***
"Hokage-sama, I have a report about Haruto Hayashi." Kakashi spoke with his head bowed, kneeling on one leg.
Hiruzen, who was busy with paperwork, frowned for a second in confusion, but didn't let the frown show outwardly and just pretended to be busy while he gathered his thoughts.
'Who's that person again… Haruto Hayashi… wasn't someone in the I.T department named that… oh! I know! He's that boy who I assigned ANBU to keep watch of because of the Uchiha attack a couple of weeks ago.'
Sigh.
'I'm too old to be the Hokage again…'
Hiruzen finally lifted his head.
"Yes, Inu. What do you wish to report? Has someone made an attempt on the boy's life again?" Hiruzen asked, using the code word of the ANBU kneeling before him.
"No, Hokage-sama… There have been no attempts made on the life of the boy as of yet. But something peculiar has occurred."
"Oh?" putting his smoking pipe into his mouth Hiruzen took a deep whiff as his frown lines deepened. "What peculiar thing has occurred?"
Kakashi shifted slightly as if unsure for a second before speaking calmly, "Hokage-sama, I suspect that the boy has awakened a Kekkei Genkai."
"Huh?!" Hiruzen's eyes widened. 'A Kekkei genkai? Did he awaken the Sharingan or something?! Is he an illegitimate child of the clan? Is that why they want to get rid of him?'
"Start from the beginning, Inu." Hiruzen said calmly, his demeanour oblivious to his internal panic.
Kakashi nodded and explained from the beginning, "We were observing the boy as per routine until last night when the boy began training in Fire Release according to the instructions I had given him during the evening."
"Fire release training… hmm… I see… go on…"
Kakashi nodded and continued, "But when he began training in fire release, performing the first exercise of burning a leaf in his palm using chakra converted into fire nature, he ended up creating an explosion of fire hot enough to char the leaf. I could feel the heat of the explosion from nearly thirty feet away in the trees."
Hiruzen stayed silent, letting Kakashi continue but suspicions were already forming in his mind.
"From my rich experience fighting shinobi with kekkei genkai, I suspect the boy has inherited the infamous Pakura's Scorch Release."
Hiruzen remained silent for a while, a number of thoughts running through his mind as he quickly pulled out Haruto's file from a drawer in his desk.
'The boy's family has been normal for the last three generations since Konoha was founded. Each of them have been excellent helpers for the village in one way or another before they lost their lives.'
'So the boy should be from Konoha…'
'Did his family mix with someone from the Land of Wind during the Warring States Era?'
'But to be unable to show this talent in the academy…'
'Did the boy hide it on purpose?'
'No… there should be nothing he could gain from doing so…'
'Perhaps the life or death battle he went through forcibly unlocked his latent potential… making him finally serious about learning to protect himself…'
'Hmm… while the boy does have great ambitions for the village, if he can be guided with the will of fire instilled in him properly he should become a great asset to the village.'
'Who do I assign to guide the boy though…'
'Kakashi?'
'No… he is still in the dark if he could think of being part of root without my explicit permission… it will take him some time to come out of it… and he's too important a piece to let baby sit a child… I also need him to check out on the disturbances in Kirigakure.'
'If only Jiraya and Tsunade were still in the village…'
'The Uchiha are out of question since they attempted to kill the boy, the Sarutobi clan is good at fire release too… but both Asuma and Shinnosuke are busy… Asuma is in the Twelve Guardian Ninja and Shinnosuke is in the ANBU.'
'...'
Hiruzen finally looked at his paperwork as an idea sparked in his mind.
'Do I take him as my own disciple?'
'Hmmm…'
'....at least I can use this time to get a break from the paperwork and dump all the work on Shikaku.'
'Alright… it's decided then… I'm sure the young boy will appreciate being trained by me, the Hokage!'
'Ahem… although he won't know that it is the Hokage training him… but still…'
"Inu, tell the boy to meet me at training ground seven after he's done with his work for the day."
Kakashi's eyes widened as he too picked up on what Hiruzen was thinking but since it wasn't his place to comment on the decisions of his masters he simply nodded and agreed before using the leaf body flicker jutsu to get out of the place.
***
Haruto looked at the code he had written after a day's worth of work with some pride.
'I have the convolutional network down… all that remains now is to prep the data and feed it into the network to train the model on the various handwritings of the people in the world.'
Haurto looked at the receipt and quickly wrote a program to split the bills scanned images by letters so that it could be fed into the machine learning model to train the model how to recognise letters and numbers.
Once that was all done, Haruto quickly turned the thirty days of bills and receipts he had from the village into usable data which he cleaned up and matched with the digitized labels before feeding it into the machine learning model.
"Now… we wait a fortnight for the model to train itself…" Haruto mumbled out loud.
It was at that point that Haruto heard someone call him out.
"Haruto Hayashi."
Haruto looked around and noticed a spectacle wearing man looking down on him, standing right behind his chair.
"Huh? What happened?" Haruto asked dumbly, confused since he was just about to get up and leave.
'Does Hiruko want something with me perhaps?'
The man looking down on him smiled kindly before pointing at the door to the R&D Department.
"Someone's waiting for you out there."
"Oh?" Haruto simply nodded and gathered his things quickly. Standing up and planning to leave the building along with meeting whoever was waiting for him outside.
Haruto stepped out of the gates and immediately saw who it was that had been waiting.
"Kakashi-san? What a surprise! Did something happen for you to seek me out?"
Kakashi rubbed the back of his head lightly before speaking seriously, "Haruto-kun, please be at training ground seven today evening after you finish eating your supper. Also bring the journal I gave you yesterday along with you when you visit."
"Oh?" Haruto gave him a puzzled look before asking, "Why?"
"You'll know when you get there." Kakashi said softly before nodding and walking away.
'What do you think is happening? Megumin? Edward?'
Megumin stayed silent for a few seconds and responded before Edward, 'Maybe they figured out that you know something about Hiruko?'
'No… that can't be the case.' Edward interrupted, 'If that were the case they wouldn't call you down to a training ground… I think they noticed your talent for fire release as you said you have ANBU or ROOT monitoring you and hence want to train you perfectly.'
'Ah… that might as well be the case…' Haruto agreed. 'And it's probably ANBU that's monitoring me… or else Kakashi wouldn't have been the one informing me… if it were ROOT they would've already captured me and taken me to Danzo instead.'
'Makes sense.' Edward nodded.
'I wonder who my teacher will be… since Kakashi came to inform me… perhaps it'll be him?'
Edward and Megumin both nodded together.
'Umu.' 'Umu.'