Hello, my fellow fanfic readers 'n' writers! Here is the actual first chapter of this little mini-story. Obviously, just releasing the introduction by itself to receive feedback would be effectively meaningless, so here is some actual content for you to read and decide. I really hope you enjoy!

N.B. Know that minor original characters who aren't going to make that many cameos are still given names purely for the sake of writing simplicity.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the official characters mentioned. They are the property of SEGA, and any and all accompanying corporations and organisations.

After the war, Nickel left the city to help restore the other wrecked sites around Mobius. There was a lot of work to be done: the Doctor's reign had severely damaged many places on the planet and everyone was expected to chip in in some way. Most of it involved heavy lifting, something that Nickel didn't really like because, to be frank, he was too willowy for it. He could, however, help in another way. Evacuations had taken place for those who hadn't been taken hostage, and they needed to be brought back to their homes. They'd be distraught, naturally - most places were still merely wreckage - but at least they'd be safe from future attacks of such magnitude, provided that the Doctor didn't launch a surprise attack immediately.

He was hailed by some workers and he waved back. Contributing to saving the world alongside many other heroes of Mobius earned him much recognition from people whom he knew and people who were complete strangers.

He suddenly grimaced in pain, prompting him to tweak the values for his gloves' electrical current output; he breathed a sigh as the hurting gradually ebbed away. A thought slipped out of him: "Much better. That was a little bit too much for my likin'."

"Nickel!" someone called. It was a Paris green bear; Barros was his name, Nickel remembered. "Yo, over here!"

"Yeah, wassup?" the vermilion feline replied.

"You looking for more prisoners?" Nickel nodded yes. "I heard there are even more POWs over in Leaf Forest. Makes sense, since nobody ever needed to go back there."

Obviously there was no need since the events of the second Advance, Nickel thought. "Guess I'll check Leaf Forest out, then."

"I wouldn't go there alone," someone else put in, and the familiar sound of psychic whirring entered both Barros' and Nickel's ears. "It's still full of Eggman's robots."

Turning, Nickel came face to face once more with Silver the Hedgehog, lead combatant of the Resistance and resident psychokinetic. "Did you follow me?"

"I was curious," was Silver's response. "I wanted to know where you were going next." There was a small pause. "Are you sure you wanna go it alone?"

Nickel didn't really want to, and Silver sounded like he was offering himself as support. "If you wanna come with me, I wouldn't be opposed."

"Alright, then! Let's go!" Silver started propelling himself psychically toward the forest. Nickel turned to Barros, who bade him farewell. Nickel returned it: "See ya later. Don't die."

The cat followed Silver on foot, faintly hearing the ursine laughter behind him.

.

"This place's been overrun," Nickel mused. "It's still pretty green, though. It didn't look like this in the future, did it?"

"No, it didn't. It was up in flames."

"Of course it was. Why wouldn't it have been, realistically?" Nickel said to himself in that droll tone that he'd perfected. He bounced off a badnik, generating enough force to destroy it. A small pain went through his foot, but he paid it no mind - perhaps his attack was slightly misplaced and a tiny spike in the robot's armour, or perhaps a loosened piece of sharp metal, had caught his foot. Maybe enough to cause a small cut, but not a serious gash. He could still walk, too, so there was no need to complain.

Silver tossed another robot into yet another of its compatriots, knocking them to the side and into a miniature scrap heap. The pair were making decent progress.

"Hey, Silver?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you have an idea where to find the prison?"

"Eggman knows what he's doing. He wouldn't put it out in the open with a big sign that says "Prison Here". It would be hidden - we just have to be vigilant."

"Fairs." Nickel jumped suddenly; two robots below him smashed into each other, being destroyed instantly. "Well, thanks for deciding to kill yourselves for me. Greatly appreciated." Silver couldn't resist a smile at that.

Coincidentally, the feline and the hedgehog would come across a cave with a sign saying "Prison Here".

"If ever you wanted an obvious trap," Nickel commented.

"Don't you think it's still worth checking, just in case at least someone is inside?" Silver asked.

"Maybe, but there's a high likelihood that there's nothing there and we'll just waste our time trying not to be completely obliterated."

"I think it's still worth it. I'm leaving no stone unturned!" Silver started for the mouth.

"Alright, fine. You shouldn't go by yourself, so I'll go with you. Just know," Nickel added, "that if I die here, you are not getting anything from my will."

The two set foot into the cave and were immediately assaulted by a swarm of robots.

"Let the traps commence," Nickel said.

.

It was going well until a strange blast took both of them by surprise. Out of habit, Silver protected himself with a psychic wall, but the beam missed him altogether. Nickel had much less coverage - the cat had excellent reflexes, though, and managed to evade the beam.

There was just one small problem.

The blast touched the ground and a large area around the point of contact turned electrified. Silver's barriers shielded him once again; Nickel was not so lucky.

Pain shot through him, enveloping his entire form within half a second. Unlike the controlled shocks he was used to, the electricity was far stronger than was probably considered safe.

His shouts of agony recaptured the attention of his comrade, who had just taken care of the weapon that had fired the blast. Silver blanched as he saw Nickel collapse to his hands and knees; quickly the hedgehog scanned the area for any offending foes, finding only the massive zone of electricity on the floor that seemed to be rapidly... shrinking?

Before Silver could react, the aftermath of the trap fully vanished, leaving behind a motionless scarlet feline with fur standing on end. He tried to rouse Nickel, but when his hand reached for the red fur a visible spark jumped between them and rooted itself in Silver's metal cuff, making him recoil. "Ow!"

Using his psychokinesis seemed to do nothing as well. Nickel was out like a light.

All the time, however, the hedgehog from the future couldn't shake the feeling that the energy that had been shot at them was familiar somehow. If it was something they knew of, then it definitely wasn't from the Time Stones - if those had been used, then certainly time itself would have been in peril, which it wasn't (of all people he was surely the one to know). It most likely wasn't power from the Sol Emeralds either. Blaze was very keen on making sure that no more evil forces snatched them from her. The Phantom Ruby's energy, as little as the Resistance might have known about it, didn't historically behave like the energy that Silver had seen. And besides, Infinite was defeated and the Ruby was most likely dormant. Hyper-go-on energy might have worked, but Eggman would not take advantage of such a prominent source for only small traps. The Wisps had agreed to lend their energy to power the wispons, hence the naming, and had made no mention of their brethren being power-abused again.

That left, to the best of Silver's remembrance, Chaos energy. But like the Phantom Ruby, the Chaos Emeralds' energy didn't work like what he'd seen, either. It could be fired as a burst or a beam, but never did it spread like liquid after hitting a surface. So it couldn't be, unless Eggman had engineered the weapon to fire, along with the energy, some extra additive to make it act like it had.

And if that were the case, then Sol energy could also have been used - the two were very similar. He'd ask Blaze the next time he visited.

Which, he realised, could be that very moment. Blaze would surely help someone who'd saved the world from Eggman; plus, she had at least twenty nurses who tended to her every need if she ever were to be injured. And, she'd never met Nickel. All the more reason to go.

.

.

.

Nickel woke up to the feeling of being numb all over, which certainly was an improvement over the immense pain he'd felt just before unconsciousness. That said, he would have liked to have been able to stop the ringing that blared incessantly in his ears. That way, he could hear the voices that spoke around him clearly.

One was saying something about side-effects; maybe that was a doctor of some kind talking about the potential repercussions of his experience. Another seemingly asked a question about anaesthetics, because the first voice started talking about them wearing off -

"AAAAHH!" Nickel shot up from his lying position, feeling something tear off his arm, but that was null in his mind; all he could think of was the excruciating pain coursing through his hands. He didn't know what was causing it, but he could certainly have done without it. He didn't have his gloves on; he didn't know where they were but he absolutely needed the TENS right then.

Clearly someone had noticed him staring at his bare hands, because his pair of gloves fell onto his lap. He couldn't even think to put them on before someone snatched them away again, saying something about the output being too high. Evidently, after that, the first person had swiped the gloves back, because Nickel saw glowing gloves with a recognisable circle symbol on them slide his own gloves back onto his hands. Nickel swiftly used his paining right to turn on the current that provided the relief.

Like magic, the severe discomfort he felt immediately started to lessen; he leaned back slightly and sighed in relief - though now he realised something else. His hands were twitching uncontrollably.

"You see? The machine is on too high a level, and it would need to be turned down. But that's the lowest power setting it has." That was the doctor voice again. Looking up confirmed that she was, indeed, a doctor or a nurse. "I would have to replace the gloves."

That's when Nickel finally fully registered the situation. "My gloves are on the lowest level and they're doing this? That's never happened before, not even during the war. Why would it break now?"

"That's what I've been trying to say!" Silver shouted from his left.

"Hmm," a third voice hummed, and the three pairs of eyes turned to a regal female lavender cat that Nickel certainly did not recognise - but Silver did and he wasn't fighting her, so she couldn't be an enemy. "Maybe it's not the gloves."

"What do you mean, princess?" the doctor asked. Nickel did a double take. She was a princess? She didn't totally look the part - perhaps the lack of a crown had deceived him.

"Doctor, you have an instrument that can measure electrical power, correct?"

"Yes, I do. I use it to test the TENS machines."

"Please retrieve it."

As the doctor left, Silver spoke up again. "Oh - Blaze, I forgot to say: this is Nickel. He helped stop Doctor Eggman during the war."

"Yes, I'd surmised as much," the princess answered. "A pleasure to meet you, Nickel."

The vermilion feline's vibrating hands felt like they'd been turned to lead; it took nearly every ounce of his willpower to move them, to turn off the current (no longer needed) and meet the purple one's outstretched hand. "Hi..."

"Don't be shy, I won't bite."

"I would certainly hope that a princess doesn't bite random people for no reason," Nickel quipped almost automatically, nearly regretting the words were it not for Blaze's tiny, well-obscured snicker. Silver's was less discreet.

Presently, the doc returned. "What should I connect the machine to, if not the gloves?"

Blaze pointed straight at Nickel's face. "Hook it up to him."

"To him?" Silver asked, surely voicing everyone's thoughts - definitely voicing Nickel's.

"Princess, are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Have you come up with any others?" Blaze was answered with silence. "I thought not. Please do as I have said."

Shrugging, the medic connected the electrodes to Nickel's left arm under his blue hoodie's sleeve; her unsure expression morphed into disbelief as she saw the reading. "He's... he has current running through him."

"You mean he's electric?" Silver asked incredulously. Nickel felt very similar. He liked electric powers and abilities, sure, but he found it hard to believe that after being electrocuted he became electric himself.

"Silver, you said that the electric zone that caught him was shrinking as he was being shocked, correct?" Silver confirmed. "Maybe the energy was absorbed into him."

"But then why wouldn't it have gone into the ground?"

As Silver and the princess - Blaze - continued back and forth, talking about whether or not he'd unwittingly taken in some kind of energy (Silver had apparently theorised that it was Chaos energy), Nickel just looked at the electrodes still attached to him, following the wires to the screen the medic had set down on the gurney. Picking it up with his still lightly twitching hands, he looked at the value that he was said to have been outputting.

"Silver?"

"Yeah? What's up, Nickel?"

"How do you use your psychokinesis?"

"Oh, that's easy. You just imagine you have an extra hand that isn't attached to you, and then just think what you want it to do." As if to demonstrate, he momentarily lifted the screen Nickel had a few inches into the air. "You're thinking that it's the same if you were electric, aren't you?"

"You're not as naïve as people make you out to be," Nickel said. "Yeah." Watching the screen in his hands as closely as he could manage, Nickel imagined what it would be like for his left arm to be electrified.

Sure enough, the values he was seeing rose considerably; glancing at his left arm he found it enveloped in yellow electricity, the kind you see dramatised in movies.

Dishearteningly, the electricity had made fast work of his hoodie's sleeve, burning it away and leaving the rust-coloured fur showing underneath the sparks. He puffed out his cheeks as he blew out a heavy sigh.

"Something wrong, Nickel?" Blaze asked.

Imagining that his left arm was no longer covered in electricity, Nickel held it up. "My sleeve's gone."

"Don't worry about that. We have a special tailor who makes all of my fireproof attire. He will most certainly be able to create something similar to what I have for you."

Nickel realised the implications behind some of those words, but he didn't say anything about it - after all, her name was Blaze. "Are you sure about that? I mean, I don't want to step on any toes."

Blaze waved away Nickel's concerns. "Not a problem. You helped to save Sonic's dimension and by proxy helped to save mine from potential disaster. This is the very least that I could do."

"Okay, if you say so..."

First chapter in the books! Again, I really hope you enjoy this chapter.

'Til next time, see ya later!