Rufflet and Braviary

Rufflet
The Eaglet Pokémon
Type: Normal/Flying
Official Registration #: 627
Entry: An eagle-like pokémon known for its particularly fascinating tendency to stand up to any opponent, no matter how large or powerful they may be. This is, in general, an honorable behavior to display. It is important to stand up for your principles, after all, even if those principles result in you rolling down Cycling Road in a trash bin because you decided to stand up to the Celadon University rugby team while conveniently forgetting that you lack any sort of battling skills, hand-to-hand combat training, or, in fact, any semblance of hand-eye coordination.

To your credit, at least it was casserole day, so you had a cushion and free dinner. —LH

Braviary
The Valiant Pokémon
Type: Normal/Flying
Official Registration #: 628
Entry: The evolved form of rufflet, by battle experience. A large, eagle-like pokémon that will fight for its friends, regardless of the risks to itself. Because of this behavior, braviary has been taken to be a symbol of sorts to various regions and nations—including and especially Unova, where braviary represents FREEDOM. Which is, as the writer understands it from his good friends on the internet, a distinctly separate concept from freedom, as FREEDOM apparently involves far more fireworks, guns, ursaring, and acts of throwing perfectly good tea into a questionably good harbor.

Vullaby and Mandibuzz

Vullaby
The Diapered Pokémon
Type: Dark/Flying
Official Registration #: 629
Entry: Vullaby’s wings are too short and underdeveloped to allow it to fly, but as it nears evolution, it sheds the bones it wears in order to drop dead weight and give its wings more space in which to move. One would assume this would be the joke of the entry, but in actuality, it is the pokémon’s recorded species, which was neither the writer’s fault nor something on which he can provide any sort of witty comment, as any commentary regarding this has already been made somewhere on the internet with varying degrees of irony and innocence.

Mandibuzz
The Bone Vulture Pokémon
Type: Dark/Flying
Official Registration #: 630
Entry: The evolved form of vullaby, by battle experience. Mandibuzz is a large, vulture-like pokémon known for circling potential prey, then swooping down on it and carrying it back to its nest, where it dismembers said prey to use its bones for nest reinforcement and decoration. This behavior may seem intimidating to some, but there are theories within the pokémon ethological community that it is better explained with the fact that the appearance of its preevolved form is not particularly well-respected among pokémon either.

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?

Tirtouga and Carracosta

Tirtouga
The Prototurtle Pokémon
Type: Water/Rock
Official Registration #: 564
Entry: A two-foot-tall Protostega pokémon. The presence of tirtouga and other ancient marine pokémon throughout Unova (and, for that matter, its home nation of the United States) indicate that there had once been vast seas taking up the majority of the continent. However, thanks to the receding water levels, tirtouga from the interior seas died out completely, while those that called the present-day coastlines home eventually made way for modern-day turtle species such as the squirtle line. Many Unovans have pointed out that all of their discovered fossil species are therefore the ancestors of modern pokémon. Because this is true, some casual pokémon fans in Unova like to jokingly imply that this indicates a lack of variety among Unova’s faunal species, whereas some casual pokémonologists like to jokingly respond with the idea that it’s a shame tirtouga’s habitat is no longer submerged in the ocean.

Carracosta
The Prototurtle Pokémon
Type: Water/Rock
Official Registration #: 565
Entry: The evolved form of tirtouga, by battle experience. An amphibious pokémon, carracosta uses its front flippers not only for swimming but also for attacking, and it is generally known that a single slap from this pokémon’s flipper can rip a hole in the side of a tanker. Of course, given the fact that tankers did not exist when carracosta inhabited the seas, one should ask why the scientific community chose that oddly specific example to gauge its strength—or, better yet, how we know that it can rip a hole in the side of a tanker—to which this writer responds with science.

Archen and Archeops

Archen
The First Bird Pokémon
Type: Rock/Flying
Official Registration #: 566
Entry: A two-foot-tall Archaeopteryx pokémon. Although incapable of flying, this feathered pokémon once hopped from treetop to treetop in the ancient Unovan forests in order to forage for food. Remarkably, recent evidence has linked archen to all bird pokémon, meaning every bird pokémon in existence is really descended from this mighty, dinosaur-like creature. Every bird pokémon, that is, from the mighty braviary to the somewhat less mighty psyduck.

Archeops
The First Bird Pokémon
Type: Rock/Flying
Official Registration #: 567
Entry: The evolved form of archen, by battle experience. While these fast predatory pokémon were capable of flight, they much preferred chasing after prey on foot in large groups. Evidence suggests that these were vastly intelligent pokémon capable of coordinating well enough to take down prey much larger and stronger than any individual archeops. Thus, it is even more astounding that for all its cunning and swiftness, we refer to its modern-day counterparts as “birbs” and make memes out of them.

Stunfisk

Stunfisk
The Trap Pokémon
Type: Ground/Electric
Official Registration #: 618
Entry: A sizable flounder-like pokémon known to hide in the muddy expanses of marshlands and heaths. Blending in with the ground, stunfisk is virtually undetectable until it’s stepped on, at which point it delivers a strong electric shock directly into its victim. Why it does this is still a mystery to behaviorists, particularly given the fact that a stunfisk’s body has been found to be durable enough to withstand hundreds of pounds of pressure. The only real clue scientists have for the answer to this mystery lies in the fact that stunfisk smiles with extreme pleasure as it delivers electric shocks … a fact that has dampened quite a few scientists’ curiosities, to be completely frank.

Cryogonal

Cryogonal
The Crystallizing Pokémon
Type: Ice
Official Registration #: 615
Entry: A giant snowflake pokémon equipped with cryokinetic chains. This pokémon’s body is made of pure ice and is, therefore, susceptible to temperature changes. When its body temperature rises, cryogonal dissolves into steam and vanishes. When the ambient temperature drops, cryogonal returns to ice. What happens to cryogonal if a warm-blooded being inhales parts of it in its steam form is both unpleasant and best left to the imagination for the sake of good taste.

Basculin

Basculin
The Hostile Pokémon
Type: Water
Official Registration #: 550
Entry: Fish-like pokémon that come in two different forms. The basculin known as the “red-stripe” variety are far more aggressive and reckless than their counterparts and will launch itself at prey without thinking twice, whereas the “blue-stripe” variety is far more careful and calculating and has been known to coordinate attacks with scores of like-striped basculin. Despite this, the two varieties of basculin are essentially the same, complete with the same battling potential and the same movepools, yet red-striped basculin are notoriously incapable of getting along with blue-striped varieties and vice-versa. These facts have led many Unovan poets throughout the twentieth century to use basculin as metaphors for the human race, a trend that some say is questionably tasteful due to the fact that basculin are secondarily known for the fact that both varieties taste the same and go great with a little lemon, basil, and white wine.

So, Bill. Is there a Foongus Amoongus?

There may be!

Foongus
The Mushroom Pokémon
Type: Grass/Poison
Official Registration #: 590
Entry: A small, mushroom-like pokémon known for the fact that its cap strongly resembles a pokéball, especially when the rest of its body is concealed by tall grass. According to the official pokédex, the reason for this pattern is unknown. However, given that foongus are capable of learning Spore and Giga Drain, that their natural ability involves releasing toxic spores upon contact, and that their caps are the approximate size, shape, and coloring of an object human trainers would be most likely to pick up, this writer can say without a doubt that the reasoning behind this coloring is an absolute mystery that the scientific community may just never solve.

Amoonguss
The Mushroom Pokémon
Type: Grass/Poison
Official Registration #: 591
Entry: The evolved form of foongus, by battle experience. Upon evolution, amoonguss grow to be about two feet tall in height, and its cap expands proportionally. This makes its poké ball-like coloring less effective, even in the cover of tall grass, and as an added defiance of subtlety, it increases its own visibility by shaking its arms—both terminating in buds the size, shape, and color of its original head as a foongus—wildly in front of it. In theory, this is to attract attention to its arms and lure in prey with hypnotic motions. Also in theory, human beings have evolved a level of awareness and wisdom that would prevent such a tactic from working on us. In practice, however, this exact strategy is to blame for over 60% of all human hospitalizations in the vicinity of Unova’s Victory Road on an annual basis.