyway? And Nori and Kikurage and Wonton and whoever else was listed on page 18? Did they ever help her when she was feeling down? Did they ever smile at her? Did they share the same ninja way? Could they name her blood type? What if Hinata was being taken advantage of by some losers who saw her as a doormat or something?

If...if Hinata had a harem, then that harem had better be filled with people who actually appreciated her awesomeness. And no one with those other ramen topping names could ever appreciate her awesomeness. He growled.

"Naruto's better than Menma and Wakame and all the others, ya know!" he yelled. "Hinata could have some taste!"

Just like in the previous village, a lot of people gave him very strange looks.

"We need to teach you about using indoor voices," Jiraiya advised. "Don't shout in public like that. People will think you're insane."

"But this is important, Pervy Sage!" Naruto snapped, clenching his fists so hard that his knuckles turned a ghostly white. "Hinata likes Menma and Wakame and Nori and all the others so much."

Despite what people thought of him, Jiraiya didn't interpret every single conversation in a pervy way. He had no idea that Naruto was talking about Hinata's "harem," as he didn't read Awesome Assassins' celebrity column. Nor did he know that Naruto was talking about the figments of random people's imaginations rather than actual ramen toppings. So no one could blame him when he said, "Well, sometimes variety is the spice of life, Naruto. Not everyone sticks to just one. I, personally, like mixing a bunch together. Hmmm, reminds me of what I plan to put in Icha Icha Tactics..."

Naruto looked horrified. "But...but that's...that's..."

"Completely normal. Why do you care so much about your friend liking...Menma or Nori or whatever?"

"Because they suck, that's why!"

Unfortunately, Naruto shouted this part out loud too. He really should have thought about using indoor voices.

Someone cleared her throat. Naruto and Jiraiya turned around in slow, slow, comically slow motion, finding a teenage village girl cracking her knuckles ominously.

Hinata was famous. And judging by the flames dancing in this deranged fangirl's eyes, Hinata's harem was famous too.

"Did you just say," asked the girl in a terrifyingly calm voice, "that Hyuuga-san's harem sucks?"

"Wait, harem?" Jiraiya's eyes lit up with flames to rival Hinata's teenage fangirl's. "We were discussing harems just now? Naruto, why didn't you tell me? I needed inspiration for Icha Icha Tactics!"

"Yeah, they suck!" Naruto bellowed, ignoring Jiraiya completely and cracking his knuckles right back at the teenage girl. "Everyone knows that I, the future Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto, am way better than Menma." He spat out the name Menma like it was poison.

This was a bad idea.

That was how Naruto started a second war in a village and Hinata unwittingly found herself the subject of a future bestseller.

Poor Hinata.

Really, poor Hinata.

So far, most of the attention she had received was positive. People who wanted her autograph, people wishing to gift her enormous sums of money, people who wanted to use her face as a talisman of good fortune. People who were protective of her to the point of deranged behavior if they believed she had been mistreated in some way. People who wanted her to do well and be well, even if they had...strange ideas of how that would come about. Even the little "negative" attention she had received had been a mix of awe and terror. Generally, people either loved her, or were terrified of crossing her. As she and Neji made their way to the daimyo's castle, Hinata had little reason to suspect that this time would be any different, that she would encounter negative, truly negative attention for the first time in her celebrity status, not from petty bandits, but from a group of missing-nin with explicit "do not combat" warnings in the Bingo Book.

It was a dark, gloomy, freezing day, just a few days to her sixteenth birthday. Pellets of freezing rain hammered the slushy, snowy path the two cousins were taking. Neji adjusted the Hinata-themed strip of cloth securely around his cherry-colored ears and Hinata tightened the red muffler around her neck.

Then a voice rang out from somewhere in the woods.

"Is it true that your blood type is a secret?"

A/N: Thanks for the sweet reviews, everyone, they really keep me going. :)