A/N: First, we would like to thank MaxDark158 for giving us this idea. When we pondered if we could do this, one particular scene popped into our heads and then we said—
Sword: Dude, we gotta do it!
And here we are.
Pen: Okay, stop wallowing in how you concocted this next chapter in my never-ending misery and let's move on. Rogue, Knuckles, Shadow, and all the other related material belongs to Sega. The story, Sword, I, and Ruby belong to the author. Don't use anything without asking, blah, blah. You know the rest. Now start.
But I—
Pen: Start.
A Little Crush
"Ruby, did you unpack your clothes?" Rouge called. No answer. "Ruby!" She counted silently to herself, irritably tapping her fingers on the bannister. Moving itself was bad enough. Not that Rouge didn't mind a change of scenery from time to time and she enjoyed having more space to re-arrange her belongings.
But two things prevented her from re-locating often. One was her stash of ill-gotten goods over the years. She was still paying them off piece by piece to reduce the pressure from authorities worldwide and sold some to GUN in exchange for more valuable favors, such as pardons from sticky situations. But her hoard seemed to grow with a beautifully cut gem here, a priceless vase there, and soon she was back to square one.
So she had to use her black market connections to hide her treasure in certain locations and move it one at a time. Frankly, it exhausted her and she made empty promises once again to off-load some of it for good. Maybe Knuckles could help her keep to them this time. Doubtful, she thought.
The second was when the only available homes were outside of the city. She took stock of the suburban décor around her while she waited for Ruby and shuddered. Fresh, green gardens outside, homey atmosphere with simple furniture, friendly neighbors. It made her nauseous. She loved the city and its smog, its loud traffic, its cantankerous population, and the many targets ripe for the picking that she could slip in and slip out of, then disappear into the shadows without notice.
Here, she was recognized and waved to and invited to "come over anytime." Not on their lives. In fact, if the apartment had been big enough for Shadow, Knuckles, her, and Ruby, she would have opted to stay there. At least Knuckles had compromised to have a house within walking distance of the city limits instead of out in the middle of nowhere.
"Ruby!" she shouted and stomped up the stairs. Of course, a third unpleasant reason was starting to reveal itself in her daughter's lazy habit of barely packing her own belongings, and sometimes not even that much.
Ruby's bedroom door flung open, missing Rouge's face by inches. "Oops! Sorry, Mom! Got to get to school!" The smaller bat raced down the stairs without a backward glance.
"Hold it!" Rouge said, chasing her out the front door's threshold. "Did you unpack your clothes?"
"I'll do it later! Bye, love you!" she said, already sprinting down the road to the bus stop at the corner.
Rouge grumbled, resting her head on the jamb. "Howdy, neighbor," the person next door said, waving as he left for work. She bared her teeth and slammed the door shut.
The boxes in the living room were partly unpacked. She dumped the contents of each box out, busying herself to calm down and arranging pictures, lamps, and kitchenware around the first floor. By the time she finished with the last box, the place was starting to feel more like her apartment. Her chest swelled with pride and relief.
Knuckles and Shadow would be bringing over the rest pretty soon. In the meantime, her attention returned to Ruby and Ruby's clothes. With a weary sigh, she climbed the stairs to see how little work her daughter had actually done.
In Ruby's room, the bare mattress and bed were stacked with boxes of clothes that had been rummaged through, with unneeded attire for the day tossed to the floor. The closet was wide open with more boxes shoved inside of it. In fact, the only things that had been unpacked and put up were posters of favorite bands on the walls, Ruby's television and game systems, her computer, and some Sudoku and crossword puzzle books.
Just the essentials, Rouge thought with a wry grin.
The daunting pile of boxes on the bed taunted her waning energy. Instead she turned to the closet and pulled out the box on the bottom. It was already a little crushed. Better check if anything's broken, she reasoned, ripping the tape off.
Nothing ruined on top. There was only some old school books and pictures. She sifted through the packing peanuts, accidentally spilling some on the floor. She noticed a wastepaper basket in the corner, stuffed with some paper. Grabbing it, she scooped handfuls of the peanuts in as she unloaded the box.
At the bottom of the box, she noticed a white book with a lock strap. Curious, Rouge dug it out, brushing some of the pink peanuts off it. It looked like a diary. When had Ruby gotten a diary?
Allowing her instincts to take over at the sight of the keyhole, she reached for the clasp, tugging at it. Locked tight. She searched the box for a key, but Ruby must've hidden it elsewhere. Maybe in one of the other boxes.
I don't really need a key, she thought. She had a perfectly good lock pick kit somewhere that would make short work of this shoddy lock. She could run downstairs right now and check if it was—
Rouge blinked, snapping back to her senses. She couldn't do that. Invading a stranger's privacy for grand larceny was one thing, but her daughter's secret diary? That was too far. She set the book aside and continued unpacking the textbooks and picture.
Yet as she set aside book after book, her eyes kept darting to the diary. She added a textbook to the pile.
Where did Ruby get it from?
Textbook.
How long had she kept a diary?
Cracked picture frame of the beach.
What sort of secrets were within?
She reached into the box and realized it was empty. She shoved it aside and rather than grab another, she crossed her legs and stared at the diary, taunting her, mocking her. How would Rouge feel if someone else invaded her privacy?
But I'm her mother and I have a right to know if there are any problems she isn't telling me.
Privacy.
Parent.
Ruby's wrath.
Ruby's well-being.
Her mind flopped between both sides, each with their convincing arguments, and was so engrossed in the diary, her vision tunneling on the numerous pages begging to be read and full of juicy secrets, that she didn't notice Knuckles had arrived. He carried a chair stacked with a lamp and small dresser into the room and stepped on the book, breaking the spell on Rouge.
"Wah!" he yelled, the book crunching and sliding out from underneath his foot. He lost his balance, fighting for control of his leaning tower, frantically shuffling back and forth throughout the room.
"Careful!" Rouge yelled, steering him away from the bed. He ran to the corner, banging the chair into the wall, and dropped the load. He leaned over the chair, panting and holding onto the armrests tight.
"You all right?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, slowly sliding to the floor.
Relieved that he was fine, she surveyed the damage. Pulling the chair forward, she frowned at a new hole in the wall. "Good going, Knucklehead." At least the chair appeared undamaged.
"Hey, I'm not the one who left books everywhere," he said.
The diary. In the confusion, Rouge had lost sight of it. She fell to her hands and knees, scouring the floor, and spotted it under a leg of the chair. Great. She needed to put the book back where it belonged before it was completely destroyed.
Rouge pulled the dresser and lamp off the chair, then lifted the leg. To her dismay, the lock was cracked and the strap hung limply off the book. After all the trouble she went through resisting temptation, fate had opened the diary for her.
"What's that?" Knuckles asked as she stood up.
Rouge ignored him. Her troubled spirit was replaced by a giddy excitement as she held the diary in her hands. A treasure trove for any parent was at her fingertips. I'll already catch flak for tampering with it anyway. Not to mention Ruby would likely suspect her parents read the diary entries no matter what they said. May as well commit the crime if I'm going to have to deal with the guilt.
Licking her fingertip, she thumbed through the pages. The entries varied in length greatly, some long, some short. She skimmed some of the entries, searching for any stand-outs. Hates school, adventures on Angel Island, family, friends. She hummed to herself, finally reaching the last few entries.
"What is that?" Knuckles repeated.
"Ruby's diary."
"You can't read that!" he said, jumping up. "That's her—What is it?"
Rouge's eyes had widened and a devious, knowing smirk crawled along her lips. Well, well. What have we here? "It seems that our dear Ruby is growing up faster than we thought," she said, reading through the particular entry in fascination.
"How do you mean?"
"She has her eye on a handsome young man at school." She tore her eyes from the book as she flipped to the next page. "A crush on a classmate."
Knuckles's own eyes ballooned and he was silent for a beat, processing the revelation. He looked between the diary in her hands, then back to Rouge. "Who do we have to kill?" he asked, standing beside her and reading along.
"Relax, Ultra-Dad," she said teasingly. "It's a little crush." She turned to the latest entry as Shadow entered the room, heaving a beanbag chair with some bed sheets into a corner.
The black hedgehog stopped at the doorway, watching Rouge and Knuckles standing side by side, completely enthralled. "If you two are having a moment, I'll be outside."
"It's not like that," Rouge said, turning so he could see the diary in her hands.
"Ruby has a crush," Knuckles said. "We're trying to find out more about him."
Shadow looked between the two of them and crossed his arms. "Who do we have to kill?"
Knuckles swept his arm towards Shadow in gratitude as if to say "Thank you."
"Nobody," Rouge said, sitting on the bed and moving aside the scissors, tape, a roll of ribbon, and a pen on the mattress. The other two gathered around her, pouring through how she had made a special card for the boy, Ethan, that day to confess and ask him to be her boyfriend. "Explains the craft supplies," she said, picking up the tape and noting the paper in the wastebasket.
"I feel a little guilty about reading this," Knuckles said, taking the diary from her and flipping randomly through the pages.
Rouge smirked. "I don't see you putting it down."
"Well, I want to know about this Ethan," he said, walking around. "But I feel like we should wait until Ruby wants to tell us and is ready. When she's ready to introduce us to Ethan, I trust that she'll do it."
"Children shouldn't keep secrets from their parents," Shadow said. "Maria and I never kept anything from Gerald Robotnik, or one another. We got along well and had very few fights, all because we trusted one another to not hide anything. No secrets at all."
"As much as I hate to admit it, Ruby is growing up," Knuckles said. "She'll start having secrets of her own. Not much we can do about that."
He had a point. The shame in the pit of Rouge's stomach gnawed at her. She already lied and deceived enough in her job. Their home should be a safe place, especially for Ruby, and their daughter should feel like she could trust her parents with anything, including respecting her secrets. "You're right for once, Red."
Shadow scoffed. "A parent has the right to their privacy."
"Hate to see how screwed up your kid would turn out to be," Knuckles mumbled under his breath, but Shadow's piercing glare bored right through him. Knuckles busied himself with another entry and looked up. "Wait, what's this about Ruby swallowing diamonds as a baby?"
Rouge whipped around to Shadow, whose pupils dilated and face become beet red in terror. "Uh, then again," he said, quickly snatching the book out of Knuckles's hands, throwing it in the corner of the closet, shutting the door, and leaning on it, "maybe kids are entitled to keep something to themselves now and then."
"You told her that story?!" Rouge thundered.
"It was a bonding moment," Shadow said, trying to explain but Rouge pounced at him. He side-stepped and rushed to the door. "I almost forgot. We should really bring in that living room sofa. Got to have the moving truck back before five." Then he dashed out and his footsteps rumbled down the stairs.
Before Rouge give chase, Knuckles stepped in. "Hold on! You told me she ate a rock and when I brought the money you asked for, that it was to pay for the surgery to remove it!"
"I didn't lie exactly," she said. "Diamonds are rocks."
"That money was bail money, wasn't it?"
Seeing she was caught, Rouge pecked Knuckles's nose, catching him off-guard. He stumbled back, enough for her to slip around him. "I should really help Shadow with that sofa. Be right there. Shads!" she said, quickly exiting the room.
"Oh, no, you don't," Knuckles said, running after her. "We're not done with this yet!"
It took hours of back and forth arguing while bringing boxes and furniture in, but they unloaded the moving truck in record time. Although Rouge attributed that to the adrenaline from the arguments. Fleeing from someone breathing down your neck and chiding her, while at the same time dashing after someone she was chewing out, was a great motivator while carrying heavy loads.
In the end, they settled on a truce as the clock struck three so as not to arouse any suspicion. Ruby was due home any minute, so everyone did their best to act natural. Knuckles made the mistake of entering the backyard and was immediately cornered by the old woman who lived behind them and loved to prattle nonstop about her azaleas. Shadow watched from the kitchen, enjoying a refreshing drink and the show.
The front door opened and Rouge perked up from the sofa. Ruby walked in, kicking off her shoes and shuffling across the foyer. "Hey, sweetie," Rouge said. "How was school?"
Her daughter didn't even look her way. She mumbled a "Fine" and started to climb the stairs.
Rouge's intuition kicked in. Something was wrong. "Hey," she said, following after her. "Did something happen?"
"It's nothing," Ruby said, turning into her room and shutting the door.
Rouge was quicker and jammed her boot between the door and the jamb. "Ruby." But her daughter abandoned the door, dropped her backpack on the floor, and collapsed on the bed, rolling away from her. Rouge opened the door wider, carefully approaching Ruby and sitting on the bed beside her.
She couldn't see her face, but Rouge sensed that her daughter was crying. Ruby's breathing through her nose sounded a little too congested to Rouge's ears and she hid her face against the wall. Rouge sat patiently, her eyes wandering around the partially unpacked room.
It had to be because of Ethan. Had to be, even though she hoped it wasn't. Maybe it's something else, yet nothing came to mind. She had hoped Ruby's first crush wouldn't end in heartbreak already.
Who's to say it's heartbreak? Perhaps Ethan was moving to another school and they wouldn't see each other as much. Best case scenario. Worst case was he had rejected her. Please let it have been gentle. For her sake. Please, please, please.
"Hon," she asked, touching Ruby's shoulder. She shivered and rolled onto her stomach. "Did something happen at school?"
"It's nothing," she said.
"Hey, you can tell me," she said. "It'll be our secret." Unlike Shadow and his big mouth.
Ruby peered out at her with one glassy eye. She kept her face in her pillow, mumbling low, and Rouge had to strain to hear her. "Well, there's this guy at school."
Rouge's heart beat faster. She was actually going to divulge her crush to her. Fearing to move even a muscle, Rouge kept her mouth tightly closed, humming as she took in the news and urging Ruby to continue.
"And he's really nice and I kind of like him. So today, I was going to tell him, so I left a note in his locker."
"Mm-hm."
"But one of his friends found it and blabbed about it all over school. Then when I saw him at recess later, I found out he had a girlfriend. Her and her friends were making fun of me, calling me 'weird' and a 'loser with loser parents'."
Teeth biting down and grinding the enamel, Rouge kept an even composure. "Hm."
"And they kept calling me a 'thief like your mom' and accused me of stealing boys. I wasn't trying to! I didn't know he had a girlfriend. His friends kept laughing at me too."
"And what did this boy say?" Rouge said, her voice close to cracking in a violent rage.
"He said, 'Sorry, I don't feel the same way'," Ruby said, "and that was it. I walked away and his friends kept laughing."
"He didn't try to stop them?"
"No, not really," she said and offered a lame, "He told them to cut it out once."
Rouge's entire vision was bathed in murderous blood red and she nearly couldn't see straight, but the soft sniffles of her daughter stalled the anger for the time being. First things first. She opened her arms wide and Ruby swayed from the pillow into Rouge's chest. She stroked her daughter's head, curling her long, pink bangs around her finger.
"Hey, a boy like that isn't worth it," she said. "If he can't even stand up to his friends, he sure isn't going to stand up for any girlfriend he has. He's a doormat. And frankly, he doesn't deserve a beautiful, smart, amazing girl like you. No matter how nice, or handsome he might be, if he doesn't stick up for you, then it's better to move on."
Ruby didn't say anything and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Rouge dabbed her daughter's eyes with her gloves, cleaning off the tears.
"I know it may seem hard now, but you'll forget about this boy in no time. And soon you'll find someone better. A girl like you will have no trouble doing that. Boys will flock to you. You'll find someone who appreciates you for who you are."
"Yeah, right," Ruby said, her voice croaking.
"I promise you will," she said, kissing the top of her head. "And don't listen to those other kids. You're my daughter and that already makes you more special than they could ever be." She lifted up Ruby's cheeks and looked into her eyes, giving her a warm smile. "Hey, your dad and I have to run a couple of errands and return the moving truck. How about we bring home a pizza and a couple of movies for us to watch? Your pick."
She nodded. "Yeah, that sounds good."
Rouge hugged her tight, pecking her cheek. "I love you, hon. We all do. Never forget that."
"I love you too, Mom."
"We'll call you on our way home," Rouge said. She grabbed a blanket from one of the boxes, draping it over Ruby and laying her down. "Try to get some sleep, okay?" Ruby nodded.
Rouge left, closing the door behind her, and found Knuckles and Shadow at the bottom of the stairs. Knuckles had slipped on his sharpest pair of gloves and Shadow was checking the clip of a pistol. They gave her a knowing look and Rouge sighed.
"Fine," she said. "Let me get my steel-toed boots."
Knuckles produced the boots behind his back. She exchanged a peck on the lips for them. "You know me so well," she said. "And," she plucked the gun out of Shadow's hand and pointed the grip at him, "no guns. We're going to scare this Ethan kid and his girlfriend, not traumatize them."
Shadow clucked his tongue, as if to say, "You take the fun out of everything."
"So, was there any address in that book?"
"No," Rouge said, leaning against the stair's bannister and taking off her boots. "But where do all middle school kids hang out?" She paused for an answer and received none. "The mall." She tugged on the steel-toed boots and walked out the front door. "We can drop off the truck on the way."
Some might accuse her of overkill. Perhaps. But this was something only a mother could understand. Nobody, and that meant nobody, messed with her baby girl. She turned back to the house, smirking. "Coming, boys?"
A/N: This was a pretty fun one to write and we have to thank MaxDark158 again for the idea. It was made all the more fun by Rouge's more, shall we say, flexible morals in handling situations.
Sword: Super-Mom to the rescue with a smack-down!
As always, we would love to hear from all you lovely people what you think of the story. Please let us know and if you have any suggestions, we're happy to hear them. In the meantime, until we come up with another idea, take care!