#since that's my Tails Solo Journeys collection on AO3

[sage-nebula]

In my headcanons, during Tails' solo travels he ends up with a pretty cool jacket.

The jacket is made out of canvas, and recycled canvas at that. He picked it up at a thrift store originally. The patches were ones he sewed on himself, with the following explanations:

Atom symbol: Science™. He's a science boy, and the atom is a good representation of that.

Stars: He likes space and different constellations, and the stars are representative of that.

NASA logo: Again, he likes space, space exploration, and engineering. Also while I did draw the logo in my sketchbook, when it came time to color I cheated and just copy-pasted that one in, lol.

Twin tails logo: This is actually the logo that we see on the hangar door of the Mystic Ruins workshop in SA1. There it has some text, but it's unreadable and I couldn't make the text look good on the patch. This is what he uses as the logo for his "company" later on, Mystic Prower Innovations. It's not really a company since he's the sole employee, but it's what he files his patents under.

Biplane: Because he's a pilot, and in honor of the Tornado.

Wrench and screwdriver: He's a mechanic and loves to tinker.

Chaos Emerald: My friend Steph has a headcanon that the cyan Chaos Emerald watched over Tails between the first two og games (hence why Sonic only had six in Sonic 1), but I also felt that, as a Chaos gemstone, it's a good representation of, well, chaos, anarchy . . . those sorts of beliefs Tails was raised with due to Sonic bringing him up.

Recycle: Tails is a huge believer in recycling. I mean, this jacket was thrifted! And in the Scrapnik Island miniseries we see him overjoyed that all of the badnik and machine parts were repurposed on the island. I like to think Tails gets most of his stuff second-hand, he goes to junkyards to find scrap metal and things he can use to repurpose what's already there. His science is devoted to bettering the planet, rather than destroying it, so he recycles whenever and wherever he can.

When he first gets the jacket it's too big for him; the sleeves fall down over his arms, so he rolls them up and buttons them. He normally wears the jacket open, but I couldn't make the drawing look right, so I drew it zipped up. Once he gets his growth spurt (wherein he ends up about a head taller than Sonic) it fits him much better, but it's still a relaxed / somewhat baggy fit, which is what he prefers since he doesn't like constricting clothes.

I have a lot of other details in mind for what Tails looks like as a teen, but this is all I've drawn so far (especially since I'm so bad at drawing lol). I'm very certain about him wearing this jacket pretty much all the time after he picks it up during his solo journeys. That jacket was there with him when he was figuring everything out and growing into his own; it's a comfort item as a result.