"Mesprit! Are you here?"
"Vui~!"
Gary's voice carried across the still surface of Lake Verity, echoing faintly off the tree-lined shore before dissolving into silence. Beside him, Eevee added its own high-pitched call, its small voice bright against the quiet of the late afternoon.
No response. The lake lay serene and undisturbed, its glassy surface reflecting the pale sky overhead like a mirror. Not a ripple. Not a shimmer. Nothing.
Gary sighed and shifted his weight, scanning the water with his system-enhanced vision. The data overlay showed nothing but the ambient life signatures of ordinary wild Pokémon—Goldeen beneath the surface, Starly in the surrounding trees, a family of Bidoof along the far bank. No Legendary Pokémon. No Mesprit.
After rescuing the Lake Trio from Team Galactic's control and destroying the Red Chain fragments embedded in their foreheads, the three Legendary Pokémon had departed without ceremony—vanishing in flashes of golden light, returning to their respective lakes. Gary had no way to contact them. No psychic link, no summoning device, no telepathic bond. The only option was the most basic one imaginable: show up and call.
Which was exactly what he was doing. And it felt ridiculous.
Gary cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. "Mesprit! It's Gary—the trainer who freed you on Mt. Coronet! I want to talk!"
His voice rolled across the water and faded into nothing.
"Vui vui!" Eevee called out again, bouncing on its paws.
Silence.
Gary and Eevee spent the next hour walking the perimeter of Lake Verity, stopping every hundred meters or so to call out. The lake wasn't enormous, but the shoreline was irregular, dotted with rocky outcroppings and dense clusters of trees that broke the view into fragmented sections. Every time they rounded a new bend, Gary scanned the area with his system—and every time, the result was the same. Empty.
Mesprit might not even be here, he thought. The Lake Guardians spent most of their time in the mysterious subspace dimensions connected to their lakes—pocket dimensions that existed outside normal space. They emerged occasionally to explore or interact with the surface world, but their appearances were unpredictable and rare.
With the Lake Trio having just been through the trauma of capture, control, and forced combat, there was every chance that all three of them had retreated deep into their hidden spaces to recover. They might not surface for days. Weeks. Possibly longer.
I'll give it two weeks, Gary decided. If Mesprit doesn't appear in that time, I'll move on. There's no point camping here indefinitely when the Lily of the Valley Conference is approaching.
Fortunately, there were no other people around. Lake Verity remained one of the few undeveloped natural sites in Sinnoh—unlike Lake Valor, which had been transformed into a tourist destination complete with a lakeside Grand Hotel and guided boat tours, or Lake Acuity in the north, which had undergone similar commercial renovation. Lake Verity was still protected wilderness, accessible only by a narrow trail through dense forest. If anyone had been nearby, the sight of a teenage boy walking circles around a lake shouting a Legendary Pokémon's name would have earned some very concerned stares.
Night fell gradually.
By six o'clock, the last traces of daylight had bled from the sky, and Lake Verity was wrapped in deep, velvety darkness. The trees surrounding the lake formed a natural wall of shadow, but above them, the sky opened up—a vast, cloudless expanse glittering with more stars than Gary had seen since leaving Pallet Town. Without any light pollution from cities or towns, the night sky over Lake Verity was breathtaking.
Gary set up camp on a flat stretch of grassy shore about ten meters from the water's edge. The tent went up quickly—he'd done this enough times that his hands moved on autopilot. Eevee supervised from a nearby rock, its tail curling contentedly as it watched Gary work.
With the tent secured, Gary released a few of his Pokémon to keep watch and enjoy the evening air, then turned his attention to dinner.
"Nothing fancy tonight," he muttered, rummaging through his pack. He pulled out a self-heating meal kit—the kind designed for trainers on long routes. Just add water, wait a few minutes, and the chemical reaction inside would bring the contents to a boil. Simple, practical, and utterly devoid of culinary ambition.
Tonight's selection: hot and sour noodles.
Gary peeled back the lid, added the water, and waited. A few minutes later, steam was curling from the container, carrying the sharp, tangy aroma of vinegar and chili. He broke apart a pair of disposable chopsticks and dug in.
"Hope these noodles are the sweet potato kind," he muttered between bites, slurping a particularly long strand with genuine enthusiasm. The texture was better than expected—chewy and elastic, with that slight translucence that suggested genuine sweet potato starch rather than the cheaper wheat imitation.
"Vui…"
Gary glanced down. Eevee was sitting directly in front of him, eyes locked on the noodle container with laser-like intensity. Its small pink nose twitched as the aroma wafted toward it. A thin thread of drool glistened at the corner of its mouth.
"Don't even think about it," Gary said flatly. "These are spicy. You don't like spicy food. I already fed you dinner."
Eevee said nothing. It didn't move. It just continued to stare—those big, dark, impossibly round eyes fixed on the noodles with the unwavering determination of a Pokémon that had decided, on a fundamental level, that those noodles were going to be its noodles.
Gary ate another bite. Then another.
Eevee stared.
Gary ate a third bite.
Eevee stared harder.
"…Fine." Gary sighed, shaking his head in defeat. "Here. Take them."
He held out the container with the remaining noodles. Eevee's entire demeanor transformed in an instant—ears perking up, tail wagging at maximum speed, eyes sparkling with pure, unbridled joy.
"Vui~!"
Eevee buried its face in the container and began inhaling the noodles at a speed that defied the laws of physics. Despite not particularly enjoying spicy food, Eevee loved sour flavors, and the hot and sour noodles fell squarely into that category. Within seconds—literally seconds—the container was empty. Not a single noodle remained. Not even a drop of soup.
Gary stared at the spotless container. "…You didn't even leave the broth."
"Vui!" Eevee chirped happily, licking its lips.
I really can't win against this Pokémon, Gary thought, half-amused and half-exasperated. He tossed the empty container into a waste bag and leaned back on his hands, tilting his face toward the sky.
The night deepened. Gary and Eevee sat together on the grassy shore, watching the stars reflected in the motionless surface of the lake. The effect was mesmerizing—it felt as though the sky extended downward as well as up, and they were sitting on a thin boundary between two infinite voids of light.
Neither of them spoke. The silence was companionable and complete, broken only by the distant calls of nocturnal Pokémon in the forest—the soft hooting of a Noctowl, the rustle of Kricketune beginning their evening chorus, the occasional splash of something small breaking the surface of the lake.
Minutes passed. Maybe an hour.
"Vui!"
Eevee's ears snapped upright. It jumped to its feet on the rock, body tense, eyes scanning the darkness in every direction. Not alarmed—there was no bristling of fur, no defensive posture—but alert. It had sensed something.
"What is it?" Gary asked, his hand instinctively moving to his belt.
"Vui vui." Eevee's head swiveled back and forth, ears rotating like satellite dishes. It could sense a presence—faint, indistinct, but definitely there. Whatever it was, it carried no hostility. No danger signature. Just… a presence.
"Probably just wild Pokémon coming out to feed," Gary said, gently rubbing the top of Eevee's head. "It's nighttime. The nocturnal species are active now. Don't worry about it."
He turned his gaze back to the sky, letting his system scan the area passively—
And froze.
A name had appeared in his system overlay. Floating in the air, approximately three meters away, hovering just above the surface of the lake.
[LV90 Mesprit — Legendary]
Gary's breath caught. His eyes locked onto the precise coordinates the system indicated—a patch of seemingly empty air just off the shoreline. There was nothing visible there. No shimmer, no distortion, no outline. To normal eyes—even to Eevee's highly refined senses—that space was completely empty.
But the system didn't lie.
Mesprit was right there. Invisible. Watching him.
Gary kept his body language casual. He didn't tense, didn't reach for a Poké Ball, didn't do anything that might be interpreted as threatening. He simply looked directly at the invisible Legendary Pokémon and spoke.
"Mesprit. I can see you."
The statement was delivered calmly, matter-of-factly—the tone of someone pointing out that it was raining.
"Vui?" Eevee looked at Gary with pure confusion, then followed his gaze toward the empty air above the lake. It saw nothing. Sensed nothing. Eevee's Anticipation ability—its innate danger prediction—was powerful, but it only triggered in the presence of hostile intent. Mesprit harbored no hostility whatsoever, which meant Eevee's sixth sense had nothing to latch onto.
Three meters away, still invisible, Mesprit was startled.
The Being of Emotion had approached out of pure curiosity. It recognized Gary—the human who had freed it and its siblings from the Red Chain's control at Mt. Coronet. When it sensed his presence at its lake, it had come to observe, cloaking itself in psychic invisibility as a precaution. In tens of thousands of years of existence, no human had ever detected Mesprit's invisibility without advanced technology.
And yet this boy had looked directly at it and spoken its name.
Mesprit remained invisible, curious to see if it was a bluff.
Gary waited a moment, then raised his hand and pointed directly at the spot where Mesprit hovered.
"I'm not guessing," he said. "I can see exactly where you are. There's no point hiding."
"Mes!"
The invisibility dissolved like morning mist. Mesprit materialized in a soft shimmer of pink and golden light—a small, elegant Pokémon with a gray-pink body, four long trailing tails tipped with red gems, and a crystalline jewel set into its forehead that glowed with faint inner radiance. Its wide, expressive eyes studied Gary with undisguised astonishment.
"Vui—!" Eevee yelped, nearly falling off its rock in shock. A Legendary Pokémon had appeared out of literal thin air barely three meters away, and Eevee hadn't felt a thing. Its pride as a sensor was visibly wounded.
"Mes?" Mesprit tilted its head, drifting slightly closer. Its expression was curious, probing. How? it seemed to ask. How did you see through my invisibility?
"It's an ability of mine," Gary explained. "My eyes can detect hidden Pokémon—even when they're using psychic cloaking. It's something I was born with."
It was a simplified explanation—he wasn't about to reveal the existence of his system to a Legendary Pokémon—but it was close enough to the truth. His system's data overlay functioned as a form of enhanced perception, and from Mesprit's perspective, the distinction between an innate human ability and a supernatural system was meaningless.
Mesprit considered this for a moment. It had lived for tens of thousands of years and had encountered humans with extraordinary abilities before—Aura Guardians who could perceive the world through Aura, psychics who could sense emotional wavelengths, even rare individuals with a natural affinity for the spiritual plane. A human who could see through invisibility was unusual, but not unprecedented.
"Mes." Mesprit made a soft sound of acknowledgment—then promptly vanished again.
Gary blinked. A moment later, his system pinged: Mesprit had Teleported to a new position, roughly fifteen meters to the left, still invisible.
He pointed. "Over there."
"MES?!" A flash of pink light—Mesprit reappeared, eyes wide with disbelief, then vanished again. This time it Teleported behind Gary.
He turned and pointed without hesitation. "Behind me."
Mesprit appeared, stared, and vanished. It reappeared on the far side of the lake—over a hundred meters away.
Gary pointed across the water. "Way over there, near the big rock."
"MES—!!"
What followed was an extended game of psychic hide-and-seek that lasted nearly half an hour. Mesprit grew increasingly creative—hiding behind trees, hovering directly above Gary's head, diving beneath the lake's surface, even splitting its psychic signature to create decoy impressions. Every single time, Gary pointed directly at the real Mesprit's location without a moment's hesitation.
The only time Gary lost track was when Mesprit retreated into its subspace dimension—the hidden pocket universe connected to the lake. The moment Mesprit left the physical plane entirely, Gary's system could no longer detect it. But the instant it returned, the data tag reappeared, and Gary's finger was already pointing.
Eventually, Mesprit stopped. It floated back to its original position in front of Gary, breathing slightly harder than before—not from physical exertion, but from the sheer emotional excitement of the game. Its eyes were sparkling with what could only be described as delighted wonder.
"Mes! Mesprit!" it cried, spinning in a small circle. It was genuinely impressed.
"It's not that special," Gary said modestly, waving a hand. "I can only see you. It's not like I can read your mind or predict the future."
"Mes." Mesprit nodded, then settled into a more serious posture. Its expression shifted—still warm, but curious now. Questioning. It fixed Gary with a steady, perceptive gaze that carried the weight of thousands of years of experience reading human emotions.
Why are you really here? that gaze seemed to ask.
Gary met it without flinching. He'd thought carefully about this moment—about how to approach a Pokémon that was literally the embodiment of emotion. Mesprit couldn't read minds, but it could read feelings. Deception, ulterior motives, hidden malice—these were things Mesprit would sense as clearly as a normal person could see colors. Lying to the Being of Emotion was not only pointless; it was counterproductive.
The only strategy was honesty.
"I want to catch you," Gary said. No embellishment. No clever framing. Just the plain, unvarnished truth. "I came to Lake Verity specifically to find you, and my goal is to make you one of my Pokémon."
"Mes?" Mesprit tilted its head, more curious than alarmed. The Being of Emotion had heard similar declarations from humans countless times over its long existence. Some had been driven by greed. Some by obsession. Some by genuine admiration. And a few—like Cyrus, not so long ago—had succeeded through force.
But what puzzled Mesprit was what it felt from Gary. There was no malice. No greed. No hunger for power or desire to dominate. Instead, the dominant emotion radiating from this young human was something unexpected—a deep, genuine concern for his own Pokémon. A desire to become stronger not for personal glory, but for the sake of the partners who fought beside him.
Gary wanted to catch Mesprit… for the benefit of his existing team.
The feeling was unmistakable. Clear as sunlight on still water.
But Mesprit didn't understand how catching it would help Gary's Pokémon grow stronger. The Lake Trio were powerful—Level 90, Legendary-tier—but their power was primarily psychic and spiritual. They couldn't enhance other Pokémon's base stats or break through species limits. Only God-tier Pokémon—beings like Arceus, Dialga, or Palkia—possessed the ability to fundamentally alter a Pokémon's species potential, and even then, the enhancement was modest.