A Pokémon Trainer is You! XII: Be Vewy Vewy Quiet

Last time, on A Pokémon Trainer Is You:

How will you frame the situation in your report to Professor Oak?
– Suggest encouraging the Bidoof population and increasing their influence on the area, while searching for ways to mitigate any harm they cause to native species.

The situation here is complicated, and you worry that removing the Bidoof by force could be just as disruptive as doing nothing at all – not just to the Bidoof themselves, but to everything else living in the area. It would take half a dozen trainers to round up just the ones here (you assume there are other dams), and breaking the dam could easily be destructive. Besides, the Bidoof aren’t just crowding out or oppressing native species; they’re also creating something new. Many of the local species actually stand to benefit from their transformation of the landscape, and the end result could be a more diverse ecosystem than Route 22 started with – if the competing needs of the different species are managed correctly. It’ll be like threading a needle, no mistake, but your instinctive compassion makes you unwilling to dismiss the possibility that all the Pokémon of the area can live in something resembling harmony. You resolve to write the conclusion of your report in a way that emphasises the potential benefits of the Bidoof presence, but without downplaying the risks to species like Goldeen that could be harmed by their effects on the landscape.

I hope you know what you’re doing, kid.

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A Pokémon Trainer is You! X: A Huge Nerd is You!

Last time, on A Pokémon Trainer Is You:

What do you do on route 22?
– Train with Nancy, the Negator.
– Perform an ecological survey.

Once Nancy is recovered from her battle, you decide to do an hour or so of basic training – exercises, attack drills, dodging Scallion’s Vine Whip attacks, that sort of thing. Everything you’ve seen from Nancy so far suggests that she’s a very gentle and mild-mannered Pokémon, but she takes battle and training very seriously, and celebrates her successes with gusto. You suppose that shouldn’t be surprising, for a Pokémon who approached and challenged a human trainer. It’ll take time for her to reach her full potential, obviously, but you can see some improvement even in the short time you have to spend. Once Nancy starts to tire of training, you take another look at the relatively meagre information your Pokédex has on Minun. The key words and phrases all seem to be about teamwork. In their native Hoenn, Minun often live closely with a sister species, Plusle, each amplifying the other’s electrical powers, but they can apparently team up with just about any Pokémon, given time to establish a bond. The Pokédex is considerably less clear about how a trainer might go about doing this, or exactly what advantages might accrue from it. One thing is clear, though – Minun love to cheer for their friends in battles. You try this out, getting Scallion to perform a couple of quick, very basic training exercises, and find that he is inexplicably faster and more accurate with Nancy’s active encouragement. Hmm.

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A Pokémon Trainer is You! IX: Pidgey Minus Minun Equals…?

Last time, on A Pokémon Trainer Is You:

How do you handle the battle between Thingummy’s Pidgey and your Minun, Nancy the Negator?
– Bring Pidgey down with Thunder Wave and fight it on the ground.

You scan the valley floor where Nancy is facing off against Sapphire’s Pidgey, flapping its wings energetically to stay in the air. Nancy can’t directly blast Pidgey with a Thundershock or something – as far as you know, she just doesn’t know the techniques – and she isn’t going to be able to fight an airborne opponent effectively with basic physical attacks. There are a lot of stray boulders, and Nancy can gain some altitude by scaling the wall of the gorge, but this will still be tricky. So… don’t fight it in the air. There’s more than one way to skin a Meowth, after all.

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