Linoone

The badger digs straight tunnels and moves poorly sideways, and almost everything else follows from that. Linoone stretches that low, burrowing body into a half-metre-high, 32.5-kilogram line, with short legs, long claws and cream-coloured fur crossed by brown stripes.

Every Pokédex entry insists on the same trait, presenting it as a flaw as much as a virtue: it runs at a little over 100 km/h as long as the path is straight, but the moment an obstacle appears it has to brake hard and turn at a right angle to carry on. In open country, that's enough to catch prey. On a winding trail, it often fails, and one entry says it plainly: winding routes reduce its ability to run.

One detail appears only once. The fur it sheds is used to make bristles for shaving brushes, and the finished product is sold as a luxury item.

It comes from Zigzagoon, which is the same animal in miniature and moves in zigzags precisely because it still hasn't learned to go its own way. The official category, Rushing Pokémon, sums up the only way it knows how to move.

Its 100 Speed is the only stat that stands out, and it really stands out. The rest of the sheet is poor for an evolved Pokémon: 78 HP, 70 Attack, 61 Defense, 61 Special Defense and 50 Special Attack, for a total of 420.

When it has a plan, it's always the same one. Belly Drum comes at level 43 and maximizes Attack at the cost of half its HP, so that modest 70 stops mattering. Gluttony works well alongside it: it makes the held berry activate sooner, and emptying half the tank in one go is the quickest way to reach the point where it kicks in. After that come Double-Edge, with 120 power and recoil, and Flail, which hits harder the less HP remains — and after a Belly Drum, there isn't much left.

Everything else is what holds it back. With 61 and 61, it can take a neutral hit and little more, so any extra turn kills it before it gets anything in return. Its type is super effective against nothing, and Ghost-types ignore it completely; Shadow Claw by TM is the stopgap, and it has 70 power. The other route is Quick Feet, its hidden ability, which raises its Speed when there's a status problem and fits with Facade, which deals double damage if the user is burned, poisoned or paralysed.

Where it does work is in a normal playthrough. It outspeeds almost everything wild in Hoenn and Sinnoh, finishes off weakened opponents and, with Pickup, keeps filling the bag without the Trainer having to press a button.

It has a single Egg Group, Field, the most populous on the list: it can breed with half the mammal-filled Pokédex. The sex ratio is an even split, so getting a female to breed costs nothing.

Its 15 hatching cycles work out at around 4080 steps, putting it in the middle range. In Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, it has no egg moves: anything it knows is learned by levelling up or through TMs.

Evolving from Zigzagoon is as simple as it gets: level 20 and nothing else. The next step is another matter: Obstagoon requires level 35 at night, and is only available to the Galarian form. The Hoenn form stops here.

It lives in grasslands and has a catch rate of 90, neither trivial nor awkward: two or three balls against a weakened opponent. When defeated, it yields 2 Speed EVs and 147 base experience, and grows at an average pace, on the Medium Fast curve. Wild specimens commonly hold a Potion, Max Revive, Oran Berry or Sitrus Berry, exactly the sort of item Pickup keeps returning again and again.