Shade the Echidna

Shade the Echidna (シェイド) is a character from the video game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. As a high-ranking Lieutenant with the Marauders, she is an important spy and recon agent, and her job is not easy. She has lived with others of her lost clan within the Twilight Cage for over 4000 years (from Earth's perspective). She is the brains of the group. Within her clan there have been a lot of individuals who do not harmonize with the whole group, and have interests or ideas that frequently conflict with each other. These people are constantly striving and competing for a position of superiority or authority over others.

History
Shade is first seen assisting in the capture of the final Chaos Emerald and takes Knuckles the Echidna prisoner while doing so. She's next seen trying to stop Sonic and friends from entering Metropolis by causing an avalanche, but they use an alternate route made by Doctor Eggman. After she believes to have fulfilled her duty of stopping Sonic, she goes to Angel Island and meets up with the rest of the Nocturnus and Lord Ix. While on the island, Sonic and Knuckles confront her and Ix, and Ix reveals his plan and true intentions to the heroes. After she discovers Ix's plan to conquer Sonic's world, Ix attempts to kill Shade, only to be saved by Knuckles. She says that she is impressed by the courage and strength of Sonic and Knuckles, and that she is hard to impress.

She then becomes Sonic's ally for the rest of the game. She joins with Sonic and friends because she only wanted to bring the Nocturnus back to Sonic's world - not to take over it as well (Ix's goal).

Personality
Shade is a tough, disciplined, and somewhat noble figure, the polar opposite of Rouge the Bat. She is very loyal and is not afraid to stand up for what she believes is right. Trained in the arts of stealth and the use of powerful, high-tech weaponry, Shade is a deadly force in combat.

As a former denizen of the Twilight Cage and high-ranking officer of the Nocturus, she is very knowledgeable about the races and places of that alternate dimension, and she is willing to help the team by telling them what she knows of Ix's secrets.

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.

Shade apparently does not speak to Shadow. Although they have a lot in common with each other, the only time they interact is in Knuckles' POW move "Hard Line".

Physical Appearance
Shade has orange fur, a peach muzzle, lilac eyes rimmed by a patch of much lighter (almost white) fur and each with a single, short eyelash which curves off to the side.

She has seven dreadlocks hanging from around her head, noticeably shorter than Knuckles', which may be caused by her headband, and a small, black nose and zigzag tail, akin to that sported by Knuckles and Tikal.

Attire
Shade wears a form-fitting, all-body, steel colored Nocturnus combat uniform with what may be additional armor plating on the upper chest and back. The uniform in general is probably made of some advanced Nocturnus polymer.

She wears a pair of black and light-grey armored boots. These boots sport an iridescent pink strip running down the thigh and toe, which might be decorative or serve some sort of technological function.

Shade's black gloves appear to be part of her one-piece combat uniform as opposed to separate pieces of apparel.

Around each wrist Shade sports a grey circlet, which look a bit like squat, four-spoked cogs, featuring a number of purple buttons. These are high-tech Nocturnus devices which project Shade’s ‘leech-blade’ energy knife and also allows her to activate her cloaking device and trigger explosives remotely.

Although she usually doesn’t wear it in combat, Shade’s Procurator uniform is completed by a helmet that serves to disguise her head entirely (masking the fact that she’s an echidna, too). The helmet looks much more formidable and armor-plated than the rest of Shade’s suit.

The faceplate displays a prominent Nocturnus sigil in iridescent pink (like the strips on her boots) on the forehead. Shade sees out of the helmet through glowing purple-white eye visors; these ‘eye sockets’ are set in somewhat extravagant, outward-sweeping pieces of the light-grey material seen on her boots.

The lower portion of the faceplate has a pair of glowing pink lights that resemble nostrils. Shade’s dreadlocks fit inside two branching, backwards ‘horns’ that curl downwards from the back of the helmet. Oddly enough, these horns seem to be the most heavily-armored part of the Procurator’s entire ensemble, the outer curve being composed of large, segmented plating.

The inner surface of the curves is the same light-grey stuff as features on Shade’s boots and visor-trim. When not wearing the full helmet, Shade still sports a wide headband-like strip of Nocturnus fabric that covers most of her forehead and crown. It’s decorated with the same glowing pink vigil as her armored helmet, which had led a few to believe that it may actually be the helmet itself minimized to a headband via the Nocturnus' technology.

Knuckles the Echidna
Shade gets along well with Knuckles and he seems to care for her, for example: when he saved Shade from falling from a height due to a tremor. When she revealed herself as an echidna, she left Knuckles shocked, as he thought he was the last of his kind. She watches out for him throughout the game; an example of this is when they first land on Voxai Colony Beta. Shade and Knuckles also have many POW moves together in the game. They also work well together when in a group.

Pir'Oth Ix
Shade originally had a great deal of respect for Lord Ix, but once she found out his true motives, she betrayed him for using her people for his own benefits. Even after denouncing Ix's evil motives, she still holds some respect for his power as a leader.

Sonic the Hedgehog
Shade has a certain respect for Sonic after he stood up against Ix, and was interested in co-operating with him because she found him a loyal hero. Interestingly, when the team had to split up into multiple squads during the assault against the Nocturnes, Shade said that she wanted to be with Sonic.

Amy Rose
Amy is initially hostile towards Shade, as she objected to her joining with Sonic immediately: "Oh no you don't! You stay away from him, witch!" However, this may only be because Amy believed Shade had a crush on Sonic. Shade does not return these feelings (or if she does, she does not show it), and even responds to Amy's harsh objection with a polite appeal.

Friends/Allies

 * Knuckles the Echidna
 * Sonic the Hedgehog
 * Amy Rose
 * Miles "Tails" Prower
 * Shadow the Hedgehog
 * Rouge the Bat
 * Big the Cat
 * Cream the Rabbit (Optional)
 * E-123 Omega (Optional)
 * Eggman (against Ix)

Enemies/Rivals

 * Nocturnus
 * Pir'Oth Ix
 * Charyb
 * Scylla
 * Pachacamac (4000 years ago)
 * Doctor Eggman (currently)

Abilities
Training under the Nocturne Military has given her agility and speed to keep up with Sonic and the cast as well as knowledge of the Twilight Cage. Like Knuckles, she can scale walls and rough terrain. Her main abilities lie in her knowledge of machinery. Examples are a cloaking field for stealth missions, a warp belt for teleportation, and various weapons for leeching and stunning.

POW Moves
In Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Shade's POW involves using the technology she has been given from the Nocturnus Clan to damage her foes, distract them, make herself a harder target or even drain their energy. These moves include:
 * Cloak (クローク): Shade activates her cloaking field, making her faster and harder to hit.
 * Blade Rush (ブレードラッシュ): Shade slashes her target twice with her leech blades, then performs a vertical strike with them, replenishing her Hit Points in the process.
 * Echidna Rush (エキドゥナラッシュ): Shade throws a grenade at her target that explodes on contact, then she and Knuckles punch the foe, causing them to be distracted.
 * Blade Drop (ブレードドロップ): Sonic spin-dashes into Shade's target for the initial blow and rebounds into Shade, launching her into the air. As she comes down, she does a downward slash with her blades, ignoring the foe's armor and restoring her Hit Points.

Trivia

 * Until the Archie comic adaption of Sonic Chronicles, Nintendo Power magazine and Sonic fan sites addressed her as Shade the Goat, however this was probably to keep the secret that she was an echidna until the game came out. The success of the subterfuge could be in part due to her helmet in some of the illustrations, which resembles 2 horns much like a goat would have.
 * Shade has many similarities to the Archie character, Julie-Su: they're both female echidnas, both use technology to fight, both defectors of a villainous legion of the last echidnas (Dark Legion and Nocturnus Tribe), etc. Perhaps in a nod to this, an enslaved version of Julie-Su from an alternate future in the comics known as Prelate-JS heavily resembled Shade in her full body armor, being black in color with glowing pink/purple highlights and eyes.
 * Shade is the first, and so far only, hero character (with the exception of Excalibur Sonic) to have officially had a full set of clothing (in both cases, they wear metallic armor). Blaze comes as a close second.
 * Many people believe that she's the daughter of Ix, due to the fact that the prefect gizoid Charyb called her the "Princess of Traitors". However, this could be just an insult, as there is no evidence of any relation between them beyond their Nocturnus kinship.
 * According to Nestor the Echidna, after giving him the Precursor Tablets, time travels at a different speed inside the Twilight Cage than it does without. He also mentions that this is the reason that 4000 years have passed on Sonic's world, while it seems like only a few years from the perspective of the Nocturnus Tribe. This means that Shade is, biologically, the same approximate age as most other main characters in the series, such as Sonic or Knuckles.
 * In the game, Shade is the only playable character who has POW moves with Life-Draining effects, which restore her Hit points when they deal damage to the enemy.
 * Shade is very similar to Shadow in a few ways: Both can teleport, they are both physically young whereas they are much older chronologically (Shadow is 50, Shade is 4000, although time flows differently in the Twilight Cage so she is technically still young) and the first four letters of their names are the same (in fact, both names are largely synonymous nouns).
 * 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.
 * Shade is the only current Sonic character without a Sonic Channel profile.
 * 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. Fortunately, these thoughts were greatly amplified by the psychic powers of the Overmind and do not interfere with Shade anywhere else in the story.
 * 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, Shade's mouth is almost never seen, due to the angle of her head in her artwork.
 * The horn-like parts of her helmet are similar to the jesters on NiGHTS's head.