Ninetales legend

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Ninetales

The Ninetales legend (Japanese: キュウコンでんせつ) is a 1,000-year-old legend told by Whiscash in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX.

Legend

According to this legend, a greedy Trainer once entered a sacred dungeon, known to contain many rare Pokémon. The Trainer encountered a Ninetales and crudely grabbed one of its tails. The Trainer was supposed to receive a curse as a result of this action, but his Gardevoir took the curse, doing its duty as a Gardevoir by protecting its master, which startled the Ninetales. The Trainer, horrified, fled the scene in fear of the curse. Ninetales told Gardevoir that the Trainer would one day become a Pokémon, which would bring on many natural disasters.

In the games

When Xatu is visited at the Hill of the Ancients, he tells the player this legend.

Gengar, eavesdropping on the player's conversation with Xatu, tells the public that the player is the Trainer in the legend, and that they are causing the natural disasters. The public is shocked, and chases the player and their companion out of town.

After being fugitives for quite some time, the player and partner find Ninetales and ask to be told the truth. Ninetales reveals to the player, and Team A.C.T., who has finally caught up to them and plan to defeat them in battle, that they are definitely not the cursed Trainer. Gengar is exposed as a liar, and the player and partner are allowed to return to Pokémon Square while Gengar is then chased out of town instead.

In the epilogue, it is revealed that Gengar himself is actually the greedy Trainer of the legend.

Quotes

This is the legend as told by Whiscash.

There once lived a Pokémon by the name of Ninetales.

Now, Ninetales had many tails, all of them imbued with psychic power...

It was said that anyone so foolish as to touch a tail would be cursed for a thousand years.

But there was someone so foolish as to grab a tail. And it was a human.

As one might expect, the human that grabbed the tail was subjected to a thousand-year curse.

However, just when the curse was cast, a Pokémon named Gardevoir shielded the human...

And sacrificed herself to absorb the curse.

Taking pity on Gardevoir, Ninetales asked the human this...

"Do you wish to save Gardevoir?" it asked...

But the human had already abandoned Gardevoir and fled.

Ninetales became disillusioned with the human...

And it made this prediction...

"That human will one day be reborn as a Pokémon..."

"And when the human becomes a Pokémon..."

"The world's balance will be upset..."

In the manga

In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Ginji's Rescue Team manga

In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Ginji's Rescue Team, the Ninetales legend, known as the "Legend of Ninetales", is explained fully in Chapter Three.

According to the Legend of Ninetales, those who touch the tail of a Ninetales will be cursed for a thousand years. One day, a human decided to touch a tail of a Ninetales just for fun. When the Ninetales inflicted the curse, the human's Gardevoir was hit instead. Ninetales asked the human if they would save their friend, but instead, the human ran away and abandoned Gardevoir. As a result, Ninetales cast a prophecy — after one thousand years, that human would be reincarnated as a Pokémon which would destroy the world. It is explained by Gengar that Ginji is that human, reborn as a Torchic. In Chapter Five, Ninetales reveals that it is actually Gengar who is the cursed human, not Ginji.

In other languages

Language Title French Légende de Feunard German Vulnona-Legende Italian Leggenda di Ninetales Korean 나인테일 전설 Ninetail Jeonseol Spanish Leyenda de Ninetales

This article is part of Project Sidegames, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon Sidegames.