Menma clutched Sakura's unconscious body tightly in his arms as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop towards his house, sailing above the heart-wrenching sight of thousands of civilians collapsed in the streets. That impostor would pay for what he had done to Sakura, to the village… Menma promised himself that he would make him pay the next time he saw him.
"Menma!" Minato called over the wind whistling in their ears as he joined him in soaring above the streets below. "What's going on? People are dropping left and right! It seems to be coming from the direction you just came from!"
A twinge of fear seized Menma's heart. What if his father blamed Sakura-chan for the devastation? He was the Hokage; it was his responsibility to keep the village safe, no matter the cost… what if Sakura had another seizure? Would he kill one girl to save countless lives…?
Kakashi-sensei's words echoed in his ears.
"In the Ninja World, those who break the rules are scum, that's true, yo! But those who abandon their friends are worse than scum, babyyy! Now, let's run fifty laps around the village, yahoo!"
"It's the enemy's plan, I've figured it out!" Menma shouted. "The impostor somehow implanted the Kurama clan's Kekkei Genkai inside Sakura and placed a mental trigger in her head to make her go on a rampage! I'm taking her to Mum so she can seal her abilities!"
Before Minato could reply, his wireless radio transceiver crackled to life.
"Kakoi of the Barrier Team here!" a voice came from the speaker in his ear. "Multiple chakra signatures detected! The village is under attack!"
Minato pressed two fingers to his earpiece.
"From which direction?" he asked. "Do we have their signatures on record?"
"All directions! It's the Akatsuki! They've returned!"
The fake Menma, the genjutsu crisis that had paralysed more than half the village, and now the Akatsuki invading… there was far too much unfolding at once for it to be mere coincidence. Minato could clearly sense the shadow of someone's guiding hand behind it all.
However, even with the Hidden Leaf at such a disadvantage, there was no plausible way a mere band of mercenaries could bring the entire village to ruin; there had to be some other ultimate objective they were working towards… but what could it possibly be?
"Go, Menma!" Minato said decisively. "Go to your mother's side and protect her!"
Before Menma could say anything, Minato vanished with a loud pop as the air rushed in to fill the Minato-shaped void left behind. There was nothing more to say; Menma quickly resumed flickering his way home and burst through the front door, nearly scaring his mother half to death in the kitchen.
"MENMA!!" Kushina screeched as she saw Sakura's curvy figure in her son's arms. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE THIS TIME, YOU UNFILIAL LITTLE…"
"Mum!" Menma shouted. "Sakura needs your help!"
Kushina instantly transitioned from wicked mother-in-law mode to serious kunoichi mode upon seeing the unusually severe expression on her son's face.
"Bring her here," she said. "The sofa in the living room."
…
Obito grunted as the scarlet bead containing the illusory world began to heat in his palm. It was becoming almost too hot to hold, even through his gloves, which had begun to smoke.
"A bug in the Limited Tsukuyomi?" he muttered to himself. "Impossible."
The genjutsu was powerful enough to scan a person down to their very soul and manifest a tailor-made paradise of their own making. How, then, could flaws appear in such a divine technique, even if it was only a beta version? Like those strange, censored figures that had terrified Sakura before… who, or what in the world, were they?
"Hold her down!" Kushina's image in the bead spoke authoritatively. "I'm going to seal away her ability to use yin chakra!"
Obito leaned forwards eagerly.
…
Sakura dreamed of another life. It was oddly realistic.
In this other life, there was no such thing as chakra; imagine that!
She saw a dream in which she was a normal boy with a healthy interest in the female body.
He had a mother and a father and a big sister, whom he loved very much.
And a hot neighbour, his sister's best friend.
She was nice.
This dream was so vividly real that she could not possibly have imagined it, Sakura told herself. It brought a tear to her eye just seeing those people. The emotions they made her feel were too real to be fabricated, the memories too heart-wrenching… memories?
'That's right, memories,' Sakura told herself. 'My precious memories were stolen from me.'
To take away someone's memories was to kill a vital part of their being, for what was a person without the accumulation of memories that made them who they were?
All those memories of her playing and learning with the other children at the Ninja Academy, they couldn't possibly be real… She had transmigrated here as a twelve-year-old, after all… she may have lost her old world, but she wasn't about to lose another one!
…
Sakura's eyes flew open.
"Hold her down!" cried Kushina. "I'm going to seal away her ability to use yin chakra, but I can't guarantee I won't accidentally seal something else important if she keeps struggling, ya know!"
Sakura's irises turned scarlet, Obito's pinwheel-patterned Mangekyō Sharingan rotating and locking into place around her pupils…
…but she screamed, and thick, knotted veins bulged around her eyes, injecting chakra into her pupils, forcing out the rotating coal-black pinwheel. Her scarlet irises faded away, leaving her eyes milky white, but her eyes did not lose their focus. Her sightline expanded, until she saw tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of kilometres away, until…!
"I… see… you!" Sakura snarled. "UCHIHA... OBITO!!"
Obito recoiled in shock as his palm began to sizzle; the bead had turned incandescent and burned straight through his glove. Yet even that scalding pain was nothing compared to the question burning in his mind:
How in the world did Sakura know his name!? She couldn't even remember Naruto's name!