DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything from the Naruto universe.

Thinking (+ flashbacks, "Naruto speaking to Kurama in her mindscape," etc.)

Emphasis

Bijuu, etc. speaking

Bijuu, etc. thinking

"BRAXTON-HICKS?" Naruto shouted in disbelief. "What the hell are… Well, I mean, I KNOW what Braxton-Hicks contractions are but I don't WANT them to be Braxton-Hicks."

"So-rry," Tsunade sang lightly, not sounding sorry at all. She snorted: Minato was still pacing back and forth only a little less like a headless chicken now that Naru had finally been given the all-clear. "They are what they are."

"But if those are practice contractions, how bad will the real ones be?!"

"Maa, I thought you weren't worried about pain?" Kakashi immediately realized that he should've kept his masked mouth shut. Although she seemed to have forgotten about it earlier, Naruto couldn't be happy with him freezing up as badly as he did. In his defense, it was the first time he felt THAT close to becoming a father. On the other hand, he'd helped or ordered dozens of women (minimally) to calm down when they were in labor. He let out a very awkward chuckle.

Naru went from glaring at Kakashi to understanding how he'd lost his cool, to pouting in frustration. Now that everything was calm, she was also beyond pissed regarding what he'd said about her retiring. She focused on Tsunade instead. "I wasn't! But the pain was in such a weird spot, ya know: my back and way down here," she explained, pointing with embarrassment to her hips and pelvis.

"Where did you think the pain would be?" Tsunade asked in amusement.

"Up high," Naruto said seriously, placing her palms on the top of her very extended belly. "I mean everything's pushing down, right?"

"Don't forget pushing and pulling open," Tsunade snarked. She always thought it was hilarious how uncomfortable the couple got over these things. Now Kakashi looked like he'd crawl right up his own sore asshole. She still couldn't believe that Naruto had used the Hatake perverted jutsu on it to get Kakashi to move when a Suiton jutsu hadn't worked.

It was no wonder. Although they'd attended parenting classes, those two had attended exactly one childbirth class and had run for the hills. "Did you two watch the birthing video?"

"No," they said together. "I've been present for several births," Kakashi added - although truthfully, he'd always respectfully looked away and tried to stay as far away as possible in those situations. Usually, he had his hands full with something else - say if a woman had been rescued, mid-labor, in a disaster.

"We've read all of the books you've recommended," Naruto told her. She had been far more interested in what to do/what to look out for/what NOT to do than anything about labor pain, though.

"Cesarean," Minato said out of the blue. "Everything today just proves how much better the cesarean option is."

"I keep telling you, Minato," Tsunade argued, "there are significant risks to performing a cesarean! And jinchuuriki or not, Uzumaki or not, it will take longer for her to heal if she has a cesarean."

"I want a decision made now," Kakashi demanded.

Naruto looked back and forth between them, used to this argument although Kakashi was more heated than he normally was. She really didn't care which option they chose. She only wanted to meet her sons, ASAP. She sighed as they discussed what was going to happen.

There was something she could do that was important, pressing, and available to her now, however. She needed some comfort. "I'm gonna make brownies," she decided. She was also hungry! Tsunade followed behind to join her in the kitchen. Kakashi tried not to panic again, and to breathe normally - and instead, bent over and madly pulled at his hair.

"There, there, Kakashi." Minato gently pulled his son-in-law's hands away from his head and then patted his back, smiling at him consolingly. He hadn't seen Kakashi do that since he was a teenager. "If Naruto wants brownies, that means she has some time before this happens, I would think."

Kakashi slumped, relieved that the screaming pain in his head was calming down. "But it seemed so real."

Minato laughed, understanding. It had seemed real to him, too, once he'd been alerted. Kushina had suffered through false labor pains, as well.

Compared to Naruto or probably anyone, Kushina had often been hell on wheels in her third trimester but at least Uzushio kids grew up with homebirths in a very communal environment where the whole village was almost literally a family. Kushina helped a couple of mothers give birth during her first year at the Academy: one of those times, on her own! She was so incredible.

Gods, he missed her.

.

Aside from killing this mofo, Kushina's only thoughts were of her newborn daughter. This snake-like guy, though: she was NOT bringing up Naru-chan in front of him!

Kabuto took a step back when Lady Kushina's attitude turned, her wide smile making it clear that she'd pulled a 180 - or was trying to convince him of that. The last corpses he'd created and revived were not nearly as expressive although they'd still retained much of their personalities, from what he understood of them. "I'm surprised you don't have questions, Lady Kushina."

"Oh, I do!" And that was true! Kushina was in a body that wasn't quite hers, without the fox - without a giant fox claw hole in me, she was positive: the first thing her hands had felt for was her abdomen - in front of a nut who had brought her back from the dead. What a dick! How absolutely disgusting! "Maa, 'Master Kabuto,' is it? I'm more interested in what I can do for you!" she grinned even more, showing off her sharp canines. I'm going to kill you - just as soon as I figure out what your plans are. "I do wonder how you've managed to pull this off."

"Ah," Kabuto exclaimed, showing the first real emotion since she woke up. "You remember your death?"

Kushina's face fell some. She bobbed her head almost imperceptibly. One doesn't forget a night like that. Oh, Minato… Oh, my baby; where are you?!

"I suppose, as an Uzumaki, I should thank you. Your clan is partially responsible for the jutsu I used." Kabuto internally grinned at seeing the fiery woman bristle at that, although she tried to hide her response. He planned to push her buttons over the days that followed to understand how to better control her, and to enhance his jutsu further, of course.

"I'm not sure I understand," Kushina finally decided upon settling on as a response. If her new body was strong, she was going to rip this guy in half, she decided. She tried to feel the world around her but found that her sensing ability had been damaged. Or taken away.

"I believe telling you will be of no consequence," Kabuto admitted slyly. "At the Uzumaki Shrine, there was a mask that allowed my master to be resurrected." For what purpose, Kabuto didn't know. Why the Akatsuki chose to bring Orochimaru of all people fully back from the dead only meant bad news.

Orochimaru's experience with death had changed him. Kabuto didn't like it.

Because of that, Kabuto needed allies, and he had always worked best as a solo artist.

So, the dead would be his allies - and his puppets.

"Were you or this other person able to get into the Uzumaki Temple?" Kushina asked. That means there is another Uzumaki out there! Or… "You used my daughter?!"

"No," Kabuto said truthfully, smirking at the way the woman's hair had risen - just as near-legends told. He found it interesting, having thought that the long hair crackling with chakra, raising in what looked like nine directions was a result of the fox since that was said to happen with her daughter, too. Sadly, Uzumaki Kushina no longer had even a trace of the fox's chakra. The (now-empty) seal work that had been used to hold the fox, (along with what Uchiha Madara's had done, as the masked man was calling himself,) had ensured that every bit of the fox's chakra had been taken from her; damn him. "I have no reason to lie to you about that."

"Does that mean that you've found another Uzumaki?" Kushina asked hopefully. It had to, didn't it? She hadn't meant to bring up Naruto-chan but she'd snapped when she thought of this person using her baby girl! I need to be more careful! Calm down, Kushina!

"Indeed, I have. She is not here now but… Would you care to meet her?"

Kushina slowly nodded, not believing this snake for one minute. "Your master was resurrected? Why? And who is he?" Kabuto shrugged, and Kushina wanted to strangle him even more. This guy was a freak, that was for sure - and a thoughtful one which was even worse.

"Orochimaru-sama."

"Blegh," Kushina breathed before catching herself. She smiled at the dead man walking. "I can't say we got along. I suppose you're following his orders." Kushina found it interesting that the man who'd revived her actually showed some slight discomfort at that. Oddly enough, he went back to what she could only guess were medical experiments. Figures this guy would like lab stuff. He's like a cartoon villain.

Oh, Kami. Now that she had time to look around the room, it looked like she was in a morgue.
How long had it been since the Nine Tails attack? What had happened to all of these people?

And what does he plan to do with us?

Since Kabuto didn't seem to have any more to say at the moment, she tried to evaluate her condition. Her chakra levels were high even without the fox; she had no wounds; not even the small scars near her wrist that she'd had since before she'd taken the Kyuubi. Her arms, hands, and what she could see of her legs were hairless, just as her body had been since she'd taken the fox, too.

She also tried to remember where she was before being revived and saw Mikoto's face for a moment - Minato had been there, she was sure, oddly enough - that can't be real for reasons I'm not yet ready to ponder - and then she clearly remembered her normally calm, collected Minato freaking out before they were attacked. Her dear husband had started muttering, not understanding where he was just as Naruto was born - then - still saying things that made no sense, he finally moved.

Hopefully, Minato saved Biwako-sama when he pushed her away from their assailant's sword.

And then he had taken off after their baby.

That man put an explosive note on my little girl.
That bastard!

Gods, what a mess. She rubbed her eyes, refusing to cry and wondering what she could do from here. Minato was dead but Naruto just couldn't be; she had to get back to Konoha. But first, she had to assure no harm came to it or her daughter.

"So! What are my orders, Kabuto-shishou? What's going on?"

After eating most of a pan of brownies, Naruto cleaned up and got dressed for bed after everyone left. She had to be up early to report to Shikaku at the Tower. The blonde stopped before opening the door, knowing that she needed to continue her conversation with Kakashi. She grumpily left the bathroom and found him waiting for her.

Kakashi sat up a little straighter when she reentered their bedroom. A vision as always but boy, does she look put out. "Are you alright?"

"Yes." Naruto took her time messing around as much as she could, ignoring Kakashi and feeling more and more irritated. Sure, she knew that pregnancy was screwing with her hormones and emotions but she had a real reason to be aggravated with him. She crawled into bed and covered herself up, almost on the far edge of her side of the bed.

"Talk to me," Kakashi implored.

"I'm not retiring," Naruto replied firmly. "I can't afford to; we can't afford me to."

Kakashi hesitantly nodded although Naruto was turned away from him. He wasn't going to fight her anymore on this tonight: earlier had been way too stressful. "How long do you want to stay home with the pups?"

Naruto blew out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "I'll do what the village needs of me but it's hard to say. Obviously, I need to be near them to keep the Akatsuki from getting their filthy hands on them. –Or Iwa. Or Kiri. –Or I suppose more than half of the shinobi world."

She grudgingly accepted Kakashi's gentle ministrations moving up and down her arm. He pulled away and got more comfortable before coming back, pulling her against him.

"I don't want you to fall off the bed." That was a good excuse, right? He began pressing kisses into her shoulder and neck.

"Thanks for that," she replied simply. Sadly, the great ninja she was: (ha,) she HAD fallen off the bed before but that was a few months back.

Kakashi was a baka but he was her baka and Naruto wouldn't deny that his muscular arms around her - as much as they'd go around her - felt good. "The thought of you ending my career, as my supervisor, is…" Awful. Please don't do that, for Kami's sake, Kakashi. "I don't like it." Kakashi didn't say anything for a while. He began massaging her shoulders and back and Naruto steeled her resolve to remain firm.

"You're right that it will always be something." He continued pressing his calloused hands into her soft, supple skin, sighing as he moved along. "I was thinking… What if they don't want to be shinobis?"

"That would be fine! I want our children to have a choice. I want them to be anything they want to be."

He moved her hair and kissed her neck. "Me too. But they'd still need to be trained."

"Because we have enemies."

"Indeed. Let me ask you this, if - when - you go back to work, what do you want to do? I know you enjoy ANBU but it's dangerous."

"Everything's dangerous" for us went unsaid by the blonde. "I don't know. Maybe one day I can be a sensei?"

"Would you want to teach at the Academy?" Kakashi would be fully supportive of that. "Maybe while the boys are there?"

"I… Yeah! But I'm not that smart, Kakashi." Kakashi laughed, making her frown and sink into herself a bit.

"Silly girl. You're a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for, have a very deep knowledge base, plus you have outstanding emotional intelligence. That's something that the Academy could sorely benefit from."

Naruto scooched around as she attempted to turn to face him. "You think so?"

"I do." He got a gorgeous smile in return. "So am I forgiven?"

"No," Naru smirked. "I don't think so." She thought about it for a while, looking at his big, firm, poofy chest. It was absolutely glorious. "I want to have these babies."

"As do I." He let out a long sigh and closed his eyes. "All in due time, Naruto; all in due time."

"Nope." Naruto refused. Tsunade confirmed that the puppies were cooked: it was time. Either they or her body was being lazy. "I want you to speed things up."

"Hmm?" He opened his eyes again, his Sharingan spinning to life. "Ohhhh! Like that?! Really?"

She nodded. "Do you mind?"

Naruto had barely got the words out of her mouth before Kakashi's boxers went flying, getting caught in the light above them. She gave him a look of fond disbelief. "Are you sure?"

"Always! Maa, I've been wanting to try out something with the swing, in fact…"

Less than an hour later, Naruto was laughing her ass off, not caring that she might be stuck in the swing until her babies were born. When Kakashi - who had earlier attached himself with chakra to the other side of the weblike swing she was nestled in - came, he lost control of his chakra and fell to the floor. She threw her head back and laughed even harder at the sheer thought of it.

"Ohh-hhh," came a second, broken groan from the floor. "I think I broke my ass." Naruto was beside herself above him and kept giggling even as she tried to turn the swing around to see if he was okay, Kakashi hoped. "Naruto, I'm serious."

"WHAT?! Oh my gods, Kakashi!" How was she going to get out of this swing - which was high off the floor?! She scooched back and forth, side to side, not getting anywhere. She finally gave up after realizing her attempts at using a wind jutsu to swing her into a better position might dump her on her broken, prone husband.

Her legs were beginning to go numb.

Desperate, she finally summoned a toad who took one look at them and dispelled again. Kakashi summoned Pakkun who also had little sympathy for the couple but did cover his summoner up and got him a towel to clean up with. He also brought another blanket down to Kakashi from the bed to hurl up at his wife who was hanging and showing way too much skin for a human to be comfortable.

Surrounded by her puppies, Jazu trotted in and immediately started barking at Pakkun and Kakashi just as Kakashi had rolled as much as he could so that Pakkun could have a look at him.

Pakkun was good at evaluating his injuries, Kakashi felt.

Naruto gasped. "No! Jazu thinks you really hurt something! Oh, Kash!"

Kakashi sighed heavily, wondering if those two could really communicate the way Naruto always implied they could. "Do you really think I'd leave you up there if I could in any way help it?"

Naruto tapped her chin as she continued to gently rock back and forth after the nasty upward swing she'd taken with that wind jutsu. "Maybe?"

Reluctantly, Pakkun finally went and retrieved Tsunade and Jiraiya who had laughed at them for what felt like ages before rescuing them.

While Tsunade tended to Kakashi on the floor, Jiraiya walked up the wall to the ceiling and, upside-down, wiggled his eyebrows at his swinging little apprentice (because of her circumstances, he temporarily refused to view her as his granddaughter although he was damn proud.) "Are you all covered up?"

Naruto blushed all over herself. "No. Not completely."

"Never fear, my formerly small but still cute ball of a first-class apprentice! He closed his eyes and whipped part of the blanket that was hanging down to better cover her unmentionables. Naruto grabbed that end and after some wiggling around, agreed that she was as decent as she could be. Jiraiya unhooked the swing from the ceiling and did a flip as he easily touched down on the floor, hanging on to his upside-down apprentice before she fell on her head.

"I'm decent again," Naruto mumbled, not feeling that way at all, considering that she only had a blanket covering her giant self (and the swing she was partially wearing now.) Jiraiya opened his eyes for a second, closed them again, and helped her get disentangled from the swing. Naru made sure she was well-covered the whole time and then tried to get to Kakashi who was staring straight ahead of him. She grinned: Kakashi had the blanket in his teeth which covered much of his face - but she could see his pretty nose!

After watching Naruto's great impression of a crab pregnant with an upside-down giant tortoise, Jiraiya finally plopped her on the bed. Naruto clearly couldn't get down on the floor no matter how hard she was trying. "Just wait, brat."

"But I want to comfort him," Naruto pouted. Her grandparents groaned but Kakashi finally looked at her and smiled tightly, giving her a wink. "What's the prognosis, baa-chan?"

"He fractured his tailbone. –How did you even do that?" Tsunade complained. Were she and Jiraiya using their own swing wrong? No, that was ridiculous! Obviously, Naruto and Kakashi were using theirs wrong if Kakashi fell out of it and left Naruto up there.

Kakashi wasn't saying anything and Tsunade decided she wouldn't listen to him even if he did. Kakashi was a terrible patient and couldn't be trusted. "And why is your swing so high?"

"Added danger," Naruto said giddily, tapping her fingers together in waves. Tsunade turned her way only so she could roll her eyes at her, it seemed. "What?"

"You're both idiots. You're pregnant; you're supposed to be avoiding danger!"

"It's fine! Hey! Let's do the cesarean and get this show on the road," Naruto cheered. She was tired of being pregnant and wanted to meet her babies!

"Tsunade groaned. "First: no. Or… We'll give it a week and if there's no progress, we'll reconsider whether to induce or schedule surgery. Two: Kakashi needs the hospital."

"No!" both Hatakes cried. Naru couldn't believe it! She thought that Tsunade had stopped healing Kakashi because he was fine now.

"No way," Kakashi yelled. "I've gotta keep an eye on Naru!"

"She'll stay with you," Tsunade said firmly.

"I can't! I'm working with Shikaku tomorrow." Naruto waddled into the bathroom to get dressed with the help of a clone.

"Look brats," Jiraiya said, eager to work out a solution that would make his wife (and oh yeah: the other two) happy. "Naru stays with you at the hospital tonight..." Kakashi immediately began complaining: what a brat, indeed. "That way, Kakashi, you'll be able to heal FASTER since you need to be on your feet when the babies come, right?" Kakashi covered more of his face and glared at him: just like when he was a toddler. Honestly. "Naruto was going to be away from you tomorrow anyway, so what's the problem?"

"That's perfect," Tsunade said, getting up from the floor. "Well done, Jiraiya. If you go in for treatment now, Kakashi-kun, you should be discharged by tomorrow night." She shook her head as her husband bounced up to the ceiling again, this time to retrieve the silver idiot's boxers from the light fixture. Naruto flopped down to her knees and caught them, whispering that she'd help Kakashi get dressed for the trip. Now they were going to be forced to get her granddaughter's heavy, highly unbalanced butt off the floor. "Hurry up. Jiraiya will carry you as soon as you're decent, Kakashi."

Her grandparents left the room and Naruto sighed, looking down at Kakashi who was clearly in pain. "I'm so sorry." She gingerly helped him into his boxers and jammie pants.

"Ah, it's alright," he eventually grinned crookedly before she helped him pull his compression tank over his head. "Worth it!"

"I don't know about that," Naru blushed. "You got hurt: that's never worth it."

An hour after that, they were both in pulled-together hospital beds (again.) Kakashi had his ass in a sling, something Naruto found very funny although she kept quiet about it. Tsunade finished up a second healing session on him and said she'd send another medic in around 0400. –Which was when Naruto woke up to lightning and for just a second, she SWORE she saw that wolf again.

"GET AWAY FROM MY WIFE."

Sakura gaped, wondering what in the world she'd ever done against her former captain.

.

Four days later, Naruto's water broke.