A knocked up check up.

A knocked up check up

The blue suited heroine looked around the office for the person she was supposed to meet there. "Excuse me. Are you Keany Whethers," asked Susan Richards, also known as the elastic Ultra Woman of the Fantastic Four.

"Why, yes I am," announced a chipper woman as she began to approach Susan.

Neither of them was able to move with much haste at the moment, but on the other hand neither wanted to get that close either. Because while the two had very different occupations, they did have one very large thing in common, they were both pregnant.

Over the course of the last few months, Susan's stomach had puffed out to the point she couldn't even reach her belly button without aid from her powers.

Luckily the bright blue unstable molecule uniform she was wearing had been designed so as to be able to stretch right along with her elastic body. Since Ultra Woman could elongate herself across several separate footballs fields, serving as makeshift maternity wear was a snap for her outfit.

Keany Whethers wasn't as large, but judging by the way her navel had popped out, she was closer to giving birth. While Susan was dressed in a form fitting skin tight outfit with black gloves and boots, Keany's outfit was much more slapdash.

It might have once been a traditional nurse's outfit, but now it looked like it was quite obviously a custom job. There were yellow stitches racing all along the sides of it, as if Keany had sewn two separate outfits together.

There was also a yellow pouch about the size of a football resting on her hip that seemed to mark the area where one outfit ended and another began.

While there was still distance between the two of them, it was possible for Susan to see that Keany was wearing long pink stockings and white shoes. Her long red hair was topped by a white hat with a bright red ankh symbol on it, and the symbol also showed up on the shoulders of her outfit.

Keany awkwardly turned, to the side so that she could edge herself close enough to put a hand on Susan's belly.

"My, my, you are a big one! Aren't you?" She spoke as if she was talking to a child rather than a grown woman.

It would have been insulting if it wasn't for the fact that she did sound so genuinely interested in Susan and her brood.

"Yes, I am. It's sextuplets, if you didn't already know. Not sure how I'd be able to deal with getting so big if I didn't have my powers superpowers." Susan admitted candidly.

Keany wiggled her hips slightly causing her belly to bump into Susan's exciting both of their unborn broods. "Oh, how wonderful! I'm only carrying triplets myself." Keany commented before awkwardly shuffling away from the door.

With the path ahead of her clear, Susan was finally able to waddle her way deeper into the room looking in shock at all of the countless tools spread about.

Her husband, Reed Richards, was one of the smartest men in the world, but even he could only do so much with so little time. That was why he'd decided it'd be a good idea for Susan to visit the city's specialist in multiple child pregnancies.

Now that she'd actually seen Nurse Weathers, however, Susan was slightly concerned about how much of that experience was true hands on experience. "I don't mean to be rude, but shouldn't you really be on maternity leave by this point?"

Keany actually looked rather insulted at Susan's suggestion, turning about with shocking speed. "Why? I can still do my job, and there's room for plenty more in there. If you want to go on maternity leave, though, I can arrange it!" Keany insisted, her eyes flashing ominously.

The strange look then vanished as quickly as it had come into being, leaving only sweetness and warmth in its wake. Keany playfully patted a small table a few feet off the ground waving for Susan to come closer.

"All right, to get this started I'll need you to hop up on top of this. Assuming you still can hop..." She advised Susan.

There were many things which Ultra Woman's elastic powers allowed her to do that no normal woman carrying sextuplets could: Susan never had trouble seeing past her belly; she could elongate her arms to grab things across the room without getting up; she could bounce between buildings or make bullets bounce off of herself; but like most pregnant women she still couldn't "hop".

Instead Susan sidled up to the table, stood with her back to it and increased the length of her legs. After going from her unimpressive 5' 6" to a towering 7' 6", Susan simply fell backwards onto the table and retracted her legs to their normal length.

Once Susan was securely seated, Nurse Keany began to examine her chart. "Hmm... it says here that you are 'pretty sure' that your children share your powers? Superheroine or not, I'm afraid I must inform you that the medical industry doesn't run on 'pretty sures,' my dear.

I'm going to have to do some tests." Keany announced just a bit too enthusiastically.

Ultra Woman defensively crossed her arms over her belly. "Look, before I realized I was pregnant there were times when I thinned myself down to the point I was practically two dimensional. If my children weren't elastic they probably wouldn't still be alive." Susan admitted, once again feeling a twinge of fear at what could have been.

Nurse Wethers nodded slowly. "All right, still as compelling as your statements are, I'd prefer to see some test results for myself. To start with...."

She paused for a moment before flipping through the chart for a bit."Hmm.... ahh yes... it says here that you've spent a lot of the last few months bouncing. Is that correct?" She inquired.

Susan nodded awkwardly. "Yes that's right, bouncing." Ultra Woman admitted dreading what might come next.

"Can I see a demonstration?" Keany asked, confirming Susan's fears.

Still this entire thing was for the good of her children so Susan had no choice but to go along. She took a deep breath and began to retract arms and legs into her body making it swell slightly.

Then another deep breath produced similar results with her head and neck, transforming Ultra Woman into an orb the size of a beachball with a two dimensional version of Susan's face staring out from it.

Nurse Wethers once more turned sideways so as to position herself as close to Susan as possible. She scooped Ultra Woman up off the table with surprising ease and began to carefully run her hands across Susan's rubbery body.

"Oh my..... you're like one big womb now..." Keany noted while she caressed Ultra Woman's spherical form just a bit too informally for her liking.

"So, how exactly do you bounce?" Nurse Wethers asked.

"If you let go of me, I'll show you." Susan answered quickly, hoping to keep the redhead from getting any ideas of running her own tests.

She reluctantly let go, and Susan fell to the ground at which point she bounced right back up. Ultra Woman, unlike most balls, could bounce even higher than the distance she had been dropped. She also showed off her ability to control what direction she bounced in by landing right back on the table she'd been scooped off of.

Once there, she resumed her human form hoping the nurse had seen enough and would move on. The expectant nurse nodded politely as if of her patients routinely bounced about the room like a superball.

"Very well. If your children actually are elastic then it should be safe enough for you to continue bouncing. Now then, if you wouldn't mind getting off that table I'd like to come with me.

After hearing about your appointment I got to work making a machine to test your powers and pregnancy." Keany explained.

Susan suddenly found the idea of staying seated very attractive. If life as a superheroine had taught her anything, it was that having someone you weren't friends with built a machine with you in mind, it was always a bad sign.

Still she didn't exactly have a choice in the matter.Sso Ultra Woman slowly descended from the table and followed Keany into a much larger room.

Occupying most of the room was a machine that would have looked more at home in a meat packing plant than a hospital. There was a large metal basket sticking out of it that Keany approached and tapped lovingly.

"All right, after seeing how you got up onto the table, this shouldn't be too hard. Go seat yourself up on this weighing station." She instructed.

Susan sighed heavily then got to work. Once more Ultra Woman lengthened her legs making it a cinch to sit down on top of the metallic mesh weaved on top of the basket. It was far from the most comfortable seat in the house, but it would do.

While Susan was shifting around Nurse Wethers was examining the sides of the machine and Susan's chart, her eyes darting back and forth between the two cautiously.

"This isn't good at all. According to my readings you're currently clocking in at just a hair over one hundred and seventy pounds." The nurse replied.

Susan felt a powerful blush coming on, reflecting back on how slim she'd been less than half a year ago.

"You've got to get bigger!" Keany insisted, totally derailing Susan's train of thought.

"What," asked a confused Ultra Woman from atop her awkward seat.

Keany somehow managed to look down her nose at a woman several feet above her.

"It's simple arithmetic. Superheroine or not it applies to you! To insure a healthy pregnancy, a woman should gain at least twenty five pounds for every child she's expecting.

Your starting weight was one hundred and twenty, so to gain twenty five pounds per child you should tip the scales at around two hundred and seventy pounds by the time you reach your eighth month." She concluded.

"Two hundred and seventy pounds?" Susan screamed, utterly flabbergasted by the news.

"Two hundred and seventy pounds." Keany repeated the number without emotion as if she was predicting it would rain over the weekend.

"Luckily I happen to be in a position to prescribe various nutritional and appetite stimulating supplements that should help you with that problem. You should probably come in for another visit in a month or so to make sure that you've been gaining healthily though.

Now with that little factoid out of the way, let's get down to the real meat of the matter." She flipped over another page of Susan's chart and smiled up at her.

"It says here you've had some problems with your children automatically stretching when you stretch? I'll have to see this for myself, especially since it would be concrete proof that your children share your powers." Keany insisted.

Susan took note of the dimensions of the room before shaking her head.

"I'm not sure I can show you in here. That sort of thing only happened when I was stretching myself out to nearly the limits of my powers. Besides, it was only a problem early on in my pregnancy. I can handle fine now on my own." Susan muttered the last sentence a bit ruefully.

Nurse Weathers shook her head and began to fiddle with some knobs on the machine.

"I better take a closer look at this particular phenomenon myself, just to be certain. Now then Susan, I should warn you. You might feel a slight pinching sensation in your limbs." She advised.

The sensation that followed was not a "slight pinch", not even close. Instead as the machine clamped down on Susan's arms and legs it felt as they'd just been caught in a hydraulic press.

"There. Now that your limbs secured, it's time to do a little stress test. Over the next few minutes I'll be applying increasing pressure upon your extremities. With any luck, it should solicit a reaction from your unborn children..." Keany explained.

"If at any point this becomes uncomfortable or painful let me know and I'll stop the test at once." She added in a sickeningly sweet voice.

Ultra Woman didn't have time to say she already felt uncomfortable before the nurse pushed a big red button.

Instantly Susan could hear various gears humming to life, and she suddenly felt like a trout simultaneously hooked by four separate fisherman.

Susan's arms and legs spooled themselves around different sections of the machine again and again, faster than her eyes could follow.

After ten minutes of such treatment she must have hit some magical stretching point because suddenly a pronounced "stretch" from one of her children made the superheroine's belly distend for a full five seconds before returning to normal.

Nurse Wethers stopped the machine and picked up Susan's chart. She began to scribble furiously on it a wide smile filling her face.

"Excellent, we've confirmed that your unborn children are elastic! This will make all my other tests so much easier!" She exclaimed in delight.

"Other tests?" Susan mumbled, feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

Then just when she thought things couldn't get worse, they did.

Both women looked up in surprise as another female voice spoke over the hospital intercom system, "Attention all hospital staff and patients. I'd just like to inform you to please continue your rounds as normal.

That said, I have taken the Chief of Medicine among others hostage in his office. I will inform you later as to how you can see to delivering the entire hospital's supply of UWC to me in exactly thirty minutes time.

For now however I would appreciate it if you simply go about your jobs without any foolish life threatening shows of heroics." Announced an emotionless female voice from the hospital's PA system.

Susan's first reaction to the message was to just sort of stare into space.

Being a superheroine she was used to things going wrong around her, but not even being able to go to a hospital for a checkup without needing to save the day? That really took the cake.

As shocking as this turn of events was, Nurse Wethers reaction to it was even more so. She looked down at the ground and kicked at it in irritation before turning forlornly to the ceiling.

"Again?" She intoned skyward, in the exact same tone of voice that Susan was tempted to use at the moment.

Then she proceeded to "race" over to a closet and pull the largest needle that Susan had ever seen. Simply put, it was taller than its holder, and seemed to have more (and in some cases pointier) attachments than your average combat rifle.

"You just stay here. I'll go take care of things and come back to finish your examination." She promised Susan in the most patronizing voice imaginable.

"I'll stay here?" Susan bristled, her body whipping about like a fire hose.

"Which one of us is a superheroine?" She asked interested in how Keany would respond.

The woman in white simply gave the stethoscope she wore around her neck a slight tug and smiled broadly.

"Which of us is the patient? Now follow your nurse's orders or else!" She insisted before vacating the room as quickly as possible.

Ultra Woman however wasn't about to let a nurse armed only with an impossibly huge syringe deal with criminals while she just sat around.

Unfortunately, Keany had neglected to release her from the machine, and so using her arms and legs was out of the question. Luckily Susan had been in worse situations than this plenty of times before.

After being certain that Keany had put too much distance between them for her to race back and somehow improve the machine's grip upon Susan's body, Ultra Woman got to work.

Her neck began to grow longer, drooping down towards the ground, before it took a sharp left turn. With practiced ease she guided her head toward the section of the machine that Keany had been using to control it.

Next to the big red button was a big green button and figuring she had nothing to lose, Susan pressed it with her nose.

Once more the machine's gears spun into actions, this time unspooling Susan's limbs rather than collecting them.

Inside thirty seconds she was back on the floor, even if her arms and legs happened to be looped about the room in huge coils like a quartet of the world's most oversized snakes. She concentrated on getting her limbs back to their proper size (and firmness) while inspecting the room.

Just as she was regaining her feet Ultra Woman locked eyes with exactly what she wanted, a ventilation duct.

-----

It really is remarkably easy to get around any building be it a bank, an abandoned warehouse, or even a hospital if you could use the ventilation system.

That said, most buildings tend to have tiny ventilation shafts that no reasonably sized person could ever fit into.

But even this far into her pregnancy, Ultra Woman still possessed the ability to "suck in her gut" and wiggle through such confined spaces with ease. Thus even though Nurse Weathers had a noticeable head start, Susan was the first of the two to reach the Chief of Medicine's office.

Looking at what lay within from her position in the shaft Susan almost cackled with delight.

The Chief of Medicine, a balding man in his middle fifties, and a few other members of the staff were strapped down to hospital gurneys. A brown haired woman with sunglasses in a bland black business suit and black long pants had a handgun pointed at the chief's head, but she didn't seem to have any minions to back her up.

A few filing cabinets had been tipped over in front of the door to keep others out, yet another sign of how shoestring this operation was.

In short, a complete and total cakewalk for Ultra Woman.

After contemplating a few different possible approaches to the situation Susan settled on resolving things with one quick strike.

Her body oozed through the ventilation grating in five seconds flat, landing on the woman's arm like a oversized dollop of taffy. Screaming in fear she dropped the gun and backed away towards an office wall.

Congratulating herself on a job well done, Susan reformed her body with the pistol trapped inside.

"I really don't want to hurt you, so why don't we get this over with quick." Susan suggested as she advanced on the woman.

"Just get down on your knees and place your hands behind your head." Ultra Woman ordered, ready to 'cuff' this woman with her own 'long arm of the law' once she'd given up.

"I'd rather not." Replied the woman who then snapped her fingers.

There was no sound accompanying the gunshot. Its impact was undeniable however.

Next to this, the little show one of her children had put on for Nurse Wethers was nothing.

A small section of Ultra Woman's belly leapt forward dramatically before rebounding the bullet backwards. This only caused other side of Susan to be wildly elongated, before it sent the bullet rebounding away as well.

The strange woman began to snap up a storm, and the gun Susan had captured managed to somehow discharge of its own volition.

It fired off its seven round clip in under ten seconds and with over half a dozen bullets bouncing around inside of her Susan's body looked like a miniature billiards table.

Neither Ultra Woman or her children were in any direct danger, but her concentration was rather helplessly fixated on the task of keeping the bullets inside of her.

So while the stretchy superheroine was busy dealing with the worst case of upset stomach imaginable, the woman in black easily side stepped her. She then paradoxically began to undo the straps which bound several of her less important hostages.

"You can call me Tinker, Ultra Woman! I fix things. Fix them so that they're better. Fix them so that they love me. Fix them so that they would do anything for me. They're my babies!" Tinker screamed the last sentence defiantly.

As the now freed hostages ran from the room, the unoccupied gurneys, apparently of their own will began to turn towards Susan.

They rolled across the floor wheels creaking ominously. All three of them however were promptly swept away by a single swing of an enlarged rubbery palm.

Landing on their sides, the gurneys spun their wheels pathetically, still trying to move.

"My babies!" Tinker screamed again even louder than the first time.

"I'll make you pay for what you've done to them!" She vowed, before letting loose with a long whistle.

Much as she wanted to keep her eyes on Tinker, the sound of the wall behind Susan suddenly giving way took precedence.

Ultra Woman's neck did a quick 180 degree twist and she found herself face to face with what to all appearance was a perfect double of the machine that Keany had used to test her.

It advanced on Susan gears clanking ominously, barely fitting into the office.

"How do you like my bestest baby ever, Ultra Woman? You'd be amazed with what some people will just throw away in a dank cold basement!" Tinker cackled.

A hatch opened on the front of the machine and what felt like the world's most powerful vacuums kicked into action. Susan instantly lost her footing, but thinking quickly she wrapped her arms around the chief of medicine's desk anchoring at least half of her body to the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tinker also getting pulled into the air by the machine's vacuum. She was promptly rescued however when one of the over turned gurneys lassoed her with its belt.

Then Tinker snapped her fingers.

Apparently there had still been one bullet left in her gun.

Faced with a choice between maintain her grip or letting the round ricochet about in a room full of innocent people Susan did the honorable thing.

She was still trying to keep the bullet trapped inside her when she was sucked up by the massive machine.

Everything went dark as Susan listened helpless to a thousand malicious gears grinding away in every conceivable direction. With each passing moment she was stretched this way and that by the machine, down one leg, back up, into or out of an arm, towards the head of the thing.

With each turn or twist Ultra Woman's body became lodged between more and more gears before finally her flattened head emerged from the middle of the machine like a nearly printed fax.

Susan struggled for all she was worth, but her body was taut as could be. Tinker slowly rose to her feet, walked over and twisted Susan's nose until it was upside down.

"Nice try, Ultra Woman. Nobody but nobody is going to stop me from getting what I want!" Tinker vowed.

"Lord knows I'm not." Commented a figure from the office door.

The mini-tornado Tinker's machine had created inadvertently had cleared away the barricade of brickabrack she'd set up, leaving Keany Wethers free to enter the office. Even as Tinker began to turn around to face this new threat the nurse grabbed the end of her stethoscope in one hand and hurled it at the supervillianess.

Amazingly, the ordinary piece of equipment suddenly dramatically increased its length, allowing it to wrap around Tinker's arm like a bullwhip. Before the object manipulating woman could work her particular brand of magic, Keany Weathers yanked for all she was worth.

She yanked so hard that she ended up losing her sense of balance and falling forwards onto the ground.

Not that it did Tinker any good, in fact trying to stand firm against weight of a third trimester nurse with triplets was an obvious lost cause. As she was pulled forward, Keany's other hand brought up her massive needle.

Tinker was practically impaled on the thing, to the point that Susan was surprised she couldn't see part of it poking out of her back.

"Here's your medicine!" Cried Keany triumphantly as she depressed the syringe's plunger pumping a considerable amount of blue liquid into Tinker's belly.

Even more shockingly when she pulled it out, Keany's needle didn't leave behind a hole the size of her fist. All the same Tinker dropped to the ground her somehow whole stomach started to expand rapidly.

With a series of "pop"s, buttons flew from her suit as her belly bloated up to the point that it was about half the size of Susan's.

Looking down at this huge impediment, she did the last thing Ultra Woman expected, she cried.

Tinker tore off her glasses revealing large watery brown eyes, hugged her newfound girth and sobbed like an infant. The words "my babies!" came flying from her lips without sign of stopping.

The machine Susan was still stuck inside ceased to move, but that didn't bring its captive any closer to freedom.

"Do you mind explaining what's going on?" Susan asked irritably as Keany picked herself up and nonchalantly made her way over.

"As you clearly didn't know, 'UWC' stands for 'Uterine Wall Calmers.' They're a new kind of drug we're testing here in a few very rare cases. They're designed to give those who would normally be barren a chance to conceive.

I figured the only reason a woman would want them badly enough to hold somebody hostage would be if they really, really wanted to have children but couldn't.

So I gave her a shot from my Bane of Extinction, and she's now effectively four months pregnant with quadruplets, speaking of which..." She promptly turned around and placed a hand on Tinker's shoulder.

"Would you mind releasing my patient?" Tinker nodded, still too busy sobbing tears of joy to speak.

For the second time that day a machine which had gotten far too much of Ultra Woman's body wrapped up in it, proceeded to undo its actions with lightning speed. The machine ended up spitting Susan back out of the hole she'd been sucked in through leaving her to lay there on the floor, still extremely shaken.

"Do you want to explain why there was another one of these things laying around in the basement?" Ultra Woman complained.

Nurse Wethers shrugged as she helped Susan to her feet.

"Why wouldn't there be one? I built two of them in case the first one broke halfway through the tests!" She said with a smile.

Susan wanted to protest at how little sense this made, but clearly Nurse Wethers was operating on a different realm of logic than everyone else in the room.

As if she needed more proof of this fact, she then began to help Tinker up as well.

"Now then Little Miss Machine, I think you need to get up to my office straight away so that I can make sure Bane worked properly. This really is my lucky day. Now I've got two superpowered pregnancies to examine!" She announced excitedly.

Susan wanted to point out that, however understandable her motivation, someone should probably see to it that Tinker was arrested for her crimes.

She also wanted to suggest that exposing a woman with the ability to animate lifeless objects to Keany's collection of tools would be a very risky and foolish idea indeed.

But most of all she wanted to be back inside that machine Tinker had attacked her with so Nurse Wethers couldn't run any more tests on her.