You might not like where I'm taking this story, but please have a bit of patience with me, I feel like I'm trying to learn how to write from scratch lol (that and its fun playing with a bunch of concepts that never got more than a mention in the manga, which I've been rereading recently, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed some arcs! But not the end ~hisses~)

Enjoy!

Hakujitsumu V

Sakura was enveloped in a pair of strong arms before she knew what was happening, "I'm sorry Sakura… I remember Miskai so clearly, I remember Kakashi so clearly, he loved you both so much…"

"H-Hinata?"

"I'm sorry, I overheard part of the discussion, I was coming to tell you about the Tree, but… it can wait." She said, Sakura tried to get her breathing under control and to stop crying but the tears seemingly had no end. Hinata let go of her and shuffled to take a seat beside her on the high branch.

"Our lives aren't set: you just know, now, how one eventuality will play out… maybe even this time, you will still end up with Kakashi-san. Maybe you won't. But you know what that eventuality is like, each of us now know more of our lives and ourselves than, by rights, we should ever have known. You have another chance to take a different path, to see where it goes. I am sorry that you had be ripped from what was such a happy time for you…" Hinata's voice was quiet but confident, the meekness that long been her defining feature was nowhere in sight. Sakura stared at her old friend for a long while,

"H-Hinata…"

The Hyuuga gently rubbed her back in a comforting gesture, "We have all lost something very precious to us in this change. But we cannot waste this time that has been returned to us by feeling nothing but regret; there is more to life. I am certain we will have our time to be happy again."

"Thank you. You're right… I suppose everything just feels so… raw."

"It will, but do not berate yourself. As skilled as you are in healing, do you patients still not have some pain to recover from, as well as their injuries?"

"Hai, hai," Sakura nodded; so unused to hearing Hinata with such confidence, she'd never before noticed the strict formality she used; "I've never heard you talk so much, Hinata,"

"I've been thinking a lot since I woke up. Naruto has been with me a lot as well, but he's eager to pick up where we left off,"

"And you're not?"

"Yes and no; I think there are many things to be learned from what has happened… I remember how confident and happy I was under the Tsukikomi but I still always looked to Naruto to give me confidence and security, just as I always had done… I don't want to always be that, I want to experience what being confident for yourself is like… I want to be seen as confident and strong because that is who I am not because it is what someone else made me."

"Being who you want because its what you want was a hard lesson for me to learn, too. But it is so worth it!" Sakura replied; the smiled warmly at each other, a tacit moment of understanding passing between them.

"It might seem fast, I suppose… but from where I'm sat, I've had years to think about it." Hinata replied, "And so have you. We have learned a lot and I think it's okay that we use that knowledge, it isn't disrespectful to those we've lost… but it would be disrespectful to believe that they have not learned either."

"You're right, Hinata… I guess my heart's still asleep." Sakura said, though Hinata only smiled in response.

"Sakura, Sakura!" Naruto suddenly appeared on the branch beside Sakura, a small slug on his shoulder, "Oh, hey Hinata!" He smiled brightly, "I... wait, were you crying? Are you okay? Was it Kakashi?" He fussed suddenly, concern replacing his former smile in a flash,

"It's okay, Naruto, really," Sakura offered, "What were you going to say?"

"I was just talking to Katsuyu and we think you should go and learn sage-arts."

"What?"

"Hai, although I cannot guarantee that you will be able to learn it, you are a highly skilled shinobi with excellent chakra-discipline, there is still a good chance for you."

"You should Sakura, just think what a combo we could do on that chakra-flower!"

"Heh… but don't you remember, Naruto? How we struggled to fight that Juubi, which transformed into the flower? Even with Kurama's chakra and Bee-san's and Hachibi's chakra and the Shinobi Alliance, we still really struggled… how can a handful normal shinobi and two sages hope to defeat anything? Assuming I'm even successful?" Sakura asked,

"Don't think we won't be training, too, Sakura," Shikamaru interrupted, "We might not have the strength in numbers that we had, but the situation is different; right now, she has no idea we're coming for her and we've had a taste of what sort of resistance the tree will put up, that gives us an upper hand."

"Yeah," She agreed, they leapt from the tree, "It is about time we started making some strides forwards, isn't it?" She leapt down from the tree, "Katsuyu, what will I need to do for this training?"

"I will summon you to the Shikkotsu Forest, there Mageruko-sama will teach you, you do not need to bring anything."

"What happens if I can't learn the techniques?"

"Don't think about it! Just have faith in yourself Sakura, if you spend too long doubting yourself then you will definitely fail." Naruto cut in, his expression ernest, "I did it, you can too!"

"Okay!" Sakura agreed, "No hesitating."

They returned to the medical tent where Shizune was talking with Kakashi,

"Kakashi! I'm going with Katsuyu to train in the sage arts." Sakura said,

"…Were you even going to discuss this with me?" There was an edge to his voice, but she ignored it,

"We don't have a lot of options right now and I think it is worth a shot," She replied, making sure to keep her voice calm,

Kakashi looked at her for a few long moments. "That is true. We have Shizune and Tsunade-sama, when she wakes up. Go, train hard." He said, Sakura nodded and walked over to the larger body of Katsuyu,

"Are you ready, Sakura? We should not waste time."

"Good luck, Sakura." Hinata offered,

"Yeah! Good luck! We'll definitely beat Otsutsuki after this!" Naruto grinned, along with nods of approval from Shikamaru and Shizune.

"Come back stronger." Kakashi added, drawing Sakura's attention just as she and the enormous slug disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Kakashi-san?"

"Hmm? What is it?"

"Why don't we move back to Konoha?" Hinata asked,

"Eh?"

"We don't have much to protect here and right now we're hardly in the best shape to fight, if it came to it,"

"She has a point, Kakashi, Konoha would be the best move." Sasuke added, he looked tired and still seemed unsteady on his feet, but had made it out of the medical tent,

"Kakashi! Tsunade-sama is awake!" Shizune cut off whatever Sasuke was intending to say next and called the senior shinobi away, leaving a disgruntled Sasuke alone with the Nara.

"Could you make the journey?" Shikamaru asked, earning a snide glare from the Uchiha, "Before you get angry, and whilst you're on your feet, I want to request your help with something, do you have enough chakra to summon your sharingan?"

Nice, Chouji! Ino thought as she dodged out of the way of her teammate's earth-rattling jutsu, she kept her momentum as she dodged the trees and sped around to strike at her target, from the corner of her eye she could see Shikamaru's jutsu connect with the target's shadow seconds before Ino landed her strike. Kiba didn't stand a chance.

"Oww! Damnit since when do you do taijutsu, Ino?"

"Didn't see it coming, did you?" She smirked, her hand finding its way to her hip, "A ninja's still gotta evolve, you know, we can't afford to get too predicable," Kiba merely grumbled as he got to his feet,

"Yamanaka-san! Ibiki-san has requested your presence at the interrogation department!" Kuroichi, a young Intel initiate appeared on the tree behind her,

"Hai, I'll be right there," Ino replied, "Fun spar, guys, same time next week?"

"I'm getting Lee and TenTen to help us, next time!"

"By Shikamaru, Chouji," She waved a short goodbye to her former teammates and was gone; she hurried back to the office trying to put aside the fact something had bothered her about that spar. Something about it had just been Not Quite Right.

"Ibiki-sampai?"

"Ino, you're here, I'm sorry to interrupt your spar, but I think you'll forgive me." Ibiki smiled his dark, slow smile Ino had come to know well; ever since she'd first met Ibiki — as a child of five — he'd always both awed her and creeped her out, she felt as if he could see right through her and might know what was in her brain at any given moment. But when she began working in the Intel division, after she returned to Konoha, she began to understand just why he had been her father's closet friend. Ibiki was a master interrogator, he could prod and pull the secrets out of anyone, an art Ino had unconsciously tried to master ever since that day, and where most of her friends and teachers saw her as a gossiping, frivolous girl, she had been slowly mastering and honing her skills as an interrogator and intelligence operative. By the time Ino was seventeen, and fighting in that war, she knew almost everything there was to know about who she was fighting along side; five minute conversations with allies when they'd paused to eat or thirty seconds of chatter as they'd slipped into the woods, told Ino so much. The tone of voice, the eyes, the body language, syntax, emphasis… so much.

Ibiki hadn't looked the least bit surprised when she'd approaching him and asked to join his division, rather he's smiled his slow smile and asked why it had taken her so long. Ibiki was a man of patience and honour and taught with exactly those values, he knew how and when to encourage and when to let her figure out her mistakes for herself. Eventually, he passed on some scrolls that had belonged to her father, saying that it made no sense that he keep them, giving his inability to perform the jutsu and that it made perfect sense for Ino to take up her father's mantel… if she so wished. With those scrolls, Ino found the variations of the Shintenshin, which could be adapted for any conceivable situation.

"We have recently discovered a young Chuunin skulking around Konoha, he claims to be from Hidden Waterfall village… but we found old records that stated he'd been captured for suspected treason before."

"In Konoha?" Ino asked as Ibiki hands over the file,

"Look at the date,"

"This is from twenty years ago, so what's the big deal?" She asked, looking at the supplied picture of a young boy, his straight white hair reached his chin before slowly getting longer around the back of his head, he had a haitai-ate around his neck and a large triangular scar over the left side of his forehead; he looked to only be about twelve or thirteen. Ibiki pulled up the blind in front of the window of the interrogation cell, the boy sat there looked identical to the picture. As if he had not aged a day.

"I assume we've eliminated the possibility of jutsus?"

"We have. I think you should interrogate him first;"

"Really? Just me?" Ibiki nodded, "Yes!" Ino grinned, she hurried over to the door, paused a moment and took a deep breath to compose herself before marching in and taking the seat opposite their detainee.

"So, Junjou, what exactly are you doing back in Konoha?" She asked, casually flicking through his file,

"Really?" The boy asked, looking Ino up and down very carefully, "This is the best Konoha has to offer? They send some girl in to talk to me? I'm almost sorry Inoichi died." Ino merely quirked an eyebrow before raising her gaze to finally meet his. Just as their eyes connected however, she was met, not with the enormous dark eyes on Junjou but rather, with two brutally red sharingan.

"Wh—what the fuck? Sasuke? What?" She spluttered,

"Calm down Ino, I'm only here to talk. You are trapped in the Infinite Tsukikomi, we actually lost the war, you and the rest of the world have been trapped under the genjutsu for six months. I have awoken Kakashi, Sakura, Shikamaru and many others from different villages. Shikamaru asked me to make contact with you without waking you up, can you tell me about your dream world? What are things like at the moment? Do you still dream of Shikamaru? Of Sakura? Of Kakashi?"

"I… I…" Ino could only open and close her mouth for a few minutes whilst she tried to wrap her mind around what Sasuke had just told her. She forced herself to calm down, "I think I need you to give me a bit of proof here… how I know this isn't just Junjou casting some genjutsu on me?"

"I can't. But Kakashi and the others all told me that they did not dream of me at all, I was never captured by the Tsukikomi."

He was right, Ino hadn't remember that Sasuke even ever existed until this moment, "That's true, I haven't thought about you at all."

"Tell me about what you see, in your daily life, I mean,"

"I still see Shikamaru and Kakashi and Sakura and all the others but… Shikamaru has been acting weirdly recently, like he's not really him…he says thing that Shika never says… and today, in the spar, his jutsu wasn't right."

"How?"

"The two shadows grew towards each other rather than Shika's growing towards the targets… that's not how the jutsu works."

"What about Sakura?"

"I don't—I haven't spoke to her in weeks, I see her around but we just don't talk…" Ino trailed off, suddenly realising just how weird that was.

"We're planning on waking up Chouji soon, but you will have to remain under a while longer, we'll need you to be our eyes in the Tsukikomi."

"Hey, wait, no get me out!"

"We will, but we still have to defeat Otsutsuki and the Chakra Tree — right now, you are our link to what's happening in here, how much the Tree or the Mother is aware of might be reflected in this dream-reality." Sasuke cooly replied, "Talk to everyone I've woken up, Kakashi, Sakura, Shizune, Tsunade, Shino, Hinata, Naruto to see if they all seem… 'weird'. Keep eyes on Chouji, we're going to wake him up soon, see if anything changes. I'll be back to talk soon." And with that, Ino realised she was looking at Junjou again; the seemingly young boy was staring back at her, wide eyed and if he was about to crack. Neither moved for a few minutes, Ino too busy trying to make sense of the information she had just been over loaded with and Junjou trying to figure out the scary, silent woman in front of him.

The smoke cleared and Sakura stared up at the gigantic forest around her, it brimmed with life and noise; she breathed in the prevasive scent of foliage and earth — a smell not unlike the forest surrounding Konoha in the height of summer. The rich scent was almost overwhelming, the hot humid air engulfed her, as if she were stood next to a hot spring. Katsuyu was nowhere in sight, she could see small shafts of light, just managing to find their way through the thickly grown canopy overhead. The trees and underbrush were gigantic, not unlike the semi-sentient tree of chakra her allies were fighting, what looked like a rhododendron grew beside her, though each one of its leaves were as big as a bed.

"Haruno Sakura… it has been a long time since I've had a pupil to teach… who was your master? What illustrious line brings you the right to train here?" A smooth, steady voice spoke, though Sakura could not find its source easily amid the busyness of the forest around her,

"I was apprentice to Senju Tsunade-sama, granddaughter to Senju Hashirama-sama," Sakura answered carefully, suddenly aware that it was not just the abruptness of the change in her surroundings that she was struggling to adapt to, it was that the entire forest itself seemed alive with some energy or other. If she didn't know better she would have thought it was chakra.

"Hmm… not bad… but if you want to train you have to pass the first test. I live in the centre of this forest — it is peaceful but the journey is hard. If you can reach me, I will train you."

"But, aren't you here now, talking to me?" Sakura asked, though she saw nothing move around her,

"Are you sure?" The voice spoke again, this time sounding from some distance away. Sakura took several steps forwards, clambering over an enormous fallen tree, but as she did so she felt her skin begin to prickle and itch as her skin turned to gooseflesh. She could almost feel her chakra respond by instinct, flowing out to her skin, strengthening the cells against the near undetectable pressure. The forest had a presence; as if it were the sentinel to some last bastion of life and hope, it might seem unaware but some unseen eyes were watching her and waiting for her to take some misstep.

The kuniochi walked slowly, conscious of not trampling small plants or animals and to make keeping her bearings a little easier; she hadn't the faintest idea where the 'centre' of this forest might be, nor how big it was, nor even, where she had been summoned relative to it. She stopped by one of the large trees and look up — it was high, so high she was almost squinting to see its lowest branches — but it might still give her a good vantage point. Already she felt exhausted but nonetheless gathered her chakra to her feet and began to climb; higher and higher until she was forced to bring her chakra to her hands and climb as if she were a monkey. It was a far cry from the first day she'd ever climbed a tree. After several hours she reached the first branches and stopped to rest, its crook was broad and slightly dipped, she settled into it, cursing herself for not gathering a few extra sets of rations and water before she'd left, naively believing that she'd be transported into some sort of slug-house and treated to a good meal before beginning. What an idiot.

She looked up, still not seeing any sky above through the countless leaves and plenty more tree to climb; if only she wasn't so tired.

"What are you doing?" A voice said, startling Sakura,

"What? Who are you?" She asked, tensing though refraining from drawing a kunai; in front of her crouched a small, long hard man who looked well into his eighties and dressed in traditional samurai garb. He only smiled and cocked his head, waiting for her to answer his question instead; his voice was not the same as the one who'd spoken earlier. "I… I'm trying to get to the top of this tree,"

"Why?"

"So I can see where the centre of this forest is,"

"Do you really think it will be that obvious?"

"Maybe not, but it should at least give me an idea of where I am and where the boundaries of this forest lie."

"Hmm—hmhm," The only man hummed a laugh, "At least you're smarter than the last one. What if you get to the top and all you see are tree as far as you can see?"

"Assuming that there are no landmarks or defining features, then I suppose I would have to assume that I am already in the centre of the forest... or very close to it,"

"Ah! Hahahah!" The only man belted a full belly laugh so hard he almost fell from the tree, "You are definitely smarter that the last one! He walked for days before he thought to climb a tree… and then he still kept walking, hahaha!"

"Who was the last one?"

"Hm? Oh… what was his name?" He thought hard for a few moments, "Eh, Katsuyu-chan, what was that last boy's name?"

"Hashirama-sama," The familiar striped form of Katsuyu crawled over the old man's shoulder,

"Hashirama-chan! That's right!"

"The Shoudai Hokage trained here?" Sakura asked,

"That's right, he's the only other one Mageruko has ever trained," The elderly man said, "C'mon let's go meet him,"

"But... I was told to find the centre of the forest,"

"Ah, you're close enough, that old bag like to make all sorts of odd challenges and bets, come on," The man gestured before spinning in a circle and turning himself in a large, spotted slug and began slithering down the trunk of the tree.

"How far are we from Konoha here?" Tsunade asked, swallowing the last bite of her meagre lunch,

"About two days' travel," Kakashi replied,

"That's not as far as I'd thought… we were fighting up on Kaminari territory, weren't we?"

"Yes, but that final fight with Kaguya took us miles from the battlefield, thought I don't remember how or why,"

"Hn," Tsunade grunted her response, "I don't remember much either… we'll leave in an hour, get everyone ready to move. Have Gaara and the Raikage brought here."

"Hai," Kakashi replied and darted away in a blur;

"Shizune," Tsunade turned to her old friend, "What's the situation with Sasuke?"

"He is gravely ill, it seems he acquired some sort of chest infection some time ago, at this late stage I'm not certain we can cure him, he probably only has a few weeks."

"Hmm, as soon as we're back in Konoha try and get the lab set up and do what you can for him. If he dies, Shizune," Tsunade voice lowered to barely a whisper, "Save his eyes."

"But why Konoha? We need to get back to Kumogakure!" Ao rebutted, a frown playing on his face,

"I understand why you feel that way," Kakashi calmly replied, "But Konoha is closest right now and is a good place for us to regroup and prepare for our battle against Otsutsuki, that is our current priority."

"I am inclined to agree with this decision," Gaara added, "It is tactically the best option, it doesn't make sense to divide what forces we have at this point."

"Hmm, I don't like it but I do agree… Ao prepare everyone. Let's go, Kazekage," The enormous ninja stood tall, maintaining intimidating eye contact with Ao as he spoke; clearly his leadership nor confidence had not taken any sort of a hit by being subjected to the genjutsu. The two Kages walked away from the milling group of random shinobi towards the medical tent were Tsunade was still based.

"Are we all in agreement?" Tsuande asked,

"Hai," Gaara replied, I am also happy to transport those remaining who haven't yet awoken,"

"Are you meeting any resistance from your people over this decision?"

"Some," Answered A, "But they will follow me."

"No." Answered Gaara.

"What about the shinobi who aren't affiliated to you?" Tsunade pressed,

"They will follow, what do they have to stay here for?" A said,

"I have instructed Temari to talk with them and ensure they are comfortable; most will follow, I am sure," Gaara answered, a thankful voice of reason in the moment, as much as Tsunade respected the Raikage, he could be an egotistical pain in the ass at times.

"Then let's move. I want us to be in Konoha before last light two days from now."

..

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