The Little Garden was beautiful. If by beautiful you meant a jungle where the plants looked like they either wanted to heal you, eat you, or melt your bones into soup.
Sakura and Ino were in their element.
"Do not touch that vine," Sakura warned, pointing her scalpel at a bright blue tendril curling from a tree. "It secretes a toxin that can paralyze a giant lizard in under three seconds."
"So… you're saying it's perfect for my anti-pervert mist?" Ino asked, pulling out a glass vial.
"Only if you want to kill them."
"Even better."
Ino giggled while Sakura sighed, carefully wrapping a few leaves in chakra-infused preserving cloth. "Focus. We're here to collect, not experiment on each other."
The jungle buzzed with prehistoric life. They passed towering trees with bark hard as steel and leaves that shimmered unnaturally in the light. Massive bees the size of footballs zipped by, and somewhere off in the distance, a dinosaur sneezed. Loudly.
Sakura knelt beside a crimson-leafed shrub. "This one's good. Bark secretes a regenerative compound—could replace three of my current healing salves."
Ino, meanwhile, found a dainty flower glowing neon green. "This baby releases a hallucinogenic mist strong enough to make a Gama Chief think he's a princess. I love it."
They worked efficiently, Sakura slicing precise samples and sealing them in preservation scrolls, while Ino cackled softly with every poisonous treasure she added to her expanding arsenal.
Halfway through the trek, with arms full of samples and bugs crawling places bugs should never crawl, Ino suddenly asked:
"Hey, Sakura… you ever think of using viruses as weapons?"
Sakura blinked. "I'm sorry. What?"
"You know, like… infection bombs. Microscopic chakra-viruses that sneak into your enemy's system and make their intestines do backflips."
Sakura stood very still. "That would go against every oath I've taken as a medical ninja."
"Oh, right. Your ethics thing."
"Yes, my 'ethics thing,'" Sakura said with air quotes. "Deliberately crafting viruses to weaponize would be like you copying someone's memories and using them to make a clone."
Ino stopped mid-stride. "Wait. I can do that?"
Sakura paused. "What?"
"That's genius! If I clone someone's memory patterns into a construct, I can make a pseudo-self that acts like them!"
"That's literally what I just said."
"I thought you were making a weird analogy. I didn't know that was an actual jutsu possibility!"
Sakura's mouth fell open slightly. "Ino… you weren't already doing that?"
"No! I was just reading surface thoughts and controlling people the old-fashioned way. But this?" Ino's eyes sparkled with a wild, almost criminal excitement. "I can build people! This is next-level espionage!"
Sakura slumped against a tree. "I was trying to make a point about ethics…"
"And instead, you just helped me level up like crazy!" Ino grinned. "You're the best, Forehead!"
"Please stop calling me that while you discuss moral ambiguity…"
By the end of the day, the girls returned with enough botanical weaponry and medicine to fuel a small war—or a really aggressive pharmacy. Sakura kept her healing samples in a climate-controlled greenhouse chamber. Ino, meanwhile, labeled her poisons with names like "Spite Nectar" and "Kiss of Death – Limited Edition."
Sakura didn't regret coming.
But she did regret opening her mouth.
-----------------
Ino Yamanaka had invented many things over the years—deadly perfumes, chakra scalp treatments, mind-crippling poisons disguised as lip gloss—but nothing quite prepared the world for her latest creation:
DreamMist No. 5.
"It smells like gardenias," she hummed, swirling the sparkling vial, "but hits like a charging rhino dipped in glitter and shame."
Sakura, leaning on the railing nearby, eyed her with a mix of concern and resignation. "You're really gonna test that on people?"
"Correction. I'm gonna test it on Kiba."
"You mean the guy with the emotional maturity of a pizza?"
"Exactly!" Ino beamed. "Perfect test subject!"
So, with a mischievous strut and a bottle of lightly enchanted perfume hidden in her sleeve, Ino approached Kiba, who was sunbathing shirtless with the confidence of someone who thought "wolfish charm" was a personality trait.
"Hey, handsome," Ino said, her voice turning syrupy. "You look tense. Want a little aromatherapy?"
Kiba blinked. "Uh, sure?"
Psshhht!
A delicate mist wafted through the air. Floral, sweet, and laced with enough mind-bending psychotropics to make a tailed beast sing karaoke.
Kiba sniffed.
He blinked again.
Then he smiled wide. "You smell like... clouds. And meat. Are we... flying on Akamaru? Is he a marshmallow now?"
Ino giggled like she hadn't just committed what was technically psychological assault. "So dreamy, huh?"
Kiba didn't respond. He just started wagging his metaphorical tail, slack-jawed, eyes glazed like fresh donuts. He mumbled something about getting married to a dino queen and started drooling a lot.
Akamaru, observing his partner rapidly devolve into what could only be described as publicly horny chaos, let out a long, tired bark. He walked over, grabbed the back of Kiba's shirt with his teeth, dragged him like a soggy bath mat to the side of the ship—and unceremoniously yeeted him into the ocean.
SPLASH!
"Akamaru!" Ino gasped between snorts of laughter. "That's your best friend!"
Akamaru huffed and gave her a look that plainly said: He's not my friend right now. He's a liability.
Meanwhile, from the ocean:
"IS THE WATER MADE OF JELLY?!"
Kiba's voice echoed, followed by the sounds of aggressive splashing and poetic declarations of love to an imagined mermaid.
Sakura walked by sipping tea. "So… successful test?"
Ino smirked. "Perfectly. And now I know to cut the dosage by like… 50%."
"Great. Now come help me fish out your ex-boyfriend before Akamaru becomes an only child."
"Ugh, fine."
Ino waved the perfume bottle once more and sighed. "Love is an illusion. But this?" she whispered to the mist. "This is art."
-------------------
Ino had learned three things from her mist perfume trial:
Kiba was way too easy.
Akamaru had no chill.
The real test lay in climbing the "romantic difficulty ladder."
So she stood on the deck, tapping her lip thoughtfully. Neji? No way. That guy probably had mental jutsu firewalls and emotional encryption. Gaara? Trying that would trigger a global sandstorm and possibly a war crimes trial. Shino? Ha. She'd rather seduce a calculator. Choji and Shikamaru? Off-limits. Brother vibes.
That left…
"Naruto."
Blonde. Bold. Bouncy. Loud. Surprisingly sensitive. And, most importantly, 100% unprepared.
She found him leaning against the railing, staring out at the horizon like he was in a dramatic anime opening. His cloak billowed in the wind. The scene screamed Main Character Energy.
Perfect.
Ino strutted over, bottle in hand.
"Hey, Naruto," she said in a voice laced with so much sugar it could cause diabetes. "Can I show you something new I made?"
Naruto turned, already smiling. "Sure! Is it food?"
"Nope. Perfume. Close your eyes."
"Perfume? Ew—wait, is it ramen-scented?"
"No, silly. It's for ladies. But I want to see if it affects strong chakra users differently."
"Oh! SCIENCE!" Naruto said, suddenly very serious. "I respect that."
Psshhht!
The mist shimmered in the air like fairy dust. Naruto took a whiff. Blinked. Wobbled slightly.
And then…
He smoldered.
His blue eyes darkened just a little. He ran a hand through his hair and tilted his head like he was about to drop a love album.
"Ino," he said in a voice two octaves deeper than usual, "I never realized just how… radiant you look in sunlight."
Ino blinked.
Wait, what?
"You glow," he whispered. "Like moonlight on snow. Like ramen broth kissed by morning dew."
Ino was both flattered and a little scared.
"Okay, wait—hold up," she said, backing up. "You're supposed to get dreamy. Not turn into a smooth-talking romance novel."
Naruto took a step forward, all slow and dramatic. "Let me carry your burdens. Emotionally. Spiritually. Physically. I'm very strong."
Ino turned around, fanning her face. "Abort mission. Abort mission!"
Too late.
Naruto had now struck a pose. One hand on his heart. The other extended as if offering her the moon.
"I vow," he said solemnly, "to always support your dreams, Ino. Even your morally questionable ones."
Somewhere behind them, Sakura choked on her tea.
"What did you do?" she coughed. "Did you give him a love arc?!"
"I don't know!" Ino hissed. "This is a side effect!"
Naruto suddenly plucked a flower from the ship's garden, dropped to one knee, and held it out. "You are the pollen to my soul, the bee to my destiny."
"Okay, that's it!" Ino panic-tackled him into a nearby crate.
There was a loud crash, a puff of pink mist, and a long groan.
"Why… am I in a box?" Naruto mumbled.
Sakura walked over, unimpressed. "Should we call this perfume 'Date Me Maybe'?"
"Shut up," Ino muttered, now scribbling in her notebook. "Note: high-level chakra users may express effects via exaggerated romantic archetypes. Avoid extended exposure. Or… bottle it and sell as a love enhancer?"
Naruto, half-awake, blinked. "Did I… confess to a flower?"
"Yeah," Ino muttered. "And you tried to propose to my ego."