CH_8.34 (299)

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"How are they doing?" Eisbar asked as he returned from his break. He was a fit middle-aged man of average height with light grey streaks all over his hair that well complemented his blacks, giving him a mature, charming salt-and-pepper look.

Six hours had gone by since they had locked the candidates in their rooms—rooms designed to make them uncomfortable. On top of that, being put under genjutsu only announced the start of the assessment. Being left alone for six hours would only drive them paranoid no matter how level-headed they could be.

"As expected, they're become quite restless," answered Swine.

Eisbar stepped closer to the monitors. Some candidates were pacing around their rooms, some stared into the cameras, and others fidgeted in their seats. None could relax as they were expecting the assessment to throw a task at them the moment they let their guards down, but they were all missing the point that being uptight for an extended period of time was just as detrimental.

The purpose of locking them in and going no-contact was partially to mentally beat them down and test to see how they handled it.

"Is... Is he sleeping?" Eisbar said, genuinely surprised when he saw a young man napping with his head on the table. He had a large afro of puffy, curly brown hair, a muscular build, and deeply tanned skin from staying outdoors under the sun. The cameras had no microphones, but the on-site staff could hear him snore when they passed his room.

"He has been like that for three hours now," said Lowe, handing Eisbar the candidate's profile. "Number #10, Chunin Sonaba Yazo."

"Is he in any way related to Jonin Sonaba Makina?" asked Eisbar.

"Her nephew."

The Sonaba family name had been attached to shinobi since the formation of the Hidden Leaf village, and the once civilian family had turned into a shinobi family where every single person in the next generation was a shinobi. They weren't anything special and only had produced two chunin before Sonaba Makina rose to the rank of an esteemed jonin.

Since then, the Sonaba family had exploded in popularity until it was known in the Hidden Leaf village even though the Sonaba family wasn't based there and called another city in the Land of Fire their home.

"A rogue hunter, huh. That's interesting," said Eisbar as he flipped through Sonaba Yazo's file. Rogue hunting was a trade open to anyone with the ability to capture the rogues and return them to the custody of the village that had declared them wanted. An adjacent field of bounty assassination also existed where anyone could target anyone else by putting a prize over their heads.

"Sonaba family are based near the Land of Rain border in Yogan City of the Natsu province," said Lowe.

"His choice of occupation makes sense, then."

The Land of Storms shared its boundaries with three of the five Great Shinobi Nations—the Land of Fire, the Land of Wind, and the Land of Earth. The country was known to be somewhat of a haven for rogues, as they could exist in the nation without the constant fear of being hunted by the Leaf, Sand, and Rock shinobi.

The Land of Storms was also the home to the Hidden Rain village, but the shinobi village mostly turned a blind eye to the rogues as long as they kept to a single region. While the rogues were a problem, the nation wasn't in a position to regulate them as it was locked in an intense civil war between the Hidden Rain village and the mercenary group known as the Akatsuki.

That turmoil had allowed the rogue activity to bloom and balloon in the nation and take root.

Due to its proximity to the border, the region near Yogan City saw heavy rogue activity. For that reason, there was a dense shinobi presence in the city of Yogan to hunt criminals and rogues who were either trying to leave or enter the nation.

"He'll fit well if he passes," said Eisbar. Rogue hunting was part of ANBU's responsibilities, and it was clear why Yazo was chosen as a candidate. He didn't know what to make of Yazo being so unbothered that he was sleeping for three hours, but he was one of the fastest people to break the genjutsu, so at least he wasn't incompetent.

"How did he react to the room?"

"He didn't like it and openly showed his displeasure to the camera but soon got over it."

"What about her?" Eisbar tapped the screen of another monitor. A young blonde woman had her legs up on the table as she leaned into her chair. She looked utterly bored and was listlessly staring at the ceiling.

"Number #3, Yamanaka Amami. She's a practitioner of her clan's hiden jutsu/hijutsu and has worked in T&I for the past two years. She has a near-perfect track record, no black spots in her history, and glowing recommendations from everyone we asked. She has even worked with us on a couple of cases during her tenure at T&I."

The ANBU collaborated with other departments across the Hidden Leaf for various reasons, including availing their services for ther ANBU's matters. While ANBU had agents more than capable of handling interrogations, some of the best information extractors were still under the employment of the Torture and Interrogation Department—which was why ANBU asked them to train their agents in the art of interrogation—and for that reason, when they encountered someone particularly adamant about keeping their mouth shut, they brought-in external interrogators to help.

ANBU maintained various two-way relationships. Using the information they collected through their spy system, they warned other departments; similarly, the other departments made ANBU aware when they found something strange.

After all, keeping the nation safe was a collaborative effort.

Eisbar sighed. "I don't want to fight with T&I about poaching again."

It had been a whole thing last time ANBU had taken someone from Torture and Interrogation—and this time, it was a Yamanaka; their clan's special jutsu made them extremely valuable in extracting information from people. Moreover, Torture and Interrogation's current head was a former ANBU-nin, Morino Ibiki, which was unfavourable because he knew how they worked.

He was sure to prevent talents from leaving his pool regardless of their history.

"She laughed when she saw the room and has since then ignored it completely," said Lowe.

"I guess it's not a surprise seeing that she's from T&I," said Eisbar before moving on to other candidates. "How are Takuma and Kojuro doing?"

"Number #7 has been using his Byakugan every twenty minutes to check his surroundings. He tries to hide it, but it's obvious that he's doing it. He had a visible reaction to the room initially, but I assume seeing into other's rooms made him realise that we are trying to unsettle them," Lowe replied, slightly peeved as the Byakugan rendered the rooms' tactics moot.

Lowe continued, "As for Number #13, excluding when he first entered the room, he hadn't looked into the camera in six hours. If he was affected, he's kept it under wraps... He walks for ten minutes every hour, but other than that, he stays seated, doing absolutely nothing. He was also the first to figure out that the weapons we gave them had something wrong with them."

Eisbar gazed at all of the monitors. All of them had something ANBU wanted. Any one of them could do the job decently well, but they didn't want decent—they wanted someone who could perform to their best under pressure. The purpose of the test was to stress test them and keep all those who didn't snap.

"In that case, it's been long enough. Let's start in earnest."

———

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Takuma heard footsteps and the repeating sound of metal sliding against metal. His eyes went to the post-box slot on the doors, the only thing in the hallway that could produce such a sound. He got up and walked to the door, and sure enough, a package slid through it seconds later.

The package seemed to have a stack of paper inside and was sealed by a fuinjutsu tag. He released the seal and dumped its contents on the table—a thick stack of papers held together with a circular paper clip and two ball-point pens. The stack of paper was a long list of true-and-false statements and flipping to the last page showed that there were 578 questions.

The questions ranged from 'if his sleep was usually disturbed' to 'if he liked to tease animals' to 'if he got along with authority figures' to 'if he liked to dance.'

Takuma recognised this type of questionnaire but wondered about its purpose. Lying to make oneself look better was laughably easy with a quiz like this and the instructions on the first page said there were no pass-fail criteria for the test.

I shouldn't lie... completely, he said to himself as he thought about the cameras looking down on him. If the ANBU wanted them to answer the test, they must've considered they would lie and thus have ways to identify when a candidate was lying.

Takuma didn't really want ANBU to think of him as someone other than his true self and thus had no desire to lie on the test—but he didn't want them to know everything about him he flipped through the pages, he could tell that if he filled it honestly, they would have a considerably complete view of who he was.

So, after taking a moment, he picked up one of the pens and started filling in his answers.

———

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The ANBU team sat in their base and studied the completed questionnaires to learn more about the candidates.

"Yeah, Number #1 lied so much it's funny," one of the staff chuckled.

"Oof, Number #7 has some deep-seated issues, alright," said another staff member reading Hyuga Kojuro's questionnaire. "He's not at all optimistic about life. I guess the rumour about all of the Hyuuga being miserable is true."

"Number #2 abhors pressure, and this is just a straight-up confession that he will crumble at the first sign of it."

Eisbar sat on the head of the table, unhurriedly flipping through a questionnaire himself. He judged each answer and compared it against answers to other questions to see if there was a natural correlation or if the candidate had lied.

The aim of the questionnaire was to find out more about the candidates—and to see how they saw themselves. However, that was not all there was to it. People had a natural tendency to lie to make themselves more likeable to others, so candidates were expected to use the questionnaire to paint a favourable image of themselves to the examiners.

Lying was an elegant and complicated art; part of the test was to see if they could do it convincingly. They wanted to see if the candidates could deceive them into thinking they were someone other than themselves. There would come a time in every ANBU-nin's career when they would need to pretend to be someone else, and having that skill was highly preferred in an agent.

Of course, the department would love to know the truth about who they were employed, but if a candidate had the ability to deceive experienced ANBU-nin, then they were sure to be good at their jobs. Lying too much wasn't a problem if one could do it convincingly, but almost everyone who lied a lot did it poorly, and thus, gave themselves up. Even though the questionnaire asked the candidates to be honest, not lying was also a problem because deception was part and parcel about a shinobi, let alone and ANBU-nin.

"Number #10 is either the most well-adjusted man in the world, or he's really good at lying," said Swine, his highly positive tone showing that he liked Sonaba Yazo as a candidate.

"As expected of a Yamanaka," Lowe sighed as he read Yamanaka Amami's questionnaire. "Number #3 is definitely familiar with the test's base version we modified. I can't find a single error in how she used the questions to create her impression—she even added just the right amount of embellishments to make it utterly believable... I think she's a strong candidate."

While everyone discussed the candidates they were reading about, Eisbar silently read Number #13, Takuma's questionnaire.

If he had to give his impression in one word, it would be— "Genuine."

Eisbar took a deep breath. He couldn't tell if Takuma was lying or not. The impression he got from the questionnaire was that of a living human being with his fair share of problems like everyone else who lived while dealing with them.

If Yamanaka Amami had lied perfectly to create a positive yet believable picture that would impress anyone other than the current group who were expecting and wanted the candidate to lie, then Takuma had lied to show some fundamental flaws at the risk of some people having a lower opinion of him.

In doing so, he had made the impression feel genuinely authentic.

"Ah," Eisbar uttered as he realised what else Takuma had done.

As he read the questionnaire, the impression he got was that of an utterly mundane person with nothing interesting to point out. He made it feel like there was nothing overly special about him, but also made it so there was nothing egregiously wrong with him either. It was as though he had designed it so that people would forget about it after they put it down.

That was risky because a candidate would want to impress them to raise their chances.

Eisbar's instinct and experience told him that Takuma blended truths, half-truths, and lies to hide something he didn't want them to know. However, he couldn't tell what Takuma was trying to hide or distinguish what part of the camouflage was genuine and which parts were false.

He looked at the monitor and saw Takuma walking around the room, hands behind his back, without a hint of worry in his demeanour.

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