Please see first chapter for disclaimer, rating, warnings, pairings, etc.

Special Thanks: goes out to Metoochocolate, PolkadottedAngels, DarkAnonymous324, and rao hyuga 18 for the reviews, and also to all those who have read, and added this story to your favorite and alert lists!

Author's Note: A shorter chapter, granted, but some very important information is imparted in this chapter - as well as the fact that it is a bit of a calm-before-the-storm scenario. But I really, really like the end of the first scene, and the beginning of the second, so I hope that you, too, find enjoyment in them. Thanks for reading, and I hope you like!

*~Chapter XVI~*

~Unexpected~

"I picked the wrong week to stop smoking." Asuma closed the door separating the print shop from the office behind his wife and himself. He took a couple of steps and collapsed into his desk chair, burying his hands in his hair as he shook his head back and forth.

Naruto looked up, vaguely at first then in growing surprise as the editor's words registered. "Really? You're quitting?" He tried, but couldn't remember the last time he had seen his boss without a cigarette: either hanging out of his mouth, or lighting a new one as soon as he stubbed out the old one.

"It's an unhealthy, dreadful, nasty habit," Kurenai said firmly, leaning against her husband's desk. "And we owe it to our child to bring him or her into as healthy an atmosphere as we possibly can."

"Oh well, that makes sense," Naruto said. He went back to drafting his article; then half-stood and leaned forward so quickly he knocked his notepad off the desk and had to make a wild grab to keep the laptop in front of him from following. "Child?" he half-screeched. "What child? You mean 'child' as in baby?"

Asuma lifted his head to stare at his employee with bloodshot eyes. "That's right. C'mon, you can't tell me Jiraiya hasn't had this talk with you. Or even Tsunade. You know, the one about when a man and a woman love each other-"

"Ew!" Konohamaru cried from his half of the desk he shared with Naruto. "Please, Uncle Asuma, we don't want to hear about all that! It's disgusting!"

All Naruto could do was stare at Kurenai's stomach, as if waiting for a head or face to pop out of it. "You - you mean you're-?"

"It's not polite to stare, Naruto." Turning on her heel, Kurenai walked over to her desk and sat down so her stomach was hidden from his view. "And yes, I'm pregnant. The baby's due sometime in April."

"Of next year?"

"No, this past year!" Konohamaru exclaimed, exasperated. "Honestly, Boss! What's the matter with you? Of course next year!"

"You could have warned me!" Naruto yelled. "Excuse me for going into shock and not being able to think clearly!"

"You are such a blond sometimes," the younger boy scoffed. Rolling his eyes, he turned back to the photographs he was rearranging across the surface of his narrow space.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Naruto demanded. "Huh?"

"It means that I just found out earlier this morning myself, so when have I had time to warn you?" Konohamaru fired back.

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "That doesn't even make sense."

"Whatever." Konohamaru turned around, staring at his laughing guardians with wide, starry eyes. "I get to write an article on this, right?" he asked. "About my future cousin?"

"Hold on a minute!" Quickly sobering, Kurenai held up her hand. "What makes you think we want to announce it to the village just yet? Perhaps we want to keep it a secret for a little while longer."

"You won't be able to forever," Konohamaru sing-songed. "But as soon as you decide to announce it, can I please please please write the article?"

"You're a photographer," Asuma interjected, since his wife looked a little short on patience at the moment. "What makes you think you can write an article, even if you may?"

Konohamaru shrugged. "Naruto can do it. Can't be that hard."

Naruto's face heated furiously. "Konohamaru!" he thundered. "You're still in school! I had to graduate before they let me do anything major!"

Chuckling, Asuma reclined in his chair and grinned. "Well, if you really want to do it, you may write the article, but under close supervision." He held up his hand to forestall Konohamaru's celebration, stopping him mid-cheer. "By Naruto. However, this will only happen when Kurenai and I decide we're ready to announce it. Deal?"

"Uh, yeah sure, Uncle Asuma! Deal!" Konohamaru flashed a huge grin, then cheerfully turned back to his photographs.

Naruto sat down again and said, "By the way, congratulations, Asuma, Kurenai. That's great news!" He dropped his eyes back to his article, but without really seeing it. While he felt truly, genuinely happy for his bosses, on some deep level a small, insecure part of himself thought, I can see it now. Konohamaru is gonna be some sort of reporter prodigy, and I'm going to be left out in the cold. Probably get stuck sorting the mail or, even worse, answering the mail. He unconsciously shuddered.

"Hey, Naruto," Asuma suddenly said from right behind him. Naruto jumped and spun around in his chair, nearly falling off it. "I can't sit still if I'm going cold turkey. C'mon and walk with me."

Am I getting the sack already? skittered through Naruto's mind. "Uh, sure, Boss."

Once outside the editor stuck his hands into his jacket pockets and set a moderate pace toward a nearby park. A wooden bridge arched across the small stream that wound through it. Asuma stopped at the halfway point. Pulling out his cigarette lighter he leaned back against the railing and began idly flicking it on, then flipping the lid shut to extinguish the tiny flame, over and over again. Naruto leaned his forearms on the warm wood and watched the clear water rippling over white pebbles, waiting for his boss to speak.

"You know, Naruto," Asuma finally said, "you look more and more like your dad with every passing year. But when it comes to personality, you're more like your mom. They were a special pair, all right, and more than just colleagues when we were all working for my old man. They were our closest friends. That's why we decided that when we took over running the Daily, we would make Minato and Kushina full partners with us."

Naruto's breath abruptly stuck somewhere between his lungs and his throat. He turned his head slightly to look at Asuma, who continued to fiddle with his lighter.

"But they - died - before the Old Man retired. Time passed. Eventually the paper passed to us, we'd taken over raising Konohamaru in the meantime, Tsunade and Jiraiya were raising you: but we never forgot those earlier plans. And you being your parents' son, neither one of us was surprised when you started showing up around the office, trying to pester us into believing that you were the Daily's next star reporter." With a final sharp snick! Asuma shut his lighter and returned it to his pocket. "We were going to wait until you came of full age, but Kurenai's pregnancy has made us rethink things."

His shoulders sagging, Naruto thought sadly, Here it comes, as his brief flare of excitement sputtered and died. He closed his eyes, wishing he could somehow close his ears and his heart, too.

"We've watched you growing up, Naruto, taken you on and trained you in the business. And neither one of us has a single doubt that you inherited all Minato and Kushina's fire as two of the best reporters we've ever known. So we talked it over with your grandparents, and they gave us the go ahead to tell you." Asuma paused to clear his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was roughter. "We've been holding your parents' partnership in trust for you. As of today, you're a junior partner in the Konoha Daily, with full partnership waiting for you down the road."

Naruto didn't remember moving, but suddenly he was standing very straight and facing Asuma as shock, disbelief, excitement, and finally overwhelming joy crashed through him. "I- I- Asuma, you- I-"

Asuma's lips quirked as he met Naruto's eyes for a long moment. "Yeah, well," he said gruffly, "don't let it go to your head, or anything, hear? For now and the next several years, Kurenai and I are still your bosses as senior partners."

"Oh, hey, right, no problem!" Naruto hastily agreed. Whirling back to the railing, he rested his forehead on his folded arms as his overpowering emotions burst out of him in a flood of tears. A moment later he felt a large hand come to rest between his heaving shoulders, as gentle and comforting as a father's.

To Tenten's surprise, Kakashi was already in the kitchen when she got there for supper, a bento box in each of his hands. "It's much too nice an evening to stay indoors," he said cheerfully. "So I took the liberty of getting our meals to go. If you'll just bring the tea?"

"Of course, big brother," she said lightly, even while wishing her insides didn't seize up automatically now at every prospect of being alone with him. Accepting a large insulated pot of tea and two cups from a kitchen worker, she followed him to a pretty little shaded fountain just beyond the kitchen gardens. As she poured tea for them, she asked, "So, did you get to see any of the festival? Or were you cooped up inside the estate all evening?"

"I saw most of the opening ceremony from the top of the Tower." Kakashi handed her a box. "Can't say I was really interested in anything beyond that - after all, I'm older than I used to be, so the games and rides and such don't appeal to me so much." He ate a couple of pieces of sushi, then asked, "What did you think of it?"

Tenten took a quick sip of tea. "The opening ceremony was really, really impressive. I still get goosebumps remembering it: the darkness being chased away by the lights, the gongs and the drums and the flutes. How do they do that, anyway? Make it look like the light spills down over the edge of the cliff and then washes over the village?"

Kakashi chuckled. "I asked one of the monks that very same question once. Thought he wouldn't mind telling me since we'd gone to school together and was-"

"-An old friend of yours," Tenten interrupted with a giggle.

"Don't be impertinent, Panda," he said with a grin. "I do have a lot of friends in the village. He said he'd be glad to tell me, except then he'd have to kill me-"

"Okay, okay. It's a secret. Give me your cup, and I'll refill it." She suited actions to words, saying, "However they do it, it was incredible. We had a fantastically good view, too. Lord Sasuke took us up to the top of the police headquarters steps. He said he wanted us to have the best possible view since it was Lady Hinata's and my first time seeing it."

"How did she, er, handle being out in a crowd that size? Given her sheltered upbringing, I mean."

"Given that her father's kept her locked up on the estate most of her life, you mean?" Tenten fired back, then sighed. "Sorry, I know, I know, it's not your fault- Actually I think that's why Lord Sasuke took us up there; even though she did a great job hiding it, he could tell she was having some trouble. I know he kept giving her these little glances without seeming to as we were walking from the estate to the plaza."

"H- Well." Kakashi quickly altered the sound he started to make into a word. "What is your impression of Lord Sasuke, Panda?"

Tenten chased a last few grains of rice with her chopsticks and took her time replying. "I'll admit, from what Ino said about him the night she stayed over, I expected a jerky spoiled rich kid. But that might have been because she used to have a massive crush on him, and he made it abundantly clear he wasn't interested. He wasn't anything like that, though. He was polite, pleasant, attentive to milady's comfort," she shrugged. "A well brought up, high-clan gentleman, I guess you would say. Now, are you going to ask me what Lady Hinata thought of him, big brother? And if you do, are you asking for yourself, or at Lord Hiashi's request?"

Kakashi gave her a long, steady look before saying softly yet sternly, "That was impertinence, Tenten, and completely uncalled for. Are you losing your objectivity? Do I need to remind you of who and what we are; of our purpose in being here?"

Tenten's cheeks flooded with heat and her eyes filled with tears. Setting aside her empty bento box she bowed very, very low. "I'm - I'm sorry, Kakashi," she said, and heard him sigh just before she felt him flick her hair buns.

"I have been remiss in teaching you, Panda Bear," he said as she sat up again. She raised her gaze cautiously to his solemn face. "You have never been in a prolonged situation like this. Add to that Lady Hinata's sweet personality- I should have warned you how easy it might be for your professionalism to be eroded without you even realizing it. It's hard, I know, but you must constantly remember you are here to be Lady Hinata's bodyguard, Tenten: Not her friend."

"Yes, big brother," she said in a subdued voice, knowing in her heart that she lied. And he doesn't even have a suspicion that I'm in contact with Neji. . . .

He smiled at her. "No more tears, little sister. It's a learning situation, one I should have addressed the last time we shared a mealtime."

Tenten smiled shakily back at him. When they parted ways to take up their duties again, Kakashi gave her quick hug as he whispered, "Love you, Panda Bear."

"Love you too, big brother." She hugged him back, a dull ache throbbing behind her eyes.

Hinata seemed equally pensive when they rejoined company outside the dining room and made their way back to the heiress's suite. Fortunately she did not seem any more disposed to conversation than Tenten, whose headache steadily worsened as the evening deepened. A soak in the hot tub did nothing to relieve it. By the time the two young women retired, the one to her bed, the other to her futon, the latter felt desperately grateful for the dark and quiet. Closing her eyes she set herself to a set of meditation exercises, willing the pain to ease and sleep to come-

-Only to wake an indeterminate amount of time later with shattering pain extending from her head to the small of her back, accompanied by horrific nausea. Half-staggering, half-crawling, she made it to the toilet room before being violently ill, somehow having the presence of mind to lock the door behind her.

"Tenten! Tenten!" Through the sound of her own retching, she heard Hinata calling her name as she tried to open the locked door.

"Hina, no, go 'way," she croaked back her first opportunity between bouts of sickness. "You can't - be - 'round me-"

Time dragged miserably past. The point came where Tenten could only lay on the cold tile floor, too weak to lift herself when dry heaves racked her. When blackness finally drank down her consciousness, she yielded to it gratefully.

Lights. Voices. Hands touching her, lifting her, moving her. Tenten feebly tried to bat them away. She cracked her eyelids open the merest slit; groaned and shut them again at an overwhelming impression of pinkness.

"Tenten! Tenten, listen to me!" A woman's voice, but not Hinata's. This one was crisper, firmer, carrying a note of unmistakable authority. "Lady Hinata is safe. Now we need to take care of you. I'm Haruno Sakura, a Healer, and we're going to get you all cleaned up and feeling better, okay?"

Tenten forced her eyes open again, tried to force her mind to take in what she was being told as well. "Haruno - Sakura?" she repeated faintly, a dim bubble of memory rising slowly to the surface of her mind. "F-Forehead?"

The other woman laughed. "Well, I see you've met my good friend Ino. Yes, that's right. Relax now, and leave everything to me."

Tenten sank into a state where time passed in a hazy, in-and-out blur. Aware on some level of the Healer Sakura's ministering presence, she spent most of that period drifting either on the thin edge of consciousness, or in utter blackness.

Came a time, though, when she suddenly awoke feeling weak and drained, but indefinably better. It was night-time. She heard the sound of soft steady breathing in the room with her. Turning her head on her pillow, she saw in the faint light from a single lamp Sakura sleeping on a pallet not too far from her own. And between them-

Tenten blinked, not sure her eyes were working correctly. On the floor between them lay a single, fiery red amaryllis blossom. She stretched out a shaking hand to pick it up, and realized there was a very small piece of paper tied to the stem. Tilting it, she read the three tiny words written on it: Feel better soon.

*~To Be Continued~*

Author's Ending Notes: A shorter chapter, and not quite as much going on, but I really like the feel of this chapter. It's really emotional, with a lot of expanding on some of the characters and their relationships with their peers, superiors, and family members. I especially like the scene with Asuma and Naruto, it so perfectly throws into relief the fact that he's not a kid anymore - he's an adult now, and able to accept more responsibility. I like that touch, especially compared to how he's maturing as a character in the manga/anime. Anyway, I'll stop rambling for now, except to say I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'll see you for the next update!