Chương 26: New Project.

Haruto walked towards the second floor slowly, carefully, while observing the experiments of all the other researchers around his station.

'Is that guy trying to reinvent Kumogakure's lightning cloak jutsu?'

'And why does that guy look so constipated? Is he jumping to try and get the shit out?... wait is he trying to fly? Is that guy trying to reinvent Earth Release Light Weight Rock Technique?'

'How did they get the tenketsus for the jutsu though?'

'Was it by reading memories of enemy shinobi during war?'

'How does memory reading even work?'

'I remember Kishimoto saying somewhere that during clashes with chakra in the world of Naruto, both sides eventually peek into the memories and motivations of the other sides. It was an in-world explanation for flashbacks.'

'So can one read memories by simply transferring chakra?'

'Hmmm… something for me to look into… If I can read memories and work at a morgue or get some bodies for experimentation I can potentially learn a lot of jutsu…' Haruto had to put a pin on his thoughts however since he had already arrived at the second floor, in front of Hiruko's office. The door was closed and there was no way to peek inside since all the previously transparent glass walls were made opaque using some technique. So Haruto patiently knocked on the door.

After a short couple of knocks, he quickly heard a response from Hiruko.

"You may come in, Haruto-kun. My door is always open for you."

'How did he know it was me?'

'Sensing?' Haruto placed his hand on the door knob and twisted it lightly, it was unlocked, allowing him to open the door and enter into the rather brightly lit room. Inside the room were several high tech instruments that Haruto couldn't place in his memories for the life of him. All he could guess was that the worth of each of these instruments was probably a hundred times more than his monthly paycheck. At the center of the room was an operating table on which was a cadaver that was being operated.

Above the operating table were a set of bright lights illuminating the place without any shadows. Haruto looked at the cadaver and felt nauseous.

'Probably not even an adult…' Haruto noted the young age of the corpse. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The particularly gory sight of someone's insides having been pulled out and strung up on some wire to be examined was particularly graphic for him. But since he'd been working as the book keeper of the I. T department until as recently as two weeks ago, he managed to keep things under control.

"I'm done with turning the program into a specialised software Hiruko-san. I also added in a short handbook for everyone to be able to familiarise themselves with the program without my help." Hiruko, who had been bent over the corpse, and messing around with its insides, spoke without breaking attention from his work, "That's good to hear Haruto-kun. I'll have someone transfer the software to everyone's computers.

Please wait while I finish suitering up this cadaver, we can talk about your next project after that." The next few minutes passed in an uncomfortable silence as Haruto observed Hiruko slowly replace the insides of the corpse with wooden parts and pieces. By the end of a good half an hour, Hiruko was slowly suturing back up the corpse that had just had its organs replaced. And by the end of an hour, Hiruko was trying to control the corpse using several chakra threads.

'Converting a corpse into a puppet… like Sasori?' Haruto made an educated guess.

"Aha! It works!" Hiruko suddenly said as the corpse puppet sat up straight on the operating table. Hiruko's fingers twitched slightly causing the puppet to slide down from the table and stand on its own two feet. Hiruko then walked the puppet to a relatively empty spot in the office and made it form hand seals.

"If this works, it should perform the wind Release great breakthrough jutsu you know?" Hiruko said with a feverish and confident gaze. Only as soon as the puppet completed the final seal and sucked in air for releasing the jutsu, something drastic went wrong, because in the next second, the puppet ballooned to unrealistic proportions before exploding in a shower of gore. BANG! Haruto watched stunned as the shower of flesh and wood was stopped right before him by some sort of invisible wall, a barrier he guessed.

But Hiruko wasn't spared. He was showered in chunks of meat and blood, his lab coat turning red from the splatter and his hair turning slick from the gunk. Haruto's gaze flickered towards him and he saw the man's expression break down into a fit of anger, but only for a moment, before it was changed back to the same calm and easy going expression he always wore.

"Ah… well… it would seem I'm not good enough to create human puppets yet Haruto-kun… that was an embarrassing display, do spare me some dignity." Haruto nodded, "I'm sure you'll be able to do it next time Hiruko-san. This must've just been a small mistake."

"Thank you for your kind words." Hiruko performed a new handseal to deactivate the barrier before stepping closer to Haruto, "Now… shall we discuss what your new project will be?" Haruto looked at the downright devilish Hiruko and couldn't help but gulp slightly before he spoke up, "Sure…"

"Got any ideas about what your next project should be about?" Haruto pondered for a bit, the pressure from Hiruko numbing his senses a little until he felt an idea strike him.

"I could work on automating the process of data collection, Hiruko-san."

"Oh?" Hiruko said as blood dripped down his hair and onto the pool on the floor.

"Do explain…" Haruto wanted to look at anything but Hiruko at the moment but he steeled his guts and looked Hiruko in the eyes before speaking, "We currently input all the data from the receipts and bills by hand, even the research data collected I am guessing."

"Are you suggesting we can do better?" Hiruko asked curious, his brows furrowed in concentration, trying to think of a way Haruto could achieve it. Haruto nodded, "I think I can get the computers to automatically recognise the characters in the hand written reports and bills and automatically input them into the system. Of course it might not be full proof so someone will still need to verify it all, but it should be faster than before."

"You can do that!?" Hiruko asked with surprise. Haurto nodded, "I have some ideas… but I don't know if it'll succeed a hundred percent yet."

"Don't worry about that, Haruto-kun… the research we conduct in the R&D department usually has a success rate of about three percent. So be bold in whatever you do… as long as you succeed this will be a huge benefit to the village! Just let me know what you'll need." Haruto thought about it for a bit before explaining, "I'll need a few more computers if that's possible. That might speed up the process a bit.

Also access to all the digitized bills and the scanned copies of those bills about a month's worth from the entire department should do." Haruto's plan was simple: create a convolutional neural network to recognise handwritten characters, if smartphones in the two thousands could do this then there wasn't really a reason computers in the hidden leaf village which looked to be from the same era couldn't do it. A beginner's machine learning project that he had stumbled upon in his free time in his past world.

"That can be arranged easily, don't worry about it." Hiruko said with a smile and Haruto finally bowed, "Thank you Hiruko-san. I'll be taking my leave for today then." Haruto didn't want to stand in Hiruko's presence any longer. He left the office under Hiruko's creepy gaze before quickly washing his hands and face in the washroom just in case any blood had gotten on him and leaving in one swift motion.