With Carmine leading the way, the newly christened Mask Retrieval Squad set off to "gather intel" or "perform reconnaissance" or "interrogate the locals", however Carmine would word it at that moment, in order to ascertain where the Lousy Three had disappeared to with the Masks.

Ogerpon however, refused to step any further with them once they got to Mossui Town.

"I bet it doesn't want to go in the village," Kieran guessed. "The villagers did a pretty good job of chasin' it away back then, so…"

"Pay attention now, Ogerpon…" Carmine tried to command it. "We go in village! You stay here! Ogerpon stay! Understand?"

"Po…?" But Ogerpon just looked around, clueless.

"…I'm gonna take that as a no."

Juliana knelt down to it and gave a soft reassuring grin.

"Stay here and wait for us to get back, okay? Try not to get yourself in trouble!"

"Ponii!" Ogerpon cried affirmatively.

"Looks like it understood that!" Kieran giggled.

"What was wrong with what I said!?" Carmine fumed, making Juliana and Kieran laugh.

With Juliana's command seeming to resonate, Ogerpon stood patiently and watched its helpers leave with a smile.

Kieran put a finger to his chin as he looked back at the creature. "Hmm…"

The three of them split up to talk to the townspeople.

Of course, Kieran was still very shy around people and mostly just talked to the neighbors around his house. Juliana made a greater effort to scope out the whole town, checking every street for people who might've seen the beasts.

Carmine was just annoyed that everyone she talked to was merely amazed at the Lousy Three's resurrection, rather than terrified.

"Am I the only one around here who cares that these three jerks were DEAD and that they've risen out of their graves like zombies!?"

Eventually, the three regrouped and met back with Ogerpon to compare notes.

"Pon-yo-pon!" Ogerpon greeted them excitedly.

Kieran revealed that one of his neighbors, an apple farmer, spotted Munkidori heading towards Wysteria Pond while out in the orchard.

Juliana met a backpacker who saw something resembling Okidogi out in the distance all the way at Paradise Barrens.

And Carmine spoke to a young child who watched Fezandipiti fly through the sky, pointing in the direction of Oni Mountain's peak.

"I knew the Mask Retrieval Squad I assembled wouldn't let me down! Rest assured, your fearless leader—that's me—sees your hard work and effort!" Carmine pointed boastfully to herself.

"Good grief…" Kieran mumbled.

"Don't backtalk the boss, Kieran," Juliana playfully teased.

"You're both way into this…" he groaned.

"The boss appreciates your sucking up!" Carmine turned to Juliana. "I'll record everything we found out in your Rotom Phone so you can be my trusty navigator!"

"You want me to lead the way?"

"Of course! I trust you the most!"

"Sis also happens to be bad with directions…" Kieran mumbled.

"Quiet, Kiki!" she whispered.

Once the reported locations of the Lousy Three were recorded on Juliana's map, Carmine nodded confidently to everyone.

"Now then, let's go retrieve those masks!" Carmine pumped her fist in the air, and Juliana joined her in excitement.

Ogerpon jumped up in joy. It made Kieran giggle… but then that jogged his memory towards what he had just decided on.

"I'm… I'm not goin'," he muttered.

Juliana and Carmine both looked at him in shock.

"What? Why not?" Juliana asked, worried.

"You're part of the team! You have to come along!"

Kieran started fidgeting with his hands. He gazed at Ogerpon, who was looking at him confused… and clinging to Juliana.

"As long as Juliana's around, I'm sure Ogerpon will feel safe…"

Juliana's mouth dropped, and she looked at Ogerpon hugging her leg, feeling guilty.

"Kieran…"

But Kieran turned his back to them. "'Sides, I got things to do…" He ran off in the direction of town. "Sorry!"

The three of them watched Kieran leave with faces of grave concern, Juliana futilely reaching her hand out.

"Huh. I wonder if he's still upset?" Carmine wondered.

"But I thought we had fixed that…" said a disappointed Juliana.

"Oh well. We can't force him to tag along. Let's just take care of this ourselves!"

Juliana gulped. She was still worried about Kieran, but looking at Ogerpon's pleading face at her feet, she decided the mission was more important for now.

"Alright… let's go."

They headed off alone with Ogerpon, but Juliana still looked back at Mossui with a worried face as they did so.

It turned out Okidogi wasn't very hard to spot. Not only did it stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of Paradise Barrens but… astonishingly, it had grown in size! Juliana surmised it must have been from the herbs the elders fed it, knowing that there were special herbs in Paldea that caused a similar effect to the Pokémon there.

But even with its mighty size, the giant Retainer Pokémon was no match for the combined efforts of Juliana and Carmine, who together with their Pokémon sent Okidogi packing, and recovered one of Ogerpon's masks.

Ogerpon ran up to the mask Okidogi dropped, depicting a gray face with blue and black tusks and a jolly smile.

"Yeah! High five!" said Carmine.

Ogerpon squealed and jumped up to give the tall girl a high five.

Juliana giggled. "Ogerpon's really starting to open up to you!"

"I told you my devilish charms capture everyone's love eventually!" Carmine boasted. "Besides, of course we get along when we're working towards a common goal! We're going to make these Lousy Three EAT DIRT until they cry like babies and go back underground! Right, Ogerpon?"

"Pon yoooo!" Ogerpon gave its war cry.

"It's great you're so fired up about this Carmine," chuckled Juliana. "But… remember, our main goal is to get those masks back for Ogerpon!"

"I know that! But any excuse to squash bullies like the BUGS that they are really gets me going!" She slammed her hands together as she spoke, as if she was killing an invisible insect.

Juliana thought back to how unusually enraged Carmine was when they first heard the real legend about the Loyal Three being bullies to Ogerpon, and stealing its masks in the present day.

"You really have a thing against bullies, huh?" she ascertained.

"Well, yeah!" Carmine retorted like that was obvious. "I hate them more than anything. I told you about when I was growing up and I learned the only way to stop bullies is to knock them down yourself and let them know who's boss!"

"I still don't… think that that's true," said Juliana with a slightly troubled expression.

"Well, let me ask you this. Back home at… Uva Academy or whatever. Is there a lot of bullying that goes on at that school?"

"Well…"

The honest answer to that question was no, Juliana realized. All the students back home at Uva seemed to treat one another very cordially, and she was welcomed into her new classroom with nothing but friendly faces. Not to mention the fast friend she quickly made in Nemona, who was one of the kindest people she had ever met.

However, Juliana was now being reminded of one of her little quests back home in Paldea…

Operation Starfall. A mission to take down all of Team Star's bosses and disband the group of delinquent students.

And how the last boss she had defeated, a really pretty girl named Mela with energy a lot like Carmine's, revealed to her and "Clive" (Juliana's new friend who looked suspiciously a lot like Director Clavell) that Team Star was formed a year and a half ago to fight back against the bullies they faced at school… and how it ultimately just led to those bullies getting scared and dropping out of school.

"Ummm… not, not recently, I guess," Juliana conceded.

"Yeah. That tracks. It explains a lot about you, honestly."

Juliana raised an eyebrow. "Huh? What is that supposed to mean?"

Carmine laughed. "Oh, just how you're so friendly and kind of naïve, and willing to trust anyone. You don't have the rough experiences to understand my point of view." She then turned to Ogerpon. "But Ogerpon here has dealt with terrible bullies, and knows how effective a good thrashing is! Right, Ogerpon?"

Excitedly, Ogerpon unsheathed its spiked ivy cudgel, the terrifying weapon it was said to use to kill the Loyal Three in the legends, and swiped it in the air like a toy sword.

This made Carmine giggle again. "See, Ogerpon? At least you get me!"

Juliana just shook her head. "Whatever's helping you two bond, I guess."

But she looked at Carmine and Ogerpon laughing together and… had to admit it was a pretty warm sight.

Next the Mask Retrieval Squad met Fezandipiti, who had also grown larger like Okidogi, at the peak of Oni Mountain near the Crystal Pool. They ended up chasing it into a huge, sprawling cave full of twists and turns that Carmine said is called the Chilling Waterhead.

"I've only ever been in here, once I was super little and out exploring on my own… and, well… my grandparents had to send rescuers to find me when I hadn't come back home after sunset."

As they walked through the spiraling labyrinth, Carmine had decided to regale Juliana with tales of the worst bullies she'd ever heard of in Unova.

"That's when it turned out their whole thing about 'liberating Pokémon from their Trainers' was all just a whole front for this whackjob who wanted to be the only one with Pokémon so he could take over the whole Unova region!"

"Wow that's… pretty evil," said Juliana.

"Yeah! And even after he was defeated, Team Plasma was still causing trouble around the Unova region for a couple years! By the time I was going there as a junior student—as the most adorable little tyke you'd ever meet, by the way—they had dropped the whole 'liberation' nonsense and were just simply a bunch of crooks stealing people's Pokémon!"

Ogerpon gasped at the audacity.

"But they were still extremely dangerous! They froze an entire city, flew around in a huge airship, and made a giant castle appear in the middle of the Pokémon League! Even now, they still say that if you wander down the wrong street anywhere in Unova, rogue Plasma grunts will beat you up and take your Pokémon!"

She said that last part with the affect of an evil storyteller, trying to scare Juliana like she did with the other kid Butch.

"Uh huh," Juliana reacted, unimpressed. Even Ogerpon's eyelids were lowered, more so to imitate her expression. "Did they really freeze a whole city or did you just make that up?"

"No I didn't! That part's really true!" Carmine proclaimed, getting defensive. "Look, I have this friend—Well, he's not really a friend. He's just a guy I know at school, who grew up in that town around the time Team Plasma froze it. He even showed us pictures! I'll see if I can get him to send them to me so I can show you."

"Um, please do. Because that's… so hard to imagine. Was everyone okay?"

"Mm-hm. He said the town thawed out eventually." Then she leaned in close to Juliana. "Tch. Between you and me though, I don't think he ever thawed out all the way."

"Oh yeah?" Juliana chuckled.

"Yeah he's so… chill all the time. But, in a really annoying sort of way." She grumbled. "He's very irritating to deal with."

Juliana chortled a bit at the thought of that. She hoisted up her bag, and laughed as Ogerpon imitated her by hoisting its green cloak up.

"Well you know… Paldea has its own troublemakers too."

Carmine snickered, remembering the other kid who tried to brag that with her.

"Oh yeah? Let me guess, giant Pokémon crawling around everywhere?"

Juliana's eyes lit up. "Wait, you know about that?"

"Huh." Carmine gave her a look that you said "You're kidding, right?"

"Y'know, I was just thinking how funny it is… my buddy Arven said that they grew to be that way because of special herbs… Isn't that… kind of… just like what we saw with Okidogi, and… now Fezandipiti too?"

Carmine looked completely nonplussed, trying to figure out whether Juliana was implying giant Pokémon really do run amok in the Paldea region or just pushing her buttons like Carmine was doing to her.

"I uhh… I don't know, kid. Maybe it… is just a coincidence."

"Well, either way, it's not just the Pokémon you have to worry about. There's a scary group of kids in Paldea called Team Star."

"Team Star?" Carmine raised an eyebrow, amused. "Please, tell me more about your wonderous region and its love for copyright infringement."

"Well, they're not a bunch of crooks stealing Pokémon, sure. They're a bunch of delinquent students who, at least according to all the adults, cause a lot of trouble for the students. I first met them when I saw two of them trying to harass this really shy girl named Penny into joining them and—"

"Woah, woah, hang on before you start giving me your whole memoir here," Carmine interrupted her.

She stood in place at the edge of the crag they were walking through, with her hands on her hips.

"You really mean to tell me, that your school is so lame that students don't even want to go, and would rather start a gang instead? That's hilarious!" she giggled.

"That's… not what I wanted you to focus on," Juliana pouted.

"I'm sorry," Carmine said between guffaws. "That's so freaking fu—"

All of a sudden, as she was shuffling about, the ground beneath Carmine started crumbling, and then it gave way!

"—uuaaAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

And the tall Kitakamite girl found herself stumbling and falling downward.

Juliana gasped. "CARMINE!"

She looked on in abject horror as she watched her friend plummeting down the long chasm of the waterhead.

"PON-PONNN!" cried Ogerpon.

Carmine screamed at the top of her lungs as she plunged, afraid to look down because she knew she was heading for a hard impact.

Her whole life started flashing before her eyes, like they say it does when you're about to die.

Tears flying off her face into the ethers, Carmine squinted her sobbing eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable.

This is it. I'm dying, I'm about to die, this is the end of my life, I just killed myself, Kiki will be so devastated, my grandparents, my friends, I never got to say goodbye to any of them, I can't believe this is—

"AAAAHHHHHHH—Huh!?"

Suddenly… Carmine wasn't falling anymore. Instead, she felt herself get scooped up by—something. Something large.

"Wha—is it over? Am I dead!?"

She couldn't bear to open her eyes, but when she squinted them open a little bit, all she could make out was a humongous purple shape.

Her body felt like it was rattling as whatever was holding her sailed downward like it was descending a rocky wall. Her brain was still a rush of a thousand different emotions, chief among them the sensation that she still didn't know whether she was dying or not.

After what seemed like an eternity, she felt her body being slowly and gently placed on a flat surface.

Carmine was hyperventilating immensely, her eyes still scrunched shut. But then she felt two warm hands begin to cradle her shoulders and gently pick her up.

"Carmine… Carmine, are you okay?"

She slowly opened her eyes, and immediately saw Juliana's eyes. Those soft hazel-brown eyes, on her soft face. Looking down at her.

A light was casting down from somewhere up top that illuminated Juliana's whole face as she stared down at Carmine with a deeply concerned expression. Somehow, Carmine felt her spiked heart rate steadily dropping.

"Juliana…" Carmine breathed. "I-I… where am I?"

"We're at the bottom of the waterhead now," Juliana said, her voice incredibly shaky. "You fell, and—and Miraidon and I jumped down to save you. Are you okay?"

Carmine swallowed several times, trying to regain herself. She nudged Juliana to let go of her and began to sit up on her own.

"Yeah, yeah… I-I'm fine. But, but what'd you say? You said something about a… horizon or somethi—"

"GURAHH!"

Carmine jerked her head upwards and saw some sort of large lizard-like thing gazing down upon her.

"AGH!"

She scrambled and scurried away like a speedy Spinarak, reacting in shock to the huge metallic purple creature.

"What—what is that huge monster!? Some kind of kaiju!?"

Juliana giggled at how Carmine's reaction to the Iron Serpent almost identically mirrored Kieran's.

"This is Miraidon," Juliana introduced, patting her large serpent friend on the head. "I found him unconscious on a beach. He belongs to Professor Turo, who told me to take him with me on my journey so he can regain his strength." She giggled awkwardly. "Don't worry. He may look kind of strange and scary, but he's really just a big old softie who loves sandwiches!"

"Agias?"

Miraidon started inching closer to Carmine, sniffing her curiously. Carmine was backed up against the wall, both amazed and cautious at this Pokémon that was like nothing she had ever seen before it up.

"Hey now, take it easy…" she said warily. "What are you—AGH!"

All of a sudden, without warning, Miraidon stuck its tongue out and started licking Carmine in the face.

"PFF! OUGH! What the hell!?"

Juliana broke out laughing. She almost fell to her knees, clutching her stomach.

"I'm sorry! He does that to people sometimes! I guess it's his way of saying he really likes you!"

She smiled widely, feeling relieved that these two were creating some levity to shake off her extremely rattled emotions.

"Eww! Agh! Well… I-I would really like it if you would tell this beast of a Pokémon to cut it out!" Carmine yelled, frazzled.

"That's enough, Miraidon," Juliana gently commanded her rider. "Time to return to your Ball."

Miraidon grunted affirmatively and allowed itself to be recalled.

Carmine stood up and frantically began trying to wipe all the saliva off herself.

"Ewww… you really need to teach that thing some manners." Juliana reached into her bag, and pulled out a small hand towel, which Carmine grabbed without hesitation.

"Ugh! Unbelievable! I'm going to need a long shower after this!" Carmine complained as she furiously wiped herself down. "Now I think I'm remembering… isn't that the same Pokémon you rode on for the Ogre Oustin' game?" Juliana nodded.

"Hmph. So you saw me falling and sent that thing to catch my fall, huh?"

Juliana suddenly began to sweat, and tugged at her collar.

"Umm, actually… it, it caught the both of us." Carmine looked at her in confusion. "Ummm… I sort of, well, when I saw you falling, I… immediately jumped after you. And Miraidon saved the both of us from falling."

Carmine's eyes widened like saucers and she dropped the rag.

"You WHAT!?" She seethed. "Why would you do something so dangerous!? If you didn't have that—that thing with you, we would've both been killed!"

Juliana rubbed her head awkwardly and stammered. "I don't—I don't know why I did it! I-I wasn't really thinking. I just… I saw you falling and I, I wanted to save you."

Carmine glowered, at a complete loss for words to say.

The silence was broken when they heard a voice echoing through the caverns.

"Ponnnnn! Ponnoooooo!"

They heard little feet scampering, and sure enough there was Ogerpon, descending down the cliffs to meet them at the bottom of the waterhead.

"Oh my gosh, Ogerpon!" Juliana realized. "I totally forgot we left it all alone up there!"

Ogerpon had tears running down its face as it sprinted up to its squadmates. Then, to their surprise, it immediately wrapped Carmine's legs in a tight hug.

"Oh!"

"Pon-yo-pon!" it cried.

Carmine gently patted the small ogre on its head. "I'm… I'm fine, Ogerpon. Thank you for your concern."

"Pon?" Then Carmine broke off and went to hug Juliana too, crying just as heavily.

"We're both fine, Ogerpon!" she laughed, petting Ogerpon too.

"Gosh, that must have been so scary for Ogerpon," Carmine realized. "Watching both of its new friends just… fall off like that, not knowing if either of us were okay."

Juliana, realizing this too, knelt down and embraced Ogerpon in a full hug to calm the poor creature down.

"Well… we're all fine down here at the bottom of the cave now. Safe and sound."

"Ponnn…" Ogerpon was still a little rattled, but was able to calm down from Juliana's comforting embrace.

"Yip-ip-ippy!"

They all heard a sudden noise, through a light at the end of their tunnel, and the distant sound of wings flapping.

"That's… that's gotta be Fezandipiti on the other side of that exit," said Juliana.

"Well, well, well. Looks like we just took a… a very hasty shortcut to get to our goal. Let's go!"

Carmine dusted herself off and started walking. Juliana grabbed her hand in alarm.

"Wait. Carmine. Are you… are you sure you don't want to rest first?"

"Heh. Clipping that big bird's wings is all the catharsis I'm going to need!" she assured her. Her smile dropped as she took in Juliana's big… brown eyes again. She cleared her throat. "So c'mon already. Let's get that mask back."

"Ponyo!"

The three of them started walking towards the exit. Carmine quickly noticed that Juliana hadn't let go of her hand, and she gently pulled it out of her grasp.

"Oh… sorry!"

"Umm…" Carmine rubbed her head sheepishly and blushed. "Thanks, by the way. For… for saving my life."

"Don't mention it," Juliana said softly.

Carmine smiled a bit bashfully. Then, she took on a sterner face and leaned in close to Juliana.

"Don't breathe a single word of what just happened to Kiki, okay?"

Juliana solemnly nodded. "I understand."

She didn't know why, but it certainly felt much easier keeping a secret for Carmine's sake now.