Ninjask

Two pairs of transparent wings, with clearly marked veins and red-tinted tips, mounted on a black body with a yellow head and red eyes split by a dark band. Under the disguise is a cicada. Its official category is Ninja Pokémon, and the rest of its physical entry is unassuming: 0.8 metres and 12 kilos.

Every Pokédex entry insists on the same thing from two angles. One is speed—it moves so fast that it becomes impossible to see, and for a long time people believed it was invisible because its buzzing could still be heard even when there was nothing in front of them. The other is noise: listening to it continuously causes persistent headaches, and that is the only character flaw the series attributes to it. Without proper training, it disobeys its Trainer and starts buzzing without stopping, so, according to the games, it serves as a measure of what its user is capable of. It eats sweet tree sap, like any cicada.

Its place in the evolutionary line comes with a twist. It evolves from Nincada at level 20, but that evolution produces two creatures at once: the insect that takes flight and the empty skin left behind, Shedinja.

Its stat spread is one of the most lopsided in existence: 160 Speed and 90 Attack against 61 HP, 45 Defense and 50 in both special stats, for a total of 456. Its Speed does not stay still either, because Speed Boost raises it by one stage at the end of every turn it spends on the field.

The problem is what it does with that advantage. Its best native attack is X-Scissor, with 80 power, and it does not get it until level 64; Swords Dance, the move that would fix its 90 Attack, appears at 57 and costs a turn it almost never has. With 61 HP and 45 Defense, anything that hits it takes it down, and plenty of things hit it: Bug and Flying together give it a four-times weakness to Rock, as well as weaknesses to Fire, Electric and Ice. Even Sandstorm, which it can learn from a TM, damages it every turn.

That is why its best-known use is not attacking but passing. It gets Baton Pass at level 1 and Agility at 15: the idea is to stack Speed boosts with Speed Boost, protect itself while they build with Protect or Substitute, and pass the whole package to a teammate that can actually hit hard. It is a slow, fragile strategy to set up—one priority attack, a poisoning or a forced switch can bring it crashing down.

In a normal playthrough, its role is simpler. U-turn, with 70 power, lets it hit and get out without exposing itself, while False Swipe is useful for leaving a target at one HP before throwing the Poké Ball. Infiltrator, its Hidden Ability, gets through Reflect, Light Screen and Substitute, but giving up Speed Boost leaves Ninjask without the one thing it does better than almost anyone else.

One Egg Group, Bug, and a 50% gender split, so any compatible partner from the group will do and there is no need to go through Ditto to start a breeding line. Its 15 Egg Cycles work out at about 4080 steps, a medium figure edging towards the short side. Ninjask does not hatch from the egg, of course, but Nincada, and that is the practical detail: everything it knows is learned by levelling up or through TMs.

The evolution is the interesting part, and you need to have the team ready. Nincada evolves upon reaching level 20; if there is an empty slot in the party at that moment and an extra Poké Ball in the Bag, Shedinja appears in the empty slot alongside Ninjask. With a full party, you only get the first one, and the shed skin is lost without warning.

Its habitat is the forest, although it is not found on the routes in the original Hoenn games: you obtain it by evolving. Its catch rate, 120, sits in the middle of the table—neither the resistance of a 45 nor the surrender of a 255—and in practice it is almost never put to the test. It grows on the Erratic experience curve, cheap through the middle levels and expensive near the top, and yields 2 Speed EVs when defeated.