When Sakura was stuck in that horrible white room, slowly losing herself to Orochimaru, Ino promised her that when she got out, they would have a sleepover.
Ino promised her that she'd tell Sakura about all the things she'd missed, and all the things Tsunade kicked Ino out before she could say.
She doesn't come.
Sakura watches Ino walk away, her hand wrapped up tight in Inoichi's, and she'd glanced back towards Sakura, but the flower linking their minds had been silent.
She doesn't come.
Her parents scream and cry at her in equal measures when she goes home.
They don't know about what happened to her.
Nobody tells them.
(Sakura doesn't tell them.)
(If she did, they would stop loving her—)
(Just like everyone else.)
Only Gamami stays by her side while her father all but melts down before her.
That night, Sakura sleeps for sixteen hours straight and wakes up still tired.
It's almost five in the evening.
Her mother comes up to smile at her and then drag her down for dinner.
(The flower inside of Sakura's mind remains silent.)
It's a weekend, which means no training.
Kakashi could barely look at her, barely stand to speak to her, so she couldn't bring herself to ask when she would see him again.
(Monday, by default.)
Her skin itches. She wants to see him again, wants to prove her own existence, wants to—
Something.
Instead, Sakura sits alone in a room that never really belonged to her, hands around her knees, and she can feel something harden over her skin.
(She can feel something inside her skin, pulling at her sluggish grey limbs.)
(They only ever loved me, a person who never really existed says from beneath her skin.)
(They only ever loved her, she says to herself from beneath her skin.)
Morning comes, and Sakura goes to the third training ground alone, leaving Gamami behind, cocooned inside every blanket Sakura has.
She lands on the pond five minutes before nine, and it doesn't so much as splash.
Five minutes later, Kakashi arrives in a flash of white light.
Right on time.
(When was the last time Kakashi had been on time for anything?)
When he looks at her, he looks at her like he's looking at ghost.
They spar, and beating him is easy—trivial. It's like sparring with someone in slow motion.
Her every motion is faster, surer. Her blows are more explosive, her reads are sharper and quicker.
(Her mind may feel sluggish right now, but it is faster than Outer's ever was.)
She takes him down time and time again, and part of her wants to revel in it.
She'd always known she was stronger than Outer—faster than her—smarter than her.
Unfortunately, the rest of her sees the truth.
Sparring with Kakashi is like sparring with someone in slow motion because Kakashi is moving in slow motion.
"I'm still me!" Sakura shouts down at a Kakashi who cannot bear to look her in the eyes. "Look at me!"
Kakashi laughs, and looks her straight in the eyes. "Just where do you think I'm looking? I just wanted to give you a little taste of victory after your incredibly stressful ordeal, but if you insist." He shrugs, smiling a smile that reaches his eyes and proceeds to beat her (metaphorically) into the ground in spar after spar after spar, meeting her gaze easily and effortlessly all the while.
After he's taken her down ten times in a row, Sakura stares blankly up at the sky for a long moment before pushing herself to her feet once again.
She never really appreciated just how good of a liar Kakashi was before right now.
He looks exactly like he used to, smiles and taunts her exactly like he used to.
If you couldn't feel the horrible spikes of misery and guilt and agony his chakra twisted into every time he met her eyes, you'd never know.
For the first time in her life, Sakura curses her own chakra sense.
He meets her gaze easily once again, but the thing is—
He's still not looking at her.
He's looking through her.
(He's looking for someone who isn't there anymore.)
"Let's call it there," Kakashi says, too early, because Sakura cannot bear to stand. "It's important to pace yourself."
He leaves her there, staring up at the sky, and Sakura hears that voice again.
They'll never love you.
It's her own voice, she knows—Outer is gone.
It doesn't make it hurt any less.
That night, Gamami threatens to slit Kakashi's through in his sleep, and Sakura has to talk her down.
"It's fine," she lies, even though it makes her skin crawl. "They just need time," she continues to lie.
Gamami ignores her.
"Don't leave me," Sakura says in a stupid, tiny broken voice, and Gamami stops, one hand on the window. "Please."
Gamami doesn't leave.
The next day, Sakura trains with Guy.
He's the same as he always is, smile just as wide and horrible as always.
(Because he doesn't know.)
(Because no one's told him.)
When she is with him, she can almost forget.
If he knew, he would never—
Sakura's parents have a our-daughter-isn't-dead party, and they invite the entirety of her old class, because they've never really understood who Sakura is actually friends with and who she isn't.
Shikamaru and Chouji come, which is nice. She hasn't seen them in too-long, not since before.
(Not since ever.)
It's nice to see them again, and they treat her the same as they always do, Shikamaru just as stiff and awkward, Chouji just as warm.
(They don't know.)
Hinata and Shino come, and obviously feel really weird about it. (They were never friends.)
Kiba, Fumiko, Juuna—her bullies, once upon a time. Sakura doesn't know why they came, but their snide little whispers are either obviously untrue (she's not actually a ninja) or true but irrelevant (her forehead, etc).
Two people don't come.
Naruto (because her parents apparently were listening when she complained about how annoying he was), and—
Ino.
Sakura can feel the walls of the world closing in on her.
She spends most of her time with Shikamaru and Chouji, and they talk about Ino once—
"She's been training really hard," they say, not realizing they're lying. "I'm sure she'll be really mad that she missed this."
It's Shikamaru who lets it slip, in between yawns—
"Are you really part of the Senju clan now?"
He says it offhandedly, like it's nothing, but, for a moment, his chakra is as sharp as a kunai, his black eyes on her.
Tsunade looks up when the door to her office cracks against the wall.
"Oh," Tsunade says. "You found out, then?"
Sakura takes a deep breath.
Stupid ninja—no respect for civilians, there's always like this—
I thought you were different.
"Come over and sit down before you go try and commit an S-class crime."
Sakura takes another deep breath and drags her hands down her face.
"Yes, ma'am," she says, her righteous anger dripping our of her as she crosses the room to sit before Tsunade. She slants a glance at where Jiraiya is slouched across most of the couch against the wall. He looks… younger?
The lines down his face are shorter, the smile lines around his mouth shallower, his hair a little less massive, his skin a little smoother.
At Sakura's stare at the inexplicably-young Jiraiya, Tsunade says, "He's trying to make a point, because he doesn't value his life."
"What, I just wanted to relive my glory days!" he says, stretching a little more, his face losing a couple more years.
"Aren't you supposed to be a spy?" she says. "I'm pretty sure the old man didn't have to deal with your fucking shit. How about you go fucking spy?"
"In fairness," Jiraiya says, "you're much prettier than he is."
Tsunade looks not at all mollified, pitching a letter opener which is really just a flattened kunai at Jiraiya's face.
Sakura turns away from… whatever on earth that is and takes a seat before Tsunade.
"So, who was it that spilled the beans?" Tsunade asks. "It wasn't that Yamanaka brat, was it? She seemed on board for leaving you on the scroll."
Sakura freezes.
She wouldn't know.
They haven't spoken.
She reaches out to the flower connecting their minds on instinct, only to find nothing but a black static waiting for her.
Sakura's blood drains out of her face.
Ino? Sakura asks the flower.
Then again.
…Ino?
Nothing.
Sakura stares blankly down at her hands. They feel cold.
Her everything feels cold.
Tsunade clears her throat, and Sakura jerks her head up to meet Tsunade's guilty gaze.
Sakura's throat works.
She dips herself down into that anger, pulls it back up into herself, and her hands stop shaking.
"Maybe I figured it out for myself," Sakura says, shooting a glare at Jiraiya when he snorts.
He just grins tauntingly at her glare, and Sakura turns back to Tsunade.
Like, yes, it was obvious. What else could summoning Tsunade with Blood of my blood, Flesh of my flesh, I permit you possibly mean?
But… well, Sakura's been a bit preoccupied with other, more important things.
Tsunade just raises a single eyebrow.
"Shikamaru," Sakura mutters.
"That little shit."
"No!" Sakura snaps. "You should have told me!"
Tsunade raises a single eyebrow, but Sakura does not quail, standing up and slamming her hands into the desk.
(Maybe shrouding herself in righteous anger to hide other emotions she doesn't want to deal with right now had been a mistake.)
"You…" her voice drifts off, the shouldn't have done it in the first place dying on her lips as she rather involtunarily remembers Danzou bearing down on her, murder in his eyes, no hope for escape.
She hangs her head.
"I'm a Haruno," she finally says. "I don't want to be a Senju."
"Now look what you did," the peanut gallery comments, and Sakura twists to glare at him.
"You're not helping. Give me the scroll and fuck off."
Tsunade holds her hand out, and Jiraiya hands her the scroll. As he passes Sakura, he places one of his massive hands on her shoulders before leaning down to her.
"It's not so bad being a Senju, you know?" he says.
Sakura frowns and then her head snaps up to him when she processes what he must have meant by that.
Jiraiya is already walking away, but as he walks, he grabs his massive ponytail and pulls it aside, revealing the Senju vajra on his back.
Sakura's mouth falls open. The door closes behind him, and her gaze snaps back to the scroll in Tsunade's hand.
"So, what do you say, kid?" she says, pulling the scroll open before her. "The Senju's always been more than willing to share."
"No," Sakura says without a moment's hesitation or thought, like it's being drawn out from deep inside of her, like she's involuntarily puking it out.
Absolutely not.
In the wake of that one word, she feels something unravel in the world around her, but…
What was that? What just pulled that out of her?
Tsunade smiles, just a hint of pain in her eyes. "I figured you'd say that," she says, and then, to Sakura's expression, she says "You can't lie to the scroll," like it's that simple, like Sakura's mind shouldn't be immune to compulsions twice over.
She turns the scroll of Senju towards Sakura, holding it out wide before her, wide enough Sakura can see four columns of Senju names, and one column of non-Senju names.
Jiraiya
Orochimaru
Katou Shizune
Then, all the way at the bottom—
Haruno Sakura.
It is fading before her eyes, already barely more than a light grey, fading just a bit more with every passing moment.
"I was kind of hoping no one would tell you," Tsunade says, after Sakura's name is gone from the scroll, like it had never been. She rolls it back up, sets it down. "Although considering I told the whole council, I suppose it was only a matter of time."
Sakura scowls at her, and Tsunade meets her gaze evenly.
"It takes about twenty minutes for someone's name to set into this old thing," she says. "It might be too long to get to you in time."
Sakura swallows, but refuses to look away.
She is not a Senju.
She will not become one.
Tsunade sighs.
"Worth a shot," she says, setting the scroll against her desk beside her. "I don't want to leave Shizune the only living Senju," she says to the scroll, her fingers tracing the vajra sealing it closed. "It's not a fun place to be."
She turns her gaze back to Sakura.
"I suppose you want an actual explanation?"
Sakura would, yes.
"The Senju—we're not like the other clans. We used to admit a lot of foreigners. Now that I'm running the thing, we're doing it again. A lot of people who aren't born to us, aren't gonna marry into us, will never share blood with us. We made this scroll to tie us together—to make clear what is Senju, and what is not."
Sakura nods.
"Before the founding of the village, when we added someone to the scroll, we'd have a big old ceremony. Lots of blood, lots of candles, lots of Do you wish to join the most honorable and ancient clan of Senju. It's all crap. A Senju opens the scroll, and then writes down someone's name. Then they ask them if they want to join. They say yes, and their name gets burned into the paper, there until you're willing to burn a hole in the clan to exile them. They say no, they disappear."
"Just like I did."
"That's right. I realized when I was younger that you can add someone whenever you want. It's a pretty dangerous thing, because that gives them all the rights of a Senju with none of the responsibilities. They are protected by our clan jutsu, fit into all of our wards, can break all of our seals, but they aren't bound by our laws, aren't subject to our blood jutsu, and have no need to abide by our seals of secrecy."
Sakura blinks, recalling the subtly different colors of inks on the scroll—how the ink of Orochimaru and Jiraiya's names had been just that little bit different.
"You did that… for me?" Sakura asks.
She may not have wanted it, but—for Tsunade to have done something like that. A smile fights itself into existence at the corners of her mouth.
"Kid, that's nothing—I add everyone and their mother to this old thing. Fuck the Senju."
Oh. Right. Something deep and dark and cold swirls up around her. Tsunade wouldn't—
"I became the Hokage for you."
It buoys her for a day, maybe two.
It's not enough.
The next day, when Guy knocks her down, she just can't find it in herself to get back up.
Her limbs are ashen and leaden within her, and Outer's arms are doing their best to imitate them.
"What is Wrong, my youthful Pseudo-Student!" Guy bellows, not actually bothering with something as silly as the intonation needed to turn a shout into a question. "This kind of behavior is most Unyouthful! You must Rise to meet the Challenge I am presenting you!"
Sakura clenches her eyes closed before spreading her fingers in the grass. With what feels like a truly colossal effort, she pushes herself into a sitting position.
Guy grins at her with all of his teeth.
"Yes!" he shouts. "That is the Youthful Pseudo-Student I know!"
Sakura almost smiles at that, until she remembers—
He doesn't know.
He continues—
"You are much stronger than you were before your Inversion, I know you can do it!"
Sakura freezes, and so does Guy.
"I mean—since before your possession! Yes! Since before that Fiend Orochimaru possessed you, and you set yourself free!"
Sakura just keeps staring blankly at him, and his brow furrows.
"You… you knew?" she asks him.
"Of course! I am your Pseudo-Teacher, adorable Pseudo-Student!" He gives her nice guy pose, blinding smile and a ridiculous thumbs up. "I must know about your many Talents in order to effectively guide you on the Path of Youth!"
Sakura blinks rapidly down at her hands.
She does not cry.
Nope.
She's fine.
"No, we have no time for tears!" he shouts from in front of her. "You must first best me, and then you will be able to cry proper Tears of Youth!"
Sakura wipes at her face.
"I wasn't crying," she lies, ignoring the way it crawls at her skin.
"Then you can Spar!" he shouts, immediately before her, smile too wide, fist massive and way, way too close.
She doesn't win.
(It's Guy, come on.)
But she does a bit better than she did, before.
The next day, Guy is hiding in the forests when Kakashi arrives for her training.
He smiles a taunting smile at her that doesn't reach his chakra and looks through her for Outer, and all the positive feelings that Guy had instilled in her vanish.
(The flower connecting her mind to Ino's is still dark and impassable within her.)
She closes her eyes against it, and, when her eyes open, Guy is standing between her and Kakashi.
"Forgive me for interrupting your Training, Pseudo-Student," he bellows, not smiling, "but I have just discovered that I have a most Urgent Matter to discuss with my beloved Friend and Rival, Kakashi!"
His lips are pressed into a line, his black eyes hard, and there is something hard and cold in his chakra. Sakura takes a step back as Guy takes a step forward.
Beneath his feet, the ground shakes.
Kakashi cuts a glance from Guy to Sakura and back again.
"I'll be right back," Kakashi says.
"No, you will not," Guy says, and they vanish as one.
Neither of them come back.
On her way home, Sakura finally gives in, and goes to the Yamanaka clan compound. It's near the edge of the village, where the land is cheap, set back into a forest, the Nara compound on one side, the Akimichi compound on the other.
It's small—sparse. The Yamanaka have never been a large clan.
More of a collection of houses than an actual compound.
It has a gate, but they barely even man it—just a single old woman—Granny Kasumi. She sits in a little folding chair just inside the gate, reads romance novels wrapped in brown paper, and gossips with whoever comes to visit.
If Sakura came by before Ino could play with her, she would sometimes sprawl herself at Kasumi's feet, tell her about her hopes and her dreams and, eventually, how Kakashi was a fake ninja.
Sakura has never seen someone get turned away.
Never—
Until today.
"I'm sorry, Sakura-chan," Kasumi says to her, and she really does look sorry. "Inoichi's orders."
That night, Sakura's halves merge.
She almost doesn't notice.
It's subtle, just the tiniest shift in perspective.
Memories that she already had shift from being someone else's to being hers.
She notices because she isn't thinking—
Why hasn't Ino tried to come see me?
She is instead thinking—
Why hasn't Ino tried to come see me this time?
This time.
She looks down at her hands, which no longer feel so alien, no longer feel so unintuitive.
They are as natural to her as her talons and tentacles.
A lifetime of loving and being loved fills her.
A friendship that stretches half her life floods through her.
She is Sakura—the one, the only.
She has been Ino's best friend for five years.
Ino has been Sakura's best friend for five years.
An entire lifetime, as far as Sakura is concerned.
It is one thing to yearn for something you've never had.
It's yet another to lose something you've always had.
It breaks her.
One by one, the stars in Sakura's mind go out, consumed by a milky, inky darkness boiling up from within her.
She sits with all of her limbs curled up before her beside Ino's flower on surface of a tiny rock in a dying galaxy, and she watches the universe die above her.
One by one by one she watches as her mind vanishes into darkness.
All that she is, slowly sliding out of view, a manifestation of the turmoil inside of her—
She doesn't want to see it.
She doesn't want to know it.
She turns her focus, all of the holes in the world she uses to see, over to the empty, blank flower beside her.
If this is the cost of knowing herself, she doesn't want to pay it.
I'm sorry, Sakura says to the empty, blank flower beside her.
It does not respond, and above her the darkness accelerates its pace.
Soon, there is nothing left but a single rock and a single flower in the blackness.
Sakura touches a single petal on the flower before her with a single tentacle before turning all of her empty spaces up to the emptiness above her.
Okay, she says to a person that never existed. You can have it back.
With that, the world twists, and Sakura twists with it.
Sakura inverts, once more.
Sakura opens her eyes to a slope beneath her and an endless field of green before her.
She looks down at human hands, and she opens and closes them before bowing her head before her.
She has to admit—she'd been expecting it to be harder.
She'd been expecting to feel different.
She turns to the flower beside her, still so blank and so empty, and there is a part of her that is expecting the blankness and emptiness to pull itself aside—a part of her that is expecting Ino to emerge from within it, to look at her like she used to, now that Sakura has uninverted.
She doesn't.
It's okay.
I'll all be fine.
It's a lie—(how will anyone know? how can she convince them?)—
But it doesn't matter.
What does that matter to her?
That night, Sakura sleeps better than she has in a week, greets the morning with a smile on her face.
It'll be fine, after all.
Everything's fine.
Monday, she decides while eating breakfast with her parents.
On Monday, she'll go back to the Yamanaka compound.
Sure, she's apparently no longer welcome, but it's not like Kasumi can stop her.
Someone (or everyone) probably can, but that's fine.
All she needs is for someone to look inside of her mind.
What if they don't care?
What if it doesn't matter?
What if they don't believe her?
That's all.
Then she and Ino can be friends again, and everything will go back to the way it used to be.
Everything will be fine.
Gamami notices.
Sakura isn't really trying to hide it, but—she has to admit, she wasn't expecting Gamami to be able to notice.
The seal of false self has not returned to her eyes.
(The seal of false self has not disappeared from the eyes of everyone around her.)
Gamami notices, anyways.
What did you do? Gamami asks, her chakra all twisted up in horror, tiny hands fisted in Sakura's dress.
What I had to do, Sakura tells her.
Disgust spikes through Gamami, twisting her tiny little toad face up, and—
For the first time, Gamami unsummons herself.
Sakura stares down at her empty hands and swallows.
She's fine.
Everything's fine.
(She tries to re-summon Gamami, and Gamami refuses her summon.)
(It's fine.)
(Everything's fine.)
(Sakura tries again.)
(And again.)
(And again.)
(She fails again.)
(And again.)
(And again.)
Two days later, Kakashi shows up late for the first time in a week.
When he strolls into the third training ground two hours late, and she yells a good You're late! at him, he smirks at her, and it reaches his chakra.
(See? She was right.)
(All she had to do was uninvert, and people would love her again.)
(Gamami will understand.)
His chakra still twists in agony just a little when he meets her eyes, but in comparison to before, it's a muted, quiet thing.
"So," he says, standing next to her before the pond, orange book open in one hand, "we're not going to let you use Sage mode until you reach jounin." First Sakura's heard of it. "You got a plan for getting there?
Sakura doesn't answer, her brain stuck on Sage mode.
She… she can't do that anymore.
She's not… she's not inverted anymore.
Doesn't he… already know that?
If not, then—
What has she done?
(She doesn't tell him.)
(She lies, tells him she'll just do what she's always done—)
(After all he's a jounin, and he's not even a real ninja.)
(He hums, book to his face.)
(When they spar, he doesn't notice how much weaker she is.)
That night, Sakura sits at a desk covered in bloody thumbprints, and her hands shake.
Everything's going to be fine.
Everything's going to be fine.
Everything's going to be fine.
She went to the Yamanaka compound, but she couldn't make herself go through the gates.
Everything's going to be fine.
Sakura digs her hands into her hair, and—
Within her, the veil behind the flower connecting her mind to Ino's is pulled away.
I did it! Ino screams through the flower.
Ino steps through the flower, a broad, proud smile on her face, and Sakura is there waiting for her.
She knew Ino would come back to her, now that she's uninverted. She knew it.
Everything is going to be fine.
"Hi, Ino!" Sakura chirps.
"Look, Sakura! I—" Ino stops midword, that broad, proud smile freezing on her face.
"Ino?"
Ino takes a step back from Sakura when Sakura takes a step forward.
"Sakura, what did you do?"
Sakura doesn't understand the question.
"I uninverted?" she says. "So we could be friends again?"
Ino's mouth opens, and her chakra twists with horror.
"What?"
She closes the distance between them in the blink of an eye, her hands tight on Sakura's upper arms.
"What are you talking about?"
Sakura frowns.
She did this for Ino.
Ino was the one who—
Ino's eyes blaze with chakra, and suddenly Sakura is falling into them, nothing but endless blue all around her.
(The Empty Eye Technique—she remembers reading its scroll in the Yamanaka jutsu room, after she'd already found the scroll on the Triggered Implanted Memory technique.)
(It's a technique for reading minds and allowing minds to be read—effective but dangerous, only to be used among allies because it uses as a medium the Yamanaka's fragile, delicate eyes.)
The blue shatters a moment later, and Ino is staggering way from her—
"Sakura, no."
Sakura's frown deepens.
"What was I supposed to do?" Sakura finds herself shouting back. "You and Kakashi and Inoichi not letting me into the clan compound—" her voice cracks "—where were you?" She looks down at the grass. "I needed you."
Silence falls between them.
"I—" Ino's voice cracks. "I'm sorry."
Sakura shakes her head. "It's fine." She looks up at Ino and smiles. "We can be friends again, right?"
Except, the more Sakura speaks, the more Ino's face is twisting in disgust, and Sakura's smile falters.
"But I—I uninverted and everything. Ino, please."
The world flickers and frays around her, screaming nothingness just barely held back by grass and blue skies.
"I don't want this," Ino says, and Sakura takes another step back, grass giving way to black emptiness. "I didn't ask for you to do this," Ino continues.
Sakura tries to look down, but before she can, Ino's eyes blaze with chakra once more, catching her in their grasp, ensnaring her and dragging her down into a sea of blue.
This time, however, the blue is not opaque, and, for a moment, Sakura can see beyond them Ino's every thought and emotion.
She can see Ino's grief and her terror and her guilt. Grief for a Sakura she knows she shouldn't mourn, terror for what Sakura has done to herself, guilt for both of those things put together.
She can feel Ino's love for Sakura, the stupid little pink-haired civilian that went and did everything Ino had ever wanted to do. Then, beside that, she can feel a love for Inner in particular. For that form, even if it makes her want to curl up in a ball on her floor and hide from the world forever.
She can see just a moment of Ino, clawing at a seal on the back of her left hand, tears in her eyes, glaring daggers up at her father as he says—
I will not lose my daughter.
Seven days of training to survive Sakura's mind, to learn enough of the Yamanaka techniques for combating Inverted Minds so that Inoichi will…
Let her see Sakura again.
The blue shatters away as Sakura falls heavily on her butt into the soft, cradling embrace of the nothingness behind her.
"If you're going to do this," Ino says, stepping off of the grass and into the nothingness between them, her steps sure and even, "don't do it for me."
Cracks grow and disappear around her eyes with each step, tiny little tears of blood beading up and sliding down her stupidly pretty face that heals itself as fast as it cracks.
Sakura looks down at her hands and finds her skin splitting, the limbs of her true self peeking through, straining to escape.
"You're doing a horrible job, anyways—what is this?"
Sakura laughs a wet laugh as Ino comes a stop before her and slaps at a hand as it disintegrates into an incomprehensible mass of limbs before Ino takes hold of the other.
Sakura looks down at that hand, which remains wrapped around hers even as her skin pulls apart, and there's nothing left of it but a wriggling, jumbled mass of limbs.
There is no Inner to rise up this time, no Outer to shred. No seal to hold back her true body.
There is still only one Sakura.
All of this was nothing but a lie, after all.
Sakura raises her gaze back to Ino's, her blue eyes like the end of the world.
It's okay, Ino's eyes say, because her mouth can't, on account of the fact she's still just the worst at feelings.
The realization of it makes Sakura cough out a laugh even as she struggles to hold what is left of her skin together against the force of her true body, pushing at its seams.
Ino smiles back at her, and Sakura—lets go.
Sakura's consciousness blinks back into existence to find her towering over Ino, a mass of a couple million limbs, and Ino doesn't even flinch, her hand still wrapped around the limbs that used to make up Sakura's hand.
Around her eyes, cracks vanish as quickly as they form, and she smiles like she isn't actively crying tears of blood.
"You look prettier this way, anyways," she says, and—
Sakura cannot feel even a hint of deception in her chakra.