A Bit of Help With My WIP Kunio Engine

So yeah; I want to make a Kunio fangame. I have some experience with Game Maker, but the bit of this (admittedly young) project that is giving me trouble is the attacking. I prefer to use the official style of one move for every button press (instead of holding a button to attack constantly), and since an animation apparently loops endlessly if nothing else happens, I assumed that what I should have done was just make a new object for punching.

So I did, and this object in itself more-or-less behaves the way I hoped; upon pressing my punch button, it plays the punch animation once and then goes back to idle. However, there is an unforseen problem with this mechanic. Earlier, I'd put in a variable called "FacingRight". This would save data as to the character's direction every time right or left was pushed, so even with different sprites loaded than walking, it would still face the right way. The problem is that of course, I had to define this variable initially, and I did so in the "Create" event of the default object. That was before I made a separate punching object, and since the punching object now recreates the default object to after it's done punching, it just jumps to facing left.

Hopefully, you can understand my dilemma (I've included the file, just in case), and if so, please help.