Nickel caught sight of his destination: Lily's school. It was Friday and he had arrived earlier than he tended to do on the other days, knowing that the little girl would be excited to start her weekend as early as was feasible.

Undoubtedly she would have the typical weekend homework to do, but she was bright and she would surely breeze through it and be left with plenty of time for fun.

He poked his head through the open gate, seeing hardly anyone in the yard. It must have been too early; a quick glance to the screen on his left hand showed that he had arrived five minutes before the usual "home time".

"Weird," he muttered. "I swear, on Friday they end school earlier than on the other days. Didn't Lily tell me somethin' like that a couple weeks ago?"

"Hi!" His quiet train of thought was interrupted out of nowhere by another voice, one he didn't recognise. He jumped in surprise - the voice spoke again. "Oops, didn't mean to startle you."

Nickel turned to face the person. It was a young black feline, feminine according to the voice and a little bit short, with blue eyes and wearing mostly red: a red tee, red middle-length pants, red laced shoes - even her black gloves had red fingertips. He supposed he couldn't say too much about that, being clad mostly in blue himself.

He waved his hand in a forgiving, dismissive gesture. "It's fine," he added, surely too quiet for her to hear.

"What's your name?" she asked.

Nickel hesitated, as he tended to do. "Nickel."

She smiled. "You have a nice voice."

Nickel shifted his gaze to the ground, but couldn't help his own smile sprouting on his face. "Thanks. What's your name?"

"I'm Topaz!" She extended a hand. "Nice to meet you."

Nickel felt his hands turn into two-ton weights, not unlike when he met Blaze. Nevertheless he matched her gesture.

"So, whatcha doing here? Waiting for someone?" Topaz looked past him and into the schoolyard.

"Yeah, but, um... the bell hasn't rung yet so I'm just - " The aforementioned bell rang. Nickel smiled wryly. "Naturally." Topaz laughed.

Virtually immediately Nickel felt a pair of arms clamp around his midsection and a more familiar female voice sounded out from behind him. "Hi mister Nickel!"

"Hi, Lily," he answered without looking.

It was then that Topaz seemed to recognise Nickel. "Wait - you're THE Nickel?"

The rust-coloured feline looked back at his little lemon-coloured friend, who was peering around him at the ebony-coloured cat, whom Lily seemed to know. "Hi, miss Topaz!" She ran over to Topaz and hugged her. "Yeah, that's mister Nickel."

The older girl still looked in disbelief. "The one who helped save the world with Sonic and co? That Nickel?"

"I didn't know my reputation preceded me," Nickel responded. "Yes, hi, hello, that's me."

"... Huh, I expected you'd be bigger built than you are."

Nickel laughed - Lily looked more indignant than he felt, and it wasn't even directed at her. "'S actually the first time in a while someone's pointed that out."

"You can't just say that to mister Nickel!" Lily spoke out. "He's super nice and he didn't do anything to you." She punctuated her sentence with an upset pout.

"You seem to know each other well," Nickel interrupted, rerouting the conversation as people started arriving to pick up their children from school. "We should probably move from here - how did you two meet?" He started walking, Lily following and, by connection, Topaz too.

"Oh, I live pretty close to the school," Topaz explained. "I think we met when Lily went into my yard for something or other one day. Since then, sometimes at lunchtime Lily comes over and we hang out." There was a small pause. "She talks a lot about you."

"I - I would assume she does," Nickel said, a droll smile on his lips. "She loves telling people about me, the ladies especially. I wonder why." Looking at the yellow-furred kitten showed a sheepish expression on her face.

"You are pretty cute, though." That caught Nickel by surprise; he felt his heart skip and his eyebrows furrowed as he turned back to the girl who'd said that. "Not to mention that voice of yours."

The vermilion cat couldn't think of a thing to say to that. His eyes magnetised themselves away from Topaz as the smile that was already on his face shrunk in embarrassment. He heard Lily and Topaz both giggle at his reaction.

"I told you he was shy, miss Topaz," Lily said.

"Yeah, but he warms up fast," Topaz replied. Nickel could feel her eyes on him. "Hey Nickel, where are you from? You kinda sound like you have a sort of accent."

"I'm from an island off the south coast," he answered. "I like to think of my accent as Ameritish, but I'm not from either of those two."

The conversation between the three continued as the time flew by, whereupon Topaz asked what the time was.

"The time is... 4:26," Nickel said in a funny robotic voice after looking at his screen.

"Oh, I actually need to get home," the black-furred feline said. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Nickel. Come over anytime!"

"We will! Bye!" Lily answered for him as Topaz departed.

On the way back to their home, Lily asked, "Should we bring mister Zero to meet miss Topaz?"

"I don't see why not," Nickel told her. "But only if he wants to. You know how he can be sometimes." Lily nodded yes.

Silence followed before Lily piped up again. "I think she liked you."

"Lily..."

.

.

.

"Where are we?" the black-and-white jackal asked.

Nickel let Lily answer him; he was more concerned with where they were headed. The boy cat wasn't sure as to the exact location of his new friend's house, but certainly Lily would be - that, or Topaz would find them.

"I still don't know why you're bringing me to meet this girlfriend of yours, Nickel," Zero remarked, and Nickel paid him his name's numerical worth of attention. "Why didn't you just ask her to visit you, and by extension me?"

Nickel had briefly considered that, but he knew Zero's disposition and reasoned that the way they had chosen to go about this introduction was safer.

Instead of answering, the feline with rust-coloured fur turned to the little sunshiny girl and asked where exactly to go to reach the home of their dark-furred friend.

"Just go in there," Lily said, pointing toward a tall wrought iron gate that separated two similarly high walls. Their alleged destination was almost bordering the school compound, it was so close. Nickel wondered if Topaz had gone to this particular school when she was younger.

"You still didn't answer my question," the canid voiced.

"Because I know you don't like random people showin' up at your house. Especially since, y'know, former villain and everythin'," Nickel responded. Zero seemed to relent ever so slightly.

Presently, the three of them had arrived and were about to go through the metal gate, and it was at this moment that Zero had sudden second thoughts and wheeled around.

Nickel grabbed his shoulders. "Whoa, where're you goin'?"

"Back home," was the simple reply.

"Come on. We're already here, we might as well finish what we were doin'." Nickel tried to drag Zero back to the gate, but the jackal cleverly allowed his weight to be let go, making Nickel have to haul all his body weight. "Seriously?"

"Just let me go home, Nickel."

Nickel didn't want this trip to be for naught; he told Lily to go and knock, and he just walked around in front of Zero and began to push him instead. No longer having a fall breaker behind him, Zero was forced to use his feet and that made transporting him easier.

He began to push back, though. Neither were amazingly strong physically, certainly not Nickel, so it was a stalemate for a while.

"Go back in there, you so-and-so!" Nickel said as they wrestled.

"No," Zero said swiftly.

"Don't make me tase you." Nickel's words caught Zero off-guard, and the jackal stopped struggling to avoid that electric fate. "Thank you."

"They're out here, miss Topaz!" As soon as the words were spoken, their speaker emerged from the gate, followed by the person whom the trio had come to see.

Topaz seemed to shrink away when Zero turned to look at her. "Is that Infinite?" she asked in a loud whisper.

"No! No," Nickel quickly interjected. "This is Zero. Infinite is dead."

"Yeah," Zero agreed, clearly seeing where Nickel was going with his words. "I just look like him, that's all."

Lily looked about to say something, but Nickel discreetly shushed her.

"Oh, o-okay." She returned to her regular self. "Well, nice to meet you, Zero!" She held out a hand, as she'd done to Nickel.

"Likewise," the ex-villain answered, returning the gesture.

"Are you two brothers?" she suddenly asked.

Nickel and Zero looked at each other, before the feline fell into a fit of chuckles. "No, no, we're not. Why'd you ask?"

"Just your voices. They're pretty similar," she replied. "Plus the long hair, especially with you being guys."

"Well, we're not brothers," Zero doubly confirmed. "How would that even work?" Lily seemed to be wondering the same thing.

"Well, technically, Mobian genetics can allow stuff like that to happen," Nickel said under his breath. No one seemed to hear him.

"In fact," Zero was saying, "we only met some months ago."

"Wow, really? I wouldn't have guessed," Topaz mused aloud. "You two seem like such good friends."

"Thank you," Nickel said for them both.

"Well, can I go now?" Zero asked. Nickel relented; the canid said his goodbyes and went back to his house.

"He doesn't like going out, miss Topaz," Lily explained.

"For, well, reasons that were demonstrated today. He looks like Infinite, so he knows people'll be kinda scared of him. Some of 'em, at least," Nickel elaborated. "He's a nice guy, though."

"Yeah! He's super nice," Lily agreed.

"Well, maybe I'll come over someday so he and I can get acquainted with each other in a better environment for him." Topaz seemed to think of something. "If he doesn't like going out, why did you bring him all the way out here to meet me?"

"As much as he doesn't like going out, he likes strangers showing up at his door even less," Nickel told her. "But now you're not a stranger, and therefore can approach his house without any issue." He said that last sentence with an air of bourgeoisie, making himself laugh.

Nickel didn't stick around for too long after that, having done what he'd set out to do. Zero making friends was a great accomplishment; maybe there'd be more fun to be had with all four of them together now.

.

.

.

Topaz the Cat: Fourteen years old.

Rather short at 3'2"; Long fur, licorice in colour; dark cyan eyes; white muzzle, moderately long tail
Red cotton T-shirt, red 3/4 pants, black opaque tights, red and white laced shoes, black gloves with red fingertips

Has a lower mezzo-soprano voice. Bubbly, but not boisterous in her speech. Quite sociable and likes to make friends. Self-conscious about marks on the backs of her hands; her gloves are dark-colored around her palms to obscure their glow. Likes romance a lot. Does not like visible blood at all.

The marks on her hands actually do something. She just doesn't yet know what that something is.