I don't yet know how it works if you're following authors, but if you happen to be here because you were waiting with bated breath on the next chapter of the Virtua Cop story, then... well sorry to get your hopes up; that story's hiatus continues a little longer. But hopefully I'll finish the next chapter soon- it IS mostly done I swear to god- because this here is just a short and simple diversion. If that's not why you're here, uh, feel free to check it out if you're looking for something a bit more R-rated, or have a hankering for shootouts, car chases, and explosions. And while I'm plugging, you can check out my Youtube channel found in my profile for game reviews if you like my style (of course that includes some Sonic ones, even a special for the movie, so it's even ALMOST not spam!) It's not gonna get anywhere if I don't pimp it, you know? Anyway, without further ado...

"Rise and shine, Batgirl." Metal tapping on metal accompanied the voice. "It's a big night for you, so wake up."

"I am awake," Rouge answered, having been awake for the last couple of hours. She was simply lying in her bunk because there wasn't really anything else to do in her cell.

"Come here." She sat up and turned to face the speaker: Captain Westwood, high-ranking G.U.N. agent. Also present as always was a female agent named Topaz, apparently something of a partner to him. She stood up and walked over to the bars where 'here' meant. She knew what the next command was going to be but waited for it anyway. "Hands out." She obeyed. Topaz stepped forward and snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists, securing her to the bars as well.

Westwood swiped a card through a slot on the wall by the cell door, opening it. He remained in place while Topaz moved to the open door, handing something to her as she passed. Something small and gray. Rouge had no idea what it could be but she was already pretty sure that she didn't like it. "What is that?" She moved as far away as her tethered arms would allow. Topaz paused as if concerned she might get kicked if she came any closer.

Westwood answered the question. "It's a new collar that we made for you to wear."

"No way," she replied flatly. "You keep that ugly thing away from me. I am NOT wearing it."

"Then we are not letting you out of your cage. Can't just allow pets to run freely on their own without a leash." Rouge glowered at him. He had always used simple commands with her as if she were just a common animal, but he was really taking the act up to the next level now. "So what's it gonna be? Do you want to work with us or would you rather stay in your cell?" A few seconds of silence ticked by. "Well, you gonna cooperate or not?"

A response was clearly demanded. The correct answer was obvious; the difficulty was saying it. "Fine," she hissed, not breaking her glare as the 'collar' was slipped over her head and snapped shut at the back of her neck.

"I'll take it from here," the captain said to his subordinate. "You handle the other one."

"Yes sir." With that, the female agent left.

"Now," he began, "before I remove your cuffs I want to make sure that you understand the purpose of your collar."

"It says where to return me if I get lost and found?" she answered dryly.

"No... This one is more like a shock collar. You know how those work? They're designed to keep a pet from leaving the yard in the first place. If they try, they get a shock of electricity. This works on the same basic principle: we'll designate a yard for you to stay inside, and if you try to leave it..."

Westwood didn't finish the sentence, seemingly inviting her to do so. Her bravado started to crumble. "Then I get a shock?"

"That's putting it mildly." He almost smirked. "Now unfortunately we don't know exactly how much pain your kind can tolerate, so we had to use a more extreme form of deterrence to ensure that you wouldn't be able to escape."

"Like what?" she asked- uneasy now.

"Plastic explosives."

She didn't know what exactly that was but half of the name spoke for itself. "Explosive?"

"Yes. Your collar contains a small but significant charge of it; more than enough to get the job done. It's detonated by remote, which is safely in the hands of another agent, just in case you get any clever ideas. You do ANYTHING we don't like, we press the button. So stay in the yard, stay cooperative, and you'll stay in one piece. Do you understand?"

They'd thought things out. The only option was to play along for now. "Yeah."

He unlocked the cuffs. As soon as her hands were free they went to the new accessory and began feeling it out. "Forget about it," he said, knowing what she was obviously thinking about. "You can't get it off. Now let's go."

We'll see about that... The neckpiece was made of obviously strong material, though it also had flexibility, like a watch. It felt a lot more solid than any watch she ever saw before. The front had a noticeable bulge, probably where the explosives were located. She already knew that the neckpiece opened and closed in order to be put on, though she couldn't tell exactly how, let alone how to possibly force it. Her fingers found something near the opening point that stood out among the otherwise uniformly flat surface; perhaps a keyhole to release the lock. She might be able to pick it if she could figure it out. She couldn't feel where any key would be inserted though; in fact, she had a feeling it had been filled in to prevent exactly that. Apparently G.U.N. was smart enough to safeguard their collar from the abilities of the person who would wear it. It wouldn't be an easy task for certain. But she'd accept the challenge.

"In here." Agent Topaz opened one of the many doors lining the hallway and held it open, standing to the side to clearly signal 'after you' despite common etiquette dictating that women should go first. But Tails wasn't going to bring up the point to a G.U.N. agent. The room was spartan: aside from a table and a couple of chairs it was completely empty, but with an unusual feature on one of the walls: a window looking into another room which was similarly barren, but with slightly more content, namely what looked to be a projector on the table and a screen on the wall. The setup appeared to be an interrogation chamber; presumably he was in the interrogator's room. "Okay, Tails, it's time to fill you in on why you're here."

Finally- it was a little awkward coming along with government agents without ever actually asking why. It had been a normal day- well for him at least: hanging around the house and tuning up one of his planes... then a G.U.N. helicopter touched down in his front lawn, some agents jumped out and said, "We request your assistance with a matter." Which, while not exactly normal, wasn't actually all that unusual an occurrence either. What WAS different this time was the nature of the request. He said, "Sonic's not here now." They said, "We don't need Sonic, just YOU." He said, "Okay." Paraphrasing- long story short he jumped on the helicopter and was now on a G.U.N. base.

"We need you to..." the agent paused, seemingly searching for the right words, "...vet a potential new recruit for us, in a matter of speaking."

"Vet? Like what, you mean interview them?" he asked, unable to hide that his enthusiasm had dropped a few notches from the mundane-sounding assignment. Even so, he figured G.U.N. wouldn't have gotten him for such a simple task; surely they had an HR department for just this sort of thing. There must have been some special reason they'd call him in.

"No. We need you to accompany them on a mission as an observer of sorts."

Well that sounded better but likely only marginally less underwhelming. When somebody finally calls for me, it's to tag along on somebody else's mission. Figures. "So then I'm evaluating their performance?"

"Not exactly..." Another awkward pause. "We're already pretty certain of their skills, but the question is whether or not we can really trust them. This recruit isn't exactly entirely willing."

That raised his eyebrows. "What does that mean?" He'd seen enough movies to know shadowy government agencies sometimes used questionable methods to carry out missions.

Another pause; this time the agent seemed to be sizing him up to determine how to drop whatever truth she had been dancing around. "Okay, to be completely straight, they either work for us or go to jail."

He'd seen enough movies to know what that meant too. "You mean they're a criminal that you gave an ultimatum to."

"That's right." She seemed either impressed or at least happy that he understood the way things were.

The assignment had certainly gotten intriguing now but there was still the question: "So why me?"

"Because this recruit... isn't human."

That bombshell completely overshadowed the previous one. "What? You mean that they're..." he trailed off, heart pumping a little bit harder at the notion of what exactly 'not human' entailed. This mission had suddenly become infinitely fascinating no matter what the job actually was.

"Yep. We'd never be able to follow them. Only you could."

He could guess why. "You mean they can fly? What are they?" he asked excitedly.

"Wait a moment; you'll see for yourself..." She pointed towards the window and spoke into her earpiece. "Send her in." He turned to the window before fully processing the last few words spoken.

Her?

His heart pumped just a little bit harder. He wasn't sure what he was really expecting, but certainly not someone female. Did that make him slightly sexist? The door to the other room opened and in came her. White fur, large pointed ears, wings... a bat? He stood on tiptoes to be level with the window, practically pressing against the glass. Once upon a time he lived in a world of creatures like himself but by now he'd spent about the better half of his life on Earth and barely looked back. His current list of similar animal acquaintances could be counted with single digits. Just the mere prospect of meeting another had him excited enough, let alone one that had a rap sheet... Or maybe a more accurate word would be 'apprehensive'.

The door closed, leaving her alone in the room. Unsurprisingly she didn't appear particularly happy to be here. She looked around the room, eyes soon zoning in on HIM. His heart might have skipped a beat, but he couldn't tell since it hadn't really been working properly for the last minute anyway. Could she see him? She approached the window... he backed away... then realized that she wasn't looking at him; she was looking at her own reflection in the glass. Her increasingly displeased expression seemed to be for the current state of her appearance, which was probably a few days behind in upkeep- as well as being press-ganged into national civil service, probably. Topaz's voice cut in. "She's something, huh?"

He turned to the agent, realizing that she had been watching him with a smirk on her face. And he had been staring. "What?" he asked defensively.

"Nothing. I guess it all works the same no matter the animal."

He flushed, knowing exactly what she meant. "It's not like that. She just... reminds me of someone else."

His response hadn't been very convincing. "Really? You know any other girls like her from back home, Tails?" she asked skeptically.

"No..." he replied, looking back towards the glass. "Not like her..." Granted that wasn't really saying much; all the faces from back home were just blurs now, and females were the minority of his current social circle, clocking in at a whopping three. And even that provided barely any comparison. For starters, she was... older. Not nearly as old as Vanilla; probably still teenaged, but clearly older than Amy and WAY older than Cream. She was also a lot... bolder. Went the whole nine yards on looks: shiny makeup, bright lipstick, lashes, and even blue eyeliner, all still evident despite being in urgent need of some reapplication. To say nothing of her outfit, which was decidedly flattering and featured at least three hearts across the whole getup. Her entire appearance was calculated to draw the attention. She was in a whole different league than Amy (which he would NEVER let her hear him say) or Vanilla- which was as far as he wanted to go on that thought. Simply put, she was very pretty... if not beautiful. Maybe he might even use different adjectives if he were older and saw what the big deal was. Sonic said he would understand one day, though his interactions with Amy made him wonder if he actually understood it either.

Topaz simply said, "Huh," in an intrigued voice.

He slapped a hand over his face as realization dawned that his voice had turned wistful, which definitely did not help his case. Not that she didn't have him nailed in the first place. He might have been young but was still a guy nonetheless. He wasn't oblivious. His feeble attempt to deny it when so obviously embarrassed was just dragging out the teasing. "Forget it," he said in hopes for mercy.

"That would be a smart choice. Don't get all enchanted, girls like her are bad news. That's why we call them femme fatales."

"Just drop it, okay?"

There was silence for a few moments save for some more snickering. "Okay Tails, we're getting close to the moment of truth here, but you still have time to think it over. She doesn't have a choice, you do. You're free to back out if you want. So if you don't feel you can handle it, just tell us." The G.U.N. agent had gone back to her original serious face. She wasn't insulting him; in fact she was actually just being kind in laying out the situation, but after all that he really wasn't in the mood to be doubted over his ability.

"Oh, I can handle this," he said in the most confident voice (or best impersonation of Sonic's) he could muster. After a moment his face faltered. "Why? Is she... dangerous?"

"Her? Nah, I don't think so. She didn't put up a fight when we caught her. She just acts tough. I bet you could totally take her." She smiled. He laughed- nervously. Hopefully she was right. Hopefully he wouldn't have to find out. "Well, I gotta get to the other room." She exited.

He looked back to the window, free of any judgement this time. A femme fatale... Topaz had said it, but the thought had crossed his mind as well. What was it he heard? It's not like she's drop-dead gorgeous, but she has that certain something... Well, he still didn't really get the whole appeal of it, though there was a SOMETHING about her, but... not a chance.

Batgirl was still looking at her reflection, but now the focus of her attention was clearly the prominent neckpiece she wore. It seemed as if she were examining an unfamiliar object. Now that he thought about it, the bland gray accessory didn't seem to coordinate at all with her getup. Then again, he didn't think the hearts really fit the image of a criminal either. At least it seemed absurd that someone dangerous would wear such a sweet and dainty motif... right? Please let her not be difficult to work with...

The door of the opposite room opened and Topaz reappeared accompanied by her superior Captain Westwood. He had met him briefly earlier; seemed a real stern and serious fellow, and his first words reaffirmed that. "Sit down, Batgirl." She did so, casually- crossing a leg and propping her head on a hand as if she were sitting in class. Tails figured he might as well sit down too, jumping upon the table instead for the extra height. "Now pay attention, both of you." Obviously Westwood was talking to him as well. 'Batgirl' didn't seem to catch on though, as she looked to Topaz with a confused look.

"The mission is simple. We'll drop you off near the target building." On cue the projector activated, displaying a city skyline on the screen. The building in question was the centerpiece of the shot, which looked much the same as the surrounding ones apart from a few signs. "You need to get in and head to the 32nd floor where you'll find the office of the Yamamoto Corporation. This business is in actuality a front for a major international yakuza group-"

"Yaku-what?" Batgirl interrupted.

"Yakuza. A type of criminal organization," Westwood explained, somewhat annoyed. Tails got the impression he wouldn't want to make him angry.

"Oh. Well you could have just said that instead."

He glared at her for a moment. "Anything else I should explain for you? Like what a criminal organization is? It's a group of bad guys who don't follow the rules around here. Just like you."

"And?" Her tone clearly provided an unspoken "your point is?"

"That means this place isn't going to be protected by any upstanding security guards. If you get caught in there, there's no telling what they'd do... but they probably won't be as lenient as we were."

"So, don't get caught breaking into someone else's place? I'll keep that in mind." Her response was thick with sarcasm. Tails couldn't help but wonder how similar this conversation would be if it were Sonic getting the mission briefing.

Somehow Westwood managed to look slightly more angry though he kept remarkably composed. The slideshow advanced: now it was a dossier of sorts. "Your objective is the president's office. Man by the name of Nagai Takagi. We need you to get to his computer so we can search for intel about their operations-"

Batgirl put up her hands. "Wait a minute... I'm a girl of many talents, but that doesn't mean I know how all your stuff here works."

"You won't need to for this task. All you need to do is insert this device and it will do all the work. I'm sure you can handle that much." He held up a small object no bigger than his hand- Tails went OOH and zoomed back up to the window, greatly intrigued by this new and impressive (if insidious) technology. "It should duplicate all the contents of the computer in 30 minutes or so." The device was put away- Tails went AW and returned to the table. "You do that, then get out and back to us. The rendezvous point will be the roof of this building." New slide: another building. "You won't have a problem finding it; it's the tallest one in the city."

"That's it?" she asked as if disappointed. "I was expecting more."

"I'd say it's more than enough for someone we can't trust yet. On that note, you should know that there will be another one of our assets watching to make sure you carry out the mission and don't 'get lost' along the way. Any questions?"

"Yeah... exactly what do I do with that thing again?"

Westwood let out an exasperated sigh. Tails zoned out of the proceedings, processing the whole situation and thinking about what he'd tell Sonic later. Hey Tails, what did you do today? Oh, I got deployed by G.U.N. as an asset on a special op. It had a nice ring to it.

The short mission briefing was seemingly over now since Westwood had exited the room, leaving Agent Topaz alone with the bat. "So who is this agent that's supposed to follow me?" the latter asked. "It's not you, is it?"

"No," the human replied.

"Ah, so one of the better agents then?" the bat snarked. "So what, is he your best man? A super agent?" Tails smiled. You could say that...

Topaz let out a derisive "Hah!" Tails un-smiled. "Don't flatter yourself, sister. You don't rank our best." Then almost as if an afterthought she added, "He's good enough though. Don't get too disappointed, he's pretty cute."

"Oh that's even better," the bat said with exaggerated enthusiasm.

He went aw shucks and scratched the back of his head. He probably should just take it as a compliment, but surely he had more impressive traits to be known for. So she was also not given any advanced info on her partner- she was in for a big surprise. The door to his room rattled- he snapped back to attention and jumped off the table just before the captain entered. "I hope you were paying attention, Tails."

He mustered as much professionalism as he could. "Yes sir."

"Good. But you don't need to concern yourself with all that. The mission is Batgirl's. You are not here to help her. Your mission is strictly to make sure that she doesn't escape."

"By any means necessary?" he asked uneasily, wondering what exactly they expected him to do.

Westwood smiled wickedly. "Yes. Of course you'll have a standard issue earpiece to contact us if something comes up. If there is anything you can't handle, call us and we will."

This again. "I can handle it."

"Glad to hear it. We've also got something else to help you keep the bat on a short leash. Hold out your hand."

He obliged, at which point Westwood began strapping what looked like an oversized watch on his wrist. It had a screen displaying a timer of some sort, which appeared to be the current time in military format, judging by the fact the numbers would match up perfectly. There was also a very conspicuous red button situated in a recess that was under a lid cover to prevent unintentionally pressing it. Well, this looks totally innocuous... He stared at the thing for a moment, at a loss as to its purpose. "What is it?"

"It's a detonator."

Tails looked back up with eyes wide. "A detonator? To what?"

"You see the thing Batgirl has around her neck? If she tries anything, all you have to do is press the red button to blow her pretty little head off." Tails gaped slightly. Westwood continued. "The charge will explode in thirty seconds. It will start beeping to indicate its activation, and gets faster as it nears detonation. The charge itself is small to minimize any collateral damage, but you should still try to keep away from her to avoid any possible injury." There was a silence. "Do you understand all that?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Any questions?"

"Several."

DVD Commentary:

So yeah, this is something I've been sitting on a while, having thought it up during about 7 months worth of daydreaming at work after the surprisingly good movie rekindled some interest (so I have a firm rough draft in my head already, as opposed to say Virtua Cops.) I don't really know where I got my interest in the Tails/Rouge dynamic (not calling this a ship... but the possibility is always fun to think about.) I guess it was born from that Sonic Battle episode of Sonic X. I thought 'well, this is interesting...' and then 'well, that was disappointing...' So I wondered what it'd be like if they really went at it, then some other possibilities were considered, then they were filed away in my brain along with my other story ideas, then finally years later one day I was sitting around REALLY bored and had an epic brainstorm that came up with a pretty solid outline for a story, which I actually partially wrote... but isn't what you're reading now, although I do reuse some of the ideas (and title.) Maybe one day I can salvage it and get out of the corner I painted it into (yeah, I did NOT have a game plan going into that one.) Liked some of the ideas and hated others in retrospect.

I conceptualized the chapters alternating between POV of Tails and Rouge, but I have no idea how well that's going to work out- case in point: the first one turned out really short, hence why I just posted them together. Not like it WASN'T obvious where this was all going.

Topaz's superior was never named in the show, only the comics, where he also became a total jerk antagonistic to the good guys (even Topaz) so I went for a middle ground. Now that I think about it, I guess this is almost like an adaptation of Sonic X episode 9.

While I had a running gag where the question of Tails' age is brought up but never actually answered... because honestly I didn't want to either... he'd probably have to be like 11 to fit the required timeline, and make the inevitable banter a little less awkward. This would be several games into the franchise, so he's probably a couple years older by now... What that makes Rouge is another question- I don't even know if her official age is 16 or 18; I'd assume older though. It is best not to think about exactly how much Tails knows yet... but he was definitely somewhat euphemistic. Well this IS a PG-13 story after all.

As for continuity, the movie has certainly made for new wrinkles. I do find humans and animals generally being from different worlds (planet/dimension/time/whatever) to be the most logical explanation (and even canon according to some media.) Then maybe an incident like Sonic X has some elements merge together (since Sonic Adventure puts Angel Island on Earth...) I'll try to avoid it but little tidbits of my personal broad strokes continuity of the medias (read: the ones I liked) are inevitable.

Also, yes, yakuza again. There IS a reason or two for it.