Testimony

by Incognito Albatross

As two humans-turned-Pokémon travel through Murky Cave, there's much to talk about. Gengar in particular has a lot on his mind, and as the day goes on, he begins to voice things that have been left unsaid for years. This is his side of the conversation. (A set of very brief chapters consisting solely of dialogue from Gengar.)

3. 3:59 PM

Ninetales can call me Adam, I guess. I mean, she doesn't really want or need my permission.

Stop looking at me like that.

Okay, yeah, I should've asked permission before pulling her tails. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. But you weren't there. You don't get it.

I was a human, she was a Pokémon. You know how it is in the human world. Humans can't just have full conversations with Pokémon.

Yeah, we were both in the human world at that point. Did you just realize that now? How stupid can you be?

Basically, Ninetales can travel between the two worlds at will. In this world, she's a Kantonian Ninetales, and she lives on Mt. Freeze, but in the human world, she's an Alolan Ninetales, and she lives on Mt. Lanakila. She changes forms the moment she switches worlds.

Yes, I'm from Alola. And you're from Hoenn, right?

I haven't really been able to talk about the human world in years. I always have to pretend like I know nothing about it. I guess we could talk about it. If you really want to, I mean. We're not friends or anything — I don't even like you — but if you insist…

My hometown is Malie. You've heard about it, right? It's full of immigrants from Johto, so the architecture has an Eastern bent. It's kinda like Ecruteak, but more of a tourist trap. Seriously, Alola's been one big tourist trap for decades. People come, visit the beaches, eat malasadas, wear leis, go to luaus, and bask in what they call traditional Alolan culture — really just a commercialized version of stuff we did maybe a few centuries ago. And then they leave, having learned absolutely nothing. My dad would always rant about the damage they were doing to the environment, the economy, but I didn't really understand what he was saying. Maybe I'd have understood if I had ever gone to another region, but I died before anything like that could happen.

Oh, you did not just ask me how I died. Don't you realize how personal that is? How rude it is to just ask out of nowhere? You clearly know nothing about ghost culture.

All this talking is slowing us down. We have to keep going.