Kakashi: Impressions
Having been a student of Namikaze Minato, Kiiroi Senkou and Yondaime hokage, who was widely recognised as having been Konoha's greatest ever seal master, Hatake Kakashi liked to think he knew quite a bit about seals. His fiancée however had just callously stripped him of that notion and was doing a number on both his ego and his rational mind.
"How is that even possible?" he muttered, staring at the neat piles of bricks and lumber that had once been the home he grew up in. "Seals, she said; how the hell do seals accomplish this?"
The past week had been more than somewhat stressful for the copy-nin. For the major omissions in his report he had been suspended from active duty for ten days and his actions since the mission placed under review. After returning to active duty he would only receive half pay for his missions until the genin graduation exams. Then he would be given a team to test and, in the words of the Sandaime, 'get them to pass so long as they show minimum competence and adequate potential'. This was fairly lenient and only possible because it was his first serious infraction, nobody else had been affected and he was an elite journin the village really, really needed.
The only good thing about the suspension was that it gave him plenty of time with Ame-chan, who was even more perfect than he remembered. He'd asked her to marry him the evening of the day she had arrived in the village -she accepted with a smile to put the sun to shame- and had spent his free time since following her as she carried out various self-appointed and esoteric errands around the village.
She had received permission to level and replace his former home, wrangled immigration permits for two adults other than herself and thirteen -thirteen!- children, nine of them prospective ninja. The adults were listed as 'nurse (civilian)' and 'retainer (sworn)', both terms suspiciously bland and uninformative. She had also through some mysterious means acquired five blank free travel passes for the whole of Hi no kuni, which made Kakashi very wary indeed. Something told him that, although said passes bore the signatures of both the hokage and the daimyo, the Sandaime would not approve of the prospective recipients of those valuable documents.
It was only since the previous morning that Ame had actually started on the house. She had spent the first day going over the entire building with brush and ink, occasionally drawing symbols on walls, floors and ceilings as well as the weighty scroll she had Kakashi carry for her.
This morning she had dragged him out of bright and early and led the way back to the Hatake clan grounds -not that the clan had ever been very large- where she had him completely unroll the scroll in front of the rather rundown building. Ame had then knelt carefully beside the exposed seal array drawn on the paper and channelled chakra into the central design. The results of her rather mundane actions were what had the copy-nin questioning his sanity as, before his shocked eye, the house neatly and efficiently disassembled itself.
Ame had left him standing there and wandered over to the newly exposed foundations, again armed with brush and ink, muttering over yet another good-sized scroll. Kakashi wondered distantly if there was a bingo book warning above 'flee on sight' to classify his fiancée with. Avoid known haunts, perhaps?
"Kakashi! My Eternal Rival!" boomed a voice by his ear, "What are you Doing at such a Youthful Hour of the Morning?"
"Oh, Gai, it's you," said Kakashi dully, noting that Gai had a bowlcut, thick-eyebrowed, green-spandex-clad mini-me vibrating with enthusiasm behind him. Is that one of his students or some kind of clone? "I'm watching my fiancée single-handedly deconstruct my family home."
Gai looked taken aback "You are to be Wed?" he asked in slightly less ear-shattering tones. He turned, "pushups, my Youthful Student!" then asked the silver haired journin more quietly, "How long have you known her, Kakashi?"
"Long enough," the copy-nin replied lazily, knowing that 'two weeks' -the time he'd actually spent with her- wouldn't cut it and he didn't want to reveal the nature of her bloodline just yet. "I love her and I'm going to marry her."
Gai's eyes widened. "You are In Love? YOSH! Congratulations on your Youthful Achievement, my Eternal Rival!" he boomed happily, "But this is one Expression of Youth I Cannot match, Alas!" Tears streamed down his face as he lunged for Kakashi, immobilizing his fellow journin in a manly hug as inescapable as the victim found it mortifying. "KAKASHI! I am So Happy for You!"
Kakashi cringed as the infamous and unbreakable sunset jutsu came into being behind him. Somebody put me out of my misery, please.
"Nichibotsu no jutsu, fuuin!"
The beach and sunset vanished as if someone had flicked a switch; Kakashi took advantage of Gai's surprise to escape, stumbling back and staring at Ame, who had just pulled of something previously believed impossible.
"Ame-chan, how?" he breathed reverently.
The starry eyed young woman smiled mischievously: "Aren't seals wonderful?"
"If I hadn't already asked you to marry me, I would now," Kakashi said solemnly and not altogether in jest.
"Don't worry, Kashi-kun; I'll protect you from the big bad time-space distortion/ritual genjutsu hybrid," Ame said teasingly. "Now do you want the good news or the bad news first?"
"My Eternal Rival! Introduce me to your Most Youthful Fiancée!" Gai interrupted, finding his voice again.
"Of course. Gai, this is Amemaihana, my fiancée. Ame-koi, this is Maito Gai, journin of Konohagakure."
"Greetings, Amemaihana-san! I am Maito Gai, Beautiful Green Beast of Konoha! And this is my Youthful Student, Rock Lee!"
The mini-Gai, who up until this point had been diligently doing pushups, bounced to his feet with appalling energy. "Greetings, Amemaihana-san!"
"Call me Amemai, Gai-san, Lee-kun," Ame said, rolling up the small scroll containing the sunset genjutsu and pocketing it. "My full name is too much of a mouthful for every day."
"How Youthful of you, Amemai-san! Tell me, how did you Meet my Eternal Rival?" Gai asked.
There was a short pause...
"Hm? Sorry Gai-san, my mind was elsewhere. What was it you said?" Ame asked, turning her head and blinking innocently at the spandex-clad nin. Kakashi managed -barely- not to laugh, but under the mask he was grinning like a loon. Ame-koi, I adore you.
"Agh! My Eternal Rival's fiancée is just as Hip and Cool as he is!" Gai ranted, completely unnoticed by said fiancée.
"Kakashi? Good news or bad news?" she repeated, still staring thoughtfully into space while nibbling the handle of her calligraphy brush.
"Bad news first please, koi," he told her, fighting the urge to steal the brush and kiss her senseless.
"Right. Bad news is that there isn't quite enough space for what I had in mind. But! Good news is I can fix that fairly easily."
"How, exactly?" Kakashi asked cautiously, wary of the manic gleam in his lover's eye.
"More seals, of course!" Ame replied, bouncing happily on her toes. "I love seals!" She chirped. "Everyone out the gate unless they wish to experience an intermolecular self-replicating expansion! ANBU-san up in the tree, this means you as well! I don't want hokage-sama giving me grief because I accidentally exploded one of his ninja while creating my stable sub-space pocket!"
Kakashi ran for it out of the gate, Gai and mini-Gai -wasn't he called Lee?- close behind him while the ANBU vaulted over the boundary wall.
"What is she doing, Hatake-san?" the Ookami-masked ANBU asked as Ame's chakra level rose noticeably and her kimono fluttered in a non-existent breeze.
"Honestly, Wolf-san, I think I prefer not to know," Kakashi admitted as thin streams of chakra exploded from Ame's body and began etching complex deal arrays into the walls surrounding the compound. "What she can do with seals makes Jiraya-sama look like and academy student. A very slow academy student."
"I saw what she did to the sunset genjutsu, Hatake-san," the ANBU admitted with no small amount of awe in his voice. "Do you think she would be willing to hand it over to us? I believe Morino-san has wanted to test that genjutsu's efficacy on prisoners for a while now."
"I'll ask her," Kakashi promised, envisioning the dreaded unbreakable sunset genjutsu being used to traumatize the enemies of Konoha. He couldn't keep himself from cackling a little.
"Hatake-san?"
"Just wondering how Itachi would react to that genjutsu, Wolf-san."
"The ANBU paused. "I, too, would like to see the Traitor's reaction to a genjutsu his eye cannot penetrate, let alone break," the ninja admitted, "especially considering the sharingan's mnemonic component."
Kakashi cackled again. He himself had taken care to keep his sharingan covered after one particular catastrophically traumatic encounter with that evil, evil genjutsu. He had enough trouble repressing that incident as it was without repeating it.
More ninja were arriving on the scene, drawn by the high levels of unfamiliar chakra.
"Hey, Kakashi! Is that your supposedly civilian girlfriend?" Shiranui Genma asked, chewing on the ever-present senbon.
"Hai. She's rewriting reality," Kakashi said absently, his brain having supplied a solution to the space issue that fitted with 'intermolecular self-replicating expansion' and 'stable sub-space pocket'.
Genma's jaw dropped and the senbon drooped dangerously low. "Tha-that's even possible?"
"Apparently it can be done with seals," Kakashi said mildly, eye on his fiancée, whose chakra was now pulsing steadily.
Then the trees started exploding.
Kakashi hadn't known trees could go from solid-green-and-boring to expanding-fireball-of-doom that quickly. Raising his hitai-ite off his sharingan eye he gaped at what his newly exposed eye revealed.
"She- they're going from solid to powder so fast it's practically instantaneous! Ans it's not just the trees; the grass is exploding too!"
Even more ninja were in the audience by now, no doubt drawn by the noise and house-sized fireballs rising above the skyline.
"Kakashi? Why am I not surprised?" The copy-nin winced as the hokage's dry tones were heard between explosions.
"Gomen nasai, Sandaime-sama; My fiancée is remodelling."
There was a weird whistling sound and the space inside the compound shivered, twisted and stretched. It made Kakashi's sharingan hurt and he yanked his hitai-ite down over the streaming eye as his brain screamed, but that's physically impossible!
Ame appeared between the gateposts, a huge smile on her face.
"Finished! The Hatake compound is now larger on the inside than on the outside!"
There was a pause filled with the silence of abject psychological shock.
"Maa, how much bigger Ame-chan?" Kakashi asked, curious despite himself.
"I quadrupled the area!" his lover chirruped proudly. "Sorry about the trees, though. Are there any spare ones I can transplant to replace them once I've got the house built? It shouldn't take me more than a fortnight. Probably a bit less."
The hokage found his voice first. "I can arrange someone to replace the lost trees, Amemaihana-san," he managed faintly, "provided you agree to an ANBU guard until the construction process is finished."
"Call me Amemai please, hokage-sama. My name's a bit long to use all the time. But yes, that's great! Now, can somewhere tell me where to find some ninja called Morino-san? I heard he wanted an unbreakable sunset jutsu to experiment with and I have one sealed in here," she waved a scroll.
My fiancée, Kakashi decided, is completely off her head. And I wouldn't have her any other way.
Two weeks later the new Hatake mansion -it was too large to be called a mere 'house'- was finished, mostly furnished and ready to be moved into. Ame was still busy landscaping the grounds with a tiger-masked ANBU with the mokuton kekkai genkai that Kakashi remembered from his own ANBU days. He seemed rather bemused by the night-eyed young woman's enthusiasm for trees, but held up better than most of her previous ANBU minders had; he had yet to start muttering to himself, twitching uncontrollably or spacing out for whole minutes at a time, despite almost two whole days of continuous exposure to Ame-chan's... foibles. Kakashi suspected the younger man found the attention flattering.
Of course, with his fiancée gardening, he had to finish unpacking by himself. Thankfully Ame's belongings were still mostly sealed in their scrolls, and all the larger items had also been sealed according to room, making the process far easier. Ame had even drawn him a map of the building with all the rooms labelled. Pausing on the doorstep, Kakashi formed the necessary handseal for the shadow clone jutsu.
"Here, everybody pick a scroll. The sooner I finish the unpacking the sooner I can persuade her to try the new bed," he said, grabbing one for himself. Suitably motivated, the eight clones each grabbed a scroll and shunshined off to get their part done. The original made his way to the western wing of thee mansion scroll tucked under one arm. One month left until the genin exams then another three months until the babies are due, probably a little less.
The ANBU mednin who had been on duty the previous week had dragged both of them to the hospital for a checkup once he discovered that Ame was expecting more than one baby. The doctor at the hospital had warned him that multiple pregnancies often resulted in premature births. She had also tried to get Ame to agree to become less active, but his fiancée had stared the doctor down, starry eyes glinting menacingly, saying firmly that her kekkai genkai was infamous for preventing the complications usually associated with multiple pregnancies. Her exact words had been, 'up to five before the body adopts serious modifications, up to fifteen before nutrient levels become an issue', which had been both a shock and a relief. The mere idea of fifteen babies all at once was a touch overwhelming.
Ame was only just starting to show a gently expanding curve on her abdomen through her clothes. The idea that his children were growing in there was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. What if they got hurt? Okay, it was unlikely all things considered; Ame-koi breaks the rules like she doesn't know they're there, but still.
Kunoichi weren't supposed to be able to use chakra beyond the first stages of pregnancy, but Ame's sealing demonstrations over the past two weeks had proved that regardless of the norm there was nothing impeding her from accessing large quantities of chakra, thank-you very much.
Kakashi shivered, pausing in his self-appointed task as the memory of Ibiki's delight of receiving a copy of the sunset jutsu to play with resurfaced. Ame had called it a time-space distortion/ ritual genjutsu hybrid, which had prompted inquiry as none of the Konoha ninja had heard of 'ritual genjutsu' before. Ame had explained that 'visual effects' such as fangirl eye-hearts, embarrassed sweat-drops and angry facial tics were all examples of ritual genjutsu, activated by a specific action or emotion. The infamous sunset genjutsu was activated by Maito Gai's passionately 'youthful' man-hug.
On hearing the explanation Morino Ibiki had murmured about 'exploring the possibilities' with such interest as to send a shiver down the spines of all those present.
Ame also explained that the 'time-space' element of the genjutsu was created because the will of the caster -Gai- was so powerful and sincere that it distorted reality, creating a temporary pocket dimention. Thus the ritual genjutsu morphed into a time-space ninjutsu, which was why it could not be unravelled and refused to break on 'kai'.
Kakashi shivered again as he moved into the next room. Evil, evil, thing.
Notes
free travel pass = passport granting a ninja the permission to travel freely through a specific nation -or at will throughout the elemental nations- without having to report regularly to their Kage. Jiraya and Tsunade of the Sannin each have one, allowing them to wander throughout the elemental nations without being declared missing-nin.
nichibotsu = sunset. Ame's name for Gai's 'youthful' ritual genjutsu.
ritual genjutsu = a very peculiar and little-understood field of genjutsu. create unusual and generally harmless visual effects denoting female fury (fiery aura of DOOM), amorous devotion (hearts for eyes) and other anime-esque special effects. Cannot be dispelled by anyone but the caster.
A/N: I will be calling the ANBU by their mask-names in English, so as not to confuse them with the young neo-Uchiha/Kamen clan. Ritual genjutsu is all my own invention. Merry Christmas to all!