Sorry I haven't updated this story in awhile. I just recently got a Deviantart account, and I've been having fun setting that up and stuff, and have forgotten to update my stories. If you want to check it out, I'm super-sonic-iblish on Deviantart. Just search it, and you can look at my work [if you want.]
Well, here's the next chapter. It actually has a lot of detail in the little things in this chapter. I was working on this at 11 o'clock at night, bored out of my mind, so I kind of went a little overboard with the descriptions and wording. That's why it's longer [otherwise, this chapter would've been really short.] Well, here you go; enjoy!
Knuckles rolled to the other side in bed, but it was no use; he just could not get comfortable. It'd been a couple of weeks since he'd found out about the babies, and in that time, they'd grown. Now, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find a comfortable position to sleep in, and not to mention that baby two kept kicking him in his ribcage. He rolled to his other side, facing the clock, and he looked at the time. 1:30 Am; he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep the whole evening! Finally, he moaned and sat up, rubbing his tired eyes, but waking Ruby in the process. She looked up from her pillow at him.
"What's wrong?" she asked him in a whisper, sitting up as well.
"I can't sleep," he replied. "Every time I change positions and get comfortable, they move and it's uncomfortable again. And they keep kicking me." Ruby scooted closer to him and gently began to massage his shoulders.
"I'm sorry," she whispered in his ear.
"This is torture; how do girls put up with this?" he asked, looking back at her. Ruby shrugged.
"We kinda don't," she replied. "Girls don't like it either, but we live through it." It was silent for a few moments, while Ruby massaged Knuckles' shoulders, and then Knuckles sighed and spoke.
"You can go back to sleep if you want. I'll just sleep on the couch," he said.
"Are you sure?" Ruby asked. Knuckles nodded, and he pushed himself off the side of the bed. He looked back at Ruby and smiled. Ruby smiled back and blew him a kiss, before he turned and walked out of the room.
After stopping at the closet to grab a blanket, he walked into the dark living room and sat down on the couch, propping his back up with a pillow before he laid back. After a few moments of relaxing, he reached for the TV remote and turned it on. He turned the volume down, so low that he could barely hear it, and put it on a late night reality show he didn't really care about. Letting out a long sigh, he relaxed on the cushions and pulled up the blanket. He was bathed in the light of the TV as he blankly stared at his feet for several moments, and then he looked down at his belly. It seemed the moment he got up and stopped lying down, the babies remained motionless and finally gave him a moment of peace. He reached out with one hand and rubbed at his belly under the blanket, grimacing at the thought of how fat he will look once he's further along.
"It's only going to get worse from here," he muttered, and he let his hand fall to his side. He could hear the last bit of the audience's laughter from the sitcom show, and he looked over towards the TV to see what'd been so funny. One of the characters must've said a funny line. Another character retaliated to it with another funny one-liner, and Knuckles quietly laughed under his breath at the witty remark.
As Knuckles started drifting off to sleep, he began to think about the future. That's when the problem "What am I going to tell my friends?" came up. Knuckles opened his eyes and mumbled.
"Shit, what am I going to tell them?" he asked himself. "Not like I can hide this, and once the twins are born, we just tell them that Ruby was miraculously able to have kids again, now can I?" he thought. He knew he couldn't keep this a secret for long, especially from Amy. "That girl would suspect that something was up, and she would keep prying until the truth comes out. And she wouldn't keep the secret long either!" he thought. "Honestly, I'm lucky Tails is keeping the secret so long."
Knuckles' thoughts were interrupted by his stomach growling, and he sat up. At first, he thought he could ignore the fact that he was hungry, but soon his stomach began to cramp and growl louder.
"This is getting tiresome!" he mumbled, as he stood up and stretched, then walked into the kitchen. The tile floor felt cold under his bare feet, as he walked up to the fridge and opened it, allowing light from the fridge to pour into the dark room. He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for, so he grabbed out a vanilla pudding cup and a bottle of water, and kicked the fridge door shut as he left, plunging him into darkness again. Knuckles felt blindly, since his eyes were re-adjusting to the darkness, for a spoon in the silverware drawer, then he walked back into the living room and sat down. He wrapped the blanket around his legs, which had formed goosebumps from the cold floor, and opened his pudding cup. He ate one bite and then twirled the spoon in his fingers, looking at the TV.
"I hope not all nights are like this," he mumbled to himself, before he scooped some more pudding onto his spoon. He paused a moment and looked up at a commercial with a bored expression, before he raised the spoon to his mouth once again. He licked it clean and placed it back in the plastic cup of pudding, then he set it on the coffee table to finish later and sat back on the couch, rubbing his tired eyes again. He felt one of the babies switch positions, pushing either its knee or its elbow against his skin, and a little bulge appeared.
"Ow, god, that actually hurt!" he muttered, and he pulled up his nightshirt and pushed the bulge down. However, a moment later it reappeared, just a little lower than it was before. "Cut it out!" he said to the unborn baby, and he pushed the bulge down again. This time, it didn't seem to come back, so he relaxed again and took a drink of water. "This is so overrated," he muttered to himself, as he brought his legs back up onto the couch again, pulled up the blanket, and tried to go to sleep. However, he felt another kick, and he opened one eye, looking down at his belly that stuck out from under the blanket.
"Yeah, yeah, goodnight to you too," he said, closing his eye again, and he brought his arms back behind his head and let out a long sigh. He never felt another kick the rest of the night while he slept in the light from the TV.
The time rolled by, and the babies began to grow bigger, so by the 5th month, the family's monthly trips to the doctor (AKA Tails' house) changed to house calls. Tails understood, and gladly obliged to visit their home once a month for the checkup, considering the list of things Knuckles already had to go through; he wouldn't want humiliation to be added onto the list.
Tails dug in his briefcase on their living room floor and pulled out a sphygmomanometer.
"Now, let's check your blood pressure," he said, and he pulled the velcro apart. (Yeah, if any of you didn't know, the sphygmomanometer (SFIG'mo-mah-NOM'eh-ter) is that thing that they strap around your arm [and it gets really tight] to test your blood pressure.)
Tails wrapped it around Knuckles' upper arm and began to squeeze the pump. It was silent for a moment, besides the sound of the air rushing through the tube when Tails squeezed it, until Tails spoke to break the silence.
"So, have you experienced anything unusual so far during the pregnancy? Anything that might be a problem or concern?" he asked.
"Yeah, I do," Knuckles replied. "Is it supposed to hurt when they kick?" he asked.
"Don't worry, sometimes it might hurt; that's normal," Tails replied. He looked at the gage and nodded, before he un-velcroed the machine from Knuckles' arm. "Well, your blood pressure is completely normal. That's the last of the tests, we're done," he said, as he put the sphygmomanometer back in his briefcase. "Now, any more questions?" he asked Knuckles. He was quiet for a moment, looking up at the ceiling as if he were pondering, before he nodded.
"Yes. I've been thinking a lot about this recently; if I'm going to need a C-section to remove them, and that means I can't possibly have contractions, then how will I know when it's… you know, time?" he asked.
"Well, we'll never really know when exactly it is time in your case," Tails started, rubbing at his chin. "But we have the estimated date of birth, and whether or not the fetuses are really ready to leave that exact day, I'm thinking we just schedule the C-section for that estimated date, just to be safe. We wouldn't want to try for earlier than that unless the situation demands it, or they could possibly be born too prematurely," Tails said. Knuckles nodded in agreement and his eyes trailed off. "Now, I would like to warn you Knuckles," Tails said in a different tone, and the pregnant echidna looked back at the two-tailed kitsune. "Since you are carrying two fetuses instead of one, you are going to be carrying a lot more weight," Tails said, and he brought something out of his briefcase. It was a couple of bricks.
"Jeez, how much stuff do you keep in there?" Knuckles asked Tails, but he didn't answer, and he placed the bricks on the floor, then pulled out a small drawstring bag. "By the time the 9th month rolls along, it's going to feel like this, everywhere you walk," he said, as he put the bricks in the bag and handed it to him. Knuckles lifted it, grunting at the heavy weight, and brought it up to his chest. He looped the straps around his shoulders so the backpack was facing his front instead of his back, and then he stood up. His eyes widened a bit and he actually stumbled, muttering small profanities in shock, while Tails only nodded and watched the echidna struggle against the weight.
"That's a lot of extra weight on your shoulders," he continued. "That's why, closer to the end of your pregnancy, to avoid weak ankles and a sore back and shoulders, I'd recommend remaining bedridden when the due date begins to roll by," Tails suggested.
"Wow, I can't believe they really grow to be that heavy!" Knuckles said, as he took the bag off his shoulders and dropped it to the floor.
"Oh, that's not the half of it!" Tails butted in, silencing Knuckles. "Not only will it weigh more, but since there are two fetuses taking up the same amount of space as one normally should, you will also appear a lot… uh, how should I put this? rounder than a normal, one child pregnancy," he said. Knuckles sighed and let his tired shoulders droop. That was one of the things he feared the most, even more so than the C-section.
"Yeah, I figured that part out on my own," he said with a defeated voice.
"But hey, look at the bright side; at least nobody knows but me!" Tails said, to try and cheer Knuckles up.
"But how exactly am I going to keep this a secret?" Knuckles asked. "Someone's bound to come over sooner or later and see me! And even if they don't, how do we explain the two new babies after they are born?" Knuckles asked. Tails was unsure if the questions were rhetorical or not, so he changed the subject.
Standing up, he said, "Well, if you have any complications, feel free to call me anytime," and grabbed up his briefcase.
"Thanks Tails," Knuckles said quietly. It was quiet for a moment, before Tails looked from side to side and spoke awkwardly.
"Uh… ok, I'll be going now," he said.
"Take care," Knuckles said to him, and with that, Tails left their home.
As Tails walked back to his house, he began talking to himself.
"I feel so awful for him; I can't imagine what he must be going through!" he said to himself, kicking at a rock. "Well, at least it'll be all over soon, and then they're going to have two cute little babies to take care of!" he said, smiling slightly.
Eggman's spy-bot hovered for a few more seconds in the tree above the fox before it closed and turned off to charge.
"So, it seems the knuckleheaded echidna and his new wife are having a baby!" Dr. Eggman said, as he paused the recording from his spy-bot and turned in his chair away from his computer. "This is perfect!" he exclaimed. "I can kidnap the pregnant girl and use her as bait to capture both Sonic the hedgehog and Knuckles the echidna! Then I can roboticize them both!" he cackled, his voice echoing in the room.
"I see a fault to your plan," a voice said from the darkness, catching the obese doctor's attention. From the shadows in the corner of the computer-lit room, stepped Shadow the hedgehog and he stood before the doctor with folded arms and a disapproving glare.
"Oh, Shadow, it's you," Dr. Eggman said, relaxing in his chair. "What's wrong with it? Don't you like my evil plan?" he asked the dark hedgehog. He didn't dare reply about how he liked it.
"What are you going to do with the pregnant girl afterwards?" he asked. "You know from past missions how strong she is. If you let her go once you're done, she would only try to free her friends, resulting in the failure of your plan," he pointed out. "And if you do keep her caged up, then what about the unborn child? I'm pretty sure you don't know how to birth a child," he asked. Eggman scratched at the side of his head and hummed in thought.
"You have a point," he agreed. And then he widened his eyes and smiled, after getting an idea, and he turned to the dark hedgehog. "And that's why you're going to do it!" he said, poking him in the white chest fur.
"What? Why me?" Shadow demanded, curling up his lip at the doctor angrily.
"Because you're the one who had a problem with my plan, I revived you from your suspended animation to begin with, and you still owe me a favor!" Eggman replied. Shadow clenched his fists and grumbled under his breath.
"But I don't know how either!" he snapped.
"You're a mammal, it'll come naturally to you!" Eggman replied, earning a glare from Shadow that could turn the bravest of souls to stone. Eggman rolled his eyes and growled in his throat. "Fine, then learn! That's what we have internet for!" he snapped, and he turned back in his seat and chuckled evilly.
"Ho ho, soon… soon Sonic will be mine!" he cackled, and he tapped his fingertips together, smiling evilly.
... Shadow's f*cked now! 0_o I feel sorry for him! And just wait until Eggman and him learn the truth about this family's pregnancy... [muahahahahaha! I'm so evil!] I'll work on updating soon, don't worry!