Two boys and a girl looked about the same age as the Ninja Academy students, but they were not gathered together chatting.
The three stood in an impeccably precise equilateral triangle.
The distance between each of them was exact down to the centimeter.
They did not talk or look around. Even their breathing was almost perfectly synchronized.
"These kids..." Naruto's expression changed. He dropped his casual attitude and braced both hands against the console. "Why do they feel so much like the Anbu we see on missions?"
"They don't just feel like them. They're recruits raised by the Anbu." Kakashi closed his book, his gaze turning serious as well. "After the war, the village cut some Anbu positions, but the intelligence department and the Assassination Unit still needed fresh blood.
"These children were selected straight from the Orphanage and grew up in the Anbu's underground training grounds.
"This is their first time out in the sunlight, taking a public exam."
Chisen stared at the three gray-clad children on the screen and began his physiological analysis.
"Look at the boy standing in front.
"His feet are together, but his weight rests entirely on the outer edges of the balls of his feet.
"That's a 'zero-delay' stance that lets him launch himself in any direction at a moment's notice.
"His hands hang naturally at his sides, but if you look closely at his knuckles..." Chisen magnified part of the image.
Between the boy's index and middle fingers lay an extremely thin layer of something resembling a callus, but darker.
"That isn't an ordinary callus. It's a mutation in the skin's keratinization, caused by prolonged soaking in some kind of paralytic poison to build resistance.
"His nerve endings have been repeatedly destroyed and reconstructed by the toxins.
"That means ordinary pain stimuli have