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So I found out that tomorrow (December 5th) is International Ninja Day. Well I finished this early, so here's another realistic pokemon drawing, this time with the original ninja Pokémon that existed before Greninja came along.

A common bug type Pokémon in some regions, Ninjask is a medium-sized insect Pokémon capable of very fast flight. In fact, Ninjask was once believed to be the fastest existing Pokémon before the discovery of Deoxys and (more recently) Regieleki, both of the two faster creatures are extremely rare and once thought to be animals existing only in myths and legends. In fact it is so fast that it can be hard to even see one even if it flies right past, and thus was once believed to be capable of turning invisible. Ninjask greatly requires this high speed to survive as it is a frail creature, and has low defense, making it a desirable prey item for whatever predatory Pokémon can catch up with it. Ninjask itself is not a predator, but drinks tree sap using its needle-like mouthparts that pierce the bark. These insects spend most of their adult life searching for a mate and to attract the opposite sex, they make a long and loud cry. As they have a habit of gathering in large numbers in a single tree, a tree inhabited by Ninjask and the surrounding areas will be filled with this noise, which can cause headaches if you spend too long near them.

Ninjask start their lives as flightless nymphs that live underground and feed on juice from plant roots. The nymphs have much smaller wings and are mostly white, and they will spend years in this stage before they moult into adults. The nymphs are commonly referred to as Nincada, and life underground has rendered them nearly blind as there isn't anything to see down in the dark anyway, and their sensitive antennae are used for navigation instead. Its eyes work just well enough to detect light, and it tends to stay away from light, an adaptation allowing it to stay in the relative safety of the underground instead of the surface, where it is easily spotted by predators like bird Pokémon.

When Nincada are approaching the time they moult their skin and mature into Ninjask, they will dig their way towards the surface. Once there, they cling onto any surface and over the course of multiple hours it will slowly shed its skin. The creature that emerges is a Ninjask, complete with wings and ready to fly. The shedded skin then undergoes its own changes. The brown husk will soon sprout a strange, luminous fungus. It seems that the spores of this fungus can stay dormant within a Nincada until the husk is shed, and once that happens it rapidly grows. The thread-like fungus usually grows into a loop above the head of the shell and instantly starts releasing spores. The husks are so light that they are easily wind blown, which also takes the fungi with them, allowing for a wider spread of spores, and has also led people to believe the husk is a living floating Pokémon known as Shedinja. The fungus also emits a odd chemical that seems to have an odd chemical reaction with many kinds of Pokémon attacks, and several types of moves can bypass this chemical and strike the Shedinja. This is commonly referred to as the ability Wonder Guard. The husk part of Shedinja however, is so frail that if any attack were to successfully hit it, it would instantly break.

There is also a second type of fungus that can grow within a Nincada, but this one is parasitic and negatively affects the nymph. When spores of the parasitic fungus land on a Nincada, they will soon start draining nutrients directly from the host insect and the spores of the luminous fungus inside. This causes extreme changes in the appearance of the insect. It quickly turns from the usual white color to reddish-brown, more similar to the husk than a healthy living nymph. Soon, the mushrooms emerge from the back of the insect. Normally two mushrooms sprout out of the shell, but fierce competition for nutrients from the host means one usually dies soon after. An infected Nincada is often referred to as a Paras. Paras still have some control over their actions, but the fungi are slowly growing into their brains and sometimes their actions are instead controlled by it. Eventually, after one of the mushrooms dies from the competition from the other, the surviving mushroom grows extremely large, covering much of the back of the insect and now has full control over the actions of the Nincada. This form is known as Parasect, and the Nincada is barely alive now, its only purpose is to run around so the spores of the fungus spread as far as possible and infect more Nincada, and both fungus and insect will die once this has happened. These spores can even infect the eggs, and thus a Ninjask egg can hatch directly into a Paras. If the fungus were to be removed at any stage, it would instantly kill the insect, so there is no known cure to it. Interestingly the fungus has health benefits to humans and thus is collected to make medicines.

A distant relative of Ninjask, Celebi is also an insect Pokémon, but while the former is quite common, Celebi is extremely rare, so rare that for a long time some have doubted if it actually exists and thought it may just be a myth, until a live individual was caught in the Ilex forest in Johto. Indeed there are legends and myths from various eras that mention a small green creature with wings being a forest deity that brings lush plant growth and can travel through time, and drawings of these myths show a creature very similar to Celebi. The idea that it can travel through time is quite odd, but some believe that like Ninjask, Celebi may spend many years as a nymph underground before emerging as an adult that lives just long enough to reproduce and quickly dies, and the long absence of visible Celebi above ground before they are seen again may have started this myth. This has yet to be confirmed, however, as Celebi nymphs have never been found and some suspect it skips the nymph stage altogether, hatching directly as a winged smaller version of the adult.

Description
So I found out that tomorrow (December 5th) is International Ninja Day. Well I finished this early, so here's another realistic pokemon drawing, this time with the original ninja Pokémon that existed before Greninja came along.

A common bug type Pokémon in some regions, Ninjask is a medium-sized insect Pokémon capable of very fast flight. In fact, Ninjask was once believed to be the fastest existing Pokémon before the discovery of Deoxys and (more recently) Regieleki, both of the two faster creatures are extremely rare and once thought to be animals existing only in myths and legends. In fact it is so fast that it can be hard to even see one even if it flies right past, and thus was once believed to be capable of turning invisible. Ninjask greatly requires this high speed to survive as it is a frail creature, and has low defense, making it a desirable prey item for whatever predatory Pokémon can catch up with it. Ninjask itself is not a predator, but drinks tree sap using its needle-like mouthparts that pierce the bark. These insects spend most of their adult life searching for a mate and to attract the opposite sex, they make a long and loud cry. As they have a habit of gathering in large numbers in a single tree, a tree inhabited by Ninjask and the surrounding areas will be filled with this noise, which can cause headaches if you spend too long near them.

Ninjask start their lives as flightless nymphs that live underground and feed on juice from plant roots. The nymphs have much smaller wings and are mostly white, and they will spend years in this stage before they moult into adults. The nymphs are commonly referred to as Nincada, and life underground has rendered them nearly blind as there isn't anything to see down in the dark anyway, and their sensitive antennae are used for navigation instead. Its eyes work just well enough to detect light, and it tends to stay away from light, an adaptation allowing it to stay in the relative safety of the underground instead of the surface, where it is easily spotted by predators like bird Pokémon.

When Nincada are approaching the time they moult their skin and mature into Ninjask, they will dig their way towards the surface. Once there, they cling onto any surface and over the course of multiple hours it will slowly shed its skin. The creature that emerges is a Ninjask, complete with wings and ready to fly. The shedded skin then undergoes its own changes. The brown husk will soon sprout a strange, luminous fungus. It seems that the spores of this fungus can stay dormant within a Nincada until the husk is shed, and once that happens it rapidly grows. The thread-like fungus usually grows into a loop above the head of the shell and instantly starts releasing spores. The husks are so light that they are easily wind blown, which also takes the fungi with them, allowing for a wider spread of spores, and has also led people to believe the husk is a living floating Pokémon known as Shedinja. The fungus also emits a odd chemical that seems to have an odd chemical reaction with many kinds of Pokémon attacks, and several types of moves can bypass this chemical and strike the Shedinja. This is commonly referred to as the ability Wonder Guard. The husk part of Shedinja however, is so frail that if any attack were to successfully hit it, it would instantly break.

There is also a second type of fungus that can grow within a Nincada, but this one is parasitic and negatively affects the nymph. When spores of the parasitic fungus land on a Nincada, they will soon start draining nutrients directly from the host insect and the spores of the luminous fungus inside. This causes extreme changes in the appearance of the insect. It quickly turns from the usual white color to reddish-brown, more similar to the husk than a healthy living nymph. Soon, the mushrooms emerge from the back of the insect. Normally two mushrooms sprout out of the shell, but fierce competition for nutrients from the host means one usually dies soon after. An infected Nincada is often referred to as a Paras. Paras still have some control over their actions, but the fungi are slowly growing into their brains and sometimes their actions are instead controlled by it. Eventually, after one of the mushrooms dies from the competition from the other, the surviving mushroom grows extremely large, covering much of the back of the insect and now has full control over the actions of the Nincada. This form is known as Parasect, and the Nincada is barely alive now, its only purpose is to run around so the spores of the fungus spread as far as possible and infect more Nincada, and both fungus and insect will die once this has happened. These spores can even infect the eggs, and thus a Ninjask egg can hatch directly into a Paras. If the fungus were to be removed at any stage, it would instantly kill the insect, so there is no known cure to it. Interestingly the fungus has health benefits to humans and thus is collected to make medicines.

A distant relative of Ninjask, Celebi is also an insect Pokémon, but while the former is quite common, Celebi is extremely rare, so rare that for a long time some have doubted if it actually exists and thought it may just be a myth, until a live individual was caught in the Ilex forest in Johto. Indeed there are legends and myths from various eras that mention a small green creature with wings being a forest deity that brings lush plant growth and can travel through time, and drawings of these myths show a creature very similar to Celebi. The idea that it can travel through time is quite odd, but some believe that like Ninjask, Celebi may spend many years as a nymph underground before emerging as an adult that lives just long enough to reproduce and quickly dies, and the long absence of visible Celebi above ground before they are seen again may have started this myth. This has yet to be confirmed, however, as Celebi nymphs have never been found and some suspect it skips the nymph stage altogether, hatching directly as a winged smaller version of the adult.