Konoha, Hokage Office.
Under the hokage mountains was the building where most of the important decisions of the village took place, currently the atmosphere in the hokage office a bit heavy as the top three decision makers of the village discussing the ongoing serious problem.
"You should have expected this the moment you had let Orochimaru escape, Hiruzen. A bitter man denied self-supposed rightful position. His appearance during these chunin exams is definitely a sign of some huge conspiracy."
Koharu Utatane, one of the elders of the village, spoke without any hesitation, her old eyes on third hokage who seemed to have aged years since knowing his once most proud disciple had returned and caused many deaths already.
"We should consider post ponding or even cancelling the exams as with Orochimaru snooping around, the safety of daimyo's visiting for the last exam is not certain."
Mitokado Homura, pushing the glasses on his nose, voiced his opinion as well, clearly very worried due to the sudden appearance of Orochimaru.
Sarutobi didn't respond immediately at their words and with a tired face stood up and walked to the window, gazing at the bustling village below and taking a deep puff from the smoke pipe.
"It's too late to pull out of the exam now and I've given orders to danzo to work together with the Anbu to make sure nothing goes wrong. Orochimaru is smart enough to know what would happen if he tries something in such a tight net."
Saying that, Sarutobi's face showed a determined look as he turned to gaze at the elders. "But if he still tries to do something foolish, I'll make sure he doesn't leave this time."
Seeing the look on his face, Koharu and Homura didn't say anything further and left the hokage office.
But moments after they had left, there was some movement around the window as they were slid open and a man with long white spiky hair donning red broke in, and Sarutobi didn't show any surprise.
"I thought you were too busy checking bath houses to come here." Said Sarutobi as he turned to gaze at this student who he once thought was the dullest of three but had turned out to be the only one who still had the village in his heart and could be relied on if something were to endanger the village.
The moment Jiraiya had returned, Anbu and root had already noticed and notified him, he wasn't expecting him to visit him so soon.
"Haha! Well, I couldn't really continue my research, not with Minato's brat following me around." Told Jiraiya and at the mention of fourth hokage his eyes showing a complex look.
"I guess its fate…both father and son wanting to be taught by you." Sarutobi really found it very interesting, he hadn't intended for this to happen but naruto was still led to Jiraiya, truly a work of fate.
"Well, I haven't really decided yet whether to take him as a student." Said Jiraiya as leaning on the wall he continued. "Aside from the hair, he seems to have inherited everything else from Kushina. It can be my first time teaching a rather dull student."
While he hadn't spent much time with Naruto, Jiraiya could already see that whether it was intelligence or strength, naruto was far behind than Minato at the same age and was reckless and loud mouthed, truly unlike his father and more like his mother.
Suddenly Jiraiya had his eyes glued on the desk where a lot of papers were scattered, on one of the papers a picture of someone he had just recently seen.
"I wouldn't have hesitated from taking this brat as a student though." Said Jiraiya as he picked up the paper and began to read the information on it with clear interest on his face.
"You know Arisawa Isagi?" Asked Sarutobi with a curious look on his face, during the preliminaries he had requested all information on Isagi who had clearly impressed everyone with his strength and the detailed report was presented to him today.
Jiraiya at his question recounted the earlier encounter with Isagi, though hiding the peeping details.
"Interesting~ to trade blows with you without any injury, it seems he still hadn't revealed a lot during the exams." Sarutobi was aware of Jiraiya's strength and even a normal jonin wouldn't walk away without injuries after a short battle with him, though Isagi was perfectly fine.
"His mission resume really doesn't match his strength." Asked Jiraiya with a slightly confused face as Isagi's squad had barely completed one b-rank mission during his two years after graduation.
In the report it was also mentioned until two months ago when they were given time to train for the exam, he was actually second in terms of strength in his own squad as Kanzaki Ryota was the captain because of a reason.
"His chakra signature has been verified so someone pretending to be him can be ruled out; its though worth investigating why would he hide his abilities?"
Konoha was surrounded by a barrier which filtered any unrecognized chakra signature so the guess that someone had transformed into Isagi was ruled out, so the only reasonable explanation left was Isagi had been hiding his strength.
As for the thought that he had improved so much in a month and a half of self-training, Sarutobi and rest didn't even bother giving it a second thought as it was impossible to improve so much in so little time.