Sasha was exhausted, that much was clear.

Konohamaru sat on the fence, dinner roll in hand, and watched her run. She'd been running for over three hours, which was pretty good for a non-shinobi her age, and she wasn't dead on her feet yet, which was also pretty good, but she still wasn't exactly doing all that well. So, better stamina than most, but not as good as a shinobi.

He took a bite out of the roll.

Konohamaru knew how to run while wasting the least amount of energy possible. He knew how to do a lot of things while wasting the least amount of energy possible. Partially because he was a ninja, and partially because he knew a few Nara. What Sasha was doing right now was not running while wasting the least amount of energy possible.

He tossed the rest of the roll into his mouth and jumped off the fence. He'd avoided the others at the start of dinner (he didn't like questions), and stayed out here, and now… well, he had to work off the food or something, right?

Konohamaru waited until he saw Sasha round the corner of the lake again, and then jogged over to intercept her, keeping up easily once he did.

Sasha, for her part, sent him a few strange looks, but didn't have the breath to ask him questions. She didn't seem to have the breath to do more than run, really. They could talk later, anyway.

"I will run with you." Konohamaru told her. "It will be… fun?"

Sasha let out a slightly strangled noise, disbelieving of the notion. Konohamaru didn't stop running, though, so she just ignored him.

She ignored him for about two hours, since he didn't bother trying to talk to her again. By that point, she was stumbling, dead on her feet, and about to collapse. Konohamaru, while not exactly fresh as a daisy, was faring a fair bit better, though he had been running for half the time that she had.

"Saa." He came over and pulled her arm across his shoulders, turning both of them back to the barracks. He was short enough that it didn't help as much as it could have, but it was something.

Sasha didn't bother protesting, too tired to do so, too tired to even think about why this random kid was helping her out.

Konohamaru stumbled over a rock (of course I have to do this in the dark, of course), and took a second to catch his footing. "Mendokuse…"

…He'd spent to long with Naruto when the latter was visiting Shikamaru, hadn't he?

A few long minutes later, Sasha pushed away from Konohamaru and stumbled over to a porch in front of one of the girls' barracks, still breathing heavily. Konohamaru sat down on the ground and waited for the (horrifically stunted because his vocabulary sucked) inevitable conversation to begin.

"Why… why did you run with me?" Sasha finally managed, her shortness of breath causing her to double up on words at the beginning. Behind her, one of the curtains on the windows of the girls' barracks opened slightly, revealing the sight of one of the only trainees that was shorter than Konohamaru. She disappeared a second later, and he pushed it from his mind.

"Need to, ah… be healthy?" Konohamaru couldn't remember how to say exercise, or stay fit, or any number of words that could have been used in this context, but he knew this probably got the meaning across.

"I… see, I think." Sasha groaned and doubled over, holding her stomach. "Hungry…"

He winced and started digging through his jacket, hoping he had something stashed away. Before he could find something, though, the door opened, and the girl from the window came out with a bread roll.

There were times when human beings got an air about them that said 'demon, do not approach,' even if they weren't a Jinchuuriki or a Kiri nukenin (the latter were almost scarier). This was one of those times, and after so long without seeing anyone other than Naruto that could get that intense, Konohamaru had regained the ability to be surprised at random humans, even civilians, suddenly looking and feeling like monsters.

"Eep!" The blond girl jumped back, and her eyes flickered between Sasha and Konohamaru as the taller girl thanked her profusely. Konohamaru kind of wanted to help (she was cute, in a Moe sort of way…), but he couldn't really think of a way to do so, and besides, Sasha wasn't doing any real damage other than spilling crumbs everywhere.

It took thirty-seven seconds for Sasha to finish the bread roll, and another twelve for her to keel over.

Konohamaru blinked and walked over, checking her pulse and breathing. Everything seemed normal. He glanced up at the blond girl. "Ano… she is okay, I think. Just very, ah…"

How was he supposed to say 'tired,' again?

"Tired." The girl supplied, and then stuck out her hand, somewhat hesitant. "I'm Christa Lenz."

"Konohamaru Sarutobi." He sighed mentally as he watched her face fall, trying to figure out his name. "You can call me Kono."

If it weren't for how her face brightened up at that, simultaneously apologetic and relieved, he would have been more irritated. As it was, she was cute enough in the "bunnies and rainbows" manner that it negated his annoyance, at least for a bit.

"Can you, ah, take her to…" He faltered, and then just gestured resignedly to the barracks that he wasn't actually allowed into.

"The barracks." Christa supplied, and then shook her head. "I'm not that strong yet."

"I can do it if you're both too wimpy to do it yourselves." A new voice entered the conversation, and they saw the tall girl with freckles and slightly darker skin walking over. Konohamaru recognized her because he'd made a point to track who the instructor passed over once he'd realized what was going on. And this girl had been one of them.

"Okay." He was actually relieved about this. Carrying an unconscious girl into an all-girls barracks? That was just asking for trouble.

"I'll see you tomorrow!" Christa said, then turned to Ymir and started up a conversation (something about favors?) as Konohamaru left on his own.

Right, so he'd gotten in two hours of cardio, and he'd been doing surreptitious chakra exercises while running, and… he needed to do something else before he went to bed, along with a cool down exercise. Hm… he could pull that off in an hour. Probably.

o.o.o.o.o

The next day found Konohamaru doing push-ups in the middle of the dining hall, with Eren urging people, mostly the smaller girls that couldn't weight too much yet, to get on his back.

To be clear, this wasn't Konohamaru's idea. He just wanted to eat breakfast.

This was Connie's idea, and he'd dragged Eren, Reiner, Jean, and Konohamaru into it with him.

The night before, there had been a conversation of sorts. Konohamaru had more or less missed the beginning of it, because he and Armin had been busy with a newspaper, meant to help Konohamaru with his meager reading skills. They'd been in the middle of the crimes section, a few short lines into an article about a recent series of kidnappings in Trost, when the arguing had gotten loud enough to keep Konohamaru from being able to read at all.

Eren was adamant, after several months of knowing Konohamaru, that the boy was the strongest in the class (except Mikasa). Konohamaru wasn't too sure of this, but when Jean had started arguing that Reiner, who was built like one of those body-builder nuts from Kumo, was definitely stronger, Eren had decided to pick a fight about the subject. Konohamaru didn't really care about being strongest (though the comments about how short he was compared to all of them were unappreciated), because he knew that the rest of his skills together made him a pretty damn good opponent to have, but apparently, Eren and Jean's earlier tension had, rather than subsiding, blown up to the point where they were actively trying to argue a point that nobody, least of all Konohamaru and Reiner, cared about.

And then Connie just had to jump in and decide it could be decided in a contest the next morning. At least Armin and Bertholt seemed to get that this course of action was a ridiculous one, but they couldn't really stop the plan from going through. Reiner might have been able to, but he didn't, and Konohamaru's grasp on the language was barely strong enough to track the discussion, let along argue against it with words (and using his fists was, unfortunately, Not An Option). This couldn't be settled in training either, for some reason that Eren and Jean barely spluttered out before going back to arguing with one another.

(What did you two do to get so angry at one another?)

As it stood at the moment, Konohamaru and Reiner were in push-up positions on the floor, glancing bemusedly at one another every couple of seconds. They must have made a funny sight, Konohamaru decided, given that Reiner was about twice his size. After several minutes of the farce that was waiting there, he felt a weight settle on his back. It wasn't much, not compared to the time he decided to try working out with Rock Lee. In fact, given that he was apparently supposed to have a young teen on his back at the moment, he'd been expecting more.

"Um… hey, again. They kind of pulled me into this because I'm the smallest one here. I hope you don't mind…."

Oh, that was the girl from last night. Christa, right? She was pretty small, smaller than him, and if she really was the smallest, then it figured they'd take pity on little Konohamaru instead of the pile of muscle that was Reiner.

"Hello." Konohamaru was starting to feel his arms strain a bit. Granted, he'd been here for a fair while, and had weight on his back, and he wasn't really a taijutsu type to begin with, but… Eren would bug him about it for ages in between Titan rants and training, so it would probably be best to hold out for as long as possible.

"They're talking about getting more girls over her." Christa told him. "Reiner's got Annie on his back right now, and I think they're getting Mina and Sasha right now."

"Mina?" He questioned after working through the sentence. The name didn't really ring a bell, so it was probably someone he didn't know. He'd noticed Annie, though. She had an easy name to remember, and had been skipped over like Ymir.

"Er…" That wasn't Christa. That wasn't any voice he knew, but it was a girl, probably. Mina, then? "Where do I sit?"

Christa shifted and patted a spot next to her, and Konohamaru was suddenly hit by the realization that, oh yeah, there was at least one, probably two pretty girls on his back, and if Moegi or Kurenai or Sakura saw, they'd immediately think he was a pervert and oh god he was never telling them about this.

He felt his face grow red, and hoped that the people watching would just attribute it to the growing strain of holding up the weight on his back.

"Well… he's lasted longer than I thought he would." Jean mused, and that confused Konohamaru, as that particular idiom wasn't one that he'd had experience with yet.

"Hon'yaku, shite kudasai?" He muttered out, hoping Mikasa was nearby.

She translated the line for him, and he rolled his eyes. Yeah, okay, so this long with this weight was kinda bad, but he was a ninja. He had the discipline to stay up for a lot longer than he should have, if nothing else. He glanced to the side at Reiner, who was also a little red in the face, though that was probably more due to his own weight than Annie and…

They'd used Armin instead of another one of the girls?

What?

Hadn't Christa said they were getting Sasha?

…Poor guy looked so embarrassed sitting up there.

It just be really emasculating. Armin couldn't be secure enough in his identity, whatever it was, to get jokes like this played on him. Konohamaru doubted anyone in the room was as secure as he was, though, because unless one of them was a secret crossdresser, his complete lack of shame when in Oiroke no Jutsu proved that he just could not give a—

"Um, guys? The instructor's on his way here." Bertholt's voice came from over by the window, as worried as always.

Within ten seconds, everyone was at various seats, talking relatively quietly, with Reiner and Konohamaru's faces turned away from the door and slowly losing the reddish tinge on their cheeks.

This was going to be interesting.

o.o.o.o.o

A/N: I don't like long vacations from school. I lose all motivation during them, and then it takes weeks to get back into writing.

My vacation lasted from mid-December to the end of January. I hated it. I'm taking winter classes next year, at least one. And I'm hoping to take summer classes as well.

I'll be catching up with the chapters that should have been written during my period of ineptness, but you'll have to be patient. And please do review, because that will help me regain my motivation.

Ja ne,

Phoenix