Garret wasn't worried. It would all work itself out with minimal effort on his part, just as everything does. And in the meantime, there was her fridge to raid and her little sister to listen to his tales of victory. Sure, she may have been gone a while, but she'd be back. No need to panic.

No, Garret was not that concerned. That is, until Alana suggested that maybe the reason she was gone so long was that someone else was taking her from him. Now that, he could not have.

She'd left him in charge of watching Alana after riding off to retrieve her lost Yungoos. But what did he know about watching kids? Absolutely nothing, so he just let her do whatever she pleased. You wanna stay out late? knock yourself out, kid. You want to eat pizza for dinner multiple nights in a row? Shit, kid, me too. You don't want to do dishes? Tell you what, neither me or you are doing them and we aren't taking the trash out either. Not our problem. When she gets back, she'll take care of it all. All we gotta do is wait.

His leniency seems to have earned him the teenager's favor too, as far as he can tell. So what do you know! Turns out he's a natural at this whole kid thing. Of course he was. How could he not be? No one can babysit like Garret.

Without her around, he'd tell Alana of his battles and winnings at the Pokemon League. It was good to be champ and have everyone so anxious to hear your stories.

But then one night Alana says, "Ugh, enough. No more talking for you. Now it's my turn."

Garret sneers at her. "You think you'll have anything more interesting to say then what I'm telling you now?"

"I could go outside, talk to the first pokemon I find, and have a more interesting conversation than any I've had with you."

Garret laughs. "Now that's - that's quite the joke there. Both funny and factually untrue."

Alana groans and fixes him with a serious look. "It's been long enough. When are you going to go after my sister."

"Kid, we don't go to Po Town. She'll be back soon."

"Everyone keeps saying that, but maybe this time we have to go to Po Town. I can't go. I'm not going back by myself after last time. You're her... boyfriend-sorta-thing, you should go."

Garret shakes his finger at her. "Nuh uh, we have never made it official, so I have no responsibility here. Now what should we order for dinner? More pizza? How do you feel about malasadas?"

Alana crosses her arms, sighing in frustration. "Why, exactly, is it not official anyway?"

"Gotta keep my options open," says Garret, putting his hands behind his head, leaning back on the couch, and placing his feet on the coffee table. "As you know, I am the champion, so I can't settle down just yet. As far as Tapu Village, your sis is the prettiest girl here, so she's good enough. But what if someone better comes along, huh? So you see, this is best. That way there's no messy breakup and I'm not responsible for any tears or hurt feelings. Genius right?" He taps a finger to his head. "You just gotta think about these things."

"Wow," says Alana. "How romantic."

Garret chuckles. "Hey, your sis will go with it because you can't do better than me."

"What if she does find someone better than you?"

"You know, you're pretty funny for a tiny human child. You got some jokes, that's for sure."

"I'm serious. Maybe that's why she's been gone so long. Maybe she's gonna break the curse."

"Aw, kid," he says with a dismissive wave of his hands. "Those are just stories."

"They aren't, I saw the beasts!"

"Sure, sure."

"If they're just stories, then how come no one will go to Po Town?"

"Because we don't." He points a finger at her. "You gotta be careful now. Questioning how things are will bring you nothing but trouble, you know."

"I think maybe she made it inside. I think maybe she's getting to know Team Skull's leader."

Garret shakes his head. "I think maybe you've had too much caffeine. How many bottles of soda have we gone through?"

"You're just scared. And lazy. And I bet you, you're gonna lose my sister for it."

"Kid, if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that your sister's mine."

But ever since that conversation, it was like a tiny seed of doubt had been planted in his mind. With each day that goes on, it begins to grow and twist, poking at him, taunting him, and slowly filling him with anger at the idea that she might have the nerve to leave him. Sure, he might find someone else - he was the champion after all and who knew what other options would come his way. But her? She was no one, just some pretty girl in some town. He was the best she would ever have, and the idea that she could find someone better was not only ludicrous, it was maddening.

So he decides, fine, he will go see. He will stop by Po Town before he goes to the League for the day. As champ, nothing could scare him there anyway, right? Maybe it was indeed time to go to Po Town.

He flies over on a Charizard one morning and is surprised to see movement within the town. He wasn't sure what he expected, maybe that the town would be abandoned, but that doesn't seem to be the case. He cautiously has the Charizard fly lower, trying to avoid detection.

There's a man with blue hair, a white beanie, a black tank top, and black shorts. As Garret watches, the man mills about for a while, and then goes into the giant mansion at the far end of the town. It's difficult in the rain, but he brings the Charizard lower until it lands less gracefully then he hoped on the building's roof, scrapping away some tiles from it in the process. He waits to see if anything happens, but nothing does. He's not sure how many people are inside, but they don't seem to have noticed the noise he's made so far.

He tells the Charizard to stay quiet and hidden as he dismounts from it and digs around in his pocket for a pokeball. He calls out his Parasect and it scrambles on the roof a moment before finding its footing. The plan was this: he'd have Parasect use a combination of moves like string shot and grass knot to allow him to rappel down the building to look in windows and move about. Should anyone notice him, they would be hit with stun spore, allowing him to make his escape. Another completely genius Garret plan, as usual.

He starts his sleuthing around, finding many of the rooms holding either no one, or more people dressed like the man he'd seen earlier. One room strangely contains what looks like a throne, but nothing else interesting inside. He goes down to the lower level, which seems to be more populated. In the first room he looks in down there, a pink haired woman nearly spots him, but he ducks out of the way just in time, or so he hopes. He's flat against the building beside the window. It's a tense few moments as he waits to see if anything will happen, but nothing does.

Room after room hold only what he can assume are the members of Team Skull, which was surprising to see, but he sure wouldn't describe them as beasts. That kid sure had an imagination. How did the story about this place go anyway? It'd been so long since he'd even thought much about it. But for as much as Team Skull seems to exist, he sees no sign of the person he'd come looking for.

He comes to a window looking in on a kitchen, though all the equipment in it looks unused. He's still inspecting what he can from the window, when doors inside open. He quickly hides away before he can see who's come into the room. He waits a moment, trying to decide if it's safe to look or not. It's then that he hears a voice - her voice. "Tapu Cocoa is probably my favorite drink!"

Immediately he looks back into the window, and there she is. She's dressed in clothes similar to the rest of Team Skull, and holding a cup of cocoa while smiling and laughing up at some guy. Some guy wearing a hoodie and the oddest sunglasses he's ever seen. Tapu cocoa is her favorite? Wasn't it coffee, like him? There's a coil of rage and jealousy that snakes its way through his stomach, but he shoos it away, telling it that whoever this wannabe gangster is, he's clearly no competition. No reason to think he's lost her yet, right?

He watches them talk and laugh, and then they leave. He has his Parasect pull him back up to the roof, where he paces, thinking. Well, at the very least he could tell her sister that she was indeed fine, so those annoying questions would be stopped. But what to make of what he just saw? He needed to see more, but there's not much time right now. He decides to come back that afternoon.

His visits to Po Town become obsession. He goes nearly every morning and most afternoons. Garret wasn't used to rejection, not in the slightest. He had looks, his family had money, and he had dumb luck, and these things got him through most everything. Not that he would acknowledge that these things were what had made life easy for him. No, if you were to ask Garret, he would tell you he had worked hard and deserved all he had. Even though they had been what allowed him to go to the best trainer schools in Alola, to stay in the best hotels while taking the island challenge, and to receive the best professional advice and guidance while traveling the islands with ease. He couldn't see that these things had given him a leg up on the competition when it came to seeking the championship. And while he was indeed a talented trainer who had been able to retain his title for a long time, he was far from humble or grateful to anyone who had helped him along the way. With so many people giving his behavior passes, he never had reason to change. And with so many things always going his way, he couldn't understand why this should be any different.

In fact, he was downright perplexed by it. His peeks within the mansion grew more and more like a study; it was a rare occurrence that he had to better understand so he could prevent it from ever happening again. He had considered barging in and just putting a stop to the whole thing, tearing apart the situation before it induced anymore rage in him, but he just couldn't. He would one day, and he knew that, but in the meantime he had to figure out just what was going on between her and this punk with white hair. It was like strategizing in a pokemon battle: he had to analyze the opponent and learn weaknesses before finally destroying them. Because more than anything else, Garret always got what he wanted, and what he wanted now, was to reclaim what was his in any way that would cause his competition the most harm.

So he waited and watched, catching glimpses of the two of them talking, laughing, walking together, and getting closer. Each interaction he sees feeds the indignant creature growing inside him.

There was a giant round window in the upper east side of the building that was the most interesting, as it contained an assortment of old things, family portraits, and other relics. The most significant thing in the room was a very old and tired looking Comfey, that he notes is checked on several times each day. He remembers then that it's the Comfey in the story who dictates the amount of time left for the curse to be broken. If the curse is real, that would be why this one is so safeguarded. Good to know where that is then.

It's in this room that he sees the two of them talking one day. The punk seems upset about something, and when he's done telling her whatever sad story he's told her, she moves toward him and holds him for what feels like an eternity. But the real breaking point comes later. The point where he's seen enough.

They're talking in that room that has a throne, when she suddenly holds his hand. He moves closer to her and now he's brushing her hair behind her ear. Their faces are so close to each other.

He leaves before he can see them presumably kiss. He'd seen enough, and now it was time to plan what he would do.

Of course, all his spying had not always gone to plan. He knows he had been spotted a couple times. Once, one of the blue haired male grunts had even caught him in a window upon waking up, and looked him directly in the eye. He scrambled away from the window, and took off on the Charizard as fast as his panicked mind and body would let him. He'd even had to stun spore a couple others on another occasion when they were close to discovering him. Things hadn't gone perfectly, but he hopes none of it went wrong enough that they would see him coming. Garret adds being stealthy to his long list of skills.

He had never stayed till nightfall, despite the numerous times her little sister told him that he should. "Need my beauty sleep," he had told her. "I'm not staying out in those parts that late."

"But you're absolutely missing it!" she yelled at him. He had to admit Alana was a bit of an annoyance when she was talking. She begged to hear details of what he'd seen everyday, and he told her, even if reliving the events felt like it made him twice as angry. But with at least confirmation that her sister was alive and well, Alana had become more calm and less whiny.

"Kid, you've just got too much of an imagination. There's no beasts there. Just people."

"Then what do you think the curse is?"

Garret shrugs. "They can't leave and are forced to wear ridiculous clothing?"

"And they become beasts at night!"

"So you admit the clothing is ridiculous."

Alana grimaces at him, gives a frustrated groan, and storms away.

Garret could believe a lot of things about this situation, but he wasn't about to believe the ramblings of a thirteen-year-old hopped up on sugar.

And yet.

Say there were beasts in Po Town at night, how would that affect his plans? Could it possibly even be used to his advantage? Yes, he decides, that might just make things work out even better. Fine, just a small glance around to see what he finds.

He circles high up in the night sky to avoid being noticed. He tells the Charizard to cautiously descend, unsure of what he'll find now that Po Town is dark. The pokemon alights on a part of the gate surrounding the town, but Garret can see no one from his surveying point.

Under cover of darkness, he's feeling more daring, so he tells the Charizard to land on the ground within the gate. The pokemon hesitates, but does as it's told, dropping to the soft, wet ground below, a safe distance from the mansion. After dismount, Garret looks around with his hands on his hips. Just as he thought, nothing out of the usual. Beasts? What beasts? Of course that part hadn't been true. At least outside the mansion, there was nothing prowling Po Town at night.

He looks up at the mansion, considering sneaking over to it, when he hears what sounds almost like a bark coming from within. He squints, and notices how tore up the door to the mansion seems. Then the door is moving and opening, and what he sees knocks every bit of arrogance from him, if only for a moment.

Midnight form Lycanrocs - beasts - are pouring out of the door. They're running about in the rain, looking almost playful. Until some of them see him. There's barking and howling and a sea of glowing red eyes are looking in his direction.

He struggles back onto the Charizard telling it to "Go! Go! GO!" as the pack of pokemon come for him. The Charizard takes off, it's large wings beating back a few of the Lycanrocs as they start to surround it. Garret thinks they've completely made their escape when the pokemon lifts off the ground, but then it's crying out in pain. It continues its wobbly ascension into the air, fighting to stabilize itself.

They're above the gates now and the Charizard is still having an absolute fit. Garret twists around in the seat and looks below him, trying to find the problem. He glances around wildly though the wind and rain and then he sees it: there's a Lycanroc clamped onto one of the Charizard's legs.

They're heading out beyond the gate now, the Charizard still flying clumsily as it kicks its leg, trying to shake off its attacker. "Get off! Get the fuck off!" Garret screams at the Lycanroc. It snarls back in response. Between the weather and uneven flying, Garret nearly loses his grip on the saddle.

They're flying further away from Po Town and suddenly the Lycanroc is whimpering. Garret looks again to see that large cuts have randomly appeared on its head and body. As he watches, another long gash appears on its snout. What was this? Could this be the curse? Was this what happens when they leave? Is this why they can't leave?

Whatever was happening, this beast was still dragging his escape down. As carefully as can, Garret swings his leg over so that both are on the same side of the saddle. He leans down as far as he dares too, his knuckles white from their tight grip on the saddle, then he reels back his foot and kicks the Lycanroc square in the face.

It finally lets go and falls as Garret hustles back into a proper sitting position on the Charizard. He watches it hit the ground and writhe in pain, it's desperate howls just barely making it to his ears above the rain and wind. Then the next moment the Lycanroc is out of sight and he's on his way back to Tapu Village.

So it was all true then? All of it? Even the beasts? Well, at least that part's only true at night. Garret's jealous and frantic mind turns. How does this affect things then? How should he do this? First, he'll get her away during the day, then he'd see about the beasts that come out when the sun goes down. No one plots revenge like Garret.