"-so I'm just asking if you couldpretty pleasenot tell anyone?" Naruko whined, her fingers interlaced beneath her chin.

"The Hokage and Satsuki's brother are already investigating in the real world," I stated bluntly. "That means there will be formal questioning, evidence examined, and a report constructed for the village's files. Are you asking me to lie to the village leader?"

Naruko made an uneasy keening noise. Obviously she wanted me to do that, but she also wanted me to do so without her prompting because that would be at least a moderate level of treason.

"Daddy shouldn't lie to protect the perverted fox girl," Kokoro huffed irritably.

My lips twitched upwards as the blond sputtered, my hand going to ruffle my daughter's hair as I did so. "Daddy isn't going to lie, princess, but there are ways of telling the truth that get people in more trouble or less trouble depending on what you choose to say and how you say it."

Kokoro pursed her lips and nodded, though I saw no spark of epiphany behind her eyes.

"Eh, what's that mean?" Naruko asked anxiously, worrying at her jacket.

"It means that I could describe the scene in agonizing detail," I smirked slightly at her mortified expression, "or I could summarize events in a manner such as you, 'having been tempted by an illusion of carnal relations involving one or more targets of romantic infatuation.' Naruko blinked, obviously a bit confused, so I elaborated further. "The latter implies you got trapped in a genjutsu, but doesn't outright state it and thus likely won't go on any kind of official record. Especially since you're still in the academy."

Naruko heaved a sigh of relief, her shoulders slumping. "Thanks, Kota."

I opened my mouth to wave her gratitude off, but was interrupted by my young girl's voice. "Daddy! Carry me!"

The blond girl eyed our mutual hallucination. "So... that's yours and Yakumo's daughter, huh? How's that work?"

As my daughter clambered up onto my shoulders, I shook my head. "Don't ask. It's complicated."

Naruko crossed her arms skeptically, "The lesson in the academy about where kids come from seemed pretty simple to me."

The sound of a raspberry being blown caused me to tilt my gaze upwards even as Naruko responded in kind with a pulled-down eyelid and an outstretched tongue. "Kokoro, please keep your tongue inside your mouth. That kind of behavior isn't polite."

"Okay Daddy!" Kokoro chirped, wrapping my head in her arms in an awkward hug.

"And Naruko? Getting into a funny face match against a literal child isn't becoming of someone who's going to be a full-fledged ninja in a few months." My second comment made her grimace and turn away.

"Ugh, fine. I was just curious." She huffed irritably. "You always said to ask when we're curious."

I sighed. "I also said that you need to keep your situation in mind. How would you feel if someone came up to your mother, while you were standing next to her, and asked how you happened?"

Naruko colored at my question, her mouth opening and nothing coming out for a long second before she muttered, "Ah." After that, she allowed it to close again.

Kokoro giggled. "Daddy's being silly. You can tell the smelly fox-girl if she wants to know so bad."

Her embarrassment swapping to offense, Naruko glared up at Kokoro. "Hey! What's that supposed to mean!?"

"It means that she can feel the fox's chakra within and on you," I interjected, feeling that the entire situation was about to go downhill lest I intervene. "Kokoro is... complicated. I can go into detail later, but... she's something like a chakra beast in nature, even if her mind is very human."

Naruko blinked, her mouth opening again before swiftly closing as an unusual and thoughtful expression settled on her face. "Oh, that... huh."

"Anyway, we're here." I stated, looking ahead at the large store which resided on the same lot that Sagara's expanded smithy stood in reality. The building was much-changed, though, to the point where I could only guess that the entire structure had been torn down and replaced by a more modern and open layout.

"So this is what Tenten wants, huh?" Naruko asked, eyeing the sign on the side of the door. 'Bespoke Arms Armor.' Hey, Kota, what does-"

"Personalized," I stated, pulling open the door.

Naruko trailed behind, muttering something to the effect of, 'why didn't she just say that, then?'

"Oh, customers!" A familiar voice rang out, even if it had deepend just a bit with age. Standing quite a bit taller than me now was a familiar bun-headed girl in a similar, if differently-cut, outfit. "I can see you're shinobi in training, how about we look at a nice selection of training weapons and-" She stalled in her sales pitch, actually looking at me closely enough to realize what she was seeing. "Kota?"

"We're trapped in a genjutsu," I stated bluntly, applying the same technique I had with Naruko. "We need you to come with us back to the real world. The seal I was putting on Yakumo's head disrupted her bloodline and put us in this situation."

Tenten stared at myself, then Naruko, then Kokoro... before coming back to me and shaking her head faintly. "N-no... I just... I mean, weren't you just in the back making a new blade?"

"No, I wasn't," I shook my head. "An illusion of me might have been, but you need to snap out of it Tenten. We need to get back to the real world before someone tries something to fix this and makes it much, much worse."

Kokoro giggled slightly, reminding me that having a mind that was 'close to human,' did not in fact mean having a human mind.

Tenten touched her temple as though she was fighting off a headache. "Kota... no, no... we have kids, don't we? No... I didn't want kids yet. I wanted to make jounin." Her eyes slid open and she looked around the store as if seeing it for the first time. "Y-you're... h-how?"

I sighed, removing Kokoro from my back over her protestations, and stepped forward.

As I embraced her, motes of light began to cast off from Tenten's faux-body, her adult form nearly melting into something only barely older than myself. Sniffling, Tenten buried her head in the nape of my neck while I rubbed her back in soothing circles and whispered calming words in her ear.

"I-I'm okay," she stated, taking a calming breath as she visibly centered herself and looked around the store we were in with new eyes. "This really is... just like I always imagined it."

Naruko laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of her head. "Ah-hahah-yeah, it's like we're all getting exactly what we wanted, believe it!"

Tenten huffed a laugh, though it was tinged with melancholy as she looked back at me, then her eyes flicked down to the child standing near us. "Who is she?"

I sighed. "This is Kokoro. Due to an interaction between the techniques I've been using to teach Yakumo and her bloodline, she was created."

Kokoro stepped to the side, grabbing at my pants leg as she looked up at Tenten.

Brown eyes widened as Tenten stared back. "Sh-she's your daughter?" She turned to me. "Yours and Yakumo's?"

"I'm Daddy's little girl." Kokoro stated confidently as my hand found her head. "Daddy says that I have to go to sleep for a year while he makes me a body. I just want him to stay here with me in one of the worlds I made, but he says he has to do stuff for the village."

Tenten nodded slowly. "So... you're the reason we're trapped in this illusion, aren't you?"

Kokoro must have been able to read either the accusation in her voice or the shifting energy behind Tenten's emotions, because she looked appropriately ashamed and worried. "I-I thought giving Daddy's friends what they wanted would be a good thing."

Tenten stared at the girl for a long moment further, then sighed. "I suppose I can't get mad at a child for wanting their parent and trying to help. Just... please don't do that again, okay?"

Kokoro nodded rapidly and muttered another apology.

"Eh, I thought you were really going to let her have it, Tenten," Naruko admitted, blinking. "You looked really mad there."

"It's..." Tenten shook herself. "It's... not okay, but I'll get over it. Now that I know it's an illusion, people's faces being shadowed and out of focus makes sense. When the teachers used genjutsu they said that the most powerful ones would let your mind fill in the gaps. Ugh..." She shook her head more definitively. "What was yours about, anyway?"

Naruko flushed tomato-red and went stiff as a board, laughing awkwardly again. "Ah... there's no need to talk about that, right!? I mean, it's water under the bridge and over and done with and-and-"

Tenten slowly raised an eyebrow and shifted her gaze to me. "How bad was it?"

I tilted my head down to Kokoro before flicking a glance at Naruko. "She at least had the good grace to put me on top of Sakurai."

Naruko gasped, betrayal clear on her face as Tenten sputtered out a laugh that morphed into a chuckle, tears appearing in her eyes as she continued to indulge in open laughter. Despite myself, I was relieved at Naruko's earlier antics. No matter what incarnation, it seemed she always had a way to address situations like this. I pulled my own chakra back from embracing Tenten. Ninshu had already turned out to have side-effects I hadn't anticipated. Perhaps I needed to refrain from using it so broadly?

...but then, would they turn away from me? Can I make them happy without being able to open our hearts to each other?

No... the real issue is whether or not bullshit ninja elder magic is the best way to do that.

It was a question I'd have to deal with later.

"So why can't we just snap out of the genjutsu like normal?" Tenten asked, grabbing that strand of my attention back from where it had slipped by the wayside.

"Beyond the fact that the Kurama clan's illusions are strong enough to resist that kind of brute-force attempt?" I asked, frowning. "My genius daughter here-" Kokoro preened at the wry-tinted praise. "-decided to encase each of us in a separate genjutsu, but link them all together. The result is that, even if we shut down one illusion, the technique will regenerate itself and recapture the person who tried to escape."

Naruko looked at the girl, impressed as she hopped forward. "Wow, you're really smart for your age, huh? You don't look older than my little brother Enkai and he'swaytoo much of a dunce to pull off something like that."

"Hehe," Kokoro grinned shyly.

"That means we need to get Satsuki and Yakumo as well, then we can break the entire jutsu, huh?" Tenten asked with a frown. "I guess she can't just let us out?"

Kokoro shook her head hesitantly. "I can help you break it, but I didn't make your dreams easy to undo on purpose. Sorry."

Tenten sighed, but nodded. "Yeah, thought as much. So, what's the plan?"

"It depends on what Satsuki and Yakumo's illusions are like," I replied. "Yours and Naruko's were fairly simple, but Satsuki especially... do either of you know what she would want?"

Naruko cocked her head. "Oh, yeah, that's easy! She wants to be Hokage."

I blinked, my mouth opening slightly in surprise. "She... wants to be Hokage?"

"Mmhmm!" Naruko nodded, humming with a happy grin. "Satsuki doesn't like to talk about it, but she wants to show up Itachi really bad. It's like... even though she looks up to him, she wants to surpass him? Something like that."

My mind reoriented itself around that fact even as I realized that it fit so perfectly as to have been completely obvious...

Satsuki very much didn't like to talk about the things she wanted. The things she craved were acknowledgement, understanding, inclusion... but she never looked for praise, deliberately attempted to obfuscate her own emotions, and would place herself outside of any group unless it formed around her.

My mind flashed back to what I knew of Otsutsuki Indra, both through my own recollections a lifetime ago and what I knew through other means.

Even if the body and the mind are different, the emotions flow from the soul... those impressions would bear themselves out.

"Satsuki will be last, then." I decided. "We'll need Yakumo if Satsuki really has become Hokage in her illusion."

Naruko made a face. "Ugh, that means we have to go through that weird thing where we can't see anything, won't we? It's like we're floating in nothing! Last time I landed on my head!"

I rolled my eyes. "You don't seem any worse for wear." I looked down to Kokoro. "Let's go find your mother."

Kokoro bit her lip, but nodded.

Then the world opened up and we were gone.

…

Hours later, I sighed and sat Kokoro down. "Okay, you can open your eyes now."

Pouting, the little girl did so. "Daddy, you know I can sense the illusion around me, right?"

"It makes me feel better, okay?" I asked my child, who giggled in response.

Beside us, Yakumo winced, a mixture of mortification and resignation on her face. "I'm so sorry."

I took a deep breath. "We can talk about it after we get out of here."

"You know, I used to think guys were full of bullshit when they said the quietest girls were always the weird ones," Tenten commented idly, her voice contemplative in tone. "I guess I was wrong."

A noise emerged from Yakumo's throat that verged on the indaudible it was so high-pitched in its pathetic whining.

"We'll talk about it after we get out of here," I repeated, then whirled on Naruko just as her mouth opened. My eyes locked with hers. "You have no room to talk, so don't."

Naruko's shoulders slumped and she pouted off to the side, huffing petulantly.

"S-so... this is my-I mean, this is our..." Yakumo started awkwardly, looking down at the child standing between us. Kokoro frowned and edged closer to me, pulling at my pants as if to shield herself from her mother's gaze.

"Our daughter, yes." My statement produced a sharp inhalation from the young teen. "Kokoro, be nice to your mother."

"Mommy doesn't like me. She tries to pretend I don't exist," Kokoro stated bluntly, Yakumo's eyes going wide in response as she opened her mouth to reply.

I beat her to it as I petted her hair. "She didn't understand you were trying to speak to her." I gave her a mildly entreating expression. "Give her another chance? For me?"

Her hazel eyes traced back to Yakumo, then back to me, before she nodded warily. "Okay. For Daddy." Detaching herself from my side, she stepped up to Yakumo hesitantly.

While Yakumo knelt down to properly look at our child, I turned to examine the world around us. The world of Satsuki's personal illusion was...strange. Compared to the other girls, who were focused on more personal concerns, such as their relationships, this world already seemed to buck the common trend. Even the fundamentals of the genjutsu were subtly off from what we'd already experienced, the very colors around us being both harsher and more vivid than I'd come to expect.

It was hard to describe, but it just seemed as though there was more to this world.

More detail in particular. The gravel underneath our feet on the sidestreet even had focus to it. There was grain in the wood buildings near us. The store lights on and in the buildings around us were all flickering in a way that, even if it aped reality, wasn't quite real, either.

Yes, that's it. It's not that there's too little detail like the others' illusions, it's that there's too much. This genjutsu is more 'real,' than 'real life.'

There was a shift in the ambient field of dark chakra that I was beginning to puzzle out and, immediately, a team of shinobi were standing around us. No, not just shinobi. These were all-black ANBU personnel. The girls all stiffened as we were surrounded, a masked ninja with the character for 'weasel' where his face should be stepping forward.

"Intruders. You'll be coming with us." It was an audibly different set of tones, but the specific cadence of the words was familiar enough for me to pick out the identity of who had been sent to take them into custody.

"We'll cooperate. None of us want to die here." I gave the rest of my party a firm nod, not bothering to hide the reminder from the 'ninja' around us, especially since they wouldn't know its importance. Given that any of us 'dying' would result in resetting our personal illusions, that would set us back immensely. In the more immediate concerns, though, it was admittedly, gratifying to see Yakumo take Kokoro into her embrace protectively, if somewhat sad to see the disbelief on the small girl's face at the action.

As we were gathered up, Naruko running an endless stream of questions, my eyes trailed over the people walking the streets, the condition of the houses, the random loose animals and pets...

It was all too real.

There was something wrong.

Especially concerning was how, unlike in the other illusions, distance didn't seem to be completely arbitrary. When we walked meters, we covered meters of distance. The stretch of road between us and our destination and the time it took to get there didn't suddenly change if we weren't paying particular attention. As strong as the genjutsu had been on the other girls, it had all the hallmarks of an inexperienced and childish mind.

This... was different.

"It's strange-" Yakumo began, only to be cut off by a severe voice from one of the other shinobi.

"No talking. The Hokage has summoned you, you'll have plenty of time to speak when we get there," he ordered.

Making eye contact with Yakumo, I nodded before turning my head fully forward again as we marched. The unnerved look on her face told me everything I needed to know about how right my observations were even as I wondered at the reasons behind the differences. While we walked to what was obviously the Hokage's Tower, a building which looked almost unchanged from how it stood in the real world, I logged various other problematic issues.

Silence was enforced all the way up the tower and into the Hokage's personal office.

"You have some gall, wearing the faces of children from ten years ago," Uchiha Satsuki, seated behind the large desk and wearing the robes and hat of the office, stated as she looked us over. Her eyes, the swirling pattern of the sharingan-

Connections snapped into place. Dark chakra, the Uchiha bloodline, the Kurama bloodline... all of it made sense, but the interactions had never been studied. Certainly not on this level. Not under these conditions. There were too many unknowns, but... some kind of Imperfect Tsukuyomi? But only for her?

-she looked at me, harshly narrowing her gaze. "You, in particular. To attempt to take the face of Konoha's Jounin Commander and my husband."

There was a pause, an invitation, and I opened my mouth to-

"Ugh, first Tenten, then Yakumo, and now Satsuki?" Naruko scowled, crossing her arms. "Not that Kota's not a great guy, but I don't get why you girls don't act like those idiots at school all going after Satsuki." There was a beat of silence as we all contemplated her reckless wisdom, then she stepped forward and thrust a finger at Satsuki. "And you! Wake up or you won't be worthy enough to call yourself my rival! An illusion like this is something anyone could break!"

I reminded myself that it wouldn't currently help to point out her hypocrisy.

Satsuki scowled at the blond girl. "You expect me to believe this-" She waved her hand about vaguely. "-is an illusion? By what proof?"

Yakumo stepped up. "Do you remember graduating from the academy? Your chunin exams? Being promoted to jounin?"

"Of course I do!" Satsuki snapped, her face twitching as her active sharingan spun faster in agitation. "I-It's been a long time, of course, so I don't remember everything perfectly, but-"

As Satsuki began to shout, the room around us shook violently. For a moment, I thought it was some strange aspect of the sharingan, but given that everyone else was struggling to find their footing as Kokoro clung to me…

Why would there be an earthquake in the genjutsu?

"Not even with your bloodline!?" Tenten asked more urgently even as she pressed the other girl into a corner while the room shook. "You always liked to brag about how you'd remember everything perfectly if you used it! Go on then, tell us about one of the fights you had when you were a jounin."

Satsuki narrowed her eyes, her face creasing as if in pain and her mouth opening to respond... Then the flicker of doubt I'd seen flash over her was gone and she stood to slam her palms against the desk in front of her, cutting off the argument and, surprisingly, the apparent earthquake. "I don't need to listen to this nonsense! Guards, I'll deal with these fools later. Throw them in-" She paused and looked over our shoulders as a door opened behind us. Turning, I saw...

Another me. Older, my features more refined with a few scuff marks and scars here and there, my posture coiled rather than relaxed... but definitely still me.

Or at least an illusion of...me.

Now there was a thought.

The hands working on Yakumo's head paused, the ink brush being carefully set aside as my hands came up to begin forming the basic clone hand signs... then continued for another five minutes, incorporating a series of increasingly complex sigils as I worked to properly loosen one of my trains of thought and aim the technique. Slowly, I felt it taking shape, though it was fighting me for every inch of progress. Apparently, forming the chakra to cast a genjutsu inside a genjutsu was difficult.

Who knew?

Finally, I felt something snap into place and one of the parallel bands of thought I was running vanished from existence.

I blinked, looking to where the other version of myself was walking towards Satsuki and-

His foot skipped.

It was nothing except a fraction of a moment's hesitation in the way he moved, a moment of relaxing muscles that tightened up again almost instantly. Then the adult illusion of myself turned to me, looking my body over curiously as his eyes ran up and down my form before one eye snapped closed independent of the other.

It hadn't failed, but...

I'm not aware of the clone I just conjured, either. Is it... isheself-aware?

"-so I think I'll need to interrogate them personally, if that's alright Lord Rokudaime?" A more baritone version of my voice asked, looking to Satsuki.

The female Hokage opened her mouth to respond even as Tenten moved forward a half-step to speak as well. My arm shot out and clasped her wrist, my eyes darting to the edge of my vision to send her a severe look and shake my head.

Satsuki huffed an amused breath. "Well, at least one of you knows when not to dig your own graves further." She looked to the adult Kotaro. "If you think that's best, I'll leave you to it."

The 'Jounin Commander' turned to the ANBU even as he stepped up to Satsuki. "If you would, have them escorted to the private holding cells? I think these are barely-trained operatives sent in as a diversion rather than the keystone of some grand plan. We should be looking elsewhere for their true aim while I take care of these false leads."

From there, things went as one would expect for prisoners.