Click, click, click.
Hearts' mouse hand was cramping.
Lunch was proving to be rather boring as the art club spent it just drawing in an art program on her school-issued laptop. Of course, the art club was only Hearts today. She suspected that Infinite might've been sick yesterday; that was why he hadn't come. However, to be sick two days in a row, it had to be something more serious. Maybe he had been injured and had to spend some time at home recovering?
Eventually Hearts got tired of staring at her ugly art and stood up from the table. Maybe... Maybe Infinite wasn't sick or injured. Maybe he was just avoiding her. Hearts racked her mind for any sort of interaction they might have had that could've caused a rift to form between them.
Maybe it was the club name; maybe he didn't like it. Or, or, maybe she had been too forceful when getting him to collect things for her at the Ruined Mall. She could have easily gone and retrieved those things herself, but she had wanted to test Infinite's loyalty. Maybe she'd gone too far.
She might find him in the cafeteria, but... Hearts didn't really want to apologize to him. He was just one of thousands. She could afford to lose him. She sat back down and scooted back up to the table, the legs of the wooden chair screeching across the tile floor. Hearts then got to work trying to find some sort of game site that wasn't blocked by the school.
---
Scourge very gingerly closed the door behind him and was then consequently scared out of his wits by a cheerful "Hi!" resounding from behind him.
"H-H-Hi!" he responded before he knew who it was, spinning around.
It was Rosy. She was standing there with a binder stuffed full of loose paper under one arm and smiling brightly. "I've gotta put this binder in my locker first, but then do you want to walk to lunch together?"
"Lunch?" Scourge echoed. Well, that was where he had intended to go as that was where Honest was. "Sure," he agreed, nodding. He held out a hand. "Lead the way."
"Okay!" She started to walk off but then stopped suddenly and looked up at him with worry shining like a weak light in her green eyes. "Do you mind if I hold your hand?"
Scourge looked at her gloved hand as if she were holding a poisonous snake and offering to let him pet it. "No, um, go ahead." He held out his hand, and Rosy took it and started pulling him down the hallway.
Once at the cafeteria, Rosy led him to an empty table. "Uh, Rosy," Scourge said. Unable to tap her on the shoulder due to having to hold his tray with both hands, the moss-colored monarch settled for bumping her with his plastic tray. "Hey, I was going to sit at the table with Honest and the others. You wanna come sit with me there?"
"Sure," Rosy responded, looking very unsure. Scourge blinked. Was she nervous because she was afraid she wouldn't be accepted? That couldn't be it because she had sat there in the past, when she was considering joining the Honesty club and when Honest was considering letting her help with the Play.
"What's wrong?" Scourge asked her. Rosy was avoiding looking at him and turned away as she spoke.
"It's nothing. We can sit with the others if you'd like." Suddenly, Scourge had an idea as to why she was acting this way.
"You want us to be alone?" Scourge asked. Rosy turned around. If this was the Comics, she might've had obvious sweat drops running down her face. "That's fine with me, if that's what you want."
"No," Rosy said, thrusting her lunch tray between them. "That wouldn't be smart... or healthy. For me, so-" She started walking over towards the table where Scourge's friends were. "Let's go sit with the others."
Scourge tilted his head in confusion as he followed her. It wouldn't be smart or healthy for Rosy for them to be alone? She probably wasn't wrong, but that didn't mean that it wasn't sad. Scourge guessed the word to describe how he felt was "sympathetic". He wished Rosy didn't have to go through this. He wished it didn't have to be this way.
But it's my fault, Scourge thought, frowning even though Honest looked up as they approached with a blindingly bright smile. I deserve much worse than just feeling bad.
"Dina's making up an assignment for Miss Vanilla," Honest explained as she pulled out the metal and plastic chair beside her. "So one of you can sit in her spot."
There was another empty chair across from Honest. Scourge could remember sitting there on multiple occasions in the past. He looked at the chair made vacant by Dina's absence. "Well, I usually sit here, so I guess I'll sit-"
"I'll sit here," Rosy interjected, jumping into the seat beside Honest with little delay. Honest looked uncomfortable almost instantly, turning the other way and drumming her fingers on the table in an effort to distract herself. Was it because she sensed why Rosy had done that? The reason Scourge asked that was because he really had no idea himself.
"Okay then," Scourge said, rolling his eyes. He sort of hoped others at the table had noticed. He pulled out the other chair and sat down with a huff. He set down his tray and distracted himself by stuffing a huge mound of mashed potatoes in his mouth. However, Scourge couldn't help but feel the piercing stare of Shadow even as he chewed.
Scourge looked up. Shadow looked worried, and he soon revealed why. "Honest?" Honest looked up from where she had been staring at the surface of the table. "What's going on with Scourge and Rosy? Are you trying to help them again?"
"You say that like you're afraid of the answer," Honest remarked, her cat smile somehow strengthening. She looked at Scourge. "Don't worry, this isn't {w/Rosy} Volume 2; this is still {Comic Edition}. I'm not opening that same can of worms again." The blonde cat absentmindedly unscrewed the lid to her water bottle. "I'm opening a can of a different brand of worms."
Shadow's eyes were red voids. "Can you translate, please? Into a language the rest of us can understand?"
Honest frowned and stared at Scourge who blinked uncomprehendingly. "I refuse. I'm not going to air Rosy and Scourge's business like that. I have integrity."
"Sure you do," Shadow replied, rolling his eyes. Scourge shot him a surprised look. He hoped that was sarcasm, but maybe it was ridiculous to think that the Ultimate Lifeform would be able to forget everything so quickly.
Honest's eyes widened and she looked over Scourge's head. "Oh! Look who's here. Hey, Hearts."
Hearts looked peeved as she settled her hands on the table in the gap between Scourge and Rosy and glared harshly at her Mobian equivalent. Then again, she always seemed to look that way whenever Scourge saw her, so it didn't, at least not right away, raise any alarms in his mind.
"Where is he?" Hearts asked with narrowed yellow eyes. When everyone at the table just sort of stared at her, she gritted her teeth. "You know who I'm talking about! Where's Infinite?"
"How do you know I have anything to do with it?" Honest asked, narrowing her violet eyes right back. "I mean, I do, but how did you know?"
"Are you really so stupid? Principal Mephiles told me that he can see everything that happens in this school. He told me that, by doing that, he knows that whatever happened to Infinite was your doing." She looked very triumphant after saying that, resting her fists on her hips and turning her nose up towards the ceiling in uninhibited exultation.
"If Mephiles really does see everything, then he knows exactly what happened to Infinite, not just that I was involved with it." Hearts visibly deflated. Honest tilted her head calmly and continued. "He only told you half the story so that you would go out and seek your own answers."
"Like in '06 when he tried to use Silver," Shadow pointed out evenly.
"So Mephiles is using me?" Hearts asked, her eyes rounding in panic as her confident pose slid away like melting ice sliding off an angled surface.
"No," Honest answered, swallowing a swig of the root beer flavored water in her water bottle. Everyone at the table turned to look at her. "I mean, yeah, probably, but not in this situation. That's just how Mephiles operates generally. He just didn't want to be the one to give you the news." Honest cleared her throat and regarded Hearts seriously. "Infinite is dead, Hearts, and I am the one who vanquished him."
Hearts had arrived at the table on a mission to gain information as to the whereabouts of her clubmate demanding answers with a stern voice and clenched fists. Now her voice trembled and her eyes became despairing yellow swirls. "No, no! I won't believe it."
"What's so hard to believe?" Honest asked, actually confused.
"He has been a thorn in our sides for years, Hearts. It was just a matter of time until someone got fed up with him and put an end to it," Scourge explained, quick to defend her (because Chaos knows she was unable to defend herself properly without making things worse.)
Hearts didn't seem to hear him. She just wordlessly dragged a chair to the table and sat in it. She turned to Honest with a distraught look on her face. "What about my club, Honest? I needed that club to be a success, but without any members..."
Scourge tilted his head quizzically. "What do you mean? Do you really need a way to waste time that badly?"
Hearts looked absolutely livid for a second as she glanced at him, but it was so fast that Scourge couldn't be too sure he hadn't imagined the whole thing. "Honest, I know you have a club. It's called the Honesty Club, isn't it? I have a proposal if you'll just let me join it."
Honest's first reaction was to smile, but she quickly covered her mouth with a hand and began to sound uncertain. "Oh, I dunno... I'm not sure that we should be accepting too many new members..."
Shadow's ears folded back like an angry cat as he glared at Honest from across the table. Scourge noticed him and tilted his head to an even steeper angle.
"Please, Honest. It's okay; I don't have to be a full member. I can- I can vacuum the club room, operate the printer, fetch drinks from the vending machine-"
Honest stopped her double from another dimension by resting her hands on her shoulders as a gesture of support. "I'd be honored to have you as a member of my club." She smiled a warm cat smile. "I think I have a counter-proposal that you will like far better."
The only person at the table that didn't look the least bit worried about where this was heading was Rosy, who was staring off into space with her head in her hands.
After lunch, Scourge left the cafeteria with the others. They all had different classes, besides Scourge and Honest, but instead Scourge found himself falling into step beside Hearts.
"Rough lunch, right?" Scourge said, nervous that he was going to somehow make it worse.
Hearts didn't even glance at him. "Understatement of the century," she mumbled.
"Look, about Infinite..."
"What about him?" Hearts asked, oddly calm after looking so distressed just moments earlier.
Scourge didn't know it, but Honest had heard and dropped back to jump into their conversation.
"Don't you want to know how he died?" she asked. Thankfully, she didn't sound too cheerful when she said that.
"I guess..." Hearts told her. "Oh, but spare the most gory details if you can," she added at the last second.
"It wasn't gory. It was... clean," Honest said. Maybe she hoped that would reassure her. "He didn't suffer... at least I think he didn't. I just... neutralized him. He was too dangerous to be left alive."
Scourge felt a chill creep down his spine. He knew Honest thought she was helping, but "neutralized" sounded unsettlingly clinical. He couldn't imagine what it must be like for Hearts to lose her only clubmate and friend to something as irreversible as death. Scourge wasn't sure what Hearts needed to hear right now, but it probably wasn't that.
"I told you that he was trying to kill Shadow, right? Well, that's not all he was doing. You couldn't possibly have known," Scourge offered. He noticed that Hearts was still looking away and her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. "It's okay to be upset."
"Upset?" Hearts scoffed. "Why would I be upset? We weren't exactly chums, me and Infinite. If he was half the problem you claimed he was, I'm not mad at Honest for getting rid of him. Someone had to do it."
If only the others hadn't been so tough to convince of that. Then again, Hearts was a Moebian.
Hearts shrugged. "I'm not celebrating, okay? But I'm not going to mourn him either." She seemed like she wanted to say something else, but she stopped herself and crossed her arms.
Honest sighed pleasantly. "Such a breath of fresh air, eh Scourge?"
"I guess," the green king mumbled. He still couldn't help but wonder why Honest and Hearts were on the same page when it came to this. It wasn't right for both versions of Honest to agree with each other. The day that Sonic and Scourge agreed would be the day the whole multiverse folded in on itself and erupted in flames.
"Here, we should be getting to Ms. Vanilla's now," Scourge said all of a sudden, wanting to get out of there. He veered off to the right and was thankful when Honest followed him.
Scourge was aware of the pointed glare coming from Rosy as they left. Rosy wanted something from him, but Chaos knew what. Well, at first glance, one might think it was what Rosy usually wanted from him: his life. However, it was clear whatever Rosy wanted now was a want of the non-violent blushing little girl Rosy, not of the you-ruined-my-life-therefore-your-own-life-is-forfeit Rosy.
Maybe he should figure out what it was before both versions of Rosy became one and the same.
---
I'm trying to write a Warrior cats fanfiction right now, and it's really hard. I've only written the first chapter so far, but you can read it here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/52366960
This story also brings its own challenges of course, but nothing is harder than writing a new story. Especially one that doesn't have a prequel. Starting this story was somewhat difficult because I was trying out writing Scourge's POV for one of the first ever times, and I had to introduce some new characters and come up with the plot for the first arc, but I had like 7 or so other stories in the same universe leading up to that point. For my Warriors story, I'm starting from absolute scratch, coming up with characters as I go. Even at the beginning of HBP, I didn't have to completely make the Sonic characters from scratch because they already existed (albeit in multiple different universes but still).
Anyway, I just wanted to give an update on the situation here at Honest Co and uh... see you in the next chapter! 👋