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Games » Sonic the Hedgehog » What Makes a Family 2: Megan
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Author of 7 Stories |
Chapter 1
Tails hunched over the chestnut wood desk before him. The suit he wore grew hotter by the second, adding to Tail’s anxiety. His arms crossed each other tightly beneath his stomach, supporting himself as he argued to his conscience.
'I don’t believe this. He’s never even seen her, let alone taken care of her, raised her from a baby, or loved her like I have.'
The courtroom entrance-doors creaked open behind Tails. He peered over his shoulder and saw a tall, mature, male redfox, dressed in a professionally tailored suit and followed by his attorney, a graying raccoon. They both wore similar clothing and serious, yet calm expressions. Their presence quieted some of the murmuring of the court.
The fox opened the gate barring the courtroom-goers and the case itself. He glanced to Tails from the corner of his sharp eye, then turned to his place on the opposite end of the court.
Tails glared at the fox. 'You don't have the right to call yourself her father.'
Tails blinked and rubbed his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness. He was a few months into his fifteenth year of age, now, and just about everything was the same as always. Dr. Eggman made the occasional ill-fated plan to “take over the world,” but the constant failure made Tails wonder if the doctor was serious about conquest. The time spent in-between attacks usually consisted of boredom, interlaced with unnecessary work and additions to the Tornado 2. Just the year before, however, Tails began earning a decent income working with G.U.N.’s aviation division as a head plane mechanic and designer, making him the youngest legal worker in the military to date. Tails didn’t do much with his salary, mostly keeping it in his savings or spending it on his planes and machinery. He did, however, decide to buy back his old Mystic Ruins property and keep it as a vacation house. Aside from that, money was never that useful to him, and doing what he loved as a serious career bought enough honest happiness.
Tails looked around the room. The clock on the table beside his couch read 10:00, visible even after sunset. Tails stood and stretched out his back, resulting in a satisfying pop. He decided to turn in for the night and meandered towards the staircase. Just as he set a foot on the first step, a knock on the door was heard, followed immediately by the ring of the doorbell.
Tails stepped back and glanced at the foyer door standing between the living room and the old hangar, which he intended to demolish to open more room for the main house. Tails walked out into the hangar, which was really just a metal room holding a lift for the planes held in the real hangar down in the cliff. He furrowed his brow at the front door, curious and mildly irate at who was visiting him at this time. The hinges creaked as he opened the door.
Tails didn’t see anyone immediately. He looked around with a sigh, figuring someone was pulling a late-night prank on him. He then glanced down to the porch before him and noticed a basket. Tails gave a surprised look to it, unsure of whom set it there or why. His eyes jumped back up and searched around for a figure. Then, he saw a dark form slowly walking away on the dirt mound before his house, barely visible in the night light and partially illuminated by the porch light. It appeared to be female, due to the shapely figure. A bushy tail dragged behind her and pointed ears identified her as a canine.
“Hey!” Tails shouted to the mysterious woman. She jumped at the sound of his voice and spun around. At his sight, the figure immediately darted away towards the train station.
“Wait a second! Come back here!” Tails ran out and leapt past the basket on the porch, but a strange noise stopped him at the stoop by the dirt mound. He froze when he heard it again. A murmur of a living creature was coming from the basket. Tails slowly turned back around; his eyes widened as the sound grew. A voice cooed in a confused, helpless state.
Tails stepped into the porch light and peered straight down into the basket. A solid blue sheet covered all but the head of a red baby fox; it was curled up and wriggling around under the blanket, obviously anxious for attention from its absent mother.
Tails slipped around the pup, kneeling down beside it and staring straight into its innocent face.
“Oh my god…” Tails whispered to himself in shock.
As if on cue, the baby opened its eyes. Shining green met Tails’ ocean blue; they were the eyes of an angel. The child stopped shaking about, instead staring into this new face.
Tails felt a smile work its way across his lips. He reached out his hand and gently caressed the child’s cheek. “Hey,” he whispered to it. It quickly grabbed his finger and placed in its mouth, earning a chuckle of amusement from Tails.
Smile still on his face, Tails glanced back up into the distance. The woman who left the child was long gone, possibly on the train back to Station Square. His smile left him, realizing what had just happened and what she had done. He looked back to the baby happily gumming his finger. “Who could abandon you like this…?” The child only stared back at him, incapable of giving a real response.
---
“This is beyond anything I’ve ever dealt with before, Tails,” Sonic admitted to his friend as he paced around the living room. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Tails sat on his couch with Cream to his left, holding the baby, a girl, and motherly rocking it back and forth in its sleep. Aside from her, Tails, Sonic and Knuckles, who sat in the chair parallel to the couch on the opposite side of the room, thought over just what to do.
“I guess… unless somebody wants to take care of her, there’s always putting her up for adoption,” Knuckles suggested, hunched over in his seat.
“I bet my mother and I would if we could,” Cream admitted, glancing up from the child, “but that’s not something we’re really prepared for.”
Tails looked from Cream over to Sonic.
“You know I can’t,” he prematurely replied. Tails nodded in agreement; nobody would deny that Sonic wasn’t fit for parenthood.
“I wonder what Amy would say if she were here,” Cream wondered aloud to herself.
Tails also thought about it. Amy disappeared early last year and nobody had heard from her since; missing persons investigations came up fruitless, as did searches throughout the city and state. She just fell off the face of the Earth, and left her worried friends behind.
“So…” Knuckles broke the growing silence. “I guess we’ll be putting her up?”
No response came for moment. Everyone stared at the sleeping girl.
“No,” Tails answered, raising the eyebrows of everyone. “We don’t need to do that.”
“Well…what do you have in mind?” Sonic questioned.
“I’ll do it. I’ll adopt her.” Everyone’s eyes widened, despite the fact that one of them taking care of the baby was just suggested. Nonetheless, Tails was only fifteen.
“What- Seriously?!” Knuckles stammered.
“…Well, yeah…” Tails simply replied, shrugging. “I really feel like this is something I should do.”
Tails looked up to his friends, who all had confused looks on their faces. “I mean… it seemed that the woman who left her must have wanted me to take care of her. A lot of people know that I’m one of the only residents out here.”
“She could have meant for anybody to have her, Tails,” Cream argued. Even Tails knew she was right, but that feeling of fate was still there. He stared back at the floor in silent thought. “Is it something else, Tails?”
He turned back to Cream, then to the bundled girl. “…I guess…I guess I might have gotten a little attached to her already.” Knuckles gave a brief chuckle; it hadn’t even been an hour since she was dropped at his house.
“Do you actually want to adopt her?” Sonic asked his bold friend, sitting on the couch arm beside him. “Not just watch her until someone else can have her or an orphanage can take her?”
Tails nodded to Sonic. “I could never drop a child off in an orphanage; a child deserves a real family.”
Sonic thought over his friend's sentiment. Nobody knew Tails' words better than him and Sonic; neither grew up with parents or siblings, let alone a family at all. Despite being free-spirited, even Sonic admitted to a lonely childhood and the hope of learning something about his relatives, living or otherwise. “
“Besides,” Tails continued, “If I watch her until somebody else can come and take her, I know that giving her up will suck.” The room eased up with mild laughter, more of agreement than amusement.
“Well, you know, Tails?” Sonic began, patting Tails’ back. “If anyone can be a good father for her, you can.”
“Definitely,” Cream agreed. Knuckles simply nodded.
Tails felt his smile grow at his friends support. “Here,” Cream spoke. She gently lifted up the sleeping pup in her arms over to Tails. A little surprised, he awkwardly took her into his, adjusting the child’s fragile body in his lap. The baby gave nothing but a subconscious murmur and wriggle before returning to deep sleep. Tails’ lips stuck in his grin.
“You’ll do alright,” Knuckles remarked.
“So, what are you gonna name her?” Sonic asked as he watched the child rest peacefully.
“…Hmm…” Tails muttered to himself. “I’ve been thinking of that, actually…something like Molly…Missy…Megan…something starting with an M.”
“I like Megan,” Cream interjected.
“Me too,” Sonic agreed. “She even looks like a Megan.”
Silence soon followed, with the four watching the innocent child ignore everything around her. ‘Megan,’ Tails repeated to himself.
The judge entered the courtroom from a door near the judge’s seat. He was human, looking late in his life, gray with most of his hair still intact, and slightly tired. He sat in his chair and addressed the room in a clear, elderly voice. “The custody trial of Megan Prower is now in session. Please be seated.”
(Yes, I know there's an actor named Judge Reinhold. That's where I got the idea for Reinholdt. Duh.)
R&R
-CSD
