Scyther

It has wings and barely uses them. Ever since Red and Blue, the Pokédex has insisted on the same thing — “it is not common for it to use its wings to fly” — and yet half of its typing is Flying. Its place is on the ground: crossing grass with its scythes out front, faster than the human eye can perceive, and ending up beside its prey before it has even turned its head. The games compare it to a ninja, and the comparison is about speed, not stealth: what baffles the prey is that it is already on top of it.

The two scythes do everything. They slice through thick logs in a single stroke, and more recent entries make it clear that they are not just combat weapons: Scyther uses them to chop up and devour what it hunts. Arms, knives and cutlery all at once.

It is 1.5 meters tall and weighs 56 kilos, large-predator figures for a Bug type. Its official category is Mantis Pokémon. When young, it does not live alone: it gathers in the mountains and fights its companions to practise its moves, a regimented training childhood documented for very few species.

It does not evolve by level or ordinary stone. It is the base of two different branches, Scizor and Kleavor, and neither can be reached without outside help.

110 Attack and 105 Speed, and everything drops from there: 70 HP, 80 in both defenses, and 55 Special Attack that is no use at all. The 500 points are distributed around a single idea — hit first and hit hard — with no Plan B behind it.

Technician is the ability that defines it: it boosts any move with a power of 60 or less by 50%. With it, Quick Attack goes from 40 to 60 while keeping its priority, Aerial Ace rises from 60 to 90 without ever missing, and Dual Wingbeat hits twice with a base power of 40 per hit. Swarm, the alternative, only activates below one-third of its HP. Steadfast, its hidden ability, raises its Speed whenever it flinches, which means it first has to take damage.

On the attacking side, Bug and Flying overlap and cover little that X-Scissor, which it gets at level 40, does not already cover. On defense, things get worse. Rock deals quadruple damage, and against Stealth Rock it loses half its HP every time it enters the field. Fire, Electric, Ice and Flying also hit it for double damage. It is immune to Ground and takes a quarter damage from Fighting and Grass, but with 70 HP those resistances last as long as they last.

What keeps it going is not having evolved: Eviolite boosts both Defense and Special Defense, and those two 80s become real bulk with the item equipped. Swords Dance, its decisive move, does not appear by level until 44, so on any built team it gets it from TM. U-turn, also from TM, is the clean way to use its Speed without getting trapped in a bad switch.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Bug, which cuts the list of partners down to beetles, moths and company — Heracross among them. The gender split is straightforward: 50% female, with none of the lottery that affects other lines.

It takes 25 incubation cycles, around 6630 steps with the usual formula. It is in the slow bracket, well above the time an initial-stage Pokémon takes. Five moves come from the egg: Counter, Feint, Night Slash, Defog and Quick Guard. Night Slash is the one worth having, because it has a high critical-hit ratio and fits with Focus Energy, which it learns at level 28.

Evolution does not depend on level. For Scizor, it has to be traded while holding a Metal Coat; for Kleavor, a Black Augurite has to be used. The first route requires someone on the other side of the connection, and that has been the species’ toll since the second generation.

Its recorded habitat is Grassland, although the Pokédex entries place young specimens in the mountains. Its catch rate is 45, the figure for difficult catches: at full HP and without a status condition, throwing a Poké Ball is money down the drain. It grows at a medium rate, the most predictable curve there is, and gives 1 Attack EV when defeated.