Rouge's streak at pulling off amazing jewel heists, had lately began to falter. She had just returned to her apartment (with a elaborately decorated interior made from stolen jewels.) after a frankly disastrous heist. Not only did she fail to secure her prize, she almost got caught by the police. Despite the fact that she was carrying nothing other than her usual gear, flying back to her hideout felt oddly more labor intensive than usual.
But Rouge did not have time to think about this, for as soon as she entered through the moonlight window that she left open before setting off on the heist, she immediately walked over to the living room couch next to the kitchen, and passed out asleep on to it from nothing more than sheer exhaustion.
The next morning, Rouge was still quite groggy, as she could only think of, "making herself beautiful/ready" for the day. She took off her heist gear, the black rubber jumpsuit with white boots and put aside the glass cutting tools, she then put on a pink bathrobe and promptly began to eat her breakfast. 2 slices of Buttered Toast, 2 Waffles, 4 slices of Bacon, and a glass of apple juice.
After finishing, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and weigh herself as she normally did... but something about the number that the scale sent back to her seemed... wrong... It read that her weight was 10 pounds heavier than what she was familiar with. (110 pounds=normal, now it reads her weight as 120.)
"That can't be right! It must be broken... I'll..." before Rouge could finish her train of thought as to possible explanations, she heard her cell phone ring. Caller I.D. displayed that it was Shadow, Rouge having romantic feelings for him, picks up the phone, despite the fact that she could count the number of times Shadow called her on 1 hand, she was too tired to attempt to flirt with him, especially not over the phone, and because of this she told him, "Shadow... now is not a good time for..."
Unfortunately she was interrupted by an outburst of words from Shadow that immediately terrified her. "ROUGE!! YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW!! THE POLICE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE!! THEY'LL BE THERE IN ABOUT 2 MINUTES!!" Rouge immediately realized that she will have to worry about her possible weight problem later as this obviously took a bigger priority. "HOW?!..." She Thought... then she suddenly remembered a detail that she had not noticed at the time from exhaustion and panic after tripping the alarm at the museum, she heard that she dropped something. At the time she dismissed it to be a metal file but when she reexamined the tools she took off only minutes ago she realized the keys to the front door of her apartment were not there.
With horror Rouge knew that mistake allowed the police to track her down. "I..." She stammered too horrified to move, Shadow must have heard/sensed her panic over the phone so he told her, "GRAB WHAT YOU CAN!! I'M GONNA USE CHAOS CONTROL!!" Rouge with as much haste as possible, grabbed the items that could be used for DNA testing if they were found by the police, her tooth brush, the jumpsuit, the dirty dishes, and the clothes on her back. Shadow then teleported into her living room holding the green Chaos Emerald, and after briefly blushing after seeing what she was wearing (despite all his attempts to conceal it.) He Grabbed Rouge with his free hand, arm wrapped around her Rouge couldn't help but blush at this as they teleported to Shadow's Hideout.
It was the old Egg Carrier 1 from Sonic Adventure 1, the 2 of them were on the outer deck behind the structure that housed the bridge.
As soon as they were safe they stared at each other for a second both blushing before stepping and looking away from each other in the usual awkward fashion that this type of event plays out. The awkward feeling quickly disappeared as Rouge noticed the horrible stench of low tide and soon realized that the place was filthy with seaweed, barnacles and even a few seagull's nests in the platforms above them. "Sorry I suppose the mess is to be expected. This place has spent the last 5 years drifting on the ocean." Shadow remarked and pointed out the mass of robots working to clean it. All of them and the ship simply abandoned by Eggman for failing him, "They've managed to clean up most of the filth since I reactivated this place 6 months ago, but it's still disgusting... at least on the outside... The interiors in the stern of the ship are all nice and clean." Rouge struggled whether to find this situation to be repugnant or inviting as she could've considered this to be her first date with Shadow, unfortunately, the current atmosphere was the worst possible place for it, but she still expressed gratitude that it was better than going to jail (though not by much she secretly thought.)
Rouge then noticed a strong wind, it was a draft of cold air that made her silently question the location of the ship, "Oh right... you see... right now we're 10,000 feet above the surface of the ocean." Fearing that the next wind could blow off her bathrobe and reveal the purple lingerie underneath it, Rouge immediately handed the dishes and jumpsuit to Shadow and proceeded to run to the nearest door.
The swimming pool area was what she found herself in, unfortunately she could not relax in it, for she had not brought a bathing suit with her, and the pool itself was empty.
Shadow then came inside, "I gave your gear to a maintenance robot to be put in storage." He then noticed that she was eying the swimming pool, "You should be glad it's no longer full of lobsters and plankton stinking up the place."
Rouge turned around and asked him, "Shadow why would anyone turn this old piece of junk into their hideout?" Rouge had never been to the egg carrier before, but she had heard the story of it's downfall, and seen pictures of it in it's prime. When she was working with Eggman, and as luck would have it, met Shadow. "After we and the others defeated Emerl, and the Metal Overlord before that. I came to realize that the various hideouts we used over time were only running mate solutions at evading trouble. So, when I learned of this thing, I went to find it thinking the fact that it is both mobile and forgotten by Eggman would make it an ideal base of operations. Unlike the other hideouts that were only good for their namesake. This one can do just about anything for people like us, and even if it is a bit of an attention grabber, we can hide it just about anywhere where there are no cities or people, the clouds, bottom of the ocean, perhaps even outer space if we're lucky and I can fix and upgrade it well enough to do all that." Rouge couldn't help but marvel at the brilliance of this choice. Alas the 5 years adrift and neglected have not been kind to it, still she did realize it was easier to fix and cleanup an old place than build a new one.
"The past 6 months have been nothing but a restoration job for me, The robots help and I do what I can to gather materials they can't make themselves. But still, the vast emptiness of this place can make a guy feel rather..." Shadow was obviously struggling to find the right word, as he was always better at expressing his ideas than his emotions.
"Lonely?" Rouge suddenly slipped that word out of her lips, that made the 2 of them blush. And the empty swimming pool smelling of chlorine didn't help steer the conversation to something else.
Speaking of empty, Rouge then heard her stomach growling. Shadow noticed this. "I... guess you haven't had breakfast yet. Perhaps those dishes were from last night?" Rouge felt too embarrassed to tell him that they were not. It was 10:30am so she merely wrote off her hunger to a form of jet-lag associated with teleporting to the other side of the continent.
Rouge then began to struggle to decide what to do next, her belly told her it needed a bite to eat, but her brain told her she needed a change of clothes, and her still aching feet told her to find where her a new bedroom to rest in before anything else.
She then faced Shadow the both of them still blushing and told him in a tone expressing embarrassment, "I... I think I'll go find..."
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