Chapter Text
Technological advances have done wonders for the invention of modern medicine. Tails knows this intimately because he has studied every inch of anything STEM he’s ever gotten his hands on. Being quite young and having very little access to mainstream education has put him in a weird spot with his peers—he couldn’t name the last 5 governors of Mobius if he tried—but it’s also given him a unique opportunity that most don’t get until they’ve grown and gone to college. The young fox was handed the prime opportunity to specialize in his field of interest. That’s not to say he did all of the work himself, of course. His big brother’s encouragement has done so much for his pursuit of knowledge.
As a hoglet (and wow, how weird is it to refer to Sonic like that) the blue blur always put Tails first. Sonic has no interest in things like formal education, but he did his best to continue Tails’ efforts towards things like reading. Expanding the vocabulary of a toddler was quite hard for a mostly mute child, but his brilliant brother found a way, and Tails couldn’t thank him more. Being known as The Tech Guy by Sonic and his friends also definitely helped the kit put his studying first. Someone needed to be able to counter Eggman’s fancy work, and someone needed to look after Sonic the way he looked after others. The praise he got after a successful invention was just…an added bonus.
All that is to say, Tails was now the most proficient anyone else his age could possibly be in his work, and he is beyond happy about it. He used that knowledge to help his older brother and caretaker in any way possible. That very quickly expanded to beyond-rudimentary knowledge in things like first aid, biology, chemistry and anatomy. With this knowledge he could further improve his contributions to the anti-eggface cause. For example, Sonic’s shoes. Yes, you heard that right. Sonic The Hedgehog’s sneakers are hand-engineered by Miles Prower himself to withstand supersonic speeds. They’re constantly being revised when he gets an itch to invent. The hardest part of it is convincing Sonic to stay in the house as they’re being tweaked.
Because the twin-tailed boy was essentially The Expert, he took it upon himself to extend his help to their friends quite often. For devices such as vital monitors—a must have on particularly hairy missions—he has in depth files on all of their closest allies. A tap of his keyboard could get him extensive information on just about anything in his friends, from their height, average bpm, and hemoglobin, down to their very last drop of natural chaos energy. These statistics were often followed with 3D thermal models of their owner, whatever x-rays he has available of them, etcétera. He may be no doctor in practice, but he’s the closest thing they’ve got, so he does his best without exception.
When Tails heard from Sonic that Silver was in town, the first thought that crossed his mind was about whether or not he should be preparing the bunker he hadn’t told the blue hedgehog he made yet. Clearly noticing the blank look of muted horror on the kit’s face, Sonic quickly explained the exchange he’d apparently had with the time traveller before coming home for the evening. While his green eyes were admittedly shifting restlessly the whole tale, as they always do when Sonic tactfully omits information as if Tails won’t catch on immediately, Tails couldn’t be bothered to pick apart what exactly he was missing. So long as he heard that the world was not at risk of ending, he really did not care what went down when he wasn’t looking. Knowing Sonic, he probably just made an idiot of himself.
Knowing that Silver was going to be around more often did get him thinking, though. Of all of their frequent allies, Silver might be the individual he had the least information about when it came to health status. They had only ever met during serious circumstances. He could take a stab at the hedgehog’s height by appearance, sure, but definitive health data would be extremely beneficial, especially from someone 200 years in the future. Who knows what subtle evolutionary changes might’ve occurred in DNA, for example? Maybe the average oxygen concentration in blood was higher or lower. Maybe a foreign brand of antigens made Silver ineligible for things like transfusion! Then what would happen if he ever got hurt?
At the dinner table, Tails insisted vehemently that Sonic invite Silver over as soon as possible. Confused but never one to turn down his little brother, the hero of Mobius pulled out his phone right then and there to satisfy the fox’s nagging.
The day that Silver would visit came without visible fanfare. However, on the inside, Tails was buzzing about with frantic excitement. He was sure Sonic could see it, because the older boy just chuckled and shook his head every time Tails scurried past with a new notebook. Now, he didn’t want to get overzealous, but he was very ready for any new medical information. Even the smallest deviation from typical mobian biological composition would surely send the twin-tailed boy on a spiral of discovery. If he managed to inform Silver of something new about his own health, even better! It would do the hedgehog some good to have a solid person to turn to for simpler issues like fluctuations in chaos resonance, scans for specific pathogens that may not exist in their world yet, and so on. While a professional doctor might be a better option, Tails wasn’t ready to trust a government paid institution over his own wit with the safety of his friend’s unique circumstances.
That was a disconcerting revelation to have. Probably a little worrying, too. Maybe a side effect of growing up essentially homeless? With the government notably hunting down his brother on the odd occasion, maybe that line of thought was to be expected. (He definitely shouldn’t mention it to Sonic though.)
Silver arrived just before lunch time. Tails forced himself to act like a normal person all throughout the meal, participating in the friendly banter as Sonic worked at the stove and insisted on feeding their friend. Silver was unusually enamored with the food, but considering the future he comes from, the fox has to wonder if he doesn’t get home cooked meals often. The repercussions of the inventions of man in future eras… it’s a topic Tails would love to breach, but he’s not so sure Silver would be as eager to share that information with someone in the past. Or, present?
After lunch Tails was finally able to convince the futuristic hedgehog to come to his lab in the garage. “I have biological scans of all of our friends!” Tails told him, “Think of it as a rite of passage or something! Like ultra initiation. This way, I can do so much for you when we work together! Like making you special gear, or keeping you updated on your health status.” Silver seemed the most excited about the all of our friends portion, but that’s fine, the kit would take whatever he needed to get some solid scans on the older boy and soothe the flame of burning curiosity.
Silver stepped into the garage with simmering apprehension. Hesitant eyes roamed the lab space. Pushed off to the left was the ‘medical’ equipment. Different scanners, x-rays, and already finished inventions like back-up inhibitor rings for Shadow or reinforced gloves for Knuckles. The right half of the space was dedicated to what you would actually expect to find in a garage: a workbench, spare parts, oil stains, borderline illegal batteries—you get the idea. Tails getsured for him to come to the left side, where he could most efficiently get a read for the hedgehog’s physiology. He padded over to his desk, significantly cleaner than its counterpart on the right side of the room, and pulled himself into the swivel chair. “Sit down, please!” He called to the older boy over his shoulder.
Silver, thankfully intelligent enough to give the kit hope for humanity’s future, read between the lines and situated himself on the sheet-covered surface that might resemble a bed from a doctor’s office if it were more sterile. The white furred boy continued appraising his surroundings, if only as a distraction so as to not think very hard about what it could be that Tails was tapping away for on the computer. Mentally, he had to give kudos to the kid. It’s easy for Silver to forget what a mad genius the little guy is. The kit clearly was comfortable and confident in his own space. More so than Silver currently was, thank Solaris. Truthfully, Silver had never really been to any sort of hospital for anything remotely resembling a checkup. He couldn’t believe his first medical experience would be with a seven year old boy as his nurse.
“So,” Tails said as he pulled a piece from the underside of the desk. It resembled the strange barcode-scanning gun Silver had grown used to seeing in a grocery store. “What I’m going to do is get your vitals first. Those would be your heart rate, oxygen levels, hemoglobin, etcetera.” Without a warning, the handheld device flashed a red light into Silver’s eyes. He recoiled with a flinch and a hiss. Tails smiled, sheepish and yet not looking apologetic. “Then I’m going to get a feel for your physical matter. Bone and tissue structure, organ arrangement. A sense for the normal state of your body. That said, you are in an optimal state, right? No lumps, bumps, bruises or aches? Sniffles? Congestion?”
Silver blinked away the spots from his vision. His mind pulled away from the interaction for a moment to do a cursory once-over of his body. It confirmed his readied answer. No pain, not even a slight headache. That’s a good sign! “I’m feelin’ peachy,” he told the fox with a smile. Tails smiled back, although his eyes were glimmering in an unsettling way.
“Perfect,” Tails said. The kit leaned over the top of the desk for something hanging on the wall. It looked like a cuff of some sort, though longer than what would be conventional for any sort of fashion. Tails slipped it over his arm as he explained its function. “Moving onto the physiology bit, this sweet little brace will do some scanning. It’ll detect the necessary things, like high concentrations of calcium and marrow that indicate bone structure, as well as smooth, cardiac and skeletal muscle. You might feel it.” Upon seeing the frightened look on his subject’s face, he hurried to elaborate, “It will light up to show its progress on where in your body it’s scanning! It’ll look a bit like when you press a flashlight to your skin, yknow? Ever put one in your nose? Or your mouth?”
Silver stared at him incredulously.
Tails grinned awkwardly. “Oh. Uh, that’s not one of those universal experiences in your time? Alright, cool, um. You’ll see what I mean anyways. Don’t worry! It’s totally painless. You might feel some slight heat from the light, but that’s all. You can follow the light’s path if you want! If you crane your head, you’ll probably see when the light refracts around your internal organs.”
As the fox slid the brace over Silver’s forearm and tightened it, one word from that tirade stuck out to him.
“Probably?” The hedgehog repeats warily. “Have you not used this thing before?”
Tails’ eyes gaze into his with the eloquence of a child, exactly his age, with their hand stuck in a cookie jar. “Well…” the kit said, looking away as his namesakes twisted around each other nervously. “No, but don’t worry! I’m a genius.”
Silver could only numbly accept his fate as his friend’s little brother powered up the cuff on his arm. Well, if he somehow died from radiation, he had only himself to blame. Brainiac or not, he let a seven year old boy play doctor with him. His fate would be entirely his own fault.
True to the kit’s word, however, it passed painlessly. Silver watched with intrigue as a ring of light appeared under his skin, somehow, and slowly moved throughout his body. It split into two to move up and down his arm, and when the first ring hit the tips of his fingers, it retracted back into the brace and left only one. The ring of light moved up to his shoulder, then across his whole torso to the other shoulder, moving down his body at a leisurely pace. He could see the outline of his ribs, and his lungs if he looked close enough. As it crept downward toward his stomach he had to look away. As morbidly curious as he was, he couldn’t stomach seeing his anatomy laid out like that on his own body. It was freaky. Quite honestly, he felt way too exposed and yet like his body wasn’t his own at the same time. Like those organs weren’t really inside him. He’d never had to think so deeply about something like that before.
The light hit the very bottom of his lower paws before it crept back up, just like before, although this time it kept creeping past his collarbone and up to his head. A specific sort of unnerving, it was, to feel the ring of warmth go up his face. It was another sort of deeply unsettling entirely to watch a strip of light go up and down his vision and know that the light came from inside of him.
Eventually, all of the light retreated back into the ‘brace’, with a small hum and a click as a button that Silver hadn’t noticed before flickered green.
Tails blinked harshly as though he’d spaced out. “Oh! All done!” Eager paws took the brace from Silver’s arm and set it on the desk. Connecting the brace and the computer via cable (Silver doesn’t know where that came from and he’s stopped trying to understand), Tails looked victorious when an upload bar appeared on the screen. “While that data transfers to my new file for you, why don’t we get a read on a more chemical level?”
“How exactly will that be done?” Silver apprehensively asked.
Tails beamed. “Standard blood smears, of course!”
As it turned out, Silver had a fear of needles. The hedgehog who could swim through the waters of time cohesion with ease, defeat gods and hand Sonic’s own butt to him in five seconds flat, was afraid of needles. This made Tails’ job a bit harder, but if there was one thing he’d learned from his big brother, it was sheer willpower. Tenacity, if you will. Although Tails is aware most people would refer to it as stubbornness as scold Sonic for letting it rub off on him, this trait has proved very vital in certain scenarios.
Such as right now, as he happily allows his technology to pick apart the blood samples he was provided in excruciating detail while Silver nursed an orange flavored push-pop on the bed behind him as though it might take back the last 45 minutes he’d endured. Tails would bet he also has to rebuild his pride a little bit, somehow having failed to safely escape the clutches of a kit. Though being Sonic’s little brother definitely gave him an edge in the fact that most of their friends wouldn’t dare lay a finger on him.
Tails isn’t a violent kid. He’s just waited a long time for this information! If he’s somewhat instilled a fear of medical practice into the older boy, then the trade off would simply have to be that no other experience with needles could ever top this one. With this in mind, the next time Tails needs a blood sample from him, there shouldn’t be half as much fight. The first time is always the worst! Tails did the right thing by helping Silver realize how fickle his fear of the pinprick was. The scary part was just the buildup!
“You’ll be happy to hear that the testing stage is now over,” Tails informed with a beaming smile. Silver looked up from his ice cream with a start.
“…Did I pass the initiation?” The hedgehog asked hesitantly.
“Pass?” Tails repeated.
Silver tried grinning back at him. His mouth was stained orange, and the gap between his two front teeth had a bit of ice cream caught in it. “Well, it’s an initiation, and you just did a couple tests on me. Did I get an A plus? That’s the term you guys use, like on television, right?”
Tails took a glance back at his computer and opened the freshly processed data. “Well… an O positive, actually.”
Silver shrugged. “Haven’t heard of that one before, but it’s not an F, so I think that’s good.” He chuckled to himself and tried stealing a glance at the screen over the fox’s shoulder, only to give up immediately at the immense amount of information hidden in the very fine text.
Tails scanned the vitals first, double checking that everything was in order. Hemoglobin was fairly high, but not enough to be a concern. He thinks. He’s not a doctor, alright? The hedgehog behind him also seemed to have extremely high oxygen density in his blood cells, yet appeared in peak condition. This probably had something to do with air pollution in the future. He should keep an eye on that number to see if it fluctuates throughout time.
His eyes drifted to the calculated body mass in the top right corner and did a hard double take. Then a triple take.
That was— unusually high. Or at least it seemed high for someone of Silver’s physique. He was fairly lean. Right? Tails clicked a few times to drop down the calculations made to reach the weight’s final conclusion. Most things lined up with what he’d seen before in his other friends around Silver’s size, except…
“Holy crud!” Tails exclaimed, leaning forward to inspect the screen closer and make sure these numbers weren’t made up.
Silver frowned and quickly tried to peer around the kit. “What? Is it bad? I knew something would be wrong! Maybe we should check again. I might’ve moved or something—“
“No,” Tails cut him off. “No. That’s not necessary. Sorry, my uh, system bugged for a second and I thought I lost my data, haha.” He awkwardly chuckled and scratched the back of his neck. Immediately he scolded himself for lying so transparently. Not that being good at lying was a skill he aimed to have, but Sonic’s astronomically bad skills were definitely rubbing off on him. Besides, how was he supposed to explain that he was simply taken aback by his sheer amount of skeletal muscle mass? Or in other words—
Silver the Hedgehog was buff. Okay, maybe not visibly, and not quite enough for that to be an adequate description, but Tails just couldn’t think of a better word for it. Silver had to be very strong for those numbers to make sense. Like, pick the fox up right now and hurl him through the garage door with ease kind of strong. And in hindsight, he supposed it made sense. Silver had to be able to fight well to thrive in the future, from what it sounded like often. The time traveller had also fought some pretty tough battles in the past, so was it right for Tails to be so surprised?
Just to be sure…
“Your stats look great,” the kit said with a sunny smile. “Thanks for sticking around long enough to finish them. I know you might be busy running around now that you’re trying to get settled here. I like to have this kinda stuff, just in case. Makes me feel a bit more prepared.” Tails put a finger to his chin like he was thinking while Silver rambled ‘no problem’s and ‘of course’. “Although,” he hummed, and the older boy predictably quieted. The twin-tailed fox pointed to a crate on the right side of the room. “Can you bring that over here for me before you go? I need it for a project I’m starting.”
Silver looked very pleased to have an opportunity to help out. “Sure!” He agreed easily. Just as he lifted his hands, Tails cut in hastily, “be careful though! It’s pretty fragile.”
Silver looked at the kid for a moment. Then he shrugged, reanalyzing the crate and how it was surrounded by other equipment. He walked to the other side of the room and carefully moved some things nearby onto stable surfaces or the ground. When there was a clear path, Silver knelt down and picked it up. He did stumble a bit at the unexpected weight, but he still picked it up.
Tails couldn’t move that without one of his bigger and better inventions. Heck, Sonic couldn’t push the thing across the floor without grunting. But Silver lifted it in his hands, albeit with a focused grimace, and carried it over to where Tails sat. He even managed to set it down rather gently.
“Whew!” Silver exclaimed, grabbing his arm and appearing to massage the muscle hidden under his fur. “What’s in that, dude?”
Something Tails definitely shouldn’t legally disclose. “Oh, just lots of spare stuff,” he reassured with a cheery face.
So, Silver had enough strength to beat Sonic in a fistfight even without his psychokinesis. Tails just had to take that revelation with grace, he supposed. Plenty of his friends were strong. He's not sure why it’s so shocking to see it come from Silver though. Maybe it’s how nice the guy is, or how gentle. A stray thought occurred to the fox. If Silver could keep this fit, holding that much muscle and staying relatively quite skinny, then he must have a pretty big metabolism. Not high enough to rival Sonic’s, not by a long shot, but significantly high by normal Mobian standards.
And only slightly high by the standards of his other strong friends. Don’t be fooled by Amy’s girlish figure.
“Say, it’s been about an hour and a half. You ready for a snack? We have plenty of leftovers, but I’m sure if we nagged him Sonic would whip up some pancakes or something. Not half as good as Amy’s, but definitely not bad!” Tails nudged Silver to attention with the tip of his shoe. Silver looked confused by the gesture, which might’ve been a bit too casual and Sonic-like for a normal conversation, but the hedgehog forgot his befuddlement at the promise of food.
“Ready? I’m always ready for food!” He proclaimed proudly.
Tails pushed himself from his chair quickly and darted for the door, the enthusiasm rubbing off on him easily. Was he hungry? No, not really. But he would be dead before he turned up food. He was raised by Sonic after all. And hey, pancakes! How could anyone resist that?
Silver was quick to run alongside him, both of them goading each other on to go faster, stumbling and slipping on the floor as they turned a corner. They both giggled with infectious energy.
Maybe it was telling that Tails was so insistent on getting a file made for Silver. He told himself it was for the information, yet here he was, leaving his desk the moment the data processed. Maybe Tails was just ready to accept yet another big brother. He could live with that.