It was such a shame about Mama.

Doodle sauntered through dark corridors, hopping over fallen mechs and dancing between collapsed bulkheads as she went.

They'd been together for so long, after all, nearly inseparable.

She came to the door. Average size, unmarked, unremarkable.

But a young maiden couldn't stay cooped up in bed forever. Especially when matters of the heart were involved.

The door slid open, revealing long rows of empty tubes. Doodle walked by them, humming softly to herself as she went to the only filled one, leaning forward to peek at the tiny furry form floating within, long fur swaying softly between the wires protruding from its flesh.

"Good morning! Can you feel the sunshine today?"

She held up a white gloved hand, strands of yellow-orange fur caught between her fingers.

"I've got lots of new sisters for you today!"

And with these, Miles was sure to love her almost as much as she loved him.

Doodle grinned, her face pressed up against the glass as she waited for the young fox inside to grow.

Love was patient, after all.

The End

Author Notes

Thanks for reading this alternative look at Tails the Fox.

This story was at one point nearly included as part of Happy Days, but in the end I decided the change in tone and emphasis would have been too much of a whiplash from Happy Days' heavy focus on character and relationship.

Horror, more than any other genre, is about the helplessness of the protagonists against the threats they face. Wonder Woman can't be the heroine of a slasher movie, and Peter Venkman can't be the hero in a haunted house movie, because those are problems they are well equipped to handle. But what isn't the world's smartest fox equipped to handle, apart from trousers?

Hopefully, if I've done my job right, you've felt a little of Miles' distress along the way and it's felt like a genuine threat without diminishing (or overplaying, for that matter) his character, and without things ever getting so dark or horrible that it stopped feeling like a Sonic the Hedgehog story.

But now the world is saved, after it was already destroyed; the damsel has been rescued - a baker's dozen of them no less, but none of them the damsel he expected; and Miles is on his way to a new adventure with a few more scars and questions than before. Will Miles manage to make it back to his own time? Will he manage to stop the end of the world? And what adventures will the Cream Team have on Earth, and is it as uninhabited as it appears?

Well, I have no idea on that last one, feel free to write about it if you like. For the rest, if you'd be interested to see more Eternal Tails stories (or if you'd like any more shorts in the same vein as Eternal Tails: In Your Shadow), please let me know. Likewise if there's anything you particularly liked or think I should work on in future please leave a review.

Hope you enjoyed reading!

~ Pan