In last week’s edition of Legendary Pokemon of the Week, I talked about a Pokemon that could be the personification of death itself. So this week I’m going to cover that Pokemon’s opposite number. Presenting the mascot of Pokemon X, Xerneas.
At first glance, Xerneas looks like something that you’d expect to see pulling Santa’s sleigh. It’s a deer, and it looks like it has a bunch of Christmas lights decorating its antlers. All joking aside though, Xerneas is in fact the counterforce to Pokemon Y’s mascot, Yveltal. While Yveltal takes life, Xerneas gives life energy to other beings, in some cases even going so far as to make those beings immortal. At the end of its life cycle, Xerneas turns into a tree only to come back to life a thousand years later, just as Yveltal turns into a cocoon at the end of its life. Yet while Yveltal drains the life energy from other beings before becoming a cocoon, Xerneas expels life energy and infuses it into any living thing in the surrounding area before becoming a tree. Another one of Xerneas’s benevolent traits is that it has the power to create forests.
Hangout: The only place to find Xerneas at the moment is in Pokemon X in the basement of Team Flare HQ. Like Yveltal in Pokemon Y, Xerneas’s tree form is built into the heart of Team Flare’s doomsday weapon, and the player has to awaken and capture Xerneas before proceeding further through the game. I feel it should also be noted that even after Xerneas is captured, Team Flare’s leader Lysandre attempts to what little charge his death weapon has left to force immortality on the player character and his or her friends. While that may not seem like a bad thing to happen to the heroes of the game at first glance, Highlander and Code Geass have taught us that immortality can be something of a curse. Meanwhile in Pokemon Y, Lysandre tries to use the little charge his weapon has to kill everyone in the building.
Signature Move: Unlike most Legendary Pokemon signature moves, Xerneas’s signature attack is not an offensive move but an attack that raises Xerneas’s stats. The move in question is a flashy little attack called Geomancy. Basically, Geomancy raises Xerneas’s special attack, special defense and speed stats during the next turn after the move is used. To some it may seem like stat boosting moves are just a waste of a turn, but the fact is they can make a huge difference during a battle when used at the right time. Plus Xerneas has a good pool of damage dealing moves than can only be enhanced by being used with Geomancy.
Signature Ability: Just as Yveltal has its own signature ability in the form of Dark Aura, Xerneas has a signature ability of its own called Fairy Aura. While Dark Aura boosts the power of Dark-Type moves, Fairy Aura boosts the Fairy-Type moves of all Pokemon in play. This ability of course greatly benefits Xerneas itself since it has some pretty good Fairy-Type attacks at its disposal. Of course this ability really shows its worth in double and triple battles, since it powers up all the Fairy-Type attacks of all the users Pokemon that have been sent out to fight alongside Xerneas. Bare in mind though that Fairy Aura also powers up the Fairy-Type moves used by the opponent’s Pokemon.
That about wraps it up for this week’s post. For next week… well, here’s the thing. I’ve once again run out of Legendary Pokemon to talk about. The only Legendary Pokemon left from Generation 6 is Zygarde, but since Zygarde is getting something of a major makeover in Pokemon Sun and Moon, I’m going to wait until after those games come out to talk about it. In the meantime, I may either revisit some of the Legendary Pokemon that I covered in my special post called And the Rest, or I may do something else entirely. So whatever happens next, thank you for reading.
