Shade the Echidna
Procurator Shade of the Nocturnus
First appearance	Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Appears in (other media)	Sonic the Hedgehog #191
Also known as	Shade of the Nocturnus, Procurator Shade
Species	Mobian/Echidna
Gender	Female
Height	85 cm (2ft 9in)
Weight	19 to 23 kg (42 to 51 lbs)
Birthplace	Nocturne
Age	4000+ (from Mobius' perspective) Approximately 15-16 physically
Hair	Orange
Skin	Peach/Cream
Eyes	Lilac
Attire	Combat uniform with armor
Alignment	Neutral/Good
Likes	Knuckles, Sonic, Shadow, Tails, Rouge, Amy (to an extent), Omega, Big, Cream, Her Ancestry, Ix (at first), Thebes, Kron
Dislikes	Ix the Echidna, Deception, Unneeded Violence, Scylla and Charyb, Sonic and friends (at first), Eggman
Skills	Climbing, Teleportation, Stealth, Blade Rush, Echidna Rush (requires Knuckles), Blade Drop (requires Sonic), Cloak, knowledge of the Twilight Cage and it's residences.

Shade the Echidna is a Marauder. As a Lieutenant with the Marauders she is an important spy, and her job is not easy. She has lived with others of her lost clan within the Twilight Cage for over 4000 years. 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 persons are constantly striving and competing for a position of superiority or authority over others.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Retrieving the Last Emerald 2 Personality 3 Physical Appearance 4 Attire 5 Relationships 5.1 Friends/Allies 5.2 Enemies/Rivals 6 Abilities 7 Trivia 8 Gallery 9 Comments

History Edit

Retrieving the Last Emerald Edit

After Knuckles fought a whole group of Marauders after they destroyed a trap made by Tails with a Chaos Emerald as bait, Shade stepped on to the battle field and quickly knocked out Knuckles, though she was impressed by his abilities. Despite the rest of the Marauders' objections, Shade decided to keep Knuckles prisoner after retrieving the Chaos Emerald. Little did she know that as soon as she left, Tails raced to get help from Sonic the Hedgehog, Amy Rose and G.U.N. to save Knuckles. 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 Dr. 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 to the two. After she discovers Ix's plan to conquer Mobius, Ix the Echidna attempts to kill her, only to be saved by Knuckles. She says that she is impressed only with Sonic and Knuckles, and that she is hard to impress. She then becomes Sonic's ally. She joins with Sonic and friends because she only wanted to bring the Nocturnus back to Mobius - not take over it as well (Ix's goal.)

Personality Edit

Shade appears to be a cunning individual and, although her fellow Marauders don't seem to mind it, is opposed to unnecessary violence and killing, and even regrets being forced to go into battle and doing harm to her enemies. She also shows respect to skilled individuals even if they are her enemies.

Shade is a tough and businesslike woman, the polar opposite of Rouge the Bat. 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, she is very knowledgeable about the races and places in 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 Edit

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; a small black, shiny nose and zig-zag tail, akin to that sported by Knuckles and Tikal.

Attire Edit

Shade wears a form-fitting, all-body, grey/black 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 things are high-tech Nocturnus devices which project Shade’s ‘leech-blade’ energy knife, and also allow her to activate her cloaking device, trigger explosives remotely, and anything else you might need when you’re leading an interdimensional raiding party.

Although she usually doesn’t wear it in combat, Shade’s Procurator uniform is completed by a fancy looking 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 vigil 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.

RelationshipsEdit

Friends/Allies Edit

• Knuckles the Echidna
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Amy Rose
• Miles Prower "Tails"
• Shadow the Hedgehog
• Rouge the Bat
• Big the Cat
• Cream the Rabbit
• E-123 Omega

Enemies/Rivals Edit

• Pir'Oth Ix
• Doctor Eggman

Abilities Edit

Shade is a skilled martial artist, able to take down opponents with strength and power much greater than her own with ease.

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 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.

The following is a list of Shades attacks:

• Cloak: Shade activates her cloaking field, making her faster and harder to hit.
• Blade Rush: 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: 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: Sonic spinballs into Shade and her target, sending Shade in the air. As she comes down, she does a downward slash with her blades, ignoring the foe's armor and restoring her Hit Points.

TriviaEdit

• Until the Sonic the Hedgehog comics adaption of Sonic Chronicles, Nintendo Power magazine and Sonic fan sites addressed her as Shade the Goat, but it 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 another Sonic character, Julie-Su: they're both female echidnas, both use technology to fight, both defectors of a legion of the last echidnas (Dark Legion and Nocturnus Tribe), etc.
• 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. 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 Mobius, 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". Same goes 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 helment/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.

GalleryEdit