Scourge was always nervous whenever he was the first to arrive at Finitevus's for lunch. So, whenever the doctor was waiting for him at the entrance and locked the door behind him, he was more than a little bothered.
"Hey! What are you-!"
"Sshh!" the scientist said, putting a bandage-wrapped finger to the hedgehog's lips. "If someone like Sonic were to catch us two together, we would be done for." When he took his hand away from his ally's face, Scourge wiped his mouth instinctively and watched with a puzzled look as the doctor walked across the room and motioned with a ring-covered arm for Scourge to meet him at his desk.
Scourge sat atop the red stool that was already pulled up to the opposite side of the teacher's desk. As he sat there, he couldn't help but be distracted looking at all the clutter in this corner of the room.
An assortment of papers, books, and various objects laid strewn across the desk's surface like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces scattered haphazardly. Piles of handouts, graded assignments, and lesson plans formed miniature mountains here and there. Some of these paper stacks looked to be on the brink of collapse. In the center of the desk sat an assortment of colorful pens, highlighters, and pencils in a decorative cup. Finitevus reached for one of these now and pulled out a silver pen with something etched into it. Tucked in the corner was a potted plant. It was clearly artificial and had spider webs forming between its plastic leaves.
A planner was lying open, its pages filled with scribbled notes. Finitevus reached over and closed it. He picked it up and bent over to stash it in a drawer. Over his back, Scourge could see stacks of textbooks in a tower against the wall, slightly leaning. Also behind him was a corkboard laden with cards and letters. He wondered who those were from. Students, perhaps? Scourge also couldn't help but notice the framed picture hanging beside the window. It was of Doctor Finitevus, and the art style seemed oddly familiar.
"Is that... Honest's?" Scourge asked, pointing.
Finitevus straightened up with a proud, albeit sinister as always, grin. "You bet. Isn't it nice?" he turned around to look at it himself. "It's missing the glasses, but I can forgive that little mishap. Is there anything our fearless author can't do?"
"When it comes to things she can't create... No, nothing comes to mind." Scourge rolled his eyes.
From the drawer within which he had stashed the planner, Finitevus retrieved a spiral notebook. He flipped only a few pages and folded the notebook so that it was just the page he had chosen facing up at him. Scourge watched with quizzical eyes as the doctor had written Scourge's name in print at the top of the page and several other things down the page.
"What is the first thing you remember doing?"
"What?!" Scourge exclaimed, his eyes hollow white circles.
Doctor Finitevus tilted his head. "Just within this story, please. After all, in the real world, you're dead."
"What do you mean I'm 'dead'?!" The king's expression did not change.
"Your first memory, please."
Scourge grasped both sides of his jacket collar with his hands. "The existence of Hearts has already forced me to face many aspects of my past that I would rather not. Haven't I gone through my backstory enough times already?"
"Honest must not think so," Finitevus told him. He grasped the notebook and lifted it up. "These questions are from her."
"You're interviewing me... for her?" Scourge asked, confused. The doctor nodded.
"You want us to help you, don't you?"
"I... do?" Scourge thought for a moment. "Help me with what?"
Finitevus shrugged. "The quicker you answer these questions, the sooner you'll be able to leave."
He was going full teacher mode it seemed. Scourge sighed. "Fine. Shadow asked me once why I was 'so normal'. That's such a dumb question. How can anyone know why they're not a total monster? So, I told him the 'when', when I realized I wasn't. Or, at least I wanted to tell him the when, but he never picked up on my offer to tell him. That guy's so oblivious to everything." Scourge crossed one leg over the other and looked cross.
"But that's not what I'm asking, Scourge," Finitevus reminded him with a stern tone. "It's a simple question. What is the first thing you remember doing in this story?"
Scourge grunted and rolled his eyes. "I remember skipping Spanish, taking a nap in Entrepreneurship, and chatting with Honest and Sonic at a chili dog stand." Finitevus began scribbling this down.
"Okay, okay," he said, stopping and tapping the back of the pen against his chin in thought. He then looked back down at the notebook and read the next question. "What do you consider your greatest strength?"
"My-" Scourge stopped to think. "My... ability to win people over." He was staring holes into Finitevus as he spoke, whose expression turned curious when he saw this.
"Like Honest and I?" the doctor asked.
"Yes... and Shadow, and Manic, and Fiona, and Rosy, and Infinite, and Mephiles, and-"
"Yeah, I get it," Finitevus interjected. He pressed his fist into his cheek and regarded the young king with a deeply thoughtful expression while he wrote with the other hand. "Next question: What motivates and drives you to pursue your goals and dreams?"
Scourge closed his eyes and pictured Sonic sporting a smug grin, his eyes glowing red like the hellspawn that he was. "When I see other people living without a care in the world while others suffer... It makes me angry, so... I guess my anger."
"That sounds pretty heroic and selfless," Finitevus noted as he copied down the answer he had given him.
"It's not," Scourge corrected. He opened his eyes and stared blankly at the wall. "It's all about me. I'm the one suffering, and I want the whole world, no, the multiverse, to pay."
"Sounds like an inferiority complex to me." Scourge turned to him with an angry face, to which the doctor responded by patting him on the head. "Now, now. No need to get angry. I know you don't mean that. You're not inferior to anybody, and I know you know that. Now, let's move on to the next question, okay?"
Scourge huffed. "Okay. Let's get this over with already."
"Who is someone who has had a significant impact on your life and how have they influenced you?"
"Honest," he stated instantly.
"Oh?" Finitevus asked. "It isn't Fiona or Manic?"
"Shut up," Scourge told him rather harshly, slamming his palm on the desk. "This isn't about them. I'm about to reveal something sensitive about myself, so you'd better listen up and be thankful. I'm not gonna say this again."
"Ooh, I'm intrigued. Go ahead, then," Finitevus said, the corners of his mouth turning up.
Scourge put both his hands on the doctor's desk and rose from his seat. Finitevus's amused expression was unchanging as he watched the Moebian's attempt at intimidation. "I know I've won both you and Honest over, but Honest has won me over also... and it has changed my life."
"In what ways?" Finitevus asked, not reacting the way Scourge thought he would. He resisted the urge to blink like he was air-headed, as he had observed this sort of behavior from the doctor before. Way at the beginning of this story, Finitevus had accused Scourge of plotting to take over his home dimension again. Scourge was embarrassed by him bringing that up in the middle of class when they were surrounded by other people, and Finitevus must have picked up on that because he quickly moved on and took the attention away from him.
There was no way he could be confused a second time. Scourge narrowed his eyes critically at his interviewer. "Why aren't you poking fun at me?"
Finitevus looked at him the way that one might look at a child that had just used inappropriate language. "Do you have amnesia? We've already been through this."
He's talking about the beginning of Chapter 22 of {Limited Edition}, faithful reader, if you didn't know. Honest wished she could tell Scourge too, since he also couldn't remember for whatever reason.
"Could you... please go back over it again? Just to refresh my memory?" Scourge asked, completely lost.
"Fine. Let's see..." Finitevus observed the silver pen in his hand rather disinterestedly. "You said that you didn't want to chance ending your own life by attempting to specifically use the positive power of the Chaos emeralds, so I told you it was fine; you didn't have to if you didn't want to." He shrugged, holding both of his hands out with his eyes closed. "Apparently, you expected me to force you to do something you didn't want to do. Anyway, it wasn't just the fear of what might happen that was bothering you, was it?" He opened one eye to look at Scourge whose face seemed to lose some color. "You were surprised that I didn't laugh at you, and so I said of course I didn't. You remember why I said I didn't?" Finitevus had asked Scourge a question, but he didn't let him answer it. He stood up and copied Scourge, putting both his hands on the desk as well and staring back with a dead serious look. "I could never laugh at you for such a thing because I admire you, for being able to do what you do and think the way you think." His eyes filled with another emotion that looked very fitting on him. "Your existence defies all explanation. You are the ultimate test subject."
---
"Is this bad?" Honest asked, looking up from her laptop. It was after school, and the Honesty club was gathered in the club room but doing their own things. Most of the members were sitting on the two couches, playing video games. Right now it seemed Amy and Shadow were engaged in a heated match in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle while the others cheered them on.
Honest and Scourge were sitting at the round table in the corner. Honest was alternating between working on her story and reading the comic issues she had saved in folders in her desktop's "Junk" folder, the folder where she stored nearly everything on her PC. Scourge was playing Sonic Chronicles on his DS.
"Uh-oh," Scourge said, not looking up. He was in the middle of a very difficult battle between his team and a couple of high-level Dark Brotherhood marauders. "Usually when someone says 'is this bad?' it's not very good."
"The more I read about how terrible Finitevus was, the more I like him and dislike who he wronged," Honest told him, resting her head in one of her hands. "Like Dimitri. I used to think he was cool, but now... I can't bring myself to care about him at all. And Locke. I didn't care about him at all the first three times I read the Comics, but now... I find myself looking forward to when Finitevus tricked him into sacrificing himself."
"Doc Fin didn't trick him; Locke sacrificed himself and foiled his plan," Scourge corrected her, still not looking up from his game.
"That, or it's the Bias showing its ugly head yet again," Honest retorted, pointing at him. "Killing Locke might have been Fin's plan from the very beginning, ever since issue 176," Honest said. "He played the part of the mad doctor well, didn't he? Made us think he had plans of world domination until the very end."
"So he lied to me," Scourge said, unbelieving.
Honest's expression softened. "He had to, to keep the act going. Still, doesn't that remind you of something?" Scourge shook his head. "Yourself, maybe?"
Scourge looked confused. "I never lied about wanting to take over the world."
"Isn't that what you told Fiona?" Scourge looked like he was thinking about that. Honest put a bent finger to her lip. "You and Finitevus might not be as different as you think... or, you're very different."
"No, that's obvious," Scourge said, winning the battle and returning to the overworld. It was there that he noticed one of his Chao eggs was hatching. "Ooh, I'm getting another Chao." He tapped on the Chao garden icon and found that a very peculiar Chao had hatched. Its name was... "Cheezlet?" Scourge read in disbelief.
"Yeah, isn't that creepy?" Honest said, clutching her arms and pretending to shiver. "One of the Chao you can get is just a clone of Cheese without the bow-tie. He has similar abilities, but he's a completely different Chao. Brings back the trauma from X, doesn't it?" When all Scourge did was look at her sideways, Honest explained. "In that one episode of Sonic X, remember when Cheese visited that Chao garden full of Chao that looked just like him? There's a possibility that one of those Chao stole his bow-tie and went home with Cream instead. It's creepy to think that Cream might've been living with an imposter all these years and doesn't even know it... And Cheezlet may be proof."
When Scourge just went back to playing Chronicles, Honest sighed and clicked back over to her story. "But Dimitri's only cool because of what he was reduced to while under Finitevus's command. There's irony to it, but that's all." Honest closed her eyes as if picturing it in her head. "A man going to the extremes and being completely swallowed and overcome by his obsession... that sort of thing is so overdone. However, the fact that Finitevus was able to take full advantage of that and reduce a hyper-influential leader to... to a floating head that believed a mad scientist had his best interests at heart was... well, it saved the dude from being forgotten at least." Honest put a hand to her chin thoughtfully. "It's genius, such a great idea. And as for Locke, bringing an end to his life brought an end to that whole dumb story arc. What a great way to get rid of a character. Do you think I can get rid of Infinite that way?"
"By killing him?!" Scourge whisper-shouted, trying to keep his voice down so that the other Honesty club members wouldn't hear him.
"It's extremely unrealistic for there to be so many proven villains in this book and yet there be no deaths or crimes of any kind," Honest told him, looking very thoughtful. "For the sake of realism, a crime needs to be committed." Scourge's mouth was hung open in shock. A question mark flew out of Honest's head as she turned to him. "Hey, what's with that look? You're an ex-criminal. You of all people should understand."
"Understand what?" Scourge asked, looking disgusted. "None of what you just said is logical."
"UURGGHH!"
Honest and Scourge both turned to look as Shadow stood up from the couch and threw his controller down, nearly jerking the Wii into the floor. "You need to switch characters! Play as literally anybody else. I will not lose another round where I can't even leave the starting area for all the times you stop time with one of your d*mn power-ups!"
Rouge was sitting on the other couch, her arm slung over the back while her other arm was occupied by her phone. "Woah, Shadow's rage quitting. Can't stand being beaten by a girl, can you?"
Shadow turned to her with fire in his eyes. "You try playing against Amy when she's playing as herself! It's impossible!"
"You want an answer to your question?" Scourge asked suddenly, making Honest jump. "'Is it bad?' Yes, it is. Finitevus is a bad person."
"You think I don't know that?!" Honest ducked down in her seat with a scowl. "That doesn't stop me from admiring him, though. He has a flawless record after all." She suddenly tilted her head with a curious expression. "I thought you admired him as well."
"Admire? Um, what do you mean by that?" Scourge asked, looking down at his DS.
"You must appreciate him in some way. Why else did you serve him until... well, until the end?" Honest had stood up on her knees in her chair and was now leaning across the table to try to get his attention.
It was working. Scourge couldn't continue to pretend to play his game with Honest this close. "I wasn't serving him, he was serving- well, we were serving each other. We had a deal, and the deals that I make..." He was looking anywhere but at Honest. "No one can turn them down, not even someone like Doc Fin."
Honest looked deeply put off by that answer. "How cryptic... I like it!" Scourge scrunched up his face in a way that told Honest that he thought she was crazy. "No, not even a big-time villain like Finitevus can turn you down. It's like you've got a... a cheat code. Yes, a cheat code. Up, down, left, right, B, A, Start, am I right?" Honest nodded to herself repeatedly. Scourge looked despondent as if all hope had been lost. "It's not a good thing. I don't like cheating." He then began scanning the room around them as if searching for something.
"No, of course you don't. However, if you hadn't sought to make the deal in the first place, you wouldn't have cheated... right?" Honest said, beginning to doubt herself at the end.
"But, I physically could not control myself back then. It didn't help that Fiona was with me either. I can't blame her for most of my bad deals, though. At least not the ones that were made before I met her. But then, I could blame the Suppression Squad, I guess."
"Yeah, but the deal with Doc Fin is hardly the worst of them. It's like item duplication versus... well... a walk through walls glitch," Honest told him. She squinted at her laptop's screen. "You don't regret it, do you?"
Scourge shrugged. "Not right now, but time will tell."
Honest rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't. I think you were unbelievably lucky to make his acquaintance when you did. Prepare to reap the benefits." She began typing fiercely which caused Scourge to look at her sideways.
"Are you still working on the next chapter?" he asked, curious.
"I am, but I'm emailing Zonest right now. I checked the Wiki, and did you know that she hasn't even made the page for {Comic Edition} yet? That's what's most important. Who cares about {w/Snow}? I was a kid, all the important world building stuff is what needs to be recorded," Honest ranted. "Everything from Chapter 11 of {w/Rosy} onwards I consider my serious era. That's what she needs to focus on, and that's what I'm making sure she knows." Honest typed even more furiously.
Honest remembered she named the chapter "An Alliance Across Dimensions," A.K.A. Chapter 47 of {Comic Edition}, this story. As per usual, Honest had done something major and had not even realized it, not until fourteen chapters later. Anyone could see the advantage of having an ally in enemy territory or just in foreign lands. That was all it was. Zonest's existence as a No Zone-r guaranteed Honest an ally because, as her No Zone equivalent, Zonest was responsible for protecting her. It wasn't a given since Zonic had broken that promise to Scourge, but in Zonest's case, she had proven her loyalty in multiple ways now. Therefore, Honest was confident she had her.
Zonest was actively protecting both Honest and Hearts, the latter by covering up her One Bad Day, and the former by, well, keeping Zobotnik at bay. She was making sure he had a positive view of Honest, but, now that Honest thought about it, Zonest was doing the same thing with Zonic, whether that was her intention or not.
"She typed this ahead of time for me." He looked up at Honest with a smile, the first they had seen from him since meeting him for the first time back on the Egg Wrecker. "Your abilities are one-of-a-kind and extremely remarkable."
"'Honest Prime, if you are reading this, Zonic has tracked you down, and you've asked him something a little too personal and have been scolded by Shadow Prime.'" Zonic was smiling as he read from the sheet of paper, resembling Honest every time she opened up and started to read the latest issue of the Sonic Comics every month.
Okay, no, that probably wasn't her intention at all. Obviously, Zonic's amazement and wonder towards Honest was purely due to how "one-of-a-kind" Zonic thought Honest's Writer Powers were. Zonic knew about, and probably visited, a ton of zones as a Zone cop, so when he called her powers one-of-a-kind, either he was exaggerating, or he meant it. Were there others with Honest's powers out in the multiverse? If she wanted to be realistic, the answer was probably "no".
"So... what happened at lunch... what was that about?"
Honest was discharged from her thoughts by Scourge's sudden question. "What do you mean 'what happened at lunch'?"
Scourge gave her a weird look. "What do you mean 'what do you mean "what happened at lunch"'? Are you or are you not the Author? Why did Doc Fin ask me all those questions earlier?"
"Oh yeah," Honest said, smiling a cat smile and looking overall very cheerful. "I'll need to remember to drop by his classroom tomorrow morning to retrieve those notes of his. As you obviously know, I don't need those notes to know what went down today, but I would like to have something I can give Zonest to archive. I don't want to forget a single tantalizing detail of your interview."
"'Tantalizing'?" Scourge echoed with a skeptical tone. "I've already said all of those things before." He then realized something and paused, his expression turning quizzical. "I think, right?"
"What were you saying about me, though? I have had a significant impact on your life?"
"Of course you have!" Scourge exclaimed, gritting his triangular teeth. "Quit pretending you have no idea what I'm talking about all the time." He rolled his eyes dramatically. "You know exactly how you've impacted my life, you and your dumb Honesty..." He trailed off while shutting down his 3DS.
Honest looked confused for real this time. "Are you talking about how Honest I am, or are you referring to Honesty as a way of thinking, a philosophical movement?"
"I don't know," Scourge confessed, looking boredly off in a random direction.
Honest followed his gaze and realized it wasn't exactly random. He was looking out the window. She laughed nervously. "Well, if you're so confident that I know everything, why aren't you confused why I'm not laughing at you?" Scourge glanced back at her with a look of silent alarm. "After all, if Finitevus can guess what you're thinking just from your actions alone, surely I can figure it out, too."
"'Figure it out'? You know! Honest!" Others across the room began to look over towards them as Honest burst into loud, wheeze-ridden laughter at Scourge's scolding. He probably talked to his cat the same way, she thought.
"Hey, Honest, you wanna play Racing Transformed with us?" Amy asked. Shadow and Akane were choosing their racers.
"Sure!" Honest told her, jumping up from her seat and closing her laptop. "Scourge, you need to come give me support though. You can be my... pit crew!"
"Okay..." Scourge answered, sounding unsure. He rose to his feet and pushed in the wooden chair.
They would have to finish this conversation some other time.
---
Fourteen pages? Ughh. I didn't mean for it to go on that long. I'm trying to aim for ten pages now, but it just wouldn't end.
Also, subtlety is hard when your name is Honest.