As everyone knew, an ordinary Gengar was purple.
Even Shiny Gengar was only slightly paler, its body shifting toward a muted gray without looking dramatically different from the normal coloration.
A completely white Gengar standing beneath the bright midday sun, however, was impossible to overlook.
Felix barely paid attention to the unusual color.
It was obvious that this Gengar was the same black-shadowed Pokémon he had helped only a short while ago.
“You’re okay now, right?”
“Gar!”
[I’m okay!]
Gengar nodded several times in quick succession before falling quiet again.
An awkward silence settled between them.
Felix eventually gestured toward the café.
“…Want to come inside for a while?”
…
A few minutes later, Felix was sitting behind the counter while Gengar occupied a chair on the other side.
Felix opened the white can he had just made and passed it over.
“Try this.
I only made it today.”
“Gengar?”
Gengar cautiously accepted the can with both hands and raised it to eye level, peering suspiciously at the liquid inside as though it had no idea what Felix expected it to do.
“It’s a drink.
You know, like water?”
“Gengar?”
The blank expression remained.
Apparently, even the idea of drinking water was unfamiliar to it.
Felix supposed that made sense.
Ghost-type Pokémon like Gengar did not necessarily need to eat in order to survive, much less drink water the way most living creatures did.
He reached into the cabinet, took out the red drink, opened it, and demonstrated by taking a sip.
“Like this.”
Gengar immediately understood.
It awkwardly copied him, lifted the can to its mouth, and took a small taste.
Its eyes lit up.
“Gengar!”
[This is really good!]
At the same moment, Felix heard another voice carrying exactly the same words.
[This is really good!]
The Voice of All Things had taken effect.
He could now understand Gengar’s speech perfectly.
And in theory, he should also be able to hear its thoughts.
Felix narrowed his eyes slightly and concentrated, but no additional thoughts seemed to be coming through beyond what he had already heard.
‘Huh?’
Was the drink not working properly?
…
“Where did you come from?” Felix asked.
Gengar sat obediently in its chair, holding the can between both hands as it answered.
“Gengar.”
[Somewhere really far away.]
A second voice immediately followed.
[It was really far.]
“And do you know where that place is?”
“Gar…”
Gengar looked confused and shook its head.
[I don’t know.]
Then came its thoughts.
[…I really don’t know.]
Felix stared at it for a moment.
“…”
Now he understood what had felt strange ever since Gengar entered the café.
This Pokémon was almost painfully straightforward.
The ability to hear its thoughts was practically pointless because whatever Gengar thought was exactly what came out of its mouth.
Felix decided that was hardly a bad trait.
With the drink’s effects confirmed, he turned the conversation toward the ruins.
Before long, Gengar managed to give him a rough idea of what had happened.
The ruins were several mountain ranges away, buried deep within a remote region.
Gengar had stumbled across them by accident two days earlier.
Something inside seemed to radiate a strange force that prevented it from going deeper, so it had picked up a gold coin near the entrance and left.
Soon afterward, the black mist had wrapped around its body.
From then on, Gengar had been in constant pain.
It had tried everything it could think of, but nothing had removed the mist.
Felix listened carefully before asking, “Then why did you come to me for help?”
That part genuinely puzzled him.
Wild Ghost-types living this deep in the mountains were generally not known for seeking out humans.
If anything, Pokémon that deliberately chose such isolated places tended to avoid people.
Asking a human stranger for help seemed even less likely.
“Gengar…
gar.”
[Because…
you looked like a good person.]
As Gengar spoke, an image suddenly surfaced in Felix’s mind.
He saw himself from behind, crouched beside Litwick and offering it a Berry.
The scene was clearly being shown from Gengar’s perspective.
Felix understood immediately.
“So you saw me feeding Litwick.”
That explained it.
Though judging whether someone was trustworthy purely because they fed a random wild Pokémon was still a fairly casual standard.
…
Once they finished discussing the ruins, Felix memorized the rough location Gengar had described.
If he ever had the opportunity, he wanted to see the place for himself.
Gengar remained seated across from him after answering everything, quietly taking small sips from the can while watching Felix as though waiting for another question.
Felix thought for a moment.
“If you didn’t live around here before, why did you come all the way to Mount Coronet?”
“Don’t you have any friends back where you came from?”
As far as Felix remembered, the best-known concentrations of Ghost-type Pokémon in Sinnoh were around the Lost Tower and the Old Chateau in Eterna Forest.
Both were a considerable distance from Mount Coronet.
Gengar might have originally lived somewhere else nearby, of course, but what it had already told him made that unlikely.
The cheerful look on Gengar’s face faded as its ears drooped.
“Gengar…”
[Because…
they didn’t like me.
I was always by myself.]
“Gar…”
[I don’t have any friends.]
A quieter thought followed.
[I’m lonely.]
As those words reached Felix, another sequence of images unfolded before him.
He saw a forest inhabited by large numbers of Ghost-type Pokémon—Banette, Cofagrigus, Gastly, Haunter, and many others.
In one corner of the forest, a small white Gastly cautiously approached a group of its own kind.
The others immediately drifted away.
The white Gastly stopped where it was, visibly disappointed.
It seemed to believe the others rejected it simply because it had not evolved yet.
So it worked hard.
Eventually, it evolved into Haunter.
Full of hope, the white Haunter approached them again.
But nothing changed.
The other Pokémon still avoided it, and several even attacked when it came too close.
The white Haunter fled in panic.
Eventually, it left the forest entirely.
…
When the vision ended, Felix looked at Gengar with mixed feelings.
To players and Pokémon fans, Shiny Pokémon were rare treasures people might spend hundreds of hours searching for.
But in a real world populated by actual Pokémon, being born with coloring radically different from the rest of your species was not necessarily a blessing.
A Pokémon could just as easily be ostracized for it.
Especially one as gentle and socially awkward as this Gengar seemed to be.
Across the counter, Gengar sat with its ears hanging low.
Felix suddenly smiled.
“You know, white Gengar look really cool.”
Gengar raised its head.
“Gengar?”
[Really…?]
“Really.
I know plenty of people who would absolutely love a white Gengar.
Maybe I’ll let you meet them sometime.”
Felix reached across the counter and gently rubbed its head.
Gengar did not pull away.
Instead, its drooping ears slowly rose again.
“And you shouldn’t care too much about what those Pokémon thought of you.
You managed to grow from Gastly all the way into Gengar on your own, then traveled this far by yourself.
That’s already pretty impressive.”
“Gengar…”
[Really…?]
Gengar sat there in a daze for several seconds.
Then something seemed to occur to it.
It jumped up so abruptly that the chair shifted beneath it, reached directly into its own body, and pulled something out.
“Gengar!
Gengar!”
[Thank you!
Thank you!
This is for you!]
Felix looked at what it was offering.
It appeared to be a stone completely coated in dust.
When Felix did not immediately take it, Gengar hurriedly began explaining.
“Gengar!
Gar!”
[It’s my favorite thing in my collection!
It’s the best treasure I have!
It was really hard to find!]
[You helped me, so I want you to have it!]
Gengar began wiping the dust from the stone with its other claw.
As the grime gradually came away, Felix finally saw what it looked like.
It was a triangular piece of brown stone, clearly incomplete, as though it had broken away from something much larger.
Rows of deep purple markings ran across its surface.
Felix accepted it and leaned closer, intending to examine the patterns.
The moment he focused on them, his vision went black.
When sight returned, he was surrounded by a magnificent sea of stars.
Countless points of light shimmered and drifted through the vastness around him, and at the center of it all stood a single figure.
Its body was white, supported by four legs, while a golden cross-shaped wheel slowly revolved around its torso.
Everything about its presence carried a sense of overwhelming grandeur and divinity.
Felix recognized it immediately.
‘Arceus?’
If his ability was showing him a memory connected to this stone, then the fragment in his hands had some connection to Arceus itself.
The implications had barely begun to sink in when Arceus moved.
It raised one foreleg, and a stone tablet materialized before it.
Purple light and drifting mist slowly flowed into the tablet while golden patterns began forming across its surface.
The entire object vibrated violently as line after line took shape.
When the final golden marking settled into place, the tablet released a deep resonant hum.
Brilliant dark-purple light erupted from it before it shot away and disappeared into the distant sea of stars.
Arceus lowered its leg.
Then, for a brief moment, it turned its head and looked directly toward Felix.
Afterward, it calmly turned away and disappeared into the starlit distance.
The vision ended there.