"That troublesome woman..."
The moment Shikamaru saw Hanabi start asking questions, he knew things were about to go sideways.
"Achoo—achoo—achoo—"
"Akamaru, what's wrong with you?"
The first one to run into trouble was Akamaru.
Her opening move struck her own allies first.
Among the nine rookies, the very first to get hit was Kiba Inuzuka.
His dog Akamaru had been perched on top of Kiba's head the whole time, glancing around in every direction—in reality, surveying the answers on nearby exams.
But starting just a moment ago, something had gone wrong.
Akamaru kept sneezing nonstop, making it impossible to relay any information.
"Insecticide...?"
Meanwhile, Shino Aburame had also sensed that something was off.
After his Parasitic Destruction Insects left his body, they experienced obvious discomfort.
There was a trace of insecticide in the air.
"...She actually went through with it."
Sasuke could feel it too.
He himself was perfectly fine, of course. After swapping out his exam paper, Sasuke was now the most relaxed person in the room.
And precisely because of that, Sasuke had the luxury of observing exactly what Hanabi was doing.
On Team Guy's side, Neji was holding up fine, but Rock Lee and Tenten were starting to flounder.
Tenten had rigged the ceiling with mirrors, using reflections to copy other examinees' answer sheets.
But now those mirrors had been painted black, and scrawled across them was a message:
"This is to save you from getting caught cheating. No need to thank me~ Signed, a kind passerby."
Lee and Tenten broke into cold sweats.
"Hm...?"
Gaara's left hand pressed against his eye. His left eye's field of vision was linked to an eye made of sand—one he'd sent drifting through the exam hall to find answer sheets and copy them.
But Gaara discovered that every single exam paper he could see displayed the same thing—and it wasn't answers.
"You're watching, aren't you?"
A single, simple sentence.
Every exam paper Gaara's sand eye could find had the same words written on it: "You're watching, aren't you?"
"If it's not a problem with the exam papers, then someone's interfering with my jutsu... They're asking for it."
Gaara's mind immediately went to Hanabi.
No surprise there—she'd just made such a spectacle of herself moments ago.
"In that case..."
Gaara cracked a sinister smile.
If they weren't going to let him pass, then nobody else needed to pass either.
After all, as long as the proctors didn't catch him, it should be fine, right?
So Gaara curled a finger.
"Uwah!"
A slip of paper fell from a nearby examinee's person.
Ibiki Morino immediately sent a kunai thudding into the desk in front of the examinee. "Sloppy cheating. That's five strikes."
The examinee's face went ashen.
That note was intelligence passed along from a teammate. It should have been fine—but just moments ago, a bit of sand had gotten into his eyes, and his hands had slipped.
"Gaara's making his move too?"
The other two Sand ninja noticed what was happening.
"Yeah—eliminating other examinees is a valid strategy too. As long as he doesn't get caught, right...?"
Kankuro wore a smile of total confidence.
Because the "proctor" sitting next to him wasn't actually a Konoha examiner—it was one of Kankuro's puppets.
A puppet disguised as a fake proctor. And none of the real proctors seemed to have noticed.
"So all I have to do is make a few of these people slip up, and that's that."
Clatter—
Out of nowhere, a mirror fell from above and landed right in front of a Rain ninja.
The Rain ninja stared at the mirror in shock.
"Th-that's not mine! Someone's framing me!"
"Not bad." Tenten smiled.
Once she'd realized her cheating method was compromised, she'd immediately switched strategies.
She'd already managed to copy answers for a few questions earlier, after all.
Her score would be low, but Neji had Byakugan's piercing sight—a perfect score was no issue for him.
So, since the ninja tools she'd prepared for cheating were now useless... repurposing them to frame and eliminate other examinees worked out just fine.
"That Hyuga girl... She's completely changed the atmosphere of the entire exam hall..."
Ibiki Morino furrowed his brow.
What had started as an intelligence war had now devolved into a cutthroat free-for-all.
Hanabi's methods of interference were subtle. But the shock displayed by those she'd interfered with was anything but.
And once Hanabi started, others followed suit.
The one who set the precedent lit the fuse for everyone else.
Since they'd already been sabotaged and couldn't score high themselves, dragging everyone else down was a perfectly valid strategy.
Hanabi had single-handedly reshaped the entire exam hall's dynamic.
Ibiki's blood pressure was spiking, but he didn't intervene.
One of the First Exam's core objectives was testing intelligence-gathering ability.
And in the war of intelligence, reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance, interference and counter-interference, misdirection and counter-misdirection—all of it was necessary.
Denying the enemy access to correct intelligence was itself a form of combat.
It wasn't quite what he'd designed, but at least the purpose hadn't changed. That should be a good thing, right...?
"Hm?"
Suddenly, something occurred to Ibiki.
He stepped down from the podium, appearing to patrol the exam hall.
Then he walked up to a particular examinee. The examinee gave Ibiki a nod.
This wasn't an ordinary test-taker. This was a Chūnin that Ibiki had planted among the students from the very beginning—one who held the correct answers.
In other words, everyone else was supposed to "copy" from them.
This was, in a way, also a hint.
Because the exam was structured in three-person teams, but there were only two planted Chūnin. That meant the total headcount in the room wasn't evenly divisible by three—there were one or two extras. And those extras were obviously the planted operatives.
The planted Chūnin was still answering questions with complete confidence.
But after glancing at the Chūnin's paper, Ibiki knew it was already too late.
The answers his planted Chūnin had written on the exam... were every last one of them wrong.
Yes—Hanabi had indeed cast a genjutsu. But her target wasn't the Genin. It was the Chūnin operatives Ibiki had planted.
Something stiffened.
His fists. His fists stiffened.
"..." Ibiki said nothing, then returned to the podium.
Fortunately, they hadn't finished writing their answers yet, so Ibiki discreetly dispelled the genjutsu on both of them.
Good thing he'd caught it in time. Otherwise, every examinee's answers would've been thrown completely off course.
"Sir, I need to use the restroom."
Kankuro was still riding high on confidence. After having his puppet observe every correct answer, he felt assured.
Because no one had noticed the fake proctor.
Having the fake proctor escort him to the restroom, Kankuro was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing.
Success.
The "restroom break" was really just an excuse to prepare a cheat sheet.
Unlike everyone else who'd been disrupted, he'd had his puppet disguised as a proctor, so he'd been completely unaffected.
After preparing his notes, Kankuro returned to the classroom and discreetly slipped the paper to Temari.
Temari, equally discreet, unfolded the note Kankuro had given her.
Then her face went blank.
Because written on it was a single sentence:
"You—no cheating allowed!"