So... I kind of forgot about the last chapter of this story. o.o' It has just been sitting in my Google Drive since February of last year, so I'm publishing it now. Now this story will finally be completed. ^^

(Sept. 12th, 2020)

"I know this hurts Moto, but please do hold still. This is so all those ninth graders can get their hands on your circuitry tomorrow." Unscrewing twenty screws allowed five square panels to be removed from the Motobug laying on the desk in front of him on its side. Wires were exposed in each of these places. Once he had removed the last of these panels, the Doctor stood back and observed the result, looking rather pleased with himself despite it being such a small feat. Robotic chatter broke him from his accomplished trance. Doctor Eggman blew out a huff of annoyance.

"Yeah, I'll instruct them to wash their hands first, but you need to promise to hold still for my demonstration tomorrow, got it?"

There was more chatter and Eggman held a hand to his head as if he were dizzy. "I think it's time for me to head back home."

His eyes were caught by some movement outside. He had a great view from his second floor window of the old school building, and unless it was just his fatigue, the dilapidated structure had gigantic tentacles like those out of horror movies sticking out all of the windows.

Living darkness. That was the only thing it could be. Then, there was a scream.

"Wah!" And then another. Eggman turned around fiercely to see that Cubot had somehow gotten himself tangled up in the film for his presentation which he had set up in the front of the room. The Doctor sighed again and walked over. When the yellow robot saw him coming, he perked up. "Oh hi, boss! Like my new scarf?" He twirled around a couple of times, which only seemed to get him more tangled.

Dr. Eggman picked up a pair of scissors that were laying on his desk and snipped the film, resulting in Cubot's scarf unraveling and dumping him into the floor.

"Quit messing around, you heap of junk! I have something I need to check up on before we leave," Eggman said. He then turned to Orbot, who was currently playing tic tac toe by himself on the Doctor's whiteboard. "Orbot, make sure Cubot doesn't destroy anything else while I'm gone."

"Yes, sir," the little, orbicular automaton said, then turning around and watching Eggman leave the room with a scowl plastered beneath his mustache. As soon as he had left, Orbot drew a bunch of blanks and a hanging post. "Cubot, guess a letter."

"But… I don't know where to start," Cubot told him.

"Okay… I'll give you a hint then to get started. It's the name of an important person."

"Oh! Oh!" Cubot shouted. "E!"

"Yes, there is an E." Orbot wrote an "e" into the fourth blank. There were six blanks in total.

"What? But that's wrong! I may not have majored in English, but I'm pretty sure that the E comes at the beginning of his name."

Orbot sighed hopelessly. "No, Cubot, this important person isn't Eggman."

"But there aren't any other important people in the world," Cubot pointed out.

A vein protruded from Orbot's metallic forehead. "You need to get out more. Like WAY more."

"Fine!" Cubot exclaimed angrily. He then shot to the door and opened it, floating outside.

Meanwhile, Mephiles seemed to be pulling another one of his "I'm going to render Shadow helpless by suspending him in the air while threatening everyone" routines. He often pulled those in {Cafe Edition} in case you didn't know. Another thing he liked to do was insult people. He was doing this as well.

"I'd advise you to keep that mask on, jackal. It's hard to have an ego when your flaws are in full view."

"If you hadn't have been so blinded by your love for that green toad, you could have stood a chance against me now, hedgehog girl."

"Even if you hadn't been backed up by that dorky time-traveller Silver all those years ago, you would be just as lost as you are now, cat princess. No amount of assistance has the ability to improve your lack of willpower and strength."

"And Honest, you're no god. I am."

Infinite was expelling steam from his ears, Rosy's lip was quivering, and Blaze was calmly watching him with her fists alight at her sides. Honest rolled her eyes. "We're exchanging insults, then? Okay. Mephiles, Iblis would never join with you even if he was still around. He thinks you're a sorry excuse for a villain."

Mephiles used a recycled quote from Sonic 06 with way too much reverb. "Drown in darkness!"

Even with the earthquake caused by his sudden release of energy sending her stumbling backwards, Honest had to laugh to herself after seeing that her mediocre insult had provoked a reaction from the mushroom-sprouting demon.

When the flooring around the group began to crack all over, Honest became worried. What if the results of Mephiles's tantrum severely crippled this building structurally from this point onward?

As Honest contemplated the long term consequences of their confrontation, Shadow's face became red as the blood was rushing to his head.

"Honest, can you hurry up and use your magic powers or something to get me down from here?"

Honest glanced up at him, looking startled, before it seemed she remembered what was happening.

"Oh! Yeah. I can get you down." Honest turned her focus to the gigantic formation of semi-solid darkness in front of her. "Mephy! What's the one thing you want more than anything else in the world?"

Mephiles blinked. Yeah, there was still a face somewhere within that stuff. "To join with Iblis to become Solaris and destroy all of reality?"

Honest sighed loudly. "Right. Dang."

"Honest, may I try something?"

This sudden voice caught Honest somewhat off-guard. "Uh, sure, Blaze. But what could you-?"

Stepping in front of the other cat, Blaze spoke to Mephiles. "What makes you think attacking Shadow will get you any closer to Iblis?"

The embodiment of darkness looked over at his suspended victim. "Oh, no. I'm not attacking Shadow. I'm just-" He stopped a moment, appearing to realize something. "Oh, I'm sorry! Force of habit!" With that, Mephiles tossed the very confused hedgy aside. He landed on a mound of black sludge that broke his fall. The mound that was Mephiles then shrunk a bit. It squished forward.

His eyes upward carrots, the decidedly delirious demigod approached Blaze and attempted to explain himself. Honest didn't bother herself with sticking around and listening to their conversation. Instead she ran to Shadow who was now sitting in the middle of the floor and holding his head like it hurt.

Honest didn't ask him if he were okay. She knew he was. Injury was one of the many things Honest had complete control over. As long as she was in charge, no one would be getting hurt. Everybody had already been through enough pain in their short existences. Anyway.

Suddenly an opening was cut in the ceiling and a belligerent psycho dropped through, wielding some sort of crank-operated weapon.

"I'm here! See, I always fulfill my promises! Watch out!" With a couple rotations of the handle, a green ray came from the strange device and shot out across the room.

Blaze and Mephiles turned towards the sudden intruder at just a second too late. Mephiles was sucked into the machine. Then, a rattling sound was heard.

Eggman scratched the back of his head. "Sorry if it's not a very pretty device. I had to put it together on such a short notice, you know!"

Honest's eyes were wide in complete shock. "What did you just do? Where's… Mephiles?" she asked. Everyone was staring at the less belligerent but still very much psychotic Eggman. Everyone except Rosy, however. She was staring at Honest instead. "He saved us from the big scary monster," she told her.

"That big scary monster was the plot!" Honest exclaimed, confusing pretty much everyone, especially the Doctor.

"But that was our deal, remember, Honest? You let me get my job back, and in return I helped you defeat Mephiles."

"I wanted you to be an obstacle for Mephiles. I didn't want you to completely bring an end to him."

"But I thought I was going to be the villain. I thought that was your plan."

Honest was glaring at him. "Yeah, well, you misunderstood. Now let him go."

"Wait, what? Let him go? Are you insane?" Dr. Eggman asked.

"There are no real repercussions. Why not let him go?"

The Doctor looked at his gun then back at Honest. He pressed a finger against the side of the device. A plastic covering came off and a green thing came out. It resembled a glow-in-the-dark sugar cube. It popped out and rolled around in the doctor's outstretched hand. He then tossed it to Honest. She didn't catch it. The cube flew through her hands and the person behind her caught it. Infinite.

"So Mephiles is in this little cube thing?" the masked jackal asked, being careful not to drop it in case that brought some kind of harm to the being within it.

"Actually, that is him." Eggman put the plastic panel back on the gun with an echoing click. "Just dissolve it in a large bath of water, and he should emerge primarily unscathed."

Shadow looked at Honest, and that was all she needed in order to know what he wanted to do.

Letting the tiny cube go, Shadow dropped it in the water. The fountain in the courtyard was literally the only large body of water any of them could think of. Well, there was the river in town, but that was outside the campus of the school.

Just in case you weren't already aware, faithful reader, the usually slime-composed being within this cube was the self-appointed principal of their school. And I will put an emphasis on "self-appointed". But that's a topic all on its own.

Honest observed the decrepitude of the concrete fountain, tracing her finger along the cracks. Were they… "age"-stained?

"It's smoking!"

Honest jerked her head upwards when Amy exclaimed this. Sonic rested his hands on the rim and peered into the water.

"It's not smoking. That's powder," Shadow pointed out, stoically peering into the fountain as well from where he was standing.

The water was beginning to be dyed a light turquoise all over. It was kind of pretty. Then the water shot out and a huge tower of dust followed suit. Or maybe I should say "soot". The entire fountain was covered in a thin layer of that blue-green powder.

There, standing in the dry fountain in front of Shadow and everyone else, was Mephiles. He was in the form of Shadow and looked rather normal… well as normal as he ever has been in the past. He looked down at Shadow and reached down with his right hand. "Do you mind helping me out of here?"

Shadow stumbled backwards, staring at the demon's hand as if it were a spear being aimed at his forehead. "H-H-H-H-Help you?"

"H-H-H-H-Yes." The fountain was beginning to fill back with water. Mephiles just floated out. "Just thinking you might want to be a little gentlemanly-" He looked right into Shadow's confused eyes with his own soulless set. "Towards someone who has the power to kill you with one snap of his fingers."

The embodiment of darkness started to just walk away without giving any of the others even one look. Honest started after him.

"Hey! Actually, since I'm the author, you can't really do anything to him."

Mephiles just looked at her the same way. "Do you want to test that out?"

Honest stared at him back. After a few seconds, the demigod spun back around and marched off, disappearing around the corner.

"Well, so much for that," Amy huffed angrily. "What time is it?"

As if everyone found out, the group dispersed. Shadow walked up to Honest.

"That's all? Not even a 'thank you'? Well, I'm not sure what I expected." Shadow looked over at Honest but was confused when he saw she wasn't angry. She was smiling. "Honest, you okay?"

With a "hehe" being her sorry excuse for a chuckle, Honest crossed her arms and continued to watch the demon float away.

"Mephy's doubting himself," Honest told him. "Huh." The blond cat girl turned to Shadow suddenly. "You wanna go grab parfaits from the refrigerators in the cafeteria?"

When it came to Honest, Shadow didn't have nearly enough stamina to be confused about everything that came past her cat mouth-shaped lips.

"Sure."

Thank you for reading, and I'm sorry for forgetting to publish this chapter back when I had finished writing it.