Chapter 11: A New Family

January 30th, 2308 – 9:00 PM – Prower Residence, Forest Town, Elona

Kyle stepped out of the taxi in front of his new home in Elona, which the President had purchased for him and Natalie. Even in the dark, he could tell it was quite possibly the best home that he had ever lived in. While it wasn't exactly a mansion in size, it was a very impressively sized house. The two-story wooden house was a handsome dark green, with white trim. It had a large front porch, which was bordered by large flowerbeds that bloomed with every color of the rainbow. A broad, neatly cut green lawn surrounded the house. All in all, there was no comparison between this place and their old apartment in Ronoh. He took his bags out of the car and walked up onto the front porch.

This is first time I've ever lived in a house where I have a front yard, flowerbeds, a porch, and all those other things... I wonder if the surprise was the front yard and the flowerbeds. The President said she'd been working on it for a while...and it would take a while to make it look this nice...

He stepped in through the unlocked front door, dropping his bags to the floor as he looked around. The interior of the house was equally as grand than the outside. The white staircase in the front hall was quite impressive, with its fancy guardrail and broad steps. The walls were a slightly dark red, offset by the white stairs. A beautiful chandelier hung from the high ceiling of the room, providing strong light. Kyle would have examined it further, but he heard a soft cry from the top of the stairs. It sounded something like a baby's cry.

A baby? What's a baby doing— WAIT A MINUTE!

Kyle hurriedly ran up the broad stairs to the second floor. He followed the baby's cries down a hall to a cracked-open bedroom door. He pushed the door open and jumped into the room. On a large bed in the middle of the room was Natalie, dressed in a nightgown. And in her hands...was a kit. The baby quieted down from crying as Natalie hummed a song to it, and then she looked up at Kyle.

"Oh, you've finally come back Kyle! Wow...you look worse than I thought you would, judging from those pictures I've seen of you as a robot in the news."

Kyle, barely noticing what Natalie had just spoken, said to her, "Natalie...is that...?"

"Yes it is, Kyle," Natalie softly said. "This is the surprise, our new baby boy."

"Wow..." Kyle said, sitting down on the bed next to Natalie, being careful to keep the spikes on his tail away from Natalie and the baby. "I wish you hadn't kept this a secret from me..."

He looked the baby fox over. The baby had a coat of beautiful orange fur, and he had three hairs sticking out from his forehead. They dropped down over his fine-looking face. However, Kyle barely noticed any of this, due to one very unusual feature of their new son: he had two tails.

"Why does he have two tails?" Kyle said.

"I don't know..." Natalie said. "The doctor was also quite confused by it, but he said that everything should be okay. Apart from the fact that he has two identical tails, everything about our boy is perfectly normal."

"That's good... Even if he is...deformed..."

"KYLE!" Natalie screamed in Kyle's face.

Kyle was caught off guard so much that he nearly toppled right off the bed.

"Sorry...anyway...even if he does look a little...strange...he is our firstborn son. We should love him no matter what."

"That's better, Kyle."

"Can I hold him some?"

"Sure...he is your son after all."

Kyle took up the baby in his arms, and held it to his metal chest. The warmth from the baby's body spread through his cold metal chest, reminding him of what it used to be like to have a flesh and blood body.

It's going to be so hard getting used to this new body of mine. I'll never have to eat, or drink, or sleep, true enough, but I'll also never be able to truly feel alive. I can't cry...I can't taste any food...I can't smell anything... I want my old body back so badly...instead of this cold metal shell...

Speaking of the cold metal, it was starting to wake up the baby in his arms. The baby started to sniffle a little, and opened its eyes. It took one look at Kyle's robotic face with its eerie black and red eyes, and started crying heavily.

"Oh...I think he's scared of the way I look."

"Don't worry, I'll work as hard as I can on figuring out how to get you back to your old self."

She took the child back from Kyle and put it in her arms. She hummed a song to the baby again, to make it quiet down.

"Please hurry, having a body like this is terrible compared to having my old one. It's such a cold body, compared to my old one."

"Don't worry, I'm going to give this project my best. I'll find a way to reverse the roboticization process before you know it."

"Thanks... Say...did you ever think of a name for our boy?"

Natalie looked up into Kyle's face, saying, "Yes, it's Miles."

"Oh...heh...I see. Miles...after my middle name 'Kilometers', right?"

"Yes. Sonic's been calling him Tails though ever since he saw his tails for the first time. It's kind of annoying, I think. He won't call him Miles, because he says that name sounds silly."

"Heh...likes to do things his own way, just like his father... Oh wait...his father. Does he know about Swift yet?"

"Yes...he's seen the news on TV..."

"How does he feel?"

"He heard about how you were with Swift when he died, and he thinks you let him die."

"Oh...that's not good. I hope I can make him feel better about me. Swift told me with his last words to take care of Sonic."

"Really? You mean I'll be taking care of two kids at once?"

"Yes. You don't mind do you?"

"While I don't like Sonic that much, I just can't bear sending him to an orphanage to be all alone. We can adopt him, yes. Maybe it would be good for Miles to have an older brother..."

"Yeah..." Kyle said, putting his legs down on the floor as he sat on the edge of the bed. "I'll go see if I can comfort him some about Swift. Where is he?"

"He's watching TV in the living room downstairs."

"Thanks."

Kyle got up off of the bed and walked down the stairs into the living room. Sonic was watching some kind of old Earth TV show about a talking sponge and a talking starfish. It was called Spongemob Squarefish or something. He'd heard it had been a craze when it had been released on Earth long ago, but it was having trouble catching on with Freedomians.

"Sonic?" Kyle said, entering the room.

"What?" Sonic said in a harsh tone, not turning to look at Kyle.

"This is the first time we've spoken in person, isn't it?" Kyle said, sitting down next to Sonic. "It's a shame we couldn't have met under better circumstances. You look a lot like your dad, you know. It's just that your fur is a much darker shade of blue than his..."

"Get away from me!" Sonic shouted, scooting to the opposite end of the couch, away from Kyle. "You let my daddy die!"

"Sonic...I'm very sorry about your father."

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Sonic said. "I don't wanna talk to you!"

"Please, listen to me Sonic," Kyle said. "If your dad hadn't run to save me, the Freedomian Army would have been destroyed and Robotnik would have probably taken over the planet by now."

Sonic didn't say anything back, but simply sat in silence, his angry gaze fixed on the TV set.

"Also...I wouldn't be talking to you now either. Robotnik did something that turned me into a robot."

Sonic turned to look at Kyle. He was so surprised to see that Kyle was a robot that he leaped off of the couch and nearly tripped backwards over the coffee table in the process.

"Whoa! You really are a robot! I thought that the pictures in the newspaper weren't real! Why did Robotnik turn you into a robot?"

"Well...most of the reason is because every time Robotnik turns somebody into a robot, they lose their free will and have to do everything he says."

"That's terrible! But how did you get your free will back?"

"Your dad... Robotnik forced me to fight him, and I almost killed him. I couldn't stop myself," Kyle said, his tone saddening. "Anyway, right before I was about to strike the final blow, Swift electrocuted me with a wire, and that damaged the mind control program so that I could get my free will back."

"Really?"

"Yes. I'm so sorry that I couldn't stop myself from fighting Swift. I feel like this is my entire fault... If I hadn't been caught...he'd still be alive..."

Sonic lowered his head a little. He started to cry a little, the tears pattering across the carpet of the living room. The talking sponge and talking starfish on the TV continued to blather out joke after joke, oblivious to what was going on in the living room. It was like a mockery of the sadness permeating the room.

"I'm so sorry, Sonic," Kyle said again, standing up off of the couch and moving closer to Sonic. "Please...can you ever forgive me? I'll do anything I can for you. I want to do it to pay back Swift for everything he's done for me. He told me with his last breath to take care of you..."

Sonic looked up at him, his young eyes wide with tears.

This poor kid...having to go through all of this when he's only six years old...

"I'll understand if you don't forgive me. I made a lot of mistakes..."

"No, I forgive you. You must have been really good friends with Daddy if he wanted you to take care of me. So, I forgive you then, and I'll be in your family."

"Oh, thank you Sonic."

"You're welcome. So...does this mean that Tails is my new baby brother or something then?"

"His name is Miles, and yes, since we've adopted you, he's your new baby brother."

"Really? That's great! I always wanted a brother or sister, but since Mommy died in that car crash, I couldn't have one."

"That's too bad about your mom, but you are right about getting a brother."

"Can we go see Tails again?" Sonic said.

Kyle sighed, but then he said, "Yes...we can go back up to Natalie's room and see Miles again."

"Alright, let's go then!" Sonic said, already rushing out of the room and up the stairs in under two seconds.

Kyle stood there for a few seconds, dumbfounded by how fast Sonic had run out of the room.

Wow...Natalie said he was fast when we talked on the phone...but I didn't think he'd be almost as fast as Swift... He's just like his dad in almost every way, from his attitude down to his super speed. It's incredible. Don't worry Swift, I'll take care of him the best I can, especially since he's almost like a little you. I'll watch out for the rest of my new family too. They deserve nothing less than the best I can give them.

He smiled a little as he walked up the stairs back to Natalie's bedroom, to rejoin the rest of his brand new family.

The End