original description: Listen, I don’t know why the comics decided to make this absolute unit some bodybuilder, but he’s bringing chonky back, baby.
Rotger ‘Rotor’ Waldemar is the oldest of the team (discounting Dulcy, as dragons have a different bar for aging), clocking it at 35 and has the world-weariness to show for it. He was Charles’ apprentice in this AU and reluctantly took over Charles’ cyberkinetics project for war veterans when Charles was unceremoniously stripped from the position after a late beta test (involving Sonic’s father) went awry, but he from realised from going over the data input that the test had been sabotaged and tried to raise the alarm/get into contact with Charles about it,
However Robotnik followed him right to where Charles was and nabbed both of them to press them into continuing the project so the device could be perfected/mass-produced. Initially Charles refused, but relented when Robotnik roboticized Rotger’s eye and promised to take away one of his apprentice’s body part for each ‘no’ he heard, and when the machine was completed, had the two of them choose between each other to test it. Charles elected to go so Rotger was spared. Behind Robotnik’s back however, he got to work figuring out a way to reverse-engineer the process before Sally and Antoine, having heard of his plight, attempt to rescue him (running into Sonic at the same time, who was attempting to rescue a captured Bunnie).
He’s protective over Sonic, who he recognizes as ‘Chuck’s scamp’ and feels heavy guilt over the fact that he’s the reason Sonic no longer has a flesh-and-blood uncle, but is also the one who eventually gives Charles back to Sonic when he masterminds a plan to download data containing Charles’ memories/personality (which Robotnik keeps in an archive similar to Black Mirror’s San Junipero episode, because that’s a terrible mind to waste and perhaps he would like to revisit it some time) to upload to Charles’ droid body.
He wears leg braces for support the same way landlubbers wear swimfins underwater as like most sea-based Mobians, his flipper-feet are meant for swimming and not meant to hold up his weight vertically for long periods! He can’t much run, but his strength and intelligence usually make up for that.