There was a two-tailed fox in the meeting room, and nobody was acknowledging him.

He wasn't really giving them any reason to. It wasn't like he was doing anything to stand out. He was just sitting there in the corner, along with a few other kids whose parents had dragged them to this Homeowners Association meeting. The most he was getting was a few odd glances, as he nibbled one of the complimentary biscuits and casually chatted with another kid.

Amadeus and Rosemary exchanged nervous glances. They hadn't planned for this.

They had assumed he was dead for approximately the first six years. They didn't have any reason not to. How could a newborn mutant abandoned in a back alley ever have survived? But then, they had become aware of Sonic the Hedgehog, and the fact that there was a young two-tailed fox who followed him around, and always referred to him as his "big brother". Slowly, the implications had sunk in. It was exceptionally unlikely that another fox child would have been born at around the same time with exactly the same mutation. And when they had gotten ahold of a picture, the boy held a disturbing resemblance to them.

This revelation had been, understandably, pants-soilingly terrifying, until they thought about it properly. Apparently, Miles had turned out to be some kind of child prodigy. This meant that he likely knew how to find his biological parents, or at least knew how to go about looking. If he hadn't come looking for them yet, chances were low that he'd ever try and investigate his origin.

So they had moved on, and tried to continue their life as it was before. This was surprisingly easy for them, as the Prowers were not particularly prone to guilt.

However, this meant that they had failed to plan for actually meeting Miles. But to be fair, even if they had, this probably wouldn't have been part of the plan.

The two moved carefully to their seats, occasionally glancing at the fox. He wasn't acknowledging them. It didn't even look like he had noticed them.

The meeting began, normally. Entirely too normally. Miles didn't do anything at all. He just kept talking with the other children, until the organiser called for quiet. Then, he sat obediently in a chair in the corner, looking if anything more polite and interested than the others.

Contrary to this, Amadeus and Rosemary couldn't focus at all. Usually they were some of the most vocal in the meetings, always the first to complain about rowdy teenagers or motion to ban lawn flamingos. Today, they were silent, unable to take their attention off the fox sitting quietly behind them.

Eventually, the meeting came to an end. They tried to leave quickly, but found Miles standing in front of them, talking animatedly with another child.

Rosemary was the first to speak. "E-excuse me?"

Miles glanced up at them, and moved out of the way. "Oh, sorry."

They slipped past him, out into the corridor, and exchanged another glance, this one fully panicked.

They wanted to ignore it, as they usually did, but the second incident made that impossible.

Amadeus had gone out to the supermarket, to buy some more milk. When he went up to the cashiers, Miles had been there. He was next to the only free conveyor, with a few bags of candy, some tubs of ice cream, and a few large bottles of cola, talking to the cashier about the party he was planning for his friends. He stopped dead, looking around wildly, but there wasn't anywhere else to go. So, he placed the bottles down on the neighbouring conveyor, trying to avoid looking at the boy.

When he got home and told Rosemary, she hadn't believed him.

"He was a fox with two tails. Who else could it have been?"

"But it just doesn't make any sense! I mean, if that's true, then what happened yesterday couldn't have been a coincidence!"

"Why would it have been a coincidence? He's supposed to live on the mainland, Mary. Why would he come to some random HA meeting on Westside, if he didn't know we'd be there?"

"That doesn't make sense either! If he wanted to talk to us, why wouldn't he just visit? Why just show up at random points?"

Amadeus shook his head. "I don't know, Mary. Maybe he's scared."

"Or just crazy."

The next morning, when Rosemary got on the bus to go to work, she looked up to see Miles at the other end, looking casually out of the window. She spent the rest of the trip looking very hard at her feet.

Later, Amadeus went to meet a few friends at the local pub, and saw a pair of tails slip past the window. He jumped, and almost choked on his drink, and had to quickly come up with an excuse to leave.

That evening, they paced around the living room, nervously trying to come up with theories, when the phone rang. Amadeus picked it up. "Prower household?"

"Sorry, wrong number." The voice was that of a young boy, and he recognised it as the same one that had apologised at the HA meeting. The caller hung up, and he dropped the phone like he had been burned. "It's him."

"What's going on? Why doesn't he want to talk?"

Amadeus thought for a while. "Maybe he does."

"What?"

"What if he wants to talk, but he just can't bring himself to? Maybe all this is just him trying to find the right moment to say hello."

"I don't know about that. He looks... nonchalant. Like he's just going about his business, and this is all a coincidence. I mean, it's clearly not a coincidence, but still... it doesn't feel right."

Eventually, they went to bed, and didn't sleep well. The next morning, the phone rang again.

"Sorry, wrong number." It was the exact same voice, in the same tone. They didn't see Miles at all that day, but the call came again at around noon, and once more in the evening.

It still didn't make any sense. They theorised for hours, before going to bed, still shaken.

That night, at midnight, there was a tapping at their window. They both bolted upright, and Rosemary ran to pull open the curtains. There was nothing there, but they could have sworn that for a moment, they saw a pair of triangular ears poking down from the top of the glass, before quickly pulling themselves out of sight. She pulled the window open and stuck her head out, craning her neck to look upwards, but there was nothing.

When they came downstairs in the morning, something had changed.

It took them a moment to figure out why the living room felt wrong. Eventually Amadeus caught it. "It's the pictures."

The pictures lining their walls had been immaculately arranged last night, and now each and every one of them was very slightly tilted.

They fixed them, not saying a word to each other. When they had finished, Amadeus spoke up.

"If he broke in, that's criminal activity. We can report this."

Rosemary nodded. "I'll check for evidence." She walked out of the room. Amadeus turned momentarily away from the pictures, and felt a slight breeze. When he turned to close the window, he saw that they had tilted again, and the jar of cookies on the table suddenly seemed to be a little less full.

He said a very bad word.

They practically ran out of the house that day, and took as long as they could coming back. Not out of superstition, of course. That would have been silly.

At first, they thought nothing was different when they got back. But then, they saw that another few cookies seemed to be missing. The pictures had re-tilted themselves, too, and all the doors and windows were still locked. They frantically searched the house, looking anywhere a fox kit could potentially hide, even braving the cluttered attic. Nothing.

"How could he be doing this?", Amadeus finally burst out, after what felt like hours of them sitting nervously in the living room, not quite sure what they were waiting for.

"I don't know! It's almost like..."

"Don't say it." He wasn't sure why he didn't want her to admit it, as he had had the same thoughts. But Rosemary merely looked at him, frustrated.

"You know what? I will say it. It's like he's a ghost."

As if on cue, the power went out. They both screamed, and it flickered back on. The pictures were all hanging upside down, and there was a dripping sound behind them. Slowly, they turned around to see words splashed across their wall in what they hoped was red paint.

HELLO, MOTHER. HELLO, FATHER.

The power went out again, and the windows began to smash violently, one by one. They ran as fast as they could for the door, semi-tripping over suddenly collapsed lamps and hatstands. The front door was locked.

"Move aside!" Amadeus backed up and rammed it as hard as he could. He flew through the suddenly open door, falling over onto the porch. Rosemary dragged him to his feet, and they ran down the path into the road. There was a loud creaking behind them, and they glanced backwards to see the sycamore tree on their lawn uproot itself as if in a hurricane, collapsing over the path.

A bright light suddenly emitted from their roof. Looking up, they saw a distinctive two-tailed silhouette.

The Prowers ran as fast as they could, not looking back.

Tails switched off the lamp, giggling to himself. Picking it up, he leapt from the roof, gliding down to the lawn.

He turned around to see Sonic happily eating the rest of the cookie jar, and Cosmo using her powers to carefully re-root the tree. He smiled, feeling like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and laughed brightly, running forward to hug both of them.

"Great work, guys!"

A/N Thanks for reading! I wrote this because I noticed that most canons imply that Tails was abandoned by his parents, and it sort of evolved into thinking the Prowers are pieces of shit, which eventually led to this thing. Hope it's not terrible!

Also, this one's cover is by the incredible Verocitea. Be sure to check them out on Tumblr!