Business has slowed to a sad limp. The nerds have shat their pants hard enough from the whole fuckin beedril shitshow and have decided to finally take their dicks out of their hands and actually make an effort to get in shape en masse, and it's about fucking time- a quarter of them look like the kinda slobs that have sex with their shirts on, and the other half look like I could snap them in half with a fucking sneeze.

It also probably helped when the security staff stole all their towels. Or that time they shrunk all their labcoats to be form fitting. Perhaps with or without consulting me first.

There're two kinds of people in this world- show them eighty godamn nerds struggling to do pushups on their knees, and you'll have the ones that laugh and the ones that cry.

Actually getting to the shit that matters, we are actually starting to get to the shit that matters. If I had my fucking way we would have started with this bunch of monsters, seeing as they're a dime a dozen across Johto and Kanto. Hell, pidgey were easy to pick up in here at home with local farms. Good news is we have enough information to write a fucking book, and we got it cheaply. Bad news is that said book would make less sense than Kalosian drama, and nobody with any sense of self-respect would read it.

Simple fact of the matter is that compared to beedril shit, compared to most of the things covered so far, pidgey look like flying snacks, pidgeotto look like pests, and pidgeot are rare enough that you probably do wind up fighting one then someone upstairs has it out for you and wants to mount your balls above their fireplace. So, because they are the birdiest fucking birds you could ask for, let's keep this brief.

Basic Information: The pidgey line is an extremely prolific flying-normal type, three-stage line in the flying egg category. Pidgey, Pidgeotto, and Pidgeot are very common in any place Kanto, Johto, Kalos, and Alola with either trees or statues and park benches to shit on. They are found most commonly in Kanto, Johto, and Kalos, but are typically found in most regions as minimum as livestock, including a particular subspecies here in Orre- known as the, and I shit you not; Fat Pidgey.

Pidgey typically weigh between two and four pounds, and account for the largest number of organisms in this line. Pidgeot are much less common but can still be found consistently in the forests of their native regions, and weigh between sixteen and thirty-five pounds. Pidgeot are extremely rare, and you'll know them when you see them; being between sixty and seventy pounds, with the largest on record coming in at a whopping eighty-six and a half pounds.

Biology: If you really need to be lectured on this shit, look at the fucking diagram that some poor desk jockey inserted in here while agonizing over the state of his marriage and feeling emasculated next to all the big boys that get to go out and kill everything in this fucking hellscape, and then probably eat it to.

The residents of the pidgey line are, frankly speaking, birds, and in my correct opinion, the birdiest of fucking birds you can possibly get. All pokemon that you see in this bird-category are typically going to share the cast majority of their morphology and physiology with one another. If you want to see their muscle structure, go to a supermarket and buy a rotisserie pidgey. You want to see what a pidgeotto looks like? Take a pidgey and scale it up ten times. Want to know what a pidgeot looks like? Well, if you don't already, don't worry about it, because your sheltered ass is going to be so badly decomposed after being killed by dozens of other more common and more concerning threats that by the time you come within miles of one it won't even want to look at you.

I wish I could give you a funny story, a particular perk that makes them pop when you poke them in the right place, but no cigar. It's a bird, and it has bird parts; beaks, talons, wings, hollow bones, sharp eyes, decent ears, and an anus that starts dripping whenever they start to fly over anything of relative cultural significance, for reasons starting with 'F' and rhyming with 'Fuck You."

History: Most history behind these birds is pretty recent. Back in the day they represented a weak and easily acquired prey animal for humans throughout history, but only in the last two-hundred years, with the discovery of the "Fat" phenotype did they become a reliable livestock animal, which can be found just about anywhere in the world, with Unova having a massive export of it, and Pidgey accounting for about forty percent of all livestock raised in Orre. However, they have served as messenger animals in the Union landmass for at least four-hundred years.

A more niche example of their historical significance can be found in falconry. To this day, Pidgeot holds the record highest speed at a single instant in time, and it's fucking silly. 1400 mph, in a single instant. Conditions: terminal velocity, in addition to four uses of agility, in addition to certain performance enhancing drugs, in addition to incredibly favorable tailwinds, in the most genetically… the word of the fucking nerd here that actually cares about falconry says that the breeders responsible for the fucking godless beast described it as being 'Genetically Perfect', whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

Funny thing is that they should have taught it how to land better. The damned thing tried to pull up so fast that its wings got torn off and it went splat onto the pavement. The entire endeavor bankrupted the breeding family, and they had to be bailed out by selling their remaining stock to another breeding family that focused on normal types, and had to marry into another flying type family…I'm not going to pretend to understand the whole fucking thing. It just had me laughing my ass off.

Psychology and Sociology: Psychology wise you're looking at another case of true neutral; don't fuck with them and they won't fuck with you. Their intelligence isn't all that impressive, but pidgey are easy to train and can recognize patterns given time, pidgeotto are capable of planning, and pidgeot- even with low social complexity- can develop intelligence comparable to that of most non-primate mammals, and with high social complexity can achieve the higher ends of primate intelligence.

Now, sociology is more complicated, because it makes; No. Godamn. Sense. For starters, the way they act seems to fly in the face of- and take a massive shit on- observation theory of social complexity. You will find pidgey of all stripes and inclinations; some will cannibalize one another, some won't, some will travel in groups, some will avoid one another like the plague, some will migrate, some will spend their entire lives in one forest.

The best we can do is throw together a mixed bag of how we've seen them interact with one another, with regards to combat situations.

Other than that…they represent an easy to tame and train companion pokemon for the front lines. Unlike Caterpie, they don't breed at an exorbitant rate, and they can potentially raise a stable food source in the form of eggs (though they might not take much pleasure in the fate of their fat brethren.).

Combat: On their own, the worst a typical pidgey can do to a man is give him indigestion. They can go…decently fast, you're not going to be able to outrun one, but their attack options are limited to blowing a gust of wind in your face, blowing a bigger gust of wind in your face, pecking you, and scratching at you with their developed talons. Even better, whenever they are first at risk in conflict they try to kick sand in your eyes and run- and if there is a single godamn Orrean that can be dissuaded from good meal by a bit of sand in his eyes, I never want to see him.

Pidgeotto are pidgey that ate their Wheaties, and they know it. They are territorial to the tune of 20 miles around their nest, and 60 miles for hunting, and while they tolerate natives, they don't care for foreigners much, so if you're walking through the woods alone, there's a good chance it'll come down on you…so it's a good thing that you have a-hundred and twenty pounds on them. Their weapon of choice is one all my fellow divorcies are familiar with-claws. Still, they aren't likely to attack unless you're a particularly juicy target, or are being an inordinately out of proportion dick. If you want to be REALLY safe, don't go it alone, and within a couple weeks they'll be acclimated with you.

Pidgeot are probably the most dangerous thing on this list that you're likely to ever see, but they aren't particularly aggressive, definitely not as aggressive as their younger pidgeotto counterparts. Now, people seem to think that Pidgeot are the shit, specifically because of that Mach 2 story, and it's perpetuated by the pokedex. People forget to mention that the pokemon went splat at the end. Most pidgeot are going to have a dive speed of around 150 miles per hour, and a flight speed of about 120 miles per hour not accounting unnatural status enhancement. Not to mention that both of those speeds are brief, because to be blunt, the big chickens don't have a much better reaction time than you or I, if they attempted to go that fast they'd run into a tree before long, or go splat against the ground. In actual combat, outside of the initial dives, they typically move and maneuver at around forty miles per hour at low altitude, and sixty miles per hour at higher altitudes.

Tricky thing about pidgeot is that unlike their predecessors, they have a competent alternative to attack outside of scratching you. All of them are old enough to have learned agility, they can use some kind of magic bullshit to summon actual, honest to God tornadoes, talons that can tear your head off, and that's not mentioning the fact that they can swoop down, pick up children, and fly away with them.

Again, good news, is that they are rare, and usually won't. Pidgeotto start to get uppity whenever one of their brethren gets strong enough to outcompete them well enough to have their chance to evolve, and potential pidgeot can wind up dead before they get to that point. The current Game and Wildlife records in the union mark a population density of roughly one every 250 square miles in Kanto, and one every 280 square miles in Johto.

Everything except the intestines are easily edible.

Ratings:

Pidgey: Fucking cute. .1 IU, and anyone who tells you otherwise needs to reach down and remind themselves they have a pair. They are typically not aggressive, prefer flight to fight, they suck at combat, and have a limited number of options for combat. You can swat the damned things out of the air, if you felt so inclined.

Pidgeotto: Harder to say- I'd put them at .5 IU's, just by virtue of the fact that they'll actually attack you and can still mangle you pretty bad with those talons if you're not careful. That being said, you could break them with two good punches, so it's not that large of a concern.

Pidgeot: Fuck. 50 IU's, 4 GU's, or .2 ME's. Simple fact of the matter is that you're never going to be on the offensive with these things, at least, not without a hell of a trap. Good news is that a single shot is going to make it crumble in on itself, bad news is, you're almost certainly not getting that shot. In the opening parts of any probably combat scenario you're going to be minding your damn business, and you're not going to see it coming. While it can't maintain those crazy speeds within combat, they can enter combat in them, and when they do, if you're on your own, you're more or less boned. Orrean armor doesn't provide adequate protection everywhere, and these thing's eyes' can pick out your weak points and tear them out of you in one swoop. Even if you were talon proof, the damn thing is just gonna lift you in the air, go up a couple hundred feet, and then try to teach you to fly….and we haven't even talked about those tornadoes yet.

Fuck, there's a few ways that you can run into these, because, as said previously, they don't fall into a single social structure. 1,2, and 3 will cover them individually, 4 will cover groups of pidgey containing pidgetto, 5 will contain groups made up entirely of pidgeotto, and 6 will cover groups containing pidgeot, Arceus help your sorry ass.

1) I'm here to tell you how to deal with threats, not hold your hand while I wipe your ass.

2) Pidgeotto are more problematic because they are more aggressive- but no matter the circumstances behind an engagement, they'll typically always boil down to the same thing- they'll attempt to gain altitude in order to attempt to dive at your face, or they'll attempt to use moderately powerful gusts to knock you off balance, and attempt to approach at moderate speeds. Either way, the answer is obvious- cover your face and neck, and then either wrangle it as it's swiping out you or shoot at it while it's ascending. It'll hurt like hell, but better to have a skinned arm than plucked eyes. If you were really smart, you'd immediately put yourself in a position where it would be difficult for it to dive at you from. Again, good news is that they can't tear through metal, so if you can get them to run into your body armor, well, that's a game ender.

3) Pidgeot…fuck. Best way to handle these is prevention, as per usual. Maintain good intel, and whenever you think there's one nearby, do as little to piss one off as you can. If you do piss one off? Best you can do is maintain high situational awareness, and put yourself in positions that limits their approach. If you survive the initial attack, congratulations, the worst part is behind you, and now is your best chance to try shooting the damn thing, before it gets a chance to open it's bag of tricks. If it were just me, I wouldn't bother trying to block it, I'd be aware enough to see it coming and fire to force it to break off its approach, for the rest of you, those high explosive grenades would probably dissuade it if you threw it straight up in the air, even if you didn't hit it. After that, run for cover, keep an eye out, and simply shoot and outlast it- like Pidgeotto, they'll use the big time gusts to knock you around a bit, leaving you exposed to follow up attacks, but if your position is good enough, it won't be able to kill you before you get a lucky hit, and as soon as you get that hit in, your chances increase dramatically. If you're in a group; spread out so you're all eight feet apart in positions with cover above, and preferably to the sides, use terrain to limit possible approaches, set up your firing lanes, and hope that you get it before it gets all your pals. Like pidgeotto, they can't tear through metal, but they will target you where you're unarmored, but if you're really fast and really clever, you can get it to hurt itself pretty badly on your plate inserts.

4) Pidgey can sometimes grow a pair if there's a pidgeotto in their ranks. To help them out- they'll typically use diversionary moves to create openings for their more dangerous counterparts to get you with- whether that's kicking up sand at you to obscure your vision, or use gusts to knock you off balance or give it a tailwind. The gusts aren't particularly dangerous- they're brief, lasting about half a second, and are not going to knock over anything with more than one leg with good balance. For your average child, it would take at least three pidgey working together to knock him over, for your average grown man it would probably take around eight, assuming competency. If you're on your own, better to take out the pidgey first, while limiting the pidgeotto's approach, as if you kill a few they'll run off on their own, and then it's just a matter of outlasting the big bird. If you're in a group, just ignore the distractions- they can't hold up all of you unless you are seriously outnumbered, then it's just a matter of taking out the big one before they disperse on their own.

5) Fighting a group composed entirely out of pidgeotto is an application of chaos. They don't have any greater tactic than not hitting one another, and they'll merely act entirely independently of one another (again, this is what is typical, and there are no guarantees on how these birds interact with one another). That means you're going to be getting pushed around by two gusts while another dive's you, be picking sand out of your eyes from one of them while two go for your eyes, etcetera. Good news is that this means that if you outnumber them one for one, you can take them more or less in the exact same way as you'd take them individually, just being a bit more aware of your surrounding. Bad news is that if you're outnumbered, well, it's pure fucking chaos, and it's difficult to make any headway, and they act this way because it works. The best thing you can do is not play their fucking game- whatever you have to do, using grenades to block off their approach or disrupt their flight, being careful with your cover, and generally doing whatever you can to make the fight as inconvenient, unnatural, and scary as you possibly can. If you hold out long enough there's a good chance that some will peel off and give up, or that they'll start nailing one another with friendly fire.

6) Finding a situation where you fight one of these is a chore, finding a situation where you're going to fight one of these after they decide to whip up all of their neighbors into fighting you is what happens when you race down shit's creek. On your own, just put as many bullets down range as you can between you and them and run. If you have anything less than fifty men, see above. If you have more than fifty men, then dig in, put as many bullets between you and the flock of turkeys that want to peck your eyes out, and dig in. Kill enough of the pidgeotto and pidgey, and hope that their losses are enough to convince them to peel off.

Freaks:

Mega Pidgeot: Fuck. As if your typical, hundred mile an hour pidgeon capable of summoning gusts capable of throwing a fully armored soldier around like a ragdoll wasn't enough, you have these…things. Looking at combat footage we have of them, it looks like the biggest changes between them and their 'normal' counterparts concern speed, strength, and behavior. Think along the lines of some 20% faster, but twice as strong with regards to that wind bullshit- footage shows those gales picking up a steelix and throwing it clear of the battlefield, so, naturally, they're going to favor using the ability to summon motherfucking tornadoes over using their claws, which changes their approach to combat fundamentally- namely, when they're attacking, it's practically impossible to miss, because they stand still. On the other hand, they never miss. Here's what it boils down to- if you can somehow spot it before it hits you, your infantry squad, your armored division, your entrenched supply depot, and/or your aircraft carrier, you can shoot it out of the sky easily. If not, sucks to be you. I'm rating this one at a .5 ME's if I can see it coming, but a solid 1.5 ME's if it gets the jump on me.

Fat pidgey: I have to say, this one made it on the list as a technicality- look at them, they're so fucking fat it's ridiculous. How in the fuck did evolution not put these things in the ground? 0 ME's. For that matter, 0 IU's too. They're docile, can't fly, and the only difference between them and their healthy counterparts is that they have a leptin deficiency that means they'll never stop eating. Still godamn delicious.

Summary:

Domestication should be attempted whenever possible: They suit multiple purposes- pidgey eggs are laid more frequently than most others, and provide a food option. They can be trained to be non-migratory, meaning you can tie them to specific settlements, simple things like that.

With regards to flocks, good relations should be explored whenever possible: Flocks can be either migratory or non-migratory, and the species as a whole is fractious- meaning they typically won't take offense to actions against other pidgey outside of their flock, for example, fat pidgey livestock. For the migratory ones it means having a constant buffer and a reliable, autonomous scouting group that requires little oversight. In the case of non-migratory flocks, it means having another friendly neighbor that can be propped up against the beedril menace, and a constant buffer zone against hostile forces. Once reclamation of johto is well underway, well, rice is cheap, and we should be able to feed a few flocks on excess food stores.

Fat pidgey remain a reliable source of livestock: Despite losing almost all of the limited livestock we had. Fat pidgey, thankfully, are weak enough that they didn't really do…anything. So food and pidgey eggs are still on the menu, along with the rest of them. From our current understanding, wild pidgey shouldn't be offended by this, typically, and if any are, we can just kill them and replace them with ones that aren't.

Wild individual pidgey are an easily obtainable source of food in the wild: Not much to say on this point- it's true.

Don't settle alone in areas in which pidgeotto reside: And when you do, stay vigilant for the first two weeks, until they become acclimated to you.

Locations and tendencies of pidgeot should be documented whenever information arises: Typically are rational actors, or at least, as rational as pokemon get. They could be useful for later, so making contact with them, establishing a census of them, and perhaps tagging them so we can call upon them later we require a flock to be raised (after making our benevolence known, of course) would be prudent.

Best method for fighting pidgeot is attritional warfare: see above.

-ME