Important days

Fourth Birthday

"And here's your main present, Miles," Ivo said, bringing in a large cage. "You said you wanted a pet."

"Thanks, Dad!" Miles bounced up, tails flying, and hugged his father as he set the cage down, then peered into it while still clinging to Ivo's neck. "What are they?"

"Birds," Ivo answered, grinning.

"I can see that!" Miles stuck his tongue out. "What kind of bird?"

"They're blue flickies, from Christmas Island. They eat seeds and flowers, and they can also get energy from nectar."

"Neat." Miles' eyes tracked the blue birds as they flew around the cage. "How many are there?"

"Four. All male, because otherwise there'd be eggs to cope with. Flickies are social, so they should get on with one another quite well."

"Social?" The newly four-year-old fox kit said, turning to ask.

"It means they live in large groups, so they know how to work together."

"That's neat."

"Now, you'll need to take care of them." Ivo began counting on his fingers. "There's a water bottle, which needs to be refilled at least once every three days, and they can eat seeds like I said. As for the plants in the cage, they'll need to be changed once a few weeks or so – bushes with flowers is best."

"Okay." Miles frowned. "I have to keep them in my room, right?"

"Well, you can. Or I can build an arboretum for them – that means a whole room like this cage."

"That'd be cool!" The fox grinned, tails bouncing around behind him. "Can I help?"

"Sure you can, kiddo."

Twelfth Birthday

"Cool!" Tails said. "A skateboard!"

"Someone sent you something?" Sonic asked, looking over. "Huh. Could be neat. I know you've wanted something like it ever since you saw my snowboard on Angel Island."

"Yeah." Tails nodded. "I'm going to go give it a go!"

Sonic blinked as his fox friend ran out of the door, skateboard over his head. "Whoa. I didn't think he was that excited."

Tails kicked off with the board, hitting about thirty miles an hour straight off. "This IS awesome!"

Of course he knew Ivo had made it, and so he felt no qualms at all about putting it through some fairly ridiculous paces for any other skateboard. They just weren't built for speed – usually.

There was a skatepark a mile or so away. He got there in two minutes, getting used to the way the board handled, and started giving the jumps a go.

Unfortunately, Tails wasn't exactly experienced with the skateboard, so he fell off a lot. Fortunately, he could fly, so he didn't actually hit the ground any of those times.

After about an hour, he got a new idea and put the board back on the road. Twisting up his tails like he'd been doing for years, he unspun them in pusher mode, let them spin back up, and unspun them to push again.

With a woosh, he went positively rocketing forward. Nowhere near as fast as he was running, of course, but still much faster than skateboards normally went.

It was actually a bit difficult to tell just how fast he was going…

Kicking the board slightly, he jumped clean over a car going in the same direction, and accelerated. This was awesome!

Sonic picked up the phone. "Yeah, most awesome hedgehog in the world, here… what?"

"I still don't understand." Tails said, looking down at the skateboard. "I've gone five times as fast as that before and you don't mind."

"Kid, you don't normally do it on roads, and you don't normally do it in something with wheels." The police officer finished writing up the speeding ticket. "You were doing over two hundred kilometres per hour when you passed me."

"But… it's a skateboard."

"Yeah, and there's a speed limit on those. There isn't one on pedestrians."

Sonic arrived in a woosh of dust. "Hi, officer… heh heh… sorry about what Miles did."

Graduation

Tails grinned as he walked down the steps of the ornate building, holding a fistful of archaic scrolls.

"Well done, squirt!" Sonic said, meeting him. "Er… how many was it?"

The young genius used the rolled up scrolls to tap his fingers as he thought. "Bachelors' in physics, maths, engineering and computing. Masters' in aerospace engineering, theoretical particle physics, applied particle physics, artificial intelligence, mechanical engineering and chaos theory. And a BA in history."

"Goodness!" a bluff voice said, cutting through the congratulations of his friends. "So you're the young thing who they were all talking about!"

A large man wearing a doctoral gown strode up and shook Tails' hand. "Very well done, young fellow. Very well done. You know, I'd have sworn nobody could get more than two degrees at once on accelerated courses, but you're the talk of the university." He laughed, good-naturedly. "They were tripping over themselves to talk about how you showed off a scratch-built biplane as your first coursework!"

He then looked at a watch, exclaimed something about being late, and hurried off before Sonic and the others could really recover from the shock.

"Wonder who he was…" Knuckles muttered, frowning. Then he shook it off. "Anyway, come on. We're having a meal to celebrate. Sonic's buying."

"What!?" the hedgehog shouted, over the laughter of the others. "I… but…"

Tails shot a glance back towards where the Doctor had gone. Thanks for coming, dad… he thought. Wish you could celebrate with us, though.

Other

Miles Prower lay on the hospital bed, drifting in a doze.

It had gotten easier to sleep, the last day or two, as his damaged body healed. And it had gotten easier to stay alert, too, as the memories became less immediate.

Gradually, raised voices intruded on his consciousness.

"...don't see why-"

A deeper voice. "I am his-"

"I'm not going to endanger a child by-"

Struggling awake, the kit recognized one of the voices. "Dad?"

The argument stopped for a moment.

"Okay, go in," the tenor voice said after a moment. "But I've got my eye on you."

Miles' tails tried to wag for a moment as a familiar red-clad shape walked through the door.

Ivo walked to the edge of the bed, then knelt and carefully took one of Miles' paws in his hands. "I'm so sorry, son."

The fox blinked. "For what?"

Twice, Ivo tried to start talking, but thought better of it. Eventually, and not without a quick glance towards the door, he sighed.

"You're going to learn eventually. I've got... an illness. They found out about it just this week, when it hit the first time."

"What is it?" Miles asked.

"It's called Science Related Memetic Disorder. It's a mental illness, not a physical one. I go... crazy. Really dangerously crazy. And I build robots, and... I don't remember everything that happened, not properly. It's like it was a dream."

With only a slight wince as some of his regrowing fur twinged, Miles listened somberly as his father talked.

"I nearly hurt... a lot of people. I'm alright now, but it might hit me again – and I don't know if I'll be safe to be around. And I'm so, so sorry, Miles." Tears fell from Ivo's eyes. "I abandoned you, while you were hurt. And when I was... like that... it was as though I could barely even remember your existence. You just weren't important."

"I don't want to feel like that again."

There was silence for several seconds after that.

"Don't worry, Dad," Miles said softly. "It's not your fault."

"But-"

"It's not," the young fox insisted, with a lot more force.

Ivo knelt there for a bit longer, thinking.

"Thank you for your confidence in me, son," he said after a moment. "I promise I'll stay here until you're better."

"But don't you have to be treated for your science related memetic disorder?"

"They can do it in here, if they have to," Ivo said. "I'm not leaving you again."

AN:

Four shorts, all of them during the time before Tails comes clean about his past. Two of them substantially before.

As before, the reason Tails is recovering in hospital is because of the events of Tails' Adventure. One young chaos adept against an army of well equipped birds... even if he won (and he did), it's not going to have been an easy ride...