A/N: My only real time to write is weekends, so I'll try to get a chapter up every Sunday, and if I miss a week I'll try to double-update the following week to make up for it. Hopefully it all works out! I'd like to note that the story is sorta slow-build for the first couple chapters before it picks up and gets back into the plot. That's all for today, so please enjoy!

It smells like… sakura petals?

Natsu groans, draping an arm over his eyes and waiting for the headache… to…

"EH?!"

He bolts upright, fingers poking at the side of his head but that aching stabbing evil that was there earlier… just didn't exist.

Staring wide-eyed at nothing, it takes him a moment to realize that his questing fingers aren't running into any strange headbands either.

Quickly standing up, he looks down and…

"Everything's pretty normal… was that just some weird dream or something?" he looks around for a moment, but there's not much to see, just a field of sakura petals and a little cottage tucked behind the trees.

"I still don't know where I am… and everyone else is still missing…" he looks back at the cottage, and shrugs. "This way, I guess. Maybe someone there will know what's going on."

Somehow, the time it takes to reach the cottage doesn't seem to match the distance it had appeared, one moment he was standing in the fields and the next on the doorstep with only a blurry impression of having crossed through the trees.

Something breaks with the sound of shattering glass as he steps up to the door, and Natsu forgoes all pretense at manners to rush inside.

He gets a facefull of door and a vague impression of a headache for his troubles, stumbling back to glare at the wood that didn't even shift under his force.

"That's… not how doors work. Or wood. The handle didn't even wiggle!" Natsu stares at the offending handle in question, reaching out… It doesn't even turn the slightest amount. No matter how he twists, it doesn't even pretend to budge.

"H-hello? Is someone out there? Inoichi-san?"

A soft, feminine voice comes from within the house, off to the side, and Natsu looks over to see a window cracked open perhaps an inch or two.

Bouncing over, he looks in to see a small, pink-haired girl with bright green eyes looking back.

She stares at him, completely surprised, and somewhat… afraid?

"You-you're not Inoichi-san… who are you? What are you doing in my head?" her nervous stutter quickly turns into something like outrage, and Natsu backs up, raising his hands.

"Your head? This doesn't look like the inside of someone's head… I just woke up here! I seem to be just waking up in a lot of weird places…" Natsu trails off, looking around again.

It's a forest.

And he can smell the sakura petals.

But nothing else. Not the earth, or the damp of a fresh rain, or worms or birds or ants or even the scent of bark. Standing on a porch of wood, and he can't even smell that, just that overwhelming scent of sakura petals.

...This… I never heard of anything like going inside peoples' minds before! I mean, that one guy, Mist or something, could make us remember things that didn't happen, but nothing like this! What the hell?!

"You don't know how you got here? This is my mind! You don't just randomly end up in someone else's head!" Natsu looks back to the girl, her hands on her hips as she glares through the window at him, and scrambles for something to say.

"Uh… hi? I'm Natsu Dragneel, the Salamander of Fairy Tail! It's nice to meet you?" he smiles brightly, offering his hand.

She gives him a weird look, pointedly glances at the mostly-shut window, but relaxes a bit. "I'm Sakura Haruno, a… genin of Konohagakure no Sato. You really don't know how you got in my head?"

"I don't know how I got anywhere! I mean first was that weird test, and the kid with his head sticking out of the ground, now this even weirder place that you say is inside your head and all the smells are wrong and-GAAAH!" Natsu cards his fingers roughly through his hair, glaring at nothing in particular. "I'm still not sure this isn't just the weirdest trippiest dream I've ever had!"

"Wait, you- you saw Sasuke?! How? Why were you in our test, you aren't on our team at all!"

Natsu opens his mouth, prepared to respond to the accusation in her tone, only for an insidious thought to creep through his mind.

"No… no way that-no no no no no Erza would kill me it's gotta be something else…" he backs up a couple steps, looking around the clearing and the cottage and the girl inside with newfound horror, a parade of moments from that test flashing through his mind. Everyone calling him Sakura, the smaller arms and legs, the weird headband and long hair, that bast-Sasuke's surprise and the blond kid's hurt… the sensei's comment of 'her'...

"I… I'm in your body?" Natsu stutters, as horror begins to creep down his spine. He quickly looks down at himself, but nothing's changed, he still looks normal, he's not suddenly in a dress or something-

"WHAT?!" Sakura's scream of fury rends the air, startling Natsu, and he snaps his head up, looking at his companion to see her pressed up against the window, looking fit to murder. "What do you mean, in my body?! You're a guy! Yo-you sick pervert!"

"I am not! As if I want to be in your body anyway! It's tiny!"

"I'm normal height for my age thank you!"

"You're a midget!"

Natsu crosses his arms, glaring down at her, and Sakura's eyebrow twitches violently. Taking a deep breath, she steps back and closes her eyes, calming herself down.

"Okay," she starts, and Natsu relaxes slightly when it's clear she's done picking a fight, "you're in my body. You don't know how you got in my body. I don't know how you got in my body. Neither of us want you in my body. How do we fix this?"

Natsu grimaces and drops to sit down, propping his elbows on his knees as he glares at the window.

"I don't really know much about this mind stuff… but I guess if we got that stupid window open, something would happen right?"

Sakura shifts, contemplating the frame. "I'm stuck in this cabin. I know enough about mindscapes to know if you're stuck in a certain place, it normally means you are either in a coma or kept from being able to fight back while someone else possesses you… normally that involves something more obviously restraining, like chains or prisons. Things the mind instinctively recognizes as traps. Ino gave me a whole lecture on it once… So I guess the lack of that means this really was an accident, and I just got stuck in my mindscape's heart. And you can't touch my 'heart', or my memories, but have full access to the 'field', where the connections to the senses and the body are… If I could get out of here, that definitely would let me control my body again, but you'd still be in my head. I don't know where your body is, or any techniques that would put you back in even if we found it…"

Natsu shifts, leaning back on his hands. "Ehh, you know a lot about this! Does everyone have this heart and field stuff?"

Sakura smiles a little awkwardly. "Well I'm friends- used to be friends with Ino. Her family specializes in mind jutsu, and she used to talk to me all the time about the stuff she learned… she didn't teach me her techniques or anything!" Sakura waves her arms in front of herself, as though to ward away the very idea, "but we'd debate the theories and stuff that her family taught her a lot. All mindscapes have a 'heart', where your memories are stored as physical objects, and a 'field' where different things represent different senses. Like, the most common is a lake that represents sight, everyone usually knows that one. If you're in someone's head and you find a lake or body of water, looking through it lets you see what they're seeing. Some people have additional places in their mindscapes, but Ino didn't really say anything other than that they exist…"

"Huh. That's pretty neat. Why aren't you friends with that Ino person anymore? Sounds like you guys were close."

Sakura glares, crossing her arms and looking away from him. "We're rivals now!" she exclaims loudly, trying to look determined.

Natsu thinks of Gray, and Erza, and even Laxus who after everything, came back to help them when they needed it.

"In my experience, the best rivals are also your friends!" he offers, and Sakura winces, opening and closing her mouth as she struggles to speak.

"I-I… well… I mean, it doesn't matter as long as you're stuck in my body cause I can't be friends with anyone like this! So let's worry about that first!" she exclaims, hands on hips, but still looking terribly unsure of herself.

Natsu shrugs, standing up. "Alright. So, I know you guys were in the middle of some kind of test when this happened. I was too! Or. I mean, the test kinda got gate-crashed so I don't think it was going anymore, but… something has to have happened to one of us to do this, yeah? Where is this Konohagakake place anyway? Is it even in Ishgar? Or is it somewhere even further away than that…?"

Sakura stares at him in confusion. "What's Ishgar? And it's Konohagakure you idiot!"

"Eh?" Natsu feels dread creeping into his stomach again, even as he brushes off her correction. "It's a large peninsula filled with loads of smaller countries. I'm from Fiore myself, or, I mean, that's where Fairy Tail is based and I live there now anyway. I know it's not the biggest continent in Earthland but I'm pretty sure you have to have at least heard of it!"

Sakura shakes her head, biting at her lip in concern. "I've never heard of any of those places… Konoha is an independent city-state in the Land of Fire, which is part of the Elemental Nations. And even if the names sound a bit similar, our planet is called Earth, not Earthland!"

"So… this is like Edolas then?" Natsu asks nervously. "There wasn't anything like an Anima to bring me here though…"

"What's Edolas?"

Natsu sighs. "A totally different world. We got there by going through an Anima once, but the Anima was destroyed so I don't know how I'd have gone to a different world again… but I don't know any of the places you named either! Gaaah, how am I supposed to get home like this?!"

"A...nother world…" Sakura drops suddenly, her legs giving out from under her. "That can't be real… if something like that existed, surely someone would know by now. Y-you shouldn't even be able to speak the language! Why would different worlds speak the same language that doesn't make sense!"

Natsu shrugs, leaning against the guardrail surrounding the porch. "Maybe since you know the language, and I'm in your body, I just instinctively know? I'm not sure, I never thought too hard about it before when we went to Edolas either. Don't really think it matters anyway. We can talk to each other, don't need to question why."

He tosses her a grin and a peace sign, and Sakura groans, rolling over to bury her face into the rug covering the cabin floor. She lays there a moment before sighing and getting up.

"Okay, fine. So you're probably from another world-or just crazy-"

"Oi!"

"-and you're stuck in my body, with no idea where yours is or how you got here. Great. Lovely. Can you tr-"

"Whoa!" Natsu trips backwards as the guardrail disappears from behind him, only to reappear a moment later as he lands on the ground. "What the hell?!" He glares up at the offending guardrail, standing up and poking at its suddenly-solid form.

"I-I think you're waking up." Sakura offers nervously, pressed up against the window again.

"Oh." Natsu relaxes, brushing himself off and striding back to the porch.

"Wait no! I can't wake up! I'm still stuck in your body!" Rushing to the window, he tries to leverage it open.

Sakura grimaces, but doesn't move to help. "I don't think there's anything we can do to fix it though…"

"NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IF I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM?"

"Wha- I don't-" Sakura's eyes widen, horror spreading across her face as she realizes. Jumping forward, she gets her fingers in the gap and tries to help him pull the window up, but it doesn't budge, doesn't even give the slightest amount, and Natsu keeps going insubstantial as their body tries to wake up…

"It's hopeless." Sakura sighs, leaning her head against the pane.

"What, no, don't say that, you don't understand if Erza ever finds out about this I am so dead you've got to get out here, now, I don't want to die!"

Memories flash behind his eyes, that one time Erza came back from a mission and went straight to the onsen, and he rushed over without thinking to fight her… shuddering, he pulls harder, only to fall backwards again as the window turns to mist beneath his fingers.

"Look, I don't like it any more than you do, this is my body we're talking about here! But we can't do anything right now! So… just when you wake up, try and pretend to be me, and hopefully we'll figure something out later!"

"Pretend to be you? I don't even know what you're like, or what you do! How am I supposed to pretend?" Natsu shakes his head, kicking at the cabin wall.

Sakura shifts nervously, then starts trying to list everything she can think of. "Well, I like the color pink, and I'm rivals with Ino of course, I don't like Kiba much cause he's so loud but Akamaru is adorable, I love reading and I study a lot, I'm on a diet so you can't eat too much, I don't really wear a lot of makeup so don't try and figure it out, no one will really notice, except maybe Sasuke-kun, he notices everything, oh no, what if he thinks I don't care anymore if I let myself go, wait you definitely have to learn-"

"Wait. Why on earth would that guy even care about your makeup?" Natsu tries not to be too horrified. There's no way she expects him to-to actually-
"It-it's not like he cares about the makeup! But how will he know how much I care if I don't always look my best? I don't use much so it's okay, it won't be hard for you to figure out, I'm pretty sure I still have books on the basics in my room-"

Natsu backs away from the window, shaking his head. "No. No no no, you can't seriously be saying- a crush, on that- you want me to pretend- a-absolutely not, he's a brat! No way in hell!"
He turns around and bolts, barely noticing as the guardrail wisps away, Sakura yelling something behind him. Then he trips on nothing, as the ground falls away, everything spinning wildly, until-

Blinking slowly, Natsu grimaces at the light stabbing into his eyes, and the suddenly-present throbbing in his skull that reminds him of the awful headache he had before he ended up in that weird mindscape place…

"Sakura-chan? Are you alright?"

Natsu's eyes take a few moments to focus enough to see the masked face of… Sakura's sensei, and three other people he doesn't recognize. Groaning, he drapes his arm over his eyes, ignoring the pull of some sort of line as he moves.

Why couldn't this all have been a dream?!

"Sakura-chan?"

Natsu bites his lip, suppressing the urge to just scream and light everything on fire.

If Lucy were here, she'd know how to deal with this. Dammit all…

Bracing himself, Natsu shifts into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard and properly taking in the hospital room - the sensei, sitting by the bed, two people standing on the other side, and a nurse scribbling something on a board at the foot.

Time to face the music.

Let's hope it's better than Gajeel's.