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Heritage Arc.

Eternal Spiral.

Chapter 3: What's My Line Again?

"You know, when I decided to take you on this trip, I didn't expect you to have hidden rendezvous with the Uchiha brat," Jiraiya said, looking at his goddaughter with short lived shock.

He'd seen it coming really, well, not this exactly. He'd seen the fact Naruto loved the brat who'd shoved a Chidori through her chest, not once but twice, nearly killing her. This generations team seven had been like a kick to the gut, reminding him not only of his own team, but of the one he'd taught.

Team Hiruzen, also a team seven, had consisted of the Legendary Sannin. Himself, Tsunade, and Orochimaru. Team Jiraiya, his team, had consisted of Namikaze Minato, Uchiha Mikoto, and Himura Masaru. Both teams reminded him all too much of Naruto's team.

The fan girl, the genius, and the dead last; the epic love triangle of team seven. He was unsure if the team was simply cursed or if it was some cosmic joke. If it was a curse though, he was sure Orochimaru had something to do with it, it would be just like him to curse a team dynamic before leaving the Leaf for good. Petty revenge had always been something the snake sannin enjoyed.

When he'd asked Naruto what had possessed her to do things he thought Kushina and Minato might castrate him for, if they knew he'd not been watching her properly, her answer had been simple.

'It was a whim at first, I guess,' and the long haired blonde had shrugged as if talking of the weather. 'The first time he came we talked, and I thought it would be the only night. But I missed him, I still do. Is that love, Ero-sennin?'

Rubbing his temples, Jiraiya looked at the girl before him. How she'd been meeting with the Uchiha boy for nearly a year without him knowing was beyond him. He probably still wouldn't have known if not for the signs. The lack of monthly cycle, the fatigue, not to mention the dreaded hormones and morning sickness. He didn't need to be a medic to diagnose pregnancy. He didn't even have to, because Naruto had woken up this morning as pale as a ghost and told him what Kyūbi had told her.

Apparently, the Kyūbi was unhappy with the fact he once again had to share living space with a growing meat-bag, but it didn't stop the large fox from protecting it if training had gotten rough before the fox finally decided to tell the blonde Jinchūriki. According to the fox, women usually weren't this stupid as for him to have to tell them they were pregnant. Jiraiya chalked that up to the fact all his previous containers had been female (he didn't even bother wondering why the seal was affected by the pregnancy. He'd worry about that later).

Mito, Kushina, and now Naruto. Obviously the former jinchūriki had realized when they were pregnant, but Jiraiya had to wonder if Naruto had ever been given the sex talk, or if she knew where babies come from to begin with.

"Ero-sennin, say something. The staring is making me nervous," Naruto said, fiddling with her orange kimono-blouse sleeves.

"Naru, have you ever had the talk before?" he asked, knowing if he didn't ask these things Minato and Kushina might come back just to haunt him for leaving her ignorant (even if it was too little too late). "Or about safe sex for that matter."

Naruto blinked, her head tilting to the side like a confused baby fox.

"You mean there's a talk?" she asked. She was confused on what talk he meant. She'd talked about a lot things in life, but no one had phrased something quite like that.

Jiraiya groaned.

"How did you even know about sex to begin with, Naruto?"

Naruto blushed, uncomfortable with the conversation, but she'd brought it on herself (or so the stupid fur-ball smugly pointed out). She blamed the fox, even if it was misplaced blame and the real culprit was her heightened hormones caused by puberty – which explained why she hadn't thought better of accepting Sasuke's advances; as for the following nights after that... well, why bother? She missed him and he was there.

Evidently, female jinchūriki also suffered from cycles were they were more fertile than any other time of the month. Naruto hadn't known that before she and Sasuke began having sex, and the Kyūbi only mentioned it after he told her she was pregnant.

"I used to live in the Red-Light district before Jiji got me my apartment. You see a lot around there, and sometimes if I ran to the brothel the girls there would let me hide out until the coast was clear. They taught me a few things about male and female anatomy and stuff," Naruto explained, her cheek heating up in embarrassment. She'd never told anyone about the sisters at the brothel, though she suspected the third Hokage had known.

Jiraiya grimaced at the reminder of his failures as godfather. "Did they explain where babies come from?"

Naruto blushed and said, "I am not three, sensei, I know where babies come from. The older sisters at the district once told me they came from when Ramen and Kami got together for a game, but later they explained it to me properly. I know sex leads to babies if you don't use protection, but uh, I have only a vague idea what that is."

Jiraiya sweat-dropped and sighed again. He was too old for this crap.

"Okay, so if you knew that, why did you have to sleep with the Uchiha boy?" he asked.

Naruto blinked.

"I didn't."

"What?" Jiraiya deadpanned. "Then who is the father?"

"Sasuke," she answered, blinking owlishly.

"But you said he wasn't."

"No, I didn't," Naruto argued.

Jiraiya twitched.

"Yes, you did. You said you didn't sleep with him."

"I did not!" she replied heatedly.

"Then who did you have sex with?"

Now Naruto was getting angry, and her brow began to twitch.

"I told you, Sasuke."

"You just said you didn't sleep with him!" he exclaimed, and he blanched when he noticed the dark expression on Naruto's face, it only added to his unease when her long hair began to stand up like nine-tails.

Just like Kushina, he thought fondly.

"What does sleeping have to do with babies?!" she exclaimed, slamming her palms onto the table in front of her. "I didn't sleep with Sasuke. There wasn't much sleeping done!"

Jiraiya stared blankly at his goddaughter, his brain trying to comprehend what all this meant. Slowly he began to laugh; oh lord, she was still so naive. She'd thought he seriously meant sleeping.

"What's so funny?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Naruto, sometimes sleeping with someone doesn't mean literally sleeping. Sometimes it means you had sex with that person. Understand?" he asked. Naruto frowned, blinked, and then nodded.

"I think so."

"Good. So, can you answer my other question?"

"Uh, let me think," she said and then nodded, recalling the question that led to there long debate over sleeping and the babies father. "I sort of forgot. I mean, its been a while since the girls told me these things and I didn't even know what they meant by protection. And Sasuke has this effect on me..."

Considering you forgave him for shoving a Chidori through your chest, I'd say he does, Jiraiya thought dryly, but they did say love was blind.

"Didn't they teach you this at the Kunoichi lessons in the Academy?" he asked.

Naruto blushed. "I hated those lessons. Not to mention the teachers didn't like me because of Kyūbi, so I mostly skipped those days."

Jiraiya sighed in exasperation. "It's too late for that now, anyway. Protection is a condom or birth control – which are pills that stop this sort of thing from happening."

Naruto thought for a moment and then smiled.

"Oh, I know about those. Sakura explained to me along with Tsunade, but I only remember a little. Tsunade-baachan gave me these pills she said would help prevent pregnancy if I had sex," Naruto said, recalling the pills she still had with her.

"Right, do you take them?" he asked slowly, unsure if she needed to answer considering the situation.

"Yeah, but I guess they don't work," she said, shrugging and rubbing the back of her neck. "But I'm not surprised, Ero-sennin. I mean, I'm immune to most poisons, or at least I've never been poisoned with something I couldn't heal. Although, I guess it's more accurate to say that Kyūbi purges most poisons and foreign substances from my body."

Jiraiya shook his head. Knowing Naruto she probably didn't remember to take them as often as she should, and then there was the fact Kyūbi did filter nearly all drugs from her system. Sakura and Tsunade probably hadn't taken this into consideration.

"Alright," Jiraiya said. "What do you want to do now? You said you're about ten weeks along?"

"That's what Kyūbi said, it would explain why I've gained some weight," she said, looking at her usually flat stomach. It wasn't really noticeable yet to an outsiders point of view, but Jiraiya had noticed her gaining weight. He thought the ramen was just catching up to her, until now.

"Do you want to keep it?" he asked. "There are other options."

Naruto's face became much more serious, and he recognized it as her usual expression when she wasn't hyper, bored, or genuinely didn't understand something. For all her knowledge, it was the simple things that seemed to fly right over her head. But Naru had never claimed to be a genius, she also wasn't as stupid as she pretended to be.

"It's my baby, I want to keep it," she said, and smiled. "I know I have options, I was there for that lesson during the academy. Though sometimes I wish I hadn't been, considering one of the more common reasons Kunoichi have to make a choice like that."

Jiraiya nodded, knowing full well what she meant. As ninja being captured meant the pain of torture, but for a kunoichi being caught by the enemy usually meant more then torture, and it usually ended with rape. That was one reason a Kunoichi had to be strong and safe guard her emotions.

"The council will probably throw a fit, and you can't exactly hide the paternity. Unless it looks a hell of a lot like you," he said.

"I don't plan to hide it, I'm not ashamed of him or her." Then she frowned. "I do recall how obsessed they were with Sasuke. With the Sharingan and Uchiha clan in general, honestly. If they so much as look at my baby wrong, I'll shove a Rasengan up there ass." Her blue eyes narrowed dangerously.

Jiraiya burst out laughing, remembering how Kushina once said something similar, but instead of Rasengan she'd said Bijūdama instead.

"Or let Kyūbi eat them, which ever comes to mind first," she added, shrugging with an almost cruel glint in her eyes, which caused Jiraiya to shudder. Knowing her she'd find a way to go through with that threat.

"This wont be easy you know," he said. "Training will have to be kept to a theory and maybe focused on your Fūinjutsu. It would probably be alright to start teaching you the theory behind the Hiraishin." Naruto had asked about her father's signature jutsu (other than the Rasengan) several weeks into their trip.

While Jiraiya didn't know the Hiraishin himself, he did have access to notes Minato left behind on it. He didn't have a problem letting Naruto look at them, if she could replicate it into a seal that worked for her was another matter all together.

He'd told her about her parents after a run in with Iwa ninja when they were in the Land of Earth. It was a mistake on his part taking her there. She may look a lot like her mother, but her coloring screamed Minato. It came as a surprise when she said she'd always had her suspicions on who her father was.

The fact he was her godfather came out at the same time and after some anger induced shouting, and a few tears on Naruto's behalf, everything had returned to normal. Well, after the first few days in which she barely talked to him, but she'd come to understand that it wasn't because he didn't want to raise her, it was because he couldn't.

His spy network was important, and raising a child on the road wasn't safe when the guardian was one of the sannin. The lesser of two evils might've been being raised on the road with Jiraiya, but hindsight and all. Like Minato, Jiraiya had wanted to have faith that his village wouldn't treat their hero and Jinchūriki like others were treated.

It became clear that faith was misplaced (even if it was mainly emotional abuse she dealt with), but by this time the council wouldn't have allowed Naruto out of their sights. So, he'd done what he could. It was from him that she got her beloved Gama-chan wallet, even if it had been Hiruzen who handed it to her on Jiraiya's behalf. He was just relieved she'd turned out as well as she did. Most Jinchūriki were unstable because of their villages hate, yet she'd overcome it to the best of her ability.

"Um, your check," a voice said. They both looked to see their waitress with a check and uneasy look on her face. Naruto smiled, taking the slip of paper and the waitress quickly left. Jiraiya snatched the check from her hands and looked it over.

"I should have known, cafes in the Land of Water are always expensive," he said morosely. He placed the money on the table with the check as he stood up and stretched his arms out.

"Come on, Naru. We have to get back to the hotel and rest. We head back to the Land of Fire tomorrow, and then we'll find somewhere to settle for a while until that kid pops out," he said. She stood and the two made their way back to the hotel.

"We can head to Wave. I know some people there who could help us set up a place. I also wanted to catch a boat to the Land of Whirlpools. The place may have been destroyed, but the island and ruins are still there," she suggested. "And no one would think about us going there."

"Good idea, Naruto. We'll rent a boat and head to Whirlpool, and after that we'll head to Wave. They're not that far from one another." It was actually farther than it looked on a map, but Jiraiya had never been good with sea travel.

Naruto nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. That had gone much better then she'd thought it would. For the first time in a while she felt genuine happiness. Now if only she could find a way to drag Sasuke back to Konoha and break the news to him that she was pregnant.

Right now she couldn't let him know, and she'd have to hide it as long as she could. She couldn't risk her condition getting into the ears of the wrong people; not with Orochimaru and his obsession with the Sharingan, and Akatsuki breathing down all the jinchūriki's necks. Konoha wouldn't even know until she and Jiraiya returned in three years, possibly longer since she was loosing nine months of intense training.

Inside the seal on her stomach, in a sewer-like cage, the nine-tailed Bijū – Kurama – or more commonly known, Kyūbi no Yōko, squirmed around like a dog trying to get comfortable. Cracking open one eye, the nine-tails rested his large head on his front arms/paws (they weren't true paws or human hands, but a mix of both), and slowly opened the other crimson orb and he growled.

'Cursed Uzumaki women!' he thought, grumbling to himself. 'IT'S SO CRAMPED IN HERE AND IT'S NOT ONLY BECAUSE OF THAT FUCKING SEAL! CURSE YOU YONDAIME FOR HAVING A HORMONAL DAUGHTER, AND BLAST YOU UCHIHA FOR HAVING THE ABILITY TO PROCREATE!'

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Edited: 1/11/18.