Chapter Three:

Meet the Scarecrow

Sakura's progress down the yellow dirt path was slow and cautious. Traveling out in the open was simply not the way of the shinobi, but she had little choice in the matter as the path was meandering through open fields instead of forests.

Her overly cautious forward progress was due more out of concern for what her body might be doing in the real world. Sakura had been in the middle of a small clearing, surrounded by the protective forests that hid her home village of Konoha. The genjutsu she had been caught in was powerful, but the pastoral, albeit falsely colored scenery just wasn't real. She kept reaching out with a hand, half-expecting it to collide with a hidden tree. To her surprise, her exploratory gestures met with no resistance at all.

In truth, she would have felt better to have found a tree or something. This jutsu was strong, influential enough to completely disguise the real world and temporarily cloud even her analytical mind. She didn't quite understand how it worked and while the forests that surrounded her home were safe enough for a wary, trained shinobi to travel through, a jutsu-addled girl stumbling around blindly was bound to end up dead.

For the umpteenth time since beginning her journey, Sakura's silver-shod feet came to a complete stop. Her traveling companion, the ninja dog Pakkun, turned from his lead position to give an impatient sounding bark. Sakura gave a nervous giggle.

"Easy for you to say," she muttered, more to herself than to the dog. "Aren't you even a little concerned about playing along with Kurei's sick little game? I, for one, don't want to end up some giant bug's lunch."

The dog barked again, causing the pink-haired girl even more concern. Normally she would trust her sensei's favorite dog with her life, but she wasn't sure if his silence was due to the fact that he was hiding his intelligence as a good ninja ploy, or if it was because his mind had been affected by the powerful genjutsu. If the latter was true, could she really trust his judgment? With a couple of more impatient barks, Pakkun continued to trot down the path, clearly expecting her to follow. With a sigh, the girl once again trailed after him.

I suppose that if Kurei really wanted me dead, she'd have filled my body full of kunai by now, Sakura mused. Of course, she didn't seem all that sane. Maybe she gets her kicks watching people jump through her hoops; wandering around blindly until they accidentally kill themselves.

The thought gave Sakura a chill that ran through her entire body, making the hairs on her arms and on the back of her neck stand up on end. She was a geninand she prided herself on being on the path of a true shinobi, but the idea of dying in the line of duty frightened her. To make matters even more ridiculous, this was supposed to be a simple 'D'-ranked mission. Her only task had been to fetch a scroll from the hermit woman Kurei and return it to the village; a mission so simple that her two chunin teammates had found better things to do with their time than to accompany her.

This is all Master Kakashi's fault. Stupid Sensei! It would serve them all right if I died out here!

So engrossed was Sakura with her thoughts that she had forgotten to be cautious about the trail and her surroundings. When a bloodcurdling scream unexpectedly erupted from a field off to the side of the path her heart lodged firmly in her throat for a second or two, her body giving an involuntary jerk of complete startlement before her kunoichiinstincts kicked in. Rolling to dodge any on-coming attacks, she came to her feet with both hands bristling with weapons; kunai in her right, shuriken in her left, with her arms crossed in front of her chest in preparation to launch them all at once.

"Ha, ha! I scared you good!"

The familiar sounding voice almost caused Sakura to drop her weapons out of relief. She straightened, staring at the boy affixed to a tall pole in the field across the way. Bright sunshine hair spiked upwards at jaunty angles, clear blue eyes gleamed at her over a face dominated by a too-wide grin. The orange jumpsuit that was almost garish in the actual world stood out as a relief of real color in this pastel-hued one. Her heart may have been won over long ago by a certain dark and moody Uchiha, but in this moment, seeing her cheerful, indomitable teammate made it swell with insuppressible joy.

"Naruto!"

The joy was short-lived. The tied-up boy cocked his head to one side in a puzzled gesture. "Huh? Oh, hi, Sakura. What are you doing here?"

The pink-haired kunoichi's feet had been carrying her in almost a run towards her teammate; now they slowed to a stop before the boy. She sighed as she looked up at him, realizing that this person was probably as false as Konahamaru had been. Her heart suddenly felt heavy; she dreaded the truth, but she had to know. Summoning chakra to her hands, Sakura touched his leg. The illusion rippled all around them, but to her surprise, Naruto remained solid.

She stared up at him in awe. "You're real. Naruto, what are you doing here? How did you get trapped by this genjutsu?"

"Huh?" The blond boy's face scrunched up in thought, as if there was a direct connection between the functions of his brain and the movements of his face. He cocked his head to one side. "Huh? Genjutsu? Trapped? I don't know what you're talking about. I'm a scare-ninja and I'm going to be the best scare-ninja in all the land!"

The last was spoken with such pride that Sakura had to giggle. Her built-up stress caused the giggle to turn into a genuine, desperate laugh. She ended up holding her sides, she was laughing so hard. She couldn't help it. She was scared deep down; this mission had been going from bad to worse, and this 'Fairy Tale Jutsu' was so strong that it had apparently completely befuddled Naruto's mind. But still… it was Naruto; and besides her immediate relief at no longer being alone in this strange world, she had to admit that he was absolutely perfect for the role he was playing.

"Hey, hey, Sakura! What's so funny?" Naruto demanded, scowling from the top of the pole. "I will so be the best scare-ninja and then everyone will have to respect me. Me: Naruto, the greatest scare-ninja."

Sakura looked up at him, the familiar words bringing a natural smile to her face. She wiped tears brought forth by her hysterical laughter away.

"Hokage."

"Huh?"

"It's supposed to be Hokage. You want to be the greatest Hokage ever."

The tow-headed ninja still looked confused. Sakura shook her head, her mind starting to function as it should again. Obviously Naruto's brain had been ensnared by the genjutsu. He was playing the role of the scarecrow, which meant that he was supposed to accompany her to the Emerald City. Of course, regardless of what role he was playing, Sakura had no intention of leaving him here.

She circled the tree trunk sized pole he was tied too; relieved to find that he was bound there simply with rope encircling his mid-section, much the way Master Kakashi had tied him up during the very first test he had given them as a team. The thought of the silver-haired jounin brought another smile to her face. Kakashi's very name meant 'scarecrow', but the genin couldn't imagine her sensei trussed up to a pole. She still couldn't figure out how Naruto had ended up here.

Sakura freed him with ease; Naruto fell to the ground with an audible 'oooff'. Rubbing his backside, the blond teen sprang to his feet, animatedly whirling to glare at her. "Hey! What did you do that for? How can I be the greatest scare-ninja if I'm not on top of my pole scaring people?"

Teal eyes blinked in surprise at the genuine anger being displayed in the blue ones. "Naruto…" she began, watching as he crossed his orange-clad arms in front of his chest. "Naruto, try to understand. None of this is real. It's genjutsu. We're both trapped and the only way of getting out of here is to play through the story."

Silence. Her teammate was completely unappeased. Sakura sighed and decided to try a different tact. "Naruto, I'm going to the Emerald City to see the Hokage. He's supposed to help get me home. You should come with me. He can, um, tell you how to, um…" get a clue! her inner warrior inserted. "…Um, he can tell you how to be an even greater scare-ninja than you already are. And I'm sure you can find way more people to scare on the way there than you would just waiting on the top of that pole… right?"

Naruto's head was cocked to one side. He was nodding slowly at her, but Sakura knew him well enough to know that question marks were probably dancing around his head.

"So you'll go with me?"

"Yeah, well, I don't really understand what's going on, but you're probably right. I'll go see this Hokage person and maybe he'll help me too."

Sakura beamed at him so brightly that a deep red blush discolored the chunin's cheeks. They made their way back to the yellow dirt path, Sakura gently trying to question him on how he had ended up tied to the pole. Unfortunately, while he inexplicably remembered her and Pakkun, the rest of his memories seemed to start and end with the pole. In his mind, he had always been tied there. Sakura could feel her frustration mounting at his inability to grasp the concept of this world being an illusion. Finally she bonked him on the top of his head, hard enough to raise a bump and bring tears to his eyes.

"Hey!" the blond gasped. "What did you do that for?"

"You," Sakura fumed, "are being even more dense than usual. I've explained it five times already and you're still so clueless. You don't have to play your part that well!"

"I don't know what you're talking about! I'm not playing a part!"

Mentally, the kunoichi concluded that that was indeed the sad truth.