As Sakura opened the door she was surprised to see Hinata standing on her front steps, her eyes turned down.

"Oh Hinata!" Sakura said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

Oh what a loaded question that was. In truth, Hinata had been following the group around watching them from the shadows. She loved to watch Naruto work, whether it be at his normal size or his giant size (She had almost fainted once when he was working without his shirt on, all his giant muscles flexing). But she couldn't say that to Sakura. She couldn't say, "I've been stalking you for the past few days because I want to watch Naruto and wish I could be a part of his group of friends." So what could she say? Finally, she decided on something.

"I've been very lonely lately since Kiba and Shino are always working on rebuilding the village. I don't have anyone to talk to or just be with and so I was wondering if I could come in with you guys?"

That at least was partly true. Kiba and Shino had both been pretty busy but Kiba at least seemed like he was trying to make time for Hinata. But now that he was in the hospital all she had for company was Shino and all he wanted to do was go around looking for bugs when he wasn't working. She waited with bated breath, hoping Sakura would say yes.

Sakura smiled at the timid girl and said, "Sure! Come on in."

Hinata smiled back and said, "Thank you very much!"

She walked inside and Sakura closed the door behind her. When they got back to the kitchen, Naruto grinned as he saw Hinata and said, "Hey Hinata! What's up?"

Hinata blushed furiously and managed to stutter out, "N-not much Naruto."

Naruto tilted his head at Hinata's behavior and said, "Weird." quietly to himself. Sasuke just raised a hand as a greeting. Sakura pulled out a chair next to Naruto and said, "Come on and sit down. Naruto just sent out a shadow clone to get some board games for us to play."

Hinata actually looked cheerful as she heard this. "That sounds like fun!"

Naruto smiled at her and said, "How good are you at Risk or Konoha-opoly?"

Hinata replied, "I've never played Risk but I'm pretty good at Konoha-opoly. Is Risk hard?"

Sasuke shrugged and said, "That depends on how good you are at strategy games. You have to know where to send your armies and how many soldiers you want to attack your enemies. You also have to be careful that you don't bog down units of your army in weak countries or get them stuck trying to cross a river. That'll just leave open targets for your enemies."

"Sounds hard." Hinata said. "But I'll try it."

"Yeah, if Naruto can play it you shouldn't have any trouble!" Sakura said, laughing.

"Hey! That's not fair!" Naruto shrieked angrily.

Everyone laughed at this (except for Sasuke of course. But he still smiled). Suddenly, the door burst open and Naruto's shadow clone came running in with two board games clutched in his hands. He set the boxes down and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Naruto unstacked the boxes and said, "Alright, which one guys?"