Parthenogenesis

A Scientific Fact or Two:

Pregnancy is divided into three sections known as trimesters. Like a semester at school, they break the pregnancy into three month sections that can easily describe the pregnancy. A full term pregnancy from the time of fertilization is about 38 weeks, or nine months.

The first trimester consists of the weeks 1-12. Three weeks after conception, morning sickness usually begins and can last until the end of the first trimester. For multiple births, appetite usually increases to meet the increased calorie needs. As the changes in the body push on the bladder, frequent trips to the bathroom are also expected. The first trimester carries the highest chance of miscarriage as well.

For shinobi, more symptoms are to be expected including fatigue as a new being begins to draw chakra from one’s inner coils. Also, difficulty controlling one’s chakra from the first week to the end of the first trimester should be expected as the body tries to balance itself from the loss of chakra to the child. Both symptoms grow worse with multiple children as greater need for chakra arises, putting more pressure on the body.

Chapter 7

The week after the pair had returned from Suna, there had been no major missions, nothing imperative to Konoha’s survival, nothing dangerous. As such, the hokage had ordered the previous Team 7 to once again get together to train. It was supposed to be a time of fun, catching up with old friends and seeing how much they had learned. Not so for a certain kyuubi container and a particular Uchiha.

“Dobe! Watch what you are doing! You almost made that jutsu implode.” An imploding jutsu would explode back at the user, sometimes resulting in their death.

“Argh! Why won’t this work!?!” bellowed Naruto, scaring some birds out of a tree. He couldn’t even do a simple shadow clone right today.

Kakashi looked up from his little orange book, a lazy eye drifting over the two. Sasuke looked as if he had just started sparring, while Naruto looked like he had just come from a battle. He closed his book with a snap. “Naruto,” he began lecture mode, “It looks like someone has become a little rusty in the chakra control area. Why don’t you practice climbing trees for a while instead. The rest of you are free to leave. Oh, and Naruto, you might want to get another shirt.” He opened his Icha Icha paradise book once more, walking away from the trio, as Sakura followed.

Naruto looked down at his tattered shirt a moment before he tore it from his frame. Sasuke was once again assaulted by the muscular visage. The Uchiha tried to tear his eyes away from the broad chest, well-defined abs, and those guns he called arms, but the Uchiha failed miserably. No amount of screaming I am Asexual in his head could save him now. Luckily, Naruto was too upset about his own failures that day to even notice the Uchiha.

“DAMMIT! What’s wrong with me? I’ve never had trouble with kage bunshin before!” yelled Naruto, completely unaware of the Uchiha watching him. With a shout of determination, the blond threw himself up a tree, climbing with chakra in his feet. About halfway up, his chakra control wavered, making him slip off the tree. His shout of panic brought Sasuke back to his senses in which he quickly resumed the time-honored old game of catch-the-falling-dobe.

“Dobe, give it a break for today. Maybe you’re just tired,” advised Sasuke, surprising himself.

Naruto looked at him, befuddled, “Was that the emotion known as ‘concern’ teme?”

Sasuke resisted the urge to roll his eyes and instead just dropped the baka from where he had caught him. Naruto barely had time to turn in the air to land on his feet. By the time the blond looked up, there was no Sasuke in sight.

The blond took to bellowing again. “THANKS FOR NOTHING TEME!”

O0o.o0O

That night Sasuke awoke, breathing heavy and moaning Naruto’s name. He had just had a rather explicit dream about his blond friend. It had started out as a normal dream, with the pair getting into an argument, which then progressed into a sparring match, in which they both slowly lost articles of clothing until they were wearing nothing at all, and from there…well, let’s just say it took a more sexual path. He crawled out of bed stifling a groan at his realization that he had just had a wet dream about his best friend, his male best friend. ‘There’s no way I’m...but that dream…I enjoyed it.’ There was a bang, which was Sasuke hitting his own head against the wall, trying to clear his thoughts. All it did was give him a mental image of Naruto cradling his hurt head gently. ‘Oh kami! I really am gay!’ he thought in despair. He looked at the alarm clock and noticed that it was only 10:30, understandable, since Sasuke normally went to bed at 9:00. He quickly got dressed- after his mind and body had cooled a bit- and then went to do the only thing that made sense. Sake, and lots of sake.

O0o.o0O

Maito Gai required that his “little flames of youth blazed together in the passion of youthful companionship” from time to time. In other words, he liked his old team to get together every now and then, usually to go out to eat. Tonight was one of those times. The old team of Neji, TenTen, and Lee, along with their sensei, walked in together to a restaurant with a bar. Normally, the team stayed away from any place with alcohol, as Lee was a natural master of the drunken fist, but this was one of the few restaurants still open after everyone had gotten back from their missions of that day.

They had suspected drunk nobodies to drift around trying to start a drunken brawl, they had expected men who couldn’t walk straight to try to take TenTen and Neji (thinking he was a girl with his long hair) home with them, and they had expected to have to deal with Lee trying to get his hands on a bit of sake. While all of that did happen, what they didn’t expect was to see a certain raven-haired member of Team 7 sitting at the bar and pouring sake down his throat as fast as it would empty out of the bottle. But seeing as how that was what they were currently looking at, they decided to try to see what was wrong, or rather Gai and Lee tried to see what was wrong.

“Tell me, you passionate flame of my rival’s team that burns with the fire of the youthfulness, why are you trying to extinguish your youthful flames with the impassionate liquid of lost passion?” Gai then gave Sasuke his best glittering smile, hoping to make the boy tell him all due to his infallible youthful coolness.

What he got in return was a death glare and an empty sake bottle (Sasuke was already opening another) thrown at his head, which cracked him on the forehead before bouncing off and then breaking on Lee’s. It seemed Sasuke was still a brooding, yet powerful, little man, even when he was so drunk he probably couldn’t even see straight. Both Lee and Gai were identically rubbing their heads. It was rather freakish. Noticing that the Uchiha was still shooting them both a death glare that could’ve killed lesser men, Gai quickly shoved Neji in front of Lee and himself saying, “Here Neji, you are the passionate expert on how the flames of the brooding burn. You must help him regain his normal burning passion.” Neji’s eyebrow twitched as Gai and the rest of his team stalked off to find a table.

Neji waited in silence for five more minutes before he prompted, “Well?”

“Well what?” grunted the Uchiha. His forehead was resting on the bar counter, and he was somehow drinking sake out of the sideways bottle. Neji suspected he was using chakra for the feat.

“Are you drunk enough yet to tell me why you feel the need to be drunk?” Said the Hyuuga in his mightier-than-thou voice.

Sasuke grunted again, only this time it was in the effort of pulling his head off the counter to try to glare at the Hyuuga, but because he was drunk, there were three Neji’s when he looked up and all he could do was glare blearily, trying to get them to form into one image again. He gave up his effort and his head dropped back to the counter with a thunk.

“I think I’m gay.” That was all the Uchiha said, though it was said quite slurredly.

It was also all it took to make Neji sit down beside the Uchiha and order some sake for himself. Taking a huge gulp, he asked the Sharingan user, “Why do you think you’re gay?”

“Naruto.”

Neji’s eyebrow twitched. Was this going to turn into a guessing game? ‘Naruto what?’ he wondered.

The Uchiha didn’t offer any more clues as to what he meant, so Neji began trying to fill in the blank.

“Naruto called you gay?” A negative shake came from the drunken Uchiha’s head, still resting on the counter.

“Naruto asked you if you were gay?” Another shake of the Uchiha’s head.

“Naruto tried to set you up with a gay guy?” Negative shake once again.

“Naruto…” he was cut off by the Uchiha.

“It wasn’t anything Naruto did.”

Hyuuga wasn’t considered a genius for nothing. It quickly clicked in his mind about what the Uchiha was upset about. “You’re having sexual thoughts about Naruto.”

Sasuke started banging his head into the counter. Neji would take that as a ‘yes’ then.

“Oh…” Neji, for once, didn’t know the answer.

Sasuke struggled to get off the stool and put down his money on the counter to pay for his drinks. He swayed once he got to his feet.

“What are you going to do about it,” asked the Hyuuga, feigning disinterest.

“Nothing…nothing can be done. I still have to revive my clan, and Naruto can’t help me do that.” Of course, how he said that wasn’t quite that clear. The drunkenness had turned his speech into a slur, not that the Uchiha could notice at that moment.

He stumbled out the bar door to his home, or tried to. He was down some street that he thought he took on his way home, though at the moment, he didn’t really recognize anything.

“Oi, teme!”

Ah, he recognized that, the sake making his normal mask slip to be replaced with a content smile. Naruto.

Naruto saw Sasuke stumble, then trip over his own feet. He rushed over to his raven-haired friend to find out what was wrong. When he arrived, the smell of sake greeted his nose.

“Dude, you are so wasted!” he laughed as he helped Sasuke stand up again, supporting him as he walked. ”Let’s get you home.”

“Na…ruto?” he asked, trying to stop his swirling vision. “Whad er ya doin here?”

Naruto patted his belly fondly. “I just broke a personal record at Ichiraku’s- 20 bowls of ramen in less than 5 minutes!”

“Dobe, you are such a dooooobe,” he said. Probably not the most intelligent thing he said that day.

“Whatever teme. You sure are weird when you’re drunk. I’m not used to seeing another expression on your face other than the I’ve-got-a-stick-up-my-ass look.”

Sasuke looked up at him blearily and confused, “You want a dick up your ass?”

Naruto blushed, “NO TEME! That’s not what I said. I said, ‘you have a stick…’ You know what, never mind. We’re at your house anyway. Where are your keys?”

“I don’t know.”

“Teme! Stop being so difficult! Where are your keys?”

“Dobe, I don’t know.”

“Argh, I’ll just find them then,” said Naruto, starting to go through all of Sasuke’s pockets.

“Oi, dobe, what are you doing?” exclaimed the Uchiha, one of Naruto’s hands in his front right pocket. “Hands all in my pockets without even a kiss to begin with.”

“Relax teme,” he said jiggling the keys he found. “I was just getting the keys to your front door.”

“Hn,” said Sasuke with a bit of a frown, as if he were pouting.

Naruto laughed. “You know teme, you have a sense of humor when you’re drunk. Here, hold on to my shirt while I unlock the door.” Sasuke used Naruto’s shirt to balance himself.

Naruto dragged the Uchiha to his room and let him fall onto his bed, forgetting that the Uchiha was still holding on to his shirt. As a result, Naruto went tumbling to the bed on top of the Uchiha. He tried to scramble back up to his feet, but the Uchiha had a death hold on his shirt.

“Sasuke, you need to let go of me.”

“Hm…dobe, you know, everything would just be a lot easier if you could have children.”

“What?” asked Naruto.

Sasuke used the opportunity of Naruto stunned silence to kiss him on the lips.

“Sasuke?” No answer. “Teme?” Still no answer. Sasuke had fallen unconscious. The Uchiha breathed in deeply and then released the breath in Naruto’s face still up next to his. The stench of sake reminded Naruto that his best friend was definitely drunk.

‘Nothing like that would have happened if he hadn’t been drunk,’ thought Naruto with a sigh as he untangled his shirt from Sasuke’s hand. ‘No use in getting my hopes up then. He won’t even remember what he said and did in the morning.’ He finished tucking Sasuke into his bed before leaving, being sure to lock the door as he exited.

Naruto was right. Sasuke didn’t remember anything the next morning, or if he did, Naruto couldn’t tell. Their team practices continued like always, except for Naruto’s increasingly faulty chakra control and Sasuke's obvious hang-over. Naruto couldn’t help but be a little sad. He had told himself not to get his hopes up, and yet he did anyway. He wouldn’t pursue the Uchiha though. ‘He needs a woman who can give him what he really wants- a clan. I can’t give him that.’

Little did Naruto know that deep inside his mind, behind the gates of the seal, a certain nine-tailed kitsune laughed evilly at Naruto’s thoughts. Oh how little the humans know.

O0o.o0O

Shizune’s first stop when she returned from her two week mission was Tsunade’s office. She dragged her tired and sore body all the way up the stairs of the tower. Too tired to even raise her arm to knock on the door, she instead banged her forehead on the door. She should get the rest of her shinobi team back for abandoning her with a report in her hand, leaving her to go to hokage before bed.

“Enter,” was heard within the room, and so Shizune followed the command.

“Tsunade-sama, our team has returned from our mission and…” She never got to finish as Tsunade rushed over and gave her a bear hug. Shizune sweat-dropped at the hokage’s childish actions.

“Shizune! I missed you so much!” Shizune was feeling rather proud of herself right then, for having so much honor from the hokage. But the hokage’s next words killed all that smugness. “I’ve needed you here! I need you to finish reading all those books by the end of the week and find out how they relate to this seal,” here Tsunade flourished a piece of folded paper that the Uchiha had given her. If she had looked up at Shizune’s face at that moment, she might have thought Shizune was trying to do an impression of a goldfish.

“By, by the end of the week, Tsunade-sama? How many drinks have you had today. There are so many books. I don’t think it’s possible to finish them all.”

Tsunade fixed Shizune with a look that made the black-haired medic-nin fear for the woman’s sanity, “If there is anyone able to do this, it’s you Shizune. I suggest you get started right away!”

“Yes, hokage-sama,” said Shizune dutifully. Tsunade had her whipped, that poor subservient assistant known as Shizune. What made it worse was that she had signed up for this.

O0o.end chapter.o0O

A/n: So no one knows yet of Naruto’s pregnancy, not even Naruto himself. But next chapter…hehehe…I don’t want to ruin the surprise.