His legs were shaking. His heart was racing and his mind was running in circles. Every single one of his nervous twitchings spelled out his panic. It was like a curse, Naruto couldn't dispell. He couldn't think straight. All his senes had been reduced to the feeling of licking dry lips. Whenever he glanced at his empty sheet with the vague hope, that something might appear right in front of him, he reminded himself that such a wonder was not going to happen. Then, with another twitching, he turned his head slightly – not too much, for he didn't want to arouse anyones attention: Yes, he was totally just yawning! - and repeated the process. This took on the first fifteen minutes of his test and would do until the end. Unable to free himself from the vicious cycle of creating a small shimmer of hope, by unsuspiciously monitoring someone adjacent to him and then discarding it again, by reminding himself of the penalty for cheating. Every moment, he stacked his frustration even higher until the point where he had gladly beaten everyone to a pulp just to get the answers for the first question.
If he cheated, he would get caught. If he didn't, he himself would fail and even his teammated would fail along with him. This thought turned his stomache even more upside down then the idea of just failing himself. Hastily he shook his head as if denying the facts could change the reality, that he was trapped in.
"Psssht, Naruto-kun." the shy voice of Hinata whispered right next to him. In all honesty, he never even noticed her presence. Maybe this girl had a presentiment of what was going head and tried to manipulate him. Afterall, she was on a team with those annoying and creepy dudes.
He tilted his head to her side, to let her know, that he was listening. Instantly, she turned her gaze towards her pencil, flipped it around a bit and blushed.
"Whatcha want?" he snarled as stealthily as he could.
"I-I-I..." she stuttered before she started her sentence anew. "I just thought, you might want a little help. I'll let you look at my test. Hurry, while noone's looking!"
"Huh? Why would I... why would you want to help me?" Naruto just spat out the words that came to his mind without even really considering her proposition.
"You... w-well, I just think that if we are in the same year, we should support each other. Don't you think?" she reasoned, with her voice kept low, after she blushed even more. Her face was now red enough to serve as a warning sign. Either she was a really bad liar, or she was still withholding important information about her true intentions. Regardless of that, since time was running short and shorter, Naruto quickly came to the decision that – at his current state – he had little reason to distrust a person, as shy and innocent-looking as her and even less to lose.
He nodded at her and she lifted her arm, to reveal the first few questions on her sheet. Naruto, still used to his old ways of writing mischievous messages on small papers, while Iruka didn't look at him and pass them around, quickly copied the first two solutions from Hinata.
"You there! Get out!" a voice yelled over his head, just as he finished the second-to-last sentence.
Naruto's heart made a jump and he shrank to a small bag of misery on his chair.
Why me? Was I so obvious?
He heard the rattling of a chair being pushed back as the person behind him stood up.
"Wha-what!?"
"You got caught five times. That's game over. And now get your sorry little ass out of here." The member of the interrogation force looked through the room with a searching look. "And the other members of his team as well. You may leave, now!"
Two other persons stood up and turned around their papers. Unlike their comrade they didn't object to the examiners orders and simply walked out the room, while angrily staring at the one, who had been caught. The humiliation of being kicked out of the exam would not be the only thing that hurt this one, after he left the building.
Naruto, still completely frozen and in the middle of the sentence, he had just copied, was again completely paralyzed. He would have to get some more answers from Hinata, to be safe, but after the first one had been caught five times, the examiners started to call out one after another.
"Number eighty-two, you fail! Eighty-one and eighty-three as well!"
"Number seven!"
Each of these calls was starting a new wave of panic to shake Naruto's body. He wasn't even able to hold his pen. His writing instrument left his hand and fell to the ground.
I'll be the next one for sure!
"It's alright, Naruto. Nobody is looking this way." her gentle, yet reassuring tone liberated Naruto just enough from his apathy to let him pick up his pen again. "If you copy but a few more, you definitely won't fail."
Yeah, right. I want to become Hokage, but I am not even brave enough to cheat at a test that practically begs for cheating? Just how miserably of a ninja am I? Even Hinata's got more courage than I do.
He took a deep breath and calmed his senses. If the others could make, so could he. As Hinata revealed the next part of her test, he revelled in his new-found confidence. He would make it through this test and become a Chuunin! And after that, Hokage!
