#heronek

[Image Description: Three fan-made Pokemon resembling blue birds in the family of egrets, herons, and bitterns, the largest of which also slightly resembles the idea of an old martial arts master.

The first Pokemon is a light blue egret with blue eyes, powder blue wings, a stumpy blue tail, and a long dull purple beak and legs. One leg is held up to its body as it looks backwards. Blue text outlined in light blue to its right reads “Chikret”.

The second Pokemon is a turquoise heron with teal feathers covering its head, neck, and ends of its wings, powder blue feathers inside its wings, purple tail feathers and eyes, and dull purple beak and legs. The same turquoise feathers of its body are also found around its eyes and on the back of its head to resemble eyebrows and a "ponytail". It has one wing partially extended and the other folded up against its body. Blue text outlined in light blue to its right reads "Heronek".

The third Pokemon is a large bittern with a turquoise body, blue feathers on its head, neck, and ends of its wings, dark purple squinted eyes, powder blue feathers inside its wings, purple tail feathers in a fan shape, and dull purple beak and wings. It has powder blue feathers on its head near its eyes, beak, and back of its head resembling eyebrows, a mustache, and a "ponytail". Its wings are extended to its full wingspan and one leg is lifted in a martial arts pose. Blue text outlined in maroon to its right reads "Jabittern".

End ID.]

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Chikret - Egret Pokemon - water/flying It lives along riverbanks in reed beds with its parents until it is ready to be independent. When full grown, they often return to the same area their parents raised them. / Chikret is quite capable of swimming merely days after hatching, and it begins to fly short distances a few weeks into its life as well. It watches its parents to learn how to use its neck and legs to attack.

Heronek - Heron Pokemon - water/flying While it tends to use its long neck to attack, it is starting to use its longer legs as an attack as well. It is both a capable swimmer and flyer. / It extends its long neck to pluck fish out of the waterways it lives around. When its neck is fully extended, it practically doubles its overall body length.

Jabittern - Fierce Jab Pokemon - water/fighting While its denser muscles make it slightly too heavy to fly by the strictest definition of the word, its powerful leaps may make it appear to still be capable of flight. Its legs can take down an adult human often with a single kick. / It leaps into the air and drops onto foes with its powerful legs. Its strong kicks and swift wing strikes can take down Pokemon three times its size within mere minutes.

And the last of the Cantessy starters finally evolves! Chikret was the most popular of the starters in that survey I ran, so I hope you're all happy with your bird friend :D

I've always been fascinated with this heron that shows up around some creeks and ponds in my area, and so I knew I wanted to make a Pokemon based on them, regardless of whether or not they would end up as the starter. I didn't even initially take the fandom-perceived theme of water starters being weapon users or warriors, it just happened as a natural result of thinking that both of the other types of the starters having had at least one rep being part fighting-type and working those long, long legs into the concept. So Jabittern basically becomes one of those old kung-fu masters as a result, hehe.

In terms of gameplay if this were an actual game, the Chikret family is gonna be focused on speed with decent attack and special attack stats to go along with it, though they are quite a bit fragile with their defenses. They'll obviously learn a good amount of water, flying, and fighting moves that take advantage of this along with some other strong physical attacks, and when Jabittern has evolved they'll learn the move Bitter Kick, which acts similarly to Flying Press in that it works as both a water and fighting type move in terms of super-effectiveness (and by that I mean it does double damage to the things that are weak to fighting as well as those that are weak to water, but does normal water damage on things that are neutral to or resist fighting). Is that broken? It might be broken, but at least the other starters get something like it so maybe that balances it out? I'unno, I'm a character designer, not a game balancer hehe. I mainly just get the visual for how it'd look, and I can imagine a Jabittern using this move just slamming their foot down on the opponent's weak spot with some water effects around it to maybe make it look like they'd quickly pulled their foot out of the water. So I guess a bit more like how a secretary bird attacks its prey than how herons and related birds do?

Also if anyone wants to suggest other moves for these guys to learn and some physical stats (ie. height and weight, I only have a height for the base form starters atm and no weights XD ), feel free to throw 'em at me :3 Links to their info pages will be provided in the replies!

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