"Where are we going?" asked Sakura, as she and Menma strolled hand in hand through the village. "This isn't the way to my house…"
Menma shot her a sympathetic glance.
"That impostor really did a job on you, eh?" he said. "Your house was destroyed in the war, remember? Your new flat is still being built; that's where we're going."
The past few days were still a haze for Sakura.
Ignoring his father's insistence that she be debriefed, Menma had taken her to Konoha General to see a few specialists after rescuing her from the Menma impostor, and made them conduct a battery of tests on her.
Apart from her engorged breasts, Sakura was perfectly healthy, physically speaking, but her mind… an electroencephalogram had revealed that her brainwaves were all jumbled up, almost as if there were two different, overlapping wavelengths bouncing around between her ears.
"It's quite puzzling," the specialist had said. "Usually, this sort of thing is seen in people affected by genjutsu, but there are no signs of foreign chakra in her brain, and the brainwaves are far too similar for one to belong to an invading mind. They're only just out of step with one another, which would explain her befuddled state… her condition would likely improve if she were returned to a more familiar environment."
Menma gently pulled Sakura to the side as she tried to duck under a stepladder. The village was still in the midst of reconstruction, and the streets were filled with people clearing debris, carrying wooden planks on their shoulders or pushing wheelbarrows filled with bricks and sacks of cement.
"The Forty-Eight-Hour War…" Sakura murmured. "Was that it…?"
It was sort of coming back to her now.
The Hidden Cloud Village had opened the hostilities by firing their chakra cannon at the Hidden Leaf Village… and then the Cloud and Stone had jointly unleashed an unstoppable monster upon the Leaf… she remembered this happening, vaguely.
But how had the Leaf stopped the invincible weapon of war?
Sakura frowned. She wasn't sure why, but she felt as though it was crucial that she remember how the monster had been defeated, even though it was no longer a threat.
"Yes, the Forty-Eight-Hour War!" Menma said happily, encouraged by the gradual return of his girlfriend's memories. "My old man saved the village, ya know?"
"And that's why there's a big hole in the village," Sakura concluded. "The chakra cannon."
"I was helping you and your parents rebuild your house when you suddenly vanished," Menma explained. "I was so worried I forgot to tell Mum I was out looking for you… she must be freaking out, I haven't come home for two days in a row, ya know…"
At the time, Menma had been quite confused.
People would tell him they'd seen Sakura in front of the jail, in the baths, or at the park… and each time he got there, he would have just barely missed her. Now that he knew an impostor had been leading her around, it all made sense… but even so, he was a little hurt that she hadn't realised she was following the wrong Menma.
He knew Sakura-chan was a little thick in the head, but still…
"…and here we are," said Menma as they arrived at their destination, a vacant lot in the heart of the residential district, where a few tents had been erected next to a hole dug into the ground. "Oh, and there's your sister…"
Sakura recoiled in fright as a faceless woman crawled out of one of the tents.
"Sakura…!" ████ growled, her voice oddly distorted. "Going out to play and leaving all the hard work to us? You've got some nerve showing your face here!"
It was as though someone had taken a knife to reality itself and scarred it beyond recognition. She looked like a portrait whose face had been scratched out, like an old, defaced photograph. Black and white lines blurred her features, rendering her utterly unrecognisable, and yet…
"It's not Sakura-chan's fault," Menma explained. "She was misled by a bad guy…"
"W-who are you?" Sakura croaked.
"Sakura-chan!" four voices called in unison.
Sakura glanced towards the hole in which her new house's foundations were being laid. One after the other, four different people climbed out and rushed to hug her. The first two she recognised; they were her parents, Mebuki and Kizashi, but the other two… just like the young, faceless woman from the tent, they lacked faces, and their bodies were covered in mosaics, as if they were an actor's privates in an AV.
"W-what are you?" Sakura stammered. "G-get away from me…"
Menma and her parents didn't seem to notice anything wrong about the three faceless monsters next to them. They simply looked at her in concern as she slowly backed away from them.
"I get it," Sakura mumbled, signing the tiger seal. "I'm in a genjutsu… release!"
"Sakura?" Menma said in alarm. "Calm down, you're not in a genjutsu, you're safe…!"
"Release!" Sakura repeated.
The censored figures tilted their heads in confusion.
"RELEASE!" Sakura screamed.
"Sakura, talk to us," Mebuki said worriedly.
"You're not real," Sakura mumbled. "None of this is real."
Sakura's eyes flashed scarlet.
'You need to wake up,' said Inner Sakura. 'We're in danger.'
Sensing Sakura's chakra spiking as her murderous intent skyrocketed, Menma flickered behind her and grabbed her in a chokehold, applying pressure to her carotid arteries in an attempt to knock her out before she could hurt herself or anyone else, but the moment he did so, he felt a strange pressure against his own throat.
One by one, Mebuki, Kizashi, the censored people, the people walking by in the street… they all fell to their knees, clutching at their throats as their necks seemingly constricted themselves on their own.
"Yakumo's… power?" Menma gasped, recognising the nature of the attack at once. "Could it be… the impostor's plan to destroy the village… it's the Kurama clan's Kekkei Genkai!?"
Menma tightened his grip even as his head began to swim.
Somehow, Sakura was sharing what she was experiencing with everyone around her, spreading through an ever-widening radius by means of an indiscriminate genjutsu so potent it reached the body itself. All over the village, people were dropping like flies as their blood vessels constricted, blocking oxygen-rich blood from reaching their brains! Unless she was stopped, she would destroy the entire village with nothing more than her mind!
"Come… on!" Menma groaned as Sakura thrashed in his arms. "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep…!"
"You're not real!" Sakura choked out. "You're not… real!"
Menma could feel his consciousness slipping. It was now a race to see who would faint first, and every second counted. Children's brains needed more oxygen than those of adults, so unless he finished this quickly, innocents would die…!
Slowly but surely, Sakura's movements grew weaker, until at last her head slumped forwards. Menma toppled backwards, wheezing for air as he clutched Sakura's plump body to himself. This ability was far too dangerous for Sakura to possess. He needed to bring her to his mother and have her powers sealed at once… just as soon as he could catch his breath… or stop pitching a tent.
"This had better not awaken anything strange in me," Menma wheezed as he struggled to his feet and hoisted Sakura's unconscious body onto his shoulder. "Up we go… eh?"
Perhaps it had only been his oxygen-deprived imagination, but Menma could have sworn he'd just seen a masked figure in black and red robes standing over him…