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| “ | You impress me, Sonic the Hedgehog. I worked with Lord Ix for a very long time. He has led my people for as long as we can remember. But faced with his wrath, you and your friends stand up against him. You risk everything in a desperate attempt to stop him. I find that...inspiring. | „ |
| ~ Shade the Echidna |
Shade the Echidna is a minor character in the Sonic the Hedgehog 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[]
Having been trained under the Nocturnus Military, Shade is a disciplined and powerful fighter. Even her clan's leader, Imperator Ix, holds her skills in high regards and acknowledges her as his finest warrior. Another testament to Shade's abilities is that she has proven herself capable of completing even the toughest missions she was given and without flinching.
As both the agent and spy of the Nocturnus Clan's military, Shade is trained in the arts of stealth and infiltration, and is shown to especially excel on the subject, capable of sneaking through or behind even the toughest of enemies without bringing any attention to herself. Through her military training, Shade also possesses agility and speed to keep up with Sonic and the cast, and has high physical strength to match it.
Shade is also very intelligent, though she is far from being a genius. As a high-ranking military commander, Shade is a very calculating strategist and can quickly determine the best course of action during missions. As an example, when she and her group confronted Sonic and his team in the Blue Ridge Zone and failed their original goal to kill them there, she triggered a rock slide as she withdrew that blocked the path to Metropolis, thus keeping Sonic and his team from advancing. Shade also has vast knowledge and understanding of the Nocturne Clan's operations and machinery, as well as the races and colonies within the Twilight Cage.
Like Knuckles, Shade is a capable climber and can climb any kind of walls, no matter what material they are made of.
Combat skills[]
When forced into direct combat, Shade relies on trickery and the technology in her arsenal to win her battles. With her equipment, Shade is can hold her own in a fight and is a deadly force in combat. To best put her fighting skills into perspective, she was able to defeat Knuckles in combat almost on her own, though her victory could be downplayed given that Knuckles was worn down from fighting other Nocturnus Clan soldiers beforehand.
Equipment and weapons[]
Shade is highly trained in the use of the Nocturnus Clan's powerful high-tech weaponry. As with the other soldiers in the Nocturnus Clan, Shade's equipment focuses on improving her chances on her missions, be it either for stealth or for combat. When carrying out her missions, Shade has proven to use her various equipment with great efficiency and utilize their effects to the fullest.
Infiltration Equipment[]
Through usage of her suit's stealth features to improve her already impressive stealth abilities, Shade can literally pass by enemy eyes unnoticed and slip through major obstacles.
Leech Blades[]
Shade's weapon of choice is the Nocturnus Clan's trademark weapons, the Leech Blades. They are a pair of blades made of pink energy from Shade's wristbands that can leech off the opponent's life energy to replenish her own vitality, as well as noted to be able to ignore durability. Shade is noted to wield the Leech Blades with great proficiency and machine-like precision.
Explosives[]
Though not displayed very much, Shade is shown carrying and use explosives. She is shown using a black-yellow grenade as part of her and Knuckles' Echidna Rush that not only creates a diversion, but also damages her opponent.
Warp Belt[]
Like all the others in the Nocturnus Clan, Shade wears a Warp Belt. This advanced piece of technology allows Shade to escape from the Twilight Cage and to teleport short distances for infinite amount of time.
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 first echidna of the Nocturnus clan to permanently escape the Twilight Cage and enter 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 (such as the Dark Legion) 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 even though describing Sonic Chronicles as a "non-canon adventure" and making it possible that she will be reused for a future product in the mainstream and IDW Publishing.
- Writer Ian Flynn has stated that he would like to feature Shade in another story and already has ideas for one, but is still waiting for authorization to publish it.[1]
External Links[]
- Shade the Echidna on the Sonic Wiki
- Shade the Echidna on the Villains Wiki
References[]
- ↑ Ian Flynn (16 November 2008). Ask Ian for NOV'08 - Beware the Werehog. BumbleKing Comics. Archived from the original on 6 November 2015.
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 Heroes
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