It was not that he wanted luxury. He simply thought that if certain technologies could be brought back to his own world, the people of Unova could live with considerably less hardship: better food preservation, better communication, better tools for everyday life.
The absence of money was a genuinely frustrating obstacle. He was not going to take anything by force, that violated his principles, and in a peaceful world like this one, it was simply not something that needed to happen.
He was still working through the problem when a soft knock came at the door.
"Mr. Lucien? Are you still awake? We wanted to talk with you about Hoopa."
Lucien set his thoughts aside and opened the door. Ash, Serena, Clemont, and Bonnie were gathered in the hallway, and the small Hoopa hovered above Ash's head. The moment it saw Lucien, it waved both small hands enthusiastically.
"Lucien! Lucien!"
"Come in," Lucien said, stepping back to make room.
As they filed into the room, they encountered Dragonite, Volcarona, and Serperior, who were still examining the room's appliances with great interest.
"These are your Pokémon?" Ash asked, eyes moving between them.
"They are."
"They look incredibly strong," Bonnie said, her eyes bright.
"They're beautifully trained," Serena agreed.
Clemont had already noticed the Pokémon's expressions and was looking around the room with quiet understanding. "Mr. Lucien, are you all very interested in these modern devices?"
Lucien saw no reason to be evasive about it. "They're genuinely impressive. If I could bring some back to my own world, they would improve people's lives considerably." He paused.
"Unfortunately, I arrived here without any of this world's currency. So buying anything isn't currently an option."
The group stared at him.
The most powerful trainer any of them had ever encountered, the person who had stood on Kyurem's back above Dahara City and single-handedly ended a crisis involving six Legendary Pokémon, was broke.
It was, when they thought about it, completely logical. He was from another world. Of course he had no money.
Ash scratched the back of his head. "Well, that's easy enough. I've got travel money. Not a huge amount, but you can borrow it."
"I can help too," Serena added.
The small Hoopa thought about this for a moment with a very serious expression. Then it opened one of its rings. A shower of gold coins came through and piled up on the floor.
Lucien looked at the pile of gold.
He looked at Hoopa.
"Thank you," he said, after a moment, and meant it.
He looked around at all of them. The goodwill was entirely genuine, and it moved him more than he expected.
"Thank you, everyone. But the most important thing right now isn't the appliances. It's helping Hoopa understand what it needs to understand."
They gathered around the sofa and talked through it: what Hoopa needed, how to approach the sealed power in the Prison Bottle, how to help the two sides of Hoopa's nature find each other without the resentment taking over.
Ash set his jaw with the familiar, complete resolve. "I'll do everything I can to help."
"Hoopa will try too!" The small Hoopa pressed its hands together, its expression more earnest than anyone had seen it. It was not going to let them down.
The following morning, they began in earnest.
The method they attempted first was direct: using combined effort to help Hoopa reach through the ring and draw its sealed power back.
But every time Hoopa made contact with the Prison Bottle, the resentment that had built up inside it over a hundred years pushed back like a wall, and Hoopa flinched away, feeling as though it were about to be swallowed by something vast and dark.
The attempts continued and continued to fail, and eventually the group turned toward Lucien.
"Mr. Lucien, what should we do?" Meray asked.
Lucien was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Hoopa.
"Hoopa. That force inside the bottle isn't trying to consume you. Even if you merge with it, you won't disappear. You're the same being."
Hoopa listened.
"The important thing is to try to understand it. Because it has been alone in that small bottle for a hundred years. It hasn't seen sunlight. It hasn't seen the moon. It hasn't had a single donut." He paused.
"Anyone kept like that would feel resentment. It's not wrong. It must feel very wronged. So, Hoopa, try to understand it. Try to reach it rather than resist it."
Hoopa went quiet. It looked at the Prison Bottle in front of it, the liveliness that was usually so constant in its face going still. Something moved in its eyes that had not been there before.
It flew slowly to the Prison Bottle and hovered in front of it. Its small hand reached out and pressed gently against the glass surface. The glass was cool and smooth. Inside, the sealed power pressed back faintly.
Hoopa held still. Its mind turned over what Lucien had said. A hundred years in darkness. No sunlight. No donuts. No one to talk to. No one who knew you were there.
Its nose ached.
The fear had been there a moment ago. Now, quietly, it was something else.
"I'm sorry," Hoopa said, in a small, soft voice. It bowed its head slightly toward the bottle. "For leaving you alone for so long. That was Hoopa's fault. Hoopa wasn't thinking."
The restless energy inside the Prison Bottle went still.
For one breath. Two.
Then, slowly, a faint aura began to move outward from within the bottle, tentative and thin, carrying within it a hundred years of loneliness and resistance and the exhausted grief of something that had been waiting a very long time to be acknowledged.
The markings of the Imprisonment seal receded slowly from the Prison Bottle. The power that had been contained within it for a hundred years transformed into a quiet light and flowed outward, moving toward the small Hoopa.
There was no violence in it, no arrogance. Only the gradual, careful movement of something that had been waiting to come home.
Hoopa did not flinch. It spread its arms wide and accepted it.
The light wrapped around it completely. Its body grew, six strong arms emerging, each ringed with gold. The aura around it deepened and steadied, something settling into place that had not been settled before.
When Hoopa opened its eyes, the playful recklessness that had characterized every moment since Lucien first met it was still there, but underneath it now was something grounded and certain.
"The true Hoopa returns," it said, and its voice had changed: rougher, older, carrying the weight of both halves of itself at once.
"Yes!" Bonnie's voice came out as barely a whisper before she caught herself, her face bright with joy.
Serena had both hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes full of warmth.
Ash's fists were clenched, his expression doing several things at once before resolving into a wide, fierce grin. "Hoopa, you're incredible!"
Meray and Baraz stood together, both of them smiling, both of them with eyes that were too bright. A century of their family's hope, the wish their ancestor had carried into the Prison Bottle and passed down through generations, had finally found its completion.
The light faded. Hoopa returned to its small form and floated in the air, looking down at its hands, then up at the people surrounding it. It spun once in a small, happy circle.
"Hoopa did it! Hoopa can get along with itself and use its power properly!"
It raised one hand, and a golden ring opened slowly in the air. Through it, another part of space was clearly, stably visible, no chaos, no dangerous flickering, just a clean and steady connection between two points.
Lucien looked at it and felt the weight he had been carrying lift somewhat. "Congratulations, Hoopa. You understand now what your power is actually for."
This also meant that when the time came, Hoopa could open a dimensional portal and send him home. That piece of the problem was solved.
Everyone's faces were bright, and then hurried footsteps came from downstairs, and the innkeeper's voice called up: "Ash! There's a guest from Kanto! Says it's urgent!"
Ash's eyes lit up immediately. He looked at Lucien. "That has to be Professor Oak! He heard about you and came all the way here!"
Lucien was mildly surprised. He followed Ash and the others downstairs.
Professor Samuel Oak was exactly as Lucien had always pictured him from what he knew: a scholar whose enthusiasm for Pokémon research had never dimmed, whose reputation in the Pokémon world was essentially unequaled.
The moment the Professor's eyes found Lucien, something in his expression shifted into focused, almost reverent attention. He was looking at Lucien the way a researcher looks at something he has spent a long time wondering about and has suddenly found real.
He bowed slightly, with genuine sincerity.
"Mr. Lucien, I am Professor Oak, from Pallet Town in Kanto. I apologize for coming without warning, but there is something I very much need to verify with you."
Pikachu, on Ash's shoulder, looked between the two men with mild confusion.
"Hello, Professor Oak," Lucien said warmly. "What is it you want to know?"
"Not here," Professor Oak said. "Please, come with me."
He led the group to a quiet café nearby, and once they were seated, Lucien brought out Kyurem. Professor Oak looked up at it and went entirely still for a moment, the recognition and wonder on his face unguarded.
"Yes," he said softly. "Yes, that's it."
He turned back to Lucien and began asking questions, working through the legend he had recalled the night before: the original Dragon Stone, the split between the princes, the three Pokémon that had emerged from one original being.
The legend had always described it as something that had simply happened, without explaining why or how or whether anything might have changed it.
The conversation moved quickly. Lucien answered directly, without concealing much. Professor Oak listened with the quality of attention of someone who has spent their entire life preparing to understand exactly this kind of thing.
After a while, Professor Oak leaned back with the particular expression of a man whose understanding of the world has just expanded significantly and who finds this deeply satisfying.
"So you were caught in a dimensional anomaly and ended up here by accident. And now that Hoopa has mastered its power, you're planning to return."
"Yes," Lucien said. His gaze moved to Hoopa, then back. "Soon."
The brightness on Ash's face changed. Serena went quiet. Even Bonnie's expression dimmed at the edges.
Ash's hand closed into a fist. "You want to leave already?"
"We haven't even had a chance to properly thank you," Serena said softly. "For Dahara City."
Lucien looked at them, and felt something warm and genuine move through him. In this world that had nothing to do with his own, among people he had known for less than two days, something uncomplicated and real had formed. No politics, no history, no weight of obligation. Just the straightforward goodwill of people who had simply been themselves.
He reached over and gently rested a hand on Bonnie's head.
"Every gathering ends eventually. My Kingdom is waiting. My companions and my people are waiting." He looked at all of them. "But I will carry this time with me. Thank you for everything."
Hoopa flew to his side and looked up at him, its wide eyes full of feeling. "Hoopa will miss you!"
"I'll miss Hoopa too," Lucien said, and meant it completely.
He patted Hoopa's head, and then remembered the reason he had come looking for it in the first place.
"Hoopa, there's one more thing I need your help with."
"Anything! As long as Hoopa can do it, Hoopa will do it with everything it has!"
"The reason I came to this part of the world," Lucien said, "was to ask Hoopa, in my own time, for help finding a Pokémon called Melmetal. We're facing a serious crisis, and Melmetal's cooperation is essential to resolving it."
Professor Oak leaned forward. "So you found Hoopa in your own era, but that Hoopa sent you into a different dimension, and you ended up here by accident?"
"That's right," Lucien said. He paused. "That Hoopa was considerably less cooperative than this one."
Hoopa looked slightly embarrassed. It was self-aware enough to know exactly what it had been like thousands of years ago. If past-Hoopa had encountered Lucien and Kyurem, it would absolutely have attacked them first and not felt any particular regret about it afterward.