-Chapter 1-

As soon as Naruto dispelled the army of Kage Bunshin he'd used to defeat that traitor Mizuki (overkill, really), he clutched his head in pain. Instantly, the memories, thoughts and experiences that the numerous clones had gathered from the one-sided battle came rushing to him in bits and pieces, all struggling to make themselves known, like an impatient answering machine. He hadn't noticed the new memories when he was practicing the Jutsu because he was heavily distracted with, well, getting it right. It'd been a hard jutsu to obtain and learn, and he'd needed to figure it out without reading the entire thing. He simply hadn't had the time. Even after he'd gotten it right, this was the first time he'd pushed as much chakra as he could into the technique, which was probably why he had made so many clones at once.

Through his pain, his eyes lit up with a spark of insight. During the battle, one of the clones had read the rest of the technique, which warned:

Notice: Every Kage Bunshin is independent and has free will. Also, each, whether dispersed or destroyed, will return his/her memories to the owner instantly. It is not recommended to disperse multiple Kage Bunshin at once, as this can result in mental confusion and instability.

'Whoa...so anything my clones learn, I can learn too? And they can learn different things at once...' Naruto realized.

Suddenly, he wished he'd read that the first time. But it didn't matter. He could use this. He went over to the injured Iruka under a tree, excited, as his Sensei smiled weakly.

"Guess I overdid it a little, huh, Iruka-Sensei?" Naruto laughed nervously, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.

Iruka stared at Naruto in awe and respect, contemplating. Exhausted, he motioned Naruto over. "...Come here."

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Naruto walked home late that night, feeling refreshed and free. He was finally going to be a ninja! After all this time! This was, after all, just one more step on his journey to becoming Hokage…

Naruto paused. Refreshed? He should feel tired. He'd just been through one of the roughest experiences of his life, and had somehow managed to learn an A-class jutsu. His eyes widened as a barely-looked-at memory rushed to the surface of his consciousness. Another benefit of the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu is that each Bunshin will return their chakra to the original creator if dispersed and not destroyed.

Naruto blinked. Was this going to keep happening to him? He kept walking, absently weaving his way back to his apartment as he tried to catalogue what he'd learned and how to use it. 'Thinking about this is hard...already I can see that this can help my pranking a whole lot. And my training. But I need to sleep, and I won't have time to figure it out tomorrow.'

In his apartment, lying in his bed, he could hardly sleep. His thoughts were still racing through the goals and dreams that he'd had since he was a child, and now he was getting closer and closer to them. He smiled to himself for a moment, made a quick seal for two Kage Bunshin, and was soon asleep.

Naruto One and Naruto Two looked at each other, then looked at their sleeping original, then looked back at each other, grinning. They were still alive. They could still exist while the real him slept. That saved them a lot of time.

Naruto One sat down on the shabby excuse for a couch while Naruto Two began to help himself to some ramen. Naruto One stared at him. "Oi! Don't eat all the food! We'll go through it in hours!"

Naruto Two shrugged sheepishly - he was boiling the water already. "We'll figure something out. Besides, I'm hungry. How are you not hungry?"

Naruto One shrugged. He waited for Two to finish making his food, resisting the temptation himself, before getting an idea.

"Oroike no Jutsu!" Naruto Two turned back to the couch with his steaming ramen, expecting to find the other Naruto, but instead saw a girl.

"Call me Naruko. That'll make this, and future ... mes... easier," she said, with a mischievous smile. She was lying on the couch in the same orange jumpsuit Naruto always wore. Naruto could only stare as he sat down on his humble tabletop and slurped his ramen noisily.

"And just why should I do that? You are me, you know," Naruto mumbled through a mouthful of instant ramen.

Naruko rolled her eyes (something she was probably going to do a lot, later in life). "Because right after we're made as clones, we become different people. We're separate now, and we have our own thoughts and ideas. That's what free will means."

Naruto finished his ramen and looked at her oddly. "So every time I create a thousand mes, I create a thousand people?" It was an odd sensation for someone who was supposed to be another version of himself to figure out something faster than he did, but he didn't mind. Maybe she was smarter than him.

Naruko sighed. Was he always this stupid? "Well, yes. But since we get our clones' memories right afterward, it's not like we're killing them. It's more like we're … absorbing them."

Naruto sighed in relief. For a second there, he thought he'd become a mass murderer. But then something occurred to him. Something big. "So let me get this straight. Say I make a clone, and then I read a book. Then my clone reads a different book at the same time. When we're done, and that clone gets dispelled, does that mean I read two books at once?"

Naruko blinked. That was a leap of intuition she hadn't seen coming. "...Yeah. So if we make a thousand clones..."

"...We could read a thousand books. At the same time. Or prank the city. Or practice chakra control. Or work on Taijutsu. We could do anything, and a whole lot of it!"

Naruko was thinking - fast. Earlier that night, the original had learned an A-class jutsu in a few hours. If she made a hundred clones, and got more scrolls, could she learn 100 A-class jutsu in a day? As she thought of the possibilities her head spun.

Naruto was thinking along the same lines. But what would they do first? He looked down at the sleeping original. From what he understood, they had the entire night, and they could make a lot of clones.

"Naruko, let's make more of ourselves. Ideas will go around faster, and that means we'll have more time."

Naruko nodded briskly. "Right. But can we make four guys and four girls?"

Naruto looked at her, confused. "What? Why?"

She shrugged. "Being a girl isn't all that bad. Plus, variety. We're more likely to get different ideas from girls than we do guys. I've only been in this body for a few minutes, but I can already tell I'm thinking differently from you. "

He nodded and made a seal. "Ready?"

She did the same. "Ready."

Eight clones appeared in various parts of the apartment. One of the Narutos made a face. "It's gettin' kinda crowded in here."

A Naruko shrugged. "Deal with it. With our resources, we'll probably find another place to live anyway."

"Let's think about that later. I don't see why clones need someplace to live anyway. It's not like there's a point in us sleeping."

"So what do we need, and how do we get it?"

"Well, we need more Jutsu. If we can learn an A-rank that quickly with only one of us, there's no telling what we can learn with hundreds if we work at it. And weapons. And ideas for using this Jutsu. And ideas for transformation Jutsu."

One of the Narukos looked confused. "Transformation Jutsu? Why would we use that?"

A different Naruko pulled at her ponytail in thought. "Think about it. We can turn into anything if we know what it's made of, and now we have a lot of us. So say there's a hundred of us, and then we all turn into lions. Or bombs. Or birds. Or squirrels, or foxes, or rabbits. We could be anything."

A Naruto's eyes widened. "Whoa...why doesn't everyone use this Jutsu? It's effin' amazing!"

The Naruko who created him narrowed her eyes. "Remind me to remind the original to ask the old man about that. Either we're missing something, or the shinobi world is full of idiots."

A couple Narutos nodded, while the rest furrowed their eyebrows. "Okay. How do we get Jutsu?"

Naruko!Two had a mischievous look on her face. "Remember the room where the forbidden scroll was?" The rest of them nodded. "Remember all the other ones that were there?"

Their eyes widened considerably while Naruto!Three visibly panicked. "But we can't just take them! People would find out, even if we got in and out safely!"

Naruko!Two smirked at him. "Remember how, when we made clones with the scroll on us, the scroll got made again too?"

Everyone in the room blinked. "You don't think..."

Naruko!Three stood up, took a scroll of half finished homework, and put it in her pocket. She then made a clone, who took out a copy of the same half finished homework. She grinned triumphantly as the clone she'd made dispelled herself.

Naruto!Three smiled. "So here's the plan." He looked at the Naruko who came up with the idea. "You sneak into the scroll room again. Make clones to make copies of everything, and don't get caught. The entire village freaked out already once today, we don't need them doing it again. I'll go with you, but I'll go to the ninja academy instead. There're probably scrolls there, too, and they're unguarded."

Naruko!Three smiled and stood up, ready to leave for the scroll room. "When we're done, we can come back here, or wherever everyone is meeting to drop off the copies to make copies of our own. Then we can look for unused weapons."

Naruto!Three frowned. "Unused weapons?"

Naruko!Three nodded. "When ninjas train, sometimes they don't pick up their kunai or shuriken, or they drop and forget things. We'll use clones to scour the village and pick up everything left behind for our own use, if we need anything."

Naruto!Three smiled. "Ok. We'll be the Collection Team. Move out."

"Wait!" A different Naruto, Naruto!Four, said. "We'll meet behind the Hokage Faces. Okay?"

They nodded before jumping out the window, leaving the eight of them to work out the rest.

"Wait, why are they going to meet us behind the Hokage Faces?" A Naruko said, confused. "I mean, why not here, or somewhere else?"

The Naruko who gave the suggestion, Naruko!Three, started rubbing her chin in contemplation. "Space. We're going to need a lot of space, especially if we're training with hundreds of us at a time. We should make another team for that. Our training will go much, much faster that way."

Naruko!Four raised her hand. "I volunteer. And you, the one who was just talking, you come with me."

Naruko!Three nodded. "We'll start training the techniques that we already know first, especially this one. If we can clone ourselves without anyone realizing, we'll be unstoppable."

The girl she was talking to nodded, and they jumped out the window in the same direction. The rest of them kept on thinking, until one Naruko piped up. "Even if we have a bunch of techniques, we need to figure out how we're going to use them."

"How do we do that?"

The Naruko chewed the inside of her cheek. "Form another team. The Tactics Team. They can direct the Training Team, tell them what to do and how to do it. Plan things out."

A different Naruto looked her. "I'll do it. You come, too. With this new Jutsu, we'll have a lot of work to do."

They nodded to each other and followed the Training Team out behind the Hokage Faces.

Four clones were left. They were sitting or standing silently in various positions, thinking. "We need ideas for everything we can transform into. This wasn't important before, but now that we have clones, we can mass everything. Maybe even have an information network," said a Naruto slowly.

A Naruko nodded. "Okay, perfect. You and I will do that, and maybe we should go to where the Tactics Team is. They'll need the information more than we will." That Naruto nodded back, and they went to join their counterparts.

The remaining boy and girl stared at the open window. It'd all been organized so quickly...and now there were probably hundreds of clones out there. They grinned at each other and high-fived. "Fuck yeah! If we keep this up, we'll be Hokage in no time!" Naruko!One yelled, probably louder than she should have.

Naruto!One smirked at her. "Well, we don't have anything else to do...We could help the others, but I doubt they'll need it. Wanna do some pranking?"

She laughed back. "You know it." And with that, they disappeared into the night.