I do not own Naruto. Any parts that seem like they are from the Anime or Manga probably are.
- E.P - E.P -
The forest flashed by as Naruto jumped from tree to tree, his bright orange jumpsuit a dead giveaway to his location if there had been any watchers. He had failed the Academy exam for the third time, and prospective ninja were only allowed three attempts. Naruto had been so crushed that he hadn't passed, sat on the swing under the tree, that he had crushed any niggling doubts he had had when Mizuki-sensei had told him there was another way for him to pass.
He just had to sneak into the Hokage tower and retrieve a hidden scroll, then learn a jutsu and demonstrate it to Mizuki-sensei.
Naruto had half of that done, and now just had to reach the clearing and learn a technique before Mizuki-sensei showed up. He dropped out of the trees and onto the roof of the shack near the clearing before jumping down into the clearing itself and pulling the scroll off his back.
He lay one end down and weighted it with some rocks before unrolling the scroll and looking through the techniques.
"The first should be the easiest one, right?" Naruto muttered to himself, before shouting out, "A clone Jutsu! What the hell, that's my worst jutsu! What's the next one..."
He unrolled more of the scroll and nearly screamed out loud. The next three were all sub-jutsu, jutsu you couldn't learn without the first one, named Mass Shadow Clones, Memory Pulse and Memory Network. He sighed and turned his attention back to the first jutsu, the Shadow Clone. He idled looked through the text, ignoring almost all the words as he tried to find the hand seals.
"The Clone seal," Naruto wondered out loud, "What's that I thought there were only eleven hand seals... Oh, wait, a picture... so those fingers go over those..."
He idly tried forming the cross shaped seal, pushing a little katra into it...
*poof*
Naruto stared at the identical copy of himself who was doing the exact same thing.
"Was it..." The clone started, "Supposed to be this easy?"
"It can't be," The original Naruto replied, bending down to take a closer look at the writing on the scroll.
"Well," the clone replied, stepping over the scroll and looking at the next technique, "I'm here aren't I?"
"Alright," Naruto said, standing up and pulling off his orange jacket and throwing it to the side, he had gotten a little sweaty on the run there and the heavy orange fabric wasn't cooling him down, "You keep looking through there, see if you can find anything, I'm going to try again."
"But I can't even read most of these words!" the clone wailed, glaring at the original.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto called out, ignoring his clone's complaints.
The new clone stood there, slightly bemused by the sight of first clone getting into the Originals face before the original pushed him away and glanced between the two of them.
"How come you're not wearing the jacket?" Naruto asked.
"Eh?" the second clone replied, wondering what he was on about.
"The jacket," Naruto said, pushing on, "You haven't got it on but you have."
Naruto pointed at each clone as he said it, and the two of them looked each other over.
"Yeah, so?" The first clone replied, "You haven't got the jacket on either?"
"No!" Naruto shouted, getting a little frustrated, "Because I took it off before I made him..."
He trailed off and looked the pair of clones over carefully, before looking down at himself.
"Turn out your pockets!" he shouted, "I need to check something!"
The clones shared an exasperated look before replying, "Whatever you say, boss."
The ground was soon covered by various bits of pranking supplies, paint, bits of wire and so on. But each bit had two identical twins.
"It copies everything!" Naruto shouted, the clones eyes widening as they caught on, "Quick, help me roll up the scroll!"
"Why?" the second clone asked.
"Because if he does the jutsu again whilst holding the scroll," the first replied, "We'll have two scrolls!"
The second took a deep breath and his eyes widened as the original tied the scroll to his back again, "We're a genius..."
Another shout and poof of smoke revealed another clone, this one with a wide grin and a scroll on his back.
"Quick," He shouted, "Unroll the scrolls and we'll compare them!"
They did so and this time there was barely any surprise that the two were identical, all the way to a load of techniques called Mokuton. That was probably proof they were the same all the way to the end.
"Right," Naruto called, "Roll it up and go home, we'll stash it somewhere and learn more later."
The third clone nodded and rushed to do as the original asked, only to get his feet caught up in the reams of scroll and trip himself, bashing his head on a rock and dispelling, along with the fake scroll.
The three remaining Naruto all held their heads a new memories rushed into them, of seeing three copies of themselves, one with a jacket and two without, of unrolling the scroll and of tripping themselves into the ground.
"What the hell," the three of the muttered simultaneously, "Was that?"
"The scrolls gone!" the second clone shouted, just as the first cried, "I remember reading something important!"
"Yes we can see the scrolls gone," Naruto said, "And what do you mean, something important?"
"Here!" The clone said having scrambled around to the original scroll and put his finger on the text, "Memory feedback, when he went we got his memories!"
"So anything you do," Naruto replied, "I've done, when you go!"
"Or anything you learn..." the second clone muttered, only to expand when he saw his copies inquisitive looks, "If you both learnt different jutsu's at the same time then you go, we will have learnt two jutsu in the same time it normally takes to learn one!"
"But where can we find that many awesome jutsu?" the first clone moaned, before pausing.
As if drawn by a force greater than the Sage of Six Paths himself, all three Narutos found themselves unable to look away from the scroll they were all crowded around.
"Well," The originally muttered, "We're only on the first jutsu..."
"Imagine what the others must be like..." one of the clones finished.
- E.P - E.P -
After that the clearing exploded into motion, several clones being brought into existence one after another, before a quick glance at the scroll revealed how to bring as many as you wanted into existence at the same time. A group had taken several copies of the scroll and returned to the village, hoping to stash them in their home, whilst others had taken look out positions in the trees waiting for Mizuki-sensei to arrive.
By far the most activity however was going on around the unrolled copies of the scroll, a group of clones looking over each jutsu and trying it out. One clone had gotten bored of trying to get the original attention so he could try the jutsu he had found and transformed himself into Naruko to get his attention. It had worked spectacularly, as not only the original but every other clone as well had been staring at him before trying the various jutsu themselves.
There had been the sudden appearance of dozen of logs and scantily clad women as each clone found that they too could use jutsu, and started trying the ones they had found on the scroll out themselves.
The real Naruto was knelt down with a group of clones around the original scroll, ignoring the chaos all around them, and trying to figure out if the shadow clone jutsu had any secrets left to tell.
"Memory feedback from the diss-persee-all of multiple clones may result in damage to the something something section of the brain," Naruto read to the clones, "Possibly causing the user to fall into a something or require Im-e-die-ate medical attention."
"Anyone know what the means?" One of the clones asked, to a round of shook heads.
"There's a bit here that says we're chakra constructs," Another pointed out, "You reckon that's similar to katra?"
"Possibly," Naruto replied, "But Mizuki-sensei was kind of insist-"
Pain.
Itburneditburneditburneditburned
Skinmeltingfireintheveins
Burningburningburn-
It stopped.
Naruto slowly got up from the floor where he had been thrashing around in pain, along with every other clone. Sweat was running down his brow and his heartbeat racing, from the sudden surge of adrenaline.
"What was that..." Naruto asked.
"A fire jutsu we tried," A clone replied, only for another to pick up, "Katon: Self-Immolate."
"And why did we think it was a good idea to try a jutsu named self-immo-whatever?" Naruto asked.
"We're clones," Was the reply he got, "It's not like you're going to die."
"Hang on," Another clone called out, "It says here it's a suicide jutsu."
"Where?"
"The bit down the bottom that says 'Notes'."
"This one's got it as well," A clone called out, kneeling down by the scroll, "Raiton: Final Nerve Pulse – suicide"
"Same here, Katon: Volcanic Inferno – Suicide."
After that came a multitude of calls, each clone calling out the names of various suicide jutsu recorded in the scroll.
"Wait," A clone called out suddenly, "These Moku-something jutsus say you need a mastery of Earth and Water pri-mary elle-men-tall trans-four-ma-shun and an aff-in-it-e to the second-dairy Wood tras-thingy. No wait, may cause death, never mind!"
"Actually," Came the response from a group of clones, who had unrolled the scroll all the way to the end, "Pretty much all these jutsu say that they may cause death, loads say you need these aff-in-thingys as well."
"But it's like you said," The original replied, "You're clones, even if the technique kills you it won't kill me."
"True," Came the reply from the clone who had mentioned the Katon jutsus, "But do you really want to be around if we successfully perform a jutsu called volcanic inferno? 'Depending on chakra reserves, may cause total dev-a-station for up to a mile rady-us'."
"No," Naruto replied, "I see your point."
"Wonder who these guys were anyway?" A clone mumbled.
"Hm?"
"Well the first section is all added by the same person, some guy called Hashi, but the sources are all different," He replied, "See here, Yamanka, Uchiha, Hyūga, it mentions pretty much every clan. But here it changes over to some guy named Tobi, and the sources all say the same name, his. Then there's another guy called Hiruzen-"
"Isn't that Jiji's name?" A clone interrupted.
"-But the sources go back to be varied. But those sections are all the same size, but there's one guy on here who's only got a couple of jutsu here, some guy called Minato, but he's the source for them as well!"
"So?" Naruto replied, "These Tobi and Minato guys seem pretty smart if they came up with all these jutsu."
"Yeah but Tobi's are weird, there's one called Edo Tensai- anyway that's not the point. There's four names, the third of which is JiJi's, ring any bells?"
"...No?"
"Nope!"
"Nothing here..." Came the responses, as the first clone face-palmed.
"The Hokages! You think this scroll is-" Naruto called suddenly, only to be interrupted but the arrival of a memory, "Iruka-sensei's coming!"
There was mass panic as clones began grabbing scrolls and rolling them up, only to remember they would disperse with them. Naruto was left rolling on the ground from the sudden influx of memories as a group of clones quickly rolled up the original scroll and dispersed. Naruto grabbed it and slung it on his back, then took a look around the clearing.
It was a mess.
Whilst the clones may have vanished the marks of their existence hadn't. There were small craters and puddles from failed Doton and Suiton jutsu, the bark had been singed of the trees from failed Katon and Raiton Jutsu and the grass had been all torn up.
Hopefully Iruka-sensei wouldn't notice.
"I found you, Naruto!" Iruka-sensei shouted as he jumped into the clearing, "What the hell do you think you're doing!?"
"Damn it, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto cried, feeling a little unsure of himself now that his clones were gone, "You only gave me enough time to learn one jutsu!"
"Learn a jutsu..." Iruka-sensei muttered, "Naruto, do you have any idea what you've done?"
"Yeah," Naruto replied, "I retrieved the scroll and learnt a jutsu, like Mizuki-sensei told me. So I get to pass now, right!"
"Mizuki..." Iruka-sensei mumbled.
"Yeah!" Naruto cried, "I'll show you, then I'll definitely grad-"
He was cut off my Iruka-sensei suddenly throwing him to the side, allowing Naruto to avoid the hail of kunai that pinned Iruka-sensei to the wall of the shack.
"Nice job finding the moron," Mizuki-sensei called out from his newly revealed perch on a tree branch, his silver hair swept under a bandanna and a pair of oversized shuriken on his back, "Now Naruto, Give me the scroll!"
"What..." Naruto muttered, shell shocked at seeing his favourite sensei being wounded.
"Whatever happens Naruto, don't give it to him!" Iruka-sensei shouted, pulling a kunai out of his leg, "That's a forbidden scroll full of secret ninjutsu, he used you to get to it!"
"Secrets..." Mizuki-sensei sneered, "I'll let you in on a secret Naruto, a secret that's been kept from you for twelve years-"
"No!" Iruka-sensei shouted, pulling out another kunai from his flak jacket, "Don't!"
"Since the sealing of the Demon Fox," Mizuki-sensei continued, ignoring Iruka-sensei's shouts, "and since that day a special rule was created for this village, a rule that you were never to be told of."
"Tell me!" Naruto shouted, angry that this had been kept from him and no one else, "Tell me!"
"Stop!" Came Iruka-sensei's weak cries, the last of the kunai falling to the ground,
"I'll tell you alright," Mizuki laughed, his face twisting into a hideous grin, "I'll tell you that you are the Nine Tailed Demon Fox, the same Fox that destroyed the village and killed Iruka's parents!"
Naruto's world stopped.
'Demon Fox,' He thought, ignoring almost everything else Mizuki-sensei was saying 'Me... But I can't be...'
His mind was filled with memories from his past, the looks of loathing on the villagers' faces and words of cruelty on their lips.
'Perhaps I am... perhaps I am the Demon Fox-' He was suddenly brought out of his thoughts by the spray of Iruka-sensei's blood as it hit his face, Iruka-sensei using his body to block the oversized shuriken aimed at Naruto.
"I hated you at first, Naruto," Iruka-sensei said, blood dripping from his mouth, "But you reminded me so much of myself, doing anything to get some attention, good or bad. It hurts doesn't it, being alone?"
He coughed up more blood but continued, "I'm sorry Naruto, I should've done a better job..."
His voice trailed off as Naruto turned and ran, thoughts tumbling through his head.
'I'm not a Demon am I?' He wondered, running from tree to tree until he found a hollow to curl up in, 'But all the hatred people have for me, they can't all me wrong can they? But Iruka-sensei and Jiji and Ayame and Teuchi, they all care for me, don't they? But Iruka-sensei said he hated me once..."
He was once again brought out of his thoughts by Iruka-sensei, this time as he crashed through the canopy and rolled to a stop at the base of a tree. He was followed oddly enough, by another Naruto, and Naruto was sure he had dispersed all the clones he had left in the forest
"How?" he heard Iruka-sensei say, only to be surprised when the transformation dropped in a cloud of smoke to reveal Mizuki-sensei, "How did you know I wasn't Iruka?"
"Because I am," He heard his clone say, only for another transformation to drop and reveal Iruka-sensei collapsed next to a log he had used as an impromptu scroll.
Naruto had to admit, that was kind of cool from coming from Iruka-sensei, he'd always thought him a little stuffy.
"You'd even transform into the monster that killed you parents to protect it," He heard Mizuki-sensei say, his tone mocking, "How touching. But the Nine Tails would never be able to resist the power that scroll would grant."
"Perhaps the Nine Tails wouldn't," Iruka-sensei shouted, and Naruto hung his head in despair, "But Naruto is different, he is one of my excellent students!"
Naruto smiled at that, but only weakly. Was he any different than the Nine Tails? Wasn't his first response to the scroll when he'd realised how powerful it was, 'How many awesome Jutsu can I learn'?
"-Hurry up and die!" He heard Mizuki-sensei shout, as he ran towards Iruka-sensei, shuriken spinning in his hand. But no matter how bad Naruto felt about himself, he would not let this traitor hurt Iruka-sensei any more.
And with that Naruto jumped up from the hollow and pushed of towards Mizuki, lashing out with the first thing that came to hand.
Fortunately the great mass of paper wrapped around a length of wood that mad up the scroll was a pretty dangerous weapon, if only as a bludgeon, and Mizuki was sent flying across the clearing.
"Don't you dare touch him," Naruto growled, his eyes hidden by shadows, "Or I'll kill you!"
"You can try, Demon!" Mizuki shouted back and him, wiping the blood from his nose as he stood up, "But I can take you in one shot!"
"Try it," Naruto said, slowly moving his hands into a cross shape, "Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
The world, went Orange.
- E.P - E.P -
Half an hour later and Naruto was sat in the Hokage's office fidgeting in his chair and playing with his new headband. After returning the scroll to Jiji, Iruka-sensei had been taken to the hospital to have his wounds seen to, whilst Mizuki had been whisked away by the ANBU.
"Naruto," His Jiji said, "Is there anything you wanted to ask me?"
"Yeah," Naruto mumbled, "About the Fox..."
"You're not the Fox, Naruto," Jiji replied with a kind smile, "Mizuki was lying. Lets see... do you remember the lessons on Fūinjutsu?"
"Eh?" Naruto replied, an eyebrow raised.
"Sealing?"
"Oh! That stuff with the smoke and then the other stuff vanished!"
"Yes," Jiji said, sighing at Naruto ignorance, "And when the other stuff vanished, did the scroll turn into the other stuff?"
"No. Was it supposed to?"
"No, that doesn't happen. But you could say that you were the scroll that stays the same, and the Nine Tails was the other stuff."
"Oh..."
"You understand now, Naruto," Jiji asked him, lighting up his pipe.
"Yeah," Naruto replied, "You explained it much better than Iruka-sensei did! But I also wanted to ask you about the scroll..."
"No, Naruto," Jiji said with a smile, "You can't look at it again."
"That's not what I was going to say," Naruto whined, "I wanted to know more about the scroll itself!"
"Well," Jiji started, take a draw from his pipe, "Before the village was established all the Clans were wanderers and as they developed jutsu, some were deemed dangerous, and locked away. When Konoha was formed all these scrolls were pooled together by Shodaime-sama to create the Forbidden Scroll of Seals."
"Eh!?"
"The scroll you took."
"Oh."
"After that, Nidaime-sama added some during his reign, but he was a bit of a jutsu developer so they were mostly his own creations. Then came my tenure and the jutsu I've developed, as well as jutsu we have acquired from other sources, and the few new Clan Jutsu. Lastly are Yondaime-sama's jutsu. He didn't rule for very long, but the Rasengan, his special sealing techniques and the Hiraishin tag creation are all on there. Oh, and that reminds me, I need to add that jutsu of yours..."
"Eh!?"
"The Sexy Jutsu, was it,"
Naruto was almost ecstatic at the thought of having one of his jutsu on the scroll, but the quiet giggles and slight flow of blood from his Jiji's nose ruined it a little, "You're just a pervert Jiji!"
The Hokage gave him a serious look, although it as slightly ruined by the blush across the old man's cheeks.
- E.P - E.P -
A short while later and Naruto had returned to his home to find it in a state of disarray. Bits of paper covered every surface and on them were whatever bits of jutsu they could understand, as well as some rather bad replications of the scroll itself. There were still a dozen or so clones hang about slurping ramen and idly trying out jutsu.
"So Boss," One of the asked, "What happened after we beat the hell out of Mizuki?"
"Iruka made us a Genin!" Naruto shouted, and the clones all joined in, high fives going all around, until one of the clones accidently dispelled another and the ramen it had eaten dropped to the ground in a sodden mess.
There was silence, as all eyes went first to the ramen and then to the rapidly paling clone, who back away and started babbling, "It was an accident, an accident!"
"He wasted Ramen!" Naruto cried, "Get him!"
"The fight was fairly short, although the dispersal of more clones left even more ramen scattered around in messy piles on the floor, as if acting as grave markers for the fallen clones.
Naruto idly sorted through the memories he had received, finding easy and easy every time he did so. From the hundred of clones that had lived for nearly an hour early whilst trying jutsu to the thousands who had lasted only a few minutes, his mind was rapidly getting used to the strain.
"Memory Pulse?" He wondered out loud.
"Yeah," Another clone called out, "When the clone uses it, it lets you get the clones memories without it dispelling, or it creating a clone and then dispelling that!"
"I know what the jutsu does, I've got the memories!" Naruto shouted, "But it's no use to me, is it?"
"Perhaps not, boss," A clone said, "But how about this one?"
Naruto watched as the clone put his fingers in the cross shaped clone seal and started rifling through the memories that appeared as the clone called out, "Memory Pulse Jutsu!"
"Memory Network?" Naruto muttered, "Why haven't you tried it?"
"Cos I'm not the original."
"Let's see... Clone seal... concentrate, reach out to chakra creations? What does that mean?"
Naruto followed the instructions as best he could, and found that there were these strange kind of presences he could feel in his chakra, like an open door someone had left if they went out of the house. He concentrated on them, eight presences, one for each clone still alive and...
He could see himself and himself and himself, eight different viewpoints on a single ninja headband and a ninth watching them and he took a step back on nine pairs of legs and tried to wipe his eyes with nine pairs of hands and this pair of hand s was moved like this if he didn't want to move the others...
His concentration failed.
"That was awesome!" A clone shouted, "If we could get the hang of that, we could be a hundred people at the same time! Imagine the pranks!"
"Yeah," Naruto replied, "But we held it for a second with eight clones, it'll take ages for us to get the hang of it!"
"We can practice other techniques though whilst you practice that,"
"No we can't," Another clone added, as all eyes turned to him, "Almost all the others need those aff-in-thingies."
"The scroll doesn't say what they are?"
"No."
"What about the textbook," One clone said digging the pile of papers and pulling out a thin book. Most of the pages were missing and there were crossings out and revisions throughout the whole thing.
"That thing's been useless!" A clone cried, snatching it from the others hand and throwing it to the floor.
"But Mizuki gave it to us specially!"
That was a pause and then all the Narutos looked down at the book and sighed in unison.
"We need a new textbook."
"We'll do it later," Naruto said, taking a glance at the dark sky before dispelling the clones, barely noticing the influx of memories, "We've got to submit a picture tomorrow."
- E.P - E.P -
The next day Naruto woke up fairly early and, after grabbing his forehead protector, set about creating clones. He'd told them to start organising the mess of papers that was their copy of the forbidden scroll as well as trying to learn some of the jutsu. He wasn't particularly hopeful though, the wording for the techniques was so long, couldn't they just use pictures?
He didn't want to waste any time with a complicated picture, not when there was new and amazing jutsu to attempt to learn, so the picture that was taken on top of the Hokage Tower was a fairly boring one.
He'd wanted to make himself look awesome, colour his skin with swirls or spirals, maybe prank everyone by having his picture taken in his Sexy jutsu form but he couldn't be bothered.
Grabbing the picture, a cross armed Naruto looking straight at the camera, and attaching it to his form, mostly blank, he headed off to Jiji's office, where he and Iruka-sensei were waiting. Iruka-sensei still looked in bad shape, bandages wrapped around his legs and chest.
Naruto had always wondered why other people made such a fuss over getting hurt. For him even the deepest cuts would be gone in a hour or so, and the one time he'd broken his arm that had been gone within the day.
Plopping himself down in the chair opposite Jiji's desk he handed over his form and let the Hokage and Iruka-sensei look through it.
"Hm," Jiji said, "I thought you be more artistic, Naruto?"
"So it's okay?" he replied, sat on the edge of his seat.
"Yes-"
"Cheers Jiji!" he shouted, jumping up from his chair, "But I got to go, there some stuff I need to do!"
He ran out the door at that, Jiji's voice floating out behind him, "Be at the Academy for nine tomorrow morning for your team assignments!"
"Whatever!" He shouted, "See you later Iruka-sensei!"
He ran through the corridors of the Hokage Tower, past some little black haired kid with a bowl on his head holding a shuriken, down some stairs, and out the door past a ninja with some weird black glasses on.
He headed straight back home, wondering how his clones were getting on, the glares from the villagers doing as little to him now as they had ever done in the last dozen years. He'd always wondered why they hated him, even before he had started pranking them, but now he knew.
They though he was the Fox.
The civilians he could understand, they never heard of this sealing stuff, but the ninja's had. He may not have really understood the lesson Iruka-sensei gave, but he was the dead last of the class, so he was fairly sure everyone else did.
As he reached his apartment block he paused. Usually the building was dead quiet he was the only resident after all, Fox again probably. But now it sounded fairly busy, in fact he could hear some women shouting. Slowly edging into the building he moved up to the second floor and picked through a door that had been left ajar.
All he could see were the backs of some of his clones, shouting at something and trying to see over each others' shoulders. He grabbed the closest one and asked him, "What the hell's going on?"
"Well," The clone started, looking more than a little embarrassed, "We were trying one of the Earth Jutsu, Doton: Mud Pump, but we screwed it up and coated this room in mud after breaking down one of the walls."
"And then?" Naruto asked, feeling he was holding something back.
"Take a look," The clone said with a shrug.
Standing on the tips of his toes Naruto was just able to see over the other clones shoulders' and towards a pit of mud where Sakura and his sexy Jutsu seemed to be wrestling in Bikinis, pink and orange respectively.
Naruto blinked a few times before turning back to his clone, "Sakura?"
"It's a transformation," Was the reply, his clone barely paying him any attention.
"Huh," Naruto said to himself, before turning back to the mud wrestling, "We're awesome. GO ON SAKURA!"