A/N: Oi, peeps! It's me, Blazing Mobile Suit Pilot, Garoad Ran! It took me awhile, but I'm back with a vengeance! This time, I'm back in my right mind!
Sonic: Who can ever tell?
Garoad: (rolls eyes) You're still sore about Three Days, aren't you. Besides, in this story, there are all the big guns, explosions, and conspiracies to go around.
Sonic: Speaking of which, why the hell did you make me, a confirmed bachelor and badass, and Amy an item?! I have a reputation to keep! I can't slow down!
Garoad: Oh, just shut up. You'll thank me someday when this is all said and done.
Shadow: (wearing the gear he had in my first story) When can I finally ditch all of this gear? The Ultimate Life Form should not have to wear this type of field gear! It messes up my quills! And you can't be a badass, faker! I'm the resident badass around here!
Sonic: Why you—
Garoad: SHUT UP!!! Now, on with this before I lose my patience!
And now, for the ages:
Sonic: 21; Birth date: 01-27-82
Knuckles: 21; Birth date: 11-12-81
Rouge: 20; Birth date: 04-30-82
Amy: 19; Birth date: 07-18-83
Tails: 13; Birth date: 10-22-89
Nack: 25; Birth date: 02-10-78
In late January of this year, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Rouge, along with SEAL Team 3, mounted a successful rescue mission of the defense heads of the U.S. and Russia over the Pacific Ocean onboard a Rakshasa-class strike egg carrier during Operation Blackbeard. However, during the operation, Sonic, lead by an alive and clandestine Shadow, uncovers something troubling inside a hidden storage compartment: deactivated GUN infantry droids.
A month and a half later, after surveillance satellites fail to detect any suspicious activities from GUN, the CIA decides to send their best field agents to covertly inspect GUN warehouse facilities. One certain crack operative, Rouge, is dispatched to Death Valley…
Death Valley, California, U.S.A. G.U.N. warehouse facility. March 11, 2003. 2200 hours.
"Agent Rouge to H.Q, I am approximately a half click away from my objective. Now, preparing to ingress." Rouge switched off her headset radio and looked into her night-vision goggles. She was currently in some hills to the east overlooking the facility. A razor-wire fence encompassed the entire perimeter of the facility, with a guard shack and the gate at the north end. That would be her only way in… if she had to go on foot. She also saw that the only light provided in the base were the floodlights on the warehouses, and on the office building, as well as the pale light of the half moon—well what was left of it since Eggman blew a big chunk out of it a little more than a year and a half back during the ARK incident. She figured that if she flew over the fence and landed on the far side of the warehouses, the four or five sentries on patrol would be none the wiser. With that in mind, she flipped up her night vision goggles, took some steps back to get a running start, ran full tilt, jumped, and glided toward her objective, easily clearing the razor-wire fence, and landing neatly on the nearest warehouse.
Rouge carefully walked to a window on the roof and crouched down to look inside with her night-vision goggles. She only saw infantry droids, and various GUN type UCAVs (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle). Nothing suspicious, there.
GUN was the name of a weapons broker whose clientele were almost exclusively the countries of NATO, though the lion's share of their profits came from the United States. Many politicians even considered GUN the fifth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and had a big enough navy, air force, and enough infantry to rival most countries' militaries. So, when Sonic reported he allegedly saw GUN units on the now destroyed Egg Carrier Rakshasa a month and a half ago, it sent a shockwave throughout the top brass of the military and the government. But, they wanted to be doubly sure, and that's why she's out here in the middle of nowhere.
She looked ahead to the office building. That was where she needed to be. There had to be an inventory kept of all of the units in storage, as well as the ones slated to go outbound. Wasting no more time, she clandestinely made her way across the far side of the rooftops. She jumped over the alleys between warehouses until she was at the last warehouse, then double-checking for any nearby security personnel before neatly jumping off the roof to creep to the main office building in the complex.
The front door had been securely locked, so she had to climb the walls for a window to slip through. She eventually found one unlocked on the third of four floors above the ground, and she slipped inside, and into a hallway, the light fully revealing the all-black special ops type garb she was sporting. Immediately after, she heard a security guard come around the corner. Judging from how close the footsteps were, she didn't have time to hide somewhere, so she crept to the corner to lie in ambush. Her other option was to use her silenced Beretta M9 handgun, modified to fire non-lethal knockout rounds since her rules of engagement prohibited her from using lethal force. However, the modifications diminished the firearm's accuracy, even at close range. She would run the risk of missing her shot, then the security officer pulling out his gun and braining her. Not to mention if she were compromised, she was ordered to abort her mission and return to civilization.
The guard turned the corner, only to be met with a knee to his abdomen, knocking the breath out of him, and he collapsed to the linoleum-clad floor. He tried to get up, but Rouge's knee driving into the small of his back forced him prone, and Rouge also painfully twisted his right arm behind his back while grabbing her gun to point it at the guard's head. "Don't move, or you die." The bat threatened. Of course, killing him was a bluff since her gun only fired knockout rounds. "Try to scream, and you die. Just answer my question, and you'll live." Scared to death, all the guard could do was nod in compliance, and Rouge continued. "I'm looking for the shipping and receiving records for this warehouse. Where are they?"
Still mindful of the gun pointed at his head, the guard sang (figuratively). "D-down the hall, a-a-and around the corner! I-I-it's the fifth door to the left! Please don't kill me! I have a wife, and a kid on the way!"
Rouge sighed. "Then, you signed up for the wrong profession." A chop to the back of the head later, the guard was out cold, and Rouge dragged his unconscious mass to the nearby janitor's closet.
Continuing her search, Rouge followed the guard's directions with her gun at the ready, weary of the possibility that the guard may lead her into the guard's lounge. She rounded the corner, counting off the doors until she eventually reached her destination. Picking the lock was a simple matter for the CIA operative, and she opened the door to an unlighted room. Deciding not to attract more attention with more light, she flipped down her night vision goggles, and closed the door quietly. "Hmm, this must be accounting." Rouge observed. She could see a catalog of some sort on a desk, perhaps for M16 rifles. "Shipping and receiving schedules would probably be on someone's computer, which will probably make a lot of noise booting up. I can't afford to make my presence known. Maybe there's something else I can use…" She went to the first desk she saw and attempted to open a drawer. It was locked. Picking the lock was a simple matter though, and she started to thumb through the files, careful not to make much noise. What she needed wasn't there. She moved to another desk, thumbing through the file drawer when she got there. "Hmm, accounts payable… not that. Probably be accounts payable." With that, she quietly closed the drawer and continued her quarry at another desk.
Through her night-vision goggles, she could clearly make out the words "Accounts Receivable" labeled on the drawer. Bingo! Any transactions between G.U.N. and Robotnik, Robotnik's billing address, whatever that may be, as well as the terrorist's/mad scientist's name on any document in G.U.N.'s possession would be the proverbial smoking gun.
However, as she was picking the lock on the drawer, she heard fairly distant voices coming from the hall, and she froze.
"What are you doing here at this hour, Gibbons?" Someone asked, probably a security guard.
"I just remembered that I forgot some important paperwork inside my desk. I'll be in and out in five minutes." A male voice answered.
Rouge shrugged and continued her quarry. There were plenty of offices off of this particular hallway. The odds of the person heading into the one she was in was about one in about twenty, right?
The doorknob started to jiggle as the worker made to unlock the door. "One in about twenty, huh?" Rouge silently muttered, going for her gun and quickly scanning the room for a hiding spot. She was a little too late as the door opened, the light flooding in from the hallway washing out her field of vision in her night-vision goggles, and she was forced to flip them back up, cursing to herself vehemently.
"What the hell?!"
"Dammit!" Rouge instinctively brought her gun to bear on the apparent accountant and fired a knockout round. The dart-like projectile embedded itself at the base of the man's neck. It only took a couple of seconds for the tranquilizers to take effect, and the accountant collapsed in a heap in the doorway. Still, that didn't mean she was out of the woods. A shout of "Gibbons!" along with the sound of someone running on the linoleum, as well as the sound of the guard calling for backup on his radio let her know that her cover was likely compromised, meaning she'd have to abort her mission.
She looked around the room for an exit. There were no windows, and no second door. She could now hear more than one set of footsteps running down the hall. She didn't like her chances of surviving if she went out the door in a hail of small arms fire.
The first guard arrived at the doorway. The first thing he saw was that Rouge had a gun on her. Acting on the impulse that his life was in danger, the guard pulled out his handgun and fired two shots at Rouge. Fortunately for the bat, she sensed the act of aggression coming, and ducked before the rounds could do her any harm, and retaliated with a knockout round from her own handgun, just as the guard was ducking behind the wall. The mini-dart pierced the guard's upper arm. The tranquilizers wouldn't take effect immediately.
Ducking behind a desk, Rouge happened to take a look at the bullet holes in the back wall. Is that cardboard? No, wait a second! It's drywall! Perhaps she did have a fighting chance of escaping capture. Looking up towards the doorway, she could see the guard had now gone to sleep from the dart. She heard more footsteps approach on the linoleum. This would be her only chance to escape this room; she'd be a fool not to take it. So, after backing up to get a running start, she charged the drywall in a full tilt sprint with a flurry of kicks, succeeding to puncture a man-sized hole in the drywall, and she dove through it with little difficulty, just ahead of the security reinforcements entering the room.
As Rouge climbed to her feet, she heard a klaxon go off. Great, now the perimeter of the facility knew they had an intruder. A quick peek out a nearby window revealed guard dogs, probably Dobermans, along with human and anthropomorph guards, who were holding either M4s or AR-15s (civil model of either the M4 or the M16. I forget) by the guard shack. "So, this is the north side's defenses? I do not want to mess with all that." With that, she ran to the east side of the building; where she originally entered. Behind her, she heard more security guards round the corner and open fire at her. However, small arms fire wasn't that accurate at that range. She gasped in sudden pain when a lucky shot clipped her right shoulder. True, it wouldn't be a serious wound, but still, it hurt like mad, and she clutched at the wound with her left hand.
She rounded the next corner to see her entrance window still open. She peered out the window: just skeleton defenses compared to the north side. This she could get by without much fear for her life. She climbed through the window, and taking a deep breath, glided into the air amid some rifle fire, hoping she'd be able to clear the razor-wire fence, and hoping she wouldn't get shot down.
Turns out she did manage to clear the fence, but only by inches. Still, she wasn't out of the woods yet. She could hear car engines starting up. "Dammit! Motor patrols! I gotta get outta here!" She flipped down her night-vision goggles, and skirted into the desert night, with a search team just missing her. She had a CIA-issued Cessna plane in the hills about three quarters of a mile away. If she could get to that and into the air, she'd be okay.
A motor patrol had chased Rouge for about a quarter mile, until rough terrain, and Rouge's speed forced them to give up. One patrolman spoke into his radio. "Guard shack, this is motor patrol Alpha 1. The target has evaded into the hills. Request aerial support to continue chase."
Two seconds later, the answer came back. "Alpha 1, return to base. We have a positive I.D. on the intruder: Rouge the Bat, CIA."
The officer gasped. "CIA? But, why are they trying to infiltrate us? We're the U.S. military's biggest contributor!"
The officer in the guard shack seemed to ponder how to answer for a moment. "I can't tell you the details, but the situation is not as it seems. We cannot overplay our hand here. Break off the pursuit, and return to base. And we'll file a report."
The patrol officer sighed in exasperation. Something's seemed to hit the fan, and details are classified. He hated when this happened. "Roger that." With that, he turned his Humvee around, and returned to the G.U.N. compound.
Rouge actually didn't stop running until she was a little bit past her Cessna. Her shoulder was searing with pain from the gunshot wound she received, and she doggedly clutched at it, leaning on a boulder to raggedly catch her breath. She took her now bloody hand off of her wound to get to her radio and switched it on. "Boss, this is Rouge. Do you copy?"
From the other side, Staff Operations Officer Scott Dowell's voice clicked in. "Loud and clear, Rouge. What's your status?"
Rouge took a deep breath. It wasn't everyday when a mission of hers was a complete failure. "Mission scrubbed. Bad luck. An accountant compromised me. I'm wounded, but I did manage to egress to the Cessna. It's not bad though."
"Damn!" Dowell thought for a moment. "Alright, return to Vegas. You need to get that wound taken care of. We just gotta hope our other operatives did better. Dowell, out." Click.
Rouge switched off her radio and replaced it in its belt holster. If this debacle got out to the public, CNN would be all over it. And if G.U.N. got a positive I.D. on her, no, she didn't want to think about the fallout on that.
A/N: Okay, that's a wrap on that scene! Just had to get the ball rollin'. Please leave your comments and such in review form. Peace!