The Stronghold

Curse Breaking And Adam Levine

"No," Rebecca replied, sitting on the table. "I don't think so. It was probably just that random mantra in the back of my brain exploding and going 'run away'."

"Random mantra?" Dad echoed.

Forget that, what the bloody hell is he doing here? Salt squeaked.

Pepper, is that your dad? Georgina barked. He looks like you. Nothing like Salt, though. But neither do you.

Rebecca explained the story as Salt jumped about his hutch in fury. I halted Rebecca by holding up my hand, walking over.

"Dad, do you want to give Emmi back her powers?" I said. I'd explained everything to him at one stretch of the car journey when there was nothing interesting on the radio.

You called him Dad?!

"Ah yes." Dad smiled at Emmi and motioned for her to get up from her recently-taken seat. She stood and a second later he nodded. "There. You should be able to create Pokemon again now."

Emmi flexed her fingers and a Pikachu and a Piplup appeared. An Eevee and a Snorlax, a Haunter and an Umbreon, a Lucario and a Dragonite all materialised in various places over the room. Even more characters were arriving and I eventually had to ask her to stop.

"Aw, but it's fun," Emmi pouted.

"Make some go away. Please."

With soft popping noises most of the Pokemon vanished, leaving only her favourites behind.

"Now, as for the rest of you, if you want to be human again then the rest of us will have to leave the room," I said. "Tom, if you would like to explain?"

He shot me an irritated look and then awkwardly recounted what had happened when he became human again. Shaade started laughing and Tom stopped talking, glaring and sneakily freezing Shaade's quiff.

"So, um, who wants to go first?" I said, clapping my hands together.

"Josh says nobody has clothes," Shaade said. "Seeing as they randomly vanished when they became animals."

Just like animals, animals, animals, oh, animals, animals, Georgina sang in my head.

"Now is not the time for Maroon 5, Georgina," I said out loud, turning to the Shiba Inu. Her tail wilted and she lay on the floor, whining.

"Josh can go first," Shaade said, a wicked glint in his eyes. "And as for clothes, somebody can go and fetch some."

"We'll arrange clothes before turning you back to normal," Tom promised. "No more... sudden surprises."

*

Shaade and I had got some very odd looks when we went to buy clothes from the nearest shopping centre, especially as one was a set of woman's clothes and Shaade kept on messing about, putting things on his head and turning mannequins green.

"Right," I said, leading the way back to the hotel, "we're done, everything is okay. Do you still have Josh's stuff or have you dropped it somewhere 'by accident'?"

"I have it," Shaade said, holding up the bag. "But now you give me the idea..."

"No, Shaade."

*

We got back to the hotel and put the clothes next to one another, saying who's bag was who's. Then we filed out of the room, including Dad, Josh and Georgina. We'd let Salt out on the floor and Dad had a link with him.

"He's human again now," Dad said softly. This process was repeated for Josh and Georgina and then we were all fine again.

"Do you know what we need to do now?" I said, one arm around Georgina's shoulders.

"What's that?" Salt replied.

"Move hotels and pronto. Preferably fifty miles away."

*

Two days later...

I looked up and smiled, seeing Georgina wander into the kitchen wearing her infamous cat pyjamas. The Super Glitches had taken over the top three floors of the hotel, making good use of the miniature flats the hotel had to offer.

"Meow you doin'?" I asked, quoting her top. She glanced down at it and rubbed her eyes, still half asleep.

"I am in misery, there ain't nobody who can comfort me," a voice sang. I looked past Georgina to see Adam Levine, lead singer of Maroon 5, sat on the kitchen worksurface singing 'Misery'. He was dressed in the outfit from the video and was clearly made of Georgina's imagination.

"Stop dreaming about pop stars," I said sternly, reaching through him to get the toast from the toaster. He vanished in an explosion of colour and music.

"Why?" Georgina grumbled, stealing the toast from my hand and biting into it.

"Because it's annoying," I replied.

"It's Adam Levine," she protested.

"Exactly!"

"Jealous, are we?"

"No..."

"You're jealous of a mega hot, mega fabulous superstar with tons of money, lots of tattoos, a fantastic body-"

"How do you know this?"

"-and a wife." Georgina raised her eyebrows at me and took another bite of toast.

"You're safe, Pepper," she said through a mouthful of crumbs. "For now."