It was a Friday afternoon at the school and Rosy the Rascal was helping her Prime self clean out her locker. She held a stack of binders and notebooks and miscellaneous stacks of assignments in her arms as Amy rifled through the loose things like rulers and scissors and markers in the bottom.
"You have any plans for the weekend, Rosy?" Amy asked, looking up at her twin for a moment with a smile.
"Not really," Rosy said, peeking around the stuff she was holding. "Unless wandering around town looking at things is considered a plan."
Amy stuck her head back in her locker. "You're always welcome to hang out with me if you want. I like to head over to Cream's on the weekend and distract her so Ms. Vanilla can get some work done around the house." After saying that, the fuchsia hedgehog scrunched up her nose in amusement.
Rosy seemed to be thinking about that as she went quiet soon after. Then she drew a sharp breath and dropped what she was holding.
Around the corner stood Scourge the Hedgehog. He seemed to notice he had been caught and began to approach the two pink hedgehogs. "I've got something you can do." Amy didn't even seem to notice that Rosy had just dropped the entirety of her locker's contents on the tile floor of the hallway. She instead focused silently on the approaching hedgie with wrathful eyes.
"How would you like to help me clean the Castle?"
Rosy's eyes lit up. "Clean? I love cleaning!"
Amy looked at her with confusion. "You love... cleaning?" She looked away and shook her head. "Yeah, you're my Anti alright." She then turned to the squirrely king. "Why can't you clean your own castle?" Scourge didn't seem bothered by her discourtesy. Perhaps he was used to it.
"I can. In fact, I've been in the process of cleaning it for a while now. I just thought Rosy might enjoy helping me," he told her, putting his hands in his jacket pockets. There was a fearsome air about the kingly pineapple that struck Amy as something foreign to him. It kind of reminded her of Sonic. It felt like she was blushing. Was she blushing?
He's not Sonic, Amy. He's a monster who's hurt you, and he'll do it again.
And then, almost as an answer to that, another thought came.
He'll do it again?!
Amy picked up the stack of books from the floor and started putting it back with a huff. "G-Go do what you want to, Rosy. You're your own person. Just... be careful, alright?"
But then again, in which way was he not like Sonic?
Rosy nodded and grabbed and pulled one of Scourge's hands out of his pocket, flowers beginning to rotate in the air around her. "Okay! I would love to visit Moebius again!"
Scourge looked startled. "You... remember Moebius?" Rosy nodded enthusiastically.
"Yup! And I remember how nice the Castle used to look! Let's go clean it!" She started tugging him towards the entrance. Scourge was always surprised by the strength she could possess, and he struggled to keep from tripping and face planting on the cold tile. Of course, Rosy didn't actually know which way to go, seeing as though where they were headed was in another dimension.
"The teleporter is the other way," Scourge told her, narrowing his eyes in annoyance. Amy tilted her head.
"'Teleporter'? What teleporter?" Amy asked curiously.
"The one to Moebius, obviously," Scourge told her, starting to pull Rosy in the opposite direction. They went out the brown wooden double doors at the front of the building. Amy was bothered by the idea that Scourge had free travel between the two dimensions. That couldn't be safe, could it?
"I feel like there's a lot you've wanted to ask me over the years that you didn't know you could ask until now. Because Honestly, I think there's a lot more that I'm willing to answer now, too."
Should she be capitalizing an Honest word that someone other than herself says? It was just a style choice, so did it really matter?
A warm, shallow breeze blew through Honest's hair and Sonic's spines and they both sat on the concrete steps in front of the main school building during lunch and chatted. It felt alien and familiar to Honest at the same time, to be speaking to the blue blur like this. She was literally always looking at or controlling Sonic in a video game every day of her life. Heck, the guy's name, Sonic, was synonymous with "hobby" nowadays. It had been that way for Honest for over a decade of her life now, so of course it would feel familiar to her. Yeah, seeing someone was entirely different from speaking to them, but Honest had been living with this dude for at least six years. Yeah, they had said "hi", "bye", and other pointless things to each other, but they had never once sat down beside each other and spoken at length about a particular subject in... Honesty is the Best Policy history, so it felt weird. Even from a literary standpoint it was strange, much less a social one.
"Yeah, totally! For one, I have some questions about you and Shadow." Honest was so not used to talking to him that she accidentally typed "you and Sonic" for a split second, thinking she was speaking with Shadow.
Now, it sounded like Honest was about to go all "crazy Sonadow fangirl" on him, but you had to remember for a second Honest's stance on the matter. Which was... well, it was complicated. Not just complicated, but it was also a long story.
Honest wanted to ask him what, though? There was so much to ask about, so many little details. And still, even if Honest could settle on just one or two things, would she be able to find the words to describe them? It wasn't love, but maybe it was. Who was she to decide that for them? I mean, yeah, she was the Author, but where exactly did that place her level of control over her characters?
But then again, what's the definition of "love" anyway? Love always seemed off-limits to Honest. Sometimes it felt like she should say "I love you" to people she was conversing with, but she never did, opting instead for saying something far too verbose like "I have an appreciation for you". Love felt too... restrictive. But what was being restricted? Perhaps that wasn't the word. Love felt too... absolute. Like once you've said it, you can never take it back. But since Honest didn't know what it meant, she didn't know what she was agreeing to, what kind of contract she was signing. Like she said, the word "love" felt off-limits to her. She wasn't allowed to say it, she didn't have adequate permissions. Therefore, it was simply impossible for Honest to put a name to Sonic and Shadow's relationship. Her latest story, Obsessed, had made an attempt, but it had inevitably ended in a standstill as all previous attempts had.
Sonic was obsessed with Shadow. That was one thing Honest felt she pretty much knew for sure at this point. Even a Sonic fan in 2006 could tell you that. In SA2, you might be able to write it off as Shadow being a new and exciting character that's getting more focus temporarily, but in Shadow the Hedgehog you'd have to be severely out of the loop not to notice Sonic's obsession, put across through every little interaction between the two. "I was just in the neighborhood and thought I might wanna stop by and see if you'd like to go for a ride. Where? Well, I thought you might wanna go up to the Ark, THE Ark, to... I dunno... participate in a little friendly competition...?" And the scenes in Sonic '06, after they get transported to Crisis City in the future. If the cutscenes were drawn in a cartoon style, I can just imagine the cheeky grin Sonic would have when he said "Looks like WE need to stick together." after the camera literally shifted focus away from Shadow in the foreground to Sonic in the background for "seemingly" no reason whatsoever. It's such an uncomfortable transition to have not been done for any specific reason. It kind of reminds me of the scene in Forces where Shadow makes his first real appearance, and then every conversation between the two for the rest of the game. Which reminds me that I need to invest in the Shadow Episode sometime on PS4. I can imagine Sonic bribing the writers with actual cash to put more Shadow scenes in the games. Rise of Lyric must've been like a fever dream for Sonic. Meanwhile, at the time, I was so confused by that scene like "why is this suddenly a horror game?" and "why is Sonic reacting that way?" I still don't know what direction Sonic Team was trying to go in at the time. They were a little confused, but they had... some kind of spirit.
"N-Nevermind. That was kind of a dumb thing to say," Honest told him, huffing and looking angrily at the ground.
"H-How so?" Sonic asked. How come he was stuttering?
"I can't possibly find anything to ask you in any normal amount of time, so I guess those are the only questions off the table."
"Oh," Sonic said, seemingly disappointed. "Okay, then. I have some questions about you and..." Honest yawned. "Scourge." Honest's yawn stopped short and she appeared to choke on air.
"You okay?" Sonic asked, tilting his head.
"Y-Yeah! Uh... What is there to learn?" Honest asked, laughing nervously.
Sonic looked towards the sky as if searching among the clouds for his questions. "Well... Earlier you asked me if your dealings with Mephiles bothered me, but what about Scourge? Didn't you think making friends with Scourge would bother me?"
"Why would it? Scourge is a cool guy," Honest said, compressing all of her complex feelings towards the hedgehog into one singular idea.
"'A cool guy'?" he echoed. "I thought you read the Comics. Where in there does it say he's a cool guy?"
"I'm not basing that on the Comics. I'm basing it on what I've experienced personally," Honest told him, feeling the previous panic morph into something more irate. How dare he talk about her friend like that? She wanted to ask him why, but she knew why. He didn't really know Scourge, not like he knew Tails or Amy or Knuckles. And on top of that, when Sonic had asked where in the Comics did it say Scourge was a "cool guy", he was most likely just thinking of one specific era. Oh, yeah. Scourge history? Starts when he turns green. Yeah, Scourge was, for all intents and purposes, created when he touched the Master Emerald. However, his backstory is that he was once Evil Sonic, and that had an effect on Scourge as a character later on. Of course, Honest would argue that he was a "cool guy" even then, but that's her opinion. 2006 was the reigning "year of Scourge", and what Sonic was probably thinking of was what had happened near the end. The only thing he had ever referenced going forward. What he was going off of was his vague memories of the events that had occurred then. But surely he had to have remembered the short origin story they had gotten of him over the span of about one page. Bottom line, Scourge wasn't born Evil Sonic. He was just born Sonic, so any suggestion that Scourge was just evil to be evil and didn't have a reason to be that way was pure and utter garbage. Therefore, Sonic had ample opportunity to save him, and he didn't. Sometimes that sort of thing was mentioned in fanfictions, and every time, Honest wanted to scream and punch the screen. They always asserted that Sonic had tried to save Scourge, but he was just too far gone. He had never tried! And he never does try. Ever. With anybody. Not with Amy, not with Shadow, not with Tails, not with Dr Eggman. But Scourge didn't need his help. Right now, Honest had made Scourge her responsibility, and this was one responsibility she had taken on that she didn't regret.
That was why she didn't understand why she felt so guilty. She shouldn't feel guilty about helping her best friend out whenever he needed her the most. Honest was doing the right thing. You're doing the right thing! she stressed to herself. However, she could still hear the doubt resonating in her mind in response. If Sonic didn't want to help him, he was in the wrong. So, Honest put on a disHonest smile.
Sonic seemed to be thinking deeply about something, scratching his chin and continuing to look through the clouds. "Okay... Then what have you experienced?"
Hehe, oh no, this was bad. I mean, it wasn't terrible. If he had accused her of plotting against him, now that would have been terrible. Instead, Sonic was simply asking her a question whose answer was not very canon compliant. She had to come up with a roundabout, lore-friendly answer and fast.
"Um, well, we've been friends since the beginning of the series. However, it wasn't until after chapter 16 of {Cafe Edition} that I realized how cool he was. Now, Mephiles-" Honest quickly steered the conversation away from Scourge. "There are no upsides to him. He's a bad dude. He's a murderer with a god complex."
She was being so disHonest now that it was hurting. Yeah, Mephiles was a bad guy, but he had sound... Well, he did kill somebody... Well, it didn't matter what he had done in the past. He was on Honest's side now, so none of that mattered. Same with-
"Scourge is a murderer with a king complex, though," Sonic argued, his eyes narrowed.
"True," Honest said, finally deciding to be Honest, and it felt good. "I guess there's just no good way to go about thinking about him." When Sonic just continued to look at her with one brow raised in curiosity, Honest just continued to share more of her feelings. It was ironic in a way. Sonic had shared how he felt with Honest that morning, and she had mentally mocked him for it. And now, she was doing the same exact thing to him.
"But I don't just hang out with him because he's 'cool'. You can be drawn to other people in a never-ending amount of ways." Honest thought about why she enjoyed spending time with him, and she quickly found her answer. "I like his input. He's full of amazing ideas and plots just waiting to happen. He's the key to an entire world. And he's not limited by any sort of code, he's limited by his own weaknesses and shortcomings. Seeing those weaknesses and seeing him put forth an effort to fix them makes me... it makes me want to fight for him. He keeps me motivated to keep writing, not just about him but about everybody." Honest sighed pleasantly and shut her eyes. "You know, I have never felt for another person like I've felt for him. His problems were suddenly my problems. His triumphs were suddenly my triumphs. I never knew I had the ability to empathize with others before, and maybe I didn't, but I know I've empathized with him."
Honest wanted to say "Maybe it's because he's so aware of his place in the universe," but perhaps that wasn't something she should be telling Sonic. If Sonic knew what Scourge knew, about what kind of a world Moebius truly was, who knew how he would react to the information. Maybe he would double down on his efforts to make Scourge hated by all. Or, maybe he already knew what Scourge was, and he was trying to keep it a secret from everyone in order to protect himself.
Whatever the truth behind it was, Sonic wasn't going to tell Honest. Even if he didn't yet completely know the scope of Honest's treachery, and even if he was never going to know, he didn't have any plans of sharing his feelings on that particular subject, the subject of Scourge, anytime soon. He just stared at the concrete beneath his swaying feet while Honest focused on the side of his head. There were no thoughts to be gathered there, just a cold, bare slate. She hadn't been able to get him to open up at all, only close back up tight.
It was a mystery for another time and place.
