It took a bit of painful maneuvering to get through Mayuri's little lab door, especially when the lab rats swarmed like an angry hive of ants, ready to defend their home and their queen against any invasions.

Although lab rats weren't quite the same as an angry hive of ants. For one thing, they weren't really trying to defend their base, so much as they were trying to snatch him up and haul him to the center where the queen awaited her daily meal.

"I said get off of me!" Komamaru snarled as he flung away another persisting lab rat.

In any other scientific lab, these lab rats would have been considered underpaid assistants. Mayuri only saw them as fodder for more experiments. (But not, it would seem, suitable hosts for parasitic pregnancies!)

"But, Captain!" Another lab rat, this one with its multiple limbs wrapped around his ankle, wailed in protest and tightened its grip. (Four arms were, Komamaru was almost positive, not natural. But then he was an anthropomorphic dog, so really, he couldn't point paws – er, fingers, at anyone, now could he?) "We have to check your energy levels and karmic changes and biographic data for our latest cluster of blah blah blah blah wail moan gripe blah!"

Komamaru suspected that some of the experiments that Mayuri performed on his lab rats included brainwashing, as he couldn't fathom the level of desperate sincerity and sometimes mind-boggling naivety his lab rats had regarding Mayuri and his research.

Komamaru was quick to ignore the blather of nonsense as he used his zanpakuto to pry the lab rat free of his leg, cold-cocked another person into oblivion while sidestepping another pouncing lab rat, who collided off-balance with two more people. Free at last from the confusion, Komamaru slipped through another door, and then jammed it shut by forcing it against the frame so hard it warped the door.

With strength that somehow managed to escape being modified, the lab rats pounded uselessly against the door from the other side, voices rising in complaint and beseeching alike.

Ignoring them all, Komamaru raised his nose in the air and sniffed. He immediately turned to his left and followed the trail of scent. As he walked the cold, sterile hall with its bizarre blinking lights and not-so-motivational posters ("The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves!" "Just Because You're Unique Doesn't Mean You're Useful" "Happiness: The Moment You Realize You Have Finally, and Truly, Snapped."). Komamaru paused beside the poster that read "There Are No Stupid Questions: Only Stupid People" to pull out the small bottle of ginger-flavored Tums that Captain Unohana had given him for his nausea and withdrew a couple. He chewed three of them and then swallowed them dry before bracing himself for the impending confrontation between himself and Captain Mayuri.

After making sure that his stomach was going to remain firmly seated at the bottom of his torso, instead of trying to crawl up his throat like it had been all morning, Komamaru grasped the hilt of his sword and knocked the door before him off its hinges.

"Mayuri," he growled menacingly as he drew his sword forth and stomped through the doorway.

"Ah, Captain!" Mayuri cackled and pressed his fingertips together. "I am so pleased that you have come. I shall get started on your evaluation at once. How considerate of you to take the time and effort to find me."

"You have a lot of nerve forcing your perversion of science upon me!"

Mayuri, with the casual disdain he usually gave his scientific experiments and lesser beings in general (although there was little difference between them, he was sure), turned his back to Komamaru and started typing something on the near-by computer. "Hmm, yes. I was just contemplating what sort of anesthetics I could use to bring each of you in for evaluations without compromising the integrity of my implants."

"I AM PREGNANT, YOU UNETHICAL RAT"

"Hmm, hmm. You appear to be acting a little more moody than normal, but I sense little has changed with your levels of reiryoku. Until I get results from a blood draw, I hesitate to say such moodiness is due to hormonal changes, but I imagine that they would be taking place—"

"WITH OCTUPLETS!"

Mayuri's fingers froze. "What? Nonsense! I only planted one..."

The wash of Komamaru's killing intent made the computer explode, shortly before Mayuri was sideswiped through the wall. And the wall behind that wall. His zanpakuto unsheathed, Komamaru lept after Mayuri with a deafening roar.

Nemu peeked around the corner. "Be careful, Mayuri-sama," she called over the sounds of fighting. "Brutal force could compromise the integrity of the implant's health and structure."

oOoOoOoOo

Yumichika splashed cold water on to his face and scrubbed his cheeks with the palms of his hands. He dropped them and gripped onto the porcelain of the bathroom sink while another nauseous shudder assaulted his body.

Without looking up, he said in a very low, very deadly voice, "You have precisely three seconds to move before I kill you. One..."

"Ah, sir," Hanatarou's swollen and multicolored face nervously peeked around the doorframe – and then jerked back with a painful squeak, barely dodging the soap dispenser thrown with such force that it would have crushed his skull on impact. "That wasn't three seconds!"

"Eleventh squad can't count," Yumichika replied, completely unapologetic as he lifted his face and scrutinized his hideous countenance in the mirror. He took a toothpick and methodically began to rearrange his eyebrows. Perhaps if he tried doing one thing to make himself look better, he might feel better. "What do you want?"

A hand, shaking as it waved a crumpled pamphlet, extended around the corner like a white flag of surrender. "I – I was told by Captain Unohana th-that I was to give you these. For, er, y-your condition."

"What value would I have for it?" Yumichika asked, eying the pamphlet with similar distrust that his captain had shown earlier. Yumichika, like many of the other 11th Division members, was quite capable of reading. The problem was simply that reading got in the way of fighting. Unless you were Boo and Hikaru, who often got into brutal fights over the interpretation of a literary work's meaning. The last time they had done so, it had been in regards to the relationship Archie had with Betty and Veronica.

"W-well, it's about how to m-make yourself more comfortable?"

The Hamster, Yumichika decided, had a terribly unattractive bedside manner. "There is beauty to behold in suffering," he murmured, trying to convince himself that this was, in fact, the very point of why he hadn't yet drowned himself in the toilet, yet. Yumichika had personally felt before this debacle that such a saying meant that there was beauty in making others suffer.

"Then, perhaps, y-you might like to read th-this one." After rifling through his pockets, the Hamster shyly held up the glossy pamphlet. The light from the overhanging bulb reflected almost blindingly off the cover. Yumichika rubbed his eyes, and focused.

She looked radiant. Her chestnut-brown hair was long and luxurious, cascaded over her bare shoulders. Her skin was dewy, soft, and pale. Full lips curled into a tooth-aching sweet smile as her face was tilted downward. Her eyes shone as she gazed upon her very pregnant stomach, her arms wrapped around it as if she were trying to cup the infant inside.

What to expect when you're expecting, was the pamphlet's title in elegant scroll. A smaller subtitle read: The Beauty of Motherhood.

Yumichika blinked – he had reached out and gently grasped the pamphlet, holding it as gently as a fragile robin's egg.

It was the most beautiful picture Yumichika had ever seen.

Then and there, Yumichika knew there was nothing more in the world he desired than to be a mother.