Honesty is the Best Policy {Comic Edition}

Chapter 78: Scourge Gets KO'd

"900 or Nine Hundred?" was what the whiteboard said as the members of the Honesty Club took their seats in the clubroom that afternoon. Scourge pushed open the wooden door, kicking it shut with a thud that momentarily silenced the chatter within. Sunlight bled through worn windows, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the stale air. The Honesty Club looked as it usually did whenever there was a meeting. The two muted pink sofas were turned so that they both faced the whiteboard, and the TV, perched upon its usual splintering shelf, was pushed up against the wall like it had been put in timeout.

Rouge was perched on the arm of one sofa and turned to watch Scourge with a look of utter disdain, blue-green eyes fixing him with their usual hostile gaze. Shadow was sitting, no, lying on the other sofa as if it were a bed, and had his head and back propped up against the arm, his face obscured by a rather large book. Amy sat at the other end of the sofa, her legs crossed. She was humming a familiar tune from one of the games. Akane was sitting at the round table in the corner of the room, scribbling something in a purple journal, occasionally glancing up with a frown. Dina sat across from her, her arms crossed on the table between them as her bright pink eyes peeked out, scanning the room as if looking for some way she could destroy it and everyone in it. Of course, she wasn't really, but that's what it looked like.

The club's newest member, Hearts, was sitting in a metal chair at one side of the whiteboard, her head bowed as a string of z's encircled it. And finally, there was Honest herself, the self-proclaimed queen of truthfulness, fiddling with a marker and sporting a beaming smile. However, when she saw Scourge enter the room, her smile somehow widened, and she cleared her throat. "Hello, Scourge! So glad you could make it."

It was good to see that nothing had changed, and Scourge meant that with total sarcasm. The only real difference was that Infinite wasn't there-- the masked mongrel's last days (before Scourge and Honest had betrayed him, anyways) were spent as a member of the club, attending all the meetings and soaking in every bit of useless knowledge they handed out. Seeing Rouge on the arm of an empty sofa just cemented the feeling that something was missing.

It was such a shame what happened to him. Infinite felt deeply betrayed by Scourge and Honest for getting him captured by the ZP and, furthermore, refusing to try to free him, but still, there was hope that he'd come back around to being their ally once again. Scourge's mind went back to what Finitevus had told him the day before yesterday, that he severely doubted that Honest had done what she did because it was "the best thing to do". Honest acted like she had no choice, that she had been backed into a corner. However, Infinite had hardly been a threat-- to her, to Scourge, to Shadow, to anybody-- and there had been a chance that he might've still, like Scourge said, come back around. Scourge hadn't been friends with the guy for long, but still, the fact that Infinite's death could have been prevented... It was very unfortunate, what more could he say?

Anyway, he could get lost in his thoughts for hours, but Honest was waiting for him to take his seat, so that's what he did. He sat on the other end of the sofa Rouge was occupying and rested his elbow on the arm. He noticed Amy stiffen as he sat down and rolled his eyes. Out of all of his victims, she certainly had the right to act that way, though, so he couldn't be too annoyed with her. When he looked up, Honest was walking to the whiteboard, a Cheshire cat-like grin flashing across her face as she turned. She took the cap off her marker and made a small dash beneath the great big words scrawled there already, "900 or Nine Hundred?" (in case having 686 words between now and the first mention has confused you, faithful reader.)

"So, today's question," Honest said, pointing at the words with the back end of her marker. "Your thoughts when you first saw it were probably 'Seriously? Someone can't decide between writing numerals or spelling them out?' Well, I like putting it as numbers, so that's what I'm continuing to do. I just wanted to get your guys' attention." She smiled a normal cat smile and turned around, crossing her arms as if she were posing in front of a beautiful work of art instead of just a few words and a bullet point. "You've probably noticed by now that our newest member is sitting up front today." She looked over at her Anti and, upon discovering the state of her consciousness, growled. "Hearts!"