"Ouch, ouch, ouch," Naruto groaned, massaging his aching neck as he swung his legs off the park bench upon which he'd slept through the night. "Being homeless is the worst… I wish my apartment hadn't been blown up…"
Naruto yawned and scratched his armpits.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd awoken with dawn's first light, but he knew one thing for certain: he was starving. He took out his froggy wallet, filled to the brim with crisp notes and shiny new coins, and he sighed. Too bad all the good restaurants had been levelled along with central Konoha.
"Young Master Namikaze!" Two masked ANBU Black Ops agents flickered before him, dropping to one knee in salute. "We've been looking all over town for you!"
Naruto looked around for whoever was speaking, but at this hour Senju Park was completely empty. Thanks to Yamato's efforts, enough temporary shelters had been built that nobody had to sleep under the stars that night… nobody but him, that is.
"Are you talking to me?" Naruto said, pointing at himself.
"Your girlfriend started a fistfight with the members of Team 8 and was arrested by the Konoha Military Police Force," one of the masked men explained. "Would you like her to be released?"
"D'you mean Sakura-chan?" Naruto said, baffled. "I mean… sure?"
Although they weren't going out yet, the only person he'd consider his girlfriend was Sakura-chan… but even if she had decided to pick a fight with Team 8, what kind of policeman would dare arrest the village's leader, the Sixth Hokage!?
"By your command!"
And just like that, the ANBU operatives flickered away, leaving Naruto utterly dumbfounded. He spent a few minutes simply standing there, ruminating, but in the end he decided he was not clever enough to work out why Sakura had suddenly decided to pick a fight with Hinata and her teammates after they had parted ways, so he set off for the police station to ask her directly.
But along the way, as he crossed the village centre and passed the new Hokage Residence being rebuilt, he found himself ambushed by a gaggle of street vendors who pressed their wares into his hands. Hungry, Naruto reached for his wallet to buy a few of the foodstuffs they were hawking, but this only seemed to excite them all the more.
"Please, put away your wallet, Young Master Menma, there's no charge!"
"It's our blessing to have the Namikaze family protecting the village through the generations!"
"Please don't insult us by offering payment, you know everything is free for you and your family!"
The vendors would not take no for an answer, and by the time Naruto reached the police station, his arms were laden with fruits, sweets and snacks of all kinds, but for the life of him, he could not figure out why they insisted upon calling him Menma. And it was there, sitting on a bench facing the police station, that he found Sakura, sighing forlornly as she held her face in her hands, hunched over with her elbows on her knees.
"89… 89… 89…" he heard her muttering to herself.
"Y-yo, Sakura-chan!" Naruto greeted her nervously.
"Menma!" Sakura blurted out, looking up at him.
Naruto's heart sank. Not Sakura too! The Menma mind virus had got to her as well!
"Just kidding, Naruto," Sakura sighed. "This is quite the pickle we've landed ourselves in, eh?"
Naruto sat down next to Sakura and offered her an apple, which she hungrily devoured to the core before taking another without so much as asking. As for Naruto, he began tearing his way through a piece of bread, casting a sideways glance at her. Was it just his imagination, or was she much taller than before? He knew she'd overtaken him in height, but this…
"What's going on, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked worriedly. "Everyone keeps calling me Menma, or Young Master, or Lord Namikaze… it's like they know me, but they've forgotten my name…"
"That's because we're no longer in the Hidden Leaf Village we once knew," Sakura said grimly. "This is the side of the world we rarely see… the reverse side. I'm not quite sure how Madara sent us here, but this is the Spiritual Plane."
"The what plane?" Naruto asked in confusion.
Knowing where they were stranded did not change the fact that they were still stranded. Somehow, without reviving the Ten Tails and becoming its Jinchūriki, Obito had sent them into the realm of the Infinite Tsukuyomi… or something like it. This was no ordinary genjutsu; this place, buried deep within the collective unconscious of the planet's living beings, was entirely real… even though it was an illusion.
"I heard a few titbits while I was behind bars," Sakura said grimly. "For one, in this reality, I'm not the Hokage… your father is. He's still the Lord Fourth, and his wife, Kushina, is alive as well… I'm not sure if she's still the village's Jinchūriki in this reality, though. What's more, Sasuke isn't in the village… he's a missing-nin."
Naruto's mouth went dry. "Sasuke's… gone?"
Lady Tsunade was still dead, but their friends and comrades were also markedly different. Hinata had a violent personality, Shino hated bugs, Kiba loved cats… and as for the other members of the Konoha 12, she hadn't met them yet, so there was no telling how they might have changed.
"I think I might have a theory about the true nature of this world, but I need more information to confirm it," Sakura said hesitantly. "Naruto, do you remember exactly what you were thinking before Madara threw that bead into the air?"
Naruto pinched his lips.
"I… was jealous, okay? Of that bastard Sasuke," he said grudgingly. "I wanted to be the first to take you to that park on a date, and to be your first kiss, ya know…"
Sakura knew better than to remind Naruto that Sasuke had also been his first kiss.
"That's what I thought," Sakura said, half to herself, half to Naruto. "You were jealous of Sasuke, you wanted him gone, so in this world, he's a missing-nin… and I'm your girlfriend."
"But I didn't actually want him gone for good, y'know!" Naruto cried. "I just wanted him… just a bit further away from you, that's all!"
Sakura gripped her cloak so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
"And I was crumbling under the weight of responsibility," she said softly. "I wanted a break from being Hokage, so I became… this."
Sakura abruptly rose to her feet and turned to face Naruto, her fingers trembling as she clutched the edges of her cloak. After a brief hesitation, she whipped off her Hokage's robes, revealing the full extent of the changes to her body…