Honesty is the Best Policy! {w/Rosy}

Chapter 14: Spying and Conspiracies

Just as a heads up, this chapter is very short. I was thinking about tacking it on as the first part to the next chapter, but then I would have to renumber all the chapters coming after it, and... I'm lazy. 

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It was Friday, January 11, and Shadow found Honest the Cat on a bench during lunch with a pair of binoculars. "May I ask what you're doing?"

"Oh! Shadow!" She pulled the binoculars from her face and smiled. "I'm observing Rosy from a distance so that I can discover something new about her behavior."

"That's what I thought you were doing," he said, crossing his arms and looking where she was looking. "Is this girls' softball?" he inquired.

"Mmhm," Honest confirmed. "Rosy plays softball. I thought you knew that."

Shadow sighed. "Does she have manic episodes during practice?"

"I haven't observed anything like that yet," she told him. "I'm more worried about Sticks."
"Didn't you know? Baseball was designed by the government to distract people from what really matters," Sticks was saying. She was up to bat.
"And what is that?" asked Amy, annoyed. She was the pitcher.
"Aliens are among our leaders!" the badger shouted, waving her arms. Rosy ducked when the bat swung her way, narrowly missing her head. "You ever notice how the president didn't smile once during ShtH?"

"That's because there was a grave disaster occurring at that time," Amy pointed out. "Also, what's 'sh tuh huh'?"

"Oh, did I tell you? Earlier I got in trouble for listening to music in study hall. Obviously, I'm not allowed to chill while I study," Honest said, her eyes closed.
"Wait, isn't that what you're expected to do when you study?" Shadow asked, a question mark hovering in the air beside his head.

Honest just shrugged and began to watch Rosy again. It was her turn to bat, and she stepped up to the plate. The pink hedgehog watched the ball intently as it left Amy's hand. It hit Rosy's bat and shot at an arc across the large expanse of grass in front of her.

"Go, Rosy! You've got this!" Honest shouted. Rosy was distracted by this unexpected voice and turned around. No one went after her with the ball to try to get her out. Instead, a blurred figure was standing in the far corner of the backfield and caught it, Rosy being instantly out instead.

Shadow's gaze quickly shot to Honest. She turned away from her binoculars and lowered the fist she had been pumping. "What? I'm just showing my support!"

After practice had come to an end, Rosy confronted her. However, she looked to Shadow first. "Why are you spying on our practice game?"
He pointed at Honest calmly. "Don't look at me. Look at the one with the binoculars."
And so she did look at the one with the binoculars-- Honest. "Artistic research!" She held up her hands.
Shadow looked at her sideways. "I thought you said you were noting her behavior."
Honest faltered for a moment. "No, uh, well, yes, the behavior is a big part in drawing a character, too."
Rosy looked sideways at her as well. "You're drawing me? Can I see something you've drawn?"
Honest looked at Shadow as if he knew the amount of trouble she was in, too, but he didn't. "I haven't actually drawn you yet. I'm just studying you first."
"Oh, okay," Rosy said, nodding. "Show me once you do!" She then ran off.

After a while of sitting there and recovering after that successful encounter with the namesake of this story, Honest's ears perked up as Shadow began talking.

"You know, it's not hard to expect such calm behavior from Rosy after seeing her in CD and Mania," he noted.
"But that's not her, that's Amy," Honest corrected him. Then it was as if an idea just hit her.
"Actually, if Rosy's immediate behavior when calm is to be normal, she's most likely shy around Scourge. And if she's shy around him... doesn't that mean that Amy would be shy, too, around Sonic when she's... being normal?"
Shadow's left ear turned to the side. "What would cause Amy to be normal? Or... not to be normal?"
Honest smiled then laughed. "I don't know! That's just me thinking logically about a non-logical concept. I mean parallel universes? It's not really an 'exact science' is it?"

"But it works as intended," Shadow pointed out.

"Who intended it to work a certain way? We can't be sure that Penders thought that far ahead when he invented 'evil Sonic'." Shadow looked down at the grass. It was cold and windy, but the sun was shining on them where they were sitting, and it was actually kind of warm.
"Do you have anything you want to study together?" he asked, looking back up.
"The only thing I know how to study for is spelling tests, but we don't have those anymore, so I wing everything. And by 'wing' I mean show up and do better than you were expected to do if you had studied," Honest told him. She leaned back on the bench's warm, wooden back and yawned, stretching her arms upward toward the heavens. "I never study in study hall. I don't see how anyone can. Of course, I said I was studying earlier, but that's what teachers are sure you're doing, so you might as well be. Instead, I was brainstorming ideas for song lyrics."

"What are you going to do with them?" Shadow asked, staring upwards at the clear, blue sky.

"If I can, I'm going to try to make my first original song," she said. Then she sighed. "But of course I never will."

He nodded. "I see." He then propelled himself upwards and off of the bench. His metal shoes went crunch in the freshly mowed grass. "We need to start heading home. I want to catch up on my sleep before the weekend."

Honest nodded and stood up from the bench as well. Then, they both started walking back towards the school building.