(Originally published on June 10th, 2022)

They couldn't even get to school before Shadow got a similar call from GUN.

Honest was now sitting on the concrete next to the steps, locked in a mental battle of trying to decide what to do next. Akane and Dina had left and so had Silver, seeing Blaze at the gate and completely forgetting about Honest as he ran to greet her. It was fine, though. She needed to be alone, right?

Wrong, because as soon as Honest felt like she was arriving at an idea of where to go next, a shadow fell over her.

"Good morning, cat."

Mephiles was behind her on the steps and leaning over the handrails, blocking the sunlight from reaching her. Honest rolled her eyes and made an annoyed expression, eyes narrowed to slits. "What do you want, Mephy?" A drip of black goop fell on Honest's head, causing her ears to go back in pure disgust.

"You'd love to know that, wouldn't you?" Mephiles rested an arm on the metal rail, his dark aura growing. "Am I correct to assume that Shadow is no longer with us?"

Honest's scowl let up a bit. That sounded like he was implying Shadow was dead. "He's just been called to headquarters."

"Of course he has." Mephiles looked around before slipping through the bars and landing beside her. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," Honest said.

"Where has my ex-favorite, faithful servant, Infinite, gone off to?"

Honest didn't respond.

"You can't say, can you?" He stood up and looked down at her again as he spoke. "Are you really okay with what you've done? Is your little conscience strong enough to bear the weight of sacrificing one of your own like that?"

"I didn't sacrifice anyone."

"Oh, but your minion did, and isn't that the same thing?"

Honest was going to tell Infinite what she had done. Honesty was going to see to it that he forgave her in his tsundere way. Honesty always worked on people like Infinite the best. Could Mephiles really not see that? Maybe he didn't completely understand Honesty yet. Honest thought back to chapter 17 of {Café Edition}.

"You always seem to say the most alluring of things in the most fascinating of manners," [Mephiles] said. Honest was speechless for a moment, but eventually she found her words.

"You know, I was trying not to break any walls today, but now it seems somebody else is commenting on my writing style," Honest said.

"I wasn't talking about the way you write. I was talking about the way you speak."

Perhaps (ugh, there was that word again) Mephiles had been taking "Honesty" in the literal sense- straightforwardness- this whole time. It made sense. He had no reason to take it any other way. Anyway, there was no way Honest was going to sit down and explain it to him. If he didn't know everything, Honest had at least one possible method of manipulating him. Those were becoming increasingly difficult to come by in this day in age, at a time when most every character has been exposed to Honest in some way or another and has come into the possession of at least some knowledge of what she was like.

"Are you worried that I might be doing something I don't align with?" Mephiles looked confused as if that wasn't what he was doing. "You don't have to. I'm perfectly capable of doing anything I want." Honest then paused to think a little. "At least with Infinite, or, to Infinite. You act like he was the Ultimate Do-Gooder rather than the Ultimate Mercenary. I think he owes us this, don't you?" When Mephiles just continued to stare at her, Honest scoffed and continued. "You didn't nag me like this any of those times I had Rosy attack Scourge, and I bet you don't even know about what I've been doing with Eggman and Finitevus lately."

"Hey, I'm still your ally, aren't I?"

Now it was time for Honest to look confused. "Yeah?"

"Good," Mephiles replied, beginning to back away while he melted. Eventually he became a puddle and rocketed off.

"What was that about?" Honest asked nobody, or at least that's what she thought until the sunlight was blocked out yet again.

"I think he was trying to say that he's glad he's not your enemy," said a voice she didn't recognize at first. However, the flash of blue that blinded her as she turned around was all too familiar.

"Oh, hey, Sonic. I almost didn't recognize you with your new voice," Honest told him, turning back around.

"Yeah, it's gonna take some getting used to myself," he confessed, slipping through the bars like Mephiles had done and taking a seat beside Honest. "I don't think he's worrying about you, Honest. He's not your dad, he's a being composed of pure darkness." He then laughed. "Like my Honest-ism?"

"Yeah, I know," she replied, nodding. "I just wanted him to leave me alone and quit accusing me of mistreating Infinite. This is a story. Things happen in stories. And he shouldn't even care, he's, well, like you said, a being composed of pure darkness... And wow, you've got it down pat, haven't you?" Honest hoped Sonic thought her lackluster enthusiasm was due to what had just transpired between her and Mephiles and not due to... well... chapter 8 of {Limited Edition}. Speaking of which...

"I'm going to apologize, you know, the next time I see him. I just don't get why Mephiles thinks my 'conscience' won't be able to take it. I don't know whether to feel insulted or... I guess he's just being cautious, right? Anyone would." Honest twisted a strand of her hair around her finger in thought. "What I said about Infinite owing us... I was trying to scare him, and I didn't even realize. I didn't mean to, I swear, it was just an impulse."

"But do you believe it?" Sonic asked, resting his chin on top of his knees.

"No," Honest replied. "I guess that's where Mephiles was wrong... or right." Honest blinked and turned to Sonic. "He said Infinite was 'one of my own', but then I said that Infinite owes 'us'. Whose side is Infinite on?"

Sonic's eyes widened in confusion. "Well, he wants to kill Shadow, right? So, he's not on the side of the Resistance, or, at least he's not on my side." Sonic looked forward and sighed. "Anyone who seeks to do harm to one of my friends is my enemy."

Honest nodded, seeming to understand. "The reason Mephiles called Infinite one of my own is because he's Scourge's friend, right? That's the only reason."

If only Honest had come up with that explanation on the front end. Yeah, she could backspace all the way back to just after Sonic appeared, but that would mean she'd have to sacrifice all of that beautiful writing. Instead, she decided just to start monologuing again here. Where was the harm in more words?

Mephiles thinks that Infinite is one of Honest's own because Scourge claimed Infinite as his friend. Honest could see that. Like she had said earlier about Mephiles not understanding Honesty, 'he had no reason to take it any other way'. In fact, Honest had done things in the past to support this wrong assumption, that Infinite was her friend. Chapter 24 of {w/Rosy}, for instance. Infinite straight up admitted that his goal was to bring harm to Shadow. Honest threatened to 'delete him from the planet', and then immediately offered to buy him a Chaos Cola from the soda machine nearby. What kind of conclusion were you supposed to draw from that interaction? But still, in this same story even, Infinite had attacked Key, Honest's fan character, in chapter 6. Key was 'one of her own', right? So, that was proof of the opposite being true, that Infinite wasn't Honest's friend. No wonder Mephiles was confused. Who wouldn't be? Even... Honest was confused. Did she even have allies? Of course she did, what was she saying? Scourge was her ally. Shadow was her ally... except whenever he had a Chaos emerald she wanted to steal for Doctor Finitevus.

Speaking of which, Doc Fin was her ally. Rouge was her ally. Remember Chapter 15? Heck, this dude sitting beside her, Sonic the Hedgehog was her ally. Well, when she wasn't betraying him.

An ally was someone who supported you, and that was what Sonic was doing right now. He was helping her talk through her problems. What he wasn't doing was judging her for not being completely on the side of the good and just. He wasn't telling her that how she was feeling or what she was doing was wrong. He... never preached to anybody like that. Or, he wouldn't if he were being true to himself. He had no problem preaching to Scourge or broken up robots after a battle.

But then again, the people Sonic didn't preach to... maybe he was only being courteous to them because he wanted something. Like Shadow. Or Chris. Actually, now that Honest thought about it, he definitely wanted something from Mina the Mongoose in the Comics. He wanted her to be quiet about what he had done to her, about what she had witnessed. He pretended to hear her out and support her goal of being a pop idol, but it was just a front. It was just a way that he could get her out of his life so that she wouldn't pose a threat to his reputation. He was scared of her because she knew his true nature, even if she didn't completely understand what that nature was at the time. The same could be said of Shadow and Chris. Shadow knows how Sonic acts when he's not on camera due to his interactions with him. Sonic goes out of his way to make Shadow feel special enough to shut his mouth. Chris saw what everyone else saw until they were alone together in episode... 51, I believe. The episode before the end of season 2. That was a part that the English dub fell short at, if Honest remembered correctly, but you had to read between the lines even so. Chris was doing the wrong thing, yeah, but Sonic let him do it. The world was going to end, time was going to hold still indefinitely, everyone was going to suffer, and Sonic was going to let it happen. If Chris hadn't said anything, it would have. Sonic knew that Chris was being selfish and endangering the world, and Chris knew that he did, but Sonic wouldn't say it outright. He wouldn't even mention it. Chris asked if Sonic wanted the world to end, and Sonic said "So what if I do?" That would mean that him and Chris could stay together forever. The episode title was "Friends 'Til the End". As if it were a good thing. They both wanted the same thing, but Sonic knew that it was wrong and was going to go through with it anyway, even claiming that he owed Chris for saving his life in the first episode. As if that would make it okay. And when Chris asked if that meant the only reason Sonic had acted as his friend was because he felt like he owed him his life, Sonic just said "That's for you to decide."

So, Honest decided she wanted Sonic's input on this. That was how Chris got him to open up. Sonic knew Chris was doing the wrong thing, but he wouldn't say anything. He said that Chris was the one withholding something, but that was dodging the fact that Sonic had something he was concealing also. Honest said that Infinite owed them. Sonic asked if she believed it. Did he believe it?

"Do you think Infinite owes us?"

"Infinite did a bad thing, but it's not up to us to make him pay for it. He's going to pay for it one way or another, and there's nothing either of us can do to stop it or speed it along," Sonic said effortlessly. Honest was surprised.

"That makes total sense." She got up on her knees, an air of eagerness now surrounding her. "Hey, you're on my side, right? You're my ally?"

Sonic looked thrown off. "Of course."

"So do my dealings with Mephiles concern you at all?"

"Somewhat," Sonic confessed. "Mephiles killed me. It's kind of hard to trust your own murderer, you know. But, I trust that you know what you're doing. You've been in similar situations in the past. I've seen the way you act around Eggman and Scourge. They treat you like you treat them- like they forget all about good or bad, right or wrong, or any of that stuff while they're in your presence. I... envy you."

There he goes again, bearing his heart to someone who he thinks won't know what to do with the information. It didn't take as much pushing as one would think.

"Hey, I get it. It's because of your reputation as a hero, someone who believes in absolute justice without leeway. Others don't know better than to think that. Trust me, I know." Sonic lifted his head.

"How do you?"

"You believe in Adventure." She leaned back on her hands and glanced up at the sky. "I believe in Honesty." She saw the daytime moon peeking out from behind a cloud. "There's no difference, really."

Sonic wordlessly followed Honest's eyes to where she was looking. "I think I understand you, probably, for the first time."

"You did what?"

Honest crossed one leg over the other as she sat on the small sofa in the clubroom and watched Scourge freak out on the other side of the table, between the table and the HDTV he had borrowed from the destroyed mall in IWGSR. "I talked with Sonic."

"How were you able to do that? I thought you felt guilty and were doubting yourself?"

"Oh, yeah... Well, that was like 30,000 or so words ago. I've been thinking about all this for a long time, you see. I've found that the solution to feeling guilty and doubting yourself is to justify and prove that what you're doing is the right thing. But in doing this, I've found that Sonic and I are very similar philosophy-wise." She smiled a self-assured smile and closed her eyes, leaning back on the couch. Actually, Honest already knew this, she just forgot. She remembered saying something about that in... Chapter 26 of {w/Rosy}. At the time, Honest just thought it was a random detail she had put in to give that scene a certain feel. It was funny to Honest how she sometimes foreshadowed things without knowing what she was foreshadowing. Other writers had to be able to relate to that, right?

Scourge got over his lividness for the time being and instead started just looking confused. "H-How so?"

"You know that 'I'm just a guy that loves adventure' stuff? Well, replace 'guy' with 'girl' and 'adventure' with 'Honesty'. Adventure and Honesty are two alignment-neutral endeavors."

Scourge seemed to be appalled by whatever he was thinking about. "Uh-huh," he said, communicating that he understood what she was saying.

"Have you ever heard Sonic say 'I'm doing this for the greater good!' or even 'I want to save the world!' while talking about that thing he considers 'adventure'?" Honest's impression of Sonic sounded more like Tails. Although she had asked a question, Honest didn't wait for an answer. "Don't you consider yourself a bad person?"

"Well, yeah. I'm the anti-Sonic. Of course I'm bad."

"If Sonic's not all good, how can you possibly be all bad?"

Scourge was stunned speechless for a minute before Honest continued.

"The opposite of a blue pineapple with one green patch is a green pineapple with one blue pat-"

"I get it," Scourge interjected, sitting on the other couch to her left, having crossed from one side of the room to the other in the time Honest had been speaking. He crossed his arms and stared over his knees at the floor. "Trust me, I've thought about it, but I can't help but see it as a curse. For me, at least. It's my one major flaw and weakness. With Sonic, it just means that when things inevitably go right for him, he'll know just how and when to shove it in my face." The green king gritted his triangular, shark-like teeth and stared so hard at the floor it looked like the carpet might burst into flames at any moment from just his gaze alone. "For me, it's like my 'blue patch' is just enough to make me feel horrible every time something inevitably goes wrong for me." He buried his face in his hands. "And then I say something stupid and do something to make me look even worse and-" He sighed and uncovered his face, peeking out and up at a sympathetic Honest. "You probably don't want to hear this about your favorite comic character, but I'm just not worth rooting for."

Honest laughed as if finding what he had just said funny and glanced out the window behind him. The sun could be seen disappearing over the treetops. It was nearly five, and Honest kept forgetting that she didn't have to work at the café today. Rouge had been calling off working a lot recently. Honest kind of wished she could write about some small, petty plot at the café instead of this, but oh well.

"Good or bad, that kind of stuff is only deep to fourteen year-olds, you know. You'd think we'd be having more deep and insightful conversations in our advanced age like this," she mused, turning back to Scourge. Said royal rodent straightened back up and was now leaning the other direction, backwards, and sinking into the light red-pink of the cushions.

"Seventeen?"

"Well- Y-Yeah, in the context of this story, seventeen."

"Even twenty-one isn't an advanced age. Advanced age is like fifty-five years or older."

"It's an exaggeration." Honest narrowed her eyes at him. "Anyway, I've explained this to you before, but maybe you need a refresher." She suddenly pointed fiercely at him, feeling the energy she had felt back in chapter 16 of {Café Edition}, the beginning of everything, rushing back to her. "Our worlds aren't opposite, they're parallel. The Antis were identical to the Primes at their creations, but they all experienced what you call 'one bad day', which caused them to deviate from the ideal paths, the paths of the Primes. Rosy and Amy both wished to be the same age as you and Sonic, but Amy's wish came true and Rosy's wish didn't. You experienced a 'bad day', and Sonic didn't." Honest then closed her eyes and nodded adroitly. "And thus his reign of terror continues on, uninterrupted."

"Okay... but you just said that since Sonic's not all good, I'm not all bad."

"I was trying to get your attention by appealing to your wrong assumptions," Honest told him. Scourge basically took it as she didn't want him to dwell on that and rolled his eyes. "Anyway, you are worth rooting for. There are 365 days in a year, ten years in a decade, and a hundred in a century. What's one bad day?"

...

Scourge laughed. "I like that catchphrase much better. Mind if I steal it?"

"Of course not," Honest said, beaming.

"What's one bad day?" Scourge echoed enthusiastically. "I'm Scourge the flipping hedgehog!" Honest burst out laughing, falling back into the couch dramatically. Of course, he said a much more grown-up word, but you're just gonna have to imagine it, reader. I'm not typing that.

Eventually the two decided to split up and leave the clubroom. "Where are you going? Your house or the castle?" Honest asked, tightening her grip on the straps of her yellow and white polka-dotted backpack as they stood in the front doorway of the building.

"The castle," Scourge replied, leaning against the door frame. "Fiona texted me saying she had something to 'show me'. Knowing her it could be anything, but I doubt she did anything nice like bake me a pie."

Honest licked her lips, imagining Fiona delivering them a giant fruit pie. Maybe peach? Or cherry? If only. After her conversation with Mephiles this morning about "sacrificing one of her own", Honest had started to think. Yeah, Infinite wasn't "one of her own", but Scourge definitely was. And what she was doing now, to Scourge... was that considered "sacrificing?"

No, sacrifice implied death, and no one was dying. Mephiles was just exaggerating things in a morbid way like he usually did. But still, none of that mattered, not now. For now, she had a role to play. Not in a play like The Death of Sonic the Hedgehog, but in this story.

Honest wanted to say something to let Scourge know she cared for him just in case he ended up doubting that in the coming days, but there was no good way to do that without risking ruining the surprise. Yeah, a surprise. That's what Honest should be calling it. A present, even. A present for Scourge, which was well-deserved attention the comics could never deliver. There were good Scourge stories littering the Internet, but they usually included either Scourge being overly evil or overly... vexatious. None of them were about exploring the deep, underlying confusion surrounding his identity as anti-Sonic and the potential complications resulting from ever possibly having knowledge of such a thing.

One of the best stories Honest had read about Scourge included some sort of plot involving him using the power of a god to bring utter destruction and endless strife to three whole dimensions. The thing was, he was himself, but also not himself. It was easy to blame it on the author, but I don't think it was entirely their fault. I think that, although they may have felt like they were doing Scourge justice, they were still, inevitably, being controlled by the bias. The bias created by "the powers that be" Honest had talked about in chapter 5 of {Limited Edition}. Their influence can be felt by all. I'm feeling that bias even as I write this. If I just focus on how I feel towards Scourge, its existence becomes painfully obvious. But, I'm fighting back. Honest is fighting back.

"Okay, be seeing you!" Honest exclaimed, waving as she took a right and started making a beeline through the grass towards where she expected to find at least Dina waiting for her outside the main building. Instead, however, she found no one. Honest forgot what it was like when Shadow wasn't around. If she had fifty hundred OC characters to surround herself with, she'd probably still feel utterly alone whenever Shadow wasn't there.

Dina and Akane were probably at Snow's house waiting for her. Honest thought about all the things she had to start working on for the upcoming story arc. It was making her sleepy just thinking about it... and inspired. A sleepy inspiration. Usually having a lack of energy prevented you from getting inspired. With this end goal in mind, getting back home to start work on the next era of her existence, Honest found it easier to start the walk towards home.

I need to hurry and end this chapter before it gets any longer, Honest thought to herself. And so, it did.