RR: Copy and Paste is my friend, too! :D This is starting to shape up into a proper fic! Hope you have a good day at work!

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In the kitchen, Sanji worked quietly. His mind was churning over everything that had happened, ever so aware of the unnatural fluttering in his lower belly. He still couldn't come to terms with accepting it, but the picture was very vivid in his mind. He could still count all the fingers and toes visible in the photo. He found himself wondering how the baby would look when born – how would it be born? He couldn't help but reflect on his ass, thinking about the way he'd lose his guts all of a sudden – 'like a giraffe'.

He chewed on his lower lip, looking at his chopping board, at the vegetables laying there. He smelled the soup cooking lightly, and the bread was rising off to the side. Looking at the kitchen, taking in the entire area with a thoughtful expression, he tried to imagine having a child nearby. Maybe lying in a bassinet off to the side, or curled up in some type of backpack – he remembered seeing those, somewhere…

But what mattered to him was how…?

Was this some diabolical effect of his father's? The modifications that succeeded with his brothers could have manifested elsewhere inside of him, pervading his cells with some type of medical nerd speech inserted here – but Sanji couldn't be for certain that this was so. He was sure that in order to have this confirmed, they would need some type of communication going on between himself and his family. After leaving Totto Land the way they did, he wasn't about to do so, so soon.

But he had to keep that in mind, to further test that aspect of himself and get the confirmation he needed to think that this was the work of his father. Maybe this was how his mother was impregnated…? It was a far more welcome thought than the original.

If he gave up the "monster", the thought of the Heart Pirates keeping it for examination and testing gave him a distressing feeling. It made him think of himself in the baby's place – prodded and scrutinized and forced into some artificial womb, to grow up in pain and distress, and if they kept it alive, it essentially was Sanji's child; and to know he'd given up that child because men don't have babies was enough to have his chest aching fiercely.

"Well?" he heard Zoro demand from aside the counter, and Sanji looked up at him with a start. He hadn't even heard the man come in. Sanji focused on the knife as Zoro waited, stern face eclipsed with curiosity. "What'd they find out?"

"Ah…there's…there's more testing to be done," Sanji muttered, feeling the tips of his ears redden. His gut twisted, and he looked at Zoro, aghast for a few moments. There's no way, he told himself, over and over. "Nothing for you to lose sleep over."

Zoro gave him a withering look, his hands tucked into his robe as he crossed his arms. "Nothing about you has ever caused me to 'lose sleep'."

"Surely, lying to yourself causes baldness in all the wrong places."

"What 'wrong places' - ? And, furthermore, I'm only asking because we're going into this adventure with a full crew, and I want to make sure we're all in it, this time. No snaking out because you're sick, or whatever," Zoro huffed, taking a seat at the table, swords clacking noisily together. "Can that guy fix it?"

"…Yes," Sanji answered quietly, resuming chopping.

Zoro waited for a conclusion, but nearly a minute later, Sanji did not expand on the matter. "Well, what the hell was it?"

"It's…something I had somehow…contracted," Sanji answered. "Still unclear how, but they're working on it to see if it'll possibly infect others. It's a delicate process to discuss, but…I'm mulling over the extraction process that can be administered within that nerd's hands."

"So, you're fucking infectious?" Zoro asked suspiciously, looking disturbed as his hands pulled out from his robe and his shoulders grew rigid.

"I honestly don't know. But if you haven't caught any of my symptoms by now, I'm pretty sure you're okay!" Sanji exclaimed, unable to stop himself from looking at his exposed middle, wondering, with horror, that Zoro was hiding a similar lump underneath all that material. But he'd seen him shirtless plenty of times after – as flat as a board.

It took a few moments for Zoro to relax, still regarding Sanji with high suspicion as he loosened his shoulders. "If he isn't sabotaging the lot of us – how do you even know it wasn't him in the first place?" Zoro asked distrustfully.

"Because we just met up with him today, and the last time I saw him, was very briefly on Wano!" Sanji snapped at him. "When he was making his escape the first time!"

Zoro scowled out the window. "I still don't trust him."

"Your opinion doesn't matter. In the end, it's Luffy's."

"No one trusts him!"

"And that's something we'll have to live with, but…moving on…it wasn't him by any means. There's no advantage for it, for any benefit."

"It's a way in to guarantee his safety while he sails with us. That coward. Using you as a negotiation device. But he doesn't know that I'd kill you, too, if it came down to it."

Sanji rolled his eyes.

"So, did you get cured?" Zoro then asked.

Sanji thought about his answer. He set the knife aside. "I haven't yet fully committed to the idea of a cure, because there are some moral boundaries I've yet to assess of myself."

Zoro stared at him with a blank expression. "You either get cured, or you don't, cook! What's so hard about that?"

Sanji studied him for a few moments. Zoro was good with kids – no matter what, children seemed to flock towards him. What was it about the greenhaired swordsman that caused such open feeling from those younger than him? He might have a face that scared full grown adults, but at most places, kids often threw rocks at Zoro, or teased him, or openly stared at him, and barely react to his snarling. So it made Sanji wonder if the child inside of him would like him, too, or would react as he used to towards Zoro because this child was all of him?

Zoro frowned. "What?"

"It's complicated," Sanji said slowly. "On one hand, I lose my breath trying to explain to you what exactly's going on with me, or on another, I might faint trying to think that you could even understand it when it leaves my lips. I'm trying to weigh my effort with reward and consequence…"

Zoro scowled at him.

Feeling dizzy with the sensation of being overwhelmed by this strange, recently discovered entity taking up roots inside of him, Sanji did end up pressing up against the counter, waiting for the wave to pass. He felt tired all over again, his body constantly in a state of exhaustion that nothing else seemed to relieve. But now, it stood reason that perhaps it was this parasite was 'sucking the soul out of him' that made him feel all these weird things.

He still hadn't accepted it, so he sure as Hell wasn't sure how to explain it to Zoro and the others. Staring at Zoro again, he just wasn't sure how the man was going to take it. Zoro was so stubborn, macho, and if he knew that Sanji was pregnant – a woman's problem – then there was certainly a fight waiting to explode in between them.

But the very idea upset him in such an unnatural way that Sanji had to breathe in deep, exhale in the same manner to prevent himself from resorting to the embarrassing release of tears. Zoro continued watching him suspiciously.

"I hope I don't catch it," Sanji heard him mumble. Because he didn't know what to say without delving into it, Sanji shrugged. He managed to regain control of himself, and resumed chopping.

Now that the mysterious afflictions of his body made sense, Sanji was aware of the discomforts and could file them away. That uncomfortable fullness at his lower belly was the weight of the parasite pressing against his intestines, forcing an unnatural shift against his bladder, a bulge in his waistband that cut into his skin. That constant wave of nausea, dizziness, the exhaustion – was the parasite cutting into his nutrients, draining him. The sleeplessness he experienced late at night, when all of them were in their hammocks, was the unconscious stress of the unnatural festering inside of him – his body had known of the unidentified symptoms and worried about it without him. The backache was definitely the matter pressing against his spine and guts, and the swelling of his hands, feet and chest – that was definitely the hormones at work.

"I don't think you have the required parts," he said in response, his voice filling the silence suddenly. It had been so long since Zoro had said anything that the swordsman looked at Sanji with puzzled action, taking a few moments to remember what had been said.

"Is this going to set us back?" Zoro asked.

Sanji realized he could not lay on this issue for very long. What if a recovery period was needed? He would have to tell Law tonight. He felt a sort of panicked pressure in his chest upon this realization.

"Of course, it makes sense to get rid of it," he mumbled to himself, resuming chopping. "There's just no other way about it."

"Why would you keep it?" Zoro asked, bewildered. "We get rid of colds, we don't nurture them."

"I'm aware of that, but this one is a different process."

"How? I can't see the advantage of nurturing a virus…You look like shit, you act like shit, and you behave like shit – and it's ten times worse with this thing infesting your body!"

"See, listen here, pea-shit for brains, I'm going to make this as simple as possible," Sanji said, lighting up a cigarette. "The virus is actually a parasite – I picked it up somewhere. It made its home inside of me, and is connected to all my special parts – it eats what I do, it breathes what I do, it takes my blood, etcerera. You understand?"

Zoro gave him a flat look, crossing his arms over his chest. "Yeah, yeah."

"After a somewhat thorough inspection, it has been determined that some surgery is required to remove it all from inside of me. I'm not fully aware of the risks, just yet. They wanted to dive right in, but…I needed some time to think about it."

Zoro gave him a bewildered look. "Why 'think' about it? Just do it! Recover so we can move on!"

"There are some things that I must mull over before I give my permission," Sanji said, tapping ashes out onto the tray nearby. "I could actually die from this. That's the thing."

Well, I'm not lying, Sanji thought to himself as Zoro absorbed this information.

"Oh," Zoro said finally, looking a little thoughtful. "So that's how it is…"

"Yep…."

"And he's the only one that can remove it," Zoro ended with an unsteady exhale.

Sanji nodded with confirmation. "Nothing fishy about it, he's eager to do so, but I can't exactly submit myself right away at the thought of…all of that. I'm sure there's a reason why he's nicknamed 'Surgeon of Death' rather than life. And all those tattoos…"

"He's all bluff!" Zoro scoffed.

"Right…well…you see my quandary."

"And you don't know when you'd picked it up? So there's no actual cure?" Zoro pressed.

Sanji shook his head. He stabbed out the rest of his cigarette, licking his lips. The taste of nicotine and smoke in his mouth made it cloudy and foul, and he ran his tongue over his teeth. He wondered if the baby – no, parasite! – choked on the taste. If it seized upon the brief suffocation of a long inhale, if nicotine paralyzed its thoughts the same way it did with him. If this was so, if it were stealing oxygen from him, then surely it would be bodily affected by the choices he made.

He'd drank his share of wine and beer; smoked constantly; ate all the wrong foods that gave him occasional heartburn and indigestions (always on some island, or prepared by others, which is why he often stepped in to cook for everyone). So he assumed that everything he ingested, it ingested.

Was that why mothers made a conscious effort to stop smoking and drinking? Why they developed odd cravings? Was that some sort of natural maternal instinct that he could not develop because he was a man? He thought about his mother, full with them – did she develop cravings? Was she the same way as he is, now?

Was this caused by his father, in retaliation for everything that happened on Totto Land?

"Cook," Zoro interrupted him firmly, "think out loud. I can't hear what's going through your head, and whatever it is, is causing you a lot of melodramatic distress. Just get it out into the open, because I'm just going to hear about it later."

"Well, I'm thinking about dying, but, whatever, it might be too melodramatic for you!" Sanji said with a huff, tapping out another cigarette.

"Everything you do is melodramatic, but…if it truly bothers you, you should really talk to the others, about it," Zoro advised, rising to stand.

"Why can't I talk to you?" Sanji asked, giving him a curious look.

"Because whatever it is, if it isn't going to affect me in some way, and this is something treatable, I don't care much about it. Just get rid of it. You won't die, I was just teasing you," Zoro added, almost irritably. "I don't know why you aren't thicker skinned."

"Don't act like you're the one responsible for my feelings, you ass!" Sanji shouted at him, red-faced.

"I'm not responsible for you! You make your own choices!"

"I have never, in this amount of time, ever said you were!"

"Just in case, though," Zoro said, giving him a skeptical look. "If it's not something I won't catch because of my association with you, then, that's it. Nothing more."

Grinding his teeth, Sanji glared after him as the swordsman left the kitchen, yawning noisily. Amidst the sounds of the shouts and laughter of Luffy, Ussop, Brook and Chopper, Sanji listened to Zoro walk off. His feelings were boiling at this point – how dare Zoro assume that Sanji placed responsibility of his feelings on Zoro. Sanji never did. He occasionally expressed concern about their own crewmembers or some odd fate that they found themselves in, but never personal feeling.

Those…those were always reserved.

This time, he couldn't help but feel personally affected by Zoro's words.

'Association'? Did that include some nights they'd used to explore their options when nothing more was available? Those moments where easy conversation almost drifted into personal detail about what happened while separated? It was a good thing he'd held himself back. He had to acknowledge the hurt feeling he felt,and he knew it was the hormones doing the speaking for him, but it felt as if it couldn't be helped.

He exhaled shakily.

At that moment, Jinbei marched in, giving him a cursory frown. "Chopper has informed us that you are sick?"

"Is it contagious?" Nami asked, walking around him, giving Sanji a worried look.

"Torao can fix it, right?" Luffy asked, marching between both of them to make his way to the counter, looking at Sanji with worry. "That's why he's here!"

"It's nothing to be worried over!" Sanji exclaimed. "It's already been identified, and there's a plan involved to allow me as less time necessary to recover."

"No more mood swings?" Nami asked, narrowing her eyes as she sat at the counter next to Luffy. "Because I can't handle it anymore."

"We can do situps together, if you want," Luffy whispered from behind his cupped hands.

"I'm curious about this," Jinbei said, smelling of the sea, and looking at Sanji with concern. "Your symptoms were so erratic, it was hard placing a betting guess upon them. I'm glad the surgeon was able to identify them and find the cause of it in such a short amount of time."

"Yeah, same here," Sanji muttered with some embarrassment. He finished chopping, and tended to some herb sprigs he had set aside to grind into dust. With the mortar and pestle in hand, he leaned a hip against the counter and said, "I just…had to weigh some options. It's uh…complicated."

"How complicated?" Nami asked.

"Why do you have to 'think' about it?" Luffy asked curiously. "If you have a cold, kill it to make it better!"

Sanji winced. He couldn't help but think of the fetus in Law's tattooed hands, tiny fingers flexing before the surgeon crushed the pulpy formation between his palms.

He set the items aside and covered his mouth, looking up at the ceiling while blinking rapidly. The three stared at him with considerable silence, unsure of what prompted the action, or even what to say. Then they exchanged nervous looks with each other.

"Still sick!" Sanji managed to say, resisting urgent temptation to touch his abdomen. He chuckled, going back to work. "What did Chopper tell you?"

"You're pregnant," Nami and Jinbei said stiffly, while Luffy's mouth dropped open with a loud gasp.

Sanji stared at them, feeling his face warm with growing heat as he stopped grinding. "WHAT."

"Well, basically, he said you were infected with an unidentified parasite that's using your organs to thrive, and it formed another human body inside of you. To me, it sounds like you're pregnant," Nami said flippantly, eyes coasting down to his loose shirt.

"Fantasia Island is known to breed men rather than their women, because of their females' plain features. But it was generations previous that figured out how men were able to bear children after losing most of their females during a rampaging illness that swept over the island years ago. It is because of the men's contributions that their females are so…plain, and why they continue to endure bearing children as their women are too ungodly boring to bed," Jinbei contributed lightly, Nami looking up at him with disgust. "Perhaps you were given something back there, and it absorbed into you as a fitting host."

"Ah! So exciting!" Nami exclaimed, clapping her hands.

Luffy stared at Sanji in silence, the cook looking stiffly horrified as he considered Nami's and Jinbei's faces. Cupping his mouth once again, Luffy caught Sanji's attention.

"Sanji! It's okay, because Traffle Guy can fix you," he said, Sanji frowning at him. "That's his power. That's why we need him."

"First off," Sanji said slowly, setting the mortar and pestle down, "please don't get the idea in your heads that this is a 'pregnancy'. It's an infection, and infections can be removed upon treatment. Second of all, you old jerk, if you knew this beforehand, why didn't you say anything?"

"I thought to, but it was too fantastic of a theory," Jinbei said with a low sigh. "After all, you're quite a ladies' man. Even if you have a very close relationship with your na – "

"IT WASN'T DONE IN THE WAY THAT YOU THINK!" Sanji bellowed at him, Nami laughing merrily as Jinbei looked taken back. "IT WAS NEVER DONE THAT WAY!"

"Oh, ho ho ho ho! There's no use throwing a temper tantrum about it, dear. What's been done, is done," Nami said airily. "Besides, if Torao said he could fix it, trust him to do so. After all, he got this little shit up and running."

"I'm super great," Luffy whispered to Sanji, eyes lighting up. "So whatever he has to do with you, I'm sure you'll be super fine. We'll be back on the sea in no time."

"I don't doubt it, but I wasn't planning on telling everyone what was happening," Sanji grumbled. "First off, it's embarrassing, second of all, I don't understand how it happened in the first place."

"I don't think we will," Jinbei said, "unless we perform an individual search for this sort of thing. Frankly, Fantasia Island is a place where boundaries are crossed because they meet the needs of the people. We were just visitors, there."

"Why was that information so useless to me?" Sanji muttered bitterly. "Can you please talk to that introverted nerd about this? Because I'm sure it's really useful."

"Oh, I don't want to step on anyone's toes," Jinbei said lightly.

"I just asked - !"

"So, Sanji," Luffy interrupted, picking at the counter, "you're not pregnant?"

Before Sanji could answer, Ussop, Robin, Franky and Brook stumbled in, all with a mixture of expressions while Chopper trailed after them guiltily.

"I'm sorry!" the reindeer cried. "I was explaining to them how your symptoms added up to a classic parasite situation and they all came up with the conclusion on their own!"

"Sanji, I thought I had a talk about this!" Franky exclaimed, much to Sanji's mortification. "We needed to be more careful!"

"What are you talking about?" Sanji snarled at him with mortification.

"That's sad if you're getting lectured by someone like Franky on safe sex," Ussop muttered, wearing a judgmental expression.

"As one of the oldest ones here, someone needs to take on the responsibility!" Franky roared. "No one else dares to!"

"Was this performed traditionally?" Robin asked curiously, resting cheek on palm. "I have a few questions for the father…for professional reasons only!"

"Oooh, this is terrible! So terrible!" Brook wailed dramatically. "With you off the market, I'll - !"

"I'M NOT!" Sanji bellowed over all their words, causing them to all silence and look at him. "For fuck's sake! It's not as dramatic as you think! It's a virus, something easily removed! Don't make it into something it's not! Look, we've already discussed this with Law, he knows what to do. The only reason why I'm digging my heels is that this thing is attached to my insides like – like a damn suckerfish. He pulls it lose, there's potential for it to be more dangerous removed than it is if allowed to thrive."

"In that aspect, doesn't that mean it's leeching off of you?" Robin asked, holding her hand up to be noticed, while the others absorbed this information.

"Yes," Sanji grumbled. "It'll continue eating at me while it grows."

"Then remove the damn thing! You can heal!" Luffy growled, hitting the counter with a fist. "We have time for this! It's no problem!"

"Look, if it wasn't something I was concerned about, I wouldn't have told him to hold off," Sanji said slowly. "But…I feel…I should…think about it a little further."

"WHAT?" everyone shouted, nearly cracking the windows with the strength of their alarm.

"This thing is going to kill you from the inside, and you're thinking about it? How does that happen?" Franky demanded. "Explain!"

"It's complicated," Chopper interrupted hurriedly. "Because of its leeching status, it's…it's a child. It's all a part of him. A replica, if you will. However it happened into Sanji's body, it's there, now. It's all part of his DNA, and because of its current condition, Law feels that operating on it now will allow him to keep it for further study, and if Sanji chooses to carry it, it will continue leeching off of him until it is somehow…born…"

"Why would you want to keep it?" Ussop asked Sanji with a bewildered face.

"Because it is, essentially, your baby," Robin said, brightening. "No wonder it's a dilemma!"

"How does that happen?" Nami asked. "If you don't have the needed chromosomes to create a child? It just borrows off of you? Is that how it works? We gotta start charging it something in response…that's just nonsense. Nothing is for free, around here! Even babies should be charged rent for the trouble they caused!"

"Law needs to study it to further understand it, but I'm sure he'd have an explanation!" Chopper said.

"How does he know it's a baby?" Luffy asked, bewildered. "Can he see it?"

"If it's already a baby, then I can see why you're hesitating," Ussop said with uncertainty.

"It's not," Sanji said with a huge sigh, avoiding looking at them. "We don't know for sure what it is, where it came from – what if it infects someone else once released? These things are…things that we must look into before…"

"Please don't cry, because you're going to make me cry," Ussop warned him.

"I'M NOT CRYING!" But Sanji sniffled slightly, reaching up to wipe his eyes.

The rest of the crew looked at each other with understanding, murmuring amongst each other.

"STOP LOOKING AT ME! GET OUT OF HERE!"

"Sheesh, we're just concerned about you, that's all," Ussop muttered, tugging on Luffy to follow him.

Disappointed, Robin and Nami trailed out after them, Brook and Franky close behind, Jinbei working his way out the door with some trouble. Chopper looked up at Sanji.

"I'm so sorry," he said with a sniffle. "I didn't mean to reveal it all to them so suddenly, but they were all so concerned about you."

"I know. Chopper, I know how they are, I just…I can't think straight. These hormones, they're…" Sanji shook his head as he trailed off, looking down at the herbs he'd ground into dust. "Look, just keep the kitchen quiet, awhile, okay? I need to think. I can't have all those guys in here, in my face, telling me what to do or how to feel."

Chopper nodded, then hurried off, calling for Ussop to help him with guard duties. Luffy whined in the distance, but Sanji resumed staring at the dust in the mortar. As apprehensive as he felt about the revelation to the others, he felt…relieved. It was one less thing to worry about, and, after discussing it with them, he felt more confident about making the proper decision about it. He lit up another cigarette and went to work finishing lunch.