Author's note: The character several readers have been asking about finally appears.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Gai
"Despair not that you got caught painting the Hokage Monument, my youthful friend!" Maito Gai exclaimed. Most people would get embarrassed just by being near the eccentric jounin, but not Uzumaki Naruto, because he was nine and didn't quite get the whole concept of embarrassment. Otherwise he couldn't run around the town in a bright orange jumpsuit, even if the original color of his garments was completely unrecognizable now when it was covered in still wet paint. "If you fail, take it as a prompt to become stronger!"
"Huh?" was Naruto's confused response.
"Ah, it seems you don't understand the concept of youthful training," the Green Beast said. "Then allow me to explain!" He flashed a blinding smile. It looked even more blinding than usual because his shiny white teeth reflected the neon paint splashed all over Naruto's body. "You know, the youthful challenges help us to improve when we fail."
"Improve when we fail?" the boy echoed. His face was scrunched in concentration as he tried to make sense of his current caretaker's words.
"Yes!" Maito Gai nodded enthusiastically. "For example, whenever I challenge my eternal rival Kakashi to a most youthful competition, I make a youthful promise what I would do if I lose. That way I'll become stronger so that I won't lose the next competition!"
"Huh?" Naruto had a little trouble finding the meaning in Gai's youthful speech.
"For example, if I lose the next contest, I'll do ten thousand pushups! And if I can't do it, I'll run around Konoha on my hands five hundred times! And if I can't do it, I'll lift a huge boulder ten thousand times!"
"Oh, I get it!" Naruto brightened up. "So if I can't paint the Hokage Monument, I'll put buckets over a thousand doors! And if I can't do it, I'll set a zillion tripwires! And if I can't do that, I'll spray-paint a gazillion houses! And if I can't do that, I'll pour buckets of paint on a bajillion people!"
"That's the spirit, my youthful friend!" Gai smiled his blinding smile. "Flames of Youth burn strong in you!"
Naruto was ecstatic that he finally got a guardian who supported him. The citizens of Konoha were quite unhappy because the property damage done by Naruto skyrocketed and continued to rise. And so Gai was relieved of his position after a week. The Hokage then had to find somebody who would quench Naruto's Flames of Youth at least a bit.