A sharp sound from atop the table jolted the vermilion feline from his sleep. His communicator was vibrating in alarm, most likely a message or an alert from the Resistance members. That was the only thing that could make any sound while his comm was set to silent.

Nickel looked at the time on his custom digital clock. 3 AM. "Ugh," Nickel groaned, not at all wanting to entertain anything except Lily at this hour. But it was an alert from the HQ, so he really should have been answering it. "Fine. What do you want?" He picked up the device and read the alert message. It read: "Do not look at the moon. Whatever you do, don't look at it."

Nickel looked to see if he'd missed any other messages from the Resistance; instead he saw dozens, if not hundreds, of messages from completely arbitrary sources - even a few from Knuckles and Vector and Charmy - that said the same thing in eerily similar ways: "It's a beautiful night tonight. Take a look outside and see."

"Dude, it's three in the morning. I'm not getting up to go see anything," Nickel grumbled. "Go away." He put the communicator back onto the table and went straight back to sleep.

.

The next morning, Nickel arose late. He trudged to Lily's bedroom to wake his xanthic friend, to find she'd already awoken and was looking chipper as usual.

"Morning, Lily," he purred, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

"Good morning, mister Nickel!" she responded, smiling as she turned to face him. "Did you just wake up?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "I actually got up at three in the morning thanks to a weird message from the Resistance, and I guess I overslept after that."

"What did the message say, mister Nickel?"

"It said not to look at the moon. Funny thing as well," he went on, "there were a million and one people telling me to do the exact opposite. I don't even know how they managed to message my comm."

"Why didn't you look at the moon?" Lily asked, tilting her head. "If all those people told you to do it, why not?"

"First off, it was 3 AM and I was never going to get up at three to do that. Second, just because a lot of people say to do something doesn't mean that you should do it. That's how you get into doing bad things." Nickel looked around the room, as though he hadn't already seen it before several times. "Why don't we go over to the HQ and see what the big deal was?" he offered.

"Okay, mister Nickel." Lily bounded out of her room toward the front door, and Nickel followed.

Upon stepping outside, however, Nickel stood motionless at the sight. "Oh, my goodness."

Lily was shocked too, as well as slightly frightened as she gripped his right leg. "M-Mister Nickel? What happened?"

"I honestly have no clue," he answered.

Scattered across the landscape was a multitude of statues that looked far too realistic. They were mostly, if not all, looking upward.

"Oh, you're okay!" They turned to the new voice; Tails was rushing up to them, twin namesakes spinning feverishly. "We need everyone we can get."

"Tails, what's gone on?" Nickel asked the kitsune. "Is this about the moon?"

"Why is everyone a statue?" Lily asked, peering around Nickel's leg.

"Come to the headquarters. We'll go over everything once we're there." With that, Tails grabbed hold of Nickel and began to rush him to the big building.

"Wait for me!" Lily called after them, only to be scooped up by a black-and-red blur and rushed ahead herself. Shadow had taken it upon himself to take the little girl to their destination. Nickel sent a silent thank you his way.

.

"As you all know, the moon has petrified everyone who looked at it last night," Amy announced.

Nickel looked at Lily, trying to gauge how she was feeling about the situation. She was sitting in a corner, wringing her hands nervously. Nickel couldn't blame her.

As Amy talked on, Nickel thought about why on Mobius Knuckles and Vector and Charmy were among those sending those robot-like messages to him the previous night. They weren't present at the meeting, he'd noticed as well. They must have looked at the moon - that was probably how everybody else knew not to.

But if the moon had just petrified them, how would they send the messages? Some sort of hypnotic effect? And maybe if the transformation wasn't immediate, they could have done so before getting turned. That would then bring up the question of how long the change took. If it took the whole night into the very early morning, which was likely given when the alert had come in, perhaps the progression of the transformation would be just as slow. If it was somewhat fast, they would probably be in trouble.

And then there was the topic of whether or not this effect could be cast on multiple nights. Nickel didn't believe that that would be the case, given the magnitude of the spell. It would be unfair to be able to perform it twice in two nights. Never mind, of course, that similar scenarios had occurred previously.

"Nickel!" The vermilion feline jolted from his musings and looked back at the rose hedgehog, who was returning an expectant stare. He could feel everyone else turn their gazes to him too - he tried not to think about that for too long.

"Yeah?" he answered tentatively.

"Wanna tell us what you were thinking about?" Amy questioned rhetorically. Nickel answered her totally unironically and recounted his thought process to her and to everyone else, ending it with "And that's where I was when you called me."

That got the attention directed at him to shift in mood - Sonic even chuckled at some humour he found in the situation, earning himself a rather vitriolic look from his self-proclaimed future spouse. "Well, pay attention the next time you want to explain the whole situation before I do," Amy said. Nickel himself let out a little laugh at that.

"Yes, ma'am." The meeting proceeded as normal from there.