Chapter Text
Under some random tree, with a delicious-looking piece of food in his hands, laid a small, innocent boy.
Just thinking. About something specific, formidable, a good portion of footsteps away from him. Tapping his right foot - not against the ground, to be precise, but basically just against the air - only hearing his breath. That and the birds' chirping.
The piece of food that he had - a sandwich he had made himself, as it turns out - was as delicious as it looked.
At least that was a relief.
Because it had to be, in comparison to what could be said awaited him.
The thing is - he was nervous. He was extremely nervous.
The boy in discussion, Miles Prower, was a very intelligent young fox. He was so smart, so calculated, so determined to finish any task he would set his mind to.
If you were to ask him to fix a plane you just broke, he would do it without much sweat. If he were to calculate the force and direction at which he would have to throw a rock in order for it to land at a certain point in the sea, he would calculate in in no time. If you asked him what the mechanics of a furnace look like, he would be able to answer it.
That said...
There was something else he had enormous uncertainties with.
Once he finished his sandwich, he was aware that he would have to shift his focus from the piece of food to that other, uncertain, thing.
It had, in a way, something to do with the specific island that he lived on. Cocoa Island.
Now, Cocoa Island was nothing out of the ordinary for what you might imagine as an island of almost pure nature. It was a beautiful home to numerous species of beings, with food and water being at a hand's reach at every point.
Naturally, Miles Prower - or, as everyone on the island liked to call him, Tails, after a unique physical mutation that he possessed - utilized these qualities the best way he could.
That was no problem for him.
However, with all the birds and squirrels and bunnies and whatnot kinds of species - there was one more species that lived on Cocoa Island.
Seedrians.
An unusually strange species, the origins and very appearance of which it is actually not that easy to explain.
Yes, one could say that they are basically flowers.
Except that's not so simple.
They were, in fact, living beings, that could walk and talk and everything. Pretty advanced for a plant, right?
For our dear fox, though, that was nothing unusual. After all, he lived at the same place as them. He saw them every day. Why would he find that strange?
Except there was one thing.
One of those Seedrians was exceptionally special... to him. Personally.
"How do I tell her...?" he contemplated.
Yeah. In that way.
He had no trouble designing a super-powerful airplane, or solving a complex equation, or anything like that.
But this, this was what he did have troubles with.
There was this wonderful female Seedrian, just around his age, whom he was deeply in love with.
But he couldn't tell her that.
Not in the sense that he wasn't "allowed" to. He was. (Besides, law was basically a foreign term on Cocoa Island.)
He just... didn't have the strength.
"Cosmo..." he resorted to daydreaming about her, for what might as well have been a millionth time.
He had numerous chances to do it. To just come up to her and tell her how he felt about her. To just do it right there.
And every single time, whenever the chance finally came up... he just couldn't.
And for what might as well have been a millionth time, the daydream that he had about Cosmo was just delightful.
As was Cosmo herself, to him.
But he couldn't keep that a secret forever. He would have to tell her, sooner or later.
But the problem was... what would she say back?
Once he woke up from his nap, he felt genuinely rested. Scratching his chest, he looked at the trees again. One breath of fresh air was more than enough to make his worries at least temporarily go away.
He didn't have much more to do in this forest, so he headed home. Yes, he had built a house of his own, at this young an age. Weird? Completely normal to anyone from there.
As the young kitsune walked on his way home, the thoughts of Cosmo never even slightly left his mind, not even for a second.
Then, just as he saw his house, and went up to go inside it - something happened!
Somebody ran up to him!
Tails, normally, turned around head to see who it was, and - no, it wasn't Cosmo.
It was, in fact, Galaxina, Cosmo's sister. And she wasn't looking all too cheerful.
"Galaxina?" the fox greeted her in some amount of confusion.
"Tails," she said back, in obvious worry, "we need your help!"
Tails did not understand what this sudden excruciating worry was all about - until he looked behind her, in the distance.
Something was on fire!
In fact, a good portion of Poloy Forest, a forest on the far side of the island, was on fire!
Tails couldn't do much else right upon seeing this devastated state that this otherwise blooming forest was in, other than freeze in complete shock.
"Please tell me you can save us," Galaxina cried out.
And Tails had heard her words. But that was all.
This was a piece of information he received just so suddenly, and it was right away that he had to do something about it!
The time to act - the time to use his apparently genius mind for a greater good - was now!