Naruto : The Groundhog Exam

Chapter 2

Naruto was often a study in opposites. Though he could be dense at times, he was also capable of feats of amazing brilliance. The chief difference was the amount of encouragement he got.

At the ninja academy his teachers had outright sabotaged his progress. The village shops sold him the worst quality gear for premium prices, and in all other ways did their level best to hinder his progress. On the other hand...

The one time he'd felt a teacher was going out of his way to help him, Naruto had performed the mission he'd asked of him flawlessly, and learned a jonin level jutsu in a matter of hours. When he'd thought his team was counting on him, he'd participated substantially in the defeat of an A-rank missing ninja. He'd learned water walking in spite of having Orochimaru's extra seal messing up his already pathetic chakra control, and...

It was like magic. When people believed in him, he performed. It was that simple. He'd learn at rates the legendary Sannin couldn't believe, if only someone would give him a chance and a little bit of direction.

And right now he was bored, sitting through the written test portion of the chunin exam. The head examiner was trying to pour on the pressure, but Naruto already knew the secret of this test: Anyone who agreed to take the final question won. So why bother stressing about the other answers?

On the other hand, Hinata, the girl who sat to his right, was fretting visibly over his complete lack of concern for doing any work on the problems on the paper. Having already finished herself, her bloodline having gotten all of the answers for her, once again she whispered, "Naruto-kun, you can copy mine." and slid her paper discretely over to help him read her answers.

The blond in question blinked at the ordinarily shy girl, stuttering out her offer to let him cheat, using her exam as an answer key. He relaxed as it struck him this was the second time she'd made that offer. He'd only turned down the first because he could sense one of the test proctors had noticed.

Taking his feet off of the desk, where he'd been kicking back, loafing around, waiting for the test to be over, the boy leaned forward and whispered back. "Eh, er..." he glanced down at her paper and read off her name, "Hinata-chan, why would you do something like that?"

The girl blushed, cringing slightly away from him as she answered his question. "Na... Naruto-kun..." she stammered, "...the test... it is important that you pass it..."

"Team 7 - fail! Team 8 - fail!" one of the proctors called off, and to his surprise Naruto found himself once more ushered out of the building, this time with his angry team accompanied by Hinata and hers, as well, although the latter seemed more confused about how they had been caught than angry. They were experts at information gathering, and had that whole test in the bag, every one of them.

That was, Kiba and Shino, Hinata's teammates, were confused until Sakura started to yell at Naruto for whispering to Hinata during a monitored test and getting them all thrown out. That was worth some angry grumbling from Kiba and a very stiff stance from Shino, while Hinata blushed and rubbed her fingers together in the shame of it all.

Naruto felt bad for the girl, so after Sasuke's attempts to plaster him were broken up by Kakashi, he went off to find her, but Hinata and her team had disappeared somewhere.

Nothing left to do, Naruto went for another visit to the old man, and got another letter to Ebisu, where the special jonin gave him a few more tips on the leaf floating exercise, and a comment about how he wasn't as lackluster as the teacher had suspected, given what he'd already heard of him.

Another full day training on chakra control, and it was off to bed for Naruto.

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