Remoraid

The remora is a fish that sticks to the bellies of sharks and manta rays with a suction cup that grows from its dorsal fin, gets a free ride, and eats whatever the host misses. Remoraid does exactly that: two of its Pokédex entries describe it clinging to a Mantine to feed on leftovers, and one of them adds that, if someone attacks its host, the little Pokémon fights alongside it instead of letting go and fleeing.

There is a second, stranger reading layered over the animal. Its body is drawn like a revolver seen from the side: two dark stripes along its back that form the barrel, the pelvic fin placed where the trigger would be, and the dorsal fin right in front of its mouth, taking the place of the front sight. The official category, Jet Pokémon, points in that direction.

The rest of the entries hammer home the same idea from another angle: it gulps down water, compresses it with its abdominal muscles, and spits it at prey in the air, hitting targets more than a hundred metres away even when they are moving. Hence the nickname it carries, the Sniper of the Seas. It is 60 centimetres tall and weighs 12 kilograms.

It is the first half of a two-stage line. When the time to evolve draws near, according to its Crystal entry, it travels downstream with the current.

The 300 base points are split into a symmetrical and largely useless pattern: 65 Attack, 65 Special Attack, and 65 Speed against 35 HP, 35 Defense, and 35 Special Defense. Not a single stat rises above 65, it has no physical or special bulk worth mentioning, and with 35 HP, any reasonably serious neutral hit knocks it out in one turn.

Of its three Abilities, Sniper is the one that fits the character — it boosts the damage of critical hits beyond the usual increase — but it depends on the critical hit actually happening. Hustle raises Attack at the cost of accuracy, which clashes head-on with its best attacks being special. Moody, its Hidden Ability, sharply raises one random stat each turn and lowers another: it is the most volatile of the three and the only one capable of turning a 300-point Pokémon into something unpredictable, if it survives long enough.

Pure Water is a comfortable defensive typing and a dull offensive one: it takes reduced damage from Fire, Water, Ice, and Steel, and only fears Grass and Electric, but offensively it does not cover much that something else cannot cover better. Its own movepool has two attacks that actually matter, Hydro Pump at level 34 and Hyper Beam at 43, both far too slow to charge for something this frail, plus a third that does matter: Ice Beam at 25.

Beyond that, there is no case to make for it. It works in a normal Johto playthrough, freshly fished up, as a cheap answer to the early Ground- and Rock-types, and as an intermediate stage on the way to something else.

It belongs to the Water 1 and Water 2 Egg Groups at the same time, a double membership that opens up breeding with almost anything that swims, from seahorses to river fish. The sex ratio is clean: 50% female, without the asymmetries that complicate other lines.

Its 20 Egg cycles equal about 5355 steps, making it one of the quicker eggs.

The evolution condition has no trick to it: level it up to 25 and Octillery appears. No items, time of day, or friendship required. It is worth noting that 25 is also the level at which it learns Ice Beam, so the evolution and its best coverage move arrive at the same milestone.

Its habitat is the sea, and its catch rate, 190, puts it in the easy bracket: it is not the 255 of the first-route bugs, but with its HP halved, an ordinary Poké Ball catches it without a fuss. It gives 1 Special Attack EV, has 70 base friendship, and only 60 base experience, a figure befitting a species designed to show up in industrial quantities.