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Masquerain (Surskit)
Aquacursor navigantis
Overview
In the modern era pokémon are often used as pets, livestock, laborers, and battling partners. While masquerain do see some use in battle and the odd bug enthusiast will keep a pet surskit, masquerain are far more commonly used for pest control.
Surskit primarily live in still, heavily planted bodies of water. They feed upon insects and insect larvae in their pond. It is rare for them to disturb humans, even in self defense. Both stages are also aesthetically pleasing. All of this makes surskit ideal for killing mosquitoes and their larvae in retention ponds, parks, and wetlands near urban areas. In portions of China and Japan it was traditional to dedicate a new garden by introducing a pair of surskit.
As far as bug-types go, masquerain are reasonably intelligent and fair decently in battle. They are by no means exceptional companions, but their fans have made them work into the late stages of the island challenge with creative strategies.
Physiology
Surskit are classified as dual water- and bug-types. Masquerain are classified as dual flying- and bug-types. Neither designation is controversial.
Surskit have a small head, thorax and abdomen at the center of their body. Most of these are coated in a light blue exoskeleton, except for a single green spike extending upwards from the center of the thorax.
Three sets of very long legs extend from the main body. These legs are coated in hairs that trap water and let the pokémon maintain buoyancy while walking along the surface of the water. Each leg also has a retractable claw located at the equivalent of the knee. These can be released and used to attack anything that gets too close to the main body.
Surskit's upper mouth is made out of a tube-like segment used to inhale water. Filter-like appendages in the mouth catch any zooplankton. After the meal is captured the surskit opens flaps at the side of its mouth that let the remaining water escape.
The final adaptation that helps surskit thrive is a scent gland that can secrete shockingly bitter or sweet compounds. These can be used to repel predators and attract prey. Chinese natural philosophers once proposed that the bitter secretions were used to scare away birds. This is not the case. Birds have a very limited sense of taste and smell. They don't eat Asian surskit because of the large spike on their back making it difficult and even dangerous to eat them. Their bodies can also look like a blade of grass floating on the pond when viewed from above. The terrible taste is designed to repel fish.
Masquerain do not have the long, spindly legs of surskit. Instead their formerly long legs turn into wings located underneath the main body. The front two wings have claws at the end and can be bent to allow the retractable claws in the midfoe of the wing to be used. This allows them to be used for either flight or moving food to the mouth. Masquerain have a more conventional mouth designed for eating whole adult insects or very large larvae.
Almost all of masquerain's body is light grey to balance blending in with the water when seen from above and the sky when seen from below. Masquerain no longer secrete the same compounds as surskit as there is no need to repel fish or attract zooplankton.
The remaining two limbs transform into large pseudowings that form a large eyespot above the main body. The eye's color and markings varies by individual, sex, and ancestry. The most common pattern in Alola is a set of concentric circles. The innermost circle is black, the middle is white, and the outermost is a vibrant shade of green. The pseudowings can also be used to stabilize flight while the front wings are used for eating.
Masquerain are incredibly skilled fliers with gyroscopic balance and a 360 degree range of motion. They can stop and change directions nearly instantaneously to throw off pursuers or feint an attack or escape. Without elemental assistance they can move at speeds of up to fifty miles per hour. When using quiver dance or agility they can reach speeds of one hundred miles per hour, although the specimen may not have full control and impacts at these speeds can be fatal.
A cost of this speed is that masquerain flight is very energy intensive. Even unboosted flight requires successfully hunting at least once an hour. Flight boosted by quiver dance or agility can require hunting every twenty minutes.
Surskit typically weigh about four ounces and have a body length, excluding legs and mouth, or four inches. They can live for up to three years.
Masquerain typically weigh ten ounces. They have a similar body length, excluding wings, and live for up to five years.
Behavior
During the day surskit take shelter with the rest of their ferry in plants near the edge of the pond. At night surskit disperse to their own territories, each roughly the same size, and begin hunting. Surskit eat zooplankton by sucking them out of the water. They can use hydrokinesis to form small whirlpools to guide zooplankton to their mouth.
Surskit are capable of communicating with each other by creating vibrations on the water at set frequencies. When something dangerous appears all surskit in the area will quickly be informed and take shelter.
When hunting, surskit will catch and eat surskit larvae. They will even eat their own offspring. Masquerain will also cannibalize any surskit or masquerain carcasses they come across.
Masquerain spend their days resting in trees. They prefer to hide amongst leaves or in other areas with decent coverage. Because they no longer emit foul odors they are vulnerable to being preyed upon by mammals reptiles, and larger insects while they sleep.
At night masquerain glide over the water's surface in search of prey. They lay traps with slow moving bubbles and then corral insects into them, stunning their prey and setting up an opening for a kill. They can also use thin blades of air to knock creatures on leaves or tree branches into the water where they can be drowned and eaten. Some masquerain learn to use water jets to stun small birds and make them fall into the water.
Husbandry
Surskit are not particularly suited for life as pets. They do fine hunting on manmade ponds and can be an excellent addition to city parks or larger private lakes, but feeding and housing them can be difficult.
To start with, surskit are not very good at recognizing glass and plexiglass. If given a terrarium to live in the water must have dirt or plants at the tank edges to keep them from skating into the barriers.
Second, surskit's diet can be difficult for all but the most dedicated of aquarists to meet. They must be fed from a bowl of water filled with a precise concentration of suspended brine shrimp. Too many brine shrimp and their mouth filters could get clogged. Too few and they may be unable to get as much food as they need. Some gardening stores sell brine shrimp with instructions on making surskit food.
Traveling trainers who attempt to raise surskit can at least be reassured that they evolve quickly.
Masquerain have their own care difficulties but are overall much better suited for life as personal pets or travel partners.
Masquerain can be fed whole insects or smaller portions of other meats. They must be fed hourly when outside of their pokéball and active, as well as immediately after any battles. When held in a stasis ball this requirement is decreased to once every six hours. During the day masquerain tend to be inactive. As long as they do not battle or fly they will not need to be fed from dawn to dusk. Water should be available at all times during the night.
Masquerain and surskit do not need conventional enrichment. Some trainers enjoy bonding with their pokémon through games or catch or by creating soap bubbles for the masquerain to interact with. One activity that has gone viral is interacting with wild or captive masquerain with consumer drones, which usually have a build similar to that of a masquerain. The real insects have been known to socialize with the drones, destroy them, or attempt to mate with them.
Surskit prefer to have other surskit, or at least other similar bugs, on the team. Masquerain are not as social and can actively attack smaller pokémon they are not well bonded with. They seldom take issue with larger pokémon, even apex predators.
Illness
Masquerain are hardy pokémon that seldom fall sick from illnesses. When they do it is usually from pesticides they encounter in their environment. These can sometimes be treated if the dosage was low enough. Sometimes they will be fatal or debilitating.
In the wild a broken leg is a death sentence for a surskit. So is a broken wing for masquerain. Both illnesses can be treated in captivity. The pokémon may not understand this and lash out when their limbs are restrained to prevent flight while they wing heals or an artificial replacement is installed.
Evolution
Surskit can go their entire life cycle without evolving. Generations can pass without a single evolution before the entire ferry evolves in a matter of weeks.
Surskit prefer to stay unevolved as long as conditions allow for it. Masquerain have a much higher energy requirement and the environment cannot support as many of them.
Evolution occurs when the water source the association lives on becomes unreliable. This can occur on bodies of water that dry up seasonally, if there is a sudden decrease in food, or if predation becomes a serious threat. The surskit will then gorge themselves day and night before retreating to plant cover to enter a pupal state. The new masquerain will emerge roughly eight days later and fly off to look for a more stable home.
On the island challenge surskit's frequent movements usually convince them there environment is not stable. Evolution will occur shortly after. It is important to stay in one place and watch over the pupa during evolution.
Trainers who wish to prevent evolution should keep their surskit on one pond as often as possible and use a very small everstone brace when the surskit must travel for any reason.
Battle
Masquerain are some of the most agile pokémon the average trainer will have access to. They can use their speed as an opportunity act in a supporting capacity. Masquerain can unleash clouds of stun spores, lay down webbing over the battlefield, or set up with agility or quiver dance only to pass the boosts onto a more reliable teammate. Masquerain cannot take strong hits and are also not particularly powerful.
In practice masquerain compete with ribombee and vikavolt for a niche. Ribombee is also a fast, frail support-oriented pokémon. Vikavolt cannot turn as easily as masquerain but makes up for this drawback in sheer firepower. While masquerain are faster than ribombee and have a better supporting movepool than vikavolt no ranked trainer has ever used one. They remain uncommon in professional circuits.
In the early stages of the island challenge masquerain's speed and decent firepower can let them dominate opponents who don't have a homing move. Later on they will be forced to rely on sticky web and baton pass strategies to pull their weight. Trainers who want to continue using one can make it work, but more effective options exist.
Surskit are every bit as fast on the water's surface as masquerain are in the air. This could theoretically let them do well in matches where a large body of water is available. Even in Alola this is somewhat uncommon. Surskit are also vulnerable to fish and birds in combat as their main defense, being difficult or unpleasant to eat, isn't useful in sport battles.
Acquisition
Surskit and masquerain can be found in most retention ponds, public parks, and stagnant bodies of water in Alola. Capture on private property is not allowed without the owner's permission. Parks generally set time or quota limits to ensure their population remains stable.
Surskit and masquerain can be captured with a Class III license for use by a tracking trainer. When used exclusively as pest control on ponds they only require a Class I license. Surskit can also be purchased from many gardening supply stores with a Class I license. These stores almost never keep masquerain due to the difficulty of keeping them in one place. Adoption is almost never an option as the release process is easy and encouraged to keep the mosquito population down.
Breeding
Reproduction occurs in the middle of the rainy season, typically around December or January. Surskit pair up seemingly at random. The female will then dive beneath the water's surface and deposit twenty to thirty eggs on a submerged root or tree branch. Neither parent will do any more parenting after this.
Newly hatched surskit go through five nymphal stages. These are essentially identical to adults, just smaller and with a darker color. Adulthood is reached after two months.
Surskit are relatively easy to breed in captivity. After the eggs are deposited, they will be entirely fine with them being relocated or more closely monitored. Nymphs must be moved away from adults to ensure they are not eaten. Surskit have no loyalty to their parents and their parents will not care if their children are moved to a different pond.
Masquerain reproduction is much the same as surskit's. It is more dangerous for masquerain to dive as it will leave them vulnerable until their wings dry. To compensate her mate will fly around the area while she dries and ward off any attackers. The pair will have no particular loyalty to each other after this event.
Relatives
Masquerain can be found throughout the world. There are over twenty species recognized. Not all will be touched upon here. All but two species of surskit have more standard mandibles for eating individual zooplankton.
The largest masquerain species is the emerald pool masquerain (A. gigas) of Southeast Asia. They can have wingspans of up to eight feet and can hunt the large airborne insects of the rainforest. Humans almost never encounter them as they prefer to stay away from forest edges. In spite of their size they are also quite skittish. Camera traps suggest they are more common than researchers initially believed, but deforestation and habitat fragmentation has left them endangered nonetheless.
The common Asian masquerain (A. aquacursor) is known for its stark white coloration and particularly vivid eyespots. They are a common feature in East Asian gardens. Because they live in a temperate climate they must hibernate in the winter. They bury themselves under leaf litter or hide in narrow crevasses while their metabolic rate plummets. The species has been deliberately introduced to several regions for their beauty, resulting in population declines of the local species and genetic mixing. A concerted effort was made to remove them from Alola in the 1990s.
Ruby masquerain (R. harbron) are found in the American Southwest and Anahuac. They are one of the largest species with wingspans of up to six feet. Ruby masquerain have vivid colors. The surskit are an iridescent green and the masquerain are a vibrant red. Ruby surskit also dive for their food more than other species and prefer to snatch small fish and invertebrates out of the water rather than passively filtering for them. Male surskit also carry their eggs on their back until hatching. Most surskit eventually evolve given the ephemeral nature of water in the desert. The masquerain are known for using their superior speed and large mandibles to rush down slower birds in midair. When endangered they can fly low to the ground and whip up a cloud of sand to cover their escape.
The strangest species is the one Alola's are descended from, the pelagic surskit (A. challenger). Pelagic surskit are only found eighty or more miles from the coast. They do not have nearly as prominent a spine as other surskit because they rarely encounter birds in the middle of the ocean. Instead of mandibles they developed a specialized feeding tube and filters to suck zooplankton directly out of the water column. Because the ocean is not ephemeral the surskit never evolve. Captive specimens have occasionally evolved into masquerain, but the masquerain all die within a few months. The pelagic masquerain was not described by science until the Challenger Expedition in the 19th Century. The species fares poorly in captivity and is still not well understood. Field observations are also difficult due to their highly dispersed population, low population densities, and the remoteness of their habitat.