Tauros

It whips its flanks with its three tails until it gets enraged, and only then does it start running. Pokédex entries return to that gesture again and again: the tails are the warning, even when what follows is just a Tackle. Once it gets going, it does not stop.

Stillness does not suit it. If it cannot find an opponent to fight, it charges large trees to calm itself down and ends up knocking them over. In a herd, the specimen with the largest, thickest and most battered horns is in charge, so the notches in its horns serve as a record of its fights, and the one with the most marks decides where they go.

It is 1.4 metres tall, weighs 88.4 kilograms and walks on four legs. The official category, Wild Bull Pokémon, makes no attempt to hide it. It does not come from any species or evolve into anything: its 490 base stat points are all it will ever have, assigned in one go with no second stage to fix them.

Four forms are recorded: the Kanto form and Paldea's three breeds—the Combat, Blaze and Aqua breeds. And according to the Pokédex itself, riding one is an old custom that spread from Alola, where apparently its temperament is somewhat calmer than the species' violent reputation.

110 Speed and 100 Attack, with 95 Defense behind them. The spread describes a fast physical attacker that can also take a physical hit without dropping. What is missing is obvious: 40 Special Attack, 70 Special Defense and 75 HP, so any serious special move punches a hole in it.

Intimidate lowers the opposing Pokémon's Attack as soon as it enters, and it is the ability that justifies bringing Tauros out in the middle of a battle instead of at the start. Anger Point maxes out its Attack after it takes a critical hit, which means sitting around waiting for the lottery. Its hidden ability, Sheer Force, boosts the power of moves with secondary effects and removes those effects: Body Slam hits harder but no longer paralyses, and the same goes for Wild Charge or Iron Head.

As a Normal type, it gets no advantage when attacking—Rock and Steel resist it, while Ghost ignores it completely—and defensively it only fears Fighting, without resisting anything in return. Earthquake, with 100 power, and Close Combat, with 120, cover by TM what its typing cannot. Raging Bull, learned at level 35, has 90 power and also removes Light Screen, Reflect and Aurora Veil from the opposing side before it hits.

It has no place in the current competitive scene: Smogon has it in ZU, the bottom of the singles ladder, while Paldean Tauros-Aqua rises as high as NU. Its place is in a normal playthrough, midway through the adventure, switching in against a physical attacker to lower its Attack and strike first. It yields 1 Attack and 1 Speed when defeated, which fits everything else about it.

It belongs to the Field Egg Group, with one rarity on top: 0% female. There is not a single female Tauros, so its only possible breeding partner is Ditto, and the species cannot breed with anything else. Its counterpart is Miltank, the cow in the same Egg Group, 100% female and with the same total of 490 points distributed differently.

Its 20 egg cycles work out to roughly 5355 steps ((20+1)×255), putting it in the upper half of the table. It hatches knowing two moves: Curse, which for a Normal type trades Speed for Attack and Defense, and Endeavor, which leaves the opponent at 1 HP no matter how much it had left.

It does not evolve. There is no level, stone, item or hidden condition: what you catch is exactly what you use all the way to the end.

Its habitat is grassland, and its catch rate of 45 puts it among the difficult ones, the same figure used by the starters. In Red and Blue it appeared in the Safari Zone, where you could not weaken it before throwing a Ball, turning every attempt into a test of patience; in Gold and Silver it moved to Routes 38 and 39. It grows slowly, the kind that needs more experience per level than average.