Ibiki Morino had seen all kinds of shinobi.
The arrogant ones who thought they were untouchable. The nervous ones who second-guessed every decision. The calculating ones who tried to outmaneuver the system. The cocky, the clever, the cowards—he had dealt with them all.
So when the genin sat down, pencils scratching against paper, eyes flicking around to cheat without getting caught, he wasn't surprised. This was standard procedure.
But then his eyes landed on one particular candidate.
Naruto Uzumaki.
Ibiki knew the name.
Everyone did, at this point.
It wasn't just because of his status as the Kyuubi's jinchūriki—though that alone had been enough to put him under constant surveillance since the day he was born. No, this was different.
The Land of Waves.
Gatō's death.
The bodies.
Naruto hadn't just won a battle—he had wiped out an entire criminal operation. There had been no survivors. No mercy. Just silence and corpses left in his wake. The Great Naruto Bridge stood as proof of what had happened.
And yet, the boy in question… looked half-asleep.
Ibiki's sharp eyes took in every detail.
Naruto sat at his desk, one hand lazily twirling his pencil, the other supporting his cheek. His glowing sapphire eyes were dull with boredom, half-lidded as if he wasn't taking any of this seriously. His short, messy red hair swayed slightly every time he exhaled.
At first glance, he looked like the least dangerous person in the room.
But Ibiki had spent years interrogating some of the worst people to ever exist. He knew how to read people.
And Naruto Uzumaki was not harmless.
Not with that stillness. That utter, predatory calm.
It wasn't the fidgety kind of stillness that nervous people had. It wasn't the rigid discipline of a trained soldier, either.
It was the stillness of a hunting animal.
Languid. Relaxed. Like he didn't see any threats in this room, so he didn't need to move.
Ibiki saw it for what it was immediately.
This kid was an apex predator, but not in the way Zabuza had been. Zabuza was a killer, trained and disciplined, methodical in his approach to slaughter. He had goals, ambitions. He fought for money, for survival, for his dreams.
Naruto… was something else entirely.
Naruto didn't fight because he wanted to.
He fought because he had to.
There was no ambition in those glowing eyes. No hunger for power or dominance.
Just instinct.
Pure, unfiltered instinct.
And that was what made him terrifying.
Because it meant he could kill without hesitation and not feel anything about it. Not guilt, not regret, not pride. It was just something he did. Like breathing. Like blinking. Like existing.
Ibiki had tortured men like that before. The kind who didn't break under pain or pressure. The kind who didn't even react when knives carved into their skin because their brains simply didn't register it as suffering.
And now, there was a child sitting in his exam room with that same detached expression, tapping his pencil like he wasn't sitting in a den full of desperate, nervous, ambitious shinobi who would gladly kill him for a promotion.
Ibiki almost wanted to laugh.
Instead, he kept watching.
Naruto reached for his question paper, eyes flicking over the problems.
His expression didn't change.
Ibiki knew the questions were designed to be impossible for an average genin. The whole point was to force them to cheat, to test their ability to gather intel under pressure.
But Naruto?
Naruto grabbed his pencil and started writing.
No hesitation. No pausing to think. Just short, precise answers written in the most efficient way possible.
Ibiki's eyebrow twitched.
He was finishing the exam.
Not struggling. Not cheating. Not breaking under the pressure.
Just... doing it.
It was unnatural.
This was a boy who had barely passed the academy. A boy whose records showed abysmal grades, failed tests, and below-average intelligence scores. And yet, here he was, breezing through a test meant to break even the most competent genin.
Ibiki's mind immediately reeled back to the reports.
Mizuki.
The sabotages.
The fake test scores.
The intentional suppression of his education.
Ah.
So that was it.
Naruto wasn't dumb. He had just been deliberately kept dumb.
But something had changed.
Ibiki had heard the rumors, but he hadn't paid much attention to them before now. There were whispers about how Naruto had suddenly understood things that he shouldn't have.
Mathematics. Strategy. Physics.
It was as if something had woken up inside him.
And now, watching him finish the test in record time before setting his pencil down and closing his eyes as if he had better things to do—Ibiki realized that the rumors were true.
This was something else.
The boy didn't fidget. Didn't sneak glances at anyone else's paper. Didn't react when the other genin around him whispered and struggled.
He simply sat there, waiting.
As if nothing about this situation was worth his full attention.
Ibiki exhaled slowly, forcing himself to relax. He had interrogated monsters before. Naruto Uzumaki wasn't a monster.
But he also wasn't a normal boy.
He was something in between.
Something far more unpredictable.
Ibiki made a mental note to keep an eye on him.
This exam wasn't just about testing genin.
It was about finding the ones who would be dangerous. The ones who would shake the system. The ones who would either become its greatest assets… or its greatest threats.
Naruto Uzumaki, Ibiki decided, was both.