"Send me back."
Honest, Scourge, Scream, and whatever the anti-Vanilla's name was just stared at Mephiles as he stood in front of Shadow and stared back at them all.
"Uh… how do you reverse the spell?" Scourge asked.
Meanwhile, the anti-Vanilla looked excited as she ran forward and attempted to shake hands with the "demon".
"Wow! I've never accomplished a ritual this advanced before! What sort of horrific task do you have for us?"
Mephiles's hand melted into black sludge before the rabbit lady could shake it. He looked much more displeased than when they usually saw him. However, he didn't say anything. Shadow was still slumped over in the chair behind him. Mephiles turned around and laughed.
"The great Ultimate Lifeform reduced to a mere ritual object. How ironic."
"I didn't know a 'simple element of nature' could be summoned by amateurs like this," Honest told him, laughing a normal laugh not accompanied by piano and reverb.
Upon hearing Honest's voice, the embodiment of darkness looked over his shoulder and his expression softened. "Miss Author." He turned around fully and pushed past the anti-Vanilla who was beginning to look annoyed that she was being ignored. Mephiles stopped in front of the blond feline and the rotten green pineapple beside her. "Maybe it's destiny that I was summoned just now. Do you perhaps require any assistance in completing your mission here?"
Scourge put his hands in his pockets, obviously feeling unnerved by his proximity to the demonic hedgehog just then. "Is it okay to accept help from him?"
"Of course," Honest told him, smiling, still looking up at Mephiles. "Let's see…" She tapped her chin. "Do you think you can intimidate Fiona?"
"Do I think I can intimidate that red fox girl?" The scleras surrounding his slitted green eyes turned red for just a second, and Honest and Scourge swore they saw a haunting grin get stitched across his face for a moment as well. "You underestimate me, cat."
Scream got a bucket of water and a sponge and started scrubbing the circle of chalk off the floor while her mother, the anti-Vanilla, collected all of the blown-out candles and put them in a beat-up cardboard box. Scream accidentally bumped the chair Shadow was sitting in and woke him up. He went "What?" and Scream reacted by, you guessed it, screaming rather shrilly. Both Honest and Scourge jumped in unison.
"You… don't want anything in return?" Scourge asked Mephiles as Honest left to go fill Shadow in on what had happened.
"No… why?" Scourge was startled by how normally and, well, non-demon like he had spoken. Mephiles's arms hung loosely by his sides. "Honest has already given me much more than I could ever want." Scourge made a confused face, but Mephiles didn't make any attempt to elaborate further.
"So how did he get here?" they heard Shadow say.
Looking up, Scourge saw that Shadow was now standing up and pointing fiercely at Mephiles as he stood with his back to him. Scourge noticed the personification of the absence of light bristle a little as if he were annoyed by Shadow's sudden switch to wakefulness. He then spun around on one foot and held his arms out as he walked over to Shadow. "Ah, Shadow! My faithful partner has awakened! Are you prepared to assist me in bringing this planet to its knees as well?"
Shadow dodged out of the way, hiding behind the chair. Mephiles jumped up into the chair and sat on his knees, peering over it with his elbows resting on the wooden back and his head in his hands. "This zone surely has a future I can disrupt, too. Perhaps even its very own Iblis to join with. It's a pretty romantic thought at least, right?" Shadow just reacted with fear and disgust.
"Except maybe, instead of destroying the world, it heals the world. Or maybe it creates worlds," Honest wondered aloud.
"Don't entertain his ridiculous ideas, Honest."
"You're no fun."
Suddenly, Hearts poked her head up from where she had wandered up the staircase after waking from her soup-induced sleep. "Hey, what's going-" However, when she opened her sleepy yellow eyes and saw a creepy clone of Shadow sitting backwards in a chair with his head turned 180 degrees to stare at her, she stuttered. "Wh-Wh-Who's th-th-that?"
Mephiles shot over in a partially liquidated blob and then reformed in the blink of an eye in front of the Honest look alike. "Am I allowed to ask the same thing?"
Honest looked around at Shadow and Scourge. "Are you asking me?"
Scourge walked over to Hearts as well. "This is Mephiles the Dark, the embodiment of darkness," he told the anti-Honest, gesturing. "And this is Hearts, the Moebian equivalent to our Honest."
"Oh, so you're a horrifying nightmare creature," Hearts said, looking relieved, apparently content with the idea.
"Oh, so you're not Honest's adorable little sister," Mephiles said, looking, well, like usual, content with that idea as well.
"Do I really look younger than her?" Hearts asked, tilting her head.
"I think it's the loose sleeves and long hair," Scourge offered, shrugging with an awkward smile. Hearts just looked at him curiously as if noticing him for the first time despite Mephiles being the one she was being introduced to. Scourge looked even more awkward after that.
"Or-" Both Scourge and Mephiles regarded the cat curiously as she pressed a finger to her lips in thought. "Embodiment of darkness… Are you like an ancient spirit or something? Like, should we-" Hearts made a strange gesture where she put both hands in front of her, the left one's palm facing towards her chest and the other one's turned upwards towards her face as she did a slight nod while looking up at Mephiles with wide eyes. The demonic hedgy scratched his head, as did Scourge.
"No," Honest answered, sounding amused. Apparently only she could decipher Hearts's strange hand gestures since they were essentially the same person. She left Shadow cowering behind the chair and went to stand facing Scourge. "There's no need to bow to Mephy, no. However-" Honest grinned widely and went all the way to the floor almost, bowing way too deeply for any sort of royalty to feel honored. "His highness the king deserves only the highest amount of honor." Scourge's face turned completely red, perfectly contrasting the deep green of his fur.
"Oh! Oh, okay." Hearts bowed as well beside Honest. Scourge looked like he was going to pass out. Mephiles looked to Shadow for some sort of assistance.
Shadow also looked red in the face. "Honest, Hearts, stop it. That's horrifically inappropriate and- and- Can't you see that Scourge is totally not into it? You're embarrassing him."
Honest straightened back up and rolled her eyes at the intruding striped hedgehog. "Fine." The grin she had sported seconds before had disappeared and been replaced by the most uninterested frown he had ever seen. "Party pooper."
The group left Scream and the anti-Vanilla behind to clean up and descended the stairs. Honest broke away from all of them and stood at the end of the stairs with both hands on her hips. "I have no idea what time it is since I don't know how to tell time on this planet, so Hearts? Care to make a guess?"
Hearts pushed her head through the front door and looked up at the sky. "I'd guess it's about noon. The sky's a pretty pale lavender. The sky gets light purple towards noon and dark red towards midnight." Honest clapped, impressed.
"We learn something new every day," Honest observed. She turned to Scourge who was stomping angrily down the stairs, obviously still upset by Honest's strange show of loyalty seconds ago on the second floor. "Did you know that?"
"I guess," he said, puffing his cheek out in annoyance. "But if you have a clock, why bother looking at the sky?"
"The sky was all I had out in the desert," Hearts retorted. She pulled her head back into the building and squinted at Honest. "Are you gonna leave for the castle now? 'Cause if so, I'm coming with you."
"Why?" Honest asked. "I mean, I don't know where else you would go and what else you would do, but-"
"Let her come with us, Honest," Scourge told her, walking down the rest of the stairs to join them at the door. "Don't leave her behind like you did Rosy at Vanilla's."
"Oh, yeah. Ouch, yeah, I do feel bad about that," Honest said in a low voice, sounding sincere. At least she thought she sounded sincere; that was her intention. She hadn't felt bad at the time, but she had a lot of time to reflect since chapter 27 of {w/Rosy}, and well… that had just been the objectively wrong thing to do. Now Rosy was living in a ruined mall spending her nights watching electronic ads and her days playing like she has it all together but losing her composure every time she sees anything that reminds her of… Wait. She lost it when she saw the throne at the castle. Scourge had taken her to the castle to "help him clean".
What if he had another motive?
"Uh, okay! You're welcome to join us in taking back the castle! Also-" Honest walked out of the inn and stopped at the top of the steps. "Something you should know: this isn't just a capture the flag mission, this is also a rescue mission." Hearts tilted her head, a universal sign of confusion. "Scourge here let his stalker get kidnapped by his girlfriend Fiona, who's the one who has captured the castle, and so she's most likely going to be held hostage when we arrive. If you're not comfortable with the possibility of having to take responsibility for her being harmed, you might want to rethink going."
Hearts regarded Honest with narrowed eyes. "Anything's better than spending another day near that darned desert. I want to separate myself from it as much as possible."
"Fine then, let's go!" Honest exclaimed, jumping off the porch and landing in the sand, bypassing the wooden steps entirely. "Now… which way's the castle?"
"Northwest," Scourge said, passing Honest on her left and starting to walk in front of her. "Right now we're heading north, but if we go far enough this way, we'll make it to the outer city and then we can start heading left and we'll be there."
"Okay, Mr. I-have-a-map-of-Moebius-in-my-green-screen-colored-head. You lead the way, then."
"I know, you're upset you can't be the one to lead us around since you don't know where you're going."
"No, I feel honored to have the privilege of following our great king around."
"Shut up."
Hearts followed closely behind them while Shadow and Mephiles brought up the rear, Shadow's eyes wide with worry and Mephiles's eyes half-lidded with… smugness? I don't know why Mephiles did that. Maybe that was his idle face.
Meanwhile, Hearts was thinking that Honest's and Scourge's relationship was the weirdest thing she had ever seen. Hearts had always thought that her Prime equivalent would be, instead of a failed regicide turned wanderer living in exile, an accomplished person of some repute. Instead, it seemed that Honest was still in the process of either succeeding or failing in something. If Hearts had failed, then perhaps this couldn't turn out in any way other than a positive one. Hearts might be about to witness or even be a part of Honest's great, life-changing accomplishment.
Should she be excited or nervous?