Time Travel? What The Fuck?

Chapter 27: Uzumaki

Karin watched as the blond Uzumaki made his way to his seat, determined expression fixed on his face. He seemed so confident, so self assured. Could he... could he really be family?

Karin wouldn't have believed it at first, just because he looked nothing like an Uzumaki. He didn't have red hair or pale skin like her or her mom did, but he was as bosturious as her mother said their clan was. And his chakra... it was so warm and bubbly. She'd felt it immediately when he entered the room, like a bonfire on a cold night. It was something she automatically wanted to latch onto, just because she never felt that back in Kusa. Maybe she had with her mom, but that was long ago. She couldn't honestly say she remembered everything about the woman perfectly, even though she wished she could. The memories were all tainted with bitterness and regret.

She'd never met another Uzumaki before, she'd thought she was the last one. After all, she had no reason to think otherwise. To this this boy smiling and bouncing around, it was so foreign to her. What did he do for the village? Did they treat him like they treated her? Did they treat him better? He said he'd never had a family, so he was orphaned like her. Did they kill his mom too? Push her to the edge where she couldn't crawl back from?

Looking at the way he smiled, somehow she didn't think that was the case.

The proctor up front continued his speech on the rules of the exam and signaled for them to start. Karin did. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of her teammates glaring daggers at her. She had to pass this exam or else, is what their eyes said. Gulping, she turned to the clock.

One hour until she could speak with that Naruto boy.

Suddenly passing this test didn't seem all that important.

***

Sakura was willing to just sit the test out if she was being honest. She didn't have to answer a single question or do anything. The point of this test wasn't to answer the questions correctly after all, it was just to gather information without getting caught. Which wasn't a problem for her. She'd already made chunin, she could gather intel just fine. But that wasn't the problem right now. The problem was she was so bored.

She was easily smart enough to answer all these without having to cheat, albeit it would still be hard, but she didn't have to. But on the other hand, she couldn't just sit here for an hour!

God, decision, decisions...

Eventually she decided to answer the questions, not working too fast in the hopes of stretching it out for as long as possible. If she really tried to she might even be able to push it till the last question. Maybe.

Across the room, Sasuke was eyeing his own test. His sharingan wasn't activated yet, as he was still debating the merits of bothering to answer the questions. He didn't have to, they were going on to the second exam anyways no matter what they did or didn't do. They just had to stay until the very end.

Around him, he noticed some people begin to start cheating. Next to him, a boy was blatantly looking over at someone's test. It was so obvious Sasuke almost laughed. He didn't, but he did roll his eyes. He saw one of the chunin proctors make a tic on their clipboard. So he'd seen it too, he thought. Good. Any ninja as obvious as that didn't deserve the title.

A few rows in front of him sat Naruto himself. The boy wasn't nearly as panicked about the test as he was last time, but that didn't mean he was doing anything either. He was torn between looking around to see if he could spot any familiar faces and just straight up taking a nap. He didn't quite want to risk doing the first one though out of fear of one of the proctors thinking he was cheating. Nap it was.