Shade the Echidna

Shade the Echidna is a minor character in the franchise.
She first appeared in the non-canon game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, as the lead member of the Marauder forces. She is always serious and serves to teach her please lord. She has lived with others of her lost clan within the Twilight Cage for over 4,000 years (from the perspective of Sonic's world).
==Appearance==
Shade is an anthropomorphic tomato red echidna female, with a peach-colored muzzle and small black nose and pink eyes surrounded by a much paler (almost white) patch of fur. Each eye is paired with a single short lash that curves to the side. She has seven dreadlocks with a lighter zigzag pattern near the ends that hang from her head and a zigzag tail.
She wears all-black armor and a helmet and black, gray and pink boots and gray and pink Leech Blade bracelets. Her helmet is shaped like two large horns that curl downwards and underneath her she has a black band. Both his helmet and headband sport a pale pink Nocturnus seal.
==Personality ==
Shade is very tough, disciplined, authoritative, honorable and very noble. She is also very loyal and is not afraid to stand up for her friends and what she believes is right. She has been trained in the arts of stealth and the use of powerful high-tech weapons, so she Shade she knows how to be a real deadly fury in combat.
As a former Twilight Cage resident and high-ranking officer of Clan Nocturnus, she is always well-informed about alternate-sized races and locations and is willing to help the team by telling everything she knows about agents Ix.
She is quite impressed with both Sonic and Knuckles and she fights alongside them to redeem herself for unknowingly contributing to Ix's plans for world domination.
==Powers and Abilities==
TBA
==Biography==
Prior to the events of the game, Shade had witnessed the capture of the last Chaos Emerald and captured Knuckles the Echidna as she did so, almost able to overpower him on her own.
She first appears in the Blue Ridge Zone, revealing herself and introducing the Marauders as an echidna of Clan Nocturnus. After being defeated in combat, she tried to stop Sonic and his friends from entering Metropolis by causing an avalanche.
After she believes she has defeated Sonic, she goes to Angel Island and meets Emperor Ix, unaware that the team used an alternate path built by Dr. Eggman. On the island, she and Ix face off against Sonic and Knuckles, there Ix reveals her plan and her true intentions to the heroes: to conquer Sonic's world. Then Ix attempts to kill Shade, who is saved by Knuckles. Shade is therefore now a hero for the rest of the game and she joins them to bring the Nocturnus clan back to Sonic's world, not to get hold of them (Ix's objective). She also says she is impressed with Sonic and Knuckles' bravery and heroism and also that it is not easy to impress her.
Soon, Shade forms a team with Knuckles on the Nocturne trying to bring the Nocturnus back to Sonic's world, but fails when they are attacked by Emperoro Ix. After Ix is defeated by Super Sonic, Shade escapes to the Cyclone with Sonic and his friends, making her the only echidna of the Nocturnus clan to permanently escape the Twilight Cage in Sonic's world.
==Trivia==
*Until the Sonic the Hedgehog comic adaption of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Nintendo Power magazine and Sonic fan sites addressed her as "Shade the Goat", probably to keep the secret that she was an echidna until the game was released. The success of the subterfuge could be in part due to the shape of her helmet, which resembles two horns much like a goat would have. The same artwork also shows Shade with a huge tail, something she lacks in the game.
*Shade is the first (and so far only) hero character (with the exception of Excalibur Sonic) to have officially had a set of full-body clothing (in both cases, they wear metallic armor).
*In the game, Shade is the only playable character who has POW moves with Life-Draining effects, which restore her Health Points when they deal damage to the enemy.
*Even though she currently hates Ix, she still refers to him as "Lord Ix". The same is true for the Kron, N'rrgal, Zoah and Nestor.
*When the Voxai Overmind managed to take control of most of Sonic's group, Shade's statement while brainwashed was "I betrayed Lord Ix." This may imply that, while she does realize that Ix was pure evil and needed to be stopped, she does feel some guilt for having to betray him.
*The symbol on Shade's helmet/headband appears to change from left to right and vice versa when comparing her artwork.
*In the dialogue in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Shade's mouth is almost never seen, due to the angle of her head in her artwork.
*Shade, along with the other Nocturnus echidnas, appears to always have her head facing downward while looking up, giving her face a shrunken appearance.
*Writer Ken Penders filed a lawsuit against Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, accusing the developers for taking concepts he wrote for the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics (At the time, Ken Penders was also in lawsuits against Archie and Sega for usage of his work). Though Sega won the case, it is unlikely Shade will ever make another appearance presumably to avoid further legal issues. The events of the game itself also became non-canon possibly for the same reasons.
**Despite this, the character was acknowledged in Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia.
==External Links==
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