Being a thief is hard at first for Sheena. Not the actual stealing, no, that part comes as naturally as breathing. The hard part is all the pretending involved. Fake names, fake motivations, fake everything. Pretending to be sorry for bumping into someone when pulling a bait and switch or pretending that she doesn't have a precious artifact hidden on her person when a passerby looks suspicious of her. Pretending she isn't scared in a room full of villains who would throw her to wolves for nothing more than a stack of cash.
In reality, she's terrified.
Luckily, the one thing Sheena never had trouble faking was confidence.
She remembers her first day at V.I.L.E. academy. She'd spent most of the welcome lecture sizing up her classmates—or rather rivals—instead of listening to Coach Brunt. She didn't come here to make friends. She came to make mayhem, and more importantly, to make money.
When entering the room she will be sharing with four strangers for the next year, she forms a plan in her mind to establish herself as the alpha of the room. She spies the younger girl who called herself Black Sheep setting her stuff by her bed and grins. Perfect target. She moves in for the kill. The other girl defends herself with unexpected ferocity, but Sheena would have had no problem breaking her had Gray not interfered.
She concedes that they shouldn't be at each other's throats just yet, at least not until classes officially start, but in that tense moment before she turns to leave, she contemplates the value of having Gray on her side. He's certainly pretty enough to be seen with her, and he must be clever enough to help her considering that he was chosen to be one of the forty thieves. But when she sees him glancing at Black Sheep's turned back with a hopeful glint in his eyes, as if he wants to have impressed her, she quickly decides against it. First of all, any man who would notice that little girl before her is not worth her time. Second, she knows by now that is she wants a job done right, she has to do it herself.
She chooses her codename after they all end up in detention. Tigress. She revels in the surge of power that courses through her as she renames herself. She feels as though she has been born again, and this time, she is not afraid, because Sheena was weak.
Tigress will be stronger, smarter, better….
….she hopes.
The rest of the year flies by in a blur of training, class, training, and more training. She continues to watch her classmates for information on weaknesses she may be able to exploit later. Most of her rivals have not followed her lead of going through this process alone. Their bonds and relationships become her main interest. She finds Antonio and Jean Paul making out in the hallway after hours and immediately turns around and goes the other way so that they won't notice her. Well, she thinks, that was easy enough for those two.
So easy, in fact, that it almost escapes her notice that Gray and Black Sheep have a similar issue.
Tigress isn't sure when the change first occurs, but at some point the inexplicable affection Gray has for Black Sheep becomes less brotherly and starts to seem a lot more like longing. She notices a few changes actually.
She notices the way their sparring is more flirtatious than violent.
She notices the way their hands always seem to be brushing against each other "accidentally". It happens in the mess hall when they get food, while gearing up for Coach Brunt's class, while they get beakers and tools for Bellum's, and don't get her started on how they do the same type of thing with their knees as they sit together in Shadowsan's class, folding origami.
She notices the blush that creeps up on Black Sheep's face after each and every one of these encounters.
Tigress notices all of these things, but she pretends to be as clueless as everyone else, because another thing Tigress does better than Sheena is feigning ignorance while seeing everything.
Just when she thinks things will continue this way forever, they are all graduating except Black Sheep. She sees the pain on Gray's face when he sees the results, a pain that only increases when he turns to Black Sheep's shining, hopeful face, when he has to crush her with the news.
As they go through the prep for their first caper as graduates, Gray's pain recedes into the background, but the impression of it lingers in his expression until they board the helicopter, then his face becomes blank as they all focus in advance of their mission.
Everything goes fine until Black Sheep shows up. The cleaners make quick work of her, but Tigress can't help looking at Gray to gauge his reaction. The pain is back with a vengeance. As the cleaners drug Black Sheep and drag her away between them, he look torn between finishing the caper and running after them.
She wonders if he knows he's in love with her.
Probably not, she guesses. After all, the best thieves aren't exactly in touch with their emotions.
Just ask her.
After their success in Morocco, they are sent around the globe doing V.I.L.E.'s dirty errands. Each time they return to the island, Tigress notices Gray staring off into space as if Black Sheep will materialize in front of him. After their last encounter, Tigress is not surprised she doesn't want to see any of them. She doesn't particularly want to see Black Sheep either.
She just wishes Gray would stop moping.
Some time later, they are called back early from one of their missions, and they find the Isle of V.I.L.E. in a state of chaos upon their unscheduled return.
The reason for the pandemonium astounds them: Black Sheep escaped.
That fact by itself is extraordinary, but the rest of the story is even more shocking.
She stole the V.I.L.E. hard drive.
Tigress is so surprised by he younger girl's actions, she almost forgets to be angry rather than impressed. Almost.
She doesn't even need to look at Gray at this point to know that he is more torn about his chosen path than ever, even more so than in Morocco. She almost expects him to quit on the spot and run out after the new most wanted traitor of V.I.L.E. Again, almost.
They spend the night in their old room. Tomorrow they will embark on their new mission: Capture Black Sheep and bring back the hard drive. Tigress has no idea exactly what was on that hard drive, but she knows it's sensitive information that, if in the wrong hands, could bring even an empire as vast as that of V.I.L.E crumbling to the ground.
As they settle in for the night, Tigress pretends not to see Gray staring wistfully at Black Sheep's empty bed. She also pretends not to see him pack Black Sheep's most prized possession-her Russian nesting dolls—into his bag as they depart in the morning. When Antonio and Jean Paul bring it up later, she suggests he did it so they would have something they could use to bait Black Sheep; she always was too sentimental.
She knows that's not why he did it, but none of them ever mention it again, so she keeps her mouth shut.
They track Black Sheep for over a year, but the only thing they manage to do is learn that she is going by a new name now: Carmen Sandiego. Months later, they obtain a grainy photograph of her taken from security footage at one of the V.I.L.E. hideouts she robbed, and as Tigress looks at the red hat and trench coat, she scoffs.
More like Fedora the Explorer she thinks.
As she passes the photo to Gray, she inwardly sighs and steels herself for seeing the usual pained, puppy-like expression on his face for the millionth time. And she sees exactly what she expected. At first. What she doesn't expect to see is the mixture of anger and determination that comes after it.
Who is he angry at? Bla- Carmen? V.I.L.E.? Himself?
All three, she realizes, but why the determination?
She inhales sharply as the answer hits her. He's going to defect!
She's right. He leaves that night. She knows exactly where he goes.
They find out the next morning. The shock of it falls on them like a bomb.
Antonio and Jean Paul insist that this is not their friend, he must be misguided or confused or something. Meanwhile, Dr. Bellum bemoans the loss of her star pupil and her Crackle Rod, and Coach Brunt rages against this second betrayal, this second disgrace to the name of V.I.L.E. Tigress plays along, acting as shocked and betrayed as the rest of them, but really the only thing she is left wondering is why Gray didn't leave sooner. He may have been loyal to them at first, but the moment Carmen wasn't in the picture anymore he was done with their schemes, their politics.
She also wonders if he'll find Carmen, and if he does, will she listen to him? Take him in? Trust him again? Finally admit she's as crazy about him as he is about her?
He'll have a tough time explaining himself. She muses as they set off after him. He better hope she doesn't immediately attack him. Tigress doesn't care to admit it, but Carmen left her fair share of bruises on all of them during their time as students. She was small, but she could be vicious when provoked, and considering that Tigress made it her mission to provoke her, she was intimately familiar with the other girl's temper.
Although Tigress is placed in charge of tracking down the two traitors, she doesn't see them face to face until two years later in Indonesia. Ironically, she isn't even looking for them; she is helping Dr. Bellum with her rice thing. She encounters Carmen first, on top of a truck speeding through the jungle. They spar and exchange verbal barbs, and Tigress begrudgingly admits to herself that Carmen has improved at both types of fighting. She notices twin redheaded sidekicks, but doesn't see Gray anywhere.
Maybe Carmen didn't want to risk it she thinks. Sucks for him.
Or not. She ends up seeing Gray at the shadow puppet festival where she is meant to fire Bellum's fungi fireworks. She has to fight both of them to get her part of the plan in motion.
They are both older now, stronger and faster too. She knew they fought well against each other; she'd watched their fluid, graceful movements as they sparred so long ago in class, but when they fought together? They were unstoppable. If she managed to get one on the ground, the other would come at her with even more force to compensate. They were totally in sync with each other. It was as if they each knew exactly what the other was going to do before it happened. Tigress couldn't keep up.
They managed to defeat her and avoid having Bellum's fungus infect the country's rice crops, but Tigress escapes before they can capture her.
As the real fireworks explode in the sky, she limps back into the shadows with only one lingering question. She gets her answer as soon as she turns around and sees Gray pull Carmen into his arms as they admire the fireworks. Their lips meet, and they seem to get lost in each other as the rest of the world continues around them, oblivious to this moment of passion between the two lovers. Tigress has a distinct feeling that this isn't the first time they have indulged in the urges she has witnessed in them for years. Their companions clearly don't seem surprised by this display of affection; they simply stroll over to the center of the festival and get food and enjoy the sights.
As she expected, the faculty aren't too pleased with her upon her return to V.I.L.E., but they concede that she at least didn't get caught, and she'd gathered valuable intel on the two people who continued to threaten them with the information they had stolen. They send her to be checked for internal injuries, and a week later she is flying out in pursuit of Carmen and Co. Again.
This time, it only takes V.I.L.E. a few weeks to track them down this time, which is why she finds herself literally clawing her way to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge to the helicopter where the cleaners are waiting to pick up both her and the stamp she'd stolen from her scarlet rival moments ago. She finally scrambles to the top of the structure and retrieves the plastic bag containing the stamp from her boot, only to discover that the bag is empty.
She groans in frustration and takes off in pursuit of her nemesis, the cleaners staying put, monitoring her movements on GPS. Tigress follows Carmen across the city of San Francisco, ducking and weaving after her through alleys and side streets before finally reaching a park on the far side of town. Realizing she may be about to be outnumbered, Tigress melts into the shadows and watches Carmen stroll over to a park bench and take a seat. Just as Tigress is questioning her instinct to hide, Gray appears with the two redheads and sits down next to Carmen. Tigress can't hear a word they're saying, but she can guess the fight both women just came from is one of the topics they are so fervently discussing. Carmen produces the stamp from her trench coat pocket, and the redheads take it before running off to what must be their getaway car. Carmen herself moves to follow them, but Gray motions for her to stay back, and she does, albeit with a confused look in his direction.
Tigress know she should be going after the sidekicks, but she is too interested in what her former classmates are doing to care about the stamp.
Curiosity did kill the cat she muses. So she follows at a safe distance as Gray leads Carmen deeper into the park. Tigress still can't hear what they say to each other, but she can tell from their facial expressions that this is a serious and private moment upon which she is intruding.
A few minutes later, she doesn't even need facial cues as she watches in shock as Gray drops to one knee, taking one of Carmen's hands as he pulls a box out of his pocket that Tigress knows can only contain a ring. She'd done this last year with Jean Paul when he proposed to Antonio. She still has to steal something to give to them at their wedding next month. She's a thief, not a savage.
She is abruptly pulled back to scene before when Carmen practically screams her answer and kisses Gray, knocking both of them to the ground.
Tigress watches them as they laugh and stand up, brushing themselves off, before walking off together in the same direction in which their companions had departed, and for some reason, tears well up, unbidden, in her eyes. She furiously blinks them back. Since when is she so soft? Love is weakness; any V.I.L.E. operative worth his or her salt knows that. So why does she feel envious of what others around her have found? She doesn't know.
And even though she knows she'll be berated endlessly for letting a valuable artifact get away, she lets them have their moment and leave.
She doesn't get it, what they have, but she lets it happen anyway.
Maybe someday she will understand….
….she wants to.