Noon found Sakura sitting at a table in Amaguriama, the traditional sweets shop on Konoha Tea Avenue, with a tall pile of sticky plates stacked before her.
"Oof, I couldn't possibly eat another bite," Sakura sighed, patting Ino's overstuffed belly. "…Boss, ten more orders of mitarashi dango!"
"Coming right up!"
When it came to sweets, Sakura's stomach capacity was almost bottomless; it was just like Naruto and ramen, Chōji and barbecued meat, or Hinata and food in general. Unfortunately, as she'd learned in Lady Tsunade's crash course on military rations and wild edible plants, sugar was about the worst enemy of women trying to mind their waistlines, many times worse than fat itself.
But what did Sakura care about Ino's diet?
"Body Activation Jutsu!"
Sakura focused chakra on Ino's stomach, quickening her digestion and metabolising the sugar faster to make room for more sweets. She couldn't control where the fat would go, but if she stimulated Ino's gluteal muscles as well as her stomach, she could make sure that by the time she was finished, her butt would be enormous!
The owner came over to Sakura's table and set down two plates piled high with skewers, then went back to the counter for the rest of her order.
"Teach you to steal my body, Ino-Pig," Sakura muttered to herself as she popped a dango into her mouth. "Mmh, sho good… eh?"
The sweets shop was suddenly plunged into shadow as a wave of darkness swept over the village.
Startled, Sakura accidentally swallowed her glutinous snack whole and immediately choked. Eyes bulging, she grabbed her glass of water and gulped it down, and after what felt like an eternity, her airways finally cleared.
"That was… too close," she gasped, coughing water and syrup out of her nose. "What in the world is going on?"
Noticing the other patrons of Amaguriama stepping outside, Sakura pushed herself to her feet with some difficulty and stumbled out of the sweet shop to see what was happening. She craned her neck and looked up: the sky had darkened, not from clouds, but from chakra rippling outwards at a high altitude, in vast concentric circles.
"Over there!" someone said, pointing towards the source of the chakra. "Look!"
Sakura lowered her gaze north-westwards.
A red-eyed child's enormous figure towered over the treeline, his reflection shimmering in the streams of chakra that rippled through the sky above. He wore what appeared to be a white, long-sleeved straitjacket fastened with black leather belts. His hair was as pale as his clothes, and the small part of his mouth visible above the collar was wrapped in white bandages.
A youthful voice suddenly rang out.
"I am Hiruko," the voice said. "A shinobi of the Hidden Leaf Village."
Sakura took a bite from her dango skewer. Now, where had she heard that name before?
"Using my Chimera Jutsu, I have already obtained four Kekkei Genkai from each of the Great Shinobi Villages," the voice went on. "When the fifth and final Kekkei Genkai falls into my hands, I will become invincible, a perfect, immortal ninja, and with that power, I will start the Fourth Great Shinobi War, and conquer all."
Sakura snapped her fingers as she remembered where she'd heard Hiruko. It was the name of the bloke Lady Tsunade had warned her about; the missing-nin who'd become the shinobi continent's most wanted, because of his inhuman experiments on Kekkei Genkai transplants! He was the reason why she had been banned from stealing other women's breasts for so long!
"So, you're the bastard!" Sakura shouted with Ino's mouth full, angrily shaking her fist at the sky as the atmospheric chakra began to clear. "If it hadn't been for you…!"
Her head suddenly snapped back as if she had been punched in the chin.
'Wait, someone's already in my body?' Ino's voice echoed inside her skull. 'Ugh! Sakura, what do you think you're doing in there, you fat cow!? Get out already, something serious is going down!'
Sakura nodded and closed her eyes… and when she opened them again, she was staring blearily at what looked like… an enormous pile of plates?
In just a few hours, her eyesight had recovered quite a bit. Was it because Ino's foreign chakra had taken over, creating a fake Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan situation… or because Ino had just supercharged her Hashirama cells by eating a mountain of food, by the looks of it!?
"My eyes! I can see…!" Sakura gasped. "Well, sort of— ouch!"
She squinted her clouded eyes, taking in the familiar décor and sounds… wasn't this that new all-you-can-eat buffet place, just two streets down from Amaguriama?
"Ino…! You… ugh… fat… pig!" Sakura hissed as pain lanced through her belly. "You… couldn't find… Sasuke, so you… decided… to ruin my body instead!?"
Great minds thought alike, it seemed. Ino starved herself to maintain her slender physique, so no wonder she hadn't hesitated to pig out when placed in someone else's body…
"Thanks for treating us, Sakura-chan!" came Chōji's voice from somewhere behind the tower of plates. "I had no idea you could eat so much!"
"That's because I can't," Sakura groaned, foaming at the mouth as she collapsed forwards, her head falling onto her fat chest atop the table. "Urgh… I'm dying…"
Out of the corner of her eye, Sakura noticed Shikamaru heading towards their table. Judging by his expression, he'd stepped outside for a moment to see what was going on.
"I just got orders from the Hokage on my wireless," said Shikamaru. "C'mon, we're to assemble at the Hokage Residence, all of us."
He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"I, er… I already paid the bill, so you don't need to worry about that," Shikamaru murmured in Sakura's ear. "I've known Ino long enough to recognise her in anyone's body. Sorry."
"The bill's not what I'm worried about," Sakura groaned, lurching to her feet. "I'm gonna be sick…"
Unfortunately, Sakura now had more pressing matters to worry about than paying restaurant bills or exploding Monty Python-style. Even though Shikamaru was right there, she had no choice but to shelve her plans to impeach Danzō with Team 10's help; this was not the time to be starting a civil war.
In essence, Hiruko had just declared war against the entire shinobi continent on behalf of the Hidden Leaf, turning whatever doubts the other villages might have had about the whole Sakura–Orochimaru–stolen Kekkei Genkai affair into outright certainty.
From the other Great Villages' point of view, the Hidden Leaf now harboured three shinobi who had broken the taboo of stealing Kekkei Genkai, which were equivalent to tactical weapons: Sakura, Orochimaru and Hiruko. It made no difference that two of them were missing-nin; three was far too many for coincidence.
As the saying goes, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action!