So, hello readers of fanfiction, it is I once again, FriTik. I'm sure some of you know me and others have heard of me. Or perhaps you have no idea at all who I am, which is fine by the way.

Anyway, yes another new story. This was going to be posted in Perpetual Tales, but two things stopped me from doing that.

First, a friend managed to convince me that this was good enough to bother trying to continue.

Second, no one really seems to care about Perpetual Tales. I would now like to take the time to shamelessly promote that story. It is to be a collection of the idea for the Naruto fandom I will likely never finish, everything inside is up for adoption, if this appeals to you go and read it, please.

Moving on, I do hope that you all enjoy this mess.

"..." Sarutobi took a puff of his pipe as he stared at five very similar looking whiskered boys and the awkwardly shuffling Inu. He sighed, "Inu, do I even want to know how this happened?"

"To be honest Lord Hokage… I'm not too sure how it happened. Merely what happened as a result." Inu, or Hatake Kakashi as it were, admitted to the Sandaime.

Sarutobi stared at the ANBU operative for a moment longer before turning his attention to the five boys. More accurately the five Narutos. Dear kami what had he done to deserve this? One was bad enough to deal with on a daily basis. The amount of paperwork the boy created alone….

"Naruto-kun… whichever one of you is the real one… can you please explain how this happened?" Hiruzen asked in kindly a tone as he could manage.

They glanced at each other but no one spoke up. Not even the one who most resembled the boy as he used to be.

Yes where once there had been one blonde, blue eyed Naruto there was still one blonde, blue eyed Naruto, with slightly different shading.

Also four more additional Narutos.

There was a red headed one whom significantly resembled Kushina, right down to the eye color. He had never noticed how much Naruto resembled his mother, probably because his coloring was his father's. Or it used to be anyway.

Next to the redhead was one with black hair and eyes that eerily resembled an unactivated Sharingan. He did not even want to think about that detail. He was not the only one with black hair and strange eyes either. On his other side stood a similar looking boy with brown almost ebony hair with white pupiless eyes that resembled the Byakugan.

Finally on the other end of the line up was a Naruto with brown hair and eyes. That wouldn't have been very interesting except for the fact that the whiskers on his cheek were blockier and far more defined.

"Is there a problem?" Hiruzen prompted still waiting for an answer.

The blonde one stumbled forward. Not because he worked up the courage but because the brown haired one with darker whiskers pushed him forward. He turned and glared at his counterpart who smiled back innocently.

"Well you see Jiji… we're not exactly sure which one of us is the original." He said shuffling awkwardly in a similar fashion to Inu. Hiruzen was sure if it were not for their training the ANBU guards in the room would have been cackling at the situation.

"I see…" Hiruzen paused. "Well can you explain how it happened anyway?"

"Oh yeah." The one in front nodded eagerly and now the the Hokage got a better look at him he certainly resembled a Yamanaka more than his father. At least now anyway.

Flashback no Jutsu

Naruto trudged through the training ground he had aimlessly wandered into. He had spent hours practicing and he still could not do the Bunshin Jutsu properly. The academy teacher who was filling in for Iruka-sensei said it was because he was a talentless nobody.

He refused to accept that.

Unfortunately he had yet to manage to prove the teacher wrong despite his efforts. No matter what he did the clones just never came out right. All pale and half dead looking. It was actually kind of creepy.

So lost in his thoughts was he, that he didn't notice when he stepped on the hidden pressure plate. Nor did he notice the man sized hole that opened up in the ground in front of him. Well he noticed when he fell in at least.

"AAHHHHHH" He screamed as he tumbled down a narrow tube flailing his arms. His left hand managed to catch the rung of a ladder that ran vertically to the tube. He took deep gasping breaths as he hung there for a moment. That had been a rather terrifying experience. He looked back up just in time to see the opening close back up leaving him in the dark.

Naruto clamped his other arm onto the ladder and firmly placed both feet on it. He wasn't exactly scared of the dark or of heights but right now he was high up in the dark and he wasn't sure he liked the combination of the two. He wasn't about to climb back up and risk being trapped in a tight space, high up in the dark. So he made the logical choice of descending into the creepy dark hole he had literally fallen into.

When he eventually got to the bottom he found himself at the end of a long hallway with multiple doors and a foul smell. The door at the end of the whole was slightly open and red light pooled on the ground outside it.

Entering the room he had to blink as his eyes adjusted to getting some proper light, even if it was still red. It was a strange room with a large sort of array on the floor. What was that again? Seal array? Yeah that sounded right. The walls were lined with cabinets and desks and there were operating tables lined up. On the opposite wall were a set of tubes filled with some sort of liquid. It was hard to tell what color it was with the lighting but that just gave it the unsettling appearance of blood.

Naruto slowly walked around the edge of the room carefully avoiding the tables and tubes on the wall. He also made sure to stay outside of the seal array. From what he had learned about them, seals were weird and did weird things. He so did not want to find out what the one in a creepy... Laboratory? What one in a creepy laboratory did.

As he inspected one of the desks he picked up one of the scrolls sitting on it. He opened it up and tried to read the name. To be honest no one really ever taught him how to read so he had to try teaching himself. He knew a bunch of kanji but there were way more that he did not. He found he could not read whatever this scroll said so he shrugged and picked up another. This process repeated itself for about ten minutes. He recognized words here and there but none of the important ones.

Then he picked up a scroll with a word he could read and was familiar with. One that had led him to this situation in the first place. Bunshin. There was a bunch of other stuff written there as well but he couldn't read it. He unrolled the scroll and took a look at the hand seals, they weren't the same as the version he had learned… He shrugged and got to it.

It took about half an hour before he could run through the entire thing smoothly. It took another ten minutes to properly add his chakra to it. The results however were very favorable.

After making the hand seals Naruto felt an uncomfortable tugging sensation starting in his stomach and spreading throughout his body. Fortunately it soon ceased and he saw the fruits of his effort.

"Sweet!" He cheered as four clones appeared in a puff of smoke.

"This is weird." One of the clones said inspecting his hands.

"I thought the Bunshin was an illusion, I feel solid." Another complained. This statement led to the third one poking the fourth to test the theory.

"Hey!" he complained pushing the other clone's hand away from his face. "Quit it!"

"Huh." Naruto said as he looked at the scroll again. "I guess the other stuff written here was important."

"No duh." One clone commented.

"Oh like you'd pay attention to that." Another told him.

"Maybe I would!" The first one replied.

"We're the same person, why would we do anything different?" Yet another one asked.

"Hey is this supposed to be glowing?" The one not involved with the conversation suddenly inquired.

The rest of the group turned to him to see him standing with one foot inside the sealing array. Said sealing array was now glowing brightly and a low humming began to fill the room.

"You idiot what did you do!" Naruto yelled at him.

"HEY IF I'M AN IDIOT YOU ARE TOO!" The clone shouted back.

"AM NOT!" Naruto defended.

"ARE TOO!" The clone shot at him.

"AM NOT" Naruto reiterated loudly.

"Can we FOCUS?" One of the other clones cut in as the humming got louder and the seal glowed brighter.

Then there was a flash of light and everything went dark.

Naruto groaned. Everything hurt, and by everything he meant literally every single part of his body. He actually felt like throwing up on top of the burning pain he felt everywhere. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times. The colors looked different for some reason. It was still red but the shading was different. Weird.

As he sat up he noticed a few other things. One, he was now on one of the tables he had made certain to avoid. Two, five of the tubes full of liquid were now empty. Three, he wasn't the only one on a table. Four, sitting up made him feel even more nauseous.

It was a good thing he had been planning to eat after his walk and not before.

As he pushed himself off the table and nearly fell over he looked at the other tables. Four other boys lay on each table. Each one looked similar to him. One looked just like him with blonde hair, another one had black hair and the last two had brown hair and one had way more noticeable whiskers now.

Less than a minute later the others started groaning and pulling themselves up. Naruto had stood back and let them go through the same process he had. Mainly because he had no idea what to do in this situation.

It got weird (again) very fast.

"Okay, this is even weirder." One of the black haired ones said.

"Yeah." the brown haired one agreed.

"So which one of us is the real one?" The one with black hair and pale eyes asked.

"Me." The entire group simultaneously said. Before freezing and glaring at each other.

"I woke up first, and I remember making you guys!" Naruto told them.

"Well I remember that too and your hair is red! How could you be the real one?" The blonde one asked.

"It is?!" Naruto shouted feeling stunned. He pulled down some of his bangs and sure enough even in the red light they were a deeper shade of it than anyone else in the room.

"Wait, is my hair a different color too?" One of the black haired ones asked.

"Yeah it's black." The only blonde haired one said.

"Okay, hold up, what do we each look like?" The one with pale eyes asked.

After a few minutes of figuring out who looked like what they went back to the topic of who was the real Naruto.

"Well I'm the only one with blonde hair so I must be the real one!" The self identified blonde said.

"Yeah, well, I still woke up first." Naruto told him defensively, not willing to accept defeat.

"I'm just going to point out whoever is the real one is at fault for this whole mess." The pale eyed one said and everyone stared at him. "What?" He asked defensively.

"You definitely aren't the real one, we've never talked like that." The black haired one told him.

"You know what, you can be the original. You get to explain this to Hokage-jiji." Naruto told his blonde counterpart.

"What? Forget what I said! You're the real one!" Said blonde suddenly started panicking.

That was when the door burst opening causing all five of them to jump and turn. Standing there was a heaving dog masked ANBU. He stared at the five Narutos and they stared back.

Finally he came out of his stupor and rhetorically said, "Why do I feel like I'm getting blamed for this?"

Flashback no Jutsu Kai

"...and that's what happened." The blonde Naruto finished.

Hiruzen stared for a moment processing and sighed. "Inu take the five of them to the hospital and have some blood tests done. I want to know if they can figure out which one is the original and how the clones seem to be just as real as said original."

"No!" Five voices shouted. "Not the hospital!"

Inu sagged in place and led the quintet out of the Hokage's office. Hiruzen might have felt pity for the man if not for the fact that if he had been paying more attention they would not be in this situation. There was also the concerning fact that from what Naruto(?) described he had stumbled onto another of Orochimaru's hidden labs. It worried him how many more of his wayward student's hideouts were still hidden throughout the village. He would see if he could convince Hiashi to loan some Hyuuga to help locate them.

A thought then occurred to him. He had known Naruto for so long he rarely related the boy's burden to him anymore but if there ever was a time to think about it, that time was now. If there were five Narutos were there five Kyuubis? Or was the Kyuubi split among all five of them? Or perhaps only the original held it? Great now he needed to call Jiraiya back to the village to check the boys' seal(s).

That would be a conversation and a half.

Hatake Kakashi POV…

It was a very good thing Kakashi had years of specialized training. Otherwise he may have been tempted to strangle one of the five eight year olds who constantly shifted subject every ten seconds. Whether it was complaining about going to the hospital, or debating which one of them would be Hokage, or asking if he was a super powerful ninja, or asking to stop for ramen...

Did he mention there were five of them?

Thankfully it was late at night so there weren't too many people out and about and even among those who were it was harder for them to notice that the five boys he was leading looked very much alike.

It was also good for him because looking at the one with black hair and eyes reminded him way too much of Obito for him to feel comfortable with.

Dealing with the hospital staff was actually entertaining.

"Uzumaki Naruto." He told the attendant.

Her smile became more forced but she knew better than to argue. She glanced over his shoulder at the group of five who had gone back to arguing amongst themselves. "And the others?" She asked politely.

He had to give her some credit, even if she didn't like Naruto for what he contained at least she was staying professional, of course that might have just been because he was here. "Also Uzumaki Naruto." He paused. "We think, it's a long story and the Hokage ordered me to get some bloodwork done on them."

The nurse nodded and went about cataloging the information and informing the Doctor. It took a little while but the Doctor led them to the room for bloodwork. There was much complaining but eventually they managed to get a blood sample from each of them.

"Normally this would take a few days but given the circumstances I'll see if I can speed it along to have it done in a few hours." Dr. Phil B. Duor told him.

"Thank you." Kakashi said feeling a bit relieved. The sooner this matter got sorted out the better.

To add on to his good luck while in the waiting room all but the redheaded Naruto passed out. Kakashi wasn't sure if that was because he was the real one or if it had to do with the fact there was no mistaking him as anyone but Kushina's son.

"Inu?" The conscious Naruto asked about an hour after the others fell asleep.

"Hmm?' Kakashi asked looking up from his *ahem* reading material.

"What happens to me if I'm a clone? What happens to all of us that are clones?" Naruto asked quietly.

Kakashi paused, to be honest he hadn't quite thought of what would happen to the clones. So far it appeared as though they wouldn't just pop given the fact that they had been able to take blood samples from them. So what would they do with them?

"I don't know." He decided to answer truthfully. "This is an unprecedented situation so I honestly have no idea what will happen. But if it's any consolation I don't think we'll just pop you if you're a clone."

"Thanks Inu." Naruto said leaning back and closing his eyes. A few minutes later his breathing had evened out and he was asleep like the rest.

Kakashi sighed and leaned back himself. This whole situation was an odd one. If only he hadn't lost track of Naruto then they wouldn't be here right now. Ah well, at least no one died because of his failure this time.

Yet anyway.

But quite ironically it appeared that this time his screw up had ended up creating life rather than ending it. And considering it was Sensei's son and one of them looked like Obito and another like a male, whiskered Kushina…

Someone up there had a sick sense of humor. (Believe it or not I actually fucking sneezed right after I typed that. No joke.)

When the test results got back Kakashi found himself a bit divided on what to do. He quickly decided to take the Narutos back to the original's apartment and then take the results directly to the Hokage.

Once again it was a good thing that it was so late, or rather early at this point as it was past midnight, or else people might have been curious why an ANBU was running over rooftops carrying a bunch of children. Yeah that would have been really awkward to explain. True he could have just dodged the question but it would still look quite odd.

Upon arriving at Naruto's apartment he came to sudden realization. Naruto only had one bed, and a couch. So he ended up dumping three of them on the bed and two on the couch. He had done them the solid of pulling their off. The furniture was in bad enough shape as it was, it didn't need dirty shoes kicking it in the night. It did make him wonder though, clones were chakra constructs but all five versions of Naruto had blood so did that make their clothing just as real as they were?

With the multiple Narutos safe at home he took the blood test results to the Hokage. It was a real shame that in all the excitement of that evening's events, he had forgotten that Naruto had to go to the Academy the next day.

Hokage's office…

"So which one is the original?" Was the obvious initial question from Kakashi, as soon as he noted that the Sandaime had finished reading the results of the blood tests.

"Hard to say. They all have similarities in their DNA but they each bear similarities to a different clan. Out of all of them only one of them is related to a clan that he already should have been." Hiruzen explained thoughtfully.

"The redhead?" The dog masked Anbu inquired.

"Yes, it seems that whatever happened brought out a few of his recessive genes. Like the hair and eye color. He's definitely an Uzumaki, more so than before."

"So I'm guessing he's the most likely bet for the original?"

"Hmm, I could be wrong. But I have a hypothesis that the clones, as odd as they are, were not perfect when they were first created."

"What's the situation with the others?"

"The one with pale eyes, if it wasn't obvious, definitely has Hyuuga genes, the other black haired one has Uchiha, the brown haired one has Inuzuka and the one that's still blonde has Yamanaka. I was a bit confused at how the DNA could be transferred to clones but I have a rough understanding now." Hiruzen explained.

"You read the jutsu?"

"Yes I took a look at it when you brought it back. I am somewhat impressed Naruto managed it, I'm not sure I could. In fact I doubt there are many who could manage to use it. Unfortunately Naruto just happened to be one of the few who could. His large reserves were perfect for it."

"How so?"

"The jutsu my wayward student created was called Etānaru Bunshin no Jutsu."

"Everlasting clone?"

"Exactly, the idea is based off the Shadow clone but the difference was to create a clone with complete and stable chakra coils."

"And Naruto had enough chakra to make four."

"Exactly. But as I said it was not perfect or even complete, it is likely that is what the room was for and that Naruto unintentionally finished the work. I believe the problem was that there would be due to the nature of the human mind. The subconscious would insist such a thing isn't possible, so with his lack of understanding and huge reserves, Naruto was the ideal user."

"So we're stuck with all five now?" Inu asked.

"Oh yes." Sarutobi took a puff of his pipe.

There was a brief silence before Inu asked. "How do we let them know?"

"Oh I already left a note to explain it." The hokage took a deep smoke of his pipe.

"Naruto can't read very well." Inu protested weakly.

"It's a very basic note. They should at least be able to get an idea of what it means." Hiruzen shrugged.

"Why don't you just tell them?"

"I could send you to…" The Sandaime started.

"Nevermind sir I was out of place." Kakashi said quickly.

Naruto's apartment…

Naruto woke up to someone else's foot in his face. This was the first time such a thing had occurred as he normally did not have such close interaction with other people. He also hoped it was the last time because he found the experience very unpleasant.

It did take a little while but the boys did eventually figure out what it meant. Needless to say not everyone was happy with who the original was supposed to be, but the fact that no one was going to be dispelling at anytime in the foreseeable future was a good thing.

Although there was bit of an identity crisis going on.

But that was working itself out.

Kinda.

The fact that only one of them could technically call himself an Uzumaki now was a bit odd but they were rolling with it. Seeing as they now had an Uchiha, a Hyuuga, a Yamanaka and an Inuzuka sharing an apartment. They only knew those names because they were in a class with each of them.

"Okay so does everyone remember who they are." Naruto asked the group.

"No I've forgotten in the last thirty seconds." The only remaining blonde rolled his eyes.

"Cut the sass Inoruto." Menma told him.

The naming had gone as followed.

The Uzumaki had kept the name Naruto.

The Uchiha had gone with Menma.

The Hyuuga had chosen the name Hiruto.

The Yamanaka picked Inoruto.

Finally the Inuzuka went with Arashi.

"You know it's funny I still feel like Naruto even though I'm not Naruto. Actually come to think of it none of us really are anymore." Arashi commented.

"Heh, I wonder what Old Man Teuchi and Ayame are gonna think of this." Menma snickered.

Naruto suddenly wondered how going to the academy was going to go over. It was then that Naruto came up with a good old fashioned prank for the academy. After all there were five of him now…

Oh, watch out Konoha. It was time to step up his pranking game.

…

I honestly have no idea where the fuck this idea came from.

About six months ago, I just sat down and wrote this thing out along with a few other documents with what happens next. This was the only part that could be called "complete." I have no idea what triggered the idea, or why I was so enthused to write it, but here it is.

I can only hope that you found it entertaining!

Until next week, bye.

~FriTik

R&R