River the Echidna

*"It’s odd. When most people think about the ocean, they think of this beautiful, blue thing full of life. But they forget about all the tsunamis, all the storms…"*

River is an echidna hailing from the island of Ali'ikai, an isolated place formerly unknown to modern civilization. She is imbued with chaos energy, and from it has the power to control water. However, she isn’t much of a fighter, and rather spends her time as a nomad meeting new faces on a frequent basis.

## Concept and Creation

Okay look, I've had River for a long time. Ever since I was like 13-ish and it's been like four years since then. Not gonna lie, she's been reworked through a ton of crap. Multiple iterations, multiple stories and experiences and roles, heck one time I even made her human, but that's beside the point. After some time I was like "You know, I have nothing left for this character, I should probably just give her to someone who can do something with her."

And so I gave her to Sigma. I worked on original projects, and made little fancharacters off to the side. But then for some stupid reason I started thinking about River again after like months of being away from her. Then well, I started brainstorming, got ownership back, and now here I am working on this page again. Probably will work on it until I die and still be unsatisfied.

## Personality

River tries to be the kind of person who sees the beauty in everything. Even in the darkest, ugliest things, she will find something that makes it good. That being said, she always gives someone a second chance even when many others won't. But even then, she's still wary of others. She has a lot trust issues, and has a hard time believing that people like her for *who* she is rather than *what* she is. So while she can love a lot of people, she feels that not a lot of people can love her.

Regardless, she tries to be very caring and kind to those she meets. Maybe not the most charismatic or the most quirky person, but she does put effort to try and leave a good impression on people. Her ultimate goal is to just make the others around her happy, even if most of the time she's not happy herself.

River is honestly riddled with troubles and insecurities. Her natural gift of hydrokinesis has been praised since she was young, and has always been a source of pride for her until recently. After she had left her home and realized that strange powers and abilities were commonplace around the world, her powers suddenly seemed... not so special. She began realizing that not only were her powers mundane by comparison, but that in the outside world, others have only shown interest in her for her rare species and color. They didn't really care for anything other than that. So, it's led River to occasionally lie about her species and powers in hopes that others would like her for her. Though unfortunately, these attempts have been fruitless save for a few individuals.

## Abilities

**Hydrokinesis** - River has the ability to control water in any way, shape, or form, though she prefers to control it in a liquid form as it's easier than vapor or ice. She has more capability when surrounded by a body of water like an ocean or a lake, but her power is practically useless in a desert. Her preferred method of using water in combat is to make "claws" around her arms that are similar in form to the claws that echidnas in the real world possess.

**Water Claws** - River can make large, claw-like appendages around her arms out of water. They can be pressurized to slash, but that’s not necessarily practical. She usually utilizes the weight of the water instead to hold down or push back an opponent. Outside of combat, River can “dig” with her claws, using the water to soften the ground.

**Sailing** - Being born on an island that has a rather large dependency on fishing, River knows quite well how to travel open water by boat. Not necessarily with modern boats however, but rather with smaller, more primitive vessels that rely mostly on wind power.

**Bilingualism** - River is actually bilungual, only having recently become fluent in english. Her native language is a dialect of the ancient echidna language, a tongue once thought to be dead. She can also decipher echidna runes because of this.

### Weaknesses

**Chaos Dependency** - River's life is directly attached to the chaos emeralds. If they are damaged, she feels pain from it, and if they are drained, she can fall into a coma. And if somehow the chaos energy imbued in her body is removed, she will risk dying within a short time span.

**No Combat Training** - River never learned exactly how to fight with her powers, as it was never necessary. She never had to fight anyone or anything growing up and was never in a dangerous situation. So far she's only been able to teach herself very basic self defense, but she has very poor spatial awareness and lacks the confidence to fight well.

**Emotional Instability** - River is not the most emotionally sound. She is very insecure, anxious, and easily depressed. If someone can get into her head, it will screw her up immensely and make her entirely unwilling to fight. If she’s attacked during an emotional episode, there’s no predicting how she might react.

## Relationships

### Zuasi

River is one of Zuasi’s few friends. Most people don’t bother to understand or even interact with the hybrid, but River isn’t all that judgemental of a person, and they’ve been getting along well. River is good at calming her down and assisting her socially, which Zuasi appreciates a lot even if she’s bad at showing it. Zuasi doesn’t know how provide much for River, but for them it doesn’t really matter since she cares most about companionship.

### Eris

River looks up to and highly respects Eris. They are, for starters, under very similar circumstances as two chaos-imbued echidnas. She believes that she can learn from Eris, and is inspired by her intense passion of the sciences. However there is still quite a lot that she doesn’t know about Eris, and is still oblivious to her true intentions.

## History

River was born on an obscure, remote island called Ali’ikai far from contact with modern civilization. Unfortunately, River was born very ill, and was teetering on death for the island’s more primitive medical knowledge couldn’t save her. Losing hope, her parents turned to a last resort, and exposed River to a chaos emerald that had recently appeared on the island (as the emeralds seem to enjoy popping up wherever). To their surprise, its power not only had restored her to health, but had changed her color to cyan. Shortly after, the emerald disappeared, vanishing to another part of the world.

So from that point on, River’s parents raised her normally. Of course her odd colors earned some strange looks from other residents, but no one was necessarily disturbed by it. But at around the age of five, the girl had learned that the emerald had also gifted her the power to control water. Excited, she immediately began to show off to as many people as she could, and well, they were impressed, and figured this could be way more useful than just party tricks.

Once she had gained better control of her powers, River helped out in all sorts ways around the island. She fished by lifting schools of fish out of the ocean in a bubble, she helped sailors around the island by moving the waves to their advantage, and she could dive down and bring back up valuable treasures or artifacts that had been lost to the ocean. Everything she did made her a local celebrity. But sometimes, she had stumbled upon items in the water that she had never seen from her island. Things made out of glass, or metal, and after finding enough of these things River and some others figured that there might be a world outside of Ali’ikai.

In previous centuries, many sailors had tried to leave the island, but never returned, so everyone was more than a little hesitant to go out into open waters. But in centuries before, they didn’t have a girl that could command the ocean. So after some debating and preparation, River alone was selected to sail out.

After some time, she arrived ashore a mainland continent, and even met locals, which she was a bit shocked by considering no one has seen any species different from her in centuries, while the locals all believed echidnas to be extinct. But after this encounter, River was being taught english and the mainlanders had established a peaceful line of contact between them and Ali’ikai. In the months that passed there has been introduction of modern technology to the island, as well as outsiders traveling to visit the island.

While River could have gone home and enjoyed the rest of her life there, something deep down had bothered her. There was a whole world that had just opened up to her and yet no one in her village had the courage to explore it? River has always been on the timid side, but for once this felt like something that called to her. So… she decided to set out, and start venturing around this newly discovered world looking for purpose.

## Trivia

* She has a very deep adoration for the ocean.
* Also a really good swimmer even without using her powers.
* Her clothes colors (red, white, and dark blue) are meant to represent the colors of the Hawaiian flag (which is totally not a nod to how Knuckles' colors reflect the Jamaican flag).
* She is a Mercy main
* She smells like seawater most of the time.

## Gallery

previous design from not too long agoBright sunny day, don't cost nothin'with her quills downformer stylealternate casual designREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEI can't believe this is the actual first time I've drawn DashSAILING, SAILING, JUMPING OFF THE RAILINGOh hey here's a dumb gijinkaGay girls are best girls by DotIt's Boom!Riv wearing a swimsuit and the fishy has returnedAnd here is a much better gijinka by SA3I got a little inspired by the Sonic Mania openingout of the sea, someday she'll be... part of your ***WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD***yess babbythis is just like... a thing.kurisumasucolored just a bitdrowning in her sorrowsJust an idea for a 10 years later Riv, when she's older and had more traumathis is mehugh okay human version againyuy she got hips now I guessthey're into each other but really awkwardjust chillin with totally not her daughterin some traditional paint for Renewalhere we gochemical x? more like chemical... uh, NEXT, because these girls are total losers