Rouge the Bat

Rouge the Bat is a video game character in the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series, who is a determined treasure hunter and part-time government agent who plans to make all the gems and treasures of the world hers. Her main jewel obsessions are the Master Emerald and Chaos Emeralds. She made her debut in Sonic Adventure 2, released June 18, 2001, and has been featured in the all Sonic the Hedgehog console games following it (except Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic Unleashed, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and Olympic Winter Games, and Sonic and the Black Knight), as well as three handheld games.

In six of nine the games she has appeared in to date, Rouge wears a skintight black body suit with a large pink heart-shaped chest plate, long white gloves, and thigh-high white boots with pink hearts on the toes. In Sonic Heroes and Sonic Riders, she wears different outfits, but often with similar color schemes and heart-shaped details.

Personality
Rouge is a strong-minded, fearless, ambitious, and flirty young bat. She has been known to seduce people with her adorning looks to get what she wants, such as chaos emeralds. However, she is actually quite compassionate as well, as seen from time to time in most games she appears in, where she performs various kind and heroic actions. Rouge, along with Shadow, is one of the few characters in the series who could be described as an 'anti-hero', due to her conflicting character traits and actions.

Video Game Appearances
Strangely Rouge does not appear in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games.

Sonic Adventure 2
Rouge first appears in Sonic Adventure 2 as the treasure-hunting character of the Dark Story, making her the equivalent of Knuckles, her goal being to seek out the pieces of the Master Emerald. She also drives a car in one level. She fights the boss Flying Dog (a G.U.N robot), and her rival, Knuckles who saves her from falling into the hopper of molten metal in her last boss battle. In the following cutscene, she gives up the shards of the Master Emerald she had collected. In Cannon's Core, Rouge is the third of five characters to go through the level and is given Shadow's ring cufflink by Sonic after the defeat of the Final Hazard.

Sonic Heroes
In Sonic Heroes, Rouge is the captain and flight member of Team Dark. She releases Shadow from his stasis pod, and (accidentally) activates E-123 Omega, who attempts to destroy all of Eggman's robots, including Shadow, who Omega thinks is a robot clone. Rouge stops Shadow and E-123 Omega from fighting, suggesting that they work together as a team to find Eggman.

Sonic Battle
In Sonic Battle, Rouge is one of the most prominently featured characters in the game, with her story being the third to be played through. She is the owner of Club Rouge in the Night Babylon area (no relation to the Babylon Rogues from Sonic Riders). Most of her fighting techniques appear to be derived from kickboxing. She plans to use her position as a government agent to gather information on valuable treasures. She also knows a great deal about the Gizoid and tells most characters about the Gizoid, eventually telling Shadow the Hedgehog how to 'free' Emerl. She steals Emerl from Amy Rose, in order to train him as a master thief to steal more jewels for her. She fights with Amy and Sonic numerous times, increasing the tension between Rouge, and the pair. Rouge teaches Emerl to fight, evade capture, and pick locks. Rouge then uses Emerl to steal a Chaos Emerald (which he absorbs, much to Rouge's displeasure). At the end of the game, when Emerl thanks Sonic and his friends/acquaintances for taking care of him, Rouge is only mentioned in the Japanese version.

Shadow the Hedgehog
Rouge also appears in Shadow the Hedgehog, and helps on hero missions in the Digital Circuit, Death Ruins, and GUN Fortress levels. In Expert Mode, her voice can be heard at the beginning of Cryptic Castle, Lava Shelter (along with Omega's) and The Last Way (along with the voice of every other character that appears in Expert Mode).

Sonic Riders
Rouge appears in Sonic Riders as an unlockable racer. She is a Flight type, and is the strongest Flight type character in the game. The Japanese website also mentions that she has some kind of rivalry with Wave the Swallow. Rouge is one of only three characters in Sonic Riders who do not wear any sporting gear on their heads, with the others being Amy and AiAi. She is also one of the few characters who do not take any part of the story.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
In Sonic the Hedgehog, Rouge appears as an "Amigo" character, playable in stages White Acropolis, Kingdom Valley, Flame Core, and Tropical Jungle. At the start of Shadow's story, she had gone on a mission to recover an item from Eggman's base, and Shadow is sent by GUN to help her escape. After being rescued, Rouge then works with him very closely for most of the game, in various endeavours, such as defeating Mephiles, tracking down the Chaos Emeralds, escaping from the future, and separately finding Omega, to aid Shadow, whilst he was stuck in a different time zone. Rouge also helps find the Chaos Emeralds to revive Sonic in the Last Story.

Sonic Rivals
Rouge appears in Sonic Rivals in Shadow's storyline. Rouge sends transmissions stating that she has stumbled across an interesting discovery about "Dr. Eggman's" true identity in the game, but the transmissions ended with her in danger. It is later revealed during Shadow's storyline that Rouge was turned into a card like Tails and Amy so Shadow sets out to save Rouge whilst also trying to discover what she was trying to warn him about. Rouge is playable in the sequel, Sonic Rivals 2.

Sonic Rivals 2
Rouge appears along with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Metal Sonic, Silver and Espio as a playable character in Sonic Rivals 2. She teams up with Knuckles to help him find the Master Emerald (which Knuckles has lost once again). She suggests following Eggman to get and Emerald detector from him. Rouge actually worked with Knuckles for that what so she can find the seven Chaos Emeralds for her client. It is later discovered that her client is actually Eggman Nega and she decides to keep the Emeralds for herself. In the end they get stolen from her and the portal to the Ifrit's dimension is opened. Knuckles forces her through, assuming that the Master Emerald is inside. In the end Rouge breaks the Emerald Detector in a fight against Knuckles (one of them was being controlled by the Ifrit depending on which story you play) and they discover the Master Emerald had been inside the detector the whole time. Rouge then steals the Emerald Detector and the Master Emerald, only to be chased by Knuckles.

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity
Rouge returns in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity as a secret character along with Shadow, Blaze, Cream, Silver and Dr. Eggman. Her game mechanics are unchanged from the previous Sonic Riders.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Rouge appeared as one of 11 playable characters in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, along with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, E-123 Omega, Cream and Big.

Abilities
Rouge, as a treasure hunter, has similar treasure hunting skills to those of her rival Knuckles (with the exception that she has a strapping lower body as opposed to his muscular upper body). Her signature attacks are strong martial arts kicks like her powerful Screw Kick. Rouge can fly and glide with her wings, and aviate herself to move at speeds close to that of other speedy characters like Knuckles and even Sonic and Shadow (though she is not as fast as the supersonic hedgehogs). She can also climb, dig and swim quite well. In many games, Rouge makes use of different advanced technologies and weaponry. However these are mostly game specific.