Margaret spent the next few minutes dissecting the philosophy of the first round. She drilled into the Genin how crucial it was to withhold information from the enemy.
Once she was satisfied that the reality of their profession had settled in, she marched the surviving teams out of the academy and straight to the Leaf Village stadium.
The massive arena was entirely empty. There were no spectators in the high stands, no dignitaries sitting in the Kage box, and no banners flying. Just the Genin clustered in the center of the dirt floor.
It almost felt like this next round was going to be an all-out battle royal or something.
"So what's this part about?" Kaiyo asked, impatient.
Margaret simply smirked. "You'll see…" Then her chakra surged as she clasped her hands together. "Wood style: deep forest bloom!"
The ground ruptured with wooden branches tearing through the stadium floor like massive serpents. The wood then interlocked and sprouted bulbous flowers. Everyone gasped as the petals opened, causing a cloud of yellow pollen to rise all the way to the top of the stadium walls.
The airborne narcotic was an instant shutdown of the nervous system. Genin dropped to the dirt in droves. Even Kaiyo and Shigeru collapsed without making a single sound.
Rin fell to her knees as the toxin invaded her lungs, making her vision blurry. Before the world went entirely black, she managed to focus her fading gaze on the center of the brush just to see the one Genin still standing. Naruto.
The boy held his breath before summoning a shadow clone to help him form a Rasengan, clearly intending to use the spiraling chakra to blow the toxic cloud away.
Seeing this, Margaret caused a tendril to shoot from the brush and pierce the clone. Then she immediately entrapped the real Naruto.
"Sorry about this," she said, charging forward with a chakra-enhanced fist.
Bang!
A brutal punch landed directly into his gut, knocking the breath and consciousness right out of him.
Rin finally hit the dirt as the darkness took her completely.
Hundreds of miles away, Arthur narrowed his eyes to process the sensory feed.
It was clear to him that Margaret had not neglected her physical conditioning. To effortlessly suppress the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki—and by extension, the Eight-Tails Jinchūriki, Fū—spoke volumes about her raw power.
Arthur watched the real mechanism of the exam unfold while the Genin slept on the dirt. Elite shinobi from the Leaf and Sand descended and performed flawless Transformation techniques.
Now he understood the game perfectly.
When the Genin finally began to stir after groaning and wiping the dust from their clothes, they found their squads had grown. They were no longer three-man cells. There were four.
Team Shira stared in quiet alarm at two identical Shiras. Team 8 looked in bewilderment at two towering Jugos. Team 10 was trapped with two glaring Inos. Even Rin was perplexed upon seeing herself.
The imposters were mirror images, right down to the scuff marks on their bodies.
Margaret stood high above them on the stadium wall to announce, "I like to call this round the Doppelgänger Dilemma!"
She then laid out the parameters of the round, explaining that each team harboured a perfect imposter mimicking one of their teammates. They had exactly thirty minutes to figure out who the fake was and bind them using a specialized sealing tag.
Shigeru glanced down and found the paper tag tucked securely into his waist pouch—clearly planted there while he was unconscious.
Margaret finished by warning them of the consequences: if a team tagged their real comrade, they failed. And if the clock ran out, they failed.
Sakura scanned the two Karins standing next to Naruto. She and Naruto had only known Karin for months, but they'd been so well acquainted that they knew her habits and her attitude.
"This'll be a piece of cake!" Sakura boasted.
"Ya really think so, huh?" Margaret asked her.
"What do you mean?" Sakura wondered, feeling her confidence shatter.
"Ya remember that personality test you all took? While you all slept, your imposters memorized every single thing you wrote on those papers."
Naruto let out a low, knowing chuckle. If he hadn't lied on every single question during the first round, these imposter operatives would have likely chosen to impersonate him instead.
Across the dirt, Team 8 tried to bypass the psychological warfare entirely as Shino instructed Hinata to simply activate her Byakugan. But when she had, she gasped.
The chakra signatures were absolutely identical!
Margaret's voice echoed with mockery. "Oh come on, guys. Ya didn't really think we'd let your Kekkei Genkai slip by us now, did ya?"
Team 8 stood embarrassed. Clearly Margaret knew what she was doing.
Meanwhile, Arthur deduced the core mechanic of the test immediately.
Since visual jutsu was useless, the only way to survive was by microscopic interrogation. The imposters would never break character, so the Genin had to rely on subtle tells such as obscure shared memories, emotional triggers, or unique physical habits—just to expose the fake.
The first round was meant to teach them deception. This round was meant to teach them paranoia.
Arthur felt a dark amusement settle over him in the throne room. He asked himself why Margaret, a girl from another world with access to infinite fictional trials, would choose this specific test over a standard combat bracket.
The answer was simple. It was because of him.
Arthur's mass infiltration had terrified the global leadership. He had walked among them as the politician John, fought alongside them as the mercenary Hoshikaze, feigned piety as the monk Ryugetsu, and infiltrated the Akatsuki as the cunning Kaito.
Evidently, he had proven that their physical barriers were useless and their trust was a fatal liability.
All of his actions had truly scared the living crap out of everyone.
This exam was the direct result of his actions.
Panic began to thin the herd as the round started.
In the center of the arena, a confident Genin from a minor village slapped his sealing tag onto his teammate's chest. "Ha! This test was too easy!" His arrogant smile vanished when a puff of white smoke erupted from the other teammate standing next him, revealing the true imposter.
"You're out!" Margaret yelled.
The boy stammered apologies to his ruined squad as the proctors escorted them off the dirt.
Team Guy was trapped in a similar nightmare of mimicry.
"Neji!" Tenten urged. "Just use your Byakugan. There's no way the imposter can copy that."
"That is a good idea!" Lee encouraged.
In response, both Nejis raised their hands in the exact same seal as the veins simultaneously bulged around their eyes. Both Lee and Tenten gasped.
"Seems like the village's used someone from my clan for this one," a Neji said.
"An interesting deduction," the other argued, "but you meant to say my clan."
Lee and Tenten were entirely lost, unable to tell the prodigies apart.
Team 10 fared no better.
Chōji stood between the two Inos, sweating nervously as he grilled them. "What's your mother's name?!"
"Inoya!" both Inos snapped in perfect unison.
"What does Yamanaka mean?!"
"Among the mountains!"
The translation was mirrored flawlessly. So Chōji hasted another question, "What does Sakura like to call you?!"
"Ino-pig-chan!"
One Ino turned to the other, genuinely outraged. "How did you know that?!"
"What do you mean?" the other demanded. "I should be asking you that!"
Shikamaru watched the identical twins bicker, rubbing the back of his neck with a deep sigh. "What a drag. We're going nowhere with this."
Elsewhere in the stadium, Naruto and Sakura circled the two Karins.
They eyed the redheads up and down by scrutinizing the exact placement of their glasses, the scuffs on their boots, and the way they held their shoulders.
The two Karins kept their arms crossed in perfect synchronization.
"Can you hurry this up?" one complained.
"Yeah, I'm starting to feel really uncomfortable," the other added.
"Don't copy me!"
"You're the one copying me!"
Their voices overlapped as they accused the other of being the copycat.
When Naruto and Sakura finished their visual inspection, they exchanged a grim look. The doppelgänger was flawless. Not a single detail of Karin's physical appearance or baseline chakra had been missed.
"Why don't we try asking them some hard questions?" Sakura suggested.
One of the Karins scoffed loudly, berating Sakura for taking this long to come up with the most obvious strategy.
Naruto looked at the two girls and casually asked, "Female cuz, why don't ya just tell us what your favourite food is instead?"
"It's okonomiyaki, duh…" one answered, rolling her eyes.
The other Karin's face flushed bright red with anger. "I told you to stop calling me that already!"
At that, Naruto snatched the sealing tag from Sakura's fingers, lunged forward, and slapped the paper directly onto the chest of the Karin who had answered.
Sakura yelled his name in a panic as he leaped back to create distance.
"Just trust me," he said.
The sealing tag flared with chakra as a thick cloud of white smoke enveloped the girl. When the smoke cleared, the Karin disguise dissolved, revealing an adult Leaf kunoichi bound by the paper's jutsu.
The imposter sighed, looking down at the tag. "How'd you know it was me?"
Naruto grinned. The answer was easy: his cousin absolutely hated the nickname "female cuz". Hardly anyone knew this on account of Karin's recent acquisition in the village.
Sakura let out a long breath. She had recently been looking at Naruto with respect for a while now because of his combat prowess. But to think his mental game had become just as good.
Naruto puffed out his chest, claiming that brains simply ran in the family. The real Karin adjusted her glasses, crossing her arms and begrudgingly admitting that it was a pretty smart move.
High above the arena, Margaret smirked at the display since they were the first team to succeed.
Through Rin, Arthur watched the blond boy celebrate. The physical prowess of the Jinchūriki was a known variable, but this tactical manipulation of emotions was new.
Even then, Arthur was not the least bit impressed by the main character's growth.