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After traumatizing experiences occur, it is always important to take some time to unwind and reflect. At least that was what Shadow thought. Honest had different plans for their troop. Glancing over the actors, it was pretty obvious what they all had in common. Well, except for Sonic. They were all members of the Honesty club. Therefore, Honest had decided that a club meeting was just what they needed to give them the valuable planning time she thought was important.
Honest walked silently through the lines, glancing at each of the choices as she passed. The sudden appearance of a black blur heading her way made Honest stop in her tracks and look towards that blur. Shadow was carrying a small, red, plastic bag which he then offered to her once he had slowed down. The cat's lilac eyes then lit up, and she gasped. "That's perfect thinking food!"
Honest sat at the- well, there really wasn't a "head" of the table seeing as though it was a round table, but she was sitting in the innermost chair. The blond cat who frequently referred to herself as "empress" of the club rather than "president" was eating her bag of cookies at lightning speed as she waited for everyone to get there. Shadow had spent his very last ring on that bag of cookies, but it did seem to him as if it were well-spent seeing as though she seemed to be just as delighted by them as he had hoped. However, Shadow had to make sure to shield his eyes so that none of the stray crumbs put one of them out.
Rosy the Rascal sat on the other side of Honest, her head bowed in silence. For some reason, Honest had Fiona go and retrieve her. Maybe Honest was already forming a plan that involved people on the outside? Or maybe she was just trying to be nice to her by including her.
On the other side of Shadow sat Rouge. Shadow had tried to tell her that this matter did not involve her, but she just wouldn't listen. Always spying. She was just way too nosy.
Sonic was sitting on the other side of Rouge. Mephiles had thought of everything. He had released Sonic from the cage onstage with a pair of ankle cuffs, preventing his escape via running. His arms were stretched across the table and his chin was resting on the cool surface.
Next to him was Amy who had him further trapped, squeezing the life out of him in order to calm herself. No wonder he looked so glum. Oh, yeah. It could also be the fact that he was literally a prisoner being let out for a thirty minute lunchbreak.
Beside the pink menace was an empty seat, and on the other side sat Fiona. Suddenly, the last person they had been waiting for came and sat in the empty seat. He locked his icy blue eyes on his food. Shadow couldn't help but notice he kept stealing paranoid glances over at Rosy. Immediately, Honest voiced Shadow's thoughts.
"Hey, Scourge? What's wrong with you?"
"Oh... I was just wondering why Rosy's here. What does she have to do with our predicament?" Scourge asked.
Honest suddenly began to look more thoughtful as she rested her elbows on the table and her head in her palms. "Well, you see, it all started with a joke made by Shadow and I on our way to the cafe one afternoon." Honest turned to Shadow excitedly, her hands still firmly grasping her face. "Do you remember?"
Shadow suddenly faltered, searching through his mind for what she could possibly be talking about. When all he did was continue to scratch his head, Honest sighed loudly. "Chapter 20 of {Cafe Edition}. 'Attack on the Café Part Two'," she explained. "Shadow and I were walking to the cafe together when I brought up the question: 'Who is more destructive: Rosy or Mephiles?'. We both decided that it would be too dangerous to let them battle it out."
Shadow's eyes then went very wide. "You're going to pit them against each other? But- but-" He turned white. "Destruction." Shadow knew that there must be a word for someone who frequently pitted others against each other for their own enjoyment, but he just couldn't for the life of him think of one.
"No, actually. I was just thinking having her attend our performance might strike some fear into him, you know?"
She said it sweetly with eyes like upward-facing carrots, but Honest was talking about scare tactics, was she not?
"You're relying on... mortal fear in order to overtake a demon?" Fiona asked, double-checking.
"I'm just setting the stage," Honest explained. "When you think about it, we can do this however we want." She was looking at everyone one-at-a-time as she said this, "We can keep pushing, adding things to the play as we see fit. We can't change the plot or characters or set, but don't you think the audience could serve as a valuable weapon?"
Scourge was about to say something just because he felt pressured to, but Rouge interrupted him. "Oh! Then you wouldn't have any problem with me sneaking around the set during the performance, would you?"
"Of course not," Honest replied cheerily. "Though, you would have to be careful not to get caught by Infinite. Today he was setting up the stage lighting and spotlights."
Rouge looked pretty sure of herself as she said, "'Not get caught'? That's definitely something I can do!"
Shadow rolled his eyes, trying to be as obvious as possible.
"So you just want me to sit there in the front row and look intimidating?" Rosy asked. Pretty much everybody at the table jumped as a reaction to her statement. She hadn't said a word this whole time, so once she had, it was startling.
"I'm not sure how intimidating I can look..."
Scourge went white and planted his face on the table in front of him. "I'm sure when you do, you'll even surprise yourself," he said, his voice muffled a bit but still somewhat comprehensible.
Flash!
Honest blinked, having been blinded for a moment by the flash of light emitted by Sonic's cellphone just then. Rosy started rubbing her eyes. Said blue pineapple then began typing furiously with the cellular device's on-screen keyboard.
"Another post for my FriendSpace page! 'That moment when your friend is the school Yandere and doesn't know it'. Hashtag relatable!"
"I don't think that's too relatable," Scourge said.
Honest's ears perked up. "Oh! Don't you know? Sonic puts '#Relatable' on all of his posts on FriendSpace. Some say it's because he is the most realistic character right now, but others say it's because he-"
"Assumes he's normal. In actuality, he's the farthest from that description." It was Shadow who finished her explanation.
Suddenly, Sonic dropped his phone and grasped his own cheeks dramatically, all sorts of little cutesy marks and clipart flying out of his head and beginning to rotate in the air around him. "Did Shadster just call me special?"
"That's one way of putting it," the dark-colored hedgy stated plainly.
Rouge smiled from where she was sitting between the two of them. "That was sweet of you to say, Shadow."
"That's not the meaning I was going for and you know it," Shadow said.
"Um, hey," Fiona spoke, making the others turn their heads in her direction. "Is that our plan? Hide behind a psychopath and wait for salvation?"
"Well, that's the point of me calling this meeting. But don't rush things. This is one of the last breaks you'll be getting for a while. Trust me, several chapters from now you're going to be begging for another chapter like this to collect your thoughts," Honest told her, closing her eyes and pointing her nose in the air. Honest felt the same pairs of eyes that had been on Fiona on her instead now. "Well, you less than the others," the feline club leader tacked on afterwards, scratching her head.
Honest continued to scratch her head even as the others' attention was drawn to the light grey hedgehog pulling up a chair to the table to sit with them. Silver pulled the chair between Sonic and Rouge and took a seat. "Hey, guys," he said, waving his right hand as if to say "hey, guys" to a cameraman sitting across from him. However, the person sitting across from him wasn't holding a camera. She was holding a fork.
"Why'd you take so long?" Honest asked. The person sitting across from Silver, Fiona the Fox, licked sweet and sour sauce off of that fork.
"I had something to do," the time traveling hedgy answered, tilting his head to the side.
"That's pretty sus," Honest said, narrowing her eyes and regarding him just as suspiciously as Silver had been acting.
"W-What am I being accused of?" the accused asked.
"Shadow, accuse Silver. I don't want to accuse him and risk appearing sus myself."
"And yet you're okay with me taking the fall?!" Shadow asked to clear up what her intentions were.
"So you will agree with me if I accuse him of what we're thinking?"
"Uh, maybe?" Shadow was scratching his head now, the universal sign of confusion.
"You're working for Mephiles!" Honest said with the most serious expression she could muster, pointing directly at him.
"What?!" the silver fluffball exclaimed, putting a hand to his chest as if he had been shot.
"Honest!" Amy exclaimed afterwards, looking up from where she had been burying her face in Sonic's arm. "You can't just attack an adorable, white fluffball like Silver without any sort of warning!"
"'Any sort of warning'?" Honest echoed as a question. She tilted her head. "You mean to tell me talking back-and-forth with Shadow about making an accusation wasn't warning enough?"
When Amy didn't answer right away, Honest turned back to Silver. "Are you or are you not? Answer!"
"I- I can't tell you," Silver said, shaking in fear.
Honest "pft"ed. "We already know you are," she told him, rolling her eyes. "You literally carried out his orders in front of all of us." The blond cat crossed her arms and regarded him sternly. Silver was quietly thinking how to respond.
Honest's eyes popped back to their normal width. "We already know you are, so can we know why?" she asked sweetly in an over-the-top way. The number of sweat droplets forming on the time-travelling hedgy's forehead increased dramatically.
"Uh... I'm just here to eat my lunch," Silver explained. Well, actually, that wasn't explaining anything.
"Where's that bag with all our scripts?" Scourge asked, noticing it wasn't with him anymore.
"Oh, uh, Mephy took it," Silver answered quietly, feeling somewhat relieved now that someone was asking questions he actually had the required clearance to answer.
"I notice that the accused says 'uh' a lot when they're lying," Honest commented.
"Hey, can we lay off the accusing for a while?" It was Shadow who said this, sounding angry. "Can't you see he's not ready to talk about it yet?"
Honest smiled pleasantly like that had been what she was waiting for. On the other hand, Scourge blurted out, "You're in on it, too, aren't you!"
Shadow stared at him. Scourge's fur bristled. "Shadow's always had some sort of grudge on Sonic. I bet him, Silver, and Mephiles are working together to take him down."
"I'm not! But-" Shadow raised a hand in front of his face and observed his useless fingers. "Sonic and I have had our differences, but-"
"Scourge, is there something you would like to tell us?" Honest was smiling impishly at him, which made Scourge do a double-take.
Was there something he wanted to share with them? What the heck was she talking about?
"That... Shadow is the third imposter?" Scourge offered.
"Oh. I thought it was something more along the lines of 'my number one distinguishing characteristic is that I jump to conclusions'. 'Cause it's painfully obvious that's what you're doing. We've gotta take this seriously. This is life or death, remember. And Shadow's terrified. You saw him back at the theater."
Oh, so she's teasing me. Making me think something's going on.
"You aren't suspecting Scourge of being a traitor, are you?" Fiona asked, crossing her arms and looking rather uncomfortable across from them.
It was hard for Honest to tell if Fiona was concerned herself that Scourge may be a traitor or if she legit thought he was one.
Before anything else could be said, the person whom they had been plotting to take down all this time (er, most of the time. They had gotten quite a bit off-topic there at the end) squished in between the person whom they had been accusing of being their accomplice this whole time and Sonic. He set his tray full of food on the table. Food he couldn't eat due to lacking a mouth.
"I do hope you guys haven't been plotting to betray me all this time that you should be spending eating. Being hungry might impact your acting."
"We haven't," Amy said, letting go of Sonic and peering frightfully around him at the intruder.
"Okay, then why is this green Sonic sweating bullets over here?" the demon asked, gesturing across the table at the viridian king.
Honest had originally decided to stay silent so that the others could try their hand at conversing with the intruder, but now it seemed as though if Honest didn't say anything, the conversation would go nowhere.
"We are plotting to betray you, what's wrong with that? Isn't that a natural response? We're just obeying nature."
Mephiles just stared at her weirdly as if simply choosing not to respond to that. Instead he shoved all of the food on his tray onto Silver's. The silver time-traveller regarded the food he received without asking with a sad expression.
"M-Mephiles, don't just dump your food onto Silver's tray because you don't want it," Shadow said, looking more troubled than what may have been reasonable.
"Oh my, you seem to be mistaken. I have done nothing of the sort."
"But your chicken..." Shadow told him despondently. Silver suddenly perked up.
"I-It's not like that! I love chicken, and Mephiles is always willing to give it to me. So he didn't do anything wrong." He then smiled as if someone might buy that.
Meanwhile, Shadow was looking down at Mephiles's now empty tray as if it was the one who had told him something that was obviously a lie. "Silver, he's just making it look like an act of goodwill." He then looked up at the owner of the tray. "You know, if you didn't want your food, you shouldn't have gotten any. I don't want Silver developing unhealthy eating habits because of you."
"What's wrong with having particular tastes?" the demonic hedgy asked, folding his arms on the table.
"Nothing, except lying about it. You can't taste."
"I don't need the nutrients, and Silver's a growing boy."
"Well, but eating too much-"
"Silver, are you not thankful?" Mephiles asked, turning to said hedgehog.
The silver pineapple's ears were pointing straight up. "Oh, no, I am very thankful! Thank you, Mephiles." He then stuffed a giant chunk of chicken into his mouth with his fork.
Hearing that, Shadow looked deflated and couldn't respond.
"Is that all from you then?"
You could tell the Ultimate Lifeform was trying desperately to find the words to argue his point further. However, what came out was a hardly intelligible string of "er"s and "um"s.
"Mhm. As always, not one to fare well in a battle of words. I worry for your future."
Honest seemed to be wistfully thinking about something as the two argued. Rosy was attempting to stick a straw in her milk with little luck so far. Scourge was still sweating as Mephiles had pointed out earlier, and Fiona was staring intently at the demon across from her as if trying to figure out what he was exactly. Rouge, despite sitting next to the embodiment of darkness himself, seemed to be completely unperturbed, observing the water in her bottle and sloshing it around with a curious expression. Amy and Sonic both stared on in astonishment.
"L-Like I want someone like you to worry for me..." Shadow said nervously, staring down at the table.
"Oh my," Mephiles exclaimed, his eyes going wide with false concern. "And here I am showing concern for my dearest future partner... He doesn't appreciate me in the slightest!"
"Why- no- How could I?!"
The ability to scare Shadow has been a superpower of Mephy's for a long time (since '06 really), but lately, he seemed to really be using it to his advantage. Then again, it could always just be to entertain himself because wasn't entertainment always a big concern for demons or am I just making that up? Was the Play just for his entertainment as well? Or was he really trying to accomplish something with it?
As Honest contemplated these things, another thought came to her head. Does Shadow think Silver's choosing Mephiles over him?
Shadow jumped as Honest seized possession of his arm and whispered to him. "Hey, everyone's afraid of Mephiles. If he weren't here, Silver wouldn't be saying those things."
Mephiles was staring at them with what looked like a nervous expression. Honest noticed it immediately. "You... heard?"
"Of course. I have the ears of the Ultimate Lifeform after all."
"Then what's the reason for the face you're making?" Shadow asked. Honest was surprised. They were on the same page.
"Your statement was wrong, is all," he replied, losing the expression immediately as if it were a mistake that it was there to begin with. "My presence doesn't affect the actions of anyone here. At least, my being frightening has no effect." The embodiment of the absence of light glanced over at the dorky time-traveller beside him briefly before turning his face downwards to stare at his empty tray.
It seemed as though everyone in the cafeteria at that moment grew quiet in anticipation for the bell. Then it rang. Of course that wasn't what had happened, but that's what it seemed like. Much like how it was impossible for Mephiles to feel, but that was what it had felt like he had done, right? Anyway, everyone went back to the theater. The actors all had to rehearse for Wednesday, or else something bad might happen to everybody's favorite blue weirdo.182Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjHwJ1iOKLc
