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The sun in Emerald Hill shined brighter than any other day, something that Miles Prower took advantage of. He decided to take a walk after weeks of staying inside his school, which he also denominated as ‘home.’ He really needed to stretch his legs; his home was quite big, but the hallways and classrooms got boring really fast, and he was tired of trying to hide from the security cameras, since he didn’t know where he could delete the security footage, and —surprisingly— it wasn’t in the principal’s office.
The light breeze caressed his face, his dirty fur felt clean again as the wind groomed and softened it. The grass tickled his scuffed and overused red shoes, giving him a slight chill. His lungs stung from breathing fresh air and both his tails were wagging in sync with the sounds of flickies flying.
He closed his eyes in order to enjoy nature with all of his other senses, but was stopped suddenly by a feeling of cotton touching his chest. He opened his eyes to find two tall, brown foxes with a pointy snout and red boots, almost identical to each other. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” Said one of them. “I guess you were right, Finley, taking a walk would be fun today!”
One of the foxes put his arm around Miles’ shoulder and forced him into an aggressive side hug. His tails stopped flapping and it felt as if the wind had completely halted, scared from the foxes’ presence. “Where do you think you’re going, Two-Tails? Finally getting out of school for once?”
“I’m not– looking for trouble, Preston.” Miles said hesitantly.
“Of course you ain’t, buddy.” The fox that was squeezing him said before putting his hand behind Miles’ head and pushing him down, his mouth forced to eat the dirt from the impact. He could have sworn he ate a couple of worms on the ground. “But we are.” They both started laughing.
“Come– come on, guys! What have I even done this time?!” Miles tried to yell while trying to spit out the mud from the floor.
“A freak of nature like you shouldn’t enjoy this beautiful day.” Finley smirked. “You should have stayed in school so nobody could see you!”
“That’s not–”
“No wonder your mom left you.” Preston said, venom in every one of his words as he grinned, waiting to see Miles’ reaction. His eyes turned to look at Preston, his pupils looking like a darker shade of blue than before as they glared at him intensely. Miles stopped shivering, now looking up at him, still from the ground, frozen in place. His hands clawed the dirt below him until there were perfect marks and his tails quivered. Finally, he swallowed thickly and spoke. “What did you just say?”
Preston snickered. “Two-tailed and deaf too? I said, ‘No wonder your mom left you,’ idiot.”
He saw a twitch in Miles’ eye before he rushed at him. He got on top of him with no issue, where he restrained Preston by holding his arms with his hands. He could feel Miles’ blood boiling from the hard grip at his wrists. He looked back at Miles’ face; he saw the same expression as before but now his brows furrowed in an angered expression and his right eye kept twitching. His dark, blue eyes stared daggers into him.
“Are you going to say that again?!” He hissed as he hardened his grip on the fox’s wrists. He felt his claws extend but he was too distracted with Preston to even realize. His world turned dark, only Preston and himself visible as his heart raced and eyes fidgeted.
“He– Hey dude! Cut it out!” Said the fox he was holding, but Miles did not listen, only squeezing harder, his claws slightly puncturing his skin. As he pressed, Preston started growling from the pain. He looked at one of his wrists to see Miles’ claws tearing into him, blood starting to drip from the injury, to which he started wailing and yelling.
“Nobody says that about–” Miles got interrupted by a punch in the head, something that promptly took him from above Preston, rolling on the dirt as the world reappeared to him. He looked back at the scene; Finley was helping Preston get back up. He saw Preston’s blood dripping from his wrists. His eyes widened, “Did I– do that?”
“What the hell, man?! What’s wrong with you?!” Finley yelled, still holding Preston close, “I’m calling the cops!”
Preston and Finley fled, leaving Miles alone. He started to panic. He wasn’t a violent person, he would never hurt someone. What happened to him? He never wanted this, he just wanted to go for a walk. Miles could feel both his claws and his lungs retract as he started to hyperventilate. He glared at his hands, the point of his fingers bloodied.
“No. No no no no–” He said. “What did you do, Miles?!” He put his hands to his head before remembering the last thing Finley said. “I need to get out of here.”
Running was something he was not used to, he didn’t need to run much in his life —and he was horrible in P.E.— but the adrenaline helped him to keep on longer and to go faster than he had ever gone. The trees zoomed past his vision, the grass no longer cozy, only a feeling that gave him chills. He refused to look at his hands; he could still feel the blood on his gloves. The thought of it made Miles want to puke, his insides felt like they were jumping up and down. He wanted to stop, he wanted to lay down and cry, but he couldn’t do that, he needed to run faster, the police may already be on his tails by now. He should have never done that to Preston, so much for a ‘young prodigy.’
Suddenly, he heard a sound from near, resembling stirring tires. Oh no, they’re here, Miles thought, I need to hide. He found the nearest boulder and crouched behind it, praying to whatever God there was up there that they didn’t find him. He heard the sound of running and metal being hit even closer, a tear fell from his eyes from the stress.
“Come on, egg head, you’re not even being clever this time!” A joyous, energetic but unknown voice said, it sounded like a boy in their teens. Confusion started to grow in Miles’ head; who was that? It definitely wasn’t a policeman —or the age requirement for being one had been shrunken down significantly— and it wasn’t referring to him. He peaked his head from behind the boulder to see the situation.
There stood a medium-height, blue hedgehog with green eyes, with long quills and sporting red shoes that had a white line passing through them, scratching his nose with no care in the world. He ran back to reveal the foe he was referring to: a much older man, quite round in complexion with a red top and a yellow cape, blue glasses and a bushy but neatly groomed moustache that covered half of his head. He could not see his lower half, however, as it was being covered by the machination he was driving, a flying, egg-shaped device with a yellow light at the front and a windshield.
The stress Miles had been feeling was somehow dissipated away in an instant, he stared with awe at the hovercar, surprised at such an invention. The hedgehog made himself into a ball and rapidly hit the mobile. Miles flinched at the thought of such a precious work of machinery being destroyed this way.
“Agh, you blasted hedgehog! I am clever all of the time! My brain is bigger than you could ever comprehend, rodent!” The man said as he tried to stomp the Mobian with his machine.
“Yeah yeah, 300 IQ, blah blah blah. My experience tells me you only have a yolk-sized brain inside that giant head of yours!” The hedgehog retorted while mocking the man by sticking his tongue out and putting his open hands to his head.
The blue hedgehog and the man continued to fight for some ten minutes, time which Miles spent examining the person’s hovercar, paying attention to all of its details and complexities. He saw a little compartment below the vehicle, which he theorized were legs in order to land it. The windshield looked completely pristine even after getting hit by the hedgehog many times; how many gigapascals could that thing stand? Although the car looked dented and damaged from all of the hits, it still maintained its height and never fell, which surprised Miles the most, it was the most resistant machine he had ever seen. What had that hedgehog said before? That the man had 300 IQ? Miles’ eyes shined at such a thought. That was higher than the IQ of the most intelligent people that Miles knew; only his hero, Gerald Robotnik, could compare.
While Miles gazed astonished, the hedgehog landed a last hit, causing the creation that he had been idolizing for ten minutes to break down in a smoky mess, but it still kept floating regardless, which just amazed him even more. “Ugh, I’ll get you one day, pest!” The man cried before escaping.
“That’s what you always say, Eggman!” The hedgehog scratched his nose once again. “Heh. What a dummy.” He said before disappearing in a picosecond.
Miles got out from behind the boulder and ran to the previous battle arena. Incredibly, there was no sight of the hedgehog around, it was as if he had never been there at all. However, he could see the man in the distance, still riding his hovercar. He thought of following him, but perhaps it was better if he didn’t, he should just get back at his home and not annoy a good man. “Yeah, I should go–” He paused looking at his gloves, the fingers still covered in blood that had now dried and were as black as burnt toast. His pupils shrunk before shoving his hands downwards with such force it almost hurt him. Miles considered his options: follow an unknown man who could be the most intelligent person in the world, or go back and face the consequences of what he had done. The choice was easy, all things considered.
Miles started sprinting to his left, where the man had gone. As he ran, he wondered: why did the blue hedgehog want to hurt the man so badly? Why were they even fighting? He kept asking himself these questions until he saw a flying egg-shaped mobile in the distance, still breaking down and losing altitude until it promptly fell into the ground with a loud thump that could be heard from kilometers away. Miles got worried for the man and ran faster to see if he had gotten injured at all.
As he got closer, he could start hearing mumbling. “Ugh. I hate that hedgehog.” He continued grunting while he got out of the vehicle, visibly struggling. He got out a screwdriver and opened a hard steel plate that showed countless wires, chips and pipes. “Wretched rodent. Does he even know how much this takes to fully repair?! The gall of some people–”
His muttering got interrupted by the sound of crushed grass, to which he jumped before quickly pulling out a device similar to a laser gun. “Come. Out.” He said in a completely flat tone, his glasses shining with the sun’s light, capable of blinding even those who wore protective eyegear.
Miles jumped out from the bushes, red in the face, sweat on his forehead, ears flattened and both tails covering his body as a crude method of protection. “I’m– I’m so sorry– sorry, sir. I– Uh. I just–”
“Oh, you’re just a kid.” He exhaled, interrupting Miles’ stumbling over words, before putting his weapon back and returning to examining the plate. “Get out of here, fox cub. I have things to attend to.” He said and then whispered “I don’t need another annoying critter to pester me.”
Miles mustered up the courage to speak up. “I’m sorry to have scared you, sir, but I– Uh. I saw that flying car thing of yours and I found it very cool!” He exclaimed only to be met with no response. “I was wondering what kind of fuel you used for it. Neither coal, steam, or even oil can produce such quick combustion! Plus, that unbreakable windshield is amazing!” he rambled. “Oh! Oh! And the fact that it just kept flying even after being hit multiple times! How can a machine be so resistant?"
The man stopped fiddling with the wiring and looked back, putting his arm over his leg as he slouched over the device. His glasses gleamed with confusion before lighting up. “Well, I use my own mixture of oil, specifically made for this type of machinery, and I blend that with some nuclear energy in the more complex devices where I can’t get a proper power source.”
“Nuclear energy?!” Miles’ eyes beamed. “Oh my God, that is so cool! Does this have nuclear energy?!” He said, pointing at the car.
The man slightly smiled, “Quite a bit, yes. It’s not really safe to handle if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Miles continued staring at the man’s amazing creation, before he approached him and got on one knee to match his height. “Smart kid, aren’t you? So, you saw my battle with that lousy varmint just now? How come you came to me? People are always so crazy to meet the Sonic the Hedgehog.”
“I was just astonished at your machine, sir! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Frankly, I still can’t. Wait a second.” The young fox said before pinching himself in the face. “Nope, not a dream!”
The man snickered. “What’s your name, kid?”
“It’s– Uhm. Miles Prower, sir!” He bursted out. “I heard before that hedgehog called you Eggman. Is that your name?”
“It is what people call me. They thought they could mock me with such a name. Mock me for my appearance? Nonsense! I took the name with pride! It’s not a mockery, it’s a brand!”
Miles looked at the side, petting his two tails with his hand. “I understand how that feels…”
The man raised a brow at him.
“I always get made fun of for my appearance too– My two tails. They call me a freak, a mistake.”
The man scoffed. “And you let them get under your skin? Please, kid, you’re clearly more intelligent than that. Take what they tell you and wear it with pride! You may be a freak, but you know what? That makes you more deserving of the world!” He put his arms to the sky theatrically. “Tell me, Miles; is there any sort of name they call you?”
“...Two-Tails, sir–”
“Unoriginal, but catchy!” The man did a thinking pose. “Tails… That is a perfect nickname for you, I must say!”
“Do you think so?”
“Kid, when I say something, I don’t go back on my word. Doing that just makes you weaker.”
Miles looked at the tails he was petting. Tails… Perhaps that is a good nickname. He once again turned his attention back to ‘Eggman.’ “If I may ask, what is your real name, sir?”
The man crossed his arms and dissented with his head. “You really haven’t heard of me? I am the most genius scientific mind still alive! I am doctor Ivo Robotnik!”
Miles’ tails suddenly began wagging, his ears shot up like radar antennas and he opened his mouth so hard that it almost damaged his jaw. “Robotnik?! Like– Gerald Robotnik?!”
“Ah yes, my grandfather, the only mind more intelligent than my own.”
“Oh dear! I’m in front of a Robotnik! I can’t believe this! I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life!” Miles paced from left to right, looking at his gloves, still covered in dry, black blood, but he didn’t care about that now.
Eggman laughed. “Flabbergasted, huh? You got the right to be!” He grinned, “Well, as much as I would like to stay here and boast, I must go back to repairing my Egg Mobile.” The man said before going back to looking inside of his hovercar.
“Uh– Mr. Robotnik, if I may.” Miles stuttered before he gazed inside of the machine. “I think the main problem is that small leak at the back. I think it’s damaging the wires, not to mention it’s losing a lot of oil.”
Eggman adjusted his glasses and pulled out a flashlight from his toolbox, turning it on to reveal the leakage Miles had mentioned. “Good eyes, fox cub.” He tried to get farther in the device to fix it, but his rotund body kept getting stuck at the steel plate, unable for the Doctor to properly handle the damage. “Ugh, perhaps I should have followed that diet the doctor recommended.”
Miles blushed, his fur got straight and his tails covered his body once again. “Ah– Can I– Try… please?” He looked down. Eggman looked at him, then at the inside of the steel plate. “Hm. Okay, but make sure you don’t touch the engine; it holds all of the nuclear energy in the ship. Luckily, I have invented a thin metal that isolates any type of radioactive energy as long as it's contained! So you should be fine.”
Miles tried to mask his stupefied expression and laid on his belly before getting inside of the car. He asked Eggman for all of the necessary tools, which he grabbed with his tails and carried them to his hands. Eggman looked at the fox work dumbfounded at the efficiency of such a small child, especially with hard, mechanical tasks. He kept giving and getting tools to him until he got out of the Egg Mobile, gloves covered in oil. Miles looked at his hands, the dry blood was almost indiscernible from the Mobile’s oil.
Miles looked up from his hands to Eggman, gleaming at him and wearing a grin from cheek to cheek. Eggman gave him an earnest smile. He screwed the steel plate in and got on top of the Egg Mobile. He then took a piece of cloth from inside his pocket and removed his glasses, fogging them with his breath and rubbing the cloth against them before putting them on once again. “Alright, let’s see how this goes.” He pressed a button and, on that same instant, the exhaust pipe released a giant burst of flames as the hovercar began levitating out of the ground. “Hey! Not half bad!” The doctor chuckled. “You have a quite competent brain, fox boy!”
Miles blushed at the comment, hiding his face with his hands. “Okay, kid, we had our fun, but I must leave you now. Your parents must be worried about you, anyway.” The man said. That last sentence impaled Miles’ heart like a skewer; his pupils wobbled and his ears collapsed as if feeling gravity for the first time. Eggman looked at him curious. “What is it?”
“Umh– Sorry, sir. I, just– Uh. I–” He muttered, trying to hide his watery eyes behind his tails.
“Oh. I see.” The man looked at the fox longingly. The car lowered its altitude so that Eggman could see Miles eye to eye; he put his arms on the edge of the vehicle and cleared his throat. “Look, kid.” He said. “I can’t bring you to my home. My work is dangerous and you would not like it there, it’s not a colorful place to live.”
“B-But–”
“However. Repairing my machines every time that hedgehog breaks them is a tiring job, and not as dangerous —or thrilling. A mechanic would be nice to have around. You’ve already shown your brilliance by fixing my Egg Mobile! And without the blueprint as well.”
Miles looked at the doctor, his eyes still watery, although his ears flicked from anticipation of what the doctor would say.
“So I propose: how about you join my empire? Be my mechanic, my repairman. How does that sound?”
Miles raised a brow. “But, sir– I thought employing children was illegal.”
“There are no child labor laws in the Eggman Empire, Miles!” He pointed at the sky dramatically.
Miles fully processed the offer. To work with a Robotnik. His dream, finally coming to fruition. He couldn’t let this opportunity pass up. His ears fully stung upwards and his tails waggled in excitement. “Yes! Of course! Of course I’ll work for you, Mr. Robotnik!” He jumped with his arms rolled on his chest and hands made into fists.
Eggman laughed. “Good kid! Of course, you will have to pass a work trial period that will instruct you in how to properly serve the empire! This period starts now and your first lesson will be: learn to keep up!” He said before fully taking his device into the air, going at a moderate speed for a machine but fast enough so a child could not outrun it.
Miles began to run after the Doctor, at first going at a good pace, but soon enough his legs started hurting, soon growing numb and slowing in speed. He hyperventilated from the unusual amount of exercise, now that he didn’t have adrenaline he could not compare to his previous rate. “Sir! Wait! I can’t– Run anymore!” He said in-between coughs. “Run on, kid! Persistence is what makes someone strong!” Eggman yelled from the faraway Mobile. Miles closed his eyes to try to ignore his fatigue, his legs kept moving and moving until they completely stopped; however, he still felt the wind still hit his face like before as if he was still running. In fact, his feet weren’t even touching the ground, he hadn’t felt the grass for seconds, he hadn’t heard his footsteps crush it either. “Dear God, Miles!” He heard Eggman say, sounding closer than before.
Miles opened his eyes, only able to see the sky and the Egg Mobile, but no sight of the ground. “Huh? Where’s the– OH!” He yelled as he looked downwards, where the ground stood… ten meters away. He looked at his back to see his two tails rapidly twirling in the air. “I’m– I’m flying!” He yelled, looking forwards at Eggman. The man looked astounded from the back of the vehicle before he laughed. “Yes! That’s what I’m talking about!” He cheered. “Come on, fox boy! Follow closely! But not too closely, you could get burned.”
Miles followed Eggman for an hour, stopping to rest every once in a while, until they finally reached what looked like a mountainous, industrial paradise, with factories producing smoke in a fifty kilometer radius and a great egg-shaped structure at its center that had the Doctor’s face plastered all over it. The edifice had giant tubes connected to every factory surrounding it. Miles had to admit, it was a pretty good place to put a giant building, the mountains covered it so it wasn’t really visible from afar, and the top would just look like another mountain since it was painted white.
“Sir? Shouldn’t we land? To go to– you know, the door?” Miles asked.
“No, no, just keep flying.” Eggman said. They flew until Eggman almost hit the wall, until it suddenly opened to reveal a great hallway wrapped in metal. Miles didn’t know how the same man could dumbfound him so many times, but he was doing it, and he prayed that it didn’t stop. They soon reached the end of the metal corridor, and they both landed on an elevated platform. As Eggman got out of the Egg Mobile, Miles put a hand on his chest and breathed heavily. “Wow! What a rush! I can fly! I– I can fly!” He cried while throwing his fists in the air.
Eggman walked beside him and crossed his arms. “See? I knew you could keep up.”
Miles smiled before taking in his surroundings. It was Mr. Robotnik’s home, although it didn’t look very homely. The walls were made of the same hard metal as the corridor, the furniture made of ancient wood and plastic, probably inherited, and few paintings or pictures were framed, but he had been living in a school for years so it’s not like he could complain. He probably didn’t understand the vision anyway; a genius like him probably had a different relationship and grasp of homes than regular people.
“Welcome to my lair!” He boasted dramatically. “Make yourself at home– work! Make yourself at work!
“That doesn’t make sense–” He whispered before the Doctor pushed his back with one of his hands. “Let me show you around.”
Eggman showed him around his house: there was a giant living room with a couch and a colossal flat-screen television sitting in front of it, robotic plants, shelves and bookcases filled with memorabilia and numerous hardcovers of many topics and genres, from physics and chemistry to crappy romance novels, all of them had a bookmark on, roughly in the middle of their contents. The living room was connected to the dining room, which had a large table with a dozen or so chairs adjacent to it. The kitchen was orderly with tiles as white as pearls, there were no dishes in the sink or any dirty pots or pans to clean. Eggman led them both to a long corridor that held a number of rooms, but to get there they had to go through a steel catwalk that was raised above a massive room full of different robots —such as: ladybugs with wheels; crabs with big, cartoony eyes and claws; or what looked like blue armadillos sporting a red horn— with an enormous metallic door at the back. The whole home seemed to be full of robots; Miles saw robots cleaning, robots doing electrical work, robots organizing the books in the bookshelf. He was startled, this really was the house of a genius.
They stopped in front of one of the doors. “And this will be your room!” He pointed at the door with his palm as he put his other hand on Miles’ shoulder. Before Miles could look at it he quickly withdrew it to his own back before grunting, a bit of red in his face. “To rest after a long day of work, of course.”
They opened the door to show a smaller room, with a bed, a nightstand with a lamp standing on top of it and a wardrobe on its right side, with nothing but a propagandistic poster of the Space Colony ARK and a trashcan in the left side of the bedroom. “The room isn’t very decorated as you can see, but I’m sure we– you will fill it with whatever stuff you like soon enough.”
Miles stepped inside of the bedroom, mouth gaping and unable to blink. He pinched the black bed sheets —also plastered with the Doctor’s face— and turned on and off the lamp a couple of times as Eggman peered at him. He felt his eyes water again, tears beginning to run across his face, dampening his fur and his filthy gloves. “A room– For me?” He said between sobs. “I– I–” He stuttered before breaking into tears. “I’m sorry, I just– I never–” He tried to speak but his weeping and mucus prohibited him from doing so. He tried to wipe away his tears and snot with his gloves, but it only produced more as the fox stayed crying from just looking upwards at the room. He rushed to the man as best as he could with his arms open, trying to see through his blurred vision, but before he could hug him, he stretched his arm to the fox’s head, preventing him from being able to reach him. Even through his teary eyes, Miles could see his completely red face, confused on what to do as he held his head. “Well– Uhm. I will leave you here now, get accustomed to the place. The job starts tomorrow.” He blurted before closing the door, leaving Miles alone once again.
Some fifteen minutes passed as he continued crying, only intensifying the longer he looked at his surroundings. When he stopped, he actually started to rummage through the room, not that there was much to rummage through. He looked in the drawer of the nightstand, there were a pair of light brown work gloves, decorated with yellow cotton in the knuckles and the fingertips. He looked at his own gloves, stained not only with oil, tears, snot and Preston's dried blood, but with memories. Memories of hundreds, thousands of days of relentless torment, bullying, hiding from his classmates during the day and from the school’s security cameras at night; memories of a past he didn't want to remember. He glared at them. He despised them.
He took his gloves out and put on the work gloves in the drawer. They surprisingly felt quite cozy despite being for work, the cotton was inside of them as well and it kept his hands warm. He approached the trashcan in the west side of the room and threw his old, dirty gloves inside it. He glared at them again before turning back at the bed. This was a new start for him. No more.
As he stared at the bed he started realizing how tired he was; flying must have really taken a toll on him, but the excitement distracted him for a long time. He pulled away the sheets and got inside the bed. “Comfy.” He yawned, cuddling below the sheets.
The room was only lightened by the lamp in the nightstand. Miles wasn't quite sure what time it was, but it was probably past his bedtime. He turned off the lamp before huddling once again in the bed, turning towards the wall. It was about time to sleep.
“Please, don't let this be a dream.”