"You lied to Mother," said Sāra accusingly, driving her forefinger into the soft swell of Sakura's fat breast. "Ordinarily, deceiving royalty would have earned you a death sentence."
"I'm sorry I lied!" Sakura said, her breasts smacking against her stomach as she bent nearly ninety degrees in apology. "I didn't know what else to do at the time! …ouch, my back."
For the time being, Sakura and Princess Sāra were lodged in the patriarch's residence within the Uchiha District, which had not yet been relocated to the complete outskirts of the village. For now, the clan still lived near the police station, where Tobirama had banished them the first time around.
At the very least, they were still closer to the town centre than the Hyūga clan.
"Mother should have known better than to trust a random girl who crawled out of a ventilation shaft one day," Sāra sniffed. "Still, you did get me this far, and you did save my life, so I might just ask her to spare you when I get back home."
"Er…" Sakura said, scratching the side of her head. "Didn't this beloved Minister Anrokuzan of yours crawl out of the same ventilation shaft— what, six years ago, was it?"
Sāra's face turned the same shade of red as her hair.
"Gngngngh… that's not the same!" she exploded. "You can't compare those two things!"
Sakura sighed and shook her head wearily. What was it with red-haired women and their inability to be honest about their feelings? Tsunderes, they were all an absolute pain in the behind to deal with. No wonder the Land of Whirlpools was no more.
There was no point in getting into a quarrel with Princess Sāra over trifles, so Sakura left her to her own devices in Itachi's nursery and went down to the living room, where Uchiha Mikoto was sitting on a sofa, chatting with a certain flame-haired…
Nope, nope, nope!
Sakura had just started back up the stairs when Mikoto's voice stopped her in her tracks. "Oh, there you are, Konan-chan," said the black‑haired beauty with a kind smile. "We were just talking about you. Why don't you come down and have some tea with us?"
Tsunade was due to arrive any minute now. Sakura was supposed to be rehearsing her speech to convince her that she was her disciple from the future. This was hardly the time for sipping tea, swapping anecdotes and nibbling on snacks!
"Those things are huuuuge!" Kushina said, gaping at Sakura's chest with eyes wide as saucers. "What'd ya eat to grow 'em this big, ya know!?"
"Er…" Sakura said helplessly. "I drank lots of milk?"
Most people were polite enough to limit themselves to staring, but Kushina had already sprung to her feet. She walked up to Sakura and began fondling her chest over her clothes, and for a heartbeat, her face seemed to overlap with Naruto's in Sakura's mind's eye. Sakura had to physically restrain herself from slapping the woman who would one day be his mother.
"That's enough, Kushina," Mikoto said reproachfully. "Konan-chan is our guest. You're making her uncomfortable."
Sakura's cheeks were beginning to turn pink… but not because she was embarrassed.
"That can't be all there is to it," Kushina insisted, as she continued squeezing. "What's the real secret? …ooh, those are real heavy, ya know? Does your back hurt?"
"Lady Tsunade is here!" came Fugaku's voice from the vestibule.
"There are two kinds of people: those blessed by the heavens, and those who are not," a familiar voice rang out. "Don't bother trying to grasp what cannot be held… you'll only give yourself a heartache."
Kushina snatched her hands away from Sakura's chest as if burnt. Mikoto stood from her seat in living room's sofa, and together the two young women bowed respectfully, saying, "Lady Tsunade!"
Tsunade stepped into the living room, and at the sight of the ridiculously busty girl standing behind Kushina, she frowned. Was this the Konan she had been told to come check on? She looked nothing like the meek, little, blue-haired girl Orochimaru had once threatened to put out of her misery…
"Lady Tsunade!" Sakura said in turn, bowing stiffly. "Could I have a moment with you? Alone?"
…
A few minutes later, Sakura and Tsunade were watching the koi frolicking in the pond behind the house. Sakura glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, but unless she went into Sage Mode, which would undoubtedly spook Tsunade, she had no way of making sure.
"I've never seen you before in my life, and I know for a fact you're not the little girl Jiraiya picked up that day," Lady Tsunade said at last, cracking her knuckles menacingly. "Now, talk. I'm assuming everything you've told your interrogators so far has been a lie, so if you're planning to harm the Hidden Leaf in any way…"
"This may be hard to believe," Sakura said slowly, "but I'm your disciple from twenty years in the future."
Tsunade scoffed. She obviously didn't believe her.
"I can prove it!" Sakura said quickly.
Sakura began reciting things only someone close to Tsunade could know: her fear of blood; the fact that she had been washing board flat until puberty struck her like a lorry; the secret behind Katsuyu's return to the ninja world…
She spoke of how Tsunade had won her first pocket money gambling against her grandfather, and how she resembled a wrinkled old prune beneath her Transformation Jutsu after years of overusing kinjutsu in the second war, and she even cited niche details about jutsu she had developed. Only when Sakura started reciting her future self's three sizes did Tsunade, flustered at last, tell her to stop.
"Goodness, does my butt really get that big twenty years from now?" Tsunade muttered to herself. "Why wouldn't I just make myself thinner?"
"Thicc comes back into fashion in the future," Sakura explained. "Oh, right, I probably should have led with this…"
Sakura reached into her cleavage and drew out the First Hokage's necklace. Tsunade, stunned, did the same, holding hers up to compare. For a one‑of‑a‑kind, priceless artefact, the two necklaces certainly did look identical… and then they began to grow hot, the pendants swinging wildly of their own accord, attracted towards each other by some invisible force…
"You gave this to your little brother," Sakura went on obliviously. "Then to your lover…"
Tsunade hurriedly separated the two necklaces before something catastrophic happened. Apparently, the universe did not appreciate having the same object in two different places at once.
"ENOUGH!" Tsunade roared.
In the span of a few seconds, she seemed to age a hundred years.
"I've heard enough. I-I believe you," she said weakly. "But if you're truly from the future… why have you come here? The timeline…"
What could Sakura say? That she was an airhead? That she had missed all the obvious clues until it was way too late, and that now she was trapped in the Hidden Leaf because of a war that had ended the year she was born?
Sakura bowed deeply.
"I need to leave the village, but I'm trapped here, in the Uchiha District," she said. "I have to go back to the Land of Lōran. That's where it all began, so there must be some clue there. It's my only hope of going home."
Tsunade chewed her lip.
"Well, I'll see what I can do," she said slowly. "Even under martial law, the higher‑ups can't interfere directly with the inner workings of the Uchiha clan, since it doesn't directly concern the war. Still… it might take a few days, but I'm certain I can find a way to get you out of here without causing a fuss with either the village or the Uchiha clan."
The last thing Sakura wanted was for the Uchiha clan to launch a manhunt for her across the country, or for the Hidden Leaf to start posting bounty notices with her face on them. So, from now on, her goal was to leave as few traces of herself in the past as possible.
Simple enough, right?
…right?