Rouge the Bat

**Rouge the Bat** (ルージュ・ザ・バット Rūju za Batto?) is a fictional character from the *Sonic the Hedgehog series*. She is an anthropomorphic bat and jewel thief that has worked as a part-time government spy for the President of the United Federation and in close association with the Guardian Units of Nations. A world-famous treasure hunter, Rouge has a weakness for jewels, like Master Emerald and Chaos Emeralds, which she always obsesses about. As a spy, Rouge is trained in combat, stealth, and infiltration, and possesses both super-level kicking power and flight.

Rouge is in short, an enigma, as her motivations are always in question. In truth, she is usually just out for herself. She is smart, sassy, and seductive, and knows how to get what she wants. Once she has a target in mind, she always goes for it, regardless of the costs. Beneath her ditsy exterior though, she is a calculating realist and her motives are always mercenary. Regardless, she is loyal to her closest friends and has more than once helped Sonic the Hedgehog and his allies save the world.

## Appearance

Rouge is an anthropomorphic bat with white fur, tan skin, teal eyes, and a curvy figure. She has large pointy ears, small fangs, a small black nose on a tan muzzle, a short tail, and a pair of dark purple wings on her back. Only her head appears to have fur, which flares out into six points at the back. She usually wears light blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick. Her typical attire consists of a skintight, black, sleeveless unitard with a pink, heart-shaped chest plate with white trim and long white gloves and boots with pink cuffs. The boots are high-heeled and feature hearts on the toes.

During the Neo Metal Sonic incident, Rouge wears a tight-fitting dark purple outfit (which exposes most of the chest) with a pink bodice-like garment and belt with a heart-shaped buckle around the waist, white gloves with thick pink cuffs, and dark purple boots with thick pink cuffs like her gloves, box-like white and pink squares below the cuffs and pink and white heels. She also wears pink eyeshadow instead of blue.

For Extreme Gear racing, Rouge wears a black top with white trims, black pants with white trims and flowers, white gloves with pink trims, gold bracelets, and pink sports shoes with white stripes, pink straps caught on yellow triangles, and gray soles.

## Personality

Rouge is a strong-minded young woman. A fearless, ambitious, independent, flirtatious, greedy, calculating narcissist who most people see as only caring for herself and gems. It is shown in *Sonic Generations* that Rouge can be referred to as a temptress, due to her seductive ways. Her carefree and playful attitude can be fun to some characters, like the easygoing Sonic, or annoying to others, like the gruff Knuckles. She has a lot of pride and will fight dirty when facing a formidable opponent, such as Knuckles (when it comes to strength; hindering his sight in a dark tent). She can also show a bashful side, such as the time Knuckles saved her life from falling to her doom and became very embarrassed before concealing it with disgust, outrage, and ingratitude. She can also be a bit of a hypocrite, especially regarding thefts. This is especially evident when, after witnessing Master Emerald being stolen, she refers to the one stealing it as a thief even though she had stolen it from Knuckles earlier, something the echidna even noted by saying "Look who's calling who a thief", and in Grand Metropolis stage when she calls robots energy thieves.

Rouge is also at times a government spy who often works for her gain. Rouge has a great obsession with jewels or even anything else that shines or glitters. She also has little to no qualms about lying and manipulating others, often using her charms and attractiveness to seduce and take advantage of others, just to get what she wants (such as kissing Tails in *Sonic Battle*). However, she has, on many occasions, shown she can be heroic, possess loyalty, care about others, or, at least, have some degree of morality. In the final events of *Sonic Adventure 2*, she helped save the planet from destruction. In *Sonic Heroes*, she jumped between Shadow and Omega's hectic fight as the mediator. In *Sonic Battle*, when Shadow was injured and needed a place to stay, Rouge helped him. In Shadow the Hedgehog, she did other laudable things, such as rescuing a Chaos Emerald from the doomed mainframe, destroying the evil monster Black Bull, and assisting Shadow in defeating Black Doomas well as showing concern for his welfare at the end of the game. She also is not fond of hearing Omega constantly talking about vengeance.

Recently, she has been seen as less selfish, as can be seen by her actions toward Shadow in *Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)* and *Sonic Rivals*. However, as shown in her portrayal in *Sonic Free Riders*, depicts her is very cold and callous of her desire for the cash prize, suggesting she still possesses her interest in jewels and riches. This is proved as she couldn't care less that her robot team member broke down and even went on to insult it as well.

## Voice Actresses

* Lani Minella
* Kathleen Delaney
* Karen Strassman