(This is a brainstorming chapter. Honest was able to figure a lot of stuff out.)

Now it was February 13th and Honest decided to hide in the social studies hallways' bathroom instead. Maybe that would lower the possibility of her running into any flying hedgehogs this time. That might've not been her best course of action either, though.

Everyone who had second lunch had a social studies class after lunch, and so the math hall was empty during first lunch. The reverse was also true. That's why, upon entering the girls' restroom that day, Honest found that the bathroom was packed.

Eventually however, once the period was about at the halfway point, it started to clear out a bit. Before long, Honest was nearly all alone there. That was when this story's namesake made yet another appearance.

"Ho-Honest?"

Rosy stepped out from behind the wall in front of her slowly, looking as if she weren't very sure of herself before immediately brightening up at the sight of Honest standing there.

"Honest! Sonic told me I'd find you here. Hey, I have something to ask you about."

Honest had to admit she felt somewhat uneasy about having to occupy the same small space as a character known to experience frequent episodes of sudden manic behavior resulting in bouts of extreme violence, but she smiled anyway, deciding that it was her responsibility as author to find methods of carrying out anything that her characters requested of her (especially if it impacted the character[s]' ability to contribute to a particular plot or plots necessary to complete Honest's goal). Also... how come Sonic knew where she was? "What is it?"

Rosy tugged at the corners of her orange skirt nervously. "You know how you said you wanted to help me last week? Well... could you... help me get closer to Scourge?"

Honest immediately lost her smile and stumbled backwards. "Get 'closer' to him? You literally almost smashed his teeth in last time you and him were close!"

She was of course referencing last Monday when Honest had stumbled upon Scourge running down the road in front of the school in a desperate attempt to escape the two-ton hammer Rosy was chasing him with. However, when Rosy saw Sonic standing by the side of the road, she stopped and hugged him so Scourge could escape only just narrowly with his life.

"I-I'll think about it... in the meantime, shouldn't you be at lunch or something?"

"Why should I be? You're not," Rosy pointed out.

Honest sighed. "You got me there." When Rosy just continued to glare at her, Honest blew out a puff of air. "Okay, fine then. Let's go eat and discuss our plan."

Now in the cafeteria, Honest and Rosy found the table where everyone was at, and Rosy made an attempt to sit down but was halted by Honest.

"Wait," she said. The blond cat then looked around the lunchroom until she spotted another table near the back that happened to be empty. "I think this sort of thing should be discussed privately." They made their way over to that table.

Honest wanted to make the most of Rosy's current-but-most-likely-temporary calm state, but that didn't mean she had to be reckless about it.

"So, you want Scourge to notice you, but every time you get close to him, you freak out and try to crush him underneath your hammer." Rosy nodded passionately.

Honest hated to have to simplify Rosy's conflict so much, but it was necessary if she wanted to appear knowledgeable about her problem. She needed to be able to get on top of the situation. Picture a large, pink block. Then imagine Honest scrambling to try to get on top of it, but failing miserably. That was what was happening with this plot. Now, if Honest were to shrink this block by cutting a little bit off the top, she might be able to get on top of it. Keyword being "might".

Rosy stopped nodding suddenly and her expression saddened. "And when I am in a state where it's possible to act calm around him, I'm confronted with an overwhelming shyness that I can't beat."

And then the block Honest had aimed to shrink appeared to be starting to grow instead.

"Wh-Why did you get a job at the cafe?" Honest asked, trying to ignore the fuschia hedgehog's previous statement.

"I didn't get a job at the cafe..." Honest's eyes suddenly widened as she realized something.

"That was a long time ago, wasn't it?" Honest asked. Rosy looked up at her and nodded. When {Cafe Edition} was created, Honest had assembled a team of characters she thought would be useful. Characters she assumed she'd be able to work with in order to create entertaining situations to make the story interesting. However, Honest had added Rosy practically on a whim because she hadn't known really anything about her at that point. Actually, when Honest had encountered Rosy while reading the comic series one day, her immediate thought was "this character has a dynamic with another character that doesn't have much use right now, so I should add her to create conflict". However, Honest soon realized afterwards that the conflict between those two characters was way more in-depth than she knew. Therefore, she chose to ignore that dynamic entirely and simply keep Rosy around to fill up empty spots in the storyline, even calling her a "helper" in one chapter. Technically, Rosy hadn't applied to the job at the cafe at all.

If Honest was supposedly ignoring Rosy's and Scourge's dynamic back then, how come she was currently typing a whole book based on it now?

The answer wasn't simple, she was afraid.

At one point, Honest decided she wanted another account so that she could have one for typing this story and another for role playing. So, she created XxRosy_the_RascalxX, where she planned to pretend to be Rosy in order to spy on other characters. However, there was a problem with this. Since Honest didn't really know too much about Rosy at that time, it was hard to keep up the disguise. Somehow she was able to keep it up long enough to find Scourge.

Actually, she found two of him.

And she found out that there was a huge following of people who supported him being with Sonic's brother.

And that upset her.

So, in order to show up those people, Honest hired Manic to work at the cafe.

The chapter started up just like most chapters of {Cafe Edition}.

It was National Pi Day, so when Sonic showed up at the cafe one afternoon to order something, the only thing he could order was pie. So, he did. Blueberry pie.

Who knew that something like pie could cause so much chaos?

Scourge came to the cafe to get pie. Pretty simple. He got distracted by seeing that Manic was working there, but Honest walked up and started to argue with him.

Honest thought that it was wrong for someone's love of him to cause them to turn into a monster, but then him ignore them and get with someone else.

It wasn't fair.

And so, Honest started off by arguing that point. One of his points was that Manic was simply distracting him from Rosy. He argued that his anti had someone distracting him as well, so it was even. But for some reason, Scourge was quick to see her side of the argument, and immediately seized the fighting.

However, Rosy overheard their conversation.

All she had heard was that Manic was "distracting" him from her.

There was a situation that required Honest's attention. While she had been preoccupied, Scourge had disappeared.

Honest's pie, which Sonic had graciously bought for her for some reason unknown, had gone cold over this time, so she went to the kitchen to microwave it.

That's where she found them.

Honest hid behind a box of yet-to-be-unboxed cupcake decorations as she watched a situation between Rosy and Scourge unfold before her.

Scourge, apologetic, opened his mouth to say something, but Rosy immediately pulled out her spiked hammer and held it out in front of her as if to block him from attacking her.

"What Honest told you was true! Manic is distracting you! You need to do something about that!" she had said.

Scourge didn't want to hurt her, and he tried to prove this to Rosy by holding up his hands, but she didn't move her hammer an inch. He then tried to explain to her that he cared for Manic, but even Honest was unsure if he had been lying or not.

Rosy then tightened her grip on her hammer, telling him that she understood what was going on. She was convinced that Manic was fooling him into believing that in order to prevent him from acting.

That confused Scourge. Honest could tell by the face he made as Rosy swung her hammer at the open air saying, "I will take him out. Just say when!"

Eventually Scourge looked more concerned than confused as Rosy swiped at an imaginary attacker with her hammer. Maybe it was at that point that he was starting to realize that Rosy was mentally unstable and thus didn't have a clue as to what she was actually saying.

"I don't want you to hurt Manic, but I also don't want to hurt you."

Honest soon realized that it wasn't Rosy's problem so much that she didn't understand. It was Scourge's.

Oh. So the block was actually green...

"Honest?"Snap. Snap. "Yoohoo, Honest? You okay?"

Soon Honest was back at the lunch table with Rosy. The pink hedgehog was reaching across the table to snap close to Honest's ears in order to bring her back to the present.

"Oh, uh, sorry." Honest looked up at the analog clock on the wall above their heads. It was 11:33. She stood up and swung her blue bag over her shoulder. "It's time for us to go to class." She made a move to leave the table.

"No, but wait! Weren't we supposed to discuss how to get me closer to Scourge?!"

Honest's mind was still stuck in March 14th of last year. She didn't hear her and instead dashed out of the cafeteria and towards her fourth period class.

Now it was February 21st, 2019, and Honest and Shadow were walking to their second period classes when Honest suddenly pulled out her smartphone and pointed at its screen.

"Hey, Shadow! Look what I can do!" she exclaimed.

He looked confused. "What do you mean 'what you can do'? Text? Call?"

"No!" Honest said, smiling a cat smile. "Way farther past cool than that!" She showed him her screen. "I can use my phone to use my computer to use my other computer!" Shadow squinted at her phone's screen. She was looking at her desktop wallpaper of Sonic merging with the Mona Lisa from within a window on the desktop of a computer which had a screenshot from Sonic '06 of Silver standing in a fern for its desktop on her phone's screen.

"Explain," he demanded, convinced that she was using some sort of forbidden tech.

"I'm remotely connecting to one of my computers from my phone, and then I'm remotely connecting to my other computer from that one!" He was still confused.

"I've been experimenting with it over the weekend. This strange chain of applications will allow me to access anything on any of my computers from anywhere, especially through my phone which will allow me to use them from school."

Shadow thought for a moment. "It's like when the computer company accesses your computer from their offices to help you out, but instead you're using that same method to use your computers from anywhere," he said, trying to explain it to himself. "That's genius, but... scary."

"'Scary'?" Honest asked. She then laughed. "How is it 'scary'?"

"'With great power comes great responsibility' and all that," he told her.

Honest squinted her eyes at him. "It's the future, Shadster. In the year 4000, this will be an everyday occurrence."

"Whatever you say," Shadow said next, rolling his eyes. When they reached the agriculture building where Honest's study hall was, they split up, Shadow disappearing into the main building where his history class was.

Honest was looking forward to next year. If she didn't get a job right away after high school, she planned to start a new story that followed a new character every chapter. In this story, she was going to try to connect IWGSR's, {w/Rosy}'s and {Forces Edition}'s and {w/Snow}'s, and {w/Sonic}'s canons all together so that there were no major differences between the stories. That way, for the remainder of Honest's life, she could continue to type stemming from that one point. It might not make much sense to you, dear reader, but to Honest, this sounded like a great deal.

Of course, none of that could happen until Honest found out what was going on with this story, namely with Scourge. Honest didn't have a class with him until third, but she really didn't feel like talking to him then. Perhaps it would be easier if she could get him alone at lunch like she had done Rosy last week.

But then again, today was Thursday which meant she would be having chicken strips for lunch. Honest couldn't miss out on that! Maybe she could talk to him in art this afternoon.

Honest found the regal, green pineapple sitting at his computer in the graphic design lab fifth period.

"Scourge, can I get you to help me with something?" Honest asked as she settled into the seat beside him. That was her computer. The art teacher let AP art students like her and Scourge take whole periods off from their projects to work in the design lab as long as they were working on something for graphic design.

"I don't know what else you could want from me," he told her. The way he was acting now reminded Honest of how Shadow acted whenever she would ask him how he felt about Sonic. However, Honest hadn't asked him anything about anyone yet. She tilted her head to the side as he continued to speak. "I've been endangering my life for you for the past ten months, and I have gotten zilch in return so far."

Honest sighed. "I know, and I'm very thankful for that, but this isn't about Rosy. I came to talk to you about... you."

When he looked confused, Honest attempted to explain.

"Other than being a tad bit unstable, Rosy really doesn't have any major hang-ups that would prevent the story from progressing." He was just silently puffing steam as she said this. "The only character with hang-ups around here is you." At this, he became slightly more irritated.

"There's nothing wrong with me," he said, sounding sure. "Why would there be anything wrong with me? I'm the victim. She's the murderous psycho."

That's not what Honest meant, but she was having trouble describing what it was she did mean. "That's not what I'm trying to say," she said, praying that he would understand. "Here. Just tell me what you know about the situation. Start from the very beginning."

He blinked. "Uh... okay." He cleared his throat before he began to speak nervously. "I... ignored Rosy in the beginning because I... well, she was a little kid! What did she expect me to do?!"

"Exactly, Scourge. Rosy was an impressionable little kid and your-" Honest moved her mouth frantically as if searching for the most acidic word to use. "Hideously immoral actions were in plain view for her to see. She looked up to you, but you were the worst role model in the history of role modelling."

The green hedgehog looked around the room as if he, by moving his eyes, were able to dodge everything Honest said to him.

"Are you listening to me?!" she asked.

"Yeah," he replied, still not looking at her. His tone was the complete opposite of Honest's right now. She was losing it trying to get his attention, but he sounded as if he were absentmindedly listening to small talk. He eventually was able to train himself on what Honest was saying, though. "But what do you expect from me? If you want a good example, go find Sonic."

"That's what Rosy's doing." At this, Scourge sat up and his red sunglasses fell down, revealing his intrigued, blue eyes. Honest rolled her own violet eyes. "If you've been paying attention at all, you'll find that any time Sonic and Rosy are in the same room, she immediately runs to him. Rosy is in desperate need of a role model right now. It's the same thing Tails experienced in SA. If you want to have any say in how Rosy grows up, you'll go to her. Otherwise, she'll just continue to see you as the enemy just as Sonic does."

Scourge spun his chair around until it faced the door and his back was to Honest.

The room's one fan in the center of the ceiling was making a low humming noise as it spun.

"How do I show her I want to help her?"

Honest's ears perked upwards. "Huh?" Had she heard him right?

He really was willing to help her.

I think I've finally made Scourge understand where I'm coming from. I want to tell him more- how Rosy, with both our guidance, can become whatever sort of character we want her to be- but he has his own mission right now. I'll tell him later.

Anyway, I know this chapter is long, but it was definitely worth it, so please leave a review if you like. I will see you in the next chapter.

PS: Search for "Is a Walled Garden Still Rosy" and read that story to get Scourge's point of view. Thanks for reading!

(Except now I'm debating whether or not all of that story is canon. Well, that chapter, or at least that part, is canon for sure.)