Honest had been asleep for thirty minutes or so now. Akane was sitting in her human form in front of Honest's chair on the floor with Honest's 3DS. She was playing some sort of game where you played as a tiny robot and used your cord to move around and fight enemies while collecting food items with real world brands. Scourge watched her play this mindless game in an attempt to stay awake, but he was soon bored to tears. Not literally- who cries when they're bored (the answer is not seventeen year-olds)- but you know what I mean.
"Are you guys done harassing the ghosts yet?" Scourge asked. The lack of urgency in answering his question should've been all the answer he needed. Still, eventually, Vector replied, "No, not yet. Espio, Charmy, let's go try another room." And with that, the three scooped up their equipment and left.
Scourge shook Honest awake. "We're switching to another room," he told her. Honest opened her eyes.
"Can you carry me? I don't wanna mooove," Honest complained, reaching out to him. Scourge rolled his eyes.
"Alright, Akane. I'm gonna pick Honest up and you move the chair to the next room over, okay?" The orange cat stood up, nodded, and set the handheld game console in the nearby window.
His strength, increased due to the power he absorbed from the Master Emerald sixteen years ago, made the task of moving the fifty pound Mobian cat girl no sweat at all. He traveled down the dark hallway effortlessly while Akane struggled with her cargo behind him. Shadow followed a distance behind them, all the while sipping from his tenth cup of tea that night.
This next room obviously used to be some sort of... actually, I'm not sure what this room used to be. There were marks on the wooden floor where chairs used to stand in rows. On the back wall was a balcony of sorts. Tattered curtains still hung over the doorway and, through the gaps in the fabric, shattered glass could be seen reflecting their own faces back at the group. Honest wanted to know what Scourge remembered about this room, if anything, but for some reason he had closed himself off as soon as they had crossed the threshold. "Let me in your head," she whispered. Scourge just looked down at her in confusion.
"What?"
Honest sighed and stretched out her legs. "Your brain is like a brick wall right now," she told him. "I want to know what's up with this room."
"There's... nothing up with this room. I cleaned it out just like I did all the rooms." The green hedgehog set Honest down and walked out onto the balcony, sliding the glass door out of his way carefully. The door hung up before he could get it fully open, but that was okay. Old sliding doors often did that. He folded his arms atop the railing and stared out into the fog.
Honest followed him out. Meanwhile, Shadow and Akane hung out in the doorway behind them, watching curiously.
Scourge sighed... pleasantly? It was a weird sound to hear from him. "Man is it nice to be able to stand out here and see no one," he said. Honest peeked over the top of the rails but, after seeing nothing, turned to look at Scourge.
"You're... used to seeing people from here?"
Scourge pushed away from the railing. "No, but I once was. It's so quiet now. When there's no leadership, there's no reason for people to gather anymore. Not like I want to see the people from here, though." He continued to prop himself up with his hands on the railing as he talked, but after he had finished his last sentence, he folded his arms again and frowned.
Honest furrowed her brow for a second as she thought about that.
In the Comics, the first time he visited Mobius to cause trouble, Scourge was there to... How should I put this... score some chicks? He said that the girls in his world weren't as... "good" I guess, as the ones he could find in the Prime verse. And that's when he met Fiona. He just wasn't attracted to women in his home dimension. Scourge had been settling his whole life. I guess you could say that initial "chick quest" was the only reason why he broke the interdimensional laws in the first place, why he ticked off Sonic, why he found out about the Master Emerald and became the Scourge we all know today. Everything he was today stemmed from that one plot point.
So, why did Scourge romantically prefer people from Mobius? Honest thought about the differences she could think of between the two worlds' citizens. Well, for one, in Mobius, there were more heroes than villains. In Moebius, since their alignments were supposedly the opposite, there were more villains than heroes. That was probably why their world was so... messed up. So, obviously, Scourge preferred good girls. ... Oh. Well, that was just one theory.
Another theory was that everyone in Scourge's home dimension believed their zone was the opposite of the Primes', but in actuality, it wasn't. The reason Scourge made everyone change their names and appearances to try to become their own characters wasn't to rebel, it was to make them realize that fact. Scourge had discovered this fact back when he first decided to go to the Prime verse to look for a significant other. He felt more at home with Mobians because they knew they were unique and acted like it. He realized that he and the rest of the Moebians were their own characters, not simply copies of other people but with a twist. Evil twins? That kind of thing only existed in fiction.
Of course, both of these could be totally wrong. They were just theories, after all. However, right now, in this moment, Honest had to fill in the blanks herself. And, perhaps, she would always have to. Scourge appearing in the IDW comics was possible, though. There were rumors Flynn was thinking of bringing Mina the Mongoose back, the character that exposed Sonic's true nature somewhat and gave Honest one of her first tastes of absolute despair knowing that Sonic had the power to destroy lives with just a snap of his fingers whenever he felt like it. Honest wondered if the way Sonic completely ruined Mina emotionally hit way too close to home for other people like it had for her. If Scourge had read those issues, it would have for him. In Honest's opinion, now that she thought about it, Mina and Scourge had a lot in common. Huh.
"Why not?" Honest asked.
"They're shallow," the king told her, smiling. "I'd much rather hang out with you guys."
It was the next day and Honest, Shadow, Dina, and Akane had walked to school together like always and were now standing in front of the main building, waiting for the bell. Honest was resting against the back of the concrete steps while Shadow and Dina stood on either side of her and Akane sat as a cat at her feet, facing towards the gate. Shadow was looking somewhere off to their left towards the gym with his arms crossed while Dina combed her hair through her fingers as she watched the chaos unfolding to their right.
Sonic was attempting to run away, but Amy had hooked her hammer around him and was holding him in place. "Sonic, you can't run away from everything, you know. We were grouped together for this project, and if we don't do it, we're both gonna fail the whole semester!"
"You planned this from the beginning! You rigged the hat!"
"'The hat'? You can't rig a random drawing."
"You... weighted the slips of paper!"
"What would that do?"
"I don't know, make the names that aren't ours sink to the bottom and leave ours lying on top?"
"That's just ridiculous."
The two of them continued arguing back and forth all the way up the steps and into the building.
Honest put her arms behind her head and sighed. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have someone obsess over me like Amy does Sonic." She looked over at Dina, who was faced the other way, without her noticing. "Even if I didn't like them to begin with, knowing they loved me so deeply would be touching, ya know? I might just fall in love with them as a result of their devotion."
Shadow turned around and gave her his usual death glare. "You're saying that now, but if you ever had a real stalker, you'd know it's no joking matter. It's impossible to enjoy an experience like that."
Honest didn't seem to hear any of that as she just sighed again. "Those kinds of people just want to be noticed. If you notice them, they'll either lose interest or you'll find out that they actually want to take the relationship a step further. That's when you toy with them until they open up to you about their crush." Honest said all this as if she were making plans.
Akane turned around and looked up at her. "Even if they do eventually confess, I have a feeling you wouldn't give them a straight answer."
Flowers started spinning around Honest's head. "Has Sonic ever told Amy he doesn't like her? Of course not! But what's wrong with Sonic and Amy's relationship as it is now?"
"Uh, the obvious," Shadow told her with a sarcastic tone. "It's endless torment. They torture each other daily. You can argue who's hurt worse, but you can't argue that it's not torture." Honest suddenly looked depressed and hunched over, her arms hanging.
"Thanks for reminding me of all the horrors Amy faced in Sonic X," Honest said, punctuated by a "pft". "It's not the rabbit's fault it was captivated by the moon." Honest then started looking thoughtful again. "But is it the moon's? Is it anybody's fault?"
Shadow had begun to ignore her, turning back around and actually standing back up straight. Eventually you just had to ignore Honest and her ramblings. He looked into the distance and saw a wave of people heading their way.
"I have a paper to finish in biology," he said. Honest's ears perked up.
"For Doctor Finitevus? Be sure to tell him thanks for rigging up the-" Honest stopped herself just in case someone outside overheard them. "Well, you know."
"Yeah," Shadow said, heading up the steps behind them. Once he disappeared into the building, Honest slid down until she was sitting in the same place she had been standing and pulled Akane into her lap. Suddenly the art teacher walked by and Akane turned into her girl form in order to avoid Honest being spotted with an animal on school property. This just made said teacher stop in her tracks and stare for a completely different reason. Dina saw and immediately started trying to explain the whole shape-shifting thing to the teacher, failing rather miserably. Honest just watched her, not trying to intervene and ruin such an entertaining exchange.
As Shadow made his way down the hallway, a ruckus of noises erupted from one of the classrooms to his right, just before he made it to the stairs. Suddenly, there was an explosion and, in a flurry of nuts and bolts and various scraps of metal, Sonic the Hedgehog came flying out of the classroom and landed on his back. He then proceeded to just lay there like a motionless doll. Shadow rushed over.
"Faker, are you all right?" the Ultimate Lifeform asked, crouching over his rival's seemingly-lifeless body. However, Sonic promptly opened one of his eyes and even seemed to smile.
"Yup," he confirmed. "You swear you don't care that much, but you always come running to help me when I'm down."
Shadow rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Come on, get up." He hadn't been fooled for a moment, or at least that's what he started repeating to himself mentally as he stood up and waited for Sonic to do the same.
"It's kind of interesting, actually."
Shadow rolled his eyes even harder, if that was possible. "What is?"
"One might think I'm just a really good influence on you," He made a small chuckle as he stood up straight. "But I think it's a little more complicated than that." He turned to Shadow, his eyes narrowed in a challenging sort of way. "Am I right?"
"Wrong. I'm pretty sure I've made it obvious more than enough times for you to come to accept it. Unless you're just really dumb."
"Quite the opposite, actually. I can see right through you, ya know. You're not hiding anything."
Suddenly a wrench was thrown in their direction. It rebounded off the tile floor and skipped across the hallway like a stone across the surface of a pond.
"Come back in here, Sonic, before I program this bot to disintegrate you with lazers!" It was Amy's voice.
Sonic rolled his eyes and his whole head before turning back around one last time. "I'll see you at lunch." He winked. "Maybe I'll pick you up a mini pizza. I'm sure I've got a coupon somewhere." He then walked back into the classroom.
Shadow cooked his head to one side in silent confusion. Sonic sure had a weird way of flirting. Oh, well. Anyway, he would never turn down a HedgehogHut pizza. Especially if it meant escaping the dreaded chicken balls if only for one day. Anyway, he had a paper to write, and his teacher's pet status depended on him showing up to work on it.
So, Shadow continued to the biology classroom.
(A/N:) So... I wanted this story to have at least two illustrations in each chapter, but I've been writing so much lately that I can't wait until I draw something before I move on to writing the next chapter, so I just don't. So, I'm sorry if the illustrations were your thing, but I still might make some for these chapters. I'll just have to remember to come back and draw them sometime in the future. Just wanted to let the readers know that before I continue. Thanks for reading!
