Of Course.

The rest of the week went by uneventfully. Sakura spent her time either avoiding Naruto or sitting next to Sasuke's sleeping body. Sasuke woke up after a few days, and was shocked to find that the task had already been completed. The rest of the teams trickled in towards the end of the week, although Kabuto's team was suspiciously absent. Nevertheless, there were still too many teams for the examiner's tastes, so the preliminaries happened once again. It was a much easier win for Naruto this time. He was well rested, while Kiba was tired, and didn't have the five-element-seal hampering his movements this time. A crowd of shadow clones was all it took. The next month secure, Naruto set out to find Jiraiya.

Who was, of course, peeping on the women's baths. His eye was pressed to a small hole in the fence, and he was giggling like a lunatic. "Oi! Pervy Sage!"

Jiraiya spun around. "Hey! Who're you calling pervy, kid?"

Naruto waved away the complaint. "You're peeping on the women's baths, Pervy Sage. You're a perv. Anyway, I want you to train me!"

Jiraiya turned back to look through the peephole. "Now why would I want to do that? You better get out of here before you ruin my research."

"I thought you had some reason to train the nine-tails jinchuriki."

Jiraiya froze. "You're the container?"

"Better believe it! I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and I'm gonna be the next Hokage!"

Jiraiya pulled out a notebook from one of the pouches on his vest, and started nodding thoughtfully as he leafed through it, occasionally pausing on a page and muttering to himself. Finally, he looked up at Naruto. "That makes a difference, then. We should start immediately."

Naruto breathed a sigh of relief at not needing to convince him with the harem jutsu again. He decided it was best to broach the topic of Sakura now. "Oh, one more thing. I have a..." He paused for a moment, "friend. A friend who I asked to train with me until the chunin exams finished. I'm not sure if she'll show up or not, but if she does will you let her join us?"

"She? Is this a girl that you want to be a little more than a friend?" Jiraiya was grinning conspiratorially.

"Uh- yea."

Jiraiya winked. "Say no more, little tadpole. Bro code says I gotta wingman you here. If the girl shows up, she's welcome to join."

"Thanks, pervy sage."

"Don't even try and make that nickname stick."

Jiraiya led Naruto off into the forest surrounding Konoha. Eventually they came to a familiar clearing, the one that Naruto had used the last time he trained with Jiraiya. They had a quick sparring session, which Naruto lost handily, even a rush of shadow clones failing to touch the white-haired sage. They then began to work through the basic ninja techniques, Jiraiya flipping to the back of his 'research' notebook to mark down Naruto's capabilities in each area. Finally, Jiraiya brought out the summoning scroll.

"Alright, kiddo, here's the plan. This here is a summoning scroll, the toad one. I'll get you to sign it, then you'll summon the biggest one you can. Use the Kyubi's chakra if you can."

"Gotcha!"

Naruto pricked his finger to sign the scroll, then slammed his hand into the ground, tapping into Kurama's reserves. It was gratifying to finally see a look of shock on Jiraiya's face as Gamabunta thumped onto the ground in front of him. Gamabunta may not have respected Naruto yet, but Jiraiya certainly scribbled down a lot of notes for the next session.

Once training finished up, Naruto decided that he should treat himself to a bowl of Ichiraku ramen. As he wandered down the streets of Konoha, thoughts of Sakura came unbidden to his head. She'd probably spent the time trying to find Sasuke's training place, if the past was any indication. Kakashi had worked out fairly quickly that the best way to get Sakura to train was to give her the chance to show off to Sasuke, though it seemed she was willing to work when she truly felt she was falling behind. That line of thought brought Naruto to the night spent water walking on the lake, and then to the conversation with Sakura. Kurama would hopefully have some idea of how to mend the relationship, But he'd been silent since that conversation, only a muttered agreement coming through when Naruto asked to summon Gamabunta. Autopilot brought Naruto the rest of the way to Ichiraku's, years of instinct making his steps sure. Caught up in his thoughts, Naruto almost didn't notice the pink head of hair slumped against the side of one of Ichiraku's booths. Sakura noticed him, though, and waved him over. Naruto slid into the booth across from her, and an awkward silence came over the two of them. They couldn't bring themselves to look into each other's eyes, and Sakura fidgeted with some chopsticks while Naruto played with the zipper on his jacket.

Finally, Sakura spoke up. "I believe you."

"What?"

She sighed. "I believe that this isn't just a ploy to sleep with me. You aren't the kind of person that would do that."

Some tension left Naruto's shoulders for the first time in a week. He chuckled. "That's a really big relief."

The silence came back. Sakura stared into her lap, then brought her eyes up to meet Naruto's. "So where do we go from here?"

"Well, I started training with Jiraiya today. He said you can join as well, but fair warning, he's a pretty big pervert. I don't think he'll hit on you, but that's more 'cause he said something about 'being my wingman'." Sakura raised an eyebrow, which Naruto raised his hands defensively to. "All I told him was that I had a crush on you."

Sakura chuckled as she got up. "I won't hold it against you then."

Naruto grabbed her hand as she got up "Wait, 'kura. Do you want to stay? We could talk through the rest of the exam answers?"

Sakura stared at him suspiciously. "Do you really care, or are you just looking for an excuse to keep me here?"

Naruto shook his head vigorously. "No, that's not it! Well, it is a bit, but it's more that you're really good at explaining stuff and," he blushed, "you're really cute when you get worked up about it." He gave her a pleading look.

She huffed. "Fine. What were your questions?" She sounded disgruntled, but there was a slight smile on her face as she sat back down. Before long, the two of them were talking animatedly, and by the time they left that evening it was like the conversation in the forest of **** hadn't even happened. Sakura hugged him as they parted ways. "See you tomorrow, Naruto."

The next morning, Naruto met Sakura on the edge of Konoha. They fell into comfortable small talk as they waited for Jiraiya. Used to Kakashi's antics, Sakura had brought some small bento boxes, one of which she gave to Naruto as they waited. Jiraiya was only ten minutes late though, walking up while stemming a blood nose. His eyebrows raised in shock as he saw Sakura and Naruto chatting over their food.

"This the girl?" He asked Naruto.

"That I am." Sakura answered instead. "I heard you were an excellent trainer, pervy sage." She shot a wink at Naruto as she finished her sentence.

Jiraiya's face was ashen. "Oh dear god it's spreading." He shook himself back to attention. "Anyway, looks like we'll be changing plans then. Naruto's going to be working on getting Gamabunta to agree to help him. He summoned the strongest of the toad summons on his first attempt you know." He nudged Naruto as he said that, a look on his face somewhere between a co-conspirator and a proud parent. "I'll be running you through a gauntlet of tests to see which area you need the most improvement in. Got everything?" Sakura nodded. "Alright then! Make sure you two lovebirds keep up!" He bounded off into the forest.

Sakura looked at Naruto. "He wasn't kidding about the wingman thing, was he?"

Naruto's face was mortified. "I'm so sorry."

Sakura laughed. "I don't mind that much, dummy." She picked up Naruto's now empty box, and followed Jiraiya into the leaves. Naruto prepared to follow her, but was interrupted by Kurama.

"Alright, I've got the new plan, kit. You're going to need a boombox, some white A3 card, a permanent marker, and some way to make sure it's raining whenever you have your first kiss."

"Uuuuh, Kurama?"

"I know it sounds odd, kit, but the 80's can't have gotten things that wrong, right?"

"No, I think we're still on track for the first plan."

"What?" A scrabbling came from the back of Naruto's mind, which he could only assume was the sound of Kurama looking through Naruto's memories. "Well well well, I'm impressed, kid. You even remembered your table manners. Keep up this pace, and she'll be in the loop well before the month finishes."

"Really?"

"Really. Now go tell that massive toad what's what."

Heart much lighter, Naruto walked into the forest to keep training.