Chapter 46: The Haruno Family's Secret Recipe
Spin. Spin. Spin.
Use chakra to blow the rubber ball in your hand wide open!
Naruto stared at the white rubber ball in his palm, channeling chakra into it, spinning, spinning, spinning.
Three days had passed since Sakura had handed him Rasengan. The water-balloon stage was already in his rear view; he was deep in stage two now — popping the rubber ball through pure rotation alone.
Kakashi was perched up in a tree with Make-Out Paradise open in his hand, his lone visible eye doing that signature dead-fish stare as it tracked from Naruto over to Sasuke, who was working on his own training a short distance away — Lightning Release nature transformation.
Geniuses, huh...
For once, even Kakashi had to acknowledge the raw talent on display.
Three days. Naruto had already burst the water balloon. Sasuke had cleared the form-change barrier on Lightning Release. It wouldn't be long before both of them had a top-tier technique under their belt.
Going purely by what was on display, though, Sasuke's gift was still the steeper of the two. Naruto's path was, comparatively, the easier one — Lightning Release was an offensive chakra nature with absolutely vicious output, and its form and nature transformations weren't something the average shinobi could just pick up. For Sasuke to have nailed the form change in three days put him in conversation with Kakashi himself at the same age.
"You two — remember to rest. Burning through all your chakra is genuinely dangerous, you know~~~"
Kakashi drawled the warning without looking up from his very-much-rated-R little paperback.
Both boys ignored him completely and kept training, neither willing to be the one to flinch first.
It was at this moment that Sakura strolled up with a bamboo basket on her arm.
"When you feel like you're about to bottom out on chakra, come try the soldier pills I made special for you two."
"I packed in some seriously good medicinal ingredients."
She held up a soldier pill the size of an infant's fist and waved at the two boys.
As for the ingredients? Bankrolled by their dear Third Hokage, naturally. After all the money Sakura had funneled into Konoha's coffers, requesting a few medicinal herbs from Hiruzen Sarutobi was so trivial it barely registered as a favor.
"Eh?"
"Sakura-chan, you can make soldier pills?!"
The instant Naruto saw her, he ditched the rubber ball and bounded over. He didn't actually feel like he'd burned through much chakra yet, but he wanted to taste what Sakura had made on principle.
Sasuke wandered over too. Unlike Naruto the chakra-walking-piggy-bank, his reserves were genuinely circling the drain.
"Soldier pills are part of the medical ninjutsu skillset, of course I can make them."
"Try them — tell me how they work."
She dropped the soldier pill straight into Naruto's palm.
Naruto stared at the dark, lumpy black ball — several times the size of a normal soldier pill — and frankly had no idea where to start chewing.
Sasuke, on the other hand, had already plucked one out, and without a flicker of hesitation tossed it straight into his mouth. Naruto, refusing to be outmanned, immediately did the same.
!!!
In that instant, Naruto and Sasuke felt as if a bolt of lightning had cracked straight down through the crown of their skulls.
Searing, eye-watering heat. Blistering sour-bitterness. A grimy, hard-to-name astringency. A sandy, gritty texture, like swallowing mud. And underneath all of it — a faint but distinct whiff of something foul...
Their faces became a full-color art exhibit. White to red. Red to green. Green to purple.
"Don't you dare spit it out!"
"That stuff is expensive!"
Sakura clamped one hand over each of their mouths, dead serious.
Sasuke was already rolling his eyes back in his head. He forced the thing down by sheer willpower, then collapsed against a nearby tree, gasping for air like he'd just survived a war crime.
"S-Sakura... what the hell did you just feed me..."
He felt like his mouth had been subjected to a hundred different forms of torture.
"The Haruno family's secret-recipe soldier pill!"
"Super effective!"
"Want another one?"
She held one up with a bright smile, watching Sasuke look like he was about to flatline.
He stared at the dark, lumpy thing in her hand and his face went green — like she was holding up some unspeakable Lovecraftian horror.
Kakashi finally drifted down to join them, plucked a pill from her basket, lifted it to his nose, and gave it a sniff.
"Velvet antler. Ginseng. Licorice root. And it smells like..."
"This is the good stuff."
A veteran of countless missions, Kakashi could practically reverse-engineer half the ingredient list off a single sniff.
"As expected of Kakashi-sensei. A man of taste."
Sakura threw him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Because chakra was a fusion of physical and spiritual energy, basically anything that nourished the body would replenish chakra. Shinobi could top off their reserves through proper meals, too. As for the spiritual side — unless you were a genjutsu specialist, a dōjutsu user, or someone whose will to live had cratered, the spiritual drain was rarely the bottleneck. Physical energy was the heavy lifter.
Sasuke had been about to fire back something cutting — there was no force on earth that would make him eat another one of those — but his pitiful medical knowledge gave him zero ammunition to argue with.
And right then, he suddenly felt a wave of warmth surge through his body. His chakra was visibly recovering at an absurd clip.
This effective?
His eyes lit up. He glanced sideways at Sakura, then mumbled, fidgeting:
"C-can I... have a few more?"
Mm~ Smells great~~
Even Sasuke Uchiha could not escape the universal that-tastes-better-than-I-said-it-did law.
"Of course. Just —"
She didn't get to finish. Sasuke was already grabbing three or four out of the basket and cramming them into his mouth, jaw clenched against that nearly lethal flavor.
???
Sasuke chewed with both cheeks bulging, looking back at her in confusion.
She watched him swallow, paused for a moment, and then said:
"No, never mind. We're done here."
"Just take care of yourself tonight."
???
Sasuke blinked at her, confused.
Off to the side, Kakashi just gave him a deeply speechless look.
Because, well — these were soldier pills designed to replenish physical energy, so...
Mmm...
There might be... a little bit of, uh, "vigor" later...
And given Sakura's special-recipe version, the effect might be... particularly strong... probably...
Meanwhile, Naruto had finally surfaced from the catastrophic flavor experience. The instant he saw his rival had powered through the unspeakable taste and gone back for seconds, his teenage refuse-to-lose instinct flared up. He plunged his hand into the basket and shoveled in an equally insane mouthful!
"..."
Sakura and Kakashi rolled their eyes in perfect sync at the two of them — these two had to one-up each other on literally everything.
A natural-born pair of squabbling soulmates.
Sasuke, riding the rush as the medicinal effect kicked in, immediately dove back into training.
Naruto, on the other hand — having shoveled his mouthful in too fast, on top of that god-awful taste — went rigid, complexion turning ash-black, and toppled over sideways onto the ground...
Sakura... next batch of soldier pills... please... add sugar...