A/N: Okie Dokie! First, I want to say thanks to the people… sniffperson… who responded :D You are my hero! Second, I should apologize for how long it might take me to write my chapters. I'm out at camp virtually all summer, and water skiing on Lake Superior is a bit of a gamble so I have my eye on the lake a lot. Also, I am a complete spaz and really forgetful, with almost illegible penmanship so you can imagine how tough it would be to write anything without loosing it or spilling my lunch all over it (I actually dropped tomato soup all over a rough draft just the other day). Third, I finally got my hands on the new Harry Potter book (OWOW:D) so there's another random thing which distracts me from writing. Umm... although I would just love to write "Fourth", I should probably write, or people might spork my eyes out... No? Ahh well maybe spoon? No? Oh boo. I'm not a world famous writer... or am I?... so the spotlight often passes over me and my novels which I call "Author's Notes".

-- LA

P.S: Sorry about this chapter. I wrote it late at night so it's really rushed and umm... TOTAL CRAP!

You guys know the drill… I don't own the sonic characters and yadayadayada…
With a cavernous yawn, Tails sat alone in his workshop in front of the massive and dusty archive which was a gardening book. He thought back to the hundreds of books he had read. From "Everybody Poops", to science magazines of all genres, shapes and sizes, to his vast collection of encyclopedias. Why, he wondered, was reading this one book such a challenge? Why did each page seem to take hours? Honestly, he knew the answer. He was not the least bit interesting in gardening. From infancy, he had been fascinated with machines, mechanics, electronics. To him, reading seventy-five pages on transplanting cherry tomatoes seemed so bland, so utterly boring in comparison. He was disgusted with himself. 'For Cosmo' he kept repeating in his head, to get himself through one more seemingly endless chapter, but 'For Cosmo' just didn't seem to motivate him. He scolded himself mentally.

'How can you be so selfish?' An angry voice in his said 'You said you loved her, but you can't even finish a measly book for her own child.' He felt sick to his stomach, and completely exhausted despite the glow of the morning sun spilling through the open windows and onto his face. As it had countless times in the past months, his gaze fell upon the plant incubator. He gently opened the little door and lifted the pot out and cradled it in his arms, careful not to let any soil fall onto the hard, tiled floor at his feet. He let out a little gasp of surprise and pleasure. A tiny green seedling pushed its little head out of the dirt. Its eyes were undeveloped, and its sex was uncertain, but it was clearly alive. Although unseen, a tiny and delicate heart beat inside its sprout of a body. Perhaps he didn't need a book to grow the little child. He wondered if he was capable of a maternal instinct; would things which came to mothers as common sense seem far-fetched and senseless to him? With much difficulty, he closed the book which contained a library worth of information and pushed it of the table to the floor with a grunt. It landed with a thump. Feeling a bit guilty afterwards for mistreating a library book, he lifted it onto its side and pushed it up against a sturdy table leg and dusted it off. For a few more moments, he watched the infant plant. Though it didn't move, he found himself able to stare it for what seemed like forever. A loud knock snapped him out of his trance. He blinked and stood up quickly, dashing to get the door. He looked through a peep hole on the door, seeing nothing but red and a white crescent moon.

"Tails! Lemme in!" Knuckles called from outside, banging loudly on the door again. Tails opened the door and greeted the echidna, who looked annoyed to say the least.

"Um… Hi Knuckles." Tails said with a tired smile.

Knuckles angrily muttered something under his breath. Tails noticed that Knuckles was holding a plastic bag in each hand.

"What have you got there?" Tails asked, referring to the bags.

Knuckles looked embarrassed for a moment, but quickly flashed back to angry. "Well, the master emerald was acting up because it sensed a chaos emerald, so I went digging around to try and find it but I was digging around so fast, and there was so much dust in the air that I didn't notice that I had turned around in a circle and I uhh… Crashed into the master emerald shrine and busted my gloves." He lifted the bags onto the table, just about squishing the little potted plant. Tails quickly moved it to a safe table in a far corner. "So… I was hoping you would-"

"Fix them for you?"

Knuckles nodded, again looking embarrassed.

"If it's not too much trouble."

Tails sighed, but quickly faked a smile

"No trouble Knuckles. If you leave them with me, I can have them fixed by tomorrow."

"Thanks Tails." Said Knuckles, but he looked troubled.

"What's the matter? You look… upset." Though he didn't expect Knuckles to bare his soul, Tails hoped Knuckles would explain.

"It's that damn bat, Tails!" He groaned and punched the wall, chipping the paint.

"You mean Rouge?" asked Tails, confused.

"Yes!" Knuckles cried in exasperation. "I can't stand her, but I can't stop thinking about her! She drives me insane, but I find myself thinking she's fascinating!"

Tails didn't know what to say. To him, Knuckles had always been stubborn, sometimes hot-headed even, but always secretive about these things. And the fact that Knuckles, who Tails had never been particularly close to, was sharing these emotions with him left him mute and looking shocked. Knuckles looked just as shocked at his own outburst as Tails. Eyes wide, Knuckles cleared his throat and tried to fill the awkward silence.

"Um… Sorry. So… I'll come by tomorrow to pick them up. Bye." Without another word, Knuckles left Tails alone in the empty workshop. Tails felt like a child. He had always thought Knuckles to be raw and devoted to nothing but guarding the master emerald, without emotions or worrying about anything but his work. Now, that he had seen Knuckles out of his tough shell, he didn't find him so impressive, so daunting and intimidating. He felt furious with himself. How could he blame Knuckles for how he felt? If it was Cosmo…

He stopped himself. Resolving to forget the fiasco, he turned to the mangled gloves. They were completely totaled, the right worse than the left. Grateful for something to do, Tails set to work tinkering away at them. It took him about half an hour to repair both, reinforcing each in hopes that it wouldn't happen again. He set them by the front door for the next day.

With a bored sigh, he walked over to the seedling, still deep in thought. He knelt down beside the table so his face was level with the pot. He furrowed his brow. The little plant which had, an hour earlier, only poked about a centimeter out of the soil, now stood almost five centimeters. In fact, when he looked close enough, he noticed that he could actually see the little sprout growing before his eyes, though extremely slowly. Were plants supposed to grow this quickly? Tails looked outside at a few meek flowers he had planted. None of them grew four centimeters an hour.

He watched it grow for a few more minutes, until an idea hit him suddenly. He sprung up off his knees and grabbed the pot. He carried it over to the incubator and carefully placed it inside. Because there was no window on the door, Tails could only wait and hope his prediction was correct. After ten minutes of silent patience, he apprehensively opened the door and peeked in. He gasped in surprise. Where there had, only a few minutes previously, been a tiny, undeveloped seedling, now sat an infant, about to drop from its green "umbilical cord". With a jump, Tails reached inside and… picked the baby.

It felt so strange to pull a newborn from the only thing it had ever known, as if it was a tomato. He gently cradled it in his arms and it very slowly opened its eyes. They were the same shade of blue as their mother's, and it became suddenly obvious to Tales that it was a female, a she. Tales looked down at her and saw the pretty face of Cosmo. Bittersweet tears swelled in his eyes, both from seeing his friend and from succeeding in planting and growing her seed. The next thought that came to his mind seemed obvious; a name. He tried to think of a name that would describe her soft, round face and kind eyes. It came to him after a seconds thought. Hina. Her name was Hina.

A/N: Hey everybody! Thanks so much for reading. You're great! You know… I do love when people respond, don't you? (hinthint, winkwink, nudgenudge) Anywho… Thanks again. And by the way, Hina is the Japanese name meaning "sun, sunlight" or "day, sun" combined with "vegetables, greens", so I thought it was a nice name for the baby. Hoorah!

--LA