Lily dashed to the door to answer the person knocking.

Upon seeing who was there, she smiled a big smile. "Hi, mister Zero!"

"Hello, Lily," he answered with that deep voice of his. Lily would never say anything, but she was pretty sure Nickel's was lower. "Where's Nickel?"

"He went to the big Resistance building," she informed him. "Where they have their meetings and stuff."

"Oh, the HQ." Zero looked like he was thinking hard about something.

"What are you thinking about, mister Zero?" she prodded.

"Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if I should go there. I wanted to ask him something."

"But they don't like you, mister Zero. Are you sure?"

Zero paused. "It's not urgent. I could wait until he comes back."

Lily's eyes lit up with an idea. "You could stay here and play with me! Please?" She gave him her best pleading face.

"Okay," he relented. "What do you want to do?"

.

.

.

The meeting took much longer than Nickel expected and, quite frankly, went on for much longer than Nickel wanted to be there. A lot of it consisted of arguments between the friendly rivals, mostly Knuckles, Sonic and Shadow.

The cat stood near the door, wanting to be the first to leave when they called the meeting to a close. Closest to him was Silver, who looked similarly uninvested in the verbal battles being fought. He was playing with a stack of papers using his psychokinesis; at one point he had looked to be tempted to hurl a crumpled sheet at the arguing members, but Nickel stopped him with his own kinetic ability - doing such a thing would just make more unnecessary strife.

Presently there was a knock on the door, and the arguments quieted quickly. The semi-automatic door slid open and standing there was a jackal whose presence raised the hairs of many a person in the room.

Nickel spoke first, approaching him. "What are you doing here?"

Before an answer could come, Silver and (of all people) Shadow jumped in front of the russet feline, in what felt like an act of defense to Nickel. Both hedgehogs advanced toward Zero, demanding the meaning of his presence.

"Look, I'm not here to start another war," Zero said, and Nickel could see the familiar mixture of regret and slight annoyance in his face. "I only came here because I wanted to ask Nickel something, but he was - "

"Wait, what do you mean 'ask Nickel something'?" Silver questioned. "Why would you need to ask him anything?"

As Zero prepared to reply, Nickel hoped that there wouldn't be yet another argument. The back of his head was starting to hurt and he could honestly do without any further pain.

"Because I wanted him to - " the jackal began, but he was cut off by Tails.

"How do you even know each other in the first place?"

Zero tried to speak again, but this time he didn't get in a word before another question came in. "Also, how are you even alive?" Sonic asked.

Nickel wanted to shout at everyone to stop talking and let the ex-villain say what he wanted, except his voice and his nature weren't necessarily conducive to shouting. Never mind that doing so would likely amplify his worsening headache.

Thankfully, Zero actually did shout at everyone. "Just listen!" He punctuated the statement with a slight snarl; everyone shut up after that. The ex-villain continued, a sharp edge in his low voice: "Look. I know Nickel, and that's all you need to know."

Shadow, to his credit, was unfazed. Taking a menacing step toward the black jackal, he spoke: "I think you'll find that we need to know everything about how and why you're here. Now, answer the questions." Zero refused still. Shadow glowered even more furiously. "Answer. The questions. Now."

Nickel now intervened. "Bro, calm down," he said. Shadow looked back at him with a much unchanged expression, but he didn't say anything, instead deciding to let the feline state his bit.

Before that could happen, however, Knuckles opened his mouth to ask a rather questionable query. "Wait. If you knew Infinite, then wouldn't that make you like a spy in the war?"

Nickel never wanted to punch the echidna more in his entire time of knowing him, and he was sure a fair few others felt similarly.

"Let me explain what happened," the vermilion cat started, and immediately he nearly referred to Zero by his real name. "Z - Infinite showed up to my house out of nowhere, bleeding from some kind of cut he got when he was running away from - I can't even remember, I think he was running from where he was living at the time?"

Now Zero decided to input something. "Some Resistance members were digging through my things and, fearing I would be caught, I fled."

"Yeah, that," Nickel continued. "He came to me, because he knew where I lived because he's a stalker - anyway..." That made someone snicker in the background, and Nickel wasn't too sure who it was. "I patched him up and, well, let's put it this way: he lost a lot of sleep over his, uh, past delinquencies."

"I wonder whose fault that is," Zero remarked. Nickel chuckled.

"But yeah; he's repented and now he just lives a little further away from the City than I do. He's a good neighbour. Sometimes." Nickel cast a sideways glance at the former supervillain. "As for how he's alive? That's a question even I don't know the answer to. He'll hafta tell you about that one."

Eyes shifted back to Zero, who took a breath before speaking. "After I was defeated at the Empire Fortress - thanks for that, by the way - I was transported away, whereupon Eggman performed a countermeasure to ensure that I didn't foil his final plan. I don't really remember everything that happened, but the Ruby was taken from me and Eggman warped reality to close the hole that it left. The next thing I remember is waking up in an alley in the city."

Nickel tried not to imagine the giant chasm that would have been in the jackal's torso after the Phantom Ruby was removed.

"So why didn't our good doctor just leave you to die with that hole in your chest?" Shadow questioned. "If he had no use for you, he wouldn't have needed to keep you alive."

Zero shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe he believed that somewhere in the aftermath of the war, whoever won, I would be disposed of properly anyway."

"Just like Eggman to leave a job unfinished," Silver said. "If that were me, it would have been a different story."

"Similar," the Ultimate Lifeform agreed.

"And that's why I went to Nickel. He was probably the only person alive who wouldn't have killed me on sight."

Silence reigned for a moment as everyone took in the story.

By and by Nickel stepped around the colour-contrasting hedgehogs and spoke to Zero again. "What was it that you wanted to ask me?"

The canid hesitated. "Now I've forgotten." Nickel chuckled. "Don't laugh at me. It was a serious question."

"Well, if you remember, you know where to find me." The vermilion feline made for the door, but Knuckles stopped him.

"Where are you going? The meeting isn't done yet."

Nickel let out a silent, exasperated sigh. How much longer would he be here?