To SunSera: Happy to hear you're enjoying this! Just heads up, Shadow's age in this story is a headcanon of mine, not canonical. (Not sure if I'm remebering it correctly but I believe his canonical age is only specified to be 50+ with his physical age being 15.) There's little info to work off when it comes to Shadow's time on ARK, so I'm putting him at age that makes sense to me—due to obvious reasons, Shadow has to be younger than Maria and we know that Professor Gerald had made a prototype (Biolizard), but because he had to enlist Doom's help it's probably safe to assume there were more prototypes before Shadow came to be, thus I think it's reasonable to put him at 4 years old at the time of raid. Hope that cleared it up a little bit!

AN: Hey, it's been a while. Let's bring on the cuteness!


"—to my defense, we've only had her for a day," Sonic explained, pulling an apologetic expression on his face. "And Rouge hasn't exactly given us time to announce it one at a time."

"Oh. I'm not mad, just surprised," Tails clarified, realizing his earlier tone might have given Sonic a bad idea. "You two haven't said anything about wanting children and she looks just like Shadow so—you know." Tails made vague gestures with his hands. " It's a lot to take in. How are you two faring?"

"So far so good." Sonic laughed, rubbing his neck. "She hasn't been giving us any trouble so far but Shadow thinks it's only because of her being interested in all the new things around her."

"That's possible." Tails inclined his head a little, letting a small smile show. "The sleep deprivation has yet to come."

"Or we might end up being lucky and have a kid that sleeps through a whole night!"

"Most babies are not like that, Sonic."

"But I was that kind of a baby, so I think we have a solid 50% chance of that. Plus even if push came to shove, we agreed on a sleeping schedule with Shadow. At least one of us will always be awake at a time so no sleepless nights for either of us." Sonic grinned. "Perks of having an Ultimate Lifeform as a co-parent!"

"But are you sure Shadow can manage that? Sure, he doesn't need much sleep but he's still going to go on missions for GUN, right?" Tails reasoned. "That's not exactly schedule-friendly job."

"It isn't, but we have two weeks to iron everything out; the Commander gave Shadow some time off to deal with this and promised that Shadow is going to be given only short-term missions for a few months if it can be helped."

"He's not usually this forthcoming," Tails noted aloud with clear surprise.

"No, he isn't. But Rouge suggested he might be feeling somehow responsible for this whole situation." Green eyes looked towards said bat, who was still surrounded by the rest of their friends, everybody still too busy fawning over little Night in her arms. Huh, he'd never guess Espio to be the type to gush over babies like that. "That he should have picked on the suspicious activity sooner, you know."

"How was the guy even discovered?"

"Apparently, he brought it on himself. He was a pompous jerk and his coworkers hated him for it, so one of them asked Rogue to dig up some dirt on the guy that he'd had to be fired over—and Rouge found out he was stealing medical equipment and when she was trying to find out what for, she ended up discovering his secret laboratory and Night."

"Whoa, that must have been shock to her."

"I'd bet—"

"Sorry for being late!" The door was suddenly slammed open, Amy appearing in the doorway. "I just got the message—" Amy stopped mid-sentence as she noticed the baby in Rouge's arm, her green eyes widening and sparkling at the sight of the adorable hedgie.

Amy squealed.

Night, on the other hand, started crying.

-O-

"Well, I guess now we at least know she inherited your taste in people," Sonic joked as he watched Shadow rock Night gently from side to side in attempt to calm her down. The cries have changed to sniffles, so it seemed to work at least partially. "She likes who you like and dislikes who you dislike. Daddy's girl through and through."

Shadow gave a 'hmph' sound. "Or maybe she just doesn't like people that screech like a banshee," he countered, shooting Amy a disapproving look across the room. Sonic was sure that if Shadow had Blaze's powers, Amy would have already ignited from that stare alone. "Rose's screaming probably hurt her ears."

"Ames probably just startled her," Sonic argued, stepping closer to Shadow to wrap an arm around the other's tense body, brushing his fingers gently over the other's side in attempt to relax the agent as well. With his other hand, Sonic began to gently brushed over Night's short head-fur, doing his part in comforting her. It seemed to be effective as her eyelids began to droop and it was not long after that she fell asleep. A small smile tugged at Sonic's lips at the sight.

Beside him, Shadow finally seemed to relax too.

"Give Amy a second chance," Sonic requested as he met his lover's still somewhat stormy gaze. "She didn't mean to scare her, she was just excited."

"Rose's always had poor impulse control," Shadow retorted, readjusting Night's position in his arms. "But if that's what you want, so be it. However, if she makes Night cry again, she's banned from interacting with her."

Sonic let out a small chuckle. "Deal." He pressed a quick kiss to Shadow's cheek, which caused Shadow's expression to soften. Then Sonic grabbed Shadow's free arm to put him over to Amy, still smiling. Shadow might try to deny it, but it was obvious that Night was growing on him quickly.

Daddy's girl, indeed.

-O-

"—what about kindergarten? School? Have you got a—"

"Geez, Amy, slow down. You're worse than Shadow with that."

"Sorry, I guess I got a little excited there." Amy chuckled, looking down at the peacefully resting baby in her arms. "I mean this is kind of unique situation so—"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Sonic replied simply. "First walking, talking and all that stuff."

"You're not doing the 'dad and uncle' thing, right?" Amy asked.

Sonic rubbed his neck. "Well, we haven't talked about that with Shadow." He sheepishly rubbed his neck. "I mean she's blood-related both to me and Shadow, so it wouldn't make sense. Though her calling us both 'Dad' would surely get confusing at some point."

"'Papa' seems to be quite popular these days," Amy suggested. "Some say it's easier for the kids to say than 'dad'."

"Papa?" Sonic hummed. Well, that sounded as a reasonable alternative. "Hey, Shadow! How do you feel about being called Papa?"

"Do you have anything more ridiculous?"

"That means he loves it," Sonic 'translated', grinning. "Perfect! Thanks for helping us with that, Ames," Sonic spoken aloud enough for Shadow to hear even as far as he was.

The agent immediately piped up at this. "Did you hear what I've said—?"

"Oh, Papa Shadow!" Rogue had clearly overheard too. "Everybody heard that? We now refer to Shadow exclusively as Papa. Got it?" She chuckled at the multitude of agreements that sounded from the crowd. She nudged her sulky colleague in the side. "Come on, think about the positives—you're probably going to be her first word!"

"I hate all of you," was all Shadow said. "Especially you, Sonic."

Sonic just laughed in response.