-The Apartment-

-Night-

The horde of Naruto clones were beginning to file back into the apartment, usually in groups of two or three. As they entered through the door, a clone in charge of guarding the entrance would ask them what subject they studied, before pointing to one of five groups that were forming in the apartment.

The groups naturally corresponded to what subject each clone studied, and unfortunately, it was not looking too diverse. The clones seemed to naturally gravitate to the same subject matter, with obvious ones like Ninjutsu and Taijutsu being the most popular, both groups having eight members to them.

Surprisingly, the next biggest group following those two was History, with five members to their name. When asked, "Why history?" One of the clones had simply said, "I don't know, maybe someone famous used a chakra-absorbing technique?"

The smallest two groups, Genjutsu and Mathematics, both had one member to them. Naruto could understand why a clone might look into Genjutsu, but he refused to believe that a clone of himself would even consider looking into something like Mathematics.

One might be curious, what about the clone at the door, what did he study? Oh, and what about the original Naruto as well? Both rushed to books on Ninjutsu, both technically belonging to that group, making its actual count of members ten.

Despite the absence of one clone, who they had been waiting on for twenty-some minutes, the collective decided to begin discussing what they had learned. The straggler-clone could just hop in when he eventually arrived.

Beginning with the largest group, Ninjutsu, they would end it off with the weirdo who decided Mathematics was a good use of his time.

As the original, Naruto stepped forth to represent the Ninjutsu squad.

"To keep it short, Ninjutsu is probably bust. We had a lot of guys looking into it, so we probably covered most bases. Elemental ninjutsu doesn't have what we're looking for right now. Neither does non-elemental. One of the guys found something on nature energy, but we'd have to be a Sage or something like that and we don't even know if it'll work. The only thing that might work is Kinjutsu, but I doubt the Hokage'd let us anywhere near the scroll after what we pulled last time."

Each group seemed a bit uncomfortable at the information, after all, that was one of their options for survival almost completely bust.

Next, a Taijutsu squad member spoke, "Taijutsu is technically bust, but also not. There isn't a direct way to absorb chakra through Taijutsu based on what we've studied. However, technically since chakra is a mix of physical and spiritual energies, us doing more training should increase our supply of chakra. While not what we want, at least each clone would survive for longer."

Another clone quickly added on, "That's only a stop gap solution though, and doesn't solve the core of our problem, clones would still eventually run out of chakra."

It wasn't great news. There was a moment of silence in the room before a History clone took its turn speaking.

"Our results are much the same. There are options, none that we can use. The First Hokage's Wood Release allowed him to absorb chakra, but no one has been known to be able to use it since. There is also Samehada, one of the swords used by the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, but that has apparently been missing for some time now. The last option while technically possible, would probably result in us needing to go rogue as we'd need to steal some of the Aburame's kikaichu."

It went unsaid, but they'd also need to learn to control them. Not to mention they were bugs, and the Narutos didn't fancy playing around with them.

The Genjutsu and Mathematics clones stood forth together, quickly saying, "Yeah, we got nothing," before sitting back down.

Prior to that moment, the clones had almost thought, 'Hey, maybe math will surprise us and be our ticket to salvation,' only to be let down. Not that they had really expected that math would do them any good here.

"Well shit," the original spoke, "everything we'd studied today amounted to nothing." Naruto paused letting the reality sink in, before continuing, "Since no one else has got anything to say, I guess let's end the meeting here today. We could plan out our next moves right now, but I doubt any of us are in the mood. I guess lets just do it in the morning."

And with that, the group went to sleep sad, but with hope still in their hearts, maybe tomorrow would bring better results? They just might, after all, there was still a clone missing that they'd forgotten about.

-Morning, The Next Day-

The horde energetically gathered for the morning's meeting. While last night had been somewhat depressing news, the clones had, during the night, spread that it actually wasn't that big of a deal. A dampener, sure, but that had only been one day of work. If it were that easy, wouldn't everybody be running around with a literal army?

Not to mention, they had confirmed that it was possible to absorb chakra, just that they weren't capable of using any of the methods found. That meant it was just about finding their way to do what had already been done in the past.

Naruto, who wasn't privy to the clones' thoughts, was surprised by how upbeat they were despite the previous night's news. Shrugging his shoulders, as he'd find out why when one of them popped, he put the toast one of the clones had made for him in his mouth as the meeting began.

In between bites, he spoke, "So munch munch, what's the plan for today?"

The Mathematics clone quickly spoke, still ashamed at its display from the day before, "So, last night, after the meeting, I thought about how we could improve results when looking into stuff at the libraries in the future. Before I continue, I need to ask though, did anybody else have issues with the dyslexia yesterday? I know I did."

The clone paused, raising its hand as it did so. Everybody in the room also raised their hands along with the clone.

"Just like I'd thought. Honestly speaking, for there being over twenty of us, the amount of information we actually gathered yesterday was not a lot. That got me to thinking, none of us are lazy, so it had to be something else, right? And boom, I remembered the one thing that might slow us down, the thing that's been giving us trouble all these years, dyslexia. The issue is, is that we can't really help it, it just happens to us."

Pausing to catch its breath, the clone looked around the room, seeing the other clones nodding their heads in understanding. Now, more confidently, it continued, "Obviously the question is, since we can't get rid of it, how can we work around it? The one solution I thought of, besides more practice with Iruka, is to go in groups of two or three, that way we'd be able to bounce ideas off each other, and hopefully be able to read through the material faster."

Suddenly, the room was filled with clapping, as the original Naruto walked over to the Mathematics clone and patted him on the shoulder, saying, "After hearing about your decision to read up on math, I doubted your intelligence. Thought, maybe I performed the jutsu wrong when making you. I can see that I did not, because that's a damn good point!"

The clone didn't know whether to be offended about the backhanded compliment or not, so it decided to just let it go. Narutos will be Narutos, after all.

In any case, once the room quieted down, the clone once again spoke, "Also, speaking of Iruka, we're supposed to meet with him tomorrow for him to check our progress. Not to mention, we also gotta start that journal he wants us to write."

That was a downer, not meeting with Iruka, Naruto was happy about that. No, he just didn't want to write some stupid journal, it was like homework, only he'd already graduated. He'd imagine it'd be just as bad as those crummy D-rank missions, although, he supposed, at least the journal would actually help someone.

But now that he'd thought about it, "Shit, I just remembered, I didn't do a mission yesterday. Need to get back on those, otherwise we can't afford to get those chakra weights."

A clone chimed in, "Speaking of chakra weights, shouldn't you also go train with Lee. It's been a couple days, right? He might start thinking he scared us off."

The original was on his knees, he was hardworking, but not that hardworking. He lamented, "How am I gonna keep up with all this work?"

The group laughed, but it was all true, they had to do missions, and the original had to keep up with training, that wasn't really feasible while also doing a ton of reading. They all knew it would be difficult for the original, but he had to do it all. Or did he?

"Wait a minute," the Mathematics clone said, "Isn't that actually super manageable."

Hope in his eyes, Naruto looked up at the clone who'd spoke, asking, "What do you mean?"

"Well, honestly, we're being kind of stupid. Really stupid now that I think about it."

The group looked questioningly at the clone, not quite catching on to what he was saying.

"It's so obvious! Holy shit! We wasted so much time already!"

The Mathematics clone was having a conniption at this point, as he frantically ran through the apartment, eventually returning with a piece of paper and a pen, which he began to write on.

Finishing, he held up the final product, a sheet full of numbers of cryptic writing none of them understood.

"Okay, so we've been beating me up, myself included, over studying math yesterday, but it is my time to shine. None of you can understand this, right? Right? Right!"

The math-clone was getting more and more excited as it spoke, as it slowly began to shift from explaining to gloating.

But, sensing the hostility growing in the room, it calmed itself, before continuing to explain, "Okay. Regardless, I can understand what this says, to put it simply, its math."

The group began to ball up their fists, veins bulging, all of that ruckus for…for…for MATH!

The math-clone, ignoring his impending doom, did not stop speaking, "Math sucks, I know, but this math is like a free ticket to being Hokage!"

That caught their attention, free ticket to Hokage, he better be right, or else he wasn't going to exist for much longer.

"It's a bit of long explanation, lots of math, but the short of it is this. Why have we not been using clones to do the D-rank missions?"

…

…...

…...

Pandemonium, the clones went crazy, here they were, with one guy, the original, doing all the work and missions by himself. When the entire time, he could've been out training or doing something else more important.

But, in the midst of this pandemonium, one voice stood out, "Yeah, that cool and all for handling missions, but that's not exactly a free ride to Hokage."

Suddenly, the threat of death was once more looming over the math-clone's head. Not deterred in the slightest, he resolutely spoke, "Yeah, that isn't, but what about this. Obviously, using clones to do missions while the original trains is a big money move, pun intended. But what else can clones do? Anyone? Anybody at all care to answer?"

The room was silent, for once, a math-whiz was dominant.

"We can do jutsu, can't we? Doesn't that mean that the only thing the original needs to focus on is Taijutsu and the like. That leaves everything else, missions, jutsu, reading, to us clones."

The clones weren't too excited at the prospect, it sounded like a lot of boring work. Sure, jutsu were fun. But both reading AND missions. They were going to be relegated to all the annoying grunt work.

"That may sound like a lot, but you gotta remember that the Boss can create many more of us than there currently is. Easily at that. We could have ten or twenty guys all practicing one thing. Heck, we don't even gotta stop there, we could have one hundred clones all working on learning a single jutsu if we wanted to."

That idea got the clones excited, but they kept themselves calm, the math-clone hadn't finished speaking, could it possibly get better than that?!

"That's not all. Our current objective of learning to absorb chakra for clones to live longer, if we figure that out, we'd have no issues with having thousands of clones training clones simultaneously."

Everyone was going ballistic, that is, until the math-clone forcibly quieted them.

"One issue. We still don't got shit on how to do that."

That put a damper on things, successfully managing to reduce the clone's excitement levels down to zero. Their plans to form a jutsu-learning army would have to wait.

Now with the math-clone all the more respected than before, the meeting was set to resume. And it would've, if a black-haired boy didn't suddenly burst in through the front door screaming, "I got it! I got it, guys, I got it," tears streaming down his face.

The clone who'd burst in looked around the room at the stunned faces of his fellow Narutos, wondering why they were so shocked. Suddenly remembering he hadn't undone his henge, he undid the jutsu, returning to his normal form.

Looking back at the group, they were still speechless, apparently the henge wasn't the issue. Then what was?

"Yo, guys? Why're you all staring at me like that? Do I got something on my face?"

The clone rubbed its face, nothing coming off. It was starting to get concerned, why were they acting like that?

Naruto stepped forth, and patted the shoulder of the clone, "Dude, where have you been?"

Not understanding, the clone casually replied, "Reading, at the library. Like we were all supposed to do."

Naruto, now the confused one, asked, "Yeah, that's fine and all. But surely you haven't been reading all this time? Didn't you sleep?"

Now confused, the clone jokingly asked, "What do you mean sleep? It hasn't been that long, why would I sleep? Its not like the books were that boring."

Fully caught on, Naruto continued talking to the clone, "We left to read Friday, right?"

"Yeah, well, Friday morning would be more accurate."

His suspicions confirmed, Naruto affectionately embraced the clone, before saying, "Dude, Friday was yesterday. Its Saturday."

A look of horror appeared on the clone's face, what did he mean it was Saturday. He'd only read for what, one to two hours at most.

Naruto then asked the clone, tears in his eyes, "What did you decide to study? What caused you to be this way? How can we fix you?"

Sensing that the original's tears were fake, the clone thought that everything that was said must've been all a part of some prank. Still, it answered the question, "I read up on Fuinjutsu."

The clones in the room were surprised, the clone that had just entered was the only one who had decided to study Fuinjutsu. He was also the only one who had come back so late, it had to be connected in some way.

The clone in question, ignoring the prank that was being played on him, soon regained his excitement as he cried out, "Anyway, lets ignore y'all's stupid prank for now! I got big news. I think I found a way for us to absorb chakra."

It was like a bomb had been set off in the group's heads, there minds were blank save for one thought, 'Was. It. True.' Did he really find a way?

Continuing to speak, the clone excitedly said, "So its like this. As it turns out, Fuinjutsu can do some pretty crazy stuff, the Uzumaki who we're named after were actually wiped out because of how powerful it is in the hands of a master. Anyway, apparently if one is good enough, one can alter Fuinjutsu to create any effect one desires. Which would be good enough on its own for our purposes, but I also found something else that makes it even better."

The clones were teeming with anticipation, it was already sounding better than anything they'd heard the day before.

"There's this type of Fuinjutsu called the Chakra Suppression Seal, what it does is steal chakra from whatever it is used on. And that's the thing, couldn't we make one of those, and alter it a bit to steal chakra and give it back to us."

For the second time that meeting, pandemonium broke out amongst the clones, only this time, it didn't die out until much later.

Author's Note: A shorter chapter for today, but I hope it's still a fun one for y'all. Was pretty busy, and will be busy again after posting this, but wanted to get something out for y'all today. I should have more free time to write longer chapters throughout the week, so look forward to that.

Anyways, we're finally getting somewhere. Someone (a clone) has finally told Naruto how to abuse being able to use clones. We also get the idea of Fuinjutsu=stronk firmly planted inside his head. We'll see how that play out in the future.

And like usual, a shout out. I got a pa-atreon of the same name as this account, consider donating if you enjoy my work. Peace.