Jiraiya sighed as he realized what the problem was; he should have known that Sarutobi-sensei would not have been able to protect the boy like he should have. Jiraiya should have been far more adamant more about taking Naruto with him after the Kyuubi's attack, he was sure that a life on the move would have been better then a life of hatred. "I suppose I can understand that," Jiraiya said, "but you're still going to burn out if you keep this up."
"I know…" Naruto sighed, "But I can't help it. I want to become better; I don't want to be considered the dobe, the loser anymore."
The toad Sennin looked at his godson for a long while before smile broke out on his face, "alright then, get back to your training and I'll make sure you become the best shinobi in Konoha if not the entire elemental nations."
Naruto grinned before running back to his spot where he began exercising again.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
As soon as Naruto and Jiraiya entered the next town, the Toad Sennin immediately turned to Naruto. "Listen I'm going to go and find one of my contacts here so I can look for some information. You can wander around just stay out of trouble, got it?" he asked.
Naruto rolled his eyes at the man, "I'm not you Ero-sensei."
Jiraiya rolled his eyes at the new nickname; apparently Naruto had decided that because Jiraiya had earned his respect he would give him the sensei title. Of course he later told the man that because he was still a pervert he would not be removing the 'Ero' part any time soon.
"I'll be fine, I'll just go and see if this place has any ramen, maybe do some training afterwards."
"Whatever brat," Jiraiya stated as he ran off, Naruto having been with the pervert for the last month recognized that the man was heading towards the red lights district.
"Informant my ass," Naruto mumbled as he began walking around town. He didn't really bother taking in the sights, having seen one city in fire country, he noticed that they all kind of looked the same.
Instead he looked around at all the people, even though he had been out of Konoha for over month, actually having people smile at him rather than glare was a novel experience. He still was not really sure how to react, but he would occasionally return someone's smile with a tentative one of his own. As he was wandering he noticed something else that made him curious; he had passed several groups of girls his own age, and not one to be rude to well, anyone really, he had offered them a smile. This had the unexpected side effect of the girls doing two things, the first was for the girls to blush at him, the second was to huddle in whatever group they were in and start giggling while looking at him. He really was not sure how to react to this, having never had experience with girls aside from getting his face to cave in whenever Sakura hit him, he had not even touched a member of the opposite sex before (he did not count Tsunade-baa-chan, Shizune-nee-chan or Ayame-nee-chan) at least not without bodily harm done to him.
And so he was left confused as he made his way around town, looking for a stand that would sell him some good ramen. After several minutes of searching, he finally found a stand that looked promising, he walked in and sat down at one of the stools.
At the sound of his entrance the chef turned around and spotted him, "what'll you have kid?"
Naruto frowned as he looked over the menu, "hmm… I'll have five orders of your Miso Ramen, four orders of your chicken ramen and two orders of your beef ramen to start!"
The man behind the counter just looked at him for a second, wondering if this kid had some kind of mental deficiency. "Um… are you sure you can eat that much kid?" he asked.
Naruto looked at him with his newly created 'do you know who the fuck your talking to' look, "of course I'm sure, if I wasn't I wouldn't have ordered it."
The man just looked at him before shrugging, "well if you say so…"
One hour and twenty three bowls of ramen later, Naruto left the stand leaving a very happy ramen chef and the feeling of his wallet several pounds lighter. He decided to continue his walk through the city before finding a nice quiet place to train, he wasn't too worried about getting lost, Jiraiya somehow always knew how to find him even when the man was drunk as a skunk. As he continued Naruto noticed he was getting more and more of those look's from the female population. He was not sure what they meant but the looks had the odd effect of making him swell with pride, and at the same time want to run away screaming. Though, he could have sworn he had seen those looks before…