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Four years ago…
When compared to some planets in the galaxy, Mobius is quite isolated. They had yet to have any visitors from another world.
That all changed one day, when an egg-shaped spaceship landed just outside of a city in the dead of night.
It’s so silent that it doesn’t wake a soul. No one notices the figure that looks so alien make his way towards the aforementioned city. The man has no quills or fur and stands at least a good foot taller than average.
As he is picking the lock on the doors to an orphanage on the outskirts of the city, the man thinks how interesting it would be to document the culture, infrastructure and ecosystem of this planet.
There is no adult watching the room full of sleeping kids. There are two of the brightly colored bunch that catch the man’s eye: a fox with two tails and a blue hedgehog-like thing that has electricity weaving through its quills.
He could choose any one or all of these poor defenseless potential test subjects but he doesn't, he chooses the two who caught his eye only a moment ago.
It’s far too easy to take them from the beds and back to the ship.
When the sun rises the next morning, there are two kids missing from the number-off at breakfast and a group of chameleons find three rings burnt into the grass just outside of the city.
When Sonic and Miles wake up, they aren’t in their beds surrounded by the faded blue wallpaper of the orphanage, they are lying on and surrounded by concrete.
Mere moments after they woke, the metal door swung open and a man in a red and black suit strode in.
“Hello rodents,”
The first day is filled with fear and pain while the two of them are both cycled mercilessly through what the man in the red suit calls ‘tests’.
When the ‘tests’ finally end for the day (or rather, what Miles says is a day), Sonic’s feet are bleeding and all the fur on Miles’ tails have been shaved off.
They don’t even get a full night’s sleep as they are rudely woken by the man’s voice over the speaker system.
Over the next few days, the two are rudely made aware that this treatment isn’t a one-off occurrence.
The man — whose name apparently is Robotnik and is a Doctor — seems to be enjoying seeing them in pain.
On Day Four, Robotnik starts only addressing Miles as ‘Tails’ and Sonic as ‘rodent’.
On Day Six, when the robots bring Miles back to the room, the fox is unconscious. It’s the first of many times that happens.
On Day Eight, during one of the ‘speed tests’ Robotnik breaks both of Sonic’s legs to track how fast his healing works. The answer that the doctor gets is three hours for both Sonic’s legs to heal completely.
Day Ten, Robotnik has Miles fight his most advanced robot. This is the first day that the idea of wanting to disassemble the robot to see how it works doesn’t even pass through the kit’s mind. He’s more focused on not being killed.
Day Thirteen through Seventeen, they don’t get any food at all and barely any water. Miles hypotheses that it’s to test how long they can last without food. He’s right. The answer is three days, two hours and seventeen minutes.
Day Twenty, Robotnik learns of Miles’ flight and speed abilities. Then so begins a whole new round of pain for the fox kit (and guilt for Sonic who had been the one who had let it slip).
Day Twenty-two, two significant things happen: they give up hope of being rescued (twenty-two days had already passed and there was no sight of any rescue) and Miles contracts pneumonia after that day’s ‘test’.
Day Twenty-five, they learn that the bands on Sonic’s wrists and ankles, and the band around Miles’ neck block them from using their powers.
Day Twenty-seven, Day Thirty, Day Thirty-three, and so on.
Eventually, it’s been a year since Robotnik had taken them from the orphanage. That day, Day 365, for their tests the two find a suspicious cupcake with a number one candle burning in it.
It isn’t actually a cupcake. Real cupcakes don’t explode in your face when you pick it up. Real cupcakes are edible. Real cupcakes are things that bring happiness, this ‘cupcake’ bring only pain and suffering.
As the years pass by, Miles eventually stops thinking of himself as Miles instead he replaces that name in his head with Tails, after all, it’s the only thing that anyone calls him nowadays.
They forget what it’s like to use their powers. For Sonic, the feeling of air rushing through his quills as he runs at speeds that his body shouldn’t be able to handle becomes a distant memory. For Miles, whose powers had only just started developing when they had been taken, he forgets almost completely what it feels like to be flying of his own volition.
Then, on Day 1471, three days after Robotnik, his robots and his assistant have left, the metal door is pushed fully open and a lady in a black outfit enters the room…