Naruto was not having a good day.

He was stuck in some crappy forest filled with tigers that yawned when you tried to stab them (and then tried to eat you), leeches that laughed in the face of fireballs (and then tried to drain your life), and centipedes upon which Sakura's genjutsu did absolutely nothing at all (and then tried to poison you.)

Now some huge, enormous snake had eaten him, and Naruto could feel stomach acid burning his skin. Dammit, if he got out of this... wait a moment!

Naruto had been questing around blindly in the acid darkness, and his hand had happened upon what could only be a giant scroll. Cool! Maybe it was like the old man's Forbidden Techniques scroll, it was big enough. He grabbed it and tucked it under one arm for safekeeping.

How to get out of this... hey! He knew!

In the daylight, Naruto rolled out the first couple feet of the scroll. "Snake... summoning?"

He paused. Kakashi-sensei had used some kind of summoning thing on the Wave mission to get a pack of dogs to help him. This must be like that! Dogs would have been cooler than snakes, but he somehow doubted Hatake Kakashi was going to share something that powerful with him.

Well, it wasn't like there were nin popping out of the forest canopy to offer anything else. Naruto pricked his finger with a kunai and scribbled his name down quickly before it healed up.

Naruto kept reading the scroll, memorising the handseals to actually summon something.

"Summoning no jutsu!"

*poof*

"Hey, you're not Orochimaru."

"Attack that guy!"

"Don't feel like it."

"Pleeeease? Um... I'll buy you some ramen?"

"God, the things I do... any other serpent, you'd be food by now, but seeing as I'm such a kind reptile... it had better be the good stuff. Ichiraku, or else I'm going to tell Manda about you."

"Summons know about old man Ichiraku?"

"Word gets around about ramen that good. I think the Toads make the Toad-summoner drop by there once a year."

The enemynin sweatdropped. "Uh, can we get back to our battle?"

A/N Idea was that when Orochimaru summons the snake to eat Naruto in the Forest of Death in the second part of the chuunin exam, he summons the scrollbearer by accident. Naruto has absolutely no idea that Jiraiya has the Toad scroll, is willing to let Naruto sign it, or that Jiraiya exists.

I have no idea where the ramen part came from.