"Hey… Tails."

The fox turned from working on (yet another) piece of technology about fifty years beyond the rest of the world. "What is it, Sonic?"

"I know this might sound stupid, but… I only just realized. I never met your parents."

Miles blinked. "Wow, that's kinda late. It's been, what, six years? Wow…"

"So, spill. Where are they?"

"I don't have a mum." Tails shrugged. "Never bothered me. Not like she's dead or anything, just… never had one."

"Okay, slow down!" Sonic said, waving his hands. "How does that even work?"

"This is you speaking?" Tails grinned, then sobered. "Okay. This is kind of heavy, so don't freak. In fact, you might want to sit down."

"Sure." Sonic looked down at the mess that formed Tails' workshop. "Er, is there anywhere?"

One of Tails' namesakes swept a pile of cogs and circuits into a corner. "There. Now, I know I did tell you about what happened before you met me."

"That thing with the army, right?" Sonic checked. "You know, I haven't thought about that in years.

"Lucky." Tails looked down. "I was about four. I had to fight an army, and not a robot one. It's why I'm so careful to avoid killing since."

Sonic patted the fox's shoulder awkwardly. "Come on, Tails. I know you. You wouldn't do that if there was a choice."

"I don't know…" Tails shook himself, and reached into a filing cabinet. Digging past patent applications, honorary degrees and at least one medal citation – a legacy of working with G.U.N – he finally extracted what he was looking for, lurking near the bottom.

"Anyway. The reason I had to fight them off alone was because I was the only Chaos adept on the island – well, the only one who wasn't part of the army."

"Oh, you mentioned you found the Emeralds."

"I did, yeah. I think this was probably about a week before you had them the first time, actually – I'm pretty sure."

"Wow! So you had them first?" Sonic grinned. "You've been doing this for longer than me!"

"Yeah." Tails swallowed, then changed tack. "You know how Shadow is a genetically engineered lifeform?"

"I do." Sonic answered. "Has the nerve to call me a faker…"

"He is older." Tails shrugged. "Anyway, the process was developed by Gerald Robotnik, and it's a relatively simple process to adjust if one has access to the original equipment-"

"You're losing me again, Tails!" Sonic interrupted.

"Fine. It's easy if you have the tank." Tails grumbled. "Better?"

"Much! But I don't see where you're going."

"There's a reason why I'm so smart. Why I'm a chaos adept. And why I was alone on that island." Tails flipped the documents over, and handed them to Sonic.

One of them was a medical document, diagnosing one Ivo Robotnik as a sufferer of Science Related Memetic Disorder. Sonic noticed that it was dated about a week after his first battle with the fat man. The other…

"Tails." Sonic said, slowly. "This says you were adopted by Robotnik."

"Kinda." Tails admitted. "I'm a genetic experiment – like Shadow. I didn't know until after the Space Colony ARK thing, and Ivo explained the full story after things calmed down."

Sonic's mind glitched. "But. What."

"He wanted a son." Tails said. "Dad – Robotnik – invented so much, and he wanted someone who could share it. He used a similar basic template to Shadow, but used a fox to throw G.U.N. off the scent, and cranked up my IQ so I could be an equal. The other stuff's because he wanted me to be safe." He flipped his twin tails. "There was another reason, too. This was before you and he met, and nobody'd heard of the Echidna in centuries. As far as anyone knew, it was impossible for Chaos use to occur naturally."

"So?" Sonic asked, not seeing the point.

"Gerald Robotnik had SRMD as well – mad science syndrome. Ivo feared it was genetic, and wanted someone who could stop him."

"You." Sonic said, finally connecting the dots. "He could trust you."

"Yeah, but that didn't go well. I was in hospital for a week after stopping the Grand Kukuu army, and that's when he had his first episode." Tails leant back on his chair, smiling suddenly. "But we got lucky."

"Oh?"

"Well, a superfast hedgehog with more spines than brains showed up to beat the mad out of dad's mad science – and didn't kill him in the process."

"Wow."

Sonic and Tails sat contemplatively for a minute in silence.

"You're right, that was heavy." Sonic eventually said. "Wait, is that why he never actually seems to kill me?"

"I think so." Tails hedged. "Sometimes it's worse than others, but I'm pretty sure the things like robots you need to cross pits and some of the springs are deliberate." The fox gave a grin. "He does like when you go Super, actually. It means he feels comfortable using the more powerful stuff."

"Neat. Well, kinda." Sonic thought. "How do you keep in touch?"

"We tend to use email, instant messenger…" Tails shrugged. "Whatever works. It's rare I get a chance to meet him in person, because of how we're such celebrities now, but I've collaborated on about half his papers." Another grin. "Sometimes it seems like another kind of race – who can invent the fastest."

"Now that, I can relate to." Sonic shared the grin. "Does this mean he's the one who called you 'Miles per Hour'?"

"Yep. But since he calls everything else he makes some version of 'Egg robot', I think I got off lightly."

Sonic laughed, this time. "Yeah, I can imagine you being called Eggs-tremely faust."

"Oh, ouch!" Tails clutched his head. "I think that one physically hurt."

"You know…" Sonic said, changing trains of thought with quicksilver speed. "He hasn't been any trouble in a month. Do you know how he's doing?"

Tails opened a window on his computer. "Well, he's not building huge numbers of robots, the Egg Carrier's where it usually is, and no unusual energies on board. So I think he's normal today."

"Shall we go visit?" Sonic's grin was wicked. "Let's see how long we can string it out before we tell him you spilled the beans."

Tails thought about it. Come to think of it, that thing Dad had done with the mind control beam was something he'd have appreciated having warning of…

"Yeah, alright. I'll go warm up the Tornado X-2."

"Another one?"

"Yeah, I found out how to make a supersonic propeller. So it's back to the biplane shape." Tails picked up three rings from a small pile in the corner, and headed outside to start up his newest aircraft.

Sonic suddenly realized that the power system that used rings was one he'd seen both Tails and Robotnik using – Tails first, but Robotnik had never had one to copy.

Unless he'd been told how it worked by the inventor…

"Heh." Sonic gave a chuckle. "So that's why I never seem to free animals any more…"

Ivo Robotnik, sometimes Eggman, snapped awake as an all too familiar sound reached his ears.

The sound of sneakers scraping along a metal rail.

"Oh, it's too early for this…"

Pulling on his suit, he hurried out of the door towards the control station of his current Egg Carrier.

*Alert.* the security system said dispassionately. *Intruder sector twelve. Thirteen. Fifteen.*

"Yes, yes, I know!" Robotnik snapped. "Disable all alerts for sectors below thirty."

*Affirmative.*

"Oh, what did I do this time?" the genius asked. "Computer, current date?"

*August 16.*

Ivo blinked. That was a surprise. He wasn't missing any time. If he'd been building robots in a caffeine-fuelled haze for the last week, that might have explained why Sonic was here, but as it was…

"Any news reports indicate a major threat?"

*Negative.*

"Oh, that's just brilliant." Robotnik skidded into his control booth and activated the screens.

Surprisingly, Sonic was showing more forethought than usual. Rather than just running through as fast as possible, he was smashing each and every camera that could track him.

It wasn't much of a problem – repair bots could fix that in minutes – but it did mean he could only follow where the Blue Blur was by the cameras going out of circuit.

And it was a path headed as close to being directly for him as the Carrier's maze of passages allowed.

Any minute now…

*Sector thirty alert. Sector thirty three alert. Sector-*

"Disable alarms." The scientist said, sighing to himself.

The deck erupted, and Sonic spun through to land crouched on the "runway" portion of the top side.

"Sonic the Hedgehog!" Ivo said as affably as he could manage through the loudspeakers. "An unexpected pleasure, I must say."

"Nice to see you too, Robotnik." Sonic countered. "Gotta say, less robots than usual."

"Well, you're rather early, you see." Ivo continued the banter. "I'm afraid I don't even have an evil plan yet."

"Oh, this isn't about today." Sonic grinned. "It's something you've been doing wrong for years."

"Well, I must say, I'm stumped."

"You didn't turn up for your son's last seven birthday parties!"

"…gk?" Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't that. The hedgehog beamed fit to split his face as he watched Ivo Robotnik nearly choke.

"Pardon?" he asked, once he'd regained some composure.

Tails hopped up through the hole behind Sonic. "Hi, Dad. I told him everything. Oh, the Tornado's parked in the lower number five bay."

"…good." Ivo managed. "Why did you tell him now, in particular?"

Sonic rolled his eyes, exaggeratedly. "So it took me this long to realize I didn't know Tails' parents, sue me."

Robotnik gaped. Then chuckled. Straining to keep a straight face, he looked his adopted son in the eye. "You sure he's the fastest thing in the world?"

Tails snickered. "Maybe his brain's just under relativistic time dilation."

Both father and son finally burst out laughing. Sonic's smile became slightly fixed. "Wait, was that a joke? Guys?"

Neither answered him, too busy trying to stand.

"No? Okay, fine. I'll go invite the rest of the family." Sonic grabbed a handy ring, and dove off the Egg Carrier.

Tails blinked, his laughter dying off. "What do you think he meant by that?"

"I have an idea…" Robotnik said, slowly. "In the same way you can be considered my son, Shadow is my uncle and your great-uncle."

"Oh. Never made that connection myself." Tails smiled wanly. "Suppose we were a bit harsh on Sonic."

"You can think about that, I'm about to have Shadow the Hedgehog on my carrier!" Robotnik began pressing buttons frantically to retract all the gun turrets and get the robots to hide.

He held fond feelings for Shadow – both when in his right mind and not – but the black hedgehog's visits tended to be… expensive.

AN: Just a random idea I had, playing off Tails' Adventure and how we never know who Tails' parents are in the game continuity. That and SRMD (which is from the webcomic A Miracle Of Science, as a concept) as an explanation for Robotnik's periodic world-takeover attempts. That particular interpretation borrows a bit from Jen Irwin's fics on DA. The idea is, while he's having an "episode", he follows all the standard mad science traits – but once he's foiled, it's back to being a (genius-level) sane person.