“Please demonstrate that you are not henged,” the proctor who’d escorted Hazou out to the edge of the city and introduced herself as Izumi, ordered calmly.

Hazou pulled a kunai and pricked his finger, showing her the droplet of blood.

“Thank you.”

She made a mark on a sheet of paper and offered it to him alongside a pen and small ink pad. “Please mark your right thumbprint here and sign your name.”

Hazou did so, wordlessly, next to a slot marked ‘Competitor 23’.

“Excellent. Now, to get you your secret word. Plea--”

“Wait!” Hazou shouted. “Have to make sure the area is secure!”

The proctor raised one eyebrow and nodded.

Hazou pulled up a bolus of chakra. “Living Roots Technique!” he called out, and began walking around the small plaza he’d been lead to. Along the way he dropped a pair of Air Dome seals, and activated them once he’d completed the circuit.

“What seals are those?” Izumi asked.

“They’re to muffle the sound. Right, okay, what’s my word?”

“You actually come up with your own." She pulled out a sheet of paper stamped with a complex pattern and a '23' in both upper corners. "Write out the kanji, then tear the paper in half so that it can’t be read but will match when the halves are paired. You will be periodically asked to demonstrate that you still have access to your half by proctors, and if you fail to produce it, you will automatically be considered to have failed the first event.

“At any point, you can turn in a half-sheet to a proctor and be immediately escorted to the starting location for the next event -- not your team, you personally. If you take advantage of this, you will not be allowed to leave the area until that event begins.”

She proffered the paper, this time with a different inkwell and a clean brush. Hazou blinked a couple times and took them, then set them on the ground.

Once he’d scribed his preferred word and folded the paper over in the dim red light of a Party Trick under a clone-operated Earth Dome (to the apparent amusement of Izumi), Hazou tore the paper down the center and handed half over.

She took it, placed it into a cloth sack along with the remainder of his paperwork, and withdrew a seal from one of her jacket pockets. “This is a modified storage seal,” she said, “made to only store and unstore once before ceasing its function. It will be unstored at the final verification of your success in the first task.” A moment later, the bag was gone.

“Alright, now, for our records, what was your word?” she asked casually.

Hazou didn’t respond, aside from snorting, as he deactivated and picked up the air dome tags.

“Heh, good job kid. I had one person fall for that earlier. Right, now follow me - there’s a holding area for--”

“Wait,” a voice from a nearby rooftop commanded. Hazou would have recognized it anywhere.

Kurosawa Hana leapt down to the ground with preternatural grace. “My son and I have a lot of catching up to do, Nakano. I’d appreciate some time alone with him,” she stated simply.

“Kurosawa! This is highly irregular, I’m afraid I can’t let you interfere with--”

“Get. Out. Of. My. Way.” Both Hazou and Izumi flinched backward. Killing intent was suddenly rolling off of Hana in waves. “You will let me hold my son again, or you will learn how your own spine tastes.”

“Nakano, stand down,” a steely voice commanded from the shadows. Out stepped Kurosawa Ren in her full regalia. “My sister has no information that might interfere with young Hazou’s participation. Go fetch another participant.”

“MA’AM! YES MA’AM!” Izumi shouted, going to rigid attention and bowing before leaping off.

“You didn’t need to follow me, Ren,” Hana said coolly.

“Of course I did, you ran out of my office like a fire-cat out of the Yuki compound. Good thing I did too, burying the paperwork created by a mysteriously-dead chuunin at the start of the Exams would have been a pain,” Ren responded calmly, raising a single perfectly-sculpted eyebrow.

“Fine, whatever. Now leave, or my answer becomes a giant middle finger,” Hana said, turning away from her sister, who simply nodded and turned to go.

Hazou and his mother faced each other across the plaza. Hana looked like she’d aged far more than the year and a half they’d been separated - parts of her hair were gray or thinning, her face was lined and her eyes surrounded by dark circles.

But she was alive. Alive, and here.

“Momma!” he cried out, and started rushing toward her, before he’d really noticed what he was doing.

She blurred toward him so fast she must have been burning chakra, wrapping him up in her arms so tightly Hazou was sure she was intending never to let him go again. He was pretty sure he didn't want her to. “Hazou! My Hazou, oh my sweet little cricket, you’re alive, you’re okay, you’re alive…”

She stopped speaking, her chest beginning to shake. Hazou realized she was starting to sob. He squeezed her tighter.

“I promised you I’d come back to you, didn’t I Momma?” he asked. "The Chaos Monster has been defeated again."