Honesty is the Best Policy {Comic Edition}

Chapter 49: Sonic Holmes

Getting close to Chapter 50!! This chapter is longer, you'll notice, than most of the chapters in this story so far, and this is totally intentional. This is the chapter length I would like to strive for in this story going forward. I personally LOVE longer chapters in stories and books, so I'm going to assume others do as well. Even if others didn't, I wouldn't really care, though. I've gotta think about future Honest too, ya know! One of these days I'll be older and will want to go back and enjoy the things I've forgotten about. At least that's what I'm betting on. You know, in the future when I've been writing {Intergalactic Edition} or whatever for 80 chapters and want to go back and read how it all began! XD Anyways, enjoy!
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It didn't take long until Amy noticed the absence of her only recently discovered little sister at school that day. And, as she wondered about what could've happened to her, everything started connecting.
Last Friday, as Rosy helped Amy clean out her locker, they were interrupted by Sonic's terrible twin from another world, Scourge. He somehow convinced Rosy to help him clean his home and then lured her away to her doom. Something had happened to Rosy, and it was all Amy's fault. If only she hadn't been so terrified, if only she were a better sister, if only she had told someone… Sonic.
Amy just turned in a random direction and sprinted down the hallway, tears threatening to come to her eyes at any moment. As she was nearing a bend, none other than Sonic the Hedgehog walked out, head turning and eyes widening at the sight of his self-proclaimed girlfriend appearing with such a distraught appearance. "A-Amy?"
"Sonic!" she exclaimed. Although she had been sprinting towards him at top speed, as soon as they connected, Amy just sort of sank into him, the tears pouring out as she buried her face in his chest. "Rosy! Scourge has her! She's gone and it's all my fault! It's all my fault…" Her voice melted away into a string of sobs.
Sonic didn’t know what to say as he just stared at the white brick wall opposite with his mouth agape. Eventually he settled on smiling awkwardly and patting the top of her head reassuringly. "Hey, it's gonna be fine, just- why do you think Scourge is behind her disappearance?"
Amy separated from him and stared him down with a look of fury. "It can only be Scourge. Yesterday he forced Rosy to come help him clean, and she's been missing ever since. And, guess who else is missing? Huh? Scourge? It can't be a coincidence."
Sonic crossed his arms and squinted at her. "Scourge is terrified by Rosy. Are you sure Rosy isn't the one who has him?"
Amy thought about that for a second. "I mean, maybe… But where would she take him?" Sonic just shrugged. "You aren't gonna help me look for them?"
Sonic shrugged again. "I don't know where to look."
"Well, who would know?"
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"Manic."
Said hedgehog with the doofiest haircut imaginable looked up from the assignment he was working on when Sonic firmly planted his palms across from him on the picnic table with an audible thump. "What's up?"
"Your boyfriend…" His brother's emerald green ears perked up. "Where is he today?"
Manic glanced down at his phone which was lying face down on the table in front of him, the surface of its glossy case reflecting the light of the freshly risen sun filtering through the tightly woven branches of a dead bush several feet away.
“Scourge texted me Saturday saying he had business in No Zone, and this morning, he texted me saying he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow,” Manic told him, sounding pretty nonchalant. Apparently, he wasn’t too worried.
Sonic squinted at him. “He’s in No Zone for three days? What could he possibly be doing that takes that long?”
“Heck if I know,” Manic replied, shrugging with just his shoulders. He tapped the end of his pencil against the side of the activity book he was working out of. “I asked him if it was anything bad, and he told me it was the opposite, so I guess it’s something good.”
“Pff, Scourge doing something good? That doesn’t sound like him at all,” Amy commented, laughing nervously. She leaned on one foot and gripped the edge of the picnic table with one hand to support herself. She then turned to Manic with a deadly serious expression. “What nefarious thing is Scourge planning, Manic? Kidnapping a poor baby like Rosy? Whisking her away to another dimension without a moment’s notice?” Manic began to sweat and shake all over as Amy’s hammer appeared out of thin air in her outstretched hand. She held it beneath Manic’s chin as if it were a sharpened blade. “Manic, if something has happened to Rosy, and we find that you knew more than you’re telling us, so help me-”
“Woah, woah, woah! Amy, calm down!” Sonic shoved her hammer away from Manic’s head and attempted to stand between them. “I think Manic’s telling us the truth, Ames. If he knew anything about Rosy, he’d tell us.”
Steam puffed from the pink hedgehog’s cranium. “Is he really telling the truth about Scourge being up to something good, though? That’s absurd.”
Sonic smiled, though fear was still painfully evident in his overall body language as he was afraid Amy might aim that thing at him next. “Is it really that absurd? Eggman ends up helping us at the end of most games, even if it is only temporary. Perhaps that’s what this is, too.”
They both were still overlooking the fact that Scourge has been going to school with them for years and hasn’t done anything remotely threatening in all that time, but whatever.
“OK, then why would he be in No Zone? You don’t think he’s there to… I dunno, steal something? Or travel to some other dimension and wreck it?” Amy asked, crossing her arms, her hammer disappearing in a puff of smoke before it could fall to the ground.
Sonic hesitated before answering to think deeply about what could possibly be going on here. “Maybe Z called him and Rosy up there to discuss something with them, I dunno…”
“Z?”
“Zonic,” Sonic answered, looking somewhere off into the distance.
“Oh…”
Manic hadn’t looked up at them the entire time, instead keeping his nose stuffed between the pages of his workbook. Sonic tapped the surface of the plastisol-coated metal picnic table in front of him, disrupting his bookish brother’s rhombus-ridden reverie.
“Hey,” Sonic said. Manic narrowed his eyes at him. “You’ll update us if he tells you anything new, right?”
“Sure,” Manic said, looking back down at his book afterwards. Sonic rolled his eyes and turned away.
Once Sonic and Amy were well away from the table, Sonic turned around and regarded his fuchsia rose worshiper quite seriously. "I was in No Zone too, Saturday."
Amy looked confused. "You didn't see him there?"
"Well, No Zone's a dimension, Amy. It's hard to just bump into someone you know unless you just so happen to be going to the same place. Like No Zone HQ. If Z really did call Scourge and Rosy there to meet with him, I bet you that's where he was." Sonic appeared rather enthusiastic about that finding.
"What were you doing there, Sonic?" Sonic's triumphant smirk fell away.
"I was going to see a destruction derby. You know, it's this thing where there are a bunch of guys in cars, and they run into each other repeatedly until all the cars break down and are unable to move. Then, whoever's left over is the winner."
"You went by yourself? You should've brought me along! I love that sort of stuff!" Amy clasped her hands together and spun 360 degrees on her heel.
"You do?" Sonic asked, genuinely interested.
"Not the destruction derby part per say, but hanging out with you!" Amy admitted, her pleased expression not lessening in the slightest.
Sonic laughed nervously. "Y-Yeah… Well, I was invited, so…"
Then, suddenly, it disappeared completely and she blinked curiously. "By who?" She had an angry edge to her voice as she came to a million conclusions all at once. Sonic winced.
"Shadow. He was ordered to go to it by GUN, but he ended up getting multiple tickets, so he gave one to me." Sonic opened his eyes to find that Amy hadn't exploded. She was awfully red, though. "Uh, you okay?"
"I'm fine," Amy claimed, crossing her arms. Smoke was released from her mouth as she said this.
"Really?"
"Yes, really!" Amy confirmed, flailing her arms. She stomped once, her boot kicking up dust as she did so. "Honest's my enemy."
"Wh-What?" Sonic asked, taking a step closer to her, holding out his hand. Amy lurched out of the way.
"I told you it's fi-!" She slipped in the powdery earth and took a sharp dive backwards. In a flash, Sonic ran and slid underneath her in the dirt like a baseball player slides into home base. He came to a stop in just the right place to catch Amy before she could fall and hit her head. She opened her eyes, her mouth open for a moment before she then firmly shut it and scrambled back up to her feet.
"Are you hurt?" Sonic asked.
"It's fine!" Amy repeated again, this time turning and storming out of the courtyard and ducking into a building, an arm covering her face, trying hard to hide the tears now welling in her eyes.
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