Grass—why'd that hand go up again?
It wasn't just Ibiki who thought so. Everyone else's eyes went wide too.
They'd all just passed the exam, hadn't they?!
After the earlier free-for-all, most people were still shaken from barely scraping through.
Nobody wanted any more curveballs.
Take Temari, for example.
In the end, what she'd gotten from Kankuro was no cheat sheet at all. While she hadn't turned in a completely blank paper, she genuinely hadn't felt confident about her chances.
[How'd everyone suddenly pass?]
[Long-running anime formula, duh]
[No way the whole show ends at the first exam]
[I think it was set up for Naruto—he's still got a blank sheet]
[Naruto didn't realize Hanabi gave him the answers. Can't help that]
[Yeah. The production team probably didn't want the protagonist passing through cheating]
[So they just tacked on a final question?]
[Grass, what a trash rule]
[It had to be this way for the exam to work]
[Protagonist-exclusive rules, hahahaha]
[I hate this kind of special treatment for protagonists]
"Are you really not going to screen out another round based on scores?" Hanabi asked.
"Nope," Ibiki said. "The exam's objective has been achieved."
Ibiki decided he could not let Hanabi keep stirring things up.
What mattered now was his part.
"The earlier questions tested everyone's intelligence-gathering ability," Ibiki explained. "The rules of this exam were hinting at it from the very start. These questions were never at a level Genin could solve—in other words, this was an exam built on the premise of cheating."
"However—" Ibiki unwrapped his headband, revealing a scalp covered in scars from torture. Then he continued, "Sometimes, intelligence is something you must risk your life to obtain. Wrong intelligence leads to even greater losses—even catastrophic consequences for your comrades and your village. Remember that."
Ibiki gave a brief summary of the exam's purpose.
"But the final question was the true objective and essence of the test. Suppose you've become Chūnin and you're leading a squad on an intelligence-acquisition mission. You know nothing about the enemy—there may even be mortal danger. Can you refuse the mission because of that risk? The answer is no."
"...In moments like those, what's needed is courage. That is the quality a Chūnin squad leader must possess..."
More than explaining, Ibiki was delivering a brief lecture to the room.
Ignoring Hanabi was the right call. Otherwise, she'd have had him by the nose again.
"Congratulations. You've all passed the First Exam..."
And just then, a shadow came hurtling in from outside.
A black banner unfurled, completely blocking Ibiki from view.
The text on it was simple: "Second Exam Proctor Anko Mitarashi Has Arrived."
Dramatic, over-the-top, and very much in Naruto's style.
"Now's not the time to be celebrating! All right, I'm the proctor for the Second Exam—Anko Mitarashi! Let's go, everyone, follow me~"
Anko Mitarashi, clad head-to-toe in a mesh bodysuit, stood before them all.
Though by the Boruto era, Anko had gone from "red bean" to "glutinous rice ball," right now she was still very much in her prime.
The danmaku surged. Unfortunately, there was no reward attached to this—it wasn't closely tied to any plot change Hanabi had caused.
"Take a look at the atmosphere in here."
Ibiki's voice drifted out from behind the banner, dripping with exhaustion.
"Er."
Anko's mouth twitched.
"Hmm... sixty people. Twenty teams. But no worries—I'll cut the team count down to single digits." Anko surveyed the remaining examinees.
Only sixty people—eighteen fewer than the original story.
In the First Exam that Hanabi had thoroughly warped, the latter half had practically turned into a battle royale.
If Ibiki hadn't called a halt to the test, the exam hall might well have been a bloodbath by now.
"Single digits..."
Anko's words plunged the examinees back into silence.
"Thrilling, isn't it? I'll explain the details tomorrow at a different location. As for the meeting time and requirements, ask your jōnin. That's all—dismissed!"
After being dismissed, Hanabi and the others finally left the classroom, leaving only the empty room behind. Ibiki began collecting the exam papers.
"Hm?"
Something felt off.
It was a blank paper. A blank paper without even a name on it.
Just moments ago, there had been writing on it—but the text seemed to fade with the setting sun, vanishing right before his eyes.
The ink... had disappeared.
And that was when Ibiki recalled Hanabi's final raised hand. He immediately gave the blank sheet a slight tear.
"The texture of this paper—it's wrong." The paper looked no different from standard exam paper, but the sensation when torn was subtly different.
Yet these exam papers had been on his person since that afternoon.
In other words, this paper had been swapped before the exam even started.
"Papers with the correct answers... only three... wait, two?"
Only two sheets had actually been filled in.
The audacity was off the charts—the handwriting was identical, as if photocopied. Only the names differed.
"So if there hadn't been a final question..."
Without the final question and his subsequent declaration that everyone passed, the entire Chūnin Exam would have ended right there.
Ibiki's expression started out severe, but by the end, he was laughing.
"Everything she did during the exam—all of it was misdirection. Misdirecting me, keeping me from noticing the exam papers themselves..."
She'd been meticulous. Or rather, she'd had multiple plans running simultaneously.
Spotting the paper swap was already difficult enough. On top of that, all the "performances" outside had forced everyone to focus on the examinees themselves.
Smokescreens. Every last one of them was a smokescreen.
"A ninja must see through the scheme within the scheme... indeed."
Now, everything was clear.
If he'd actually listened to her suggestion to screen by scores, then aside from Team Seven... every single examinee would have been disqualified.
Sure, they'd all answered the final question correctly, giving them at least one fallback point. But every paper was blank—not even a name on them.
"Though she probably didn't predict I'd end the exam this way. And one member of her team didn't even... hm?"
There was one more blank paper.
But this one was different from the rest—because this paper had a name on it. That meant this sheet could still get the fallback point from the final question.
—Uzumaki Naruto.
Glaring. And brazen.
Great. His blood pressure was through the roof.
[Grass, I thought the rules existed to protect the protagonist, but turns out the rules existed to protect the supporting cast 2333]
[Turns out I played myself]
[Ibiki Morino—you protected the Chūnin Exams!]
[Shock: the exam arc nearly got speedrun, I'm dying]
[I'm such a fool. I thought Hanabi would only steal exam papers. I never imagined she'd actually swap them out]
[Hanabi's a real boss—ruthless, and not one for words]
[TOTAL. DISQUALIFICATION.]
Though Hanabi wasn't even in the room anymore, this round had earned her a huge boost in popularity and a wave of new fans...