Voltorb

A Poké Ball with eyes. The design makes no attempt to hide it: a red half-sphere on top, a white half-sphere underneath, half a metre in diameter and 10.4 kilograms, heavy enough that nobody's going to slip it into their pocket by accident. Its official category is the Ball Pokémon, and Pokédex entries keep coming back to the same misunderstanding — some people mistake it for a real Poké Ball and end up having a very bad time.

Its origin is deliberately left open. One entry says it was discovered when Poké Balls were created; another places it at the company responsible for marketing them and admits that the connection “remains a mystery”; a third says it was born when a Poké Ball was exposed to a massive electrical surge. None of them fully commits, and the Pokédex itself is content to say that this is what people say.

Its temperament is clearer. It's extremely sensitive and explodes at the slightest jolt, while also camouflaging itself among the machinery of an ordinary warehouse. Its recorded habitat is urban, which is unusual in the first generation: it lives in power plants, not forests. In the wild, it sometimes carries a Magnet.

It's the first half of a two-stage line. At level 30, it evolves into Electrode, which is the same ball turned upside down: white on top, red underneath and wearing a smile.

Out of 330 base stat points, 100 are in Speed. That's the entire spread. The rest are 40 HP, 50 Defense, 55 and 55 in the two special stats, and an Attack stat of 30, among the worst numbers in the first generation.

The problem is that its moves arrive backwards. Its two strongest attacks are Self-Destruct, with 200 power at level 26, and Explosion, with 250 at level 41: both physical, both calculated from that Attack stat of 30. Gyro Ball, at level 46, hits harder the slower you are, so with 100 Speed it amounts to nothing. And Mirror Coat, at level 50, returns special damage that a body with 40 HP can almost never survive.

What it can make use of is more modest. Electro Ball, at level 22, scales with the Speed difference, and there it actually has something to work with. Discharge, at level 37, has 80 fixed power with no conditions attached. Volt Switch, learned via TM, uses Speed to hit and get out before the opponent can answer. Of its three abilities, Aftermath is the only one that can swing a battle: the attacker that lands the finishing blow takes damage in return. Soundproof blocks sound-based attacks, including two that Voltorb itself learns, Screech and Metal Sound.

On offense, pure Electric is comfortable — only Grass, Electric and Dragon hold it back, while Ground-type moves do nothing at all. Defensively, it handles Flying, Steel and Electric, and falls to Ground. In organised formats it has no place: any proper Electric-type special attacker, Magnemite included, does the same job better. Where it does work is in a normal Kanto playthrough, against Water- and Flying-type Gyms, and as a one-use bomb when the team is on the ropes.

It is genderless. The female field is blank, so the only possible partner is Ditto, and all breeding goes through it. It belongs to a single Egg Group, Mineral, the one for animated objects and minerals, which is also its group by design.

The 20 incubation cycles come to about 5355 steps, an average figure that neither keeps you busy nor drives you mad. It hatches with two moves: Recycle, which restores a consumed item, and Metal Sound, which drops the opponent's Defense by two stages in one go. Neither is essential, but Metal Sound is one of the few tools it has for helping someone else without exploding.

The evolution has no trick to it: at level 30, it becomes Electrode, with no items, no friendship and no time requirements. The exception is the Hisuian form, which ignores levels and needs a Leaf Stone.

It grows at a medium-fast rate and gives 1 effort point in Speed when it faints. Its catch rate is 190, one of the high figures: it goes into an ordinary Poké Ball without much fuss, which is rather fitting. The real risk isn't that it will run away, but that it will use Self-Destruct before you can throw anything at it — 40 HP leaves no room to lower its health carefully.