Tranq the Hedgeguin

Tranq is a hedgeguin, a type of hedgehog-penguin hybrid. Tranq's main strengths are his eternally calm composure and his ability to keep situations cool. Tranq also frequently carries a foldable shield, which he is quite proficient at using for both offense and defense.

Appearance
Tranq is a male hedgeguin with black fluff and cyan markings in a pattern resembling a Magellanic penguin. He has three short-but-thick quills in a triangular shape on the back of his head. He wears light gray sneakers with cyan laces, as well as light gray fingerless gloves. His hands have the hedgeguin sixth digit, which, on his hands, sticks straight out from the back of his hands; for this reason, his gloves have a hole in the back for his extra digit to stick through. He has gray eyes and a longish beak.

Personality
Tranq is almost always calm and optimistic about everything. He knows that everything is going to turn out right, and almost nothing will make him lose his cool. Due to this, he tries to keep everyone around him in the same state; if there's an argument, he'll try to break it up and try to get everyone to calm down.

It's very difficult to get Tranq to stop being happy; it takes something really life-threatening or depressing to do so. However, if something does make him stop being happy, he won't become sad or angry. Instead, he will become completely void of emotion and act almost robotic until whatever bothered him goes away or becomes irrelevant.

Tranq is fairly extroverted, and is quite content to spend most of his time with other people. If left alone for too long—say, a week or two—he could enter his neutral state.

Tranq doesn't have a specific set of activities that interest him; he generally will just go along with anything reasonable that his friends are doing. However, he is better at some activities than other. For example, he is fairly good at dancing, moderately good at making music (mostly through computer programs), and fairly bad at singing. These come up whenever he shares activities with musical friends.

Tranq's personality is both an advantage and a disadvantage for making friends. On one hand, some people enjoy his constant happiness and ability to keep the mood bright; on the other hand, some people find it frustrating that he can't show negative emotion at appropriate times like most normal people.

Strengths and Powers
Tranq has no magical powers. However, he is very proficient with shields. He can use them to block most incoming attacks, and even use shields as weapons. Granted, a shield won't deliver a fast attack, but if it hits, it'll hit hard. His personal shield's folding capabilities make it very compact and allow him to bring it almost everywhere with him. Tranq's calmness also keeps him from becoming possessed by emotions and doing something stupid or reckless in the middle of a fight.

History
Tranq lived a fairly normal life with his parents and his younger brother. Somewhere in his childhood, he started taking self-defense classes, and quickly learned that shields were his favorite implement of combat. He then devoted his self-defense learning to mastering the intricacies of combat using a shield.

His personal folding shield was created by taking a normal shield and having a metal-worker cut the shield into a few pieces and attach them to each other with hinges. After he obtained this folding shield, he started carrying it with him nearly everywhere he went.

Statistics

 * Strength: 9 – Tranq can take a lot of hits with his shield, and his shield packs a massive punch if he hits.
 * Speed: 6 – Tranq can move his shield at a decent speed. His shield does weigh him down some, but this is compensated for by his proficiency with it.
 * Sharpness: 2 – Tranq's slow, steady fighting style and attitude, coupled with his moderately slow reflexes, cause his noticing critical attack opportunities to be infrequent.
 * Smarts: 6 – Tranq is moderately intelligent, and he recovers quickly from a beating.

Fun Facts

 * Tranq is my second Sonic fanon character and my first male Sonic fanon character.
 * His name, Tranq, is a shortening of the word tranquil. This is a word that describes a facet of his personality.