037 - Karin Interlude: Ran was right all along

Walking into Konoha's Academy building, Karin was ashamed to admit she's feeling somewhat jittery. In her head, she knows she's ready for this test, but this is still her first time taking the exams, the first time visiting a foreign village, the first time around so many potentially hostile shinobi. Confidence is a work in progress.

The huge building making Kusa's Academy look like a sad joke isn't helping her feelings of adequacy, either.

Still, appearances must be maintained, so she puffs up her nonexistent chest, channels her inner Shimada-mama and power walks through the corridors and into the meeting room. She doesn't really have any idea where that room is supposed to be and gaping around like a country bumpkin would ruin the immersion in the role, but the place's architecture is straightforward and she's a fecking sensor. It's just a matter of looking like she knows what she's doing and following the biggest concentration of signatures.

There's the monster Ran warned her about, blood-soaked and still bloodthirsty, all jagged edges and sharp thorns. A redheaded boy from Suna, who doesn't look like much otherwise. Karin frowns a bit when she can't find any other 'monstrous' presence around. It doesn't sound like Ran to make a mistake on this sort of thing, and 'monsters' implies more than one. Unless she means whatever it is that comes out of Naruto-san and is making its way towards the building at the time.

… She'll keep an eye on her cousin, just in case, but doesn't think that's what Ran meant.

The first stage of the test comes and goes, and Karin can honestly say she's a bit disappointed about the whole thing. There's a lot of posturing both from the hopefuls and from the staff, a lot of clues given that nobody would miss unless they somehow forgot this is a shinobi test, some very basic attempts at artificially raising the stakes and the security of the test proper leaked like a sieve… All for a written test that wasn't actually all that difficult in the first place

When the second examiner erupts into the room it's a welcome relief. It's one thing to bluff them with a tenth question that doesn't actually exist, but why the heck would that invalidate the written parts? Making them go through it only to handwave it later on is a waste of an opportunity and nothing else.

They're shinobi for Kami's sake! Passing someone who couldn't answer the questions just because you said you would is nothing more than weak, uninspired reasoning. She's pretty sure Shimada-mama would've given them a piece of her mind and the whole thing is giving her migraines.

At least that nonsense allowed Naruto-san to pass the exam, so there's that.

While they were gathering for the second test, Shigeri-san clasped her shoulder and reluctantly thanked her for 'catching the genjutsu trap at the fake door and saving them from making a fool out of themselves' before walking past her.

What? There was a genjutsu trap somewhere? Is this how Ran feels when she misses something?

It was a bit of a bizarre feeling, but she shook it quick enough when the new examiner decided to make an example out of Naruto-san. As the suddenly not so welcome woman turns her attention towards Shiore-san, Karin's eyes narrow. She might not be capable of gouging an eye out of the woman like Ran would've done, but she can easily figure out where she lives. And furniture can't dodge explosive tags.

The second part of the exam starts soon afterwards, and they have a clear if not very inspired action plan. They'll rush towards the goal as fast as possible, doing their best to dodge other groups in favor of reaching the vantage ambush point around the center of the grounds as fresh as possible.

If required, they'll even give up their own Earth Scroll to avoid combat. Once in position, they'll simply pick off the weakest or more exhausted teams until they find the required Heaven Scroll or, if they had to give up their own first, the full set. Simple, effective, and yet just contrived enough to be above more hot-headed teams. Just the way Kusa is supposed to do things likes to do things.

Any pretense of normality goes down the gutter pretty much as soon as they are given the go ahead, though. An oppressive feeling even worse than the bloodsoaked boy erupts from the Eastern area, where she'd been keeping track of the other Kusa team.

"Something wrong, Uzumaki?" Shigeri calls for her when she stops her march, annoyance clear in his voice.

"I think so?" Theoretically, this might be some plot she doesn't have the clearance to know about, so best to ask, just to be safe. "Was Shiroe-san secretly an S-rank shinobi infiltrating the exam to give us a leg-up?"

"Are you high?"

"Then he's been replaced by someone with Kage-level chakra reserves." Who feels really unpleasant to her senses. And is closing in to Naruto-san's team really fast. But she doubts that'll mean anything to her teammates. "We might be better off avoiding him or his team altogether."

"Well… shit." Kannagi-san swears, as both of Karin's teammates regroup on the same branch she's standing on. "Can we still pull it off? Risking your life is one thing, commiting suicide by Kage is another."

"Depends. How good are your senses, Uzumaki?" Well gee, this is the first time in months they take an interest in her [Mind's Eye of the Kagura] beyond acknowledging its existence and promptly ignoring it. "Can you tell what's going on?"

"He's closing in on another team of examinees." Hell if she was going to tell them this was her new cousin's team. "But that's about— No, wait, he's spending chakra like crazy. I think he's engaging them."

"Engaging?" Shigeri-san asks with an arched brow. "Did the other team even survive first contact?"

"One of them was blown away, we're talking about half a mile, but seems to have survived more or less safely." Karin answers, before continuing narrating real-time. "The other two are fighting him. Looks like he's toying with them."

"Great. Who the heck is this guy?" Kannagi-san whines. "How many S-class would even bother infiltrating an exam to bully a group of Chunin hopefuls in the first place, anyway?"

"Grab your bingo book and take a pick." Shigeri-san shrugs with a frustrated sigh. "Who knows what goes through the minds of those psychos? They're all crazy, Kages included."

"Then… what are we going to do now?"

"That's the question, isn't it? We turn around and get closer to the exit." He points the way they arrived before nodding at Karin. "Uzumaki, give us a warning if looks like he's going after us and we run the hell away. Better to fail the exam than to die for nothing."

"What about the plan?" Kannagi-san protests. "If we lose too much time here..."

"The plan is busted, but we don't really need it anyway. Uzumaki here turned out to be more than a med-nin." Karin puffs up a bit with pride. It's not like she cares about this team's opinion, but a bit of recognition is always welcome. "Maybe enough to not be a dead weight after all."

She takes back anything nice she thought about Shigeri-san so far, he's still the same jerk she's got to know these last months.

The team retreats back to the fence of the area, and spends a very tense while as Karin narrates what she can tell about the situation. To make things even worse, she also picks up on the Suna kid eradicating a whole team in a matter of seconds during the same timeframe, which doesn't really help settle minds.

"The exam proctor has engaged the monster."

"Which monster?"

"The first one."

"Kami, this is bizarre."

"They're fighting… No, it's done already." Maybe ten seconds of combat, that's how long the proctor had lasted against the monster. And Karin gets the feeling it wasn't taking things seriously. "The proctor was rendered immobile, and the monster is leaving the field in a straight line. It's either using [Hide Like a Mole] or running right through the trees."

"Either or, really." Shigeri-san mutters sarcastically. "Is it coming anywhere closer to us?"

"No, it's leaving eastwards, it'll be out of grounds in a matter of minutes." There's another tense pause, where everyone seems to hold their breath as Karin tracks the monster on it's way out. "Alright, it's finally out and... Immediately [Shunshined] away, it left my range."

Her team breathes in relief, while Karin bites her lip worriedly. She hasn't told them much about the state Naruto-san's team is in. The confrontation happened far enough away they considered it not worth taking the detour, but that would change in a heartbeat if they knew exactly how bad off they are.

Only Haruno-san remains conscious at all, and the other two look worse for wear. Naruto-san's chakra comes out erratically, spiking and spasming in a way she's never seen before and doesn't herald anything good. But it's the third one, the one she's never personally met and has only briefly seen here and there during the exam that worries her the most.

His body oozes something dark and foul, that she can't look too closely at without her stomach churning and having to hold back the urge to retch. His chakra is slowly but steadily weakening, and she doesn't think he'll survive another twenty-four hours if things keep going like that.

A chunin exam is not a good place to be with two members down. Forget other teams these grounds are dangerous enough without adding a human factor.

When they camp for the night, Karin's team is much closer to Naruto-san's, not that her two teammates have any idea about it. It has been a nerve-wracking day, guiding her team through the Forest of Death in such a way they'd wander closer to them without putting themselves at risk from the other teams.

Of course that means they haven't found any other team either, but she can't risk them actually pulling off an ambush and getting the Heaven Scroll so soon. Shigeri-san would insist on making a beeline towards the tower. As sound as that strategy would be if the only goal was to pass the exams, Karin is hoping to help out her new cousin.

Finding family only to immediately lose it again is an idea that has her in a cold sweat.

Of course, she gets the middle turn to stay awake and keep watch, because of course she would. Shigeri and Kannagi are the big strong useful combatants who actually have a chance of being promoted, and she's just the barely useful fill-in medic who happens to be convenient in some other way.

So the worst turn goes for her.

Taking a deep breath, Karin makes sure her team is actually asleep, and casts around with [Mind's Eye of the Kagura] one last time. No team anywhere remotely close, except Naruto-san's. There's a team she doesn't recognise making a beeline towards them, but they're far away and, unless they can increase their travel speed somehow, won't arrive until the morning.

This is her chance. It only takes a quick series of hand seals for the [Transparent Escape Technique] to meld her frame into the background.

With a last apologetic thought towards her teammates -but not too apologetic, because seriously, they're jerks of the highest order- Karin takes into the night, leaving them as defenceless as two chunin aspirants asleep in a refuge trapped to the roof can be.

She takes into the night like a shadow escaping from yomi, jumping from branch to branch with a speed and stealth taught to her by Shimada-mama and drilled into her body by repetition after repetition after repetition after repetition. It's been a while since she's had the chance to practice, but some experiences are never forgotten.

No matter how hard you try.

Ironically, the chakra-infused fauna of the Forest of Death has an even harder time ambushing her than normal animals, their empowered bodies shining like bonfires to her [Mind's Eye of the Kagura] and thus she doesn't have to even break step to dodge the few predators that decide to take their chances with her.

With a last check to make sure nobody is approaching her sleeping team under the cover of the night, she descends onto the ground.

She's still some distance away from Naruto-san's team signatures. There are some traps she's spotted, and giving someone the chance to guide you through instead of risking triggering something is just good manners. Plus, everything she's seeing is pretty basic, there's a good chance they are just a distraction to keep one's attention away from the real traps.

That's how Ran and Shimada-mama do things, after all. Even if she usually can catch at least some of Ran's actual traps, and she has a hard time believing Haruno-san can outtrap her. There's just no point in risking it.

"Haruno-san?" She calls into the night, her voice causing a figure to start in surprise in front of her. Poor form, revealing her position like that. "It's me, Karin."

"Uzumaki-Shimada-san?" Haruno-san's faintly trembling voice calls back after a short while. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm a sensor." She explains, trying not to make any move that can even remotely be construed as threatening. This girl is tenser than a bowstring. "I noticed your fight earlier today and how your team came out worse for wear and thought I could help? I'm a bit of a medic-nin."

"Oh, thank the kami! Naruto isn't waking up and Sasuke-kun's fever keeps getting worse. I didn't know what I was going to–" Her relieved tone cuts suddenly, and when her voice sounds again it's dripping with suspicion. "No, wait! How do I know it's really you? How do I know you want to help even if it's really you? You are a competitor in this exam, you might take the chance to take out the competition!"

It's frustrating to be doubted in this situation. Whatever she tells herself to quiet her conscience, she's left her team asleep and unguarded and should get back as soon as possible, so this delay isn't something she can afford. She has to admit Haruno-san's reluctance is warranted, though.

She's trying to think out how to solve the situation when she hears her last sentence and almost collapses in a fit of giggles.

"Oh, Haruno-san. You don't know much about either Uzumaki nor Shimada if you think I'm going to backstab family." She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye, too amused by the idea to really feel insulted. "Still, there isn't much I can do to prove my good intentions, is there? What do you want me to do?"

"I… Don't know." The girl hesitates. "We had a passphrase for our team, but we never discussed anything about approaching other teams."

"Maybe I can tell you something from our meeting? Something nobody else would know?"

"That would prove your identity, yes." Not really, a real infiltrator might've listened to that conversation too, but she's not going to tell her that until she's done healing her team. "The problem is that I still can't trust your intentions. As you said, I know nothing about either the Uzumaki nor the Shimada."

"Back to square one, then. If I could at least show you that I'm not a danger…" There is nothing that she can present as guarantee. In fact, there's nothing that can guarantee your safety against a sufficiently motivated shinobi. But maybe she can offer a compromise. Taking a deep breath to steel her resolve, Karin makes her choice. "Are the boys unconscious?"

"Yes?"

"Blindfold them."

"Sorry?"

"So you can see I'm carrying no weapons, or poisons or anything else..." Karin swallows with difficulty, scanning feverishly with her [Mind's Eye of the Kagura] once again to make absolutely sure there's nobody else around. "I'll strip. But you have to blindfold them!"

"You what!?"

"Not so loud!" Dear kami, she's not going to ever live this one down is she? "If I take off my gear and clothes here, so you know I'm not carrying anything dangerous, will you let me examine your team?"

Stripping in front of a near stranger, even if she's another girl, is maybe the most embarrassing thing Karin has done in her life. But she grits her teeth and forces herself through it, slowly undoing clasps and removing clothes in spite of her burning cheeks. For family.

She's already hooking her thumbs around the band of her panties, taking a deep breath to remove that last piece, when Sakura interrupts her with a flustered squeak.

"Stop, stop!" She cries out. "You have convinced me! Put your clothes back on, I'll guide you through the traps!"

It's with great haste and even greater relief that Karin puts her clothes back on. Things are rather straightforward from there. Haruno-san proves incapable of looking her in the eye, apparently even more mortified than Karin herself by the situation, barely uttering a word as she leaves her safe spot to walk her through the trapped field.

Poor form, that. Shimada-mama would've verbally guided her from safety instead of needlessly exposing herself.

It's a relief when she finally gets to the two unconscious boys. Naruto-san doesn't look physically hurt, and up close it's clear that the strange chakra spikes and spasms don't actually come from him, but from whatever that other thing is. Still worrying, but less so.

The other boy (Sasuke-kun?) on the other hand, looks even worse up close. There's something malignant nestled in his neck, that's slowly pervading his chakra system. The process isn't actually malicious as far as she can tell, but it's very stressful for his body. She's never seen anything like it and honestly hopes to never see it again. Whether he'll survive the process by himself is honestly up in the air, and she can't help directly. What she can do though, is bolster his body and chakra reserves, so he has a better fighting chance.

Usually, having someone unconscious bite her takes some work, but the two boys are going through a restless sleep, and their teeth clench by reflex, activating her [Heal Bite].

"Wait, you showed them your [Heal Bite]?" I cut into her story in righteous indignation. Or at least slightly betrayed shock. "What the frick, Karin? You promised!"

"Naruto-san is family!" She defends herself, staring at me with those round, soulful eyes of hers. "I wasn't going to let him die!"

I take a glance at Naruto and Sakura at the other side of the table, Naruto looks confused and sheepish, and I guess he's not the sort of person to realize why it's a bad idea to publicize that sort of special ability. Sakura on the other hand is palming a kunai under the table of all things. How rude, I don't think she's actually paying attention to the story.

I take a deep breath and exhale slowly, forcing myself to think with the brain that actually has neurons. He wasn't going to die anyway, but Karin had no way of knowing, and I can get behind the 'family' reasoning. Fair is fair so I reluctantly let the matter go.

But I'm not going to help him with the [Five Elements Seal], he can damn well wait until Jiraiya does it for him.

The healing was… underwhelming. Naruto-san woke up briefly and managed to mutter some more or less intelligible words, but sleep claimed him back immediately after. The other boy didn't even manage that. He stopped shivering, so Karin would take that as a win.

"That's everything I can do for them." Karin whispers while bandaging her own wound bites. "I'll try to guide my team away from here, but I can make no promises, Shigeri-san barely tolerates my presence half the time, I won't be able to change his mind if he decides on a course of action."

"No… you have done enough, Uzumaki-Shimada-san" Karin still has to fight down a dopey smile each and every time she hears that name. "Will you be alright?"

"I should be." She nods, taking another peek into the distance. "Nobody has approached my team so far and I can get back to them before my shift is over, so they won't even realize I'm gone."

"I see." Sakura-san seems unsure of how to continue, but that's fair. It's not everyday that a shinobi from another village offers you assistance in the middle of a competitive survival test, after all. "Ummm… Thank you for everything and… Good luck in the exam?"

"Likewise, Haruno-san." Karin pauses right as she's leaving, remembering the other team coming here. "A last word of advice, there's a team coming this way. At the rate they're moving and assuming they don't change their route, they'll stumble into your encampment at around dawn. Make sure you're ready for them by then or out of the way."

With that last warning, Karin departs. She would've loved to stay with Naruto-san's team and lend a hand during the exam, but she has her own trials to overcome, and her own team to see succeed.

Things have gone well for team Shigeri ever since. With Karin's sensor abilities, ambushing a wounded team was a trivial matter. As luck would have it, their victims had managed to hold onto their own Heaven Scroll in spite of the wounds obviously caused by an enemy team.

They were easy pickings for Shigeri and Kannagi, who were admittedly experienced shinobi competent enough to have a solid chance in this exam anyway, so beating up a bunch of wounded hopefuls wasn't exactly a challenge. That put their team at the top of the race, gathering their scrolls in less than half their allotted time.

It also made them prime targets, so they understandably decided to head straight towards the goal. They're something about two-third of the way there, crossing through a wide clearing, when Karin suddenly stops in her tracks for the second time this exam. This time, Shigeri-san and Kannagi-san immediately take their position around her without complaint.

"What's wrong, Uzumaki?"

"The path is blocked. Not enemy shinobi, some sort of beast." Karin chews her lip, focusing her [Mind's Eye of the Kagura] to get as good an image as possible. The feedback she gets sends a shiver down her spine. "Four legged mammals. Judging by their shape, most likely bears."

"So? We are on a timer here. Let's just cut through." He replies impatiently. "They're only animals."

"Animals in this place are extremely dangerous." Karin protests hesitantly, already knowing her opinion on the matter would be dismissed. She has to try, though. Ran's strange fixation with bears got even worse upon reaching Konoha, and she has a feeling this place has something to do with it. "Maybe it would be best to..."

"Best to nothing. We've handled giant leeches and even bigger centipedes without trouble." Shigeri-san dismisses her worries with a handwave. "Unless those bears are building-sized, we're not going to take a detour just to avoid them."

"No, they are… only slightly bigger than average."

"Then we keep going."

"Think chakra-reinforced bears taste anything like regular ones?" Kannagi-san wonders out loud. "I haven't had bear meat in forever."

The two of them charge ahead, and Karin follows them with a sigh. Reminding herself that no, she can't pass this exam by herself. Still, the idea of poisoning them in their sleep and dragging their unconscious bodies through the gates of the tower is starting to look more and more appealing by the minute.

As she expected, it was bears. They rose from the ground, nine foot tall beasts somehow managing to hide in the tall grass of the clearing. As she feared, they are bullshit. Fast enough to block their path, tough enough to shrug off their shuriken, and strong enough to send Shigeri-san flying all the way out of the clearing with a single swipe.

At that, Kannagi-san hesitates, standing in guard with his weapon in hand, but warily alternating nervous looks between the slowly encroaching bears, Karin herself and the point where Shigeri-san disappeared. That hesitation ends soon though.

"Run you idiot!" Shigeri-san's voice comes from beyond the treeline. "Ditch the bitch!"

At those words, all hesitation leaves him. Without giving Karin time to react to the words, Kannagi turns around to flee, shoulder-checking her hard enough to send her to the ground in the process.

As Karin watches her 'team' disappear between the trees and the bears focus on her, she can only think that the maneuver was too well-executed to be a heat of the moment thing. They had to have this eventuality planned from the start.

Those… Saddle-gooses! They had acknowledged her skills! She thought she was getting to them, even if they still behaved like coxcombs most of the time! She should've let Ran hang them by their… parts! Then they wouldn't dare do something like this! Now she's surrounded by super-bears, sacrificed so the rest of her team can escape. It brings to mind a morbidly fitting saying she heard from Ran once.

"You don't need to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy running from it." She laughs bitterly into the dirt. "Isn't that right, Ran?"

It was only then, alone against the danger, that Karin finally realized the truth. Ran was right all along.

"Bears, I knew it!" I cheer in vindication, before realizing what exactly I'm cheering about, and sheepishly sitting back on my chair. "What happened next?"

"What do you think? I drowned them in bear mace." Karin smiles nastily. "And then I set it all on fire. You never told me it could explode if ignited while suspended in the air."

"Well, yeah, dust explosion. That's obvious. I mean, oops. I hope you didn't get caught in the blast."

"Oh, no I was hoping it would. I did pick the concept from your hobbies, at least. I just wasn't sure it would work. The fight would've been less nerve-wracking if I had known beforehand my plan would work."

"That's my Karin."

She then proceeds to tell me about the rest of their test after that, but it wasn't all that interesting. Without a team to call her own anymore, she rejoined Team Seven. Apparently Sasuke tried to give her some grief, but for once Sakura backed Naruto in an argument and she was accepted amongst them. Nothing else of note really happened, except that Kabuto never joined them.

Whether it was because the team was almost guaranteed to pass and Orochimaru didn't feel the need for a backup or because it would've looked suspicious if a second shinobi separated from his team joined them, I suspect I'll never know, but it's not really all that important.

I was too busy feeling vindicated to pay close attention. That and trying to figure out how to show Broody McBroodypants my displeasure at his deplorable behaviour. How does he dare bully my Karin?

At some point while Karin is explaining the preliminary rounds in the tower though, my brain re-engages higher functions on its own initiative and points out a certain obvious detail I had managed to miss.

"Wait, you didn't pass the test?"

"Shigeri and Kannagi managed to get themselves killed at some point. I'm pretty sure they stumbled into a nest of jumping leeches. And they had the scrolls, so…" She doesn't sound terribly sorry about it, in fact seems to be struggling not to smile. "It doesn't matter, my promotion always was a long shot. And Shimada-mama cleared things up with the Boss Dude so I'd stay here until the end of the Exams, anyway."

How can one react to such good news, except by wrapping a hand around her waist and pulling her closer? I have a month-long vacation with Karin! And then we dine in hell, but that's a problem for Future Ra–

...

Crap.

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