You'd tried to question Garret more outside of Shady House, but he'd only given cryptic half-answers and rushed you onto the ride Charizard he called. In the air, the wind was rushing by too loudly to make conversation, leaving you able to consult with only your panicked thoughts. You turn in the seat that's barely big enough for the both of you, and keep an eye on Po Town for as long as you can. Then it's gone in the distance as you and Garret fly off in the afternoon sun.

What had happened with Alana? Could it really be as serious as Garret claims? Was your only sister really dying? You can't bare the thought of that, especially with having been away for so long. How long had it been? You had totally lost track. You feel like you could have spent forever in Po town if it meant being with Guzma and the rest of Team Skull.

And yet you also cannot set aside the crushing guilt you're feeling. You shouldn't have stayed away as long as you did. But every time you'd thought about going back, you'd keep telling yourself "soon" and put it off longer and longer. It'd been so easy to give into the temptation to stay, especially when you'd decided that you wanted to try to break the curse, if you could. You hadn't mentioned that to Guzma or anyone, for fear of failing in your task, but you so hoped that it would have been possible. But now? It was hard to think about that when Alana's life is in peril.

You feel as if you were so close to it too. You'd let your guard down as much as you dared since the party and became even closer to him. Without whatever wall there had been between the two of you, it was like sunlight had finally been allowed in, and in that light some deeper emotion grew. It'd all been going so well until last night. Until Garret - damn it, Garret. You realize then what a disaster that scene in the dining hall was, and you remember the things that were said - the things you didn't correct, like Garret calling himself your boyfriend. Your heart sinks when you think about what Guzma must be thinking. Did he believe that? Does he think you led him on this whole time? If so, so much for breaking the curse.

Why had Garret said that anyway? The two of you had never made it official, and he'd been fairly clear about that. You'd accepted it that way, because you were so unsure about him. In a lot of ways it felt more like begrudging friends with benefits than anything even close to what had been going on with Guzma. With all that's happened since you'd been gone, it feels like an arrangement an entirely different you agreed to. And the you that you are now, is no longer ok with it. When this is all settled, you'd make sure Garret knows that, and you'd make sure Guzma knows how you felt about him.

If it's not too late.

You're a bit confused when the Charizard is landing at your house. If Alana is that ill, shouldn't she be in a hospital or something? You dismount, looking at Garret, but he won't meet your eyes. You leave him there as the pokemon takes off, and run to the door, throwing it open.

But there's Alana, sitting on the couch watching TV and looking perfectly fine. Maybe even a little more than fine by the looks of things. There's pizza boxes and take out remains scattered all over the living room. She's got her feet up on the coffee table - something that had never been allowed. She's got a donut in one hand, and large bottle of soda in the other, that she drops when she turns and sees you. She says your name.

You grip the door frame to support yourself, tears of relief, confusion, and anger welling in your eyes as your mind starts to put the pieces together. "Are you - are you alright?" You choke out to her, feeling as if your legs will give out from underneath you.

Alana says nothing, but gets to her feet, a plate of donuts falling from her lap, and runs to you.

You catch her in your arms as she meets you, and sob into her hair. You hold her tight to you, afraid that if you don't then this won't be real; that she won't be ok.

She lets you continue to hug her a moment, and then she's pushing against you saying, "You're crushing me!"

You finally let her go, wiping tears from your face, "You're ok?"

She gives you a skeptical look. "Yeah, of course I'm ok. Are you? You got my Yungoos?"

You reach into your pocket and hand her the pokeball you'd been holding onto for her, still feeling shaken. "I thought that - Garret said that you were sick."

Alana looks as if you've just suddenly started to speak another language. "No, no I'm not sick."

You knew what had happened from the moment you'd seen her on the couch, but the verbal confirmation finally makes it feel as if a switch has been flipped within you. You wheel around to face Garret, feeling absolutely on fire from the rage in your belly. It shoots up your spine to your skull, making you sure you could throw a boulder - or perhaps the tall, dark-haired asshole in front of you. "You lied? You lied to me about this? About my sister? Garret, what the fuck?"

He hardly looks remorseful. He regards your fury with a bored expression, shrugging his shoulders. "I only did what I had to to get you out of there."

"I never asked you to rescue me."

"Little too busy to do that?"

What was this? Was he jealous? "How long were you spying on the place?"

"Long enough, emdoll/em." He spits the last word venomously at you.

You feel violated now. How much had he seen and heard? "You really think doing all of this would win me back?"

"Win you back? You'd choose that punk over me? Some guy who turns into a literal monster at night?"

"He's not the monster, Garret, you are." And it was true. Garret had never been a particularly compassionate person, but it was clear that in the time you'd be gone, his jealousy and entitlement had twisted him. Like he was finally throwing the fit that had always been just below the surface now that he wasn't getting what he wanted for once.

"Really? Well, we'll see what the neighbors think." He fishes in his pocket, pulling out a pokeball, and then his Incineroar is next to him.

"What?" You take a step back.

He gestures to the sky. "Sun's about set so your friends will be turning soon, right? A town full of people? Nobody around here's going to march on that. But a town full of beasts? Dangerous monsters threatening them, their children, and all they hold dear? Well, we better put a stop to that before something bad happens. Gotta get to them before they get to us."

You reach for a pokeball and pull one out, but Garret's too fast. He grabs your wrist, hard, and wrestles the ball out of your grasp. "Don't worry," he says, lifting your arm into the air, dragging you toward him. "This time I'm going to Po Town while you stay here. I'll make sure your new friend dies like the beast he is." He reaches into your pocket and removes the rest of your pokemon, then nods to his Incineroar. "Take them to the basement and don't let them leave."

You struggle with all you've got, but the giant cat pokemon picks up both you and Alana, and carries you into the house. It doesn't stop until it's set you down in the basement. It starts back up the stairs, and you try to follow, but it turns around and lets out a roar in your face, stopping you. It snarls and turns, quickly covering the rest of the stairway before slamming the door behind it. There's crashing and scrapping sounds, and then everything is quiet.

You immediately run up and try the door, only to find all the commotion had been the pokemon blocking the door with whatever it could. It roars again at the jiggling door handle and you realize that it's staying. It's going to guard you and ensure you don't escape.

You dash back down the stairs, looking around and hoping for a way out. But the basement has no windows or other openings. There's no clear exits that you can see. You toss around boxes and piles of old belongings, searching for something, anything, to help the situation, but there's nothing useful. You stand, shoulders heaving, wide-eyed, and frantic, desperate for an answer out of this, but you come up empty. Your breathing slows, and you sit on the bottom stair, the realization that you are trapped taking your ability to stay on your feet.

This is your fault. Garret's going to lead an attack on Po Town, and it's your fault. If you hadn't stayed so long, if you hadn't gone in the first place, if you'd had nothing to do with Garret... You sigh, looking at the ground, and then Alana's two shoes step into your view. You look up at her and are surprised to find that she's smiling at you, looking very intrigued.

She sits next to you saying, "So you really did it, huh?"

You give a small laugh. "You're not - you're not mad at me?"

Alana shuffles her feet. "I mean, you being gone kinda sucked, but Garret let me do whatever I wanted, which was cool."

"I guessed that from all the trash upstairs," you say, rolling your eyes.

"I haven't seen a vegetable in forever."

You put a exasperated hand to your forehead. "Well, leaving Garret in charge was not one of my better ideas."

Alana laughs and kicks her feet out in front of her, crossing them at the ankles. "Man, what did you ever see in that guy anyway?"

You shake your head. "I don't even know. It all seemed fine at the time. People around here thought we were, you know, actually together and everything. I thought it would make them back off a bit if they thought I was with the champion. That I'd finally look like maybe I was doing something right."

"I'm sorry," Alana says next to you slumping a bit. "I know people say bad things because of me."

You nudge her gently with your shoulder, feeling remorse that she had picked up on the fact that neighbors thought you weren't doing the best job raising her. You wish you had been able to shield her from that. "No, Alana, it's not your fault. People were always gonna talk no matter what. Nothing we could have done, so we might as well not worry about it, right?"

"But you were worried about it a lot," she says, looking at you dubiously. "You just said all that stuff about Garret."

You bring your knees to your chest, "Yeah, well, I should have never started that in the first place. I think it's pretty obvious now that we were both using each other. Not sure how much having him around really helped anyway. Certainly isn't helping now."

"Do you still care then? About what everyone here thinks?"

You smile. "After all that I've seen, I can't imagine how some gossipy neighbors could matter much."

"So you really did do it? You know Team Skull's boss?"

"I thought you were afraid of them," you huff.

"I was," she tells you, picking at the chipping polish on her fingernails. "That night was really scary, but they didn't hurt any of us. And then when Garret would tell me stuff about them, I wasn't so scared anymore. And it was pretty awesome that you were finally doing something besides reading a book for once."

You laugh. "Well, actually, I did a lot of reading there too."

"That figures. So. What's he like? Do you like him? You're gonna break the curse, right?"

"I-" you start, suddenly feeling very awkward at having to talk about this with your younger sister.

Alana gasps. "You do like him, don't you! Please tell me we're gonna live in Po Town now!"

Your eyebrows furrow, but you're amused. Your sister always could be a bit too excitable and a little confusing. At least she wasn't angry with you. "You'd be ok with moving to a cursed town, huh?"

"I mean, the rain kinda sucks, and it kinda sucks that they took my Yungoos, but at least I got it back."

Everything within you suddenly pauses. "Wait. What?"

Alana takes the Pokeball out of her pocket. "Yungoos. They gave it ba - Garret never took it!" she says, having the same realization you did.

You stand up, elated that you might just have a way out of this. "Ok. Ok so, if we can get Yungoos up there, we can get him to distract Incineroar."

"But, wasn't there stuff in front of the door?"

You put a hand to your chin, thinking. There had been a decent amount of weight in front of the door. You hadn't been able to move it when you tried. "We've got to get Incineroar to move it somehow."

"Screaming, gotcha," Alana says.

"Worth a try!" You smile at her. You know she's got quite the set of lungs when she's upset. She'd spent a good amount of her younger and brattier years proving that. Then your face falls. "But we can't get to Po Town in time without a ride pager. We don't have one, and Garret's probably going to take everyone in town that does with him."

"Well, actually," says Alana.

You turn towards her and she looks a bit sheepish.

"You know how Adam's brother failed the island challenge? I mean, he wasn't using the ride pager anymore, so we decided to borrow it. That's how we got to Po Town. I never gave it back. It's in my room."

You bring your sister into a huge hug and she pushes against you, protesting. "No, no, you're gonna crush me again."

"Alana, you've completely saved us!"

"You're happy I took someone's shit?"

"Don't say 'shit,'" you tell her, letting her go.

"Garret let me say 'shit.'"

"Yeah, well, Garret's an asshole."

"Can I call him an asshole?"

"That I think I'll allow. Now get out your Yungoos."

You stand off to the side of the stairs, Alana's Yungoos doing figure eights around your feet. You feel a little bad that you hadn't let him out more while you were in Po Town. He's excited and absolutely raring to go. Just gotta get that door open. You look at Alana, meeting her gaze, and nod.

She inhales deeply and lets out a painfully sharp and horrendously loud shrill shriek. She holds it for longer than you'd expected, and as her face grows red with the effort, there's a returning roar from the Incineroar upstairs.

Alana just grows more determined, inhaling and screaming again, and though you thought it impossible, she's somehow louder.

There's more roars upstairs and you realize the two are now in a screaming competition. Every time Incineroar gets closer to the door or roars at an increasing volume, Alana's voice becomes more piercing. You cover your ears, shielding them against the noise that, between the two of them, is starting to scramble your brain. You hope it has the same effect on the pokemon upstairs.

There's an enraged roar and what sounds like the giant cat smacking away items. You can hear them scrapping floors and hitting walls above you. Then the basement door swings open, flying off its hinges and there's Incineroar silhouetted in the doorway, fur standing on end. It lets out one last deafening roar at Alana and she points up the staircase.

Like a hairy brown rocket the Yungoos leaves your legs and shoots up the stairs, escaping between Incineroar's legs and into the house. Immediately it turns and chases the creature all about your home that is far too small for the pokemon's frame. You can already hear the sounds of things breaking and crashing above you. But there's no time to stress over the further mess your childhood home would be in. You and Alana scramble up the stairs and out of the basement.

You frantically sneak around the house, trying to avoid the Incineroar's wild gaze. You pull Alana out of the way as the couch suddenly comes flying in your direction. It'd been knocked aside to get to the Yungoos that had been hiding underneath. You use it as cover to make your way to the stairs leading to the top floor and the bedrooms.

You quietly and quickly crawl up the stairs as the house continues to be torn apart, Yungoos clearly giving Incineroar hell if its roars of frustration are any indication. Then you're down the hall and throwing open the door to Alana's room, where she starts sifting through her belongings, saying, "Where is it?"

You realize with horror that she doesn't know where the ride pager is, and join her in tossing around whatever you can in a mad search for it. You don't know how much time you have. How long would the Incineroar be interested in Yungoos? How long could Yungoos keep this up?

"Got it!" Alana suddenly yells, holding the pager aloft and jamming the button down. There's a loud thump in the stairwell and skittering on the stairs. Both Pokemon are heading up towards you. You see the Yungoos run by, and then the Incineroar comes into view. It stops, and turns towards the both of you.

It looks shocked for a moment, then furious. You quickly slam the door in its face and lock it, knowing that won't hold it for long at all. You usher Alana to the window and the both of you are out of it. First you, then Alana right after, climbing down the rain gutter the way you had when you were younger, and the way Alana had on that night she'd gone to Po Town.

You hear the bedroom door burst open within the room above you.

The ride Charizard appears and lands gracefully below you at the bottom of the gutter. You shimmy your way down and onto the pokemon, looking back for Alana, only to realize she's stopped halfway down the gutter.

"Alana! Keep going!"

"My Yungoos!" she yells to you. "I can't leave him!"

Incineroar's head pops out of the window, it's claws curling around the edge. It looks all around, and then down. It roars in anger and frustration when it sees the two of you, grabbing the rain gutter, and ripping it away from the side of the building.

Alana screams, holding on desperately to the now wavering gutter.

"Go up! Go up!" you yell to the Charizard. It begins an awkward accent, the closeness of the building making it difficult for the pokemon.

Incineroar shakes the gutter and you watch as Alana's hands slip away from it. She free falls for a moment, flailing, and you scramble in the seat moving to catch her. You only manage to catch one hand, as her other clutches the saddle, her body making a bit of a slapping sound as she hits the side of the Charizard, causing it to roll on its side in the air slightly from the new, unexpected weight. You hold tight to your seat and Alana, pulling her on the pokemon while it rights itself.

Then she's in the seat behind you yelling for her Yungoos. Incineroar tries to jump out of the window, but it's too broad, and it bounces backward. It snarls at the two of you, as you continue to rise on the Charizard. It's still got its eyes fixed on you when Yungoos swiftly bounces on it's head and out the window towards you both. He sails the distance between the window and you, Incineroar snapping and clawing at him.

Yungoos lands safely in Alana's arms as you rise ever higher, and then off into the direction of Po Town, watching as Incineroars's outraged, frenzied face grows smaller and disappears.

You hold tight to the Charizard, wind whipping past you, hoping you're not too late. For everything.