An Unfamiliar Floor

Sakura woke with a start in a strange position; face down on the ground, with her head buried between her breasts. She groaned, pushing herself from the ground, wondering to herself how she'd managed to fall asleep in such a strange place.

'Oh no!' Inner Sakura whimpered. 'The Shadow Clones!'

Going to sleep the normal way wouldn't dispel active Shadow Clones. However, fainting was another story entirely— even though Shadow Clones were separate entities from their original, they were still linked through chakra on a very profound level.

Any great shock to the original's system would cause their active Shadow Clones to dissipate, which meant that the Shadow Clones that Sakura had sent to watch over Yakumo were now gone— which also explained why she felt so bloated; their chakra had returned to her, so her chakra pathway network was currently overburdened with excess chakra…

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

Sakura created a new Shadow Clone and sent her on her way. Hopefully, she would make it to Yakumo in time, because Gaara's match was scheduled to take place right after hers. She wasn't hearing any screaming or fighting, so maybe, she still had a little bit of time…?

"System, do you know what happened to me?" asked Sakura dizzily. "I can't remember…"

The cmVncmVzc29y known to the Host as VGVudGVu placed a seal on the Host's memories upon realizing that the Host was not a cmVncmVzc29y.

"The what, now?" Sakura said, perplexed. "You're not making any— argh!"

Sakura fell to her knees, clutching her throbbing head. This was her first time experiencing such a violently painful headache— it felt like a vice was being tightened around her skull…

Beep!

Problem Statement: It appears that VGVudGVu's Fūinjutsu seals memories by targeting information specifically told to them concerning VGVudGVu being a cmVncmVzc29y.

Analysis: The Host should exploit the inherent flaw in the seal's programming.

Proposed Solution #1: The seal should break if the Host works out the truth on their own, all over again.

Proposed Solution #2—

"I get it already, so just shut up!" Sakura screamed, as she rolled on the ground, tears streaming uncontrollably from her eyes. "You're making the pain worse!"

The System stopped talking, and the pain gradually faded away, enough for Sakura to stop assuming the foetal position and for her to stagger to her feet. The memories that had disappeared from her head still existed, but they were hidden just barely out of reach, giving her the constant impression that she was on the verge of something; like a worse version of edging…

"Talk about blue balls," Sakura grumbled to herself. "My edging streak is ruined…"

'I don't think we've ever lasted more than twenty-four hours without nutting in our previous life,' said Inner Sakura wisely. 'But in this world, it's seventeen days, which is pretty good, right?'

Feeling extremely unsettled, Sakura dusted herself off and navigated her way up to the stands. She then scanned the crowd, almost immediately identifying her teammate Naruto among the sea of heads. The blond-haired loudmouth dressed in an orange jumpsuit was rather hard to miss, and he was also sitting next to the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, who were also hard to miss… especially Chōji.

As Sakura slowly inched through the crowd to make her way to Naruto, she noticed that the wrong people were standing in the middle of the arena…

"Why is it already Tenten's and Shino's match?" Sakura asked Naruto, once she had finally shoved her way to him. "What happened to Gaara's match?"

"It's that guy, the one who sent Kiba to the hospital," said Naruto angrily. "He just gave up without a fight, ya know!"

If Sakura was remembering things correctly, all three members of Kabuto's team in the Chūnin exams were spies for Orochimaru. However, it seemed strange that Misumi, Gaara's opponent, would just give up without a fight— in the original, Dosu hadn't been told about Gaara's true power by his master, and he had died as a result of trying to assassinate the Jinchūriki. Could it be that Orochimaru had special plans concerning Misumi, the man who had eaten the Gomu Gomu no Mi™?

'He's probably the Impure Reincarnation Jutsu's replacement sacrifice,' Inner Sakura pointed out. 'Since we hid Kin Tsuchi away from him, remember?'

"Over here, Sakura!" Ino called out to her, three seats away from Naruto. "I saved a seat for you!"

Sakura quickly recovered the Manyuu blade from Naruto and stalked over to Ino's side, before plopping down in the seat that she had saved for her. Down in the arena below them, it seemed like things were about to start…

"The third match!" Genma declared. "Fūma Tenten V.S. Aburame Shino… Begin!!"

"Go, Tenten!" Sakura cheered. "You can do it!"

"Even though he's a bit creepy and he never says anything, Shino was still our classmate at the academy," said Ino. "You're not going to cheer for him? He's going to need it…"

The very moment the proctor gave the signal for the match to begin, Tenten retrieved a sealing scroll from one of her pouches and began circling clockwise around Shino. As she ran, the scroll began rapidly unfurling, leaving a trail of subtly off-white coloured paper behind her like a rhythmic gymnast's ribbon…

"Summoning Jutsu!"

A series of consecutive bursts of white smoke exploded along the length of scroll that Tenten had unfurled, and seven shadowy figures appeared within the smoke.

Gradually, the smoke cleared, revealing that Shino was now trapped in an encirclement of seven futuristic-looking puppets. Each of them held a different weapon; a pair of tonfa, a kusarigama, a pair of sai, nunchakus, a spear, a bō staff, and a somewhat familiar-looking war fan…

"She really is a genius when it comes to weapons," Ino commented, her admiration evident in her voice. "To have invented puppets that can move on their own while we were still playing with dolls…"

The seven puppets moved in and struck as one, bludgeoning and piercing through Shino's body with ease…

…not!

"Insect Clone Jutsu!"

The fake Shino's body exploded into a tornado of black bugs, which swarmed around the puppets. Unfortunately for Shino's bugs, Tenten's puppets' inner mechanisms were very well protected. They had no weak points that could be exploited as entrances, which meant that his bugs couldn't gnaw on or jam up their delicate clockwork gears, and disable them from the inside…

Eventually, the bugs gave up trying to penetrate the puppets' outer shells, and they settled on the ground, waiting for their master's next order. But speaking of which, where was Shino? He had clearly used the summoning of the puppets as a smokescreen to hide somewhere, but where could he be?

Tenten whistled, and the puppets arranged themselves in a heptagonal formation, and as one, they began to emit a low humming sound…