AN: Someone actually figured out which starlet Neji was turning into! Hurray! Anyway…will Neji ever get his forehead back? We'll just have to wait and see!

-…-

Neji staggered alongside the road, clutching his aching head and groaning. He heard the dim roar of a car approaching and dizzily held out his thumb. It screeched to a halt. One of the windows rolled down.

Neji kept himself from groaning. It was full of teenage girls.

"Are you a rapist?" one of them asked him in a very serious voice. He shook his head.

"Are you contagious?" Another one asked. He shook his head again.

"Okay, then, hop in!"

He climbed in back, right next to a girl with long pigtails and an insane looking smile. She waved at him.

"My name's Sasuke!" she said cheerfully, a big grin splitting her face.

"I know a boy named Sasuke." Neji offered cautiously. If he was going to be stuck traveling with her, he might as well try to make friends.

"Yah, I picked the name myself, after the legendary Sarutobi Sasuke. Impressive, isn't it?"

"It's stupid." Said one of the other girls. "You're a pirate, and Sarutobi Sasuke was a legendary ninja."

The pigtailed girl ignored her. "Speaking of such things, where do you stand on the pirate-ninja feud?"

"I'm from an ancestral ninja clan."

She narrowed her eyes. "That's funny. I'm a pirate captain, and these girls just happen to be my crewmembers."

Neji swallowed. This was going to be a long trip.

-…-

Three hours later, his head still ringing with five hundred years of pirate history and one thousand and one reasons pirates were better than ninjas, he was dropped off in Hollywood, which is apparently amazingly close to Konoha.

He picked the nearest girl in huge sunglasses.

"Excuse me, but do you know which Hollywood starlet is close to Lionel Richie?"

"Uh, Nicole Richie, his daughter, duh?"

He resisted the urge to punch her in the face.

"And what has she been doing that's important lately?" Important being a relative term.

"Uh, she just had her birthday, duh!"

The urge to punch her got stronger, but he resisted. He wasn't supposed to use his ninja skills on civilians. He thanked her through gritted teeth and went to get a hamburger while he thought, though lately all he wanted to eat was grapes and he wanted to throw those up.

I will have a hamburger! He said fiercely to himself. He would not let his forehead control him!

He ordered a burger that weighed a full half a pound, smothered in onions and ketchup and mustard and lettuce and tomatoes and secret sauce, glistening with fat, its bottom bun squished slightly with the weight of it. (AN: I'm feeling hungry.) He ate it all and it was delicious.

As he ate, he thought about the information. So, Nicole Richie had just had her birthday, hmm? Apparently her old man thought the rights to the forehead of an innocent (cough, cough) young boy was an appropriate birthday present. A wild party would explain the strange, conflicting urges he'd been having. The paper with the rights on it had probably gotten passed around.

He left the hamburger place, briefly considering pulling a dine and ditch to make himself feel more like a ninja and less like a starlet, but he'd already paid. He snuck out through a vent in the kitchen anyway, greatly confusing the greasy cook.

He sat up on the roof and contemplated. What to do now? Well, he had to get the rights to his forehead back. There weren't any other viable options. He just couldn't go on this way.

He had to hunt down Nicole Richie.

-…-

Nicole Richie was staying in some undesignated area of Hollywood, in an enormous mansion. It had topiary in the garden, fountains in the lawn, and Neji climbing in through a window.

He hoped he was ninja enough to pull off the job.

He dropped silently to the floor and shut his eyes. Come on, ninja sense! Tingle! He thought fiercely.

No luck. He still wasn't Spiderman. Why couldn't my uncle have sold my forehead to somebody cool?

He padded around the place for a while, finally sneaking up on a huge, elaborate bedroom dominated by an enormous four-poster bed. Inside the bed was a tiny blonde figure that didn't stir as he snuck around the perimeter.

He slipped up to her nightstand and began shuffling around inside.

"C'mon, c'mon." he muttered. A stirring from the bed drew his attention. He tried to dash for the curtains, but slipped on the rug. On the way down, his pants flew completely off and a man stuck a camera out from behind a curtain, snapped a picture, and then disappeared. Neji jumped to his feet and yanked his pants back on as a voice spoke.

"Oh, that is sooo going to be in all the tabloids. You totally weren't wearing any underwear."

Neji growled at Nicole. "You!" he said, jabbing a finger at her. "You have the rights to my forehead, and I want them back!"

She crossed her arms and pouted. "So you're that little ninja kid Daddy gave me the rights to? Well, you can't have them back, they were my birthday present!"

She produced a piece of paper from an enormous purse. "See? It says right here…The holder of this piece of paper hereby controls the rights to the seal on the forehead of the Konoha shi…shi…what's that word?"

He snatched the paper from her. "Shinobi! The holder of this piece of paper hereby controls the rights to the seal on the forehead of the Konoha shinobi Hyuuga Neji! And I hold the piece of paper!"

Her eyes went wide. "Hey, no fair! Give it back!"

But Neji was back in full ninja form. He whipped out a kunai. "Back off, Nicole, or I'll pop your implants!"

She covered her chest with a shriek as Neji leapt out the window and sped off toward Konoha triumphantly.