Chapter 3: Neji's Bad Hair Day...or Night
Yeah, okay, so this chapter has a bit of OOCness, I think. And when I say a bit, I actually mean a lot.
"So, let me get this straight," Gaara said, glaring at Temari. "You invited a handful of shinobi to the Sand and you don't even reserve a place for them to say."
"...Yes."
"Did you think out any of this at all?" he asked her, feeling increasingly agitated.
"...No," Temari said, looking away. Dammit, thinking was supposed to be Shikamaru's job! Why didn't he think up of this for her?Lazy bastard!
"Well," Kankurou said, "Temari, you're setting Gaara up with all of the girls... They'll sleep in his room!"
"What? Then where am I supposed to...oh nevermind," Gaara muttered.
"Hah, I knew you couldn't argue back. I mean, what are you going to do in your room? Sleep?"
Gaara sighed. "Six girls in one bedroom?"
"You mean five girls and Neji," Temari said.
"Whatever. The guest room next to mine has two beds. They'll stay there too," Gaara said. But still, he had a bad feeling about this...
Hanabi jumped on the bed, squealing in delight. "Yaay!" she said. "I've got a bed all to mysel—"
"Move over," Ino said, shoving her off the bed. Hanabi stuck her tongue out at Ino.
"Piiiig! You're hogging all the bed!" she cried. Neji and Tenten ran past them and ran into Gaara's room.
"Miiiine!" they shouted. They jumped on at the same time and started arguing about who got what side.
"They got the bigger one..." Sakura sighed wistfully to herself.
(start stutter) "It's just a bed," (end stutter) Hinata said.
"Anyway, they need the extra space," Hanabi piped up. "Last time Neji and Tenten tried to share a futon, Tenten kicked the hell outta Neji in her sleep. I saw the whole thing! And when I say kicked, Neji didn't just fall off the bed. He hit the wall!"
Gaara frowned. Nothing could be kept from a Hyuga. Not that he cared, really. It wasn't his privacy that she was invading.
"So where are you going to be?" Sakura asked Gaara.
"I don't sleep," he replied. "How many times do people have to emphasize that?"
"Well, I know that you don't sleep," she said. "But are you just going to stand there all night?"
"I'll find something to do," he said.
"Speaking of which...!" Ino said. "It's only eleven o'clock! I'm so not going to go to sleep this early."
There was an awkward silence. (start stutter)"So what are we going to do?" (end stutter)
Ino grinned evilly, glancing at the door to Gaara's bedroom. "Get me ropes, a gag, and a hairbrush..." she said.
Moments later, all of Sunagakure could hear the terrified screams of their unfortunate victim.
Neji was tied down in the chair. "Tenten, you planned this from the start!"
"We're ninjas," Ino said. "Why the heck didn't anyone have a gag?"
"Well, if 'from the start' is, in other words, since the day you decided to follow me here to Sunagakure, then yes. I planned it from the start. Besides, you never let me do your hair!" Tenten said to Neji. "And this is the perfect opportunity to have some fun—"
"For you maybe!"
"—without your uncle trying to help you get away," she finished determinedly. Tenten had taken it upon herself to perform the task of capturing Neji.
"Daddy's too nice," Hanabi sighed to Gaara. "It's really too bad. He's always helping Neji run away when Tenten gets like this."
"I hate you aaaall!" Neji cried.
"Wanna help?" Sakura asked. Gaara took out a pair of scissors from Ino's shinobi equipment pouch. "Uh, no, we're not that mean," she said with a grin.
"I wasn't serious," he shrugged. All talking in the room stopped as everyone stared at Gaara.
"You were joking?" Tenten asked him.
Gaara frowned at the reaction. "Or lying."
"Oh. Heh," Ino laughed nervously. "Anyway...PIGTAILS!"
"Noooooo!" Neji cried, struggling to get away from the chair as the girls advanced on him. His pride... his hair... the humiliation! He leaned forward and started edging away, inch by inch. Impressively enough, his 'inch by inch' was pretty fast.
"He's getting away!" Hanabi cried. But, it turned out, the poor boy couldn't even get past the door as he kicked at it as hard as he could, which wasn't very hard, considering that he was almost completely tied up.
Meanwhile, Kankurou had been listening to the screaming for a while and was starting to get curious as to what in Sunagakure was going on in the guest rooms. He frowned, trying to push open the door. Someone was screaming inside and the door had something obstructing the entrance... He shoved it open with all his strength and looked inside where he found...
...Neji on the ground, knocked out from when Kankurou hit him with the door, and all the girls advancing on him, armed with beauty supplies. Kankurou looked at his brother, who seemed to be at wondering whether to join in on this 'cruel and unusual punishment' to fulfill his title as 'Sadist of the Year' or to avoid this one so he could preserve his Golden Rule: 'I don't interact with other people because I'm too cool'. Choices, choices...
Kankurou frowned at the unconscious Hyuga, thanking the gods that he didn't have a pretty-boy face or that long silky hair that made the girls go ga-ga all over. He shuddered, pitying him.
"Kankurou, unless you are going to watch, you had better leave," Ino said. "Because if you're helping Neji, you'll have four and a half of us to fight off..."
"Why do I count as only half a girl...?" Hanabi wondered.
"The moment you go through puberty and look like a woman and wear makeup and do things with your hair...in short, make yourself pretty, we'll count you as one whole woman," Ino said cheerfully.
"That's not fair!"
"Life's not fair, sweetie. Now once you get to the two digits, you'll be a woman."
"I'm almost ten! My birthday's in a month!"
"Oh...well once you turn eleven you can join us."
"You changed it!"
While Ino fended herself off from the raging Hyuga, Tenten continued from where Ino trailed off from the subject. "Anyway, Kankurou, if you aren't with us, then you are against us, and anyone who opposes Girl Power is getting their asses kicked.
Kankurou backed out of the room and quietly closed the door.
"Asshole!" Neji said, recovering from his collision with the door. "Coward! Idiot! Ugly tranvestite who plays with mutated dolls."
"Puppets...!" they could hear Kankurou shout back through the doors. "They're puppets!"
Neji screamed as the girls played with his hair. Gaara sighed and rubbed his eyes. This was going to be a long night...
"Tired?" Sakura asked, sitting next to him as Neji was forced to go along with this torture.
"Of course..." he muttered. "Your friends are crazy."
"Well, that's what they're like. Can't live with them, can't live without...actually, I guess I could..."
He sighed. "I'm surprised that you aren't joining in with them. You seemed the girliest. Second only to Ino."
Sakura laughed. "Personally, I think this is just cruel. But this is probably Tenten's weird way of saying 'I love you' to Neji."
"They're going out?" Gaara asked, feeling rather annoyed. "Then why are they even here?"
"Neji and Tenten just recently broke up again," Sakura said.
"Then why is Neji following her? Last time when my sister had a weird stalker, she beat the living daylights out of him. And then they became friends... but don't tell me that the women of Konoha can't even defend themselves from their own men. I saw you clobbering Naruto quite a few times."
"Where you watching me?"
"Yes," he said simply. "As were the rest of your friends, family, and other fellow shinobi of Konoha."
Sakura laughed. "I guess I did hit Naruto a lot before..." she said.
"Yeah... so...how's he doing?"
"Not sure," she said.
He frowned. "Did you lose him?"
"He left Konoha with a man named Jiraiya a few months ago," she said. "After the failed mission."
"Oh. The sannin, right?"
"Yeah," she said, watching Neji struggle to escape.
"Hn, a training mission then. A really long one."
"Yup," Sakura said, with a falsely cheerful look on her face.
"It almost looks fun," Gaara commented, changing the subject and referring to the girls and Neji. "Not for Neji, of course."
"Yeah," she sighed. "Poor Neji. Personally, I think it's a bit sad how Neji is a guy and has the prettiest hair in Konoha."
"You make it sound like it was made official," he retorted.
"It was."
"..." -
"Yeah," she said, with an almost sad expression on her face. "It was in the Shinobi Chronicles. Neji was voted, 'Most Beautiful Hair'. Ino was second, Hanabi was third, Hinata was fourth, Tenten was fifth."
Gaara paused, then made a face. "You should have been up there."
"Really?" Sakura said.
"...Yeah, I mean, if Tenten could have made it up there, then you definitely could have," he said, this time without a second of hesitation.
"Oh... well it doesn't matter anyway," Sakura said. "I didn't enter myself in the polls."
"...Then how on earth did Neji get in there if he didn't enter himself?"
Sakura paused. "Yeah... how did he do that...?" she wondered. Gaara and Sakura traded glances and one of them laughed. Three guesses who. But Gaara raise an almost nonexistent eyebrow in... amusement? Whoa... that was weird.
Neji cut through the ropes with his chakra needles and began to escape through the windows.
"Should we help Neji or the girls?" Gaara wondered.
"Well, if we go against the girls, then we're opposing 'Girl Power', apparently," Sakura said. "So it might be easier to stick with the girls' side on this one."
"You're right," Gaara said. He was relatively untouchable, but it had been proved that his ultimate defense was not so ultimate after all. And it was said that women were the root of all evil. Better not risk that. Tendrils of sand forced Neji back inside as the girls pounced on him and he was unable to escape.
"Besides," Sakura said, "this is more interesting. Just how many people get so see Neji of all people freak out like this?"
"Is freaking out that interesting?"
"It is when the person freaking out is like some sort of a shinobi god," Sakura answered. "I mean, there was Sasuke when he first fought Lee. And then got beat up—"
"That was at your first chuunin exams, right?" Gaara said. "The idiot freaked out so badly he couldn't even land on his own two feet..."
"—and then when you first fought Lee, and you got beat up—"
"That wasn't so interesting for me," he muttered darkly. "Not very fun, getting bounced around."
"—and then the part where Neji and Lee fought, and Neji got beat up—"
"And I missed that?" he asked incredulously.
"You know what else you missed? Naruto's ultimate technique."
"The kage bunshin no jutsu?"
"No, I know you've seen that one. And it's much more interesting than that."
"The rasengan?"
"Well, you've never seen that, but that's not it. It's a bit less destructive, but much more chaotic."
"Some kind of crazy taijutsu technique that's completely experimental?"
"Nope... he calls it the 'Sexy no Jutsu'," Sakura said.
"...You've got to be kidding me," Gaara said. "How does that work?"
"It's actually just the henge no jutsu," she explained. "But he turns into a naked girl with huge breasts and stuff... It's annoying recently."
"Wait, huge like Tsunade's huge? Because I can't think of anything unsexier than that," he said. "I mean, they're so huge, they go down to her stomach. Sagging boobs, old lady, and a serious case of a midlife crisis isn't the most attractive thing, in my opinion..."
Sakura laughed. "Yeah, well, so far it has a hundred percent knock-out rate. I'm pretty sure that the only guy to have withstood it is Jiraiya, who had exposed himself to that technique several times in trade of teaching Naruto the rasengan, and some kid named Konohamaru, who Naruto taught it to."
"He actually taught it to someone? That's psychotic..."
"Well, Konohamaru is mastering it right now, but it's still not as effective as Naruto's harem technique..."
"A harem technique?" Just what else would this crazy kid come up with?"
"Yeah... it involves a henge, his kage bunshins, and a lot of hugging," she said.
"Ah...great..." Gaara mentally noted never to fight with Naruto ever again. He was relatively resistant to girls, much to his chagrin, but he wasn't willing to risk the humiliation and chaos that would occur if that bizarre technique ever actually worked on him.
Gaara and Sakura continued to talk as the girls tortured their resident Konoha genius. It was later that night when everyone had fallen asleep when Gaara realized it but as he clean the hair cleaning supplies, combs, brushes, and even a bit of the eyeliner 'equipment' off the floor (why did Ino have these things in her kunai pouch? what kind of cracked up kunoichi was she...?), he (almost) smiled. Sakura considered him a 'shinobi god', among Sasuke and Neji, the two young bishounen of Konoha. He didn't like the idea of being on the same level with a 'bishie', but... girls seemed to love them... Heh.
I wasn't sure how to end the night and start the next day, so here it is... I'm not sure what direction to take this fic. I guess it's Sakura and Gaara then, since that's what people are going by most. I was tempted to discontinue this. I actually had this scene in another fic of mine, saved up for future chapters, but I was running out of ideas for this one. Hence the discontinuing. But I'm struggling to actually get/go through with this fic. Can't seem to remember what the point of making this was. Like, how on earth I was going to finish this. So yeah, I guess I'm recycling ideas... I really wanted to get more of Neji's nightmare out. Actually, that idea... I was going to stick it in my HP-Na crossover, since that's my main fanfic for the time being. But then I used it for this one. I had also been planning on making a short oneshot based on that chaos.
Also, I have in my e-mail account the written permission of Topaz Talyn ((ooh, I hope I spelled that right... I've been making my spell-checker shit itself recently...)) to use the list from the WinWin Situation, a fic similar to this one. Also much longer as well.
me: Yeah, I know that's not 'gud'. And, uh, no, the story line WAS originally mine. I was going to do a series of 'Bachelor' fics, them being Hyuga Neji starring in the Bachelor-Leaf Style, Uchiha Sasuke, Sound-style Bachelor, Haku, Kakashi, and finally... Gai. (no girls appear...). Unfortunately, though I may have the time, I barely have the patience to finish this fic, let alone the others. So yes, I know my storyline is a lot like Topaz Talyn's, but originally, I had thought of it myself.
I meant to write to other anonymous reviewers, but... yeah, I don't feel like going back. Sorry peoples!
Anyway, don't look forward to the next chapter too soon. My computer when psycho ninja on me and kicked my ass before jumping out the window and wreaking havoc upon my neighbors before someone finally put an end to it with a hammer and a glue gun. Don't ask... Just kidding, but yeah, it's definitely dead. A friend said something about getting a mother board, whatever that is... And I'm like... Eh? I think it was because a certain idiot living in the same vicinity as me was silly enough to jam, like, some wireless internet cord thingie into the phoneline thing in the computer... I'm sad. So yes, please don't ask me to update super soon... that just makes me feel guilty. And annoyed. (glares at the idiot who killed my precious computer! ("buuuusteeer! Please come back to life! I neeeeeed yoooou!" and yes, my computer is named Buster. I think it's a Gundam thing. I never named it. I never got to watch any gundam at all... T-T)). Anyway, yeah. Chapter coming late because of my defective computer. And also because of my dry period. I couldn't seem to think of anything to write...
I just looked back at my last chapter and realized that I called Hinata the 'Hyugag' girl. Oops... I ought to fix that later. But I won't. Because now that I think about it, it's funny. I am a bit sad that no one brought it up though... (sweatdrop) Y'all are laughing at me, aren't you...