TITLE - what to expect when you're expecting
FANDOM & CATEGORY - BLEACH; and this, people, is crack. Sheer, unadulterated, absolute crack.
PAIRING(S) - none so far
RATING - M
WARNINGS - male pregnancy (FOR SCIENCE!)
SUMMARY - Mayuri never did extol the virtues of the ethical scientist. Which is how six powerful male Shinigami found themselves pregnant, and the invasion to Hueco Mundo gets put on hold due to emergency maternity leave. A series of short, more-or-less chronological chapters that lampoons MPREG. I would also like to thank delwynmarch for her encouragement, although I'm sure she never quite realized just how far over yonder I'd run with this idea.

oOoOoOoOo

The idea was planted, as many bad ideas were, with a question:

"I'm having some difficulty keeping up with the increasing demand of reiryoku these experiments require for food. How much would you estimate they may require within a week's time?"

The idea was fertilized with a stray observation.

"Mayuri-sama, it appears that they require the reiryoku equivalent to a high-powered Shinigami."

Then the idea was watered and placed in a good source of light.

"I'm sure those philistines would be useless in volunteering any of their reiryoku for this fine pursuit."

And carefully trimmed.

"Hmmm. Then again, Nemu, who said anything about volunteering?"

At last: fruition.

"Nemu, fetch my portable lab! Most of my targets will be drunk enough to perform surgery on without having to transport them back here! I shall carry these with me."

OOoOoOoOo

Byakuya knew something was wrong when he awoke. He felt unusually tired, his mouth was parched, and his back hurt. Such a grogginess was incomprehensible when he had participated in only one small cup of sake before retiring to his estate with Rukia on tow.

He pressed a hand against the small of his back as he made his way into the bathroom for morning toiletries – he certainly hadn't drank enough to make his kidneys ache. He paused a moment to scowl at his reflection; he didn't remember bags under his eyes. A hand pressed against his face and cheeks detected increased temperature.

Some inconsiderate moron probably came to the party sick with the flu, and now he had gone and caught it.

He would just have to visit the Fourth Division later that day.

oOoOoOoOo

Shuhei awoke in the large room where the party had taken place the night before. He was covered with debris (which was not unusual) and alone (which was, usually Matsumoto and Kira were sprawled out beside him). He sat upright – and then immediately laid down again when his head suddenly swam. It was most disconcerting.

And he had the worst heartburn ever…

oOoOoOoOo

Ikkaku knocked on Yumichika's door. "Hey. How come you aren't at our morning spar?" He tapped his sword impatiently against his shoulder before he knocked harder on the door. The hinges groaned in protest from the force. Or maybe the groans were coming from inside. "Hyah!" He kicked the door down and stormed in.

Yumichika was clinging to the toilet.

"What the fuck's wrong with you?"

Yumichika sobbed. "The sight of one's reflection in the toilet is hideous and horrible, and no one should ever have to suffer it!"

Ikkaku scratched his head. "Well, you were kinda plastered last night."

"I've never been like this before!" Yumichika, without lifting his head, waved Ikkaku off. "Go away and shut the door! No one must see me like this. I wish to be ugly by myself."

"Fine, whatever." Muttering under his breath, Ikkaku picked up the door and leaned it against the frame. As he walked away, he heard Yumichika retching miserably.

oOoOoOoOo

"Hmmm." Komamaru sniffed himself. "How odd. I smell Mayuri's stench on myself." He sniffed a little more closer, then he prodded his stomach. He had a bad feeling about this.

It took two tries before he was finally able to leave his headquarters. For some reason, the smell of the mess hall's cooking breakfast made him incredibly nauseous.

oOoOoOoOo

When Kira had to take a piss three times in one hour, he knew something was wrong. Of course, the tenderness in his pecs was also strange, because there was no way he could be sore from lifting that many pints. He was also exhausted. And hungry.

And although he had no idea why, he was really craving red bean paste smothered with maraschino cherries.

oOoOoOoOo

"What?" Ukitake asked Rukia as he smiled over her at breakfast.

"Nothing, Captain." Rukia continued staring at him, though.

"Are you sure?"

"Well, it's just that…" Rukia blushed. "You're glowing."

Ukitake sipped his tea. "It was a fine party. I think it did me some real good to get out and see people, and just revel in the atmosphere."

Rukia shrugged. It wasn't just that Ukitake seemed to be in a pleasant mood (he always was), but he glowed. It was kind of a sexual afterglow (and she blushed vividly at that thought, because thinking of her captain having sex was far more embarrassing than thinking about her brother having sex). His skin and his hair looked shiny, he seemed brighter, happier, more satisfied. She wasn't sure. But whatever it was, it seemed to agree with him.

oOoOoOoOo

When Byakuya finally reached the Fourth Division's general waiting room, his scarf carefully wrapped around his face so he wouldn't expose anyone to his contagious illness, he saw Shuhei arguing with Unohana. "All I want," Shuhei said in the way people often did when they were tired of repeating themselves, "is an antacid. That's all. Any little Fourthy could fetch that for me."

"And trust me," Unohana replied with that eerie little smile that said she was going to heal you to death, "when I say you need to come to a private exam room with me." Then she looked over her shoulder at Byakuya and blanched. "You, too?"

That… did not bode well. But Byakuya maintained his stoic expression, and settled himself in one of the waiting chairs. "I believe I have the flu," he said.

Unohana stared at him for a moment, and then turned her attention back to Shuhei. "Please, Vice-captain," she said, deliberately stressing his rank, "before this request becomes an order."

Shuhei snorted insolently. "Fine then. Although that's the bossiest request I've ever heard." Unohana remained silent as she ushered him into another room. And then she handed him an empty cup.

"I require a clean-catch urine sample." After explaining how he was expected to do that, she then told him to place it in the little cupboard, and she would return in approximately ten minutes to finish the exam."

Shuhei studied the cup in the silence of the room. "Well, that just figures," he muttered. He pressed a hand against his sternum. "Hurry up and wait, that's what I feel like."

oOoOoOoOo

Unohana entered the exam room where Yumichika sat on the cold examining table, huddled in a blanket with his face turned towards the wall. "I have the results of your test back."

Yumichika shuddered. "Don't beat around the bush, Captain. Just tell me straight. I'm dying, aren't I?"

Unohana tugged a chair over to the examining table and gently took Yumichika's hands in her own.

"I always thought I would go in the glory of battle," Yumichika said, his voice distant, "the beauty of my enemies' blood pooling around like a crimson lake. Not like this, though, with my beauty robbed and ravaged by cruel disease." Bold tears rolled down his face. "I plan to commit sekkupu before that happens, so that no one will have nothing but the memory of me as I am now – still beautiful, not yet wasted and withered away."

"You're not dying."

"… I'm not?"

"No." A heartbeat. And then Unohana gave him a smile that was almost a grimace. "Congratulations. You're pregnant."

"I'M WHAT?"

oOoOoOoOo

Byakuya narrowed his eyes in disapproval at the distant shout. This was a place of sickness. Was it too much to ask that people offer a little bit of consideration? Honestly; there was never any need to yell.

oOoOoOoOo

Unohana, having left a hysterical Yumichika to the cares of Isane, returned to Shuhei's exam. She was still waiting on the test results for Komamaru, since they required a different technique for urinary analysis due to his dog-like constitution.

She grabbed up Shuhei's urinary analysis results that one of her subordinates held out to her as she passed, and glanced quickly over it. Then she sighed as she entered the room.

"Seriously, all this for some heartburn?" Shuhei asked as she closed the door. "I knew I should have just gotten some ginger."

"Heartburn is often a symptom of other problems."

His mouth twisted. "Like what?"

Unohana said nothing as she placed her hands on his shoulders and sent her reiryoku questing through him. Shuhei gasped from the sensation; Unohana was often told her probes felt like cold water running through the veins, but she had never felt such herself.

Once she had confirmed her suspicions, she withdrew her hands and sat down before Shuhei. "It must have been one wild party last night," she said brightly.

Shuhei stared at her in suspicion, and then leaned forward on the examining table, his feet idly kicking. "No more wild than usual."

Unohana had done this a few times before with women Shinigami, so she always tried to break the news as positive as she could,. Pregnancy was such a rare occurrence in Soul Society. However, she had never had to announce such findings to men before, let alone multiple men. "I must wonder, because somehow you're pregnant."

Shuhei stared at her, his eyes narrowed and his feet still kicking. Unohana wondered if he had heard her. Perhaps she should also check his hearing?

"Okay," he said finally as he leaned back, "putting aside the improbability that I, a guy through and through, could possibly be pregnant – because then that would cast doubt on your own skills, Captain – how do I get an abortion?"

"You can't."

"Now, that's just sexist, Captain."

"No, not like that, Vice-captain." Unohana's brow creased as she regarded him carefully. "It's what makes this so incredibly difficult, and is the only explanation why you are able to remain pregnant without your body rejecting it: The fetus and its placenta is so deeply rooted in your reiryoku that it cannot be extracted without possibly doing severe and lasting damage to your core."

"Lasting?"

"As in permanent. Possibly, of course. And it would be very invasive and painful, I'm sure."

Shuhei spit. "Fuck. We can't afford possibilities of that kind right now thanks to those bastards and their betrayal. But doesn't it take time to get pregnant? I mean you have to wait a few weeks or something before you know, right?"

"It seems to be growing at a very accelerated rate."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean? And how the fuck did this even happen?"

oOoOoOoOo

Komamaru snapped his maw and simply growled, "Mayuri!" when Unohana calmly announced that he should, against any and all logic, prepare to deliver a litter of eight sometime in the near future.

oOoOoOoOo

"Ah, Captain Kurosaki." Isane looked breathless and worried when she finally called Byakuya from the waiting room. Byakuya followed after her with the waiting room's decorative garbage pail in his arms, since the strangely overwhelming stench of Kira's cheese-coated strawberries made him nauseous.

Byakuya had been shocked that none of the Fourth Division's members chose to speak to Kira about the faux pas of bringing and eating food in the waiting room. It was inconsiderate to sick people like him, who were so easily nauseated thanks to their illnesses. He vowed to have a private conversation with the man regarding this violation of common courtesy.

Yumichika flounced past Byakuya, his face an unattractive splotchy mess of tear tracks and a wool blanket slung over his shoulders like a cape, crying, "My life is over! Over!" Hanatoru ran after him, a handful of pamphlets precariously gripped in sweaty hands.

Byakuya wordlessly gave the Fourth Division the urinary sample they required, though it was the first time he had ever had to give them one for the flu While waiting for Unohana to arrive, he thumbed through the gossip magazine that was two seasons old. Byakuya made it his business to know everything that was going on – for knowledge, especially over others, was powerful – but he kept such business private. (It was why all the gossip magazine subscriptions delivered to his estate were in Rukia's name.)

There was no reason why he should be sniffling sadly over the rumored breast reduction that one vice-Captain Matsumoto was planning. Stupid cold. Stupid rumors. Which he already heard and dismissed the year before.

Byakuya was lightly dabbing his nose when Unohana came in, her expression far too solemn for him to be suffering a simple flu or a cold. She performed a precursory exam, but her body language suggested that it was more for show: she already knew what he suffered from and was merely going through the motions.

Byakuya set aside the magazine and regarded her with equal solemnity, fully expecting to be told that he had just caught a horrible disease of some sort off of the likes of Captain Ukitake.

"Well, Byakuya-san, do you want the good news first, or the bad news?"

Byakuya thought a moment. "Bad news first; then I'll have something to look forward to."

Her lips twitched in an awful attempt to smile. "The bad news: you're pregnant."

Byakuya let that sink in for a moment. "I beg your pardon, Unoahana-san?"

"Pregnant. As in hosting a fetus that is so deeply buried within your reiryoku that extraction would be invasive, and may very well cause severe and lasting damages."

Byakuya slowly nodded in acceptance. To doubt Unohana's expertise would be like doubting whether or not there was an afterlife. And since they currently were in the afterlife, there was little room for argument. "That is a risk we cannot afford to take." A pause, because doubt wasn't the same as the need for absolute, total, and complete confirmation… "Are you sure it's human?" And mine? was left unvoiced.

"Not only am I positive, I can also sense that it shares a very strong genetic and spiritual similarity to you."

Byakuya liked his dignity, but one could always confide with one's doctor matters that couldn't be spoken with others – like one's barber – and still maintain dignity. "How is this possible when I haven't had sex in over two months?" Not since any interest he might have with fornication dried up when Rukia's foray into the living world was extended far beyond what was normal, let alone permissible, and contact couldn't be made. The continuing matter of his lacking love life hadn't been rectified as of lately, either largely due to his distaste in victory sex in general ... especially when that creature was the one who rescued Rukia.

"I suspect," Unohana said carefully, "that this isn't a natural pregnancy."

Byakuya didn't even dignify that with a response.

"I would venture to postulate that this pregnancy required artificial means."

Byakuya let that sink in. And knew then just who was responsible for this travesty. "I see," he said with a very quiet voice. "Before I leave to address this… cause of my unnatural pregnancy… what's the good news?"

Unohana's smile was a little more certain this time. "You did mention last night at the party that your family had been making strong hints about finally producing an heir."

Byakuya blinked. And realized, by this point, that his dignity had probably dragged it's broken and bleeding carcass into a faraway corner and died an ignoble death.