Cottonee and Whimsicott

Cottonee
The Cotton Puff Pokémon
Type: Grass/Fairy
Official Registration #: 546
Entry: Cottonee are small, fairy-like pokémon covered in a thick layer of cotton puffs. These cotton puffs are essential to its defense mechanism, as when threatened, it will launch clouds of cotton at the threat in order to confound them as it gets away. This may seem like a weak defense, but never make the mistake of underestimating it unless you, too, have been buried under a mountain of cotton launched by a full flock of cottonee in the wet heat of an Unovan summer day. For those uninitiated, imagine being set on fire. Now imagine that you’ve been set on fire by a minimum of fifty pounds of solid flames that you must wade through in order to not be on fire. This is what a cottonee spray is like.

Whimsicott
The Windveiled Pokémon
Type: Grass/Fairy
Official Registration #: 547
Entry: The evolved form of cottonee, by exposure to sun stone. This adorable sheep-like pokémon may seem whimsical and innocently playful at first glance, but never take your eyes off one or catch one’s interest in the field. They have the ability to compress their bodies and wriggle into homes through even the slightest cracks, where they will proceed to rearrange the occupant’s possessions and leave cotton wherever it goes. As a related note, after extracting a whimsicott from your home, always do a thorough check of every possible nook and cranny of your living space for any stray cotton. Cotton, after all, has an uncomfortable habit of clogging toilets, choking air vents, and generally being highly flammable.

Deerling and Sawsbuck

Deerling
The Season Pokémon
Type: Normal/Grass
Official Registration #: 585
Entry: A deer-like pokémon known for two things: first, its ability to change the color and texture of its coat with the seasons, and second, the fact an entire generation of children was scarred for life upon watching an adorable animated film about a deerling whose mother was shot by a poacher. (Thanks, Pokéstar Studios.)

Sawsbuck
The Season Pokémon
Type: Normal/Grass
Official Registration #: 586
Entry: The evolved form of deerling, by battle experience. Just as deerling’s coat changes with the seasons, so too do sawsbuck’s coat and antlers. In Unova, a good way to tell what season it is would be to look at the plants adorning a sawsbuck’s antlers. Small flowers indicate spring, luscious greens indicate summer, brilliantly-colored leaves indicate autumn, and plain white antlers indicate winter. Of course, a better and far more reliable way of telling what season it is would be to look outside and figure it out based on basic seasonal hallmarks such as snow or hot sun, but who is the writer to judge the ways of the Unovans?

Glameow and Purugly

Glameow
The Catty Pokémon
Type: Normal
Official Registration #: 431
Entry: A fancy cat-like pokémon known for its fickleness. It adores affection and will purr when given it, but at a moment’s notice—or when trainers fail to give it enough affection or food—it will hook its sharp claws into its owner’s skin. This fickleness has made it more appealing and cute to certain groups of people. These people refer to themselves as “cat owners,” whereas the rest of the world calls them “masochists.”

Purugly
The Tiger Cat Pokémon
Type: Normal
Official Registration #: 432
Entry: The evolved form of glameow, by battle experience. Despite the fact that it looks pudgy or even roly-poly, much of purugly’s weight actually consists of solid muscle and fur, which it puffs up as an intimidation tactic by binding its tail tightly across its midsection. But really, its best tactic is one it executes by its presence alone: it is audacious enough to barge into pokémon nests and claim them as its own, regardless of the original occupant. Consequently, most pokémon are fully convinced that purugly is fully capable of killing them if it can get away with stealing even the most vicious pokémon’s nests with absolutely zero [PLURAL EXPLETIVE REDACTED] given.

Mankey and Primeape

Mankey
The Pig Monkey Pokémon
Type: Fighting
Official Registration #: 56
Entry: This primate-like pokémon lives in the treetops of Kanto in large colonies. Renowned for both its sociability and its hot temper, mankey will fly into a blinding rage over anything from a lack of food to a strange glance sent in its general direction. Because of the suddenness of these tantrums, no one, not even its own friends and family, are safe from its violent rampages, and thus, when a mankey flies into a fit of rage, it will instantly drive away anyone who is not within arm’s reach. Yet strangely enough, because of its sociability, it will also fly into a rage out of loneliness if members of its colony ignore it, which is to say mankey will often resort to massive amounts of personal and property damage until it finally exhausts itself.

Primeape
The Pig Monkey Pokémon
Type: Fighting
Official Registration #: 57
Entry: The evolved form of mankey, by battle experience. Although known for being just as destructive and violent as its pre-evolved form, in actuality, this behavior is only displayed when primeape is in the presence of others. When it believes to be completely alone, it reverts to a more passive, docile personality. Although this is very rarely observed, scientists have discovered that in this state, primeape enjoy gathering and arranging flowers, tea, cookies, complex literature, classical music, and the subtle but intelligent humor of British television.

Qwilfish

Qwilfish
The Balloon Pokémon
Type: Water/Poison
Official Registration #: 211
Entry: A pufferfish-like pokémon known for its signature defense mechanism—the ability to inflate itself with water until the spine-like scales all over its body protrude out in every direction. Although the quills themselves are painful to the touch, they don’t actually contain the venom qwilfish is also known for. Rather, they are more like hypodermic needles, fed by a venom bladder within the qwilfish’s body. If this bladder is carefully removed, the flesh of this fish-like pokémon is actually both edible and quite delectable. However, the challenge is in the fact that the bladder can easily be damaged and leak the aforementioned toxins into the edible flesh, and thus, qwilfish meat should only be consumed if prepared by a highly trained professional, if at all. Due to the risks involved, most regions have banned the consumption of qwilfish—otherwise known as hariisen when treated as a food item—except in Johto, where it is a regional delicacy in part because Johtonians themselves have a long-standing tradition of disregarding their own personal safeties.

Lapras

Lapras
The Transport Pokémon
Type: Water/Ice
Official Registration #: 131
Entry: An elusive but gentle sea monster pokémon. In ages past, lapras had been herded because their firm shells and hardiness, along with their docile personalities, made them ideal pokémon for ferrying people across large bodies of water. However, their friendliness towards humans have also made them easy to capture en masse—which, of course, humans did. Thus, lapras has become the physical embodiment of that age-old saying, “And this is why we can’t have nice things.”

The Swinub Line

Swinub
The Pig Pokémon
Type: Ice/Ground
Official Registration #: 220
Entry: A small, pig-like pokémon known for its sensitive nose. This nose can detect practically anything from quite a distance away, including truffles, treasure, and buried hot springs. It runs headlong towards any scent it finds interesting and, upon locating its source, instantly digs in an attempt to unbury it. This is unfortunate, not only because of its tendency to run into anything standing between it and its goal but also because of the part where it, a ground-type, sometimes finds buried hot springs.

Piloswine
The Swine Pokémon
Type: Ice/Ground
Official Registration #: 221
Entry: The evolved form of swinub, by battle experience. Led by its incredibly sensitive nose, this pokémon runs headlong towards odors it finds interesting, just as its pre-evolved form does. However, given the fact that this is a four-foot-tall, 123-pound pig with fur that obscures its eyes and foot-long tusks, the act of running headlong into the things between it and its goal becomes more unfortunate for anything in its way, rather than for the piloswine itself.

Mamoswine
The Twin Tusk Pokémon
Type: Ice/Ground
Official Registration #: 473
Entry: The evolved form of piloswine, by battle experience if the piloswine knows Ancient Power. Fossil evidence has shown that mamoswine has existed on the planet for over ten thousand years. However, mamoswine do not occur in the wild; they only exist as the evolved form of specially trained piloswine. There are two theories as to why this is. First and more scientific, temperatures rose over ten thousand years ago, resulting in a climate far too warm for mamoswine to exist. Second and less scientific, one only has to look at swinub and piloswine’s shared habits to hazard a really good guess involving mamoswine’s bulk, its unlikelihood to be adept at stopping, and the numbers of sharp glacial cliffs during its time.

Smoochum and Jynx

Smoochum
The Kiss Pokémon
Type: Ice/Psychic
Official Registration #: 238
Entry: A childlike pokémon noted for its extremely sensitive lips. Smoochum possess a high number of nerve endings in their lips, which they use to sense their environments. Much of their behavior revolves around getting close to things that they wish to inspect and giving them a kiss, an act that allows smoochum to take in touch, taste, and smell all at once. This act is also rather unfortunate because smoochum also use their lips to perform the attacks Lick, Sweet Kiss, Lovely Kiss, and Heart Stamp, and as baby pokémon, they have very little control over when their powers are activated.

Jynx
The Human Shape Pokémon
Type: Ice/Psychic
Official Registration #: 124
Entry: The evolved form of smoochum, by battle experience. Jynx are humanoid pokémon whose communicative patterns strongly resemble a combination of the spoken language and interpretive dances of human beings. Because of this, it is thought that jynx may be the first pokémon with whom humanity may one day establish verbal communications. However, all attempts to decipher the jynx language has been rather fruitless for the most part, as most translations of any given recording seem to be strings of expletives concerning “stupid humans on our burial grounds” … which surely must be a mistranslation of some kind.

The Slowpoke Line

Slowpoke
The Dopey Pokémon
Type: Water/Psychic
Official Registration #: 79
Entry: A sweet sap leaks from the tip of this strange pokémon’s tail. Although mysterious in its production, this sap tastes exactly like a sweeter form of honey and thus is effective in attracting pokémon. Slowpoke frequently use this to their advantage, as the core of their behavior centers around their fishing rituals, in which they flock to the banks of a slow-moving body of water, dip their tails in, and wait for a bite. However, as slowpoke are not the brightest pokémon nor pokémon with the fastest reflexes, they often fail to notice when they get a bite—or, for that matter, much about their environment at all. Which leads into the second fact: that some humans have found that slowpoke tails are not particularly nutritious but are quite frankly fun to chew on. How we as a species discovered this about a creature who is completely incapable of noticing when anything—human or otherwise—is chewing on its tail is probably best left up to one’s imagination.

Slowbro
The Hermit Crab Pokémon
Type: Water/Psychic
Official Registration #: 80
Entry: The evolved form of slowpoke, by battle experience. Or, rather, to be more accurate, slowpoke evolves into slowbro after it gains enough strength to fish in waters where shellder naturally live. This is relevant because it is the shellder that enables a slowpoke to evolve by clamping down on the tip of its tail. However, curiously enough, a slowbro will always revert to a slowpoke when the shellder is removed, which raises several questions about the nature of slowpoke’s evolution. One possible hint to the existence of slowbro as its own pokémon lies in the fact that due to shellder’s hold on slowbro’s tail, the slowbro host can no longer fish and is, therefore, forced to hunt literally by hand. Thus, slowbro is quite possibly not a true evolution but instead what happens when a slowpoke is forced to give up its sheer laziness.

Slowking
The Royal Pokémon
Type: Water/Psychic
Official Registration #: 199
Entry: The evolved form of slowpoke, when given a king’s rock and traded. It is said that a king’s rock is actually a piece of fossilized shellder that, when traded, reverts back to being a shellder and subsequently bites its companion slowpoke’s head. Upon dual evolution, this shellder then leaks toxins into its host, which breaks down slowking’s literal mental barriers and gives it a drastic boost in intelligence. Given that this means slowking’s intelligence is chemically enhanced, the writer would like to take the time to note to younger readers that drugs do not, in fact, result in intelligence boosts in humans. Just say no, children, and stay in school. Unless you go on a trainer’s journey, at which point never eat mushrooms you can’t identify.

Bill, in case you were still wondering why Fennel won’t leave Amanita with you unless another adult is present to supervise, this. This is why. —LH

The Caterpie Line

Caterpie
The Worm Pokémon
Type: Bug
Official Registration #: 10
Entry: A small caterpillar pokémon with a voracious appetite for leaves. It spends considerable amounts of time preparing for evolution, usually by focusing on consuming large amounts of leaves. As such, it seems vulnerable and weak, but in actuality, it hides several techniques that it uses to protect itself during its hunt for more leaves. Namely, its antennae have the capability of releasing a strong, foul-smelling odor reminiscent of rotting cabbage. However, this is only one part of its defense mechanism. The rest of its defenses involve wrapping anything that comes close to it with String Shot and proceeding to Tackle until the aforementioned foul-smelling oils are rubbed all over the offending creature, which is then left in the sweltering Kantonian summer heat for hours on end as said offending creature struggles desperately to break free and get to a shower.

Metapod
The Cocoon Pokémon
Type: Bug
Official Registration #: 11
Entry: The evolved form of caterpie, by battle experience. A tenacious pokémon, metapod sits perfectly still as it waits for evolution. Its rock-hard shell is resilient on its own, but it uses its only move, Harden, to toughen its body even more in order to resist damage from predators. Even a pinsir’s spiked mandibles are no match for a metapod’s body. Incidentally, the fact that it will not move until evolution, as well as the facts that it is twenty-one pounds and a durable pokémon at that, make it the perfect pokémon to serve as a doorstop. Not that this writer has ever tried, of course.

Butterfree
The Butterfly Pokémon
Type: Bug/Flying
Official Registration #: 12
Entry: The evolved form of metapod, by battle experience. While the writer would normally talk at length about butterfree’s obsession with honey, the toxic dust that coats its wings, or the fact that much of its free time is spent either consuming vast amounts of honey or mating, in truth, this writer is more astounded by the fact that metapod—a pokémon incapable of independent battling, whose entire existence is devoted to avoiding any sort of movement whatsoever—can only evolve into butterfree by battling.