"Does his strength equal his speed?"

Honest was stumbling towards the door after the bell had rung and released her from her first period business class on March 7th, 2019 when suddenly, as she was pushing the right door open, the left one was slung open as the result of some incredible force acting upon it, scaring the poor blond feline half to death. She caught just the slimmest glance of the source of the force- a red shoe.

"How's that for an answer?"

"Was that really necessary?" came the slightly aggravated remark of a black-spined rodent as the three turned onto the sidewalk, aimed in the direction of their second period classes.

The blue-spined disruption of morning tranquility laughed. "You asked, so I set up an experiment in order for you to see the answer for yourself."

"Let me guess- you have science next," Shadow said. Honest was trying to ignore them the best she could, so she stayed silent.

"AP Biology," the azure hero said in an assured manner. "Where are you going next?"

"As if I'd tell you," he told him crossly.

"He has English next!" Honest exclaimed. The red-striped rodent started puffing steam from his noggin.

"Why would you tell him that? If you couldn't already tell, I didn't plan to tell him so that he wouldn't know where I will be. Now he's going to bother me for the rest of eternity," he explained. "Thanks for nothing."

Honest felt taken aback. She looked to Sonic. "Is he in a bad mood today?"

"He's always in a bad mood in the morning time," he told her, seeming downcast. "I don't think he's much of a morning person."

What was that pointless old saying again? Something about a blue flower calling a yellow flower blue? Or was it a green turtle calling a brown turtle green? Or maybe it was a striped cat calling a spotted cat striped? Whatever it was, Honest felt that was exactly what was happening here.

"But you're the one who is always making us late to school because you have trouble waking up in the mornings," Honest pointed out. "Shadow's always up early enough to make breakfast and drink a whole pot of coffee with me before you can even sit up."

Sonic must not have been listening to her because he suddenly changed the conversation back to its earlier focus. "Tell us what class you have next, Honest."

She suddenly sped off and ducked around the corner of a building.

Honest really didn't feel like being late to her second period class today. So what it was just study hall- there was no "just" about it! Study hall was one of the only places, aside from the lunchroom if she happened to have her phone with her, where Honest could make major advances in her fan fiction. If she happened to miss that period due to some pointless conversation, she wouldn't be able to work on her story at all today. That would be horrible.

As she made her way down the hallway of the agriculture building, Honest encountered someone she remembered who shared her study hall with her running down the hallway towards her- Silver.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, showing her a slip of paper. "When you get to the room, the teacher will give you a slip to go to the library. I'll wait for you at the door!"

Honest watched him pass then hurried to the room down the hall. So... no working on her fan fiction today... but she still could in the library, right? There were computers in there. She's seen them before. Vector was usually always sitting in there using one during his lunch period.

Upon entering the main building, Honest thought about maybe hiding out somewhere else instead. After all, the library was a big, boring place. If she spent time somewhere else, like maybe in the hallway where she had encountered Rosy in the middle of some sort of fight that one time, Honest could raise her chances of encountering something to write about. After all, if she didn't have anything cool to write about, what was the point to going to the library at all?

However, Honest decided against all of that upon seeing Silver standing in front of the library, waving his arms. Since he was expecting her, Honest felt obligated to go with him. After all, she had promised to be somewhat of a mother figure to him back in chapter 17... actually it was more like chapter 20 of Forces Edition... and for some reason Honest didn't have any intentions of breaking that promise. She was only three years older than him, but he was from the future, so that didn't have to make sense. Plus, he acted a lot younger than he actually was most times, so it was easy to fool yourself at one of those times.

"Come on, Honest! Help me find a book!" he ran inside. She laughed and followed him. When he ducked into the shelves upon shelves of fiction books, Silver disappeared for the most part. A quick look around, however, informed Honest of his exact location. His five spines were seen through a gap in the books a couple rows down. She began to make her way towards them.

When Honest found him, Silver was scanning the shelves, looking for anything that stood out to him

When Honest found him, Silver was scanning the shelves, looking for anything that stood out to him. Eventually he did. He pulled out a decent-sized book with a red cover. On the front, in silver letters, it read "The Tale of Chaoberry Joe and the Seven Golden Eggs". "Should I read this one?"

Honest shook her head. "I wouldn't. I've heard that it's not very good."

"Oh," he sighed. "Have you read it?"

Honest shook her head again. "No, but Rosy has. She didn't like it."

Silver thought a moment. "Rosy... oh, okay. Let's find something else."

Honest had forgotten for a moment that Silver knew Rosy already. In fact those two had a rather hostile encounter the first and only time they'd met. However, that fact didn't seem to bother Silver much. After all, at some point during the battle, she ended up helping them fight somebody else. Then she had switched sides once more, and at that point nearly everyone in the room was pretty much aware that there was something wrong with her. Something that prevented her from keeping on task or even on the same team for very long. That's why, after restraining her, all those involved got together and decided that the least they could do was let her go.

Silver started looking again, but then sighed and looked up at Honest. "You don't have to help me, you know. In fact I'd prefer it if you didn't help me."

Honest tilted her head, confused. "Are you sure you don't need me?"

"Yeah," he said, smiling. "I can find a book on my own. It's no problem."

Honest left him and went to go find a computer. "Grow up fast" was an understatement. She had only been his mother for 11 months, a.k.a. 49 weeks, a.a.k.a. 345 days, and yet here he was- finding a book on his own at the school library.

Honest rounded a corner and happened to run into somebody who really should've been completely reviewed in the last book but somehow wasn't, causing the stack of books they were carrying to be scattered everywhere and that somebody to end up on the ground in the middle of all that.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" There was a single chapter of some comic lying on his head. Honest picked it up and immediately became confused. "Infinite? What are you doing in the library?"

The tumbled masked mongrel said "Cat" under his breath and stood up, brushing invisible dust off of him. "What else could I be doing? Reading books."

Honest tilted her head. "You're... reading?"

He crossed his arms and turned his back to her. "Yes, reading. I'm not an idiot; I can read, you know."

"But what about?" she asked him. When he didn't answer, Honest glanced down at the comic in her hands. It was a romantic comedy. He couldn't have been reading this one- it was most definitely aimed for a more feminine audience. And last time Honest checked, Infinite didn't fit, well, that description. However, before Honest could implore him further, Infinite snatched the comic book back from Honest.

"Shouldn't you be in class right now?" he asked her, gathering the other books he had dropped. "And that hedgehog over there, too?" He was gesturing towards the white fern sticking up from between a gap in the books of the shelf in front of them.

Suddenly Silver stretched and stuck his head through. "We're spending study hall in the library today!"

Honest turned back to Infinite after watching Silver desperately trying to get his head out from between the books. "What are you doing in here? I mean... how did you get out of class?"

"A friend," he stated flatly, his one eye visibly narrowed through the eye hole in his mask.

"You have friends?" Honest asked him. A vein then protruded from his... mask...

"Of course I do! You should know seeing as though you were the one who introduced us in the first place," he declared, irritated.

Suddenly a green head stuck out from a hole in the books on the other side of Infinite and Honest. The dull light produced by a hanging bulb nearby reflected off his red sunglasses. "Yo, Kitteh!" he exclaimed. They both jumped and spun around.

The rotten pineapple then became confused. "Say, Inf... Didn't you say something about how you despised Honest? How come you're having a friendly chat now?"

"This chat is anything but friendly," he said, suddenly taking a step backwards. The miniature tower of Pisa he was holding swayed ever so slightly. "So now you're saying you don't remember introducing us?" he asked Honest, training his eyes on her.

Honest shook her head fervently.

Instead of enlightening her as to when just such an exchange had occurred, Infinite turned his back to her once more. "You are a special kind of shameful."

Honest sighed and shook her head again, but this time it was a cause of her accepting her confusion.

The regal renegade behind them seemed to be forgotten, so when he suddenly spoke up again, once more Honest and Infinite were startled. "So let me get this straight... you represent all that is right in this story, and you are known, at least elsewhere, to represent all that is wrong, but... you say that you are are a dastardly, villainous creature that represents all that is wrong in this story." Scourge had pointed to Honest, then Infinite, then Infinite again, and then Honest again. The two were looking at him in a fearful manner. "Either this is a major case of dramatic irony in which everybody is aware of what's going on except either Infinite or Honest, or Inf is... tsundere."

Honest gasped and Infinite twitched. "I'm surprised you know that word," Honest breathed.

"Well I sure don't. What does it mean?" Infinite asked, still turned away.

Scourge glanced in Honest's direction as if asking permission. She just sighed and nodded. "It means angrily covering up your feelings about a person."

Infinite didn't react at all to that definition and Honest crossed her arms. "I don't know what his problem is, but I don't think that's it. I think he just has a permanent vendetta on the whole world because he's blaming it for all of his problems," she said.

"Feelings about what?" Infinite asked. He turned around slowly. "I'm over what happened in the games. It wasn't my fault that the dense Doctor's plan didn't work out like he wanted it to. I didn't fail... personally at least. He did."

"Then what's your problem?" the royal pineapple sticking his head through the shelf between them asked. He looked to Honest. "He has a problem, doesn't he?"

By "problem", Honest guessed that he had meant "plot". When a character was said to have a "problem" in her stories, Honest (or whatever character that had mentioned it) was probably either referring to the main focus of the current plot or someone with some sort of plot attached to them that would be addressed in a later book. There were many characters with "problems" walking around. One of those people just happened to be standing in front of Honest right now.

Scourge stood there with a face that read "I want answers" as he stared blankly at some indefinite location between the two people to whom he was talking.

Honest took a long, unsure look of Infinite from toe to head. When Honest had made it to his face, the masked mongrel covered up his one eye with a hand as if hiding from her.

"Uh... yeah... I mean-" Honest suddenly felt uncomfortable and turned to Scourge. "Of course he has a problem."

Scourge screwed up his face as if seeing something out of place. "Are you sure he's the only one with the problem?"

Steam suddenly began to billow out of Honest's head. "What are you implying?" She clenched her fists beside her.

Scourge shrugged. "I was just thinking... is it possible for the author to have a problem?"

"Quit calling it that!" Honest exclaimed. "Is it possible for the author to have a plot? Of course. I'm a character as well as the author. Any character can be involved in any plot at any time."

"So... do you have a plot?" he asked, somewhat annoyed. "That's what I'm asking."

"Nope!" Honest said confidently. "This story is called {w/Rosy}. If you've paid any attention at all, you'll know that means Rosy's problem is the one I'm focusing on."

"Hold on a second." Scourge pulled his head free from the bookshelf far easier than how Silver had done it and walked around and into the aisle where Infinite and Honest were. As he approached them, he looked unsure.

"What have you found out about that yet?" he asked. "I know you told me the other day, but..."

Honest felt sympathy for the poor, viridian hedgy. Back when she hadn't met him really and hadn't known all too much about him, Honest thought that she shouldn't feel any sort of sympathy for him because of his nature. She just knew that he was bad news, and that if she did pretend to feel bad for him, Honest would just be humiliated in front of everyone once he had successfully tricked her.

However, Honest now knew without a doubt that everybody was wrong. Reading the issue in the comics where Sonic called him names, pushed him down in the mud during a rainstorm, and broke his crown while looking as if he were having the time of his life was probably the final nail in the coffin that forced her to reconsider everything she once knew about Scourge. It was one thing to hear about someone being of an ill nature, but it was a whole other thing to witness something like that. Honest discovered the truth that day. Even though it was an ugly one, it was still the truth no matter which way you looked at it. Scourge wasn't the bully- Sonic was.

Honest pulled a book off of the shelf next to them. She glanced at the cover for a second before turning it around and showing it to Scourge.

"Have you ever read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?"

... And yet here Honest was. She had just admitted to herself that she had misjudged him, that he was the one being mistreated here, but now Honest was the one telling him he had a problem.

"N-No, I don't believe I have," he stammered, reaching for the book she was holding out to him. Honest let him take it. He observed the cover far longer than she had. "Why are you giving me this?" he asked.

"Because," Honest told him. "In order to better understand what's going on with Rosy, you're going to have to read that book."

He looked slowly up at her as if he were skeptical that doing that would actually solve anything. "But how can you compare a fiction book with reality?"

Honest smiled. "The author of this book knew what she was talking about. You'll find that the main character and you have a lot of things in common."

After leaving Scourge there to stare at the hardcover of the book in his hands with wonder, Honest turned to Infinite with a cheerful cat smile. "So, Inf! Why are you carrying all of those books around?"

"It has nothing to do with you," he said, attempting to walk away with his stack of books. "So... you have no reason to want to know."

"Uh-huh... you do remember I'm the author, right? It's kind of my business to know." Honest followed him.

"No, it's not. I don't have a purpose in your story, so you shouldn't let it concern you."

"I think I see what you're not getting," Honest told him. "You may not believe this now, but I'm on your side. I want to help you fix whatever problems you have."

All of a sudden, Infinite stopped. "You do?"

"Uh, yeah," Honest said, now not sounding so sure. Was he going to ask her to do something ridiculous for him now?

The jackal turned around. "I can tell you my problem, you know."

"Really?" Honest asked, confused. He knew what his problem was? Already he was ahead of Scourge.

He nodded. "Shadow is my problem. Eliminate Shadow for me."

"Hehe," Honest laughed. "Now you know I can't do that."

Infinite cocked his head to the side. "Why not?"

Honest paused. "Uh-" She laughed again. "Oh, Inf-y! It's because he's my friend. Not that I expect you to understand something as complex as friendship or anything."

Infinite suddenly pictured Scourge as he smiled and asked if he wanted to skip class with him.

"Actually, Cat. I do." A question mark flew out of Honest's head. "I'm sorry for asking something like that from you." He turned and walked out of the library.

Honest just stood there for a couple of seconds. "What just happened?"

Meanwhile, Scourge was standing a distance away whistling as he began to read the book Honest had given him.

Thanks so much for reading this chapter. Has Scourge just accidentally taught Infinite the true meaning of friendship? Even I didn't know that could happen. Hm. Anyway, see you next time.