He Flies! He Kicks! He Prowls! He Toad!

The ravine gets an answer: a detonation of smoke at the bottom, and the chief toad of Mount Myoboku rising with a twelve-year-old on his head. Gamabunta is unimpressed — by the summons, by the boy, by everything — and refuses to acknowledge a tadpole as his summoner. Naruto's counter-offer is to cling to the giant's back through an afternoon of bucking deliberately designed to throw him, until sundown and sheer stubbornness extract the title of henchman. He wakes in a hospital three days later, grinning.