What’s the story behind the giant slowpoke? And what was Bill supposed to be doing at the time?

Unfortunately, I can’t entirely say, anonymous.

Bill was supposed to be debugging the storage system. What he did instead was pull a giant slowpoke from what should have been an unused data bank (which he had no reason to check anyway). This just happened to be a giant slowpoke with the power to induce euphoric lethargy in certain humans when stared at for certain periods of time, and right when he really needed to be focusing on debugging the system to prepare it for Celio’s link-up with my part of the system, he stares at it. Because of course he would. —LH

To be fair, have you ever seen a finer slowpoke specimen in your life? —Bill

I feel like you’re missing the point. —LH

You’re just upset that I put it up for display in the Pokémon Cutting-Edge Technology Research Center’s Open House Day that one year and got more attention for it than those old poké ball prototypes from that one researcher you fancied. —Bill

I feel like you’re really missing the point. —LH

He wasn’t your type anyway. —Bill

Bill, you left Celio and me waiting for eight hours. —LH

Hi there! My husband and I are thinking of adopting either a Growlithe or Houndour puppy. Which has better temperament, house broken, health concerns, and recommendations to ‘fire-puppy’-proof our house? :)

In general, growlithe tend to be among the easiest pokémon to train for domestic purposes, hence why they’re far more popular as pets than houndour. Don’t get me wrong, of course. Houndour are also excellent pets and far better guard pokémon. It’s just that they’re less friendly, more stoic, and otherwise pack creatures. They’re not the sort who will be eager to entertain the way growlithe are, and they fare much better when homed with at least one more of their own species. As such, it may be harder to get them to listen to commands than it would be for the notoriously loyal growlithe, which means it may be harder to housebreak them, walk them, and generally train them.

On the other hand, they’re also less excitable than growlithe, and thus, they’re less likely to bark or use their fire abilities excessively. Very minimal fireproofing is necessary for a houndour, whereas a growlithe may howl, pounce, and use Ember in celebration for your return home after a long day at work. Thus, for a houndour, you may only need a handy, charged fire extinguisher in as many rooms as humanly possible, whereas growlithe need training and a constant water-type partner at minimum.

In short, I supposed it would depend on your needs. Growlithe are easier to train and more affectionate, but houndour are quiet and well-behaved by default but not quite as emotionally available as growlithe may be.

One last note, though: if you have small children or are expecting, contrary to popular belief, houndour are excellent choices—far better than growlithe. Not only is this because houndour are generally calmer, but it’s also because their pack instincts kick in around human babies and toddlers. The truth is, you’ll likely find no canine pokémon more protective and concerned for a child’s well-being than a houndour, even though the species is often (wrongly) associated with violence.

Hopefully, this helps, anonymous. Best of luck with your decision.

Hello, I was traveling through Floaroma Town recently (I’ll be staying a while) and the PC in the Pokemon Center is down since a Rotom has taken it over. The Nurse Joy there said that the Rotom’s trouble has just been taking over the PC and preventing trainers from using it, no pokemon have been released from it, and that someone has been contacted about the problem. I was wondering how long will getting the Rotom out take and is this a common problem?

Rest assured, anonymous, it’s not a common problem. It should be resolved in a few hours.

Or it will be once someone stops letting the rotom get away by taking selfies with her possessed computer instead of doing her job.

To be fair, Bill, do you remember what happened when you found the giant slowpoke? —LH

That was an anomalous slowpoke! That’s different! —Bill

Hello Bill! I have a sweet little happiny in my care, I was wondering if you had any tips on raising her? Another thing is she is very shy and has a hard time interacting with the rest of my team, any tips on integrating her? Thanks so much!

First, the necessary information. Much like babies, happiny need plenty of sleep. Ensure they have a soft bed and warm blankets. Do not swaddle them but rather loosely cover them if they look cold. Feed them at least twice daily with either kibble or pureed fruits and vegetables, as well as milk for calcium. Baby formula, strangely enough, also works. Happiny will also need a litter box with standard poké filler, and this should be changed daily. Give your happiny a daily bath with gentle soaps in your sink or tub. Finally, happiny should be given durable, soft or plastic toys—never anything with small parts—as well as a polished, round stone that resembles a miniature chansey egg (an oval stone, in other words). Even if you don’t evolve your happiny, the stone does wonders for its mental health.

Now! As for integration, this is a bit tougher. If you still have one or both of her parents, allow them to help you with this. Let them show her that the rest of her team is friendly, and let them introduce her. If you don’t still have her parents or if you adopted her, start with the youngest, gentlest member of your team. Introduce that specific pokémon to her on its own as a playmate. Let that pokémon play with her and “babysit” her, as it were. Once she begins to trust that team member, introduce another one with the first one present. Work your way towards introducing her to your team one by one until she meets the fiercest, oldest members, and have each of your team members play with and care for her in turn. Introducing her to your team all at once may intimidate her, but going slow and allowing her to start with your most approachable members allows her to get comfortable with them at her own pace. Likewise, keeping the members she’s already befriended out as you introduce her to someone new allows her to seek comfort in the friends she’s already made.

Best of luck and congratulations on the new addition to your family, anonymous!

Recently my late wife’s Aggron laid a small clutch of eggs. We turned most of them over to a licensed breeder, but my daughter decided to keep one and use it as her starter when she starts her journey in a few months. The two of us have been taking care of Aggron the past few years, but it had been fully evolved long before I met my wife. Is there anything we should know about raising a young Aron, both for the next few weeks at home, and later when my daughter sets out?

Luckily, you still have the aggron parent. That makes things immensely easier, not only because the aggron will do much of the work to take care of its child for you but also because aron will generally need many of the same things as aggron, just in smaller doses. Aron still need cool, dry places to sleep; rocks to supplement its diet (if you don’t feed it exclusively stone); and plenty of time to battle so it may gain experience and harden its shell. I would recommend a diet of pure stone, incidentally, as well as at least one hour of defensive training a day. Aron’s best traits on the battlefield is its defensive capabilities, so the harder its armor when it begins its time as your daughter’s starter, the better. It may also be worth it to invest in a sand bath of its own, complete with a few stumps or stones for it to Tackle. That way, it can bathe, play, and continue to work on training its defenses, all in one.

The only trouble you may encounter would be at the start of your daughter’s journey. Your late wife’s aggron may cause trouble, as losing her trainer would have been traumatic enough, but with the departure of her child and one of her caretakers, she may see the journey as less an opportunity for the both of them and more the act of losing half its family. It’s important to spend time with her and make it clear that you won’t leave her. If you have any other pokémon, have them bond with her too. If you don’t, consider getting her a long-term mate or ask the breeder who took on most of her clutch if she can visit until the hatchlings are adopted (or if she can spend time on the ranch, caring for any other pokémon—even this interaction will do wonders for her).

As for your daughter and her aron, have those two bond as much as possible. It sounds like the aron will still be young when it leaves home with its trainer, so you’ll need to focus on making the separation from its parent go as smoothly and as non-traumatic as possible. By having your daughter take an active role in caring for it—by feeding it, battling with it, playing with it, and so forth—the aron will bond with her more readily and, therefore, see her as its main family and caretaker, or someone who will be there for it and who it can trust.

In short, take care of the aron the same way as you would an aggron. The same could be said after your daughter begins her journey. She’ll need to continue feeding her aron and battling with it regularly. The only change is that she may need to polish her aron by hand, using a rag and standard steel-type polish, available at any pokémart. It’s just that prior to her departure, ensure that both your wife’s aggron and your daughter’s aron are emotionally prepared for the separation.

Good luck, and congratulations on your daughter’s journey!

The Venipede Line

Venipede
The Centipede Pokémon
Type: Bug/Poison
Official Registration #: 543
Entry: An aggressive, centipede-like pokémon native to dark, moist forest floors. Because this pokémon may charge, trainers are advised to take extreme caution if they spot one. Even the smallest scratch from either venipede’s needles or mouthparts can paralyze the large, avian pokémon that prey on it. Granted, it simply causes a localized numbness in human limbs, but let’s just say that it starts off as a literal ankle-biter and then invites its entire swarm to carry on from there.

Whirlipede
The Curlipede Pokémon
Type: Bug/Poison
Official Registration #: 544
Entry: The evolved form of venipede, by battle experience. This pokémon is literally just a wheel studded with venomous spikes. Because it’s not enough for this evolution line to simply paralyze its predators with a venomous bite; they also have to drive themselves into these unfortunate avians (and observing researchers) at high speeds. Luckily, researchers have retaliated by giving it possibly the punniest species designation we have ever been able to consciously muster. Because some of us are petty, and nature is a wondrous thing.

Scolipede
The Megapede Pokémon
Type: Bug/Poison
Official Registration #: 545
Entry: The evolved form of whirlipede, by battle experience. The claws on this giant centipede’s neck are extremely strong: when they grip prey, they never let go. Instead, they crush the prey gradually until it stops moving, at which point scolipede poisons them with its giant, venom-coated horns. Should anyone wish to bring up the fact that this may be overkill, please note that the average scolipede is over eight feet tall, 442 pounds, extremely fast, murderously aggressive, and vastly interested in hearing you tell it how to live its life.

Hey Bill! I’m having some problems with my Hawlucha and Pignite. They have been rough housing a lot lately. Now, While this is normal as it more of “play” fighting, it getting to the point of being competitive? Like, they get too into it and start jumping off of tables and the room would be a mess by the time they’re done. Finally, my biggest worry that they may injure themselves during these “wrestling” matches. I tried to separate them but they keep on doing it anyway. Any advice?

You may benefit from giving them a space to battle. If you live in the suburbs of country, establish that they’re not allowed to battle indoors and reinforce this with positive reinforcement (by giving them treats whenever they keep themselves from fighting inside). Then, give them their own battlefield in your yard and be sure to oversee their battles. If you can, obtain a psychic pokémon that can separate them if they get too rowdy.

If you live in the city, however, that psychic pokémon I’ve just suggested may be essential to you, especially if it can learn Disable and possesses some level of precognitive skill. You see, a pokémon that possesses these exact characteristics can either see a fight and stop it before it starts or, if the fight breaks out anyway, use its telekinetic abilities to keep them separate until they cool off. Hence, a psychic-type can serve as an ideal mediator for fighting-types.

After that, of course, you will want to establish a safe place for the two to fight—a park or the courts at your nearest pokémon center, for example. Establish a routine in which you’ll allow them to battle so they’ll know they can regularly spar and fight as aggressively as they’d like without destroying your property.

In other words, the best way to establish boundaries is by offering alternatives and being consistent with your alternatives. Once you teach your hawlucha and pignite that there is quite literally a time and place for everything—including battles—they’ll be less likely to demolish your home and more likely to look forward to this special something every day.

But yes, consider getting a psychic-type too.

Phantump and Trevenant

Phantump
The Stump Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Grass
Official Registration #: 708
Entry: This small spirit pokémon is actually a stump possessed by the soul of a child who died while lost in a forest. In light of this, the author once attempted to convince the Pokémon Association to ban the use of this pokémon in battles … until it was found out that in many cases, this is a dream come true for the child-turned-phantump, and to make a long story short, the author spent the next few weeks questioning his life decisions and the world as a whole.

Trevenant
The Elder Tree Pokémon
Type: Ghost/Grass
Official Registration #: 709
Entry: The evolved form of phantump, via trading. Using its roots as a nervous system, trevenant has the power to tap into and manipulate the trees around it. It most often uses this ability to trap those who harm the forest, but every so often, it traps and confuses children as well, who subsequently die and become phantump. Because no one is more brutal towards children than the spirits of other children, apparently.

The Duskull Line

Duskull
The Requiem Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 355
Entry: A small, reaper-like pokémon native to mountainous regions. This pokémon is quite fond of small children, and it’s known to appear suddenly before crying ones in particular. After that, researchers aren’t entirely sure what happens, but according to Hoennian folklore, it whisks the noisiest ones away in the middle of the night to a strange and wondrous place. The story doesn’t entirely go into what a duskull would do with a child after that point, but the author has no doubt that this pokémon fully intends on making friends with them and feeding them candy.

No, Bill. Just … no. —LH

Dusclops
The Beckon Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 356
Entry: The evolved form of duskull, by battle experience. Dusclops’s body is completely hollow, save for an unending void which is said to suck out one’s soul when they gaze deep into it. How do researchers know that dusclops is hollow save for an unending void that we can’t even directly observe? Well, readers, the author isn’t at liberty to say himself, but it certainly did not involve a stick, three expendable aides, a length of rope, a blindfold, and the distant hope that there would be candy inside.

Dusknoir
The Gripping Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 477
Entry: The evolved form of dusclops, via trading, if the subject is wearing a reaper cloth. The golden disk on this pokémon’s head is actually an antenna through which it receives commands from the spirit world to recapture wandering spirits. Unable to do anything else but comply, dusknoir may stop what it’s doing and seek out a lost spirit. When it finds one, it stuffs the spirit into its pliant body and drags them back to the spirit world. The author also realizes that this satisfies the tastes of at least three different questionably moral internet subcultures, so he’ll end the entry right about here.

Hello, readers. The editor again.

I must apologize. I made the mistake of telling my partner what day it was last night, and he’s realized that it’s ten days until one of his favorite holidays of the year. As I understand it, Bill likes Halloween, partly because he likes the atmosphere of it and partly because it’s one of the few times a year he can wear his research costumes and not have people question it. (For those interested, his other favorite holidays are Christmas and New Year’s, so December should be wonderful.)

The reason why I’m sharing this with you, though, is because Bill insisted that we don’t let the holiday “go to waste,” so to speak. So for the next several days, please enjoy Halloween Week, a collection of entries dedicated to bug, dark, poison, and psychic pokémon appropriate for this time of year.

Also, yes, I realize that we’re giving you more than a week’s worth of entries, seeing as Halloween is ten days away, not seven, but I’m not going to question my partner at this point.