Feather Dance ║ Guzma & Moon
The meadow was a blossoming sunburst. Yellow flowers covered its entire expanse, winding their way through trees, bushes, even on the rocky outcrops of the mountainside. The fresh aroma of its nectar was sweet as honey. Pokémon and people alike sought this place for its sereneness and for the cheerful Oricorio whose bright yellow feathers were gifted from the flowers themselves. For Guzma, the meadow brought other feelings. Memories he’d not lived in a long time.
He meandered down the worn path, slouching, with his hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie. It was a position he was familiar with, and one he took when his thoughts took over all else. The sun shone brilliantly down on the meadow below. He basked in it briefly, allowing it to warm him, but soon he moved under the shade of a banyan tree and its warmth left him. Several people stared at him as he passed. He felt their hate with ever step. Guzma kept his head low and ignored them. He continued until he was well away from the other visitors before stopping at the base of a thick rain tree.
This was far enough. Guzma took a moment to glance at the massive canopy. Its branches reached across the meadow, greedy for the sunlight and the rains that followed. The way it swayed in the breeze and overshadowed everything else reminded him of the woman president of Aether. He shivered. Guzma slumped against the rain tree, resting an arm on his raised knee, and pulled his thoughts from her. He stared at the clearing nearest him with impassive eyes.
A Pokémon chirped nearby. Guzma thought about Metapod, his thoughts drifting off to that fateful encounter. He’d been a child then, and tiny. His black hair was thick and messy, and his clothing dirty, but his toothy grin negated all of that. He couldn’t have been more different than he was today. A Cutiefly landed on his arm and glowed. Guzma didn’t appear to notice. He was walking now, entering through overgrown bushes and pretending he was a Pokémon Trainer. He’d entered the forest due to a noise—and followed it into the clearing adult Guzma was dozing off in.
It was his first experience with a wild Pokémon. His father had never allowed him one, but he’d seen them, and he’d wanted them, and if he could just have five minutes, father, please, he wouldn’t ask again, he’d do all his chores without complaint, then he would be happy. Guzma’s eyes closed. Now he was on his belly before Metapod, watching it struggle with its metamorphosis. It looked at him helplessly, and the child knew what he had to do.
“Come on,” he encouraged it. “I know ya can do it!” His younger self repeated his chant, urging Metapod on. It seemed grateful to its efforts. Soon Guzma was on his feet, shouting at the open air, his arms spread wide under the sky blue skies. “Go, Metapod! Go!” Child and Pokémon locked eyes, and for one moment time stopped. Metapod shone, its thick green body enveloped with radiating light. Out from its back burst the most beautiful Butterfree he’d ever seen.
It chittered at him, and his younger self giggled and laughed and ran after it as it flew for the first time. Yellow petals danced in the air around them in a whirlwind of color. He chased it until the sky turned dark and the surroundings gloomy. Frozen, twisting trees of crystal took the place of towering palms. The ground was obsidian instead of dirt. Butterfree flew on without him, and fear knotted in his stomach. Light refracted off the trees in a rainbow gloom, and though he ran to keep up with Butterfree, his footsteps made no sound.
A man stood in the center of the clearing. And where Guzma expected to find the Butterfree, he found Pinchy. In the man’s hands was a Poké Ball, shiny and red. Guzma’s face turned the color of curdled milk. He knew what came next. “N-no,” he whimpered, coming closer even though he wanted to run, run, run as far away as he could. His father towered over him, big and mean and angry.
His father shouted words he cannot remember. His voice boomed in the void. Pinchy stared at him with loving eyes. “Not Pinchy,” Guzma cried, his words thick with emotion. And as he watched, his father hurled the Poké Ball at the unsuspecting Grubbin, and he was too late to stop him, to protect Pinchy, to save him—
The Pokémon exploded in a cloud of dust. A woman cackled. Her voice was a nightmare, echoing through the night and its crystalline trees. Lusamine leered at him, all gold and emerald, her million poké smile flashing behind a terrifying laugh. He was small, too small, a child. Defenseless. She reached out at him with nails like claws. “No, no, no,” he moaned.
Her claws transformed before his eyes. He blanched as her arms lost their bones and thrashed at incomplete angles, her fingers elongating and resembling tentacles… And then her arms flashed and he was blinded by its light. A soft and menacing buzzing enveloped him. When he opened his eyes, he was staring into the bulbous bell of Nihilego. “NO!” Guzma shouted, his body twisting in real life. Hundreds of tentacles grabbed him, burned him, ensnared him in their electric embrace. It was too late to scream.
Guzma awoke in a flurry of flailing limbs. His heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest. Someone’s shadow blocked out the sun, but their face was feminine, and they stared at him with an emotion he was too groggy to place. In his daze, he believed her Lusamine. Guzma lashed out to punch her. “Th’ fuck’re ya lookin’ at?” he shouted at her, sitting upright as he did. He struggled to control his breathing, trying and failing to control the lingering sensation of fear. “Beat it! This ain’t no TV show!”
