With the release of Pokémon Sword and Shield approaching, I felt like telling a story that happened to my wife while we were playing Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee!  I will warn you in advance that in order to keep the authenticity of the story, strong language will be used later in the story. If the thought of someone cursing out an imaginary creature will upset you, then I suggest censoring out the words with your own creative ones; like “Frick” or some shit like that.

Toward the end of our playthrough after beating all of the gym leaders, we decided to take the time to finish up some side things and catch any Pokémon that we were missing. This included the trial of catching the three legendary birds; Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. We decided to go after Articuno first because it was the most difficult to get to and it literally has “uno” in its name. I got to the Seafoam Island first, meaning I had to set the bar on who was better at catching all the legendries (spoiler alert, it was me!).

I solve the bolder puzzle and reach the platform where Articuno laid waiting (or flapped waiting). I was able to weaken it quickly with my partner Pikachu, who I named Raichu during my playthrough. Then came the time to capture it. I threw my first ball, failed. Second ball, failed. Third ball, success! After three attempts, I was able to the icy bird as my own; now it was my wife’s turn to try and do better for bragging rights.

She makes her way to the island, solves the bolder puzzle, and faces off against her foe. She weakens the bird down and proceeds with her first catching attempt; failed. She throws another ball and it fails; then another and then multiple ones after that. You can see where this is going. My wife started the battle off with around 100 ultra balls and burned through those like cheap batteries. Around this point she starts to get mad and starts to lose it a bit. She started to beg and plea with the fowl deity to please submit to her and its force imprisonment. But like any good mystical creature, it told her to fuck off. This, like anything stupid I do, pissed her off.

The following are some of the phrases that she muttered to herself while desperately fighting a battle she was losing hard:

”Get in the damn ball you stupid bird!”

“Why won’t you be a good bird and go in your cage?!”

“Guess what you fucking bird? I like Moltres better than you! THAT’S RIGHT! I SAID IT!

“*Sob* why won’t you just stay in the ball….”

“get…in….THE FUCKING BALL!!!

At this point she had no idea that I was recording her hardships.  She vowed that once she caught it she would give it a suiting name; a high honor since she never nicknames her Pokémon. After a long hard fought battle, with many groans and F bombs dropped, she ran out of balls. Instead of restarting the game to right before the battle began, she left the cave to go buy more balls and restart the battle out of pure spite. Many balls were thrown again and each were meet with the same results. Then finally when she was down to her normal pokeballs, the ice in the cave defrosted (which cause the islands to submerge underwater due to the increased water level) and she caught the Pokémon.

Upon catching the mighty beast, she kept her promise and gave it an appropriate nickname, Stupid Fucking Ice Pigeon.

And thus concludes the tale of my wife and the ice pigeon. She hoped this was the last time she would ever see that monster again.

Later during the endgame, I was flying around looking for Pokémon in the sky when I happened to see a familiar face. A second ice pigeon decided to appear in front of me (apparently after you finish the game you can sometimes find legendary Pokémon just chilling anywhere) and I decided why the hell not. My wife, still suffering from her past trauma, glared at me and dared me to try catching it as easily as I did before. So I weakened it, throw out my first ball, and caught it on my first try.

To this day she has not replayed the game.

Thank for reading!