The door to his office slammed open with bang.

"Hey, jiji!"Naruto rushed in and launched himself onto the desk, landing in a crouch and smudging the trade agreement documents from Iwa. "Can our talk be really fast today? I have to go meet Sakura-chan! She's going to show me and Sasuke something really cool! Did you know Konoha has a library full of ninja stuff?" Naruto looked up at Sarutobi with wide blue eyes.

He looks more and more like Minato every day.

Sarutobi sighed and ineffectually tried to pull the papers out from under Naruto's foot without tearing them. "Hello to you too, Naruto. Yes, I did know we had a library 'full of ninja stuff'. It's been there since before you were born."

"How come you never told me? I have to know all this stuff if I'm gonna be Hokage someday!" He toppled backwards when Sarutobi gave a particularly violent tug on the paperwork, landing on one knee. Naruto gave a huff of annoyance and sat down next to the desk. "Sakura-chan says I hafta know everything that goes on in the village and be the strongest ninja! This is really important, jiji."

Sarutobi was surprised, to put it mildly. It had been nearly a month since he had last seen Naruto for their "chats", but the majority of them had revolved around ramen, admonishment for his pranks and how his academy lessons were going (abysmally). He had not anticipated anything different this time around.

"You're right. These are very important things that are covered in your Academy lectures. Do you have your progress report? And who is Sakura-chan?"

Naruto threw a crumpled envelope up onto the desk. "Sakura-chan is my best friend! She's really smart and she has really pretty pink hair and she lets me come over for dinner sometimes …" Sarutobi allowed Naruto's babbling to wash over him as he broke the seal on the envelope and removed the report inside. He stared at it. And then stared some more.

"Naruto, are you sure this is the paper Nakajima-sensei gave to you? You didn't open it?" This couldn't be right. There's no way Naruto's marks could have improved so much in just a month.

The boy stopped mid-sentence, looking insulted. "What? No! Like you would be able to tell even if I did open it!" He stuck out his tongue. "Sakura-chan has been helping me train, anyway. The work is really easy when she explains it!"

"Is Sakura an older student? A genin, maybe?" Sarutobi hadn't heard of any pink-haired graduates recently, or pink-haired kunoichi at all.

"Nah, Sakura-chan is in my class! She is totally my best friend, even though Sasuke says she's his best friend! She said that I had a lot of uh, potential, I think?" Naruto's face screwed up in thought, trying to remember her exact words. "When I told her that I was gonna be Hokage one day, she didn't even laugh like everyone else does. She just believed me."

His voice was quiet by the end, reveling in the fact that he had someone with that much faith in him. His first friend! Now he had to doubly make sure he was Hokage!

Sarutobi sat back in his chair, looking at Naruto as he was lost in thought. "She sounds like a special girl. I'd like to meet her sometime."

"W-what? Oh, sure. But not today! Sakura-chan said she had a surprise for us and I don't want to make her wait. I gotta go!" With that, Naruto stood and rushed back out the door, no doubt heading toward the library.

Sarutobi heard a laugh from behind him. Jiraiya stepped through the window, where he had been waiting until Naruto had left. "Sakura-chan, huh? Sounds like my godson is starting early."

"Jiraiya, he's eight. Let us hope he is more like Minato than he is like you."

"Sensei, you wound me." He held up a scroll, covered in blood and ink. "Speaking of ladies, I met a very interesting one this afternoon …"