On her way to school on March 29th, 2019, Honest spotted a strange vehicle entering the parking lot of the school. It was a white, commercial van sporting a sticker on the side of it reading "Robbing Services". That couldn't be good. She then watched as two purple weasels got out from both sides and entered the school.

"Double bad."

When Honest suddenly said those two words, everyone around her started to give her strange looks.

"And the day before my birthday, too."

However, before she could think too much harder about what she had just seen, Honest witnessed something else. Those two weasels then emerged from the school a moment later, this time clutching bundles of paper.

"Hey! I saw what you did!" Honest had stuck her head out of the bus window and waved her fist at the two thieves. They both turned around and, upon seeing her, turned again and raced faster towards their van.

Honest squeezed out of the bus window and fell into the grass, rolling all the way down the hill and into the parking lot. By the time she had stood up, however, Honest could only grasp at open air as the van, complete with the two purple weasels in the front seats, drove right past her and disappeared into the distance.

"No!" she exclaimed, stomping. She then looked dishearteningly at the building. "What did they even steal anyway?"

Honest walked into the front entrance. People were running all around her, frantically catching paper as it was all over the place, both drifting through the air and lying in heaps on the ground. Of course the two weasels hadn't been covert in doing what they had done. A filing cabinet lay on its side, a gigantic hole busted out of it, charred due to whatever weapon they had used.

"The knick knacks strike again," Honest said. Well, actually, she had said "Nic Nacks" seeing as though she were talking about the two robbers-for-hire. Their names happened to be "Nic" and "Nack", but no one standing in the office knew that. They all thought she had said "knick knacks", a.k.a. antiques, and they all stared at her funny. Honest acted as if she were completely oblivious to this, however, and walked down the hallway, intending to locate Shadow so they could give chase.

She found him in the library, talking with Silver whom had his lip pushed out in a pout.

"Give the girl her pen back, Silver," Shadow was telling him.

Silver shook his head. "I told you; I don't have it!"

He was clearly holding it in his left hand, though.

"Look, I can clearly see that you're holding Amy's pen, just please admit you took it and give it back. That's all I'm asking you to do." Meanwhile, Amy was standing there as still as a statue. She was very confused about what was going on in front of her. This was obvious because of the way she was twitching as if she were both weirded out and scared for her life. Apparently, she wasn't yet aware of the family thing Honest had helped to formally establish in chapter 17 of this story on February 4th. They should make that the date of their family reunion from now on.

"Hey!" Honest exclaimed, running to Shadow. "Nic and Nack stole some of the school's important documents!" He turned to look at her.

"How is that our business?" Honest couldn't believe he had asked such a thing.

"Because!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms up into the air. "They stole important school documents! They never work for themselves, so they must have stolen them for some big-time villain to jeopardize or imperil the school, and at the same time, the story!"

"'Big-time'... as in... the Doctor?" he asked, suddenly interested.

Honest sighed a huge sigh and rolled her eyes. "How come you never come to anybody's rescue unless it includes fighting that bozo?" she asked. He shrugged. "Anyway, we need to go to his base now! If we go quickly, we might be able to get there before they do." He nodded, but as he was about to take off, he stopped and looked behind him at Silver.

"Okay, but not until Silver gives back Amy's pen," he said.

Honest sighed again. "Silver, you're fourteen. You should know better than to steal people's stuff. Give it back."

When he shook his head again, Honest looked to a particular rotten, green pineapple, who was sitting at a table nearby, reading the book Honest had told him to read three chapters ago, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. "Hey," Honest exclaimed again. He looked up, his red sunglasses resting on his nose as if they were reading glasses... actually, they could be. O.o

"Hm?" How come he had known that she was trying to get his attention? Whatever.

"We're probably going to be gone for a good portion of the day, so make Silver give Amy's pen back, okay?" When he nodded, she smiled and waved. "Thank you! See you in a bit!" Her and her striped friend then left the library, leaving Scourge to babysit Silver. Scourge wasn't really the best person to give speeches on how stealing is bad, or really that anything was bad, but he was the only one Honest felt she could trust with Silver... for some reason.

Silver watched them leave.

"Give the girl back her pencil."

Silver suddenly jumped, startled.

"Uh- duh... it's a pen!"

Instead of arguing with him further, Scourge just turned to Amy.

"Why do you care so much about that pen anyway? Can't you give it up? I can give you a pen, ya know."

"That pen was given to me by Sonic!" Amy then glanced at Silver solemnly. "He's rubbing all the scent off..." She wiped invisible stuff off of her nose with the side of one of her fingers.

Scourge put his hands on her shoulders. "You do know all that stuff won't matter at all to you twenty years from now."

Now the stuff wasn't invisible anymore.

"How-" Amy suddenly ripped herself away from him and faced the opposite direction. "How can you say that?"

"Because..." Scourge was having to think a little deeper about his answer than he had anticipated.

"You can't. Why? Because you're... you. You haven't experienced anything like what I'm experiencing, so how come you think I will let you to judge my life like that?"

The king of air and empty space scratched the back of his head. That reminded him of something Honest had told him a couple of weeks ago.

"Plus, it will still matter in twenty years. It'll matter in fifty years. Heck, it'll even still matter three hundred years from now. Nothing will ever change. Ever."

He couldn't argue with that. It was mostly because he just didn't know. If their lives did change, it wouldn't be because they had aged... would it? Then again, the being he affectionately referred to as Stripes's whole character depended on the fact that he didn't age. If he didn't, that must've meant they did... right?

"Hey, uh, Amy..."

The rose-colored rodent turned around slowly. Her eyes were redder than her fur seeing as though she had just been crying. "Huh?"

Silver held her pen out to her.

"I didn't realize that this pen meant so much to you. I'm sorry."

Amy took the pen and smiled, little flowers hovering in the air around her. "Thank you!"

Scourge rolled his eyes. When he did so, he could hear a loud smack sound. A quick glance to his right revealed the source of this sound. The noise seemed to have been made by a certain masked individual sitting at a table nearby.

Infinite had a hand laying on his mask near the center. Apparently he had face-palmed so hard that his metal mask had actually made a noise as a result of his hand hitting it.

"What?! Do you have a complaint you want to take up with me, too?!"

The jackal removed his hand slowly, peeking out from between his fingers as he did so with his one eye. "Why must you be so quick to think you're under attack? You have such a violent personality."

Suddenly the sound of lightning cracking like a heavenly whip made everyone jump and train their fearful eyes on the fuchsia hedgehog standing in front of Silver, whom then stumbled backwards and cowered in terror once he had seen Amy's severely ticked reaction to the words spoken to her.

"What place do you have in our conversation?" The room was silent for exactly four milliseconds- the calm before the storm. "I'll show you violent!"

Amy reached above her head and her hammer appeared there. However, instead of coming down on the head of her target, it was held in place by an incredible force.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Looking behind her slowly, Amy found that a spined, crimson creature was standing behind her, clutching her hammer and preventing it from falling. She held her mouth agape as he pointed to the masked mongrel sitting at the table in front of them.

"Don't you recognize him? That jackal is the one who possessed the Ruby. He's our sworn enemy: Infinite," the creature, Knuckles, told her.

Amy looked confused. "So I should smash him, right?"

Infinite hadn't flinched at all despite almost being bludgeoned by a hammer that would laugh if it happened to find itself in a chance meeting with Thor's while in battle. He was just sitting there with his arms crossed and resting on the wooden table in front of him- Infinite, not Thor.

"Actually, the Ruby prototype I have now is completely drained of power at this moment. I can't retaliate," he said. If Honest were there, she would have probably questioned why he had just admitted to being powerless, but there was a reason.

"Exactly. That's why you can't attack him. He's powerless. It wouldn't be fair."

Amy gave him a desperate "really?" face and turned back to Infinite.

"Sonic always strives for fairness... well, he does in theory anyway," Infinite told her. "He would totally lose all favor in you if he found out you were going against his basic morals."

"Yeah, and then you call him a hypocrite, and he throws you in Zone jail," Scourge said, "pft"ing afterwards. Amy just blinked at him, not fully understanding what he meant by that, before she then turned back to Infinite.

"Sorry," she said, not looking right at him.

"Sorry," Honest said as they were walking away from the library and down the hall towards the school office.

"Sorry for what?" Shadow asked.

"You were in the middle of something, weren't you?" Honest inquired, looking up at him.

"Yeah, I guess, but this is far more important," he said. Honest noticed he had only glanced over at her for a split second before swiftly turning away. Honest knew Shadow wasn't a narrow-minded, static character. They had been close friends for far too long for that to be the case and Honest be completely unaware of it. However, she also knew that he wasn't exactly real, so the idea that he may not have any original thoughts scared her. This subtle movement reassured Honest.

"Is Silver actually being childish, or is he just faking it for the sake of the family?"

The dark pineapple scoffed as if she had said something preposterous. "I'm pretty sure he's actually being childish. After all, a summary of every bio he's ever had is this: Silver is a childish, dorky time traveler who takes himself very seriously. Plus, with a voice like that, how can he ever be actually serious?" Heaps of paper along the hallway alerted them that they were almost nearly at the crime scene.

"His new voice actor does a pretty good imitation of Capella, too," Honest pointed out. "So there's still hope for him as a character unlike..." Honest gulped and made a face as if what she was about to say had made her nauseous. "Everyone else."

Honest was acting as if "everyone else" had died when they got new voice actors. However, even though they definitely weren't the same as they used to be, the scripts will tell them how they should sound, and the characters will still act according to the personalities that were established when they were created. So, with that in mind, no one should be sad about the "big change" as Honest liked to call it. It happened nine years ago (assuming you are reading this in 2019), so you should get over it. So what some characters who sounded their age now don't anymore. What's in a voice? You're all drama queens. (Unless I'm the only one who cares. .-.)

Anyway, upon walking into the office, Honest's shadowy compadre stopped suddenly. "Oh, wow. Did they really have to make such a mess? I was imagining something a little more discreet than this."

"Yeah, well, that's the Nic Nacks for you. Fang's a sniper, not a ninja," Honest told him, stepping carefully around all the paper on her way to the front door.

"Like I said, we need to go quickly. They could already be halfway there by now."

"Honest..." he said impatiently. She turned around.

"What?" She was still navigating through the maze of paper.

"You're forgetting something." Shadow pulled a gigantic, glowing gem out of his spines. It was bright blue.

"Oh!" Honest exclaimed, feeling silly. She retraced her steps and rested one of her hands on the gem. "Right. I totally forgot you still had this thing." (Since Chapter 1 of {w/Sonic} actually.)

"I totally forgot you were still pretending you're related to each other. You do know that everything that happened in SatBK was just a dream, right?" the king of air and empty space told the dorky time traveler.

Suddenly Amy stepped between them. "I can't believe you of all people would be so quick to dismiss alternate realities like that. Especially considering the fact that you're from one."

"Alternate realities and parallel zones are completely different things," he argued.

"If the realm of Canterlot exists, which it does, then who's to say that it's not a zone? In that way, it's not an alternate reality at all. It's a physical location."

"And here we go with the dimension stuff again. We're in a library, you know. Why don't we find a book on how zones work and read that?" It was Knuckles who dropped this realistic idea on them.

It was kind of ironic for him to consider dimensions a science. After all, in the comics at least, his father had trained him to use his Chaos abilities as if they were some sort of "magic". However, at one point his dad told him the truth. When he was still just an egg (yeah, his species lays eggs. Don't believe me? Google it), his father had subjected him to strange experiments involving exposure to Chaos energy. The result was, funnily enough, mutation. He was a mutant, not a magic user. That should have come as a life-changing shock to the poor guardian, but nope. For some reason this:

i. postimg. cc/xNj1b8hp/oh-my. jpg/

wasn't "shocking" enough. I'm really surprised that didn't receive more publicity among the fans, much like this moment:

i. postimg. cc/t7DTGdnK/you-ll-never-call-knuckles-an-idiot-again. png/

But my real point here is this- all that magic stuff was bologna. He's a freak of nature, not a wizard or whatever he thought of himself as being. In this way, it was ironic, him being quick to call something like dimensions science when he had been totally content with the idea that his power over Chaos was magic for his whole life. But none of that stuff mattered anyway. Within the canon of my stories, the only power he possessed was super strong punching- and even that could be bested by Mighty, who was just strong in general.

"Why don't you just ask me how zones work? I've visited countless zones in the past. I should know more than any book you can find here," Scourge said, crossing his arms. "You activate a warp ring, go through, travel the cosmic interstate a ways, find the zone entrance to whatever zone you're going to, then go through into the zone."

"See? Sonic didn't go through a zone entrance to get to the Land of a Thousand Nights, he fell asleep and was 'woken up' by that genie woman, who then sent him there," Knuckles said.

"But who's to say that's what happened for Sonic to show up in Canterlot? Merlina was in trouble, so she summoned him with her magic. The sky opened up and he fell out. I say that's a zone entrance he went through," Amy said. She turned to Scourge. "Is there any way for someone to open a... portal... with something other than a ring?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," the viridian porcupine said, waving his hands to stop her. "That doesn't sound like a zone entrance. That sounds like a gate," he told her.

"A 'gate'?" she asked.

"A star gate," he explained. "It's a portal opened between two star posts. It doesn't occur naturally. Someone has to set it up. Usually it's powered by an Emerald or ring energy, but Merlina's magic... whatever it is- chaos magic or whatever- it could be used to power a star gate. Except, well, it opened in the sky, didn't it? That's not a gate."

"That's why I think it was a dream," Knuckles told them. "Falling from the sky just sounds like a dream."

"But he came through with a couple of chili dogs," Amy pointed out. "Why would that detail be included?"

"Because it's a dream," Knuckles said. "Sonic was dreaming of food."

"But Sonic acted confused throughout the entire adventure," Scourge said. "He obviously wasn't well-versed with Arthurian legend when he went there. How could he dream about something he had no prior knowledge about?"

"Oh, so now you're both saying it was real? I guess I'm outnumbered," Knuckles said, rolling his eyes. He looked around. "Silver? Infinite? Care to pick sides?"

The hedgehog and the jackal were holding a book between them. They both looked up in sync.

"I have not seen this game," Infinite said.

"The one I was Galahad in? I dunno, but Sonic says it happened, so I say it happened," Silver said.

"You really trust that blue pineapple?" Infinite asked.

"Mm-hm!" Silver said, nodding his head. "What, do you not?"

The masked mongrel turned his head. "I don't know. I just assumed he couldn't be trusted. He doesn't look or act very trustworthy..."

"You shouldn't judge someone based on how they look," the fern-headed hedgy told him. "Or at least that's what Blaze told me..."

"Do you trust her?" Infinite asked next. Silver nodded his head.

"Yeah, she works at Rouge's Cafe. I think Blaze looks pretty trustworthy," Infinite told him.

Flowers appeared around Silver as a response to the jackal's approval of Silver's best friend. He smiled.

Infinite just stared at him as if he had grown a third arm. He then looked at Knuckles.

"I say it actually happened, too."

"You're serious?!" the crimson rodent exclaimed. He was now outnumbered four to one. He then hung his head. "They call it the 'Storybook Series', though..."

This fact didn't cause any further arguing, so now he felt uber bad.

"Anyway, so since we've determined that the events of SatBK did indeed occur, we can say, without a doubt now, that Silver is Shadow's son."

When Amy said this, steam started silently puffing out of Infinite's head.

"Why does this bother you?" she asked him, genuinely confused.

"Silver is a great judge of character," he stated, glaring at said porcupine. "So it bothers me that he would be claiming relation to someone who is performing rather poorly in that category."

"Who? Shadow? He was the very definition of chivalry in SatBK, Sir Lancelot, and now you're saying he doesn't have good character? Obviously you don't know what 'character' is," Amy told him. "Integrity, honor, moral strength, fortitude- I could go on. Just ask."

"Does Sonic not have that stuff?" Scourge asked. He would argue that point himself, but he asked Amy instead. "You're saying such great things about a character you hardly have any relations with, but what about your boyfriend?"

"Uh-" Amy raised her finger as if to list some words to describe him as well, but she didn't say anything. Instead she just swiveled to face him, her eye twitching. Scourge saw Rosy's face there for a second. "Well, we weren't talking about him," she said quickly, snapping out of whatever trance she had been in before. "Were we?"

Everyone quickly shook their heads "no". For some reason their joint fear of the rose warrior prevented them from challenging her. Too bad. Scourge was looking forward to getting something out of her, but oh well.

He didn't need the support of others to make him feel any better about his being forever under the blue thumb of that tyrant (wait... if Sonic's arms are blue in Boom, doesn't that mean his hands are blue as well? o.o'). He didn't need revenge either. He didn't care about revenge. Not anymore, at least. He had come so close before, but he was foolish to think anybody reading would actually enjoying seeing their favorite hero get pummeled or even killed by his dorky, evil twin. Sonic was essentially invincible.

"Sonic is essentially invincible," Honest was explaining to Shadow as they followed behind an Egg Pawn as he waddled down the main street through a certain part of Eggmanland. This particular section had been converted into a miniature city. He was supposedly escorting them to the Doctor. "You can tell him he's an idiot every day of your life, but you will never spark any sort of change in him. It's not that he can't comprehend what you're telling him. It's not that he's deaf. He just can't... register it. It's not in his... code." Honest held her hands out in front of her as if she held a miniature diagram of what she was trying to explain to him in her palms.

"Yeah, and that totally makes sense," Shadow said, rolling his eyes. "He's not an entity in a video game. He's a living, breathing thing."

"Yeah, but he's also a children's mascot and an overall hero. That's like telling a dog that he's an idiot. He doesn't hold any sort of concept of ignorance, so he would just continue rolling around on the floor, something he does understand."

"We're still talking about the dog, right?" the dark hedgy asked, grinning. Honest just hung her head and sighed.

"I don't know why I try to explain these things to you," Honest said. "You don't get it. You're just like Sonic."

"Hey, Shadow! Hey, Honest!" The blond cat lifted her head and Shadow stuck his hand into his quills as if to draw some sort of weapon.

The Doctor wasn't in some fancy throne or his Eggmobile. He was standing in front of a small, general store made completely out of metal. Nack was standing beside him with his pistol aimed for them.

"You know, today is the grand opening of this Eggmart here behind us. Would you be interested in any of our opening deals?" he asked, gesturing towards a sign stuck to the metal with magnets. Nack cocked his gun. At that noise, the Eggman grunted and turned to the weasel. "If you fire that thing, I'll make you the deli special."

The sniper quickly put the gun back in its holster. Honest frowned.

"Not really," Honest said. "I don't have any money on me now." Honest could feel the resentment expelling from Shadow as they stood there.

"What did you take from the school?" he asked. Honest gave a loud sigh, then laughed.

"You took the records of you destroying that street lamp, didn't you?" Honest asked Eggman. "So you could come back?" The Doctor made a face as if he wanted to make an excuse.

Shadow turned to Honest. "How come you knew?"

Honest looked at him calmly. "It was a lucky guess."

"Yes," the Doctor replied. Honest watched Nack roll his eyes. "That was an immature move on the principal's part. One street lamp and it's an automatic firing for me!" Eggman crossed his arms and looked peeved.

"He just wanted you out of the picture. He wants to create a monopoly on villainy," Honest explained to him. Shadow looked at her as if she were crazy, but Honest was completely serious. The only way the Doctor would listen to her was if she got on his level. That's the reason Eggman doesn't have the best of relationships with other villains in the franchise, like Mephiles. What Eggman cares about the most is a partially made-up concept called "villainy". If you talk about that, he'll listen to whatever you say. You can even claim to know something about it that he doesn't and get away with it because it's impossible for anyone to completely understand something that isn't real.

Doctor Eggman was carefully thinking about it. Honest smiled. "Don't worry about it, though. Mephiles doesn't hold any cards in this story." Honest walked forward. Nack put his hand next to his gun, but he still remembered the Doctor's earlier threat.

Honest held out her hand. "You have permission from me to assume your old job. Go on and take it."

And then Eggman shook with her. A vein appeared on Shadow's forehead, but he stayed silent. Honest laughed and did a twirl.

"You didn't have to send Fang and his sister to steal a couple of sheets of paper at all! You just wasted your money hiring them. All you had to do was ask me."

The Doctor laughed as well. "Oh, no. I didn't waste any money." Nack looked at Eggman as if the bald man were deranged. The weasel was then handed a fistful of paper money. He looked them over.

"Egg dollars?" the weasel asked.

"Yup! A hundred of them. Go buy yourself a funnel cake!"

A cloud of smoke was expelled from Nack's purple ears. "I'm out of here." He walked off in a random direction and tossed the egg dollars away. Honest wondered if he knew where he was going, but she shrugged it off. Meh.

"Meh," Amy said, sticking her tongue out. "This argument is getting us nowhere anyway. Why don't we just let Scourge and Infinite continue reading their books and carry on with our business?" Then it was as if a giant gust of wind had cooled all of their tempers off. Amy walked off with her pen, and Silver sighed and traced some invisible thing on the floor with the end of his boot. Scourge and Infinite sat down at their tables and began to read again, and Knuckles went off to find a book in the maze of bookshelves around them.

When Honest and Shadow were walking back down the hall of the school towards the library, Shadow crossed his arms suddenly. "So what was that all about?"

"Oh!" Honest exclaimed. "Remember how Eggman was fired at the end of {w/Forces} because he led an army of robots into town and destroyed a lamp post-"

"No, Honest," Shadow said, cutting her off. "I remember that. I'm talking about the deal you made."

"Oh..." Honest tapped her chin. "It was a business deal. I was giving him permission to come back and teach."

"And what did you get in return?" Shadow asked. Honest was impressed. She hadn't expected him to pick up on that.

"We're teaming up," Honest said cheerily. Shadow cocked his head to the side.

"Huh?"

Honest laughed. "We're teaming up to take down Mephiles."

Yay! Finally that walking mushroom garden won't be able to attack me at work anymore! I mean, we still haven't come up with a definite plan yet, but we're working on it, Eggman and I. I can't wait. Please vote for this chapter if you liked it, and feel free to lend any help you can. I'm always open to including a fan character or two in my story, so please consider reviewing and providing yours. See you in the next part! EDIT: Oh... I didn't realize this chapter was so long. O.O Oops.