-In a Tree-
-Same Day-
"Operative Lone Orange reporting in. Do you copy. Over."
"Loud and clear, operative. What do you have to report? Over."
"The zone I'm watching swaps guards every hour. There is a gap of one minute and thirty-seven seconds between guards. Over."
"When is the next swap? Over."
"In exactly ten minutes. Over."
"Excellent. Be ready, reinforcements will arrive in cat form in nine minutes, be ready, you're the leader of this operation. Over and out."
"Copy that. Over and out."
A sole clone of Naruto was skillfully blending in with the tree he was sat in. Superhuman levels of patience were engaged (as far as Naruto is concerned). The 'zone' he was in charge of was the Anbu headquarters.
Waiting for several more minutes, the Naruto clone transformed into an orange cat, before jumping down from the tree he was in and merging in with a newly arrived group of black cats.
Gradually creeping closer to their target, the group of cats, lead by the orange cat, waited patiently for their time to strike.
Suddenly, a shadowy figure flashed down from a roof near the Anbu headquarters, before merging in with the passing pedestrians, and walking off. It was time to strike.
The group of cats rushed forward, jumping in unison at a wall, before turning into mice midair, and landing inside of a drainage pipe. Rapidly crawling up through the drainage pipe, they arrived on the roof of the Anbu headquarters.
Using their now miniature forms, they crawled beneath the door, before descending into the headquarters.
Rapidly navigating through the intentionally confusing design of the building, they soon found what they were looking for, the locker room.
In and out in less than five seconds, it was a record for Naruto.
And the same way they came in, the group of mice left. Soon reaching the ground again, they scattered, careful to not leave a trail behind.
The job was a success, Operative Lone Orange dodged into a bathroom, before re-emerging not as a mouse, but as a brown-haired boy.
Grinning to himself, he hurried towards Ichiraku's for some ramen. He had to make it there before the other successful operatives got the same idea after their jobs.
Returning to his apartment, smile on his face, Naruto ignored the glares from the surrounding villagers, his lesson for the day with Iruka had actually gone great, despite his dislike for reading.
Opening the door to his apartment, he immediately slammed the door shut, stopping for a moment to think, before slowly opening it again to confirm what he had seen.
And just like the first time he opened his door, the sight before him was unbelievable. His apartment was clean. No, that was an understatement, it was spotless. It was never clean, much less this clean, which lead to his obvious surprise at the situation.
Entering into his apartment, Naruto soon found himself face to face with several clones, each holding several radios. Even as he walked closed to the sight before him, he could hear conversations happening, not only between the clones in the room, but also to presumably other clones on the other side of the radios.
A lot of questions emerged in Naruto's mind. Where did all these radios come from? Why was the apartment so clean? But most importantly, "What are y'all doing?"
Instantly, all the Naruto clones' heads snapped in his direction. Their faces were painted with various forms of panic and worry, before quickly becoming relieved seeing it was just the original.
"Who was in charge of watching the door? What if someone else had walked in?"
Several clones chimed, "Not me," before one sheepishly raised his hand, "I was."
Several groans emerged, before the clone who had asked the question just pointed towards the door. Nodding his head in acceptance, the guilty clone passed by Naruto, before sitting in front of the door and staring.
The questioning clone quickly flashed through the hand signs for, creating a clone that promptly walked over to Naruto.
"I'm sure you're curious. The head clone made me to catch you up to speed."
"Head clone?'
"Yeah, head clone. He was in charge of everything while you were gone. We drew lots, he won, he's the leader. But that's beside the point. He's the one who split us up into the communications squad, the recon squad, and the extra hands squad, which was formerly the cleaning squad."
This confused Naruto, he remembered telling the clones to find something to do, but this wasn't exactly what he had in mind, whatever it was that was happening.
"Wait a minute, what's this about squads? I get the communications squad, its these guys with the radios. But what about the recon and extra hands squads? What are they doing besides the cleaning?"
Already expecting that question, the clone was ready with the answer.
"Well, while you weren't here the vote for the head clone. You also weren't here for the 'What should we do?' vote. We decided on one, cleaning up the apartment, cause let's be real, it was kind of filthy. And two, pull the mother of all pranks, what could be our final, big one, being as we are about to be officials ninjas starting tomorrow, might not have time, ya know?"
The picture was complete in Naruto's mind, what were a group of clones of him supposed to do with their free time? One only needs to ask themselves 'What would Naruto do?' to get the answer. And it came down to two options, eat ramen, or pull a prank.
Considering that eating ramen did not take long, that really left one option for the group, pull a prank. The problem being it of course had to be a prank large enough to satisfy all the Naruto's and let each one contribute.
When Naruto had left the apartment, he had left behind seven clones. Considering there were eight clones in his apartment at the moment, with the 'head' clone having just made a new one in front of him, who knows how many clones were out around the city at the moment with that many radios being needed.
The thought of the ensuing chaos and hilarity brought a grin to his face, it was a new note in his mind regarding the capabilities of his clones, large, hands-free pranks could be done. And as he thought about it more, they couldn't even be linked back to him as long as he had a solid alibi. Afterall, how could he possibly be in two places at once?
Moving up to the table, the 'head' clone naturally deferred the head position to the original.
"So, what do we got cooking?"
Murmurs began to resound, as the clones began to talk over one another. Naruto calmly raised his hand, silencing them, before he turned to the 'head' clone, "Head clone, explain please, if you don't mind."
Smiling, "Certainly, Boss. Its quite simple, we've planned out glitter bombs, paint sprays, stink bombs, you name it we got it, we brought out every classic. What makes this different, however, is who we've targeted this time."
"Who are we targeting that is so different?"
"That's thing, we're going after everyone, simultaneously. The Anbu, the Akimichi's, the Nara's, the Yamanaka's, every clan in Konoha, minor and major will be getting hit with something today."
"Won't…won't we get in a lot of trouble for all this?"
Smile growing wider, the head clone innocently replied, "But how could it possibly have been little old Naruto, he spent the entire duration of the incident with his former teacher, Iruka?"
Naruto silently beat himself up, he had just thought of using his clones to conduct pranks while he found himself an alibi, he just hadn't considered that it would be implemented before he had even thought of it.
"Of course, once people learn that we can use clones to pull pranks while we are elsewhere, they'll probably get mad at us again, but by then it'll be far too late."
Breaking out into a laugh, the head clone returned his attention to the table, where the rest of the clones were waiting patiently. Naruto naturally turned his head to the clones as well, looking at them with a questioning glance.
"Is it done?" The head clone asked.
All the clones promptly replied, "Done."
Catching on, Naruto grinned to himself, "Well then, I guess its time to sit back and watch the fireworks?"
In unison, the Naruto clones left the apartment, before climbing up to the roof to wait for the results of their 'operation.'
Author's Note: Gotta have some fun clone side-stories. This is the last chapter I had pre-written prior to uploading my fic, so might be a bit until the next chapter is ready. Really is just whenever I decide to pump out another chapter.
On another note, I feel like my writing can be too direct sometimes. I'm currently studying to be an engineer so it could stem from that. I'd like a second opinion if y'all wouldn't mind private messaging me or leaving a review.
Hope y'all enjoyed the clone hijinks. This wasn't how I planned for this chapter to go and was meant to only be a part of the chapter, but as I wrote it, it gradually got longer and longer. I ended up deciding to make it a separate chapter.
