Dina might not regret this, but Scourge was afraid that he might.
He already missed one whole day of school, and now he was going to probably miss another whole day if he kept this up. How many worksheets would he need to make up? How many assignments had he missed? How many tests would he have to take during the time that he could be hanging out with Honest in Finitevus's room eating? But what if they never hung out like that again?? Were their days of laughing and chatting together over for good? Had this crime of Honest's done irreversible damage to the very fabric of their relationship?
Maybe her relationship with Finitevus had been damaged, but what about her and Scourge's? Maybe it had actually improved. He remembered Honest's violet eyes, filled with a faint light of hopelessness as she asked him if she was a jerk for getting rid of Infinite in the way that she did. He had told her that went way farther than just acting like a jerk, but then he had gone back, changed his mind, and said she was. That had been a lie. This was all a lie!
It didn't matter what he had said to Mephiles, Sonic, and Dina. Everything was a lie. "She's genuinely remorseful"? No, she wasn't. She felt inconvenienced by the fact that everyone was avoiding her, but she didn't regret what she did. But, maybe Honest shouldn't regret what she did. After all, it was Infinite. Sonic, Classic Sonic, and the Avatar had the same intent in Forces: to kill him and put an end to Eggman's latest world-threatening scheme. If they had carried it out, would they be treated the same way? No, Scourge thought. Everybody assumed Infinite was killed, and no one seemed to care.
"Honest did it just to see him suffer." A chill ran down Scourge's spine as he recounted Dina's theory. Dina said that Honest had told her her reason for deleting Infinite was to "pave the way for Frontiers", but that wasn't what Honest had told Scourge. Honest told him that she had done what she'd done in order to "prevent news of her criminal exploits from getting out." Why had she told Scourge and Dina two entirely different things? Things just weren't adding up.
Now, the great king of nothingness and empty space was heading towards the transporter with both Dina and Mephiles hot on his heels, on a mission to have Honest try to explain herself to them because Chaos knows Scourge has tried.
"Mephiles, you can go first," he told the being of darkness once they arrived. Scourge turned the lock to the combination, 4-12-5, and opened the door. He then pocketed the lock so he could put it back on once they returned.
The demon drifted into the metal box. "Your feet have to be touching the transporter in order for it to work," Scourge informed him. Instead of touching down, Mephiles promptly liquefied and dropped to the surface of the transporter with a gloop. Scourge pushed the button on the front with the tip of his shoe, and the black goo atop the small, round, silver platform disappeared in a flash of golden light.
"How long until we can go through?" Dina asked, noticing that the ring of light around the button had turned red.
"A minute or so," Scourge told her, glancing around to make sure no one was watching them. "Just until the Warp Ring that powers it resets."
Dina looked solemnly at the tile floor of the hallway. "I want to trust Honest, I really do," she told him. "I know Infinite wasn't a good guy, but it still feels wrong to me to... well, to kill him."
"Yeah," Scourge agreed, scratching the back of his head. "Things got pretty dark around here fast. For all the bad Infinite's done, I still considered the guy my friend, and I don't think he would've ever actually killed Shadow; he was way too much of a coward."
"But if Honest hadn't hexed the Ruby, he would have, wouldn't he?" Dina asked.
"M-Maybe," Scourge conceded. He guessed that Honest really had saved Shadow's life by doing what she did. Perhaps he could use that information to convince Shadow later.
When the light around the button turned blue again, Scourge motioned for Dina to go inside the locker. "It'll be faster for us to go together," he explained. Dina nodded and stepped back to allow him some room. Once the door was closed behind them and the sliding lock on the inside slid over so that no one could open the locker from the outside while they were gone, Scourge pushed the button and they were transported between zones in a flash of light.
Mephiles had been standing beside the transporter on the other side, patiently awaiting their arrival. "This is the castle?" Dina asked, stepping off the platform and looking around at the stone brick walls. She turned to Scourge. "When Honest went here with you last with Shadow and Akane, she wouldn't let me go. She told me that I needed to stay behind and distract Sonic from asking questions about where they had gone." She turned excitedly to Mephiles. "Is this your first time here, too?"
"No," he answered. "I had a good look around last time while I hid with Rosy until the Zone police left." He looked at Dina and Scourge both as if he expected them to add something. Dina just blinked and looked to Scourge for help.
"What is he talking about?" the pink and white hedgehog asked.
"Uh, during our journey to Moebius to stop Fiona, Mephiles tagged along and, well, what he's talking about is-"
"As usual, Scourge forgot he wasn't the only person that mattered and thoughtlessly left me and Rosy behind to fend for ourselves. Meanwhile, he went to No Zone with the others to brag about his victory over Fiona," Mephiles claimed, rotating silently in the air and moving towards the door.
"What? It- It wasn't like that at all. I went back for Rosy the very next day," Scourge said, quickly trying to set the story right. To his surprise, Dina just laughed and walked past him.
"I think I know you enough to know that's not true," she said, sounding amused. "Mephiles really is just full of hot air, isn't he?"
Scourge sighed hopelessly. "Yeah, if only Silver knew that in '06."
The green king led his guests to the room near the entrance, expecting to see Honest reclining in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. Instead, all he found was her boots, placed together beside the chair on the right, the one she had been sitting in earlier.
"Has she been vaporized?" Mephiles asked, tilting his head to the side.
"Surely not," Scourge answered. He immediately ducked back out of the room. "Honest!" he shouted. No response. She must be very far away, perhaps on one of the upper floors.
Dina ran up beside him. "She's probably made herself comfortable while you were gone and went to sleep somewhere."
"'Sleep'?" Scourge echoed, eyeing her incredulously. "How do you know?"
Dina shrugged and clasped her hands behind her back. "She is a cat, you know."
"Fine," Scourge said, rolling his eyes and making his way towards the stairs. "Let's go check the bedrooms."
Mephiles stayed downstairs while Scourge and Dina checked all the rooms one by one. First were the rooms the Suppression Squad had used as bedrooms. They were all empty with still-made beds like how he had left them. No Ultimate Mercenary-murdering cats there. Next, Scourge ventured that she might be in the master bedroom and pushed open the door gingerly. Nope, nothing.
"Not in there either?" Dina asked when he pulled the door closed behind him.
"Nope." Scourge looked down the hallway. "I guess we can check Infinite's old room."
"Infinite lived here?" Dina asked curiously.
"He stayed here," Scourge corrected her as they walked down the hallway towards the room. "Fiona and I let him stay here with us since he didn't have a ho- well, Fiona let him stay here so she could steal the Phantom Ruby, I guess. It wasn't my plan; I really did just want to help him out."
"That was really nice of you," Dina remarked from behind him as she lagged behind. Scourge opened his mouth but then mentally scolded himself and shut it again. He was about to tell Dina that he only did it as a way to get back at Honest for abandoning Rosy after the mall disaster. However, if he told Dina that, she would just have another reason to hate Honest.
"You do realize that Infinite wasn't a helpless victim, right?" Scourge told her instead. "Infinite was a murderer himself, and the Phantom Ruby was his weapon of choice. He was determined to end Shadow, and he would've also ended anyone standing between them, including Honest. Therefore, Honest was just as much of a victim as Infinite was. It was... it was self defense." Scourge blinked, surprising himself with how much he was having to convince himself here as well.
He was arguing from a point of view that he didn't have himself. Scourge was surprising himself at every turn with how far he was willing to go to defend his friend. In any other situation, having friends and defending them was not very Scourge-like at all, but here, well, it might be. His friend was a- dang it, there had to be another word he could use. Life-snuffer? No, that just sounded lame.
It wasn't very far down the hallway at all. When the duo arrived at the room where Infinite had stayed up until he started (rightfully) hating Scourge's guts, Scourge wasn't surprised to see Honest's tail sticking out of the bedding.
"Honest?" he asked.
Honest's head popped out, and she regarded him with sleepy eyes. "It still smells like him," she explained.
"What?" Scourge asked, his eyes widening. He had heard what she'd said, but he didn't understand it. Dina pushed past him and into the room.
"Honest, are you alright?" she asked, running to the bed. Dina didn't act like someone about to condemn another person for murder as she rushed to the edge of the bed and planted her hands there on the blanket. "Have you been sleeping?"
"Yeah," Honest confessed with a yawn. She took one last sniff of the quilt and wrapped it around her shoulders. "I feel like I can solve any problem if I just sleep on it."
Dina nodded determinedly. "We're gonna help you solve it, Honest. You're not alone in this!"
The fact that she's able to sleep at a time like this proves she doesn't have a guilty conscience, Scourge thought. She still didn't feel an ounce of guilt, but that wasn't a bad thing. It meant that Honest thought she was in the right still. If she truly felt that way, shouldn't they feel that way as well?
But if she didn't feel guilty, why had she been mourning her own victim by smelling his bed of all things?
"Honest," Scourge said.
Honest peered up at him. "Huh?"
"Are you... feeling guilty about killing Infinite?" he asked. Immediately, he started to regret asking that question. That was the question, wasn't it? What if she answered it wrong? How would that affect Dina? Wouldn't that ruin everything? Then it dawned on Scourge that in the time they had been away, Honest had most certainly planned out what her answer would be beforehand.
Without moving her eyes from Scourge's, lest she give Dina the impression that she was unsure, Honest gave her answer. "I labeled Infinite a B-tier villain a while back, and I stand by that claim. However-" Honest increased the strength of her grip on her quilted cape. "He was an S-tier Honesty is the Best Policy! character, and I miss him." She then took the quilt and threw it back over her head. "There, I said it," she said afterwards, her voice muffled.
"S-tier? Honest," Dina said, reaching for the blanket. Honest pulled away. "He tried to kill Shadow. Honest, you saved his life."
"He could've had a redemption arc, a sudden change of heart, anything," Honest protested. "I did the wrong thing. I've had Infinite's theme song for Forces stuck in my head ever since. I can't escape him."
"So you're really not a monster," Scourge muttered unbelievingly.
"Of course not!" Dina retorted. She attempted to climb atop the bed and comfort Honest further. "Hey, it's fine. I forgive you, Scourge forgives you- heck, Infinite probably forgives you, too."
Honest crawled out the other side of the quilt and jumped to the ground. Scourge cringed when he saw how destroyed the bed was. "Hey, you need to make that bed before we leave here," he told her.
Dina hopped off too with a corner of the sheet in one hand. "Come on, Honest. We can make it together."
"Actually," Honest said, looking solemnly from Dina to Scourge. "Can Scourge and I speak privately for a second? You know how to get back to the room with the transporter, right?" she asked Dina.
The hedgehog girl looked disappointed as Honest and Scourge left the room. "Yeah. I'll finish up here and meet you there."
Once outside, Honest led Scourge down the hall a little ways, rounded a corner, and then suddenly Scourge recognized where they were heading. It was the room with the marked up floor and curtain-framed glass doors that the two of them had entered with the Chaotix, Shadow, and Akane forty-six chapters ago while they were hunting for ghosts. The glass doors were still agape as there really wasn't a reason, in Scourge's mind, to close doors which had most of the glass broken out of them anyway. Honest walked out and directly across the balcony to the railing on the other side.
"We're not gonna act cringy and talk about the past again, are we?" Scourge couldn't help but ask as he began to relive the incredible amount of cringe he had felt after their last encounter here.
"No thanks," Honest said, spinning around with a smile. She said it as if Scourge had offered to talk about the past and act cringy. "We can save that for later." Her expression softened. Scourge could imagine that the next thing to come from her lips might be "are you okay?" Instead, however, she said, "When I said Infinite was an S-tier HBP character, I meant it. I didn't realize it until after he was gone, but I threw away a lot of opportunities for enthralling future plots by getting rid of him."
"So you regret-?"
"No," Honest interrupted, frowning. "I'll get creative and find other characters with which to make enthralling plots. It obviously wasn't meant to be. Infinite was distracting me. He's always been distracting me, since {w/Rosy}. His story was supposed to end in {Forces Edition}, but-" Honest's forehead wrinkled in thought. "I can't help but think that Infinite will return."
"'Infinite will return'? Like- Like back from the grave?" Scourge had to admit that thought excited him, even if Infinite still hated his guts and was still going to try to kill Shadow when he returned.
"Not in that way, I mean in the games," Honest explained. "Just the fact that we never saw his fate, and the existence of CyberSpace, and the Void, and... I dunno, it just doesn't feel right. I can't help but think that maybe Sonic Forces was the beginning of a storyline that's still to-be-continued..." Honest shook her head as if clearing away that fog of thoughts. "But don't linger on it too long; that's none of our business. Just know that Infinite may not be dead forever." She looked up at Scourge with a determined face. "He was 'deleted,' remember? Therefore, we can retrieve him from the Recycle Bin if we ever need him back."
Scourge looked at Honest strangely as if she smelled terribly. "You're speaking metaphorically, right?"
Honest yawned before replying. "I mean that I can come up with some way to get him back if we ever need him. Of course I don't mean literally, Scourge. I'm not a necromancer, but I can craft some sort of storyline, a plot twist where Infinite makes a comeback. After all, this is my world, my story. I control the narrative." She chuckled and twirled a strand of hair between her fingers.
Scourge sighed, feeling a mix of confusion and amusement. "You are really something else, Honest."
"Why, thank you," she exclaimed, smirking. She then thrusted herself up off the fancy stone railing and started walking back towards the building. "But enough about that. Back to the present. We still have work to do. I'm going to prove to everyone that I made the right call with Infinite."
"But I thought you admitted you didn't," Scourge said, following her.
"It was the right call. Everything will work out, and that's all that matters."