#knuckles dread

First and foremost! I'd like to thank Mermay for the idea, and @cattyanon too, after I rediscovered her own No Place Sonic in the archive of my other account :D

Sonic "Nixie" the Merhog.

Name: Nixie, it's German for "Water Nimph". Continuing the running hc (????) that they're just named (for example) Captain Dread Knuckles or smth like that, so, "Nixie" is his nickname and how literally everyone calls him.

Dread was the one who gave him the nickname, btw. A cute nickname for a cute hedgehog, iykwim

Time passed, they flirting with eachother, Dread getting to know just how much Nixie hates water. Nixie knowing fully well that between him and the gem waiting at the Lighthouse something, Dread would choose the gem.

He knows that. He's okay with that (he's not). He's ready for that to happen, and to save himself so Knucklehead won't have to life with the (possible) guilt.

Dread calls him "Me beauty" too, gifted him a gold earring, telling him it was prove of their love. Nixie wants to believe him.

But when they arrive, the captain is betrayed and Nixie has to do something. He can't lose Dread like he did with his uncle... But he gets tripped by those he thought friends and family.

He falls to the waters and he despairs trying to get out. He can't. There's something tangled in his legs but he can't take it off.

He drowns.

... and then wakes up.

In a shore. With sand under his gloves... with the sun shining over him...

He moves, trying to inspect himself for any injury.

There were pretty scales and a biiig fish tail instead of his legs, in his field of vision, but there was no injur-

His mind goes blank for a couple of seconds before he screams...

And finds out he can't. And he gets a full panic attack, even feeling like he's drowning.

Because Mermaids in No Place don't have mouths.

His gills are still underwater (torso, in between his ribs), thanks to the fact that he can't really move that much with his new limb :D And that's on top of the fact that he's so near water, can't get away, and his new body NEEDS water to survive. Ah, and that's right, this boy had to overcome talasophobia to survive just to get cursed into living his worst nightmare.

+ Dread! :D

Dread, already fighting with the raging waters, only sees him fall off the deck. And he finds out... he doesn't want the beauty more than he wants to see Nixie alive.

And Nixie doesn't know how to swim.

But no matter how much he searched. Nixie was better off dead by the time his limbs gave up and he had to force himself to climb a rock.

He was eventually found by his current crew.

Shadow "Dirge" the Syren hybrid.

Name means (summarised from wikipedia): "Lament of the death" A siren whose song is specifically a funeral march.

A dirge (Latin: dirige, nenia) is a somber song or lament expressing mourning or grief, such as may be appropriate for performance at a funeral. Often taking the form of a brief hymn (partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or payer and typically adressed to a deity or deities) dirges are typically shorter and less meditative than elegies (poem of serious reflection). Dirges are often slow and bear the character of funeral marches. Poetic dirges may be dedicated to a specific individual or otherwise thematically refer to death.

The English word dirge is derived from the Latin Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam ("Direct my way in your sight, O Lord my God"), the first words of the first antiphon (a short chant in Christian liturgy) in the Matins (is a canonical hour in Christian liturgy) of the Office for the Dead, based on Psalm 5. The original meaning of dirge in English referred to this office, particularly as it appeared in breviaries (a liturgical book) and primer prayer books.

Didn't know all that :D

Anyways, he was, obviously, created in a lab to bring down the gap between the Mer world and the surface. The king of the Mermaids having given Gerald his DNA to create Project Shadow.

Said Project Shadow would become the only survivor of the raise of the ocean inside that GUN base. (Idk if I made sense, English's not my first language)

His despair and heartbreak made him a hybrid syren instead of just a mermaid capable of speech.

But no matter. He would NOT live in the underwater world, even if he's forced to visit it at least once a week to stop himself from dying of dehidration.

He can turn between a syren and mobian with ease. Learned how to fight with GUN, and learned by observing how a pirate acts. How a captain acts. Changed his name, seeking not to be recognized if possible. (From Shadow to Dirge)

His Goal is to kill his DNA donor, because he knows damn well he's the responsible for the sudden rise of the water.

Infinite "Barnacle" the Jackal.

Definition: Most barnacles are encrusters, attaching themselves to a hard substrate such as a rock, the shell of a mollusc, or a ship; or to an animal such as a whale.

It implies he is someone who latches onto something beautiful (like a mermaid) and drains the life out of it.

Captain of the Grand Jackal.

Found a mermaid sleeping at the shore of a small island. And, did you know a mermaid and its parts are valuable in the black market? :)

He kept that merhog for at least two years, planning to become rich with its tears (which create highly valuable pearls) and its blood (which has healing properties).

He loses his hearing when Nixie finally escapes, and gets badly injured and almost drowns by the vengeful merhogsyren's claws.

Starline "Arcadia" the Platypus.

"Arcadia" represents an idyllic, pastoral paradise. An Arcadian Nightmare is a subgenre where the beauty of nature is actually a mask for something predatory or eldritch.

He's the king Dirge got DNA from. And the very same MerWitch that cursed the chain still tied around NixieMaroon's tail.

The very same Witch that Maroon feels... endebted with, as Arcadia's the one who took him in after he was shunned away by the other mermaids, for being a syren.

And it was designed to be like that.

From the very start.

As the Warp Topaz sits in Arcadia's neck, just like Ursula with Ariel's voice in the Little Mermaid.

---------

Other facts, as I had to tell all this as a story lol:

Dread was being honest with that gold earring, that's the equivalent of an engagement ring in their culture

Dread went to become the equidna we see in canon afterwards. Truly not caring about his new crew as much as he ever did Nixie.

Nixie returned many times to the Devil's Lighthouse (that was it's name, right?), but never found Dread. He returned many more times as Maroon to remember what the surface dwellers took away from him.

Nixie became Maroon after survivors of his vengeance against the surface dwellers. Because the curse left him to rot and drown until only bone remained. He felt like nothing but a carcass... And because other people (the survivors of an encounter with him) noticed his arms, stained a maroon color (it's a consequence of him becoming a syren) spreading rumors about it being the blood of his victims.

Edit bc I clicked "publish" before it was time

My inspirations go to: Shipslucia in Twitter, with his pirate/mermaid design

Fibul, for how my Dirge was created <3

Cattyanon for how syrens are chased away from mermaid settlements (I understood that, sorry it's it's not accurate)

Ehhhhh, idk who else

Anyways Nixie/Maroon is the representation of all the anger and resentment Sonic doesn't let himself to feel. The revenge he doesn't let himself to indulge.

He's also tense constantly, no matter how much he tries, he can't fucking relax. It must be the fact that he's cursed to live underwater when he hates it, it translates into more anger and suffering

Dread or Sonic after finding out about Mer Sonic