I do not own Naruto or LoveO2O

The fragment of Hinata's and Kiba's confrontation was taken and modified from the LoveO2O movie version.

Short chapter, life had gotten in the way but by the end of the month, I hope to have the next chapter done.

"Regular speech"

Regular thought

In-game announcements

In-game narrative

"In-game speech"

'In-game thought'

-In-game comment on open chat

Himari: In-game private chat

Chapter 4

Thursday, September 6

Early in the morning, Hinata dropped a sleepy Konohamaru on her bed at the dorm before borrowing Temari's bike. The language department was on the eastern side of the campus while the computer department was the opposite. As Hinata biked her way across the campus, she mentally prepared herself for the confrontation. This is just like the poker games against mom and aunt Shizune, Hinata thought. Tsunade had taught Hinata how to play at cards and to perfect her poker face from a very young age. She had become so proficient that Tsunade had brought her to a couple of open poker tournaments and won a few of them. Keep you face neutral while executing your moves. As she crossed the archway entrance to the language department and parked her bike, Hinata dawned a stoic face as the few the early risers pointed and whispered as they recognized the Computer Department Beauty, or as they now know her as the sugar baby.

"Excuse me," she said approaching two male students. "Do you know where I can find Kiba Inuzuka?"

"Kiba Inuzuka…" the taller of the two guys said as he looked around the small square.

"It's 7:15, he should be making his way to class." The second guy said to Hinata.

"There!" the first guy pointed to a student riding a black scooter. "That's Kiba."

Hinata quickly thanked them and made her way towards the oncoming scooter. Kiba stopped his scooter about three inches from Hinata, all while giving her a smirk.

"Hinata Senju. What brings the Department Beauty to the other side of the campus?"

"You know very well."

Kiba rolled his eyes in annoyance. "What do you want Sugar Baby?"

Hinata calmed her rage at his disrespect. In a cool tone, she replied, "For a reporter, you sure like to spread gossip around."

"That's my job sweet cheeks." His infuriating grin ticked Hinata off. "Now, tell me what you want, I need to get to class."

"Then you must be really lazy to not investigate further," Hinata snapped back. "Take down the post that insinuated that I have a sugar daddy. You have exactly twenty-four hours before you face the consequences."

"Consequences?" Kiba asked acting surprised. "What consequences? What can an adopted scholarship student, who has no money, connections and does not take care of the way she dresses, do to me? The Inuzuka have power and lots of connections in the government. Don't even try kitten, you'll just get bitten by the big dogs." Kida then made a biting motion to intimidate Hinata. All he got was an unflinching stoic stare. "Whatever, I'm late to class." Kiba backed up his scooter and swerved really close to Hinata.

Hinata turned and watched his figure disappear in the entrance. "Your funeral."

Once back at her dorm room, Hinata prepared a quick omelet breakfast for everyone. The girl's classes all started at 9 but Hinata planned to skip until mid-day, she had a very enlightening presentation to prepare.

"Konohamaru," Temari said while sorting through her notebooks for the day, "You're hanging out with me until lunchtime." Konohamaru nodded and gave a quick hug to Hinata before leaving behind a fast pace Temari.

"What are you planning?" Sakura asked as the coast was clear from minor ears.

"I've hacked into Kiba's laptop. He is full-on clean, except for the obsessive amount of search hits about dogs." Hinata replied while swinging side to side in her chair with a huge grin. "Apart from that, he plays card games on a website that has a sister site that is full of hentai."

"He's a pervert!"

"He's a boy," Hinata rolled her eyes. "To society, that is acceptable to a point – remember your professor that openly reads porn?" Sakura blushed in embarrassment, she forgot about her professor's reading preferences. "Besides, it's just cartoon porn. The real kicker," Hinata now had her pranking smirk on full show, "would be if his history had the addresses of real porn sites… And someone posted that information on the school forum."

Sakura was shocked. In all the years she had known Hinata, she had never seen this side of her. "That is so Slytherin of you!"

"No my fellow Gryffindor, a real Slytherin move would be to then call the Mayor's head of public relations, anonymously of course, and tell her about the blog post by a novice reporter that portrays the Mayor as a sugar daddy. I'm sure that Anko will be foaming at the mouth to discipline that boy on the consequences of reporting false news."

"You are evil."

"Me?" Hinata blinked with wide, innocent eyes, "Never! I'm just a good girl not caught."

As Konohamaru followed Temari, instead of heading towards the science building she leads him towards the library. "Aren't we going to you class?"

Temari shakes her head. "As much as I would like you to come with me, my professor made it very clear the first day that no children, siblings, and so on are not allowed at the lab. So this," Temari pointed to the looming building of the library, "is my second option."

"What am I supposed to do at a library?"

"Reading, for starters. Besides the obvious, the library has a computer lab that students can use either individually or in groups, and they can extend the use of the computer by paying a dollar per hour."

"So you're going to pay for me to use the computer the entire time that you're in the lab?"

"Yup." Temari noticed his bored expression. "Don't look like that. These computers can access the game that you're playing with Hinata."

Konohamaru's eyes lit up instantly, "Really?"

"Yes. Think of these two hours as practice. The next time Hinata plays with you, she may notice the hard work that you put into the game."

An excited Konohamaru grabbed Temari's hand and dragged her the rest of the way. Temari had to guide Konohamaru to the right door or else he would have led her to the wrong side of the building.

"If I don't show up within two and a half hours, go back to the dorm room. Hinata should still be there."

Half an hour into the game, after Temari had him settled, Konohamaru wanted to bang his head on something. When Hinata introduced him to this game, she had helped him during the tutorial and the starter village, and Konohamaru took to the controls easily. But now, outside of the starter village, Konohamaru felt like a noob, getting beaten every single time.

What is wrong with me today?

"Do you need help?"

Konohamaru looked to his right and saw a handsome and attractive male student by society standards. But having met people with pretty faces and ugly personalities in the past, made Konohamaru a little skeptical about his intentions. "Do you play Japan: A History?"

"I do," he answered.

"Really?"

The man nodded. "It's actually quite popular. All of my dormmates play."

"Have you been playing long? I've just started."

"I started over a decade, at age seven. Since I'm twenty going twenty-one, it's been almost fourteen years."

"That's so long! I've only had like uh," Konohamaru did quick math while mumbling to himself. "It was this Monday when Hinata gave me her sub-account and the whole wedding thing, that was the third of September and today is the sixth…" Konohamaru faced the man with a sheepish grin, "Exactly three days, counting today. I'm Konohamaru."

"Naruto, nice to meet you. So what are you having trouble with exactly?"

Konohamaru told him that he was having trouble controlling his avatar.

"Do you know the type of character that you currently have?" At his blank expression, Naruto continued. "Your avatar is a Mighty Glacier, one of the strongest playable characters but they're slow. As in reeeaaally slow. In addition, they need to use specific weapons to get those one-hit-kills. They're usually played by experienced gamers."

"That means that I'm doomed to fail, right?"

"Wrong." Naruto patted Konohamaru on the back. "Have some faith, I'll teach you how to properly control a Mighty Glacier."

For the next two hours, Naruto kept his promise and showed Konohamaru everything about his character: his current move set and how to improve it, what weapons he can and can't use, how to forge stronger weapons, how to get max experience points to level up, what types of armor gave his character extra defense, and the two most important, at least for Konohamaru, the strengths, and weaknesses of his character and how to properly use his character as support with other players. By the end, Naruto had to lend him his notebook so that Konohamaru could write the information down and had led him through two new villages while explaining everything. The only reason they had to stop was the pop-up message that the usage time was up, and the computer would lock up in a minute.

"Thank you," Konohamaru said as Naruto packed up his things. All of his notes were safely folded in his pant pocket.

"Don't mention it. Besides you're a very attentive student."

"You are a good teacher, just like… Hinata!" They were just out of the library when they spotted Hinata coming up the stairs. Konohamaru raced down the remaining steps and hugged her. "Did you finish your prank? How did you know I was at the library?"

Hinata was unable to answerer as her voice suddenly stopped working. In front of her was Naruto Uzumaki, his height of 5'11" towered over her merely 5'3". His short yellow-blond hairstyle suited him, it made him more mature for his age. But it was his blue eyes that captivated Hinata and rendered her speechless. She could only nod to Konohamaru as her cheeks filled with heat under Naruto's gaze. "T-Temari let m-me know w-where you were."

"Hinata do you know Naruto? He taught me how to better play my character in the game."

"R-Really? T-That's nice." Hinata flushed deeper with embarrassment. "T-Thank y-you for t-teaching Konohamaru." She had learned to control her stutter in awkward situations and always pulled through. But she never dreamed that simply talking to Naruto would bring back her stuttering self with a vengeance.

"It was no problem." Naruto looked at his watch, "I need to get going to my class. It was nice meeting you Konohamaru, Hinata."

Hinata's heart jumped into a gallop at the way he said her name.

"Hinata? Are you all alright? You're looking very red."

Friday, September 7

It was 11:30 when the professor for the journalist class left the classroom. Hinata, Sakura, and Konohamaru stood with Asuma, Chief of Police, and Hiruzen Sarutobi, the mayor of Konoha. Hinata gave the students a few minutes to settle into the independent class review every class offered, as Asuma went over the plan with his father who had arrived directly from the airport. When Mr. Sarutobi gave the nod, Hinata entered the classroom followed by Sakura and Konohamaru.

"Kiba Inuzuka," she said loud and clear, gaining the attention of the thirty plus students. As they recognized her, murmurs could be heard mentioning the sugar daddy article.

"What do you want?" Kiba growled in annoyance at her presence.

Hinata cocked her head to the side, widening her eyes to look as innocent as possible as she dropped the bomb on Kiba, "What kind of world view can you, an up and coming journalist, develop if you log onto porn sites twice a week?"

Gasps and noises of disgust from the female students filled the room. Kiba was furious as he stood up, "What do you mean by that?!"

Speaking to the rest of the student body, Hinata continued, "Most of you know that Kiba Inuzka works every Monday and Wednesday from seven to eleven at the newspaper meeting room of the Konoha Journalist Association."

"And?" Kiba interrupted. "I do my weekly articles and arrange the school's newspaper articles during those days."

Hinata goes for her first kill and plugs in the pen-drive at the lectern, filled with her evidence. "That may be true, but during those late nights hours, the department computer is linked to this IP, Internet Protocol for those who do not understand." Hinata clicks on the presentation and a window pops up showing the address. "This specific IP is connected to the largest domestic porn site." As Hinata opened the window showing the porn site with its IP address, cries of "Pervert!" and "That's disgusting" could be heard as Kiba protested by yelling "Bullshit!"

Hinata goes in for her second kill. "Do you play Spider solitaire on a website called Karachan?"

"Yes," Kiba admitted.

Hinata opened the site on a new tab. "Then you should know that on the main page, there is a link that opens on the back end of the website and controls the traffic of that page. To the untrained eye, your history appears as if it's just a gaming website, but if we look deeper at your browsing history, we can conclude that you are browsing porn sites."

Kiba's tan skin turned white at her implications. He could practically feel his hard-earned popularity and credibility as a reporter shatter into a million pieces.

"That is why you shouldn't interpret things out of context. You released pictures of myself and a minor on the university's webpage. Did you even ask me about this supposed relationship with the man and child in question?"

"I get it now," said Kiba as he approached Hinata. "You want me to take down the pictures."

Hinata ignored him and showed the damming article. "This was posted two days ago. You took pictures of me coming out of a car and later having lunch with a minor. Then you made up a story connecting the pictures and hinting that I have a sugar daddy and/or being a young mother. Yet not once did you ever investigate. Did you?"

"I just report what I see, sweetheart." His cocky smirk irritated Hinata.

Hinata pulled her Tutor Application form from the University that offered tutoring services in and out of the university to all students of any age and grade. "This is my Tutor Application information. As it shows, I work for Asuma Sarutobi, Chief of Police and eldest son of Hiruzen Sarutobi, the current Mayor of Konoha, tutoring his nephew in English and Math." Hinata then showed a picture of the three of them and behind them was the same car in the picture that Kiba took. "The Mayor is the owner of the car that is in Kiba's photograph. That day he gave me a ride to the campus after a summer tutoring session with his grandson."

Kiba's smug smirk slipped off in surprise. The implications that he, Kiba Inuzuka, called their loved mayor a sugar daddy was too much to the watching audience.

Hinata went for her final kill. "I can forgive you for your negative outlook in life, your shortsightedness, and your weak and rude reasoning. But I think you owe an apology not only to me but to the Mayor and his grandson for dragging them in unnecessary school drama for claiming that he and I have a secret relationship and a son together and then spreading it all over the university." Hinata walked over to the blackboard that listed the traits of a responsible journalist. "You are majoring in journalism. Why are you trying to start a crappy reality TV series?"

"This is your revenge, isn't it?" Kiba leaped out of his seat and confronted her.

"No, that is," and pointed towards the door were Chief Sarutobi and the Mayor entered.

"Oh my God! It's Mayor Sarutobi!" a student said.

Mr. Sarutobi acknowledges the student before turning his gaze to the boy standing next to Hinata. "Young man, I understand that recently you published an article defaming an employed female student of mine, is that correct?"

"Y-Yes, sir." Kiba had to admit his big mistake, there was no way out of the situation without dragging his reputation that was already shattered.

"Did you approach the subject of your article and investigated your claims?"

"No, sir." He bit out.

"Hm, at least you can admit to your mistakes." Hiruzen approached the boy and gave his best 'disapproving grandfather' look to Kiba. "Young man, due to your reckless reporting, the reputation of three people was damaged, Hinata's, my grandson's and myself. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I-I…" Kiba tried to come up with something but in the end, he only looked like a gaping fish.

"Imagine, for a second, that your article had made the headline news. There would be two outcomes that I can think of. The first would be that my respectability would take a slight hit, yet Hinata would have to bear the consequences fully, as she is the most accessible to the public. A PR statement would be made and then real questions on how you came up with the conclusion would surface and you would face the public's ire. The second would be that real reporters would do your job better and a simple statement of mine would turn the public's ire on you, a simple student who is a mediocre journalist. In both cases, it is you who gets the short end of the stick. By publishing this article you became a 'fake news' reporter and that is not a good place to be in the world of journalism."

"Heh," Konohamaru butted in. "Not so tough are ya?"

"Konohamaru, do not rub his humiliation in his face," Hiruzen reprimanded.

"But he deserves it! He made people speak really bad things about Hinata."

"And he has received his punishment. Now enough."

Konohamaru gave in, but not before giving Kiba a glare in his direction.

"Young man," Hiruzen addressed a silent Kiba. "As a punishment for your dishonest reporting, you will be working every Friday and Saturday until the semester ends with my Public Relations Head who is also in charge of reforming any stray reporter in my city."

Kiba was confused, which sounded more like early graduation present than a punishment.

"Have you heard of Anko Mitarashi? No? What a shame. She will be most displeased that her reputation has not yet reached the university journalist hopefuls." Sarutobi handed him a calling card. "As of right now you are now under her command. I suggest that you give her a call as soon as possible and follow her every instruction."

For the rest of the afternoon, Hinata and the girls watched as the forum exploded about her confrontation of Kiba and the mayor showing up. After that situation, Konohamaru had begged his grandfather to have dinner at Ichiraku's and Hinata was invited along.

So that's how she found herself that evening, eating delicious Soba ramen. She preferred this type of dish as the noodles are more similar to udon flour noodles served in a ramen-style broth made with pork, bonito fish flakes, and kelp. Her favorite topping for this dish, in particular, is the bone-in pork ribs. Next to her sat Konohamaru eating Ichiraku's specialty, Miso ramen, made with fragrant soybean paste that is sautéed together with ginger and garlic and mixed together with pork broth for a hearty bowl of ramen that hits the spot on even the coldest winter days. For his toppings, Konohamaru chose roasted chashu pork and bamboo shoots. Next to him sat Mr. Sarutobi eating champon. Although not specifically a type of ramen, it is made with thick egg noodles that are very similar. The noodles are cooked directly in the soup, along with meat, vegetables, and seafood. They easily chatted about her classes and schoolwork, Konohamaru's progress during the summer, and the delicious food.

That is until Hinata realized that the person who sat in the empty seat next to her was none other than Naruto.

"So, we meet again."

1/17/2020