The soft hum of the fluorest lights overhead only seemed to amplify Naruto’s growing sense of doom. Rows of his peers sat hunched over their desks, brows furrowed in tration as though they were crag the secrets of the universe. Meanwhile, Naruto sat as rigid as a stoatue, gripping his pencil so tightly it might have snapped.

  The exam paper in front of him looked like it had been scribbled in an alien nguage. Squiggly lines masqueraded as math equations, and word problems sounded like riddles cocted by some a cryptic sage who hated humanity.

  "Calcute the trajectory of a kunai thrown at a speed of X, fact in wiand the rotational velocity of the Earth," one question read.

  Naruto bli it, his jaw sck. "Kunai what-now? Wiance? How is that even a thing?"

  The more he read, the faster his head spun. In the seat beside him, Sakura scribbled away furiously, her movements sharp and effit. Naruto could practically see the gears turning in her brain, firing off answers like a well-oiled mae. He swallowed hard. Even Sasuke, sitting a row ahead, looked unfazed, as if he was born knowing the answers.

  Naruto slumped forward, his forehead smag gently against the desk with a dull *thud*. “This is a trap. A cruel, cruel trap. Ninja exams aren’t supposed to have SAT-level math!” (Wait, how did Naruto know SAT?)He sat back up, frantiow. His gaze flicked around the room, looking for a way—any way—to save himself. Could he sneak a peek at someone else’s paper? *No, bad idea*. He’d get caught faster than he could say “ramen.” Could he bluff? Scribble random numbers and hope for the best? *Nope.*

  A bead of sweat traced its way down his temple as a proctor’s shadow loomed nearby, arms folded and eyes sharp like an eagle spotting prey. Naruto pstered on an i smile, his pencil h hesitantly over the page. *Aatural, aatural,* he thought.

  “Psst… what’s the ao hree?” he whispered out of the er of his mouth.

  The kid in the row jumped slightly, then scowled at Naruto as if he’d suggested a crime punishable by life impriso. Naruto sank deeper into his seat. *Well, so much for teamwork.*

  With every passing sed, the test paper seemed to expand in size, looming like a giant monster ready to swallow him whole. The clock ticked ominously in the background, eaent of the sed hand like a taunt.

  Tick. “You’re failing.” Tick. “You’re definitely failing.” Tick. “Say goodbye to being Hokage.”

  “Argh!” Naruto groaned, spping both hands on his cheeks. The sound echoed faintly in the quiet room, and every head turo look at him.

  The proctor narrowed his eyes. “Is there a problem, didate?”

  Naruto froze, wide-eyed like a deer caught in headlights. “Uh... nope! No problem! Just... really passionate about these questions!”

  The proctor raised an eyebrow but walked on.

  As the other didates resumed their work, Naruto let out a sigh of despair and looked down at his exam again. Maybe he could draw a little stick-figure battle instead of answering number five. At least then the paper wouldn’t be bnk.

  “Being Hokage’s gonna take more than this dumb test anyway,” he muttered defiantly, his resolve hardening—just as his stomach let out an obnoxiously loud growl.

  If he couldn’t pass the test, he’d at least ace lunch. *Ramen would never betray him.

  ---Xero smirked to himself as he shaded in the devil horns, his movements slow and deliberate, as if he were an artist at work rather than a hopeless exam didate. His caricature of Ibiki Morino grew more absurd with each passing sed—tiny fangs poked from the proctor’s scowling mouth, and in his cwed hands, he now held a pitchfork. If nothing else, Xero figured he might as well go out of this exam with a masterpiece.

  He gnced up, sing the room to see if aiced his btant disregard for the test. Rows of didates sat hunched over their papers, faces screwed up in grim determination. Occasionally, someone would shift nervously, side-eyeing their peers as though the answers might magically float from one sheet to the .

  Meanwhile, Ibiki’s t figure stalked the aisles, his sharp gaze like a hawk searg for prey. Every time his boots hit the floor, a low *thud* echoed, striking fear into the hearts of the test-takers. For a moment, Xero paused mid-doodle, gng at the real Ibiki, who happeo be gring suspiciously at a trembling student fumbling with their eraser.

  Xero snorted under his breath. *“Yeah, I got him spot on.”*

  With a quick flourish, he added tiny fmes around Ibiki’s cartoonish frame. Then, just for fun, he scrawled the words “Exam Overlord” underh, plete with lightning bolts shooting from the letters.

  *“Maybe I should bee a ninja-artist instead,”* Xero thought wryly, admiring his own handiwork.

  But then he remembered Kuro’s advice again: *“Just pretend to write.”*

  Xero g the clock. He still had plenty of time to kill—too much, actually. He didn’t dare sit still and look idle; that was just asking for trouble. With a dramatic sigh, he flipped his paper to a new page and began scrawling random nonsense. Lines of illegible scribbles filled the space where answers should have gone, looping and swirling like some cryptiguage from a forbidden scroll. He even threw in the occasional fake number, pg decimals and fras where no saion would require them.

  “2x + Y = Ninjas,” he wrote proudly, underlining it twice.

  After a moment, he started adding arrows and diagrams, none of which ected or made sense. A crude stick-figure ninja tossing kunai appeared o a graph that he titled, “Success Probability: 0%.”

  His shoulders shook with silent ughter. *If I ’t pass, I’ll fuse whrades this into submission.*

  The proctor’s shadow suddenly loomed over him, and Xero froze, his pencil h mid-air. He turned his head ever so slightly to see Ibiki standing right behind him, arms crossed and face as unreadable as ever.

  Xero’s pulse quied, but he forced himself to look casual. Slowly, he dragged his pencil across the page, drawing what looked like a very serious and deliberate *squiggle.* He even furrowed his brow, pretending to analyze it as though the fate of the world hinged on his stroke.

  Ibiki’s gaze lingered on him for a painfully long moment, and Xero could feel sweat beading at the back of his neck. Finally, Ibiki grunted and moved on to terrorize another poor soul.