Chương 340: CH_9.25 (340)

"Here you go," Dhole dumped two tall stacks of messy files, folders, and loose papers on the desk in Takuma's empty office. It was half the size of his office in the Narcotics Taskforce, but he guessed he could set it up to his liking with clever storage solutions.

"What do I need to do?" Takuma looked up at his mentor, who seemed like he was not one for words. While Dhole took him to introduce himself to the staff that worked closely with Campbell Squad, and once they returned, he asked him to wait in the office before arriving with the pile of paperwork.

"This is all I have for the case I've recently finished. I want you to know the case, and the best way to do that is going through the documents and preparing the paperwork. Read it all, take the help of the staff authorised to see the material, and complete as much paperwork, procedure, and formalities as you can." Dhole sounded dispassionate as he almost droned out the words, but Takuma assumed that was just how he spoke.

"If you have questions, collect them all and come to me one hour before the end of the day, and we will go through them together. I'll give you three days for this, and then we'll see what you have." Dhole walked out after patting him on his shoulder, leaving him with piles of paper. As he stared at the ivory mound before him, Takuma didn't know if he agreed with Dhole's method of introducing him to the job.

When he was in the Narcotics Taskforce, he would have the new hires participate in open, ongoing cases to give them a sense of personal involvement and attachment to the work they were doing so they would find value in doing tedious paperwork. Here, the case here was already over and it felt like Dhole was offloading the uninteresting, busy work on him because he didn't want to do it. Dhole didn't even give him a summary or overview to serve as an entry points into the case.

And the three-day deadline with no checks beforehand made it feel like he didn't care about the work he submitted. But he couldn't complain as this was the first task his mentor had assigned him. He had to do his best to create a positive first impression. Takuma stood up from his chair to pick up piles and bumped his thigh into the table, which toppled the ivory mound, sending loose paper avalanching down the tabletop and onto the floor.

"Well… this is just wonderful," he said, pursing his lips. By the time he was done cleaning up and organising the mess into something he could start working with, there was a knock on the door. He looked up to see Amami and Caracara standing outside his office.

"Let's have lunch," said Amami, glancing at the tabletop covered with documents.

"It's that time already?" asked Takuma, looking at his office walls that lacked a clock.

"Come on, my treat," Caracara said. ———.

"So, what's his deal?" Takuma asked. Amami, who was about to go for her first bite, looked up at him in surprise.

"Gosh, you're direct. Beat around the bush a little, will you?" She glanced at her mentor sitting by her side. They sat in a small diner fifteen minutes from their office that served "homemade" food run by a middle-aged couple and seemed to be a regular fixture for Caracara. The choice to bring him here and not somewhere a bit fancier gave him an understanding of his new senior teammate's personality.

"It's okay. It would've been strange if you hadn't asked about Dhole," Caracara said as she wiped her chopsticks with a napkin.

"What do you want to know?"

"What's he like?"

"His personal life? I don't know much. We've worked together for a good while, but we're 'work friends'—never really discussed personal stuff. As for his professional competency… contrary to how homeless he appears, that man is brilliant at his best. He is a homebody who hates to travel, so it's fitting that he has a terrifying knack for using collected intelligence from our networks and assets to find the crux of a case and then drill into the cracks until they break open."

As part of the Domestic Branch, the Inquisitor Unit handled matters from all over the Land of Fire, which required operatives to travel often as part of the job. Among the three squads in the unit, Dhole travelled the least, not because he didn't handle faraway cases but because he managed to handle them from home. His longest streak of not leaving the comfort of the Hidden Leaf was seven months.

"I benefited greatly from the cases we worked together and saw how he worked. Shadow him; try to learn how he deciphers and interprets information," said Caracara. Takuma thought about the work Dhole had given him. Reading the material on a case and preparing the paperwork did seem like an exercise in interpreting information and presenting it in a digestible fashion. Perhaps it was Dhole's way of guiding him and not using it to offload unwanted work.

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"What should I do to impress him? I want to work on some real cases as well," asked Takuma. For a while, Dhole was going to be in charge of his work, so he wanted to get on the man's good side.

"He doesn't enjoy people in general, so buttering him up won't work. Stick to producing good work, make fewer mistakes, and more importantly, don't bother him, and you'll be his favourite person." Takuma gave her a grateful nod. He would greatly prefer it if it were as simple as doing good work because, in his experience, it was almost never that.

But as he remembered Dhole's personality, which he observed in the morning, maybe the operative was indeed someone who was uninterested in office politics and only wanted to focus on his work. He looked up at Caracara. Seeing that he had the opportunity, he decided to ask more questions.

"Any things I should know about the big man himself?" Caracara hummed.

"Well... Barbary's a good boss. He knows how to manage and motivate people. He supports and takes care of the unit, doesn't have a big ego, and doesn't micromanage. Some of his antics can be a tad bit annoying, like the initiations and drinking parties"—Amami sighed; it seemed no one enjoyed their initiation—"but all in all, he's probably everything you'd ask for in a boss. In return, he holds us to a high standard.

He understands mistakes are natural and would rather focus on fixing and preventing them than yelling like others. He'll even try to help if you're in a slump or struggling for whatever reason, but he won't baby you—you have to pull your weight."

"He also prefers high-performers," Amami chimed in.

"That's right. He's fair, but if you do good work, he will be much more responsive and flexible with your demands and requests."

"He must like workaholics," Takuma said jokingly.

"Not really, no. As long as you have some updates for him that he can pass on to his bosses, he is more than happy to leave you alone even if you only come to the office two days a week." Takuma felt a rudimentary picture of Barbary form in his mind. It was only his first day, and there was a lot more to know about his team—which would come with time—but he was satisfied with his initial findings. He knew a bit about Campbell from their lessons.

Amami he was familiar with because of their partnership during the ANBU assessment. He had a feel for Caracara's type of personality, and she had given him enough about Barbary to get started. He would find out more about Dhole as he learned under his mentorship. ———.

"This is... impressive," said Takuma as he read the material before him in the unit's record room.

"It is, isn't it?" said Jotomi, a member of the ANBU staff who worked in the Inquisitor Unit. He volunteered to help with the things he didn't understand, something Takuma was very grateful for. That alone made him eager to build a relationship with the man.. In many ways, being friendly with the staff was just as important as getting along with his fellow operatives on his squad. They were the backbone of the ANBU; nothing would happen if they weren't there to establish order in a very chaotic organisation.

As they reviewed the material Dhole had collected and notes for his case, Takuma realised Caracara was right. Dhole had an amazing skill for sifting through the information collected by intelligence networks and assets and finding meaningful information without visiting the place or talking to the key people involved. He wasn't a magician, and he still had to do those things if there wasn't anything useful in the collected intelligence, but he went deeper than most people by noticing things they would've missed.

"Look at this," Takuma lifted copies of a ledger and contracts related to the case he was doing paperwork for and handed it to Jotomi.

"How did he even find that out? I mean, I would've looked at the ledger because it's always wise to follow the money, but not like this..." And that was because he wasn't a financial accountant nor was he knowledgeable in legalese—but Dhole apparently knew enough about both those matters to notice something wrong, or he had someone look into it because he sensed a smoking gun.

Whoever had written the contracts and manipulated the ledger was very good at their job, but Dhole was still able to look through the deception to find damning evidence. It had been two days since he had started looking into the case, and Takuma had already found half a dozen similar instances where Dhole discovered things he wouldn't have thought about looking.

"It's no wonder he doesn't leave the village," he muttered. While Takuma admired the material, Jotomi reviewed his paperwork to check for mistakes. Takuma had shown his progress to Dhole, who had directed him straight to the staff without looking at his work, believing the staff would be more suitable to proofread it. It made sense, but he had still not managed to sit with his mentor for more than half an hour at a time.

"... Did you do all of this?" asked Jotomi.

"Hmm? Yes, I did. Is there a problem?"

"No, not at all. This is perfect," he said, his tone tinged with surprise.

"I was expecting some errors, but this is flawless. Even the summaries break down the situation in an easy-to-digest fashion. I say you have a knack for paperwork, Ratel."

"Well, I do have some experience," Takuma said humbly. He had done more than enough paperwork in the Police Force, but in addition, he had prepared for it by studying ANBU's standard operating procedures and paperwork during training with ANBU staff introduced to him by Sango. As they chatted, another staff member entered the record room to file some documents.

"Hey, Boginori. It looks like the new guy won't be giving us any problem with the documentation," Jotomi said jokingly, calling over his friend to look over Takuma's work.

"That's not good," Boginori said as he took the papers from Jotomi.

"We'll be out of our jobs if they stop making mistakes..." he trailed off as he glanced at the papers in his hands. Takuma looked up and noticed a frown on Boginori's face, who noticed the gaze and wiped his expression off his face quickly.

"What is it? Is there something wrong there? Please don't hesitate to tell me. I would rather hear it to my face now and not make the mistake later."

"Ah, it's... how should I say this," Boginori looked extremely hesitant about whether he should say what was on his mind, but after Takuma urged and insisted, he spoke up.

"Dhole submitted this last week, and I already processed the paperwork for this case three days ago.." Takuma felt as though someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on him. Even though he wasn't happy with Dhole's interactions with him, he respected the quality of his work—but now he felt like the man had made a fool out of him.