"Hi! My name is Miles, and I'm going to save the world today."
— Chaos Break, Chapter 1
Eternal Tails is a pseudocanonical Series Fic of Sonic the Hedgehog by that focuses on the game continuity's Miles "Tails" Prower.
While Miles is a fair bit darker than his canon counterpart, at least on the inside, he still behaves very much like his canon counterpart, at least until the chips are down.
The series comes in two types of story. Longer stories focusing on Miles' adventures outside of the main canon, and shorter "introspectives", which focus mainly on Miles' relationships with his friends and his behaviour in canon through the lens of his gloomy mental state.
Currently has ten stories which can be found here
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Chaos Break: An Apocalyptic Log fic set after Eggman has won, with Miles as the only known survivor trying to stop him.
Happy Days: A friendship fic between Miles and Cream the Rabbit and a perfectly sunny day with no sinister undertones whatsoever.
Bad Seed: Sequel to Happy Days, a horror setting in a not-quite abandoned facility.
Chronos Divide: Final story in the Happy Days trilogy, loosely following the events of Sonic CD from Miles' perspective.
Chaos Calamity: New story, a crossover fic with Terraria.
Eternal Tails provides examples of:
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Alternative Character Interpretation: Eternal Tails runs on this trope. Miles' entire personality is run through a lens of PTSD, self-doubt, abandonment anxiety, and unhealthy coping mechanisms as he struggles to even consider himself a hero, let alone act like one. - Always Someone Better: Played with. Miles himself says he is Always Second Best, weaker than Knuckles, slower than Sonic, dumber than Eggman, while he also points out that just because he is second best doesn't mean he is bad at any of those things. Played more straight regarding Miles' attitude towards Sonic, who the fox views with wonder at his ability to save the day non-lethally and always attempts to emulate.
- Apocalyptic Log: Chaos Break is a recording left by Miles after Eggman wins, defeating all of his friends with him as the only known survivor planning to do something stupid.
- Badass Bookworm: Miles is just as smart as his other incarnations, while still being a Lightning Bruiser strong enough to punch through solid rock and fast enough to keep up with Sonic the Hedgehog.
- Badass Normal: Amy Rose. While she lacks the speed and strength of more powerful characters, Miles is legitimately worried about facing her due to her unpredictability being the perfect counter for his Awesome by Analysis combat style.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Miles is every bit as friendly and helpful as his canon counterpart, but when the chips are down he becomes a ruthless pragmatist willing to use every advantage he can get, especially to protect the people he cares about.
- Child Soldier: In Eternal Tails, not only are the events of Tails' Adventure considered canon, they lack any of the Family Friendly nature of the game and fully averts the No Endor Holocaust aspects of the game's ending. Miles at one point lists his kill count in the tens of thousands, and the only reason nobody knows about it is because there were no survivors.
- Cute Bruiser: Even by mobian standards, Miles is small, fluffy, and perfectly capable of tearing a robot in half with his bare hands, or tails.
- Darker and Edgier: Applied liberally to the games that Eternal Tails is based on. Tails Adventure was a dark, brutal guerrilla war, the main Sonic games and Miles' "Player Two" tendency to shrug off damage is explored in brutal detail.
- The Determinator: While he doesn't quite die and respawn like his videogame self, Miles goes through ridiculous amounts of trauma through the series while barely slowing down.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: For the Happy Days trilogy especially.
- Made of Iron: Mobians as a species are this. They can survive falling long distances, slam into walls at ridiculous speed, and so long as they have power rings they can survive almost any injury just like the characters in the game can. Their only major weaknesses are drowning and being crushed.
- Morality Pet: Sonic of all people serves as this for Miles, allowing him to use his talents without having to worry about killing anyone because he thinks Sonic will be able to stop him. If the events of Bad Seed are any indication, he's wrong.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sonic accidentally caused Miles to develop his current passive and cowardly Non-Action Guy persona while trying to push him towards a safer, back line, role to keep him safe.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: While by no means stupid, Miles deliberately avoids using his full intelligence or strength whenever possible, hiding behind a cowardly facade as a non-action guy.
- Older Than They Look: Like his game counterpart, Miles was eight years old in the Classic era, continued to be eight years old in the Modern era, and still looks to be eight years old years later. His actual age is such a mystery that his friends actually throw him unbirthday parties where he blows out a cake with eight candles year after year.
- Opposite-Sex Clone: Of multiple people, including Doodle, a clone of Robotnik, and Reason, a clone of Miles. Miles himself has so many at one point they effectively become a eusocial society as a result.
- Parental Abandonment: The only thing Miles has from his parents is a piece of paper with his name on. There's a good chance it's not even from them.
- Stable Time Loop: Featured heavily in Chronos Divide. Implied to be one causing him to end up on Cocoa Island, shrunk down to child size and losing much of his memories.
- Stepford Smiler: Miles usually maintains a smiling, positive demeanour despite, usually, being anything but.
- Super Drowning Skills: Justified. Mobians are considerably denser than water and sink like a stone, just like a real life hippopotamus. Miles' ability to swim in universe is frequently treated as more impressive than his ability to fly.
- The Last of His Kind: It's unclear if it's this or Single Specimen Species, but Miles is both the only fox, and the two-tailed fox. Apart from his clones.
- The Unfettered: Tails is this, sacrificing whatever can be sacrificed while still maintaining the status quo.
- Unreliable Narrator: Miles himself in Chaos Break, Especially later as his mental state starts to degrade.
- What You Are in the Dark: Miles constantly worries about being in a desperate situation with nobody around to stand behind purely out of the fear that he will be driven to become a villain himself.
