Chapter Four: What Else Could Go Wrong?

Naruto collapsed on his bed with his head in his hands. He felt miserable, but not for himself. He had truly wanted his and Hinata's first date to be spectacular and memorable, and he supposed that this fit the bill in some way. After all, he was sure it was an amusing spectacle to some and she was sure to remember it as the worst date in the history of mankind. He slowly thought over the night, thinking of every place he went wrong and berating himself rather thoroughly.

Hinata gave a happy sigh as she fell back onto her bed from the… rather eventful date. Sure, nothing seemed to go the way Naruto had planned it, but she couldn't help but be beside herself with excitement. The date may not have been an ideal one to other women, but for Hinata it had the only thing required to make it absolutely perfect – Naruto's attention was entirely focused on her and making her happy. Thinking back to the start of the day, she blushed brightly at the thought of his attention focused on her in a different light, as well.

The Date Gone Wrong Flashback 1:

When Naruto came to from his impromptu and accidental peek and fainting, he noticed a fully clothed Hinata sitting timidly a few feet away from arm's length to his left. Immediately flushing, Naruto began speaking at a breakneck pace, "Hinata-I'm-so-sorry-I-should've-listened-to-Shino -please-forgive-me-I-didn't-mean-to-see-you-naked- and-I'm-sorry-I-fainted-on-you-before-explaining-m yself-but-you-looked-so-beautiful-and-I-was-caught -off-guard-and-I'm-sorry-and-please-don't-hit-me?"

Hinata, thankfully, was listening intently and caught every word he said… up until he called her beautiful. At that point, she felt her face heat up to an alarming degree, with only one thought bouncing through her head; "Naruto really thinks I'm beautiful?"

Hinata took a slow breath to regain her composure, and Naruto instantly felt he was a goner. "Oh great, now she's trying to calm down enough so she only maims me instead of killing me! Look at how red her face is, I don't think I've ever made anyone that red-faced in anger before!"

Contrary to his fears, when Hinata regained her composure and the blush faded she just smiled lightly and said, "I-it's okay, Naruto, I should have told Shino and Kiba more about the type of t-training I was doing, I was just afraid that K-Kiba might try to peek. It's mostly my fault, I-I'm the one who's sorry."

"Really? I'm the one who barged in without announcing myself first, I really think it's my fault… ANYWAY! I wanted to apologize for not being able to make it back before now, my research was harder to complete than I thought. I was wondering if you'd like to have that date tonight? I'm going to be leaving on another long-term mission kinda soon, and I would really like to take you out before I have to go." Naruto looked at her hopefully, until the image of her nude form invaded his thoughts and he blushed and turned away.

Taking his blush and refusal to meet his eyes as nervousness, Hinata felt like it fell to her to be the brave one here. She hesitantly scooted to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to not stutter. "I would really like that, Naruto. I need to train for a bit longer, but you could pick me up at the gates of the Hyuga compound at six tonight?"

All other thoughts flew out of his head as he grabbed her hand and very nearly shouted, "That would be awesome, Hinata! I'll see you then! I'll let you get back to your… uh… training…" His face went from ecstatic to embarrassed as he trailed off, but then shrugged it away and gave her a brief but tight hug and fled the scene. Once he was out of earshot and Byakugan range, Naruto started berating himself for his stupidity. He was certain she hated him now for barging in on her like that, but he would do his best to make it up to her tonight.

Naruto sighed and stood to change out of what used to be brand new clothing he had bought just for this date. The pale orange dress shirt was still rather muddy on the back, and the pantlegs of the slacks he had purchased were torn and dirty. He had tried so hard to look nice for Hinata, but just like every other effort he had made it was thwarted by his own idiocy and lack of attention to his surroundings. Sure, in the midst of a battle he had some of the best instincts out of any good ninja, but when distracted by the thoughts of his date with a woman as pretty as Hinata? He had no sense of his surroundings whatsoever.

Hinata gave a tiny giggle as she observed the state of the flowers Naruto had given her at the start of the date. Just like everything else that night, it hadn't gone perfectly, but it showed that he cared about her and nothing could make her more ecstatic. Searching through the bouquet, she noticed something that gave her a very good feeling about their future. Amidst the muddy, ruined flowers there were two that were still in pristine condition, as perfect as they had been when they were cut, with one exception; the stems were lightly wound around each other, joining them tightly. The single bright orange sunflower and pale lavender rose that had been the centerpieces of the bouquet had survived the tumultuous night and were standing tall in their vase.

The Date Gone Wrong Flashback 2:

Naruto was getting excited. He had purchased new clothes in hopes of making a good impression, combed his hair, even brushed up on an old academy textbook on etiquette in preparation for his date, but he knew something was missing. As six o'clock approached, it finally hit him. Flowers! Girls LOVED flowers! Rushing to the Yamanaka Flower Shop at a quarter 'til six, he caught Ino right as she was about to close it up for the night.

"INO! Please, wait up! I need a HUGE favor!"

Taking in his appearance, the self-entitled Gossip Queen of the Leaf knew she would hit a gold mine if Naruto could explain his appearance and why he looked so classy, especially for him! Giving him a warm smile she said, "And what can I do for you, handsome?"

Naruto gave a light blush. "You think I look handsome? I've got a big date tonight, I didn't go overboard, did I? OH! Can't get sidetracked! I need your help! I need to get flowers quickly for my date in…. fifteen minutes. I don't know anything about flowers, all I know is I want your brightest orange flower and your most beautiful lavender flower in the center. Can you help me?"

Ino gave a light hum as she browsed through the plants lining the walls, carefully selecting flowers from various buckets and arranging them neatly for him. "Here you go, our brightest orange sunflower, our most beautiful lavender rose, and five other flower types surrounding them that represent happiness and budding love. So, who's the lucky young lady?"

Grinning and handing over the money for the flowers, Naruto happily replied, "Hinata! Why else would I ask for a lavender flower? I needed something to match her eyes!" Taking off at a high speed while carefully clutching the flowers to his chest, Naruto sped to the Hyuga compound. Arriving three minutes early, he waiting hesitantly in front of the gates, flowers held behind his back. Suddenly, Naruto stiffened. Approaching him with a regal air about him was the worst nightmare of any prospective boyfriend to the Hyuga heiress; leader of the Hyuga Clan and father of Hinata, Hiashi Hyuga.

"Uzumaki. Let me make one thing clear to you before my daughter arrives. She has cared for you for a long time, and while I may not have been an ideal father I am loathe to see her hurt, especially by a boy. Should I find that on this date Hinata was harmed physically or emotionally, war hero or not your corpse will never be found. Are we understood?"

Naruto was nervous, but held his ground. Thanking his foresight in reviewing that etiquette book, he gave a light bow. "Lord Hyuga, I would never intentionally harm your daughter. She has saved my life before, and her kind words mean the world to me. I swear that if she is hurt in any way on our date I will do everything in my power to fix the pain I have caused her."

Seemingly assured, Hiashi gave a slight nod and retreated to his compound. Right after he disappeared from view, Hinata exited one of the buildings. Completely dumbstruck at her beauty in her pale lavender kimono and light makeup, Naruto didn't hear the warning shout. Suddenly bowled over by what appeared to be a white and brown blur, Naruto fell backwards into a large swath of mud. While he could have dealt with this, he realized with a shocked expression that the flowers were still hidden behind him. Pulling out the ruined bouquet, he was about to start shouting at the top of his lungs and kick whoever knocked him over's ass when Hinata came running up to him.

"Naruto? Are you okay? That fall looked like it could have hurt!"

Giving her a sad smile, he just stood and held out the ruined flowers. "I'm fine, but… the flowers I got for you… I'm so sorry, Hinata." Naruto performed a quick water jutsu to pull the moisture out of his clothes, but the damage had already been done. The back of his shirt and pants were covered in dirt stains.

Hinata just smiled like he had given her the whole world. "Y-you bought me flowers? Thank you! Here, let me put them away before we go out!" Hinata scurried back inside to place the flowers nearly reverently in a vase. However, Naruto had merely assumed she was just being polite and off to throw them away. Watching her disappear into the compound again, Naruto turned towards whoever it was that knocked him over, just to see a dumbstruck Kiba and Akamaru happily wagging his tail. In unison, the boys shouted,

"You're going on a date with HINATA?"

"YOU almost ruined my date with Hinata!"

"Seriously. She agreed to go out with a complete moron like you? I must have asked her out twenty times and she wasn't interested! What the hell do you have that I don't?"

That was a severe blow to Naruto's confidence. Despite his vaunted battle status, Naruto was well aware that he wasn't nearly as socially acceptable as his friend was. A dark look crossed his face as Naruto said, "I honestly don't know, but please scram before she gets back. I really want to make this perfect for her, and running into her teammates right at the beginning doesn't scream romance."

Despite his previous belligerence, Kiba was a loyal friend and knew that a date with her nigh on lifelong crush would mean the world to Hinata, so he just huffed and walked off. However, Naruto was even more nervous than before. Hurriedly attempting to scrape off all of the dried mud along his back, Naruto both impatiently and fearfully waited Hinata's return, dreading that it would be accompanied by the news that he wasn't good enough for her.

After changing into his nightclothes, Naruto pulled out poor old Gama-chan. The toad had slimmed down a fair bit across the night, but Naruto hadn't minded that much. No, what he minded were the slips of paper he had added over the course of the night: one ticket to a movie, a receipt to Ichiraku Ramen, and the receipt to a small out-of-the-way ice cream parlor. Scowling at the three pieces, he yet again cursed his luck.

Hinata had changed out of her fancier clothing for the date, and was now emptying her small purse from the night. She had decided before it started that she wanted a souvenir from every place they visited on their date, and she couldn't be happier with the results. She had her ticket to the amusing and slightly... perverse, she thought with a blush, romantic comedy they saw, her pair of chopsticks from dining at Ichiraku's, and the brand new handkerchief of Naruto's that she had ruined while eating at the quaint ice cream parlor after a little accident. Smiling once more at her new treasures, she sat on her bed with a goofy grin as she recalled the night.

The Date Gone Wrong Flashback 3:

After the fiasco outside of the Hyuga Compound, Naruto was more than eager to get away from the place. Deciding the best place to start their date would be the theater, Naruto asked if that was alright with Hinata. Upon receiving an enthusiastic yes, he held her hand and they walked there making light conversation. Naruto noticed that Hinata seemed to be stuttering less and speaking up more… though for some reason, her face just couldn't lose that redness. He dearly hoped this was a good sign, because nothing else seemed to be going right today. When they arrived at the theaters, they saw that the premier film tonight was "A Date on the Battlefield", a romantic comedy claiming to be written and acted by ninjas for ninjas. When Naruto asked Hinata which film she wanted to see, she thought it sounded interesting. However, Naruto was soon voicing some disagreement with her choice. During the opening credits, a certain line sent off warning bells: "Based on the late Lord Jiraiya's fifth work, Tales of a Ninja's Romance".

"Hinata," Naruto whispered, "I don't think we should be watching this movie… the pervy sage didn't write very many decent books…"

Hinata just lightly smiled at him. "Why don't you give it a try? If it was good enough for them to make into a film I'm sure it's good enough for us to watch."

Of course, Hinata was proven wrong quite shortly. The majority of the movie was, as Naruto expected, sex scenes. As they watched, Naruto and Hinata tended to alternate between deep blushes and pale, shocked faces with the occasional whisper of "How is that even possible?!" to each other. To make things worse for Naruto, his mind kept trying to replace the women on screen with Hinata, making him even more nervous around her than earlier. By the time the movie was over, Naruto was feeling far too awkward to grab Hinata's hand again. Instead of trying, he just walked next to her with his hands in his pockets.

"Hey, uh… Hinata? I made reservations at the Silver Hare if you'd like to go there."

Her face lit up in surprise. The Silver Hare was a rather high end restaurant, and was rather difficult to get in to. For him to go to such lengths MUST mean something, right? Thus, she was beside herself the whole walk over and was so happy that she grabbed his hand, not the other way around… though her face was blushing to a point almost as glowing as her smile.

However, once again things refused to go Naruto's way. When they arrived at the restaurant, the greeter looked at Naruto with some slight disdain.

"Uzumaki, I was informed that if you were not meeting our restaurant's dress code I was not to allow you inside. Perhaps you should come back another day when you decide to not play in the mud?"

Naruto's face scrunched up in anger, but before he could yell at the man Hinata rested a hand on his arm. "N-Naruto, it's okay. Why don't we go to Ichiraku's? You a-always love it there and I do like ramen."

"Are you sure? I really wanted to take you someplace nice…" Naruto looked down at his feet.

Hinata just smiled. "Every place would be nice for me so long as it's with you," she murmured as she led them off to Ichiraku's. After a quiet few bowls of ramen, they left for a walk in the park… only for it to begin to rain down heavily on them. Ducking out of the rain in the closest open shop, Naruto and Hinata found themselves in an ice cream parlor. Thinking his luck had turned around, Naruto took the opportunity to buy them some ice cream, and they sat down to eat and wait for the rain to end while they talked. When Naruto finally noticed it subsiding, he gestured to the window to point it out to her, and ended up knocking what was left of Hinata's ice cream into her lap, staining her fancy clothing.

"Hinata! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to! Here!" Naruto gave her a handkerchief so she could go to the restroom and wipe most of it off. When she returned, he was apologizing profusely and gave her the rest of his ice cream.

Naruto sighed sadly and turned off his lights, preparing to go to sleep. As unconsciousness overtook him, his last thought was, "I hope she doesn't hate me after that terrible date."

Hinata sighed happily as she turned off her lights and curled up in her comforter. As she fell asleep, her last thought was, "I hope Naruto likes me enough to take me on another date as wonderful as tonight was."

The next day, Naruto woke to a messenger from Tsunade knocking on his door. Apparently, he was needed for meetings for the majority of the day. When he arrived, he found a sight that gave him an instant headache; the elder advisor duo were practically screaming at Tsunade attempting to force her hand in some matter. Naruto decided to help the Hokage out, in his own little way.

"Y'know, I think I must be mistaken here. For a minute there I would have sworn that I heard two mere advisors to the Hokage trying to make demands of her."

"Thank you, Naruto. Elders, I have already made my decision. Stop wasting my time with your senseless babble and get the hell out of my office, NOW!"

After the antiques scurried away, Naruto asked, "So, Granny, what did you need me for?"

"Tomorrow you're sending out the letters requesting for acceptance to this plan of yours. Today, we need to draft the letters, confirm our potential host for the Seven-Tails is viable, and finalize your team. The host prospect is coming at one, and your two teammates should be here at 12:30. That leaves us with a little over two hours to draft these letters."

Two hours later, Naruto and Tsunade signed the fourth letter and Sakura popped in. "Lady Tsunade, I apologize for interrupting but you called me to be here in around ten minutes?"

"Ah, yes, come in Sakura. You, Naruto, and one other will be receiving a new long-term mission today. Your third member will be here soon, so we can just relax until then."

Hinata, who was approaching the opened door at the time, froze. "A long-term mission with N-Naruto? Oh, whatdoIdo, whatdoIdo, whatdoIdo?"

"While we wait… Sakura, I need your help," Naruto said in a more somber tone.

"Naruto? What's wrong?" she replied.

"Well… It was my date with Hinata…"

Outside the door, our pale-eyed eavesdropper gasped as tears sprung to her eyes. "He didn't like it? He doesn't like me? He doesn't want to go on another date with me…?

"Everything went wrong last night! I bought new clothes so we could go to a fancy restaurant, and they got muddy because Kiba knocked me over! I bought her flowers, but they ended up getting destroyed to the point where she probably just threw them all away because of that fall! I took her out to the movies, and it turns out the movie we picked was based off of one of Pervy Sage's pervy books, and now she probably thinks I'm as big of a pervert as he is! When we GOT to the fancy restaurant, we got turned away because my clothes were dirty! We had to eat at Ichiraku's for a first date for crying out loud! And then we wanted to go for a walk in the park, and it started pouring, so we went for ice cream, and I messed it up AGAIN by making her spill hers all over herself! She probably hates me and doesn't want to see me again by now because I'm such a screw-up!"

Naruto's voice sounded more defeated than Hinata had ever heard it. This time, tears of happiness were in her eyes as she rushed into the room and pulled him into a very tight hug.

"N-Naruto, I thought our date was p-perfect. Really, I don't think last night could have been any better."

Naruto was stunned, to say the least. Here he was on the edge of tears for being such a colossal failure, and Hinata was telling him things went perfectly? "Y-you really think so, Hinata?"

Tsunade gave a light cough, and the couple looked up to see her smirking and Sakura trying to hide her giggles. In a flash, Naruto and Hinata were seated on opposite sides of Sakura, both blushing like mad.

"Now that our little teen drama soap opera has ended, why don't we get to business? Naruto, Hinata and Sakura will be your team on this mission of yours. Hinata will be both a scout and your Hyuga you needed to examine potential hosts. Sakura will be making sure all of your hosts will be physically fit and able to handle the strain on their bodies, as well as functioning as your personal medic."

At this, Naruto gave a pout. "Personal medic? Granny, I don't need a personal medic, I'm fine on my own!"

"Naruto, you are going to be fighting the Tailed Beasts for crying out loud!" This elicited a gasp from both Hinata and Sakura. "I would have to be insane to be sending you out to a battle like that without someone to keep you healthy."

"N-N-Naruto is g-going to be fighting the T-Tailed Beasts?" Hinata stammered out in a shocked tone.

"Heh… yeah, that's what my last seven month mission was for. I was out on a training mission to learn the sealing arts well enough to be able to create new seals for the Tailed Beasts. Here in a few weeks, they're going to start reforming, and I'm one of the few people who can actually subdue them safely. Our mission is to go out and reseal all seven of them that pop up in the next few months, stripping away the chakra of Kurama and Gyuuki as we go along. Don't worry, you two won't have to do any of the real fighting, Kurama and I can easily take down all of the ones we'll have to fight. All I'll need from you to is help selecting the hosts. So, you two in?"

Sakura just shook her head and sighed. "Always one battle after the next with you, Naruto. Sure, I can already tell you're going to need me to bail you out at some point."

Hinata, on the other hand, started fiddling with her fingers and looked down, a habit she had believed she had long since grown out of. "N-Naruto, are you sure you want me along? I… I'm not sure I could be very helpful…"

"Hinata, of course I want you to come! Your skill with the Byakugan is amazing, and I've seen you fight the Ten-Tails fearlessly, you'll do fine!"

Blushing at his praise, Hinata smiled a little and accepted. Just then, one o'clock arrived and Choumei's prospective host arrived.

A/N: Spoilers for the latest manga chapter (651, I think) here…

DAYUM that combo attack. Kurama-Sage-Susano'o mode Konoha 12 Rasengan Barrage of kickassery and bisected Tobito ftw. Does this mean the war is FINALLY over? Or will more crap fall down to extend it pointlessly again?