karin week 2026

Get ready for KARIN WEEK!

It's coming-- a week to celebrate the one and only Uzumaki Karin! Join us by creating cool Karin content and sharing it June 14-June 20! Our official (but optional) 2026 prompts are below to help get your creative juices flowing. Each day has one general prompt, one AU prompt, and one "shippy" prompt, but feel free to interpret however you wish~ Post any day June 14-20 and tag us @karinweek. Also check out our FAQs, rules, and AO3 collection!

June 14: Sensor || Time Travel/Time Loop || Rarepair June 15: Bite || Canon Divergence || Fake Dating June 16: Interrogation || Modern AU || Fatal Attraction June 17: Combat || Sci-Fi || Hanahaki June 18: Hunter/Hunted || Crossover || Trapped Together June 19: Family || Roleswap || Enemies/Rivals to Lovers June 20🎂: Redheads Have More Fun || Fantasy || Soulmates

Get ready for KARIN WEEK!

It's coming-- a week to celebrate the one and only Uzumaki Karin! Join us by creating cool Karin content and sharing it June 14-June 20! Our official (but optional) 2026 prompts are below to help get your creative juices flowing. Each day has one general prompt, one AU prompt, and one "shippy" prompt, but feel free to interpret however you wish~ Post any day June 14-20 and tag us @karinweek. Also check out our FAQs, rules, and AO3 collection!

June 14: Sensor || Time Travel/Time Loop || Rarepair June 15: Bite || Canon Divergence || Fake Dating June 16: Interrogation || Modern AU || Fatal Attraction June 17: Combat || Sci-Fi || Hanahaki June 18: Hunter/Hunted || Crossover || Trapped Together June 19: Family || Roleswap || Enemies/Rivals to Lovers June 20🎂: Redheads Have More Fun || Fantasy || Soulmates

POLL GAME: ESCAPE THE LAB!

Part of Karin Week, June 14-20! Please check out & reblog our prompts post to find out how to participate and promote. And follow us @karinweek to keep playing ;)

»»PART 1 | PART 2««

RECAP: This is a choose your own adventure where Karin's actions are decided by poll! Karin woke up chained to a table in a room clearly meant for keeping experimental rodents. She easily escaped by knocking a guy out and has found a lab.

>Check out what actual experiments they were running!

Morbidly curious now, Karin pulled a binder labelled RYUZAKI towards herself. Whoever this Ryuzaki person was, they kept very neat and organized notes about how different feeding regimes affected mouse chakra output. Someone named UEDA was trying to breed different mouse lines with specific mutations that they thought might affect chakra. Both SHIDOU and KINOSHITA were growing cells isolated from ninja in lab and monitoring what chakra they produced and how much, in case they could develop a new, easier research model that didn't require maintaining so many mice.

Karin had to stop and close her eyes for a bit. Her headache was clearing, but reading was still a strain. Besides, all of this was useless to her. These were basic experiments that most ninja villages had already done decades ago; they were all just too paranoid to share results with anyone, unless you were Orochimaru and you went around forcefully collecting interesting information from wayward shinobi.

Unless... cell culture with ninja-isolated cells usually didn't get very far, except in a few cases where the donor ninja had an interesting bloodline limit. Senju Hashirama's cells would do all sorts of stuff in isolation, for example. And then, Orochimaru had told her more than once with a sort of glee that Uzumaki cells had a lot of potential for such studies.

Oh my god, Karin thought. Was that why she was kidnapped, to be a cell donor? Or— she still couldn't remember why she'd been sent out here— was she supposed to infiltrate and report back, because Orochimaru would surely want to know what other scientists were doing?

Right, okay, Karin thinks, snapping open the rings of KINOSHITA'S lab notebook. This has to be what I'm supposed to be doing.

Maybe she even let herself get kidnapped! That seemed like something she would do, right? That played to her skills perfectly. She must have miscalculated something, but now she could get everything back on track. She can go home with all this stolen research and not mention losing all her memories to anyone. Orochimaru will probably even praise her!

Karin removes all the notes and protocols from the binders and assures herself that despite the mild amnesia, she's still a competent kunoichi.

She has some notes in a pile in front of her. Now she just needs to track down some biological samples. Some tubes of those cells lines, some DNA, maybe some mysterious floppy drives. The usual.

Once all the research material was piled up in front of her, Karin looked around the lab a bit. If she was going to press on exploring this place, she would need a few things.

There was a rack of white lab coats in one corner. A few of them were wrapped in plastic with the tags of a laundry service, indicating they'd be recently cleaned. She ripped the plastic off one and slipped it on. Lab coats generally had decent sized pockets, and she managed to bend the papers in half and shove them in one pocket. There: she was a little uneven, but she could carry things with both hands free.

I need a weapon, she decided. Seeing nothing obvious sitting around, she turned to the chemical cabinet. Most of the dangers here were things like "slightly increase your risk of cancer" or "slight irritant," which weren't going to deter anyone looking to seriously attack her...

She pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves before picking up a bottle of carbolic acid[1]. That could fuck you right up, she decided, if a pissed off kunoichi broke it over your head. She'd seen a fellow Oto-nin straight up die of organ failure after his lab partner freaked out and threw a bunch in his face. You know, normal human experiment turned traumatized lab assistant stuff... anyway, Karin needed this to complete her mission and not get demoted back to lab experiment. It was very important to her she was the one screaming and throwing chemicals and not the other way around.

This lab space, now that she'd looked around a bit, seemed to be more for processing whatever they were doing with the mice than the samples she thought she could feasibly bring back to Oto. She hastily went through a freezer and grabbed some DNA in test tubes, but she'd have to look elsewhere for the cell cultures.

[1] More commonly called phenol, but I picked "carbolic acid" to be more immediately evocative. Causes burns on contact with skin. Here's a case study of a poor person who suffered multiple organ failure after receiving phenol burns.

POLL GAME: ESCAPE THE LAB!

Part of Karin Week, June 14-20! Please check out & reblog our prompts post to find out how to participate and promote. And follow us @karinweek to keep playing ;)

»»PART 1 | PART 2««

RECAP: This is a choose your own adventure where Karin's actions are decided by poll! Karin woke up chained to a table in a room clearly meant for keeping experimental rodents. She easily escaped by knocking a guy out and has found a lab.

>Check out what actual experiments they were running!

Morbidly curious now, Karin pulled a binder labelled RYUZAKI towards herself. Whoever this Ryuzaki person was, they kept very neat and organized notes about how different feeding regimes affected mouse chakra output. Someone named UEDA was trying to breed different mouse lines with specific mutations that they thought might affect chakra. Both SHIDOU and KINOSHITA were growing cells isolated from ninja in lab and monitoring what chakra they produced and how much, in case they could develop a new, easier research model that didn't require maintaining so many mice.

Karin had to stop and close her eyes for a bit. Her headache was clearing, but reading was still a strain. Besides, all of this was useless to her. These were basic experiments that most ninja villages had already done decades ago; they were all just too paranoid to share results with anyone, unless you were Orochimaru and you went around forcefully collecting interesting information from wayward shinobi.

Unless... cell culture with ninja-isolated cells usually didn't get very far, except in a few cases where the donor ninja had an interesting bloodline limit. Senju Hashirama's cells would do all sorts of stuff in isolation, for example. And then, Orochimaru had told her more than once with a sort of glee that Uzumaki cells had a lot of potential for such studies.

Oh my god, Karin thought. Was that why she was kidnapped, to be a cell donor? Or— she still couldn't remember why she'd been sent out here— was she supposed to infiltrate and report back, because Orochimaru would surely want to know what other scientists were doing?

Right, okay, Karin thinks, snapping open the rings of KINOSHITA'S lab notebook. This has to be what I'm supposed to be doing.

Maybe she even let herself get kidnapped! That seemed like something she would do, right? That played to her skills perfectly. She must have miscalculated something, but now she could get everything back on track. She can go home with all this stolen research and not mention losing all her memories to anyone. Orochimaru will probably even praise her!

Karin removes all the notes and protocols from the binders and assures herself that despite the mild amnesia, she's still a competent kunoichi.

She has some notes in a pile in front of her. Now she just needs to track down some biological samples. Some tubes of those cells lines, some DNA, maybe some mysterious floppy drives. The usual.

POLL GAME: ESCAPE THE LAB!

Part of Karin Week, June 14-20! Please check out & reblog our prompts post to find out how to participate and promote. And follow us @karinweek to keep playing ;)

»»PART 1 | PART 2««

RECAP: This is a choose your own adventure where Karin's actions are decided by poll! Karin woke up chained to a table in a room clearly meant for keeping experimental rodents. She easily escaped by knocking a guy out and has found a lab.

>Check out what actual experiments they were running!

Morbidly curious now, Karin pulled a binder labelled RYUZAKI towards herself. Whoever this Ryuzaki person was, they kept very neat and organized notes about how different feeding regimes affected mouse chakra output. Someone named UEDA was trying to breed different mouse lines with specific mutations that they thought might affect chakra. Both SHIDOU and KINOSHITA were growing cells isolated from ninja in lab and monitoring what chakra they produced and how much, in case they could develop a new, easier research model that didn't require maintaining so many mice.

Karin had to stop and close her eyes for a bit. Her headache was clearing, but reading was still a strain. Besides, all of this was useless to her. These were basic experiments that most ninja villages had already done decades ago; they were all just too paranoid to share results with anyone, unless you were Orochimaru and you went around forcefully collecting interesting information from wayward shinobi.

Unless... cell culture with ninja-isolated cells usually didn't get very far, except in a few cases where the donor ninja had an interesting bloodline limit. Senju Hashirama's cells would do all sorts of stuff in isolation, for example. And then, Orochimaru had told her more than once with a sort of glee that Uzumaki cells had a lot of potential for such studies.

Oh my god, Karin thought. Was that why she was kidnapped, to be a cell donor? Or— she still couldn't remember why she'd been sent out here— was she supposed to infiltrate and report back, because Orochimaru would surely want to know what other scientists were doing?

Right, okay, Karin thinks, snapping open the rings of KINOSHITA'S lab notebook. This has to be what I'm supposed to be doing.

Maybe she even let herself get kidnapped! That seemed like something she would do, right? That played to her skills perfectly. She must have miscalculated something, but now she could get everything back on track. She can go home with all this stolen research and not mention losing all her memories to anyone. Orochimaru will probably even praise her!

Karin removes all the notes and protocols from the binders and assures herself that despite the mild amnesia, she's still a competent kunoichi.

She has some notes in a pile in front of her. Now she just needs to track down some biological samples. Some tubes of those cells lines, some DNA, maybe some mysterious floppy drives. The usual.

POLL GAME: ESCAPE THE LAB!

Part of Karin Week, June 14-20! Please check out & reblog our prompts post to find out how to participate and promote. And follow us @karinweek to keep playing ;)

»»PART 1 HERE««

>Pull some sneaky ninja shit.

Oh shit, Karin thought, standing immediately. The sudden motion made her head spin. The person in front of her was an older man in a white lab coat buttoned up to his neck. In his hands, he held a metal tray with a glass of clear liquid. The controlled nature of his chakra signature signalled ninja, but the average size meant he was either chump change or retired.

Normally, Karin thought she could take him. However, she was currently seeing double with a slight hint of the urge to vomit. Better to try a strategy that required absolutely no aim or, like, any kind of physical movement.

"Oh no!" Karin cried, clasping her own face and gasping in a girlish manner. "A big strong man! Whatever will I do?"

The man frowned in evident confusion and started to say something. Karin didn't really care what he had to say; the point was that he was paying attention to her over-the-top damsel in distress act and not the floor. Karin still wasn't confident enough with her chakra chains to use them in open combat, but she was good enough with them for this. One whipped across the floor, knocking the man right off his feet. The tray clattered tot he floor, and his head knocked against a rat cage. He slumped to the floor, unconscious. Karin stepped over his body and out the door, into a hallway. There were some more closed doors lining it, and a stairwell at the end.

Karin rattled all the door knobs as she walked down the hall at a brisk pace. She couldn't sense any human chakra nearby, except a bunch of people immediately above her. There must be other... whoever these people were... on the floor above her.

Definitely not going up, Karin decided, and one of the door knobs turned beneath her fingers. The door opened to a wide, dark room, and Karin felt along the wall for a light switch.

When she got the lights on, the room turned out to be a standard lab. Multiple lab benches with various pieces of equipment were strewn about: a biosafety cabinet in one corner and a fume hood in the other; a floor-to-ceiling cabinet of glassware; and a neighboring cabinet of chemicals. Karin clicked her tongue in annoyance. There were no windows to escape from. Maybe these guys kidnapped her because they also lived in a creepy basement lab, and they wanted to off Orochimaru's minions for copying them?

Karin pulled the door shut behind her and moved a rolling cart marked AUTOCLAVE in front of it. She locked the wheels. It wouldn't keep a anyone out, but it sure would slow them down long enough for her to... to do something...

Her head still hurt. This was such a dumb problem.

Karin eyed the lab benches in front of her. There was a waste beaker filled with an amber liquid that was almost definitely lysogeny broth, fresh enough it hadn't all evaporated away. The shaking incubator in the corner was making a jzzh-jzzh-jzzh noise that meant it was indeed currently shaking. Even if it was empty right now, this was an active lab.

Maybe there's fire escape info, Karin thought, making a beeline for a line of binders on one of the shelves over the work benches. Further down the bench was an ethanol lamp— a little glass ball with a wick— and then a bit more, a lighter. Karin shoved the lighter into her pocket and moved the lamp, filled with sloshing clear alcohol, in front of her, in case she needed to... throw an explosive cocktail at someone, or something...

The first notebook was labeled PROTOCOLS and she set it aside. She also ignored PURCHASE ORDERS and MOUSE ROOM. The second said SAFETY DATA, and Karin briefly flipped through in search of information on evacuation. However, it contained only information on presumably all the chemicals kept in the lab. Karin clicked her tongue in annoyance. The other binders were labeled with people's names and appeared to be experimental records.

Karin turned, scanning the walls by the door with her eyes. If she were a fire escape plan, where would she be...?

A lot of the smaller countries didn't have mandates for posted safety information, and this place appeared to be one of them. Or maybe she was in some sort of secret evil lab that just didn't obey the law? Both seemed plausible.

She tried the binders she'd set aside. PROTOCOLS was only experimental procedures. PURCHASE ORDERS contained records of lab supply orders and supported the hypothesis that the lab was active, and also that she was still in the same tiny country she remembered being sent to, but the addresses and names were otherwise meaningless to her. MOUSE ROOM revealed that the room she'd woken up in had once housed mice meant for... chakra related experiments... but they'd all been sacrificed recently after some sort of chakra-based disease broke out.

Well, I don't like that, Karin thought, squinting down at the note on the incident from just a few weeks ago.

»»Next part will be in a new post! Follow @karinweek for updates.

POLL GAME: ESCAPE THE LAB!

Part of Karin Week, June 14-20! Please check out & reblog our prompts post to find out how to participate and promote. And follow us @karinweek to keep playing ;)

»»PART 1 HERE««

>Pull some sneaky ninja shit.

Oh shit, Karin thought, standing immediately. The sudden motion made her head spin. The person in front of her was an older man in a white lab coat buttoned up to his neck. In his hands, he held a metal tray with a glass of clear liquid. The controlled nature of his chakra signature signalled ninja, but the average size meant he was either chump change or retired.

Normally, Karin thought she could take him. However, she was currently seeing double with a slight hint of the urge to vomit. Better to try a strategy that required absolutely no aim or, like, any kind of physical movement.

"Oh no!" Karin cried, clasping her own face and gasping in a girlish manner. "A big strong man! Whatever will I do?"

The man frowned in evident confusion and started to say something. Karin didn't really care what he had to say; the point was that he was paying attention to her over-the-top damsel in distress act and not the floor. Karin still wasn't confident enough with her chakra chains to use them in open combat, but she was good enough with them for this. One whipped across the floor, knocking the man right off his feet. The tray clattered tot he floor, and his head knocked against a rat cage. He slumped to the floor, unconscious. Karin stepped over his body and out the door, into a hallway. There were some more closed doors lining it, and a stairwell at the end.

Karin rattled all the door knobs as she walked down the hall at a brisk pace. She couldn't sense any human chakra nearby, except a bunch of people immediately above her. There must be other... whoever these people were... on the floor above her.

Definitely not going up, Karin decided, and one of the door knobs turned beneath her fingers. The door opened to a wide, dark room, and Karin felt along the wall for a light switch.

When she got the lights on, the room turned out to be a standard lab. Multiple lab benches with various pieces of equipment were strewn about: a biosafety cabinet in one corner and a fume hood in the other; a floor-to-ceiling cabinet of glassware; and a neighboring cabinet of chemicals. Karin clicked her tongue in annoyance. There were no windows to escape from. Maybe these guys kidnapped her because they also lived in a creepy basement lab, and they wanted to off Orochimaru's minions for copying them?

POLL GAME: ESCAPE THE LAB!

Part of Karin Week! Please check out & reblog our prompts post to find out how to participate and promote. And follow us @karinweek to keep playing ;)

Karin woke up on a hard metal surface, one hand held firmly in place by the cold band of a handcuff. Groggily, she thought, This has got to stop happening to me.

Her head hurt. She wasn't sure how she'd ended up here. She'd been on a mission, she thought. A favor to Orochimaru while he dealt with his weird clone baby. She couldn't quite remember the details, just that he'd been joking about making her pay rent instead of freeloading in post-war Sound, and that Orochimaru's "jokes" often abruptly turned into extremely cruel reality. Also... she'd just been kind of bored lately.

Had she met someone nefarious on this "mission"? Where was she? How had she gotten here? Why was she chained up?

Karin jerked her arm, and the chain attached the handcuff rattled along something metallic, making an embarrassingly loud noise for a ninja. The sound made the throbbing in her head increase, but she could still think coherently. Likely she was on a table or raised platform, and the chain was attached to the table's leg.

Amateur hour, Karin thought, then rolled right off the table. This did not help her headache at all, and she landed clumsily on her face, the chain clattering around her. On the bright side, she had been on a table, and she was able to lift it slightly with one arm and slip the other end of the chain free. As she did this, she thought, My captors must not have experience restraining anyone at all. Even a civilian could do this.

Karin stood, leaning on the table to help her. The room only had dim emergency lights, but it was very clearly lined with empty cages. Tiny empty cages, the kind they used to keep lab rats in. The room smelled pristine and clean. Next to the table was a a handful of machinery and rolling stables, clearly set up as some sort of surgical suite.

What the fuck? Karin wondered.

Karin crouched next to the table, both hands gripping it to keep herself upright. She made herself take deep, steady breaths, and that kept her headache marginally in check.

She couldn't remember the events leading up to this or where she was or even who these people could be, but her captors seemed to be fairly incompetent. This was bad, but it wasn't that bad. She could get out of this, easy.

Karin closed her eyes, and concentrated inward. She focused on the beat of her heart and the flow of her chakra. She'd probably been poisoned, at the very least. But it didn't seem like she had any new bites, or that anyone had stolen her blood, nor did she have the telltale injuries of a fight lost. She rolled up her sleeves to check major blood vessels just in case she'd been injected with something, but there was no evidence of anything except mild poisoning and imprisonment.

Then why capture me? she thought. Information, maybe? Some sort of deeply misguided plan to ransom her to Orochimaru?

Karin spent so much attention debating this, that she didn't realize someone was approaching until they'd already opened to the door to her room.

(The next part will be in a new post to save space! Follow @karinweek to see it first. And check out our promo post for Karin Week!)

POLL GAME: ESCAPE THE LAB!

Part of Karin Week! Please check out & reblog our prompts post to find out how to participate and promote. And follow us @karinweek to keep playing ;)

Karin woke up on a hard metal surface, one hand held firmly in place by the cold band of a handcuff. Groggily, she thought, This has got to stop happening to me.

Her head hurt. She wasn't sure how she'd ended up here. She'd been on a mission, she thought. A favor to Orochimaru while he dealt with his weird clone baby. She couldn't quite remember the details, just that he'd been joking about making her pay rent instead of freeloading in post-war Sound, and that Orochimaru's "jokes" often abruptly turned into extremely cruel reality. Also... she'd just been kind of bored lately.

Had she met someone nefarious on this "mission"? Where was she? How had she gotten here? Why was she chained up?

Karin jerked her arm, and the chain attached the handcuff rattled along something metallic, making an embarrassingly loud noise for a ninja. The sound made the throbbing in her head increase, but she could still think coherently. Likely she was on a table or raised platform, and the chain was attached to the table's leg.

Amateur hour, Karin thought, then rolled right off the table. This did not help her headache at all, and she landed clumsily on her face, the chain clattering around her. On the bright side, she had been on a table, and she was able to lift it slightly with one arm and slip the other end of the chain free. As she did this, she thought, My captors must not have experience restraining anyone at all. Even a civilian could do this.

Karin stood, leaning on the table to help her. The room only had dim emergency lights, but it was very clearly lined with empty cages. Tiny empty cages, the kind they used to keep lab rats in. The room smelled pristine and clean. Next to the table was a a handful of machinery and rolling stables, clearly set up as some sort of surgical suite.

What the fuck? Karin wondered.

Get ready for KARIN WEEK!

It's coming-- a week to celebrate the one and only Uzumaki Karin! Join us by creating cool Karin content and sharing it June 14-June 20! Our official (but optional) 2026 prompts are below to help get your creative juices flowing. Each day has one general prompt, one AU prompt, and one "shippy" prompt, but feel free to interpret however you wish~ Post any day June 14-20 and tag us @karinweek. Also check out our FAQs, rules, and AO3 collection!

June 14: Sensor || Time Travel/Time Loop || Rarepair June 15: Bite || Canon Divergence || Fake Dating June 16: Interrogation || Modern AU || Fatal Attraction June 17: Combat || Sci-Fi || Hanahaki June 18: Hunter/Hunted || Crossover || Trapped Together June 19: Family || Roleswap || Enemies/Rivals to Lovers June 20🎂: Redheads Have More Fun || Fantasy || Soulmates