"A second Arceus?" Alena asked in an unimpressed voice. "If that's the case, then it would only be as strong as the Arceus we all know. All of the legendaries would easily be able to fight it off!"

Suicune shook her head. "It is… far stronger than Arceus, in some cases. Arceus's power comes from order – as long as things are as they are supposed to be in this world, Arceus will be the most powerful. But with things falling out of balance, he will weaken greatly."

"Then why isn't Arceus trying to fix this himself?" Electrinz inquired, still clinging to Alena tightly.

Entei laughed. "Arceus never descends from the clouds. He wishes for others to fix these problems for themselves – even if this puts him at risk of losing everything."

Although Alena still wasn't quite confident with her newly acquired sense of hearing, she could have sworn that Suicune hissed "Fool!" under her breath.

"Arceus thinks that the humans will fix everything for them," Raikou informed them. "He has never had the Pokémon or humans of the world fail to fix everything for him before, so there's no reason for him to think so now."

"Then… maybe we should just let him rot," Alena growled. "The stupid goat is supposed to have created the world, but he can't even take responsibility for his own problems?" The three legendary beasts looked shocked, but Electrinz just shook his head.

"If we don't do anything, everyone in the world will suffer. Come on Alena, do it for them, not for Arceus." The girl frowned, looked down at her feet, and then swiveled her head to the skies. It was nearly dark – the stars were coming out, and the moon was visible in the sky. Alena slowly lowered her head and gave the legends a stern look.

"If I ever get the chance to fight Arceus, I'm going to kick his ass."

With that said, she pulled Electrinz away from the beasts and started to run back towards home.

"So, let me get this straight. This curse is going to make all humans forget that they were ever human."

"Correct."

Twig took another deep swig of coffee. The Sceptile had been questioning them for the past hour, and only large quantities of his favorite beverage had managed to keep him from going into shock. Whishcast and Waggy were out on guard duty. Every so often, one of them would come up to announce that the area surrounding the treehouse was, for the most part, completely normal; forest-dwelling Pokémon would occasionally walk by and exchange greetings, while a few groups of lost travelers would stop to ask for directions. The only difference was that these travelers were walking in a huge group of Pokémon – sometimes as many as thirty – and some of them were quite obviously human. Sander was in her room, researching something in a few dusty old books, and Sy was working on some project in her room.

"There is another Arceus," Twig continued. "Unlike our Arceus, this one is chaotic and strives for the world's unbalance, as it would make him more powerful."

"Correct," Electrinz sighed.

"And that if we do not find a way to reverse this curse, the entire world will be ruled by chaos and destruction."

"Correct," Alena told him. "However, the curse is supposed to be impossible to reverse. Also, we're some kind of chosen ones. We're the only ones who can do anything, all that jazz. So, in other words, Tyler Burn has just sent us on a wild goose chase for a cure that doesn't exist. The legendaries are going to eat me if I don't fix this, so hopefully that chaotic Arceus or whatever will eat them first."

"Alena!" Twig gasped. "That's it! Go find Tyler Burn! He'll know more about the curse!"

Alena was halfway to the door, with visions of kicking Tyler's ass dancing in her head, when Electrinz grabbed her by the collar of her shirt. "Knew this would be useful," he muttered to himself. You're training more," he informed Alena.

Several dozen Poochyena later, Alena felt as though she was going to spontaneously combust from the energy flowing inside her body. She felt as though she could run faster than a car and then send a full-grown person flying with a simple push. Granted, this probably wasn't too far from the truth, but it was still a weird feeling to someone who was supposed to be a human.

"Ready to go?" Electrinz asked her.

"If by ready to go, you mean ready to kick Tyler to the moon, then yes."

"Sounds great," he told her. "But how are we going to get back to Ever Grande?" Alena's face betrayed her idea. "We are NOT going through the power lines again. Already did that twice. Two times too many. New plan."

Alena scowled. "I still think it was fun…"

"My tummy didn't. That's beside the point, though. We need a clever plan of action if we're going to stop this weird curse."

"All right," Alena began. As she said each point, she would put up a finger. "First, we go to Lilycove. Second, we take a boat or a Wailord or something to Ever Grande. Third, we find Tyler. Fourth, we tell him to spit up everything he knows. Fifth, we do more research. And sixth, we stop the curse and everyone's happy."

Electrinz sighed. He sincerely doubted that such a plan would work, but Alena seemed confident enough. He nodded slowly and began to dash towards Lilycove, albeit reluctantly. He was not looking forward to seeing another big city so soon – seeing Ever Grande in such a terrible state of disarray yesterday was going to stick with him for years. Lilycove was easily four times the size of the smallish town surrounding the Pokémon League's Hoenn headquarters, and was a port town to boot. There would be a ton more people turned into Pokémon, and Electrinz wasn't sure that he wanted to risk that.

But Alena was still the leader…

As he watched her dash in front of him with renewed speed, Electrinz wondered how much longer it was until her memories began fading…