Gardevoir

It first appeared in the third generation, with Ruby and Sapphire, and the design makes its reference clear: a 1.60 m, 48.4 kg humanoid figure, a white body that falls to the ground like a long dress, a red plate running across its chest and back, and two fins at the sides of its head. The official category, Embrace Pokémon, points in the same direction.

The Pokédex entries it has carried ever since repeat two ideas and nothing else. First, that it can read the future. Second, that its strength appears when its Trainer is in danger: it then releases all the psychokinetic energy it has in one burst, and Ruby adds that it does so even if it costs its own life. Two of those entries go further and talk about altering dimensions to create a small black hole, which is the biggest claim ever written about a creature with 518 stat points.

It completes the line that starts with Ralts and passes through Kirlia, though it does not complete it alone. Gallade also branches off from Kirlia, and that detour turned what had been an automatic evolution into a decision with consequences.

The 518 points are distributed without ambiguity: 125 Special Attack and 115 Special Defense against 68 HP and 65 Defense. On the special side, it can take whatever is thrown at it; on the physical side, a reasonably serious neutral hit knocks it out. Speed, 80, is the awkward figure — it does not move first against anything built to attack, and it is not slow enough to make use of Trick Room without help.

Trace is the Ability that defines it: it copies the opponent’s as soon as it enters the field, so it inherits whatever the other Pokémon brings for free. Synchronize, the alternative, gives poisoning, paralysis, or burns back to whoever inflicts them, and Telepathy, the Hidden Ability, only makes sense in doubles, because it avoids attacks from its own partner.

When attacking, Psychic and Fairy split the work with little overlap. Moonblast, at level 49 and with 95 power, and Psychic, at 42 with 90, cover almost everything that is not Steel-type between them; that is what Aura Sphere is for via TM. Calm Mind, at level 35, raises both special stats at once and is the only thing that pulls it out of the range of dying in one hit. Future Sight arrives late, at 63, with 120 power and a two-turn wait. Psychic Noise hits for 75 and prevents the target from healing.

Defensively, the combination gives it an immunity to Dragon and a four-times resistance to Fighting, but also three well-spread weaknesses: Poison, Steel, and Ghost. A Metagross resists both of its attacking types and answers with physical Steel damage, which is exactly what it handles worst.

It belongs to two Egg Groups, Human-Like and Amorphous, giving it a fairly wide list of breeding partners for a species with such a specific appearance. The gender ratio is 50/50, without the imbalance found in starter lines, so getting a female is no trouble.

Twenty incubation cycles come to around 5355 steps. It has no Egg Moves of its own: everything it knows comes from levelling up or TMs, and there are more than sixty TMs, including the three elemental punches, which are useless to it with 65 Attack.

The evolution condition is straightforward: Kirlia reaches level 30 and that is that. The mystery is next to it. A male Kirlia can be given a Dawn Stone and becomes Gallade without waiting for level 30, so half of the offspring allow two possible endings and the other half only one.

Its recorded habitat is urban. The catch rate, 45, puts it among the difficult ones: without leaving it weakened or asleep first, it breaks out of an Ultra Ball more often than you would expect from something that is not Legendary. It grows at a slow rate, so it reaches each level later than almost anything else accompanying it in the team, and its base friendship is 35, below average. Defeating it gives 3 Special Attack EVs.