Plusle

It does not evolve, does not come from anything, and has no alternate form: it begins and ends with itself. Its only relative is lateral, with Minun, the other half of a pair that the games have never joined through breeding, only in concept. One has red plus-sign markings on its cheeks and the tip of its tail; the other has the opposite sign.

According to its Pokédex entries, it cheers people on. It absorbs electricity from telephone poles, stores it in its body, and releases it as short circuits that surround its entire coat while it cheers on its teammates. Its official category is the Cheering Pokémon. One entry describes those discharges as pom-poms of sparks; another adds that, when the teammate it is cheering for loses the battle, it starts screaming at the top of its lungs.

It is 40 centimeters tall and weighs 4.2 kilograms, the measurements of a small rodent with large ears and an upright posture. In the wild, it may be carrying a Cell Battery, which is more of a footnote about its design than a useful item.

Its 405 base stat points follow a clear idea: 95 Speed and 85 Special Attack up front, followed by 75 Special Defense, 60 HP, and 40 Defense, which lets almost any neutral physical hit knock it out. It yields 1 Speed EV when defeated, exactly where it points.

Plus, its standard ability, raises Special Attack by 50 % whenever there is an ally with Plus or Minus on the field. That ties it to Double Battles and a specific partner; until Generation V, the condition was even stricter, because the ally had to have Minus specifically. Lightning Rod, its Hidden Ability, is the one that actually changes something: it draws Electric-type moves aimed at any target toward itself, nullifies them completely, and raises its Special Attack in the process.

It learns Nasty Plot at level 46 and Baton Pass at 34, the obvious pairing: raise Special Attack by two stages and pass them to another Pokémon. Helping Hand, at level 4, is the quintessential doubles move. Thunder comes at 43 and Volt Switch by TM.

Everything else is what holds it back. Being pure Electric means a single weakness, Ground, but it also means its attacks bounce off Ground types, and its only answers are Mud-Slap, with 20 power, and Grass Knot by TM. In a normal playthrough, it is a different story: it appears early on Route 110 in Hoenn, with Thunder Wave at level 1 and Spark at 7, and can comfortably paralyze the first few Gyms.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Fairy, which lets it breed with small Fairy types and many of the domesticated Normal types. Its gender split is even, 50 % female, so there is no need to hunt for a female or resort to Ditto to start a breeding line.

Its 20 Egg cycles come out to around 5355 steps, an average figure within the Pokédex. Five moves can come from the Egg: Wish, Nuzzle, Charm, Sweet Kiss, and Sing. Wish is the one worth having, because it heals on the following turn and survives a Baton Pass, while Nuzzle always paralyzes when it hits, without the accuracy roll other status moves have.

There is no evolution. No level, stone, friendship, or trade: what you catch is what you get, and the evolutionary line ends with a single name. It grows at a medium pace, so it neither gets ahead of nor falls behind the rest of the team.

Its habitat is grassland. Its catch rate, 200, puts it in the easy range: a standard Poké Ball after one hit is usually enough, a long way from the 45 that starters carry.