Furret

It stands 1.8 metres tall and weighs 32.5 kilograms: the height of an adult with less than half the mass. Almost everything there is length. The Pokédex classifies it as the Long Body Pokémon, and its body is so evenly proportioned that it is not clear where the torso ends and the tail begins.

The starting point is a ferret, or mustelids in general, with cream-coloured fur and repeated brown rings running along its back. That leads to the habit mentioned most often: it digs a narrow den, built to fit its own body, that no other Pokémon can enter. The Pokédex entries keep stressing the contradiction of its legs, extremely short compared with the rest of it and yet capable of moving all that length at a good pace; one says it corners enemies through sheer speed, while another says its slimness helps it slip through any gap in battle and get away.

The other thing it does is raise its young. It curls its offspring against that long body so they can sleep.

It evolves from Sentret at level 15, and the line ends there, in two stages and with no alternate forms. Sentret stands upright on its tail, keeping watch; Furret has given up the lookout posture and stretched itself along the ground.

Its 415 points are spread without a single spike: 90 Speed and 85 HP are its best stats, while Attack sits at 76. That is the whole problem. It is fast for something that hits so weakly, and what it hits with is Normal-type damage, which is not super effective against anything, is resisted by Rock and Steel, and is ignored by Ghost. Defensively, the balance is the same in reverse: one weakness, Fighting, no resistances, and an immunity to Ghost.

The ability that sets it apart is Frisk, its Hidden Ability, which reveals the item the opposing Pokémon is holding as soon as it enters battle. Information, not power. The other two, Run Away and Keen Eye, are useful for fleeing from wild battles and keeping its Accuracy from being lowered.

Its tools really are unusual for a first-route rodent. Coil is available from level 1 and raises Attack, Defense, and Accuracy all at once; Baton Pass, at 46, lets it pass those boosts to another Pokémon. Follow Me, at 21, redirects the opponent’s attacks towards it in Double Battles, and that is its most defensible use: buying a turn for its partner. Super Fang removes half of the target’s current HP without depending on its Attack, and Sucker Punch, at 36, gives it a priority hit.

It reaches its ceiling quickly. With 64 Defense and 55 Special Defense, it cannot take directed hits, its 45 Special Attack invalidates half a TM list—Thunderbolt, Flamethrower, Hyper Voice—and it does not appear in usage statistics for competitive formats. Where it does its job is in a normal Johto playthrough, and there it helps to know that Slam, at level 28, is its first move with more than 40 power.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Field, the largest of them all, which gives it an enormous list of possible breeding partners. The gender ratio is 50%, so there is no need to hunt for a female with a magnifying glass or rely on Ditto. Its 15 Egg Cycles amount to roughly 4080 steps, a short figure.

It can hatch with six Egg Moves, and two deserve mention for opposite reasons. Last Resort has 140 power and only works if it is the last Pokémon to move that turn, something its 90 Speed makes difficult. Focus Energy raises the critical-hit ratio, and it fits better with Fury Swipes, which it learns at 13 and which hits several times. The other four are Slash, Reversal, Baby-Doll Eyes, and Tidy Up.

The evolution has no trick to it: reach level 15 from Sentret, with no items, no time-of-day requirement, and no friendship involved. It grows at the Medium Fast rate, the flattest of the six curves.

Its habitat is grassland, and its catch rate, 90, puts it in the middle range: much more generous than the 45 of a starter, but nowhere near the 255 of a route Pokémon. In the wild, it can be holding an Oran Berry or a Sitrus Berry.