Pushing Through the LImit Chapter 25: A Simple A-rank Mission (Patreon)

We’d been traveling for a few hours now and it was clear to see that we weren’t going to be arriving at the next one of Orochimaru’s labs before night fell. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. We were all capable Shinobi and the change in lighting shouldn’t affect us… however, there was a small problem.

Both Anko and Shizune had been acting oddly.

Shizune had simply been embarrassed by what had happened in Tsunade’s office and wanted to forget that the entire event had happened. I understood that. It was Anko that I was worried about.

Once she had found out that the next one of Orochimaru’s labs was located in the Umi no Kuni, she’d grown quiet. It was clear that something was wrong. The Anko that I’d come to know was boisterous, loud and teasing, while now she was quiet and serious.

With neither of my teammates being in the right state of mind, it would probably be for the best that we wait for the morning.

“Let’s stop here for the night,” I announced as I landed in a small clearing below the trees. “We’ll continue again in the morning.”

“We’re already close to Umi, I don’t see why we can’t just finish the mission tonight,” Anko commented as she landed in the clearing.

“It’s going to get dark soon. From what we know about the next lab, its entrance is located somewhere on the Demon Island near the ocean and it periodically floods at high tide.”

“So we’ll just have to swim,” Anko shrugged.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Shizune muttered softly.

“In the dark on a night without a moon,” I deadpanned. We could still technically do it. I could use a pulse of earth style chakra to locate the manmade tunnels, but it still seemed like a bad idea to me.

Anko met my gaze for several seconds before sighing. “Fine… If that’s what everyone wants to do, then I’ll follow suit.”

I was hoping that Anko would relax a bit after a nights rest, but I knew that was unlikely. Whatever was stressing her was clearly related to this specific lab.

Deciding to focus on setting up the camp, I clapped my hands together. I molded some earth style chakra and slapped my hands to the ground. Immediately, the ground shifted and pushed away the dirt, leaving stone. A small pit for a fire appeared in the center and three basic stone tents grew out of the ground.

With time, I hoped to be able to build a stone house in a similar fashion to how Yamato was capable of growing an entire mansion.

Inspecting the camp, Anko gave a nod before smirking. “What, no toilet?”

“… I’ll get right on that,” I replied.

“I think it’s quite impressive,” Shizune hummed as she walked around the small camp, before turning around. “To be able to form this with only a single hand seal isn’t a small feat. You’ve really mastered how to use earth style chakra.”

“Of course you would say that,” Anko said teasingly. “He is your boyfriend after all.”

Shizune’s face turned a bright shade of red as she tried to defend herself. “I… I only said that because I know that… Naruto didn’t want anyone else to know who he was dating.”

“Sure you did,” Anko smirked.

“I did!”

“Maybe you did… or maybe you wanted the chance to hold hands in public like a pervert.”

Shizune blinked. “What?!”

“You heard me!”

Maybe I’d been overly worried about nothing and Anko just didn’t have much to say while we were traveling. It wouldn’t be the first time that I’d overthought the situation.

“Your teammate is currently leaking a lot of negativity, primarily self loathing,” Kurama began. “You weren’t wrong when you realized that something was wrong.”

Well crap.

…PTL…

I sat on a stone seat staring into the crackling fire while Shizune sat opposite me. It was currently just the two of us as Anko had proclaimed that she needed to use a bathroom and left in search of a place she deemed suitable.

“So… I’m not really following the logic with how you claimed that we were dating. I know that you wanted to keep Tsunade safe, but…”

“Shhh, Anko could be nearby,” Shizune whispered frantically.

“She’s really not,” I replied. Kurama was actively tracking her to make sure that she didn’t run off on her own. Right now, she was about a kilometer outside of camp.

Shizune let out a breath as she seemingly deflated.

“So…”

“It’s as you said, I did it to protect Tsunade-sama,” Shizune replied. “If her relationship with you gets out… it wouldn’t be well received for a multitude of reasons.”

I winced at that. “Yeah, I know. It’s actually one of the things we discussed before we started dating.”

Shizune’s gaze locked onto me. “So this wasn’t a spur of the moment thing? The two of you went into this… relationship after discussing it?”

“It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, but it probably would have happened sooner or later,” I hummed. “It’s a bit difficult to explain. Ever since Tanzaku Gai, Tsunade and I have had a deep understanding of each other.”

Red stained Shizune’s cheeks as she recalled a certain conversation we had back then. “I remember… Do you think you could summarize it without going into too much detail?”

I suppose it was worth a try.

“Imagine having someone’s entire life flash before your eyes. A full fifty years of all the good times and the bad… I’ve connected with a few people through a similar fashion, but only one other as deeply as I did with Tsunade. It changed how we viewed each other and we grew interested in one another, after that… well, you know the rest.”

“If you’ve connected with someone else like that, then why aren’t you dating them?” Shizune asked.

A bemused smirk came to my face and I heard Kurama let out a short chuckle in my head. “Yeah, I don’t think that I’m going to ask the sentient mass of Chakra with nine tails out on a date. We really don’t view each other that way!”

“You’ve done that with the Kyuubi?!”

“Yep and let me say this, fifty years is a lot easier to handle than a thousand,” I replied. “Also, please don’t say it like that, you make it sound like we’ve had sex!”

Shizune’s face turned a bright red. “How would that even… wait, never mind… I don’t want to know!”

“It would be impossible,” Kurama answered, despite the fact that Shizune couldn’t hear him. “Not only are our sizes too different, but I lack the required equipment.”

“I really didn’t want to ever have to hear that coming from you,” I muttered.

“What?”

“It’s just the Kyuubi, he’s explaining why it’s impossible for the two of us to… copulate.”

Shizune reeled back. “It’s listening in?!”

“Well he is inside of me and you are talking about him.” I said easily.

“So… it heard my question about it having sex?!” Shizune squeaked.

“I did,” Kurama replied, knowing that she couldn’t hear him.

“He did,” I groaned. “Look, if the two of you keep talking about this topic, I’m just going to trade places so you can talk directly to each other while I stay in the seal where everything is nice and sane.”

“I’ll stop,” Shizune said frantically, either not wanting to come face to face with the Kurama in my body or just not wanting to have a sex talk with him.

“I don’t particularly have anything that I want to experience outside right now,” Kurama replied.

“Good,” I nodded.

The camp soon quieted down with the only sound coming from the crackling fire.

”I’ve been with Tsunade-sama since before I was a genin. When my uncle died, it broke her,” Shizune explained. “She just… lost interest in life and decided to drink it away… until she met you. I don’t think I’ve seen her get drunk a single time since you’ve come into her life. She’s slowly reclaiming herself.”

I listened, not daring to interrupt her.

“You’re a lot like the person she once was… the person she’s becoming again. You’re both incredibly stubborn, but beyond that… there’s kindness. It was a shock for me to discover the two of you this morning and I initially had a few issues concerning this relationship, but, now that I’ve had time to collect my thoughts, I can see that this relationship is good for her… I will fully support it, so please… continue to make my master happy,” Shizune requested. “I don’t want to see her sad anymore!”

I sat in silence for several moments, digesting what Shizune had just said, before a smile came to my face. “That’s really not something you need to request. Regardless of what comes in the future, I will always do my absolute best to make Tsunade happy.”

…PTL…

It was early in the morning and we were all getting ready to complete the mission, when…

“What the hell is that?” Anko demanded, pointing to the small stone shack I had my clones build earlier.

“This? Oh, it’s the toilet I had my clones build,” I replied, moving the thin slab out of the way to show a fully functioning stone toilet. “It’s not perfect and I doubt it would last longer than a week, but it gets the job done.”

I was actually pretty proud of myself. Through use of shadow clones and earth style chakra, I was able to build a proper pipe system, a septic tank far underground and even a basic cistern that was connected to a large stone tank out the back which was filled using water style Chakra.

“You… You let me go take a piss in the woods when you could have just… built a toilet?”

“Well, I didn’t think about it until after you went into the woods, but yeah, I could have made one earlier.”

“You know what, just give me your toilet paper and we’ll call it even.”

“Yeah, about that,” I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly. “I don’t have any toilet paper… I just use a water style technique.”

“Just show me how to do it,” Anko grunted.

“Alright.”

I created a pair of clones, one formed a stone basin while the other filled it with water through use of an extremely weak water bullet. Holding my hand over the water, I let my chakra seep into it and then picked it up. I took inspiration from when Sakura did the same thing to save Kankuro in Shippuden, except this was a much simpler version as I didn’t need to use it to leech poison out of a body.

“It seems simple enough,” Anko commented and mimicked me. She ended up holding a much larger bubble of water and it fully separated from the bowl.

“You need to grab less water. Too much and it’ll pop, too little and it won’t be effective,” I explained, before dropping my own bubble back into the stone basin.

“I’ll get this right, damnit,” Anko grit out as she tried again.

Climbing out of her stone tent, Shizune spotted us. “What are you two doing?”

“Trying to figure this stupid thing out so I can take a crap,” Anko grunted.

Shizune blinked. “What?”

“Long story short, I built a toilet, but didn’t bring any toilet paper, so I just used a water style technique,” I explained and pulled a bubble of water out again.

“That’s a medical technique,” Shizune noted.

I suppose Shizune recognizing this made sense.

“It’s a stupid technique is what it is,” Anko complained. “Why do I keep grabbing so much water?”

“Because you need to use less chakra,” Shizune explained as she formed her own bubble of water. “And you also need to circulate it, so it’s not all collecting on the bottom, that’s the weak point!”

“Huh,” I hummed. I hadn’t thought about it, but Shizune was right. I just never ran into the issue because I subconsciously swirled the water like I did with a Rasengan.

“Why are you watching, you can already do this,” Anko complained. “How is it that you can do this properly? Didn’t you have really bad Chakra control at one point?”

“It’s a lot like the third step to forming a Rasengan and I’ve got a lot of experience with that,” I explained. “You create a shell of chakra to contain the spiraling chakra inside… but in this case, it’s the slow moving currents in the water!”

I know the Rasengan is based of a bijuudama, but could Minato have also used some medical Shinobi trick to properly form it… that man was truly a genius.

“Ha, I got it,” Anko cheered. “Now if you two will excuse me, I’ve got to take care of some business.” And with that, she promptly entered the small bathroom I made, bubble of water in hand.

“You know, out of all the things that could’ve happen in my life, I never thought I’d be in the woods teaching a Tokubetsu Jonin how to hold a bubble of water in order to clean her ass,” I commented idly.

Shizune offered me a strained smile. “It’s a new experience for me too.”

“I can hear you assholes,” Anko called out from the outhouse. “You mind giving a lady some privacy?”

…PTL…

It wasn’t much longer that we left the camp. I’d considered destroying or deconstructing it similarly to how Yamato deconstructed his wood style house, but decided against it. There wasn’t anything special with the camp, it was simply made of earth style chakra, there weren’t any secrets for other Shinobi to find.

“So, anyone here ever been to the land of the sea?” I asked.

“There weren’t really any places to gamble there, so Tsunade-sama avoided it.”

“Once before,” Anko replied softly. “And I never thought I’d ever return.”

“Why?”

“It’s where Orochimaru gave me this mark,” Anko explained, pulling her jacket to the side, revealing her curse mark. “I… really don’t want to talk about it alright. Let’s just get this mission over with.”

Well, that explained why she’d been visibly miserable when we were heading here yesterday.

“Are you telling me that we were only five minutes away from a town?!” Anko growled. “A town that likely has an inn that we could have checked into instead of sleeping on rocks!”

“This is the closest spot to the demon island and we don’t know if Orochimaru had any Shinobi stationed here,” Shizune replied. “It was safer to camp out in the woods.”

Anko just grumbled to herself.

…PTL…

Getting to the demon island was easier said than done. It was about 20 miles off shore and no one wanted to sail near it, everyone was convinced that there were spirits that kidnapped people.

If I had wood style, I’d have likely just made my own ship and figured out how to sail it on my own, but sadly that wasn’t something I could currently do.

The best we could get is a one way trip to the island and even then it wasn’t all the way, the captain stopped the moment we saw the island and refused to go further. He did offer to sell us one of row boats, but we decided to walk the rest of the way instead.

“According to the description the sound four gave us, the entrance should be this way,” Anko said as she led us to a small cave just above the water line.

Climbing into the cave, we passed through a small tunnel and finally entered the base.

“So, how do we want to do this?” I asked, staring down the hallway.

“The same way as usual. We retrieve important documents, kill any of Orochimaru’s minions and destroy the base,” Anko listed almost aimlessly.

“Anko, are you–“

“I’m fine,” Anko cut me off. “It’s just… this place reminds me of my worst moment. Let’s just get this mission over with.”

“If you’re sure,” I replied.

The hallway while long was pretty narrow, so I hadn’t been able to create as many shadow clones as I wanted. Six clones rushed through every room, looking for anything that might be important and sealing it away as the three of us cautiously walked to the end of the hallway.

Entering the new room, I was immediately disgusted with what I saw. There were several large vats filled with liquid and the horribly mutated remains of people. All of them appeared to be attempts at trying to cross a fish with a human.

Walking up to one that looked like an emaciated mermaid, I recoiled when its head turned and it looked right at me.

Shizune gasped and Anko was stone faced.

It shifted and tried to say something, but the liquid containing it didn’t allow any sound to come out.

“It’s an amazing specimen, wouldn’t you say?” A man asked as he walked into the light, followed by two other men dressed in black and a girl about my age. “She was the breakthrough in my research. All the other ones expired before I could gain any use from them and weren’t intelligent enough to talk. Truly, she is the one that made all of this possible.”

The lights flickered on and a dozen more vats were revealed, each one containing people in various forms of mutation, each one awake and in pain.

“This is horrific,” Shizune muttered, holding her hand to her mouth.

“You’re the one that did this?” I asked softly.

“Yes,” The man proclaimed proudly. “I am doctor Amachi and I am responsible for perfecting the aquatic Shinobi. The three are going to help further that cause in… further ventures!”

“I see,” I said simply. ‘Kurama, do you feel anything at all from these… people that would stop me from killing them?’

“Only the girl. She’s filled with self loathing… and so is your teammate, Anko.”

‘Thank you,’ I thought back. “Anko, Shizune. Do either of you want to call dibs on them, or should I just kill them?”

Shizune shook her head, not trusting her voice.

“Leave the doctor to me.”

I nodded before turning to the girl. “You there, girl. I know you don’t want to be here, so stay out of this and you won’t get hurt!”

“I… I can’t do that. Doctor Amachi is the only one that can fix me,” The girl replied.

“If you get involved, you’re going to die,” I said simply.

Anger burned in my chest and I allowed it to turn cold when I regarded the two Shinobi in front of me. I noticed that they were Kabuto’s old teammates in the chunin exams, so that meant one of them was flexible and the other could absorb chakra.

Rushing forward, my foot impacted the younger one with regular glasses, sending him flying backwards. I aimed a slower punch at Yoroi, the one Sasuke originally fought and he caught it, smirking arrogantly as he latched on to me and refused to let go.

I could feel some of my chakra being absorbed, but it was such a small amount that it didn’t make a difference.

“Nice try, but you’re too weak to beat me,” He boasted.

Generally speaking, it was a seriously bad idea to grapple a Shinobi. You didn’t know what tricks they had up their sleeve, from a regular knife to being able to coat themselves in a cloak of lightning chakra… it was just a bad idea.

Now, I could pull out a single tailed cloak and it would severely burn Yoroi, but I had a better… more painful idea for someone like him who helped commit all these atrocities.

‘Kurama, why don’t we show this guy why it’s a bad idea to steal our chakra.’

Kurama let out a deep chuckle. “With pleasure.”

“You know, it’s a really bad idea to steal someone’s chakra without absorbing it properly, it can lead to all manners of problems, especially when your body hasn’t got the resistance to withstand it.”

Almost instantly, Kurama’s chakra flowed through my veins. I directed it to Yoroi, so he would absorb it faster.

Yoroi pulled himself off me with a startled scream, but I caught his arms and knocked him to the floor.

“WH-WHAT IS THIS?” Yoroi asked, in a pained scream. Blood began pouring from his nose, his eyes and his ears as his skin quickly began turning red.

“This is the chakra from a biju, it’s the reason why you shouldn’t be trying to absorb chakra from others with such a bad technique,” I replied.

Yoroi tried to pull free from my grip, but quickly discovered he was unable to. It wasn’t much longer before he passed out from the pain of having the extremely corrosive chakra of a biju burn him from the inside out.

Grabbing a hold of the chakra, I commenced a chakra tug of war and immediately ripped Kurama’s chakra out of Yoroi, along with my own and what little he had, killing him instantly while causing his body to shrivel up like a prune.

“That… felt a little more disturbing than I thought it would,” I commented idly as I turned to where his teammate was.

Misumi Tsurugi clutched his stomach with one hand as he pulled himself away with the other, blood dribbled from his lips. Walking over, I knocked him onto his back. A Rasengan spun to life in my hand.

“P-Please… Spare me!”

“In the other two labs Orochimaru had, everyone that he captured and experimented on had been missing-nin or bandits. These here… they’re civilians and I’m willing to bet that it was you and your dead teammate that were the ones to abduct them.”

“NO, PLEASE. I WAS JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS!!!”

“Following orders from Orochimaru after you betrayed Konoha,” I replied. “The only reason why you were following orders from a person like Orochimaru is because you felt you could gain more from him than living as a regular Shinobi… Not caring about the pain you would cause others.”

“PLEASE!”

I brought my Rasengan down. The moment it hit Tsurugi’s chest, there was a brief resistance before it drilled a hole straight through hit and detonated into the ground. It was over in less than a second. Tsurugi’s eyes were blank, but his face was twisted in an expression of fear.

I momentarily felt disgusted, but reminded myself that these were people who had hurt innocent civilians. They’d ruined the lives of regular people.

Turning to the doctor who had done all this, I was met with a strange sight.

Anko stood over Amachi… or what I assumed to be Amachi. He had transformed himself into some kind of fish man, but it didn’t seem to do him much good in his fight with Anko. He was being restrained by snakes, bloodied, several Kunai and Shuriken were stuck in him and his face was swollen from a severe beating… at least I think it was a beating, it was hard to tell when he was a fish man.

Shizune hadn’t been idle either. She had the top of one of the vats open and was examining one of the civilians that had been experimented on.

The girl on the other hand trembled and looked horrified at what had just happened. By the looks of it, she was either a civilian or someone who hadn’t even finished the academy.

 “It looks like you had fun,” I commented idly as I approached them.

Anko panted lightly as blood dripped from her knuckles… I was pretty sure none of it was hers.

“Yeah well, I couldn’t kill Orochimaru, but this was a close second,” Anko replied. “It was therapeutic.”

Amachi chose that moment to let out a pained moan… well, it was more of a pained gargle of blood.

“So why didn’t you kill him?”

“No, you can’t. He’s the only one that can fix me,” The girl interjected.

“I’m not saying we should, I just want to know why she didn’t.”

“O-oh,” the girl mumbled.

“So?” I asked Anko again.

Anko shrugged. “We’re ordered to bring back anything that might be important… and besides, I want to see him poked and prodded in the same way he did to others.”

I nodded in understanding. What Amachi had done here was monstrous, but at the same time, he was able to successfully transform himself into this fish man form. We could learn more from his body while he was still alive than dead.

Soon Shizune arrived with a grave look on her face.

“What was done to them… it can’t be undone. Their bodies are too damaged… too altered to even begin doing anything. They wouldn’t even survive a minute outside of those vats!”

“What? No! Doctor Amachi promised me that he could reverse it!”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Then… I’ll handle it.”

“Yeah, no,” Anko interjected. “This is my responsibility. If anyone here is going to be cleaning up after Orochimaru’s mess, it’s going to be me!”

Amachi let out a bloodied laugh.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing. From the moment we get back to Konoha, you’re going to be a test subject,” I pointed out. “And we have Tsunade as our Hokage. There’s no way you’re going to die. You’re going to live through it all. Vivisection, experimentation, everything!”

Amachi promptly shut up.

“Anko,” I began.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Anko interrupted. “This is my responsibility… My atonement!”

“You’re not responsible for the things Orochimaru did.”

“I am when I knew about this place and said nothing,” Anko shot back. “I… I knew that Orochimaru had a base here and I never did anything about it. I shoulder the blame for what happened here through sheer negligence. This is something I need to do… it’s my responsibility!”

“Fine then. Using your own logic, seeing as I’m on a team with Mitarashi Anko, it’s also my responsibility seeing as she’s my teammate!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Anko argued.

“Why? Because you can’t shoulder everything on your own? You said it yourself, we’re partners and that means we work together. We share the good times and the bad!”

“You couldn’t handle my bad times,” Anko growled.

“Sure, the Kyuubi Jinchuriki that grew up hated and feared can’t handle your bad times,” I said sarcastically. “Give it a shot, I might just surprise you.”

“Fine then,” Anko whispered. “I wasn’t the one to abandon Orochimaru, he abandoned me!”

Well now… I hadn’t been expecting that.

“Why so quiet? I thought you could handle me at my worst?” Anko taunted. “Afraid that I’ll turn traitor and kill you?”

I walked up to Anko. Standing in front of her, I reached forward and flicked her nose.

“What are you, some kind of idiot? Do you think I give a crap about who abandoned who?” I scolded. “You are who you choose to be and every day since he left you, you’ve chosen to be Anko, loyal Shinobi to Konoha and a relatively good person! If this is your worst, then there’s literally nothing to worry about!”

“W-What?!”

“Now make a clone so it can help hold the Rasenshuriken and let’s get going!”

It seemed like the best way to put an end to all the pain and misery in this place. It worked fast and disintegrated everything that it touched. I wish I could have done more to help these people, but this was the way it would have to be.