Agent Gray, Red with Love

Shadow is a Fake-Girlfriend Magnet

  "Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire...!" 

  His steps echoed on the damp stone floor of the fortress, a nice castle in Scotland. Still, it was a little dark for his taste. Not enough spunk.

  "Gotta whole lot of money that's ready to burn...."

  The faculty of V.I.L.E. heard the low hum of their double agent, if they could call him that. They straightened in their seats with anticipation. 

  "So set those stakes up higher!" Rodger Headroom sang to himself as the great doors of the new faculty lounge swung open. He trotted up straight to the table looking each one of them in the eyes. Not his faculty, the other faculty.

  "Rodger," Maelestom greeted him, "Any news from Moscow?"

  Dunces. They still thought that HQ Europe was placed in Moscow, Russia. Like he would ever willingly live there. Similar to V.I.L.E., ACME liked to hide in plain sight (though they were noticeably worse at it.) Quite honestly, Rodger knew that they knew that the HQ wasn't in Russia, but he still had no intention to tell him where his turf was. They weren't welcome in Berlin, they'd be too moody.

 One may wonder why Rodger Headroom might stoop so low as to assist V.I.L.E., especially after serving ACME loyally for a little over 20 years. He considered Tamara a genuine, dear friend. He cared about every one of his agents at HQ Europe. He had no reason to ever want to hurt or betray anyone.

  But long story short: he was bored and it was something to do.

Long story long? He had realized a long time ago that ACME was filled with incompetent losers, no matter how much he loved them. With notable exceptions, everyone there was an entitled, egotistical, goody two-shoe disappointments with a serious "greater than thou" mentality. And what had any of them achieved? Nothing. 

  There comes a time where you just snap. Where you think, "oh what's the point?" Billions of international tax dollars disappeared and went down the drain for ACME for nothing, and the people of the world didn't even know they existed. People could be investing in hospitals, schools, defense, global food distribution or clean water...  But they weren't. They were blindly investing in ACME just so a freakin teenager in a red hat could to do everything for them in less than a tenth of the time. They'd be nowhere if it weren't for Carmen San Diego, ironic as it was.

  No, his faith in ACME had long been dead. But he had picked his road and there was no going back. It was his life. Paperwork and Germany.

  Or so he thought.

   Rodger was not V.I.L.E., but it seemed he wasn't ACME anymore, either. Rodger was just Rodger, your local businessman who would support whoever was willing to use his genius as he searched for fulfillment in life.  For the longest time ACME had provided that fulfillment, but now he saw that ACME hosted an utter incompetence of which he had never seen before. They had multiple openings on multiple occasions to take the bad guys down, and then always fell short. Hayashi and Tammy had always insisted on doing the traditional plans, which always ended in disaster. News flash honey, tradition was outdated. And V.I.L.E. gave him a chance to start again in a new chapter.

  Besides, in the big picture, V.I.L.E. and ACME didn't seem that different. 

  I mean, on one side we have a secret organization that dictates everything that is anything related to international crime, chases Carmen San Diego to no avail, can't finish the job for the life of 'em, and have hundreds operatives working toward their common, not always particularly clear goal.

  On the other, we have  ACME.

  As said, they weren't all that different: just sitting on opposite sides of justice. No wonder it was so easy to track them down once Rodger got enough clues. It was like Sherlock Bond! Or James Holmes. No-no... Sherlock Holmes! That's it. Not like 1800s literature was any fun anyway... accept Tom Sawyer.