Guzma wandered aimlessly through the city, hands stuffed in his pockets and back slouched. He felt comfortable this way, as though the simple gestures of sticking his hands in his pockets and slouching somehow put another barrier between himself and those around him. Guzma had grown to depend on these barriers as a Dewpider depends on water.

Eyes drifted and lingered on him as he wandered through the city, and if not for his pensive mood and his barriers he might have snapped at the people they belonged to for staring. Even after he'd disbanded Team Skull and he'd started working with Hala -and sometimes Rachel- to turn a new leaf, most of the people of Alola still only knew him as the hated boss who beat them down and beat them down and never let up, and they would not forgive. Not as easily as Rachel had, anyway.

Still, the knowledge that he had eyes constantly on him didn't do much to make him feel comfortable in his own skin. Why had he come here? He was aimless, simply wandering in a perennial state of limbo. Guzma asked himself that and tried to find a good answer, but when he could think of none he simply told himself because I could and distracted himself with other thoughts.

But they soon drifted back to Rachel -to her family- and he couldn't stop them. In fact, Guzma had scarcely been able to keep his mind off the kid since he'd seen her in her house, enjoying herself with her family and her friends. Knowing this, he cursed himself for following Hala- cursed himself for having some curiosity in the kid. What made it worse was that he didn't even understand why he had it, and if he didn't understand himself, who would? He shouldn't have cared that Rachel was having some party; he shouldn't have cared whether he was invited or not. He didn't belong there, he knew, and yet he still couldn't hold back his curiosity. A curiosity that had granted him an answer that had left him pensive and hollow.

Perhaps it was because he had longed to have what Rachel had all of his life, and he envied her for being able to find it even when she was in a place completely unfamiliar to her. Perhaps she had actually given him some hope that he could be the same if he only tried.

"Tch." Guzma scoffed at the thought. Big bad Guzma didn't need anyone in his life to be happy! Not a gang or friends or a family. He had his Pokemon, and as long as they were with him there wasn't anything in the world he couldn't face.

Still, he found it hard to deny to himself that it was true. The small seed of envy that he felt when he thought of her in that moment only grew larger the more he thought about it. Would he ever be able to have what Rachel had with his own family? He tried not to let the thought remain in his mind, but it lingered like a distant echo in a large cavern, only reaffirming the emptiness he felt within himself.

Perhaps he couldn't deny that he was feeling something, but he refused to accept that what he felt was anything more than a seed. If he did, it would mean admitting defeat, and Guzma never admitted defeat to anyone, not even to himself.

That he recognized this didn't make the hurricane of conflicting emotions within him any calmer.

Guzma sighed, kicking a small rock at his feet for no real reason beyond the fact that it was in front of him and he could. He watched the rock tumble ahead of him until it collided with a pair of unsuspecting rose high-heels, bouncing back an inch after the impact and settling gracelessly on the ground afterwards. There was an audible "oh!" of surprise from the wearer of the heals, who turned and inspected her foot to see what had hit it.

Head still lowered and back still slouched, Guzma only knew the woman had turned because he was still absently watching her heels. It took him a moment to realize what he had done, and he lifted his gaze to meet the woman's so he could apologize to her, as Hala had taught him to.

Apologize. Apologize? The word felt foreign and unfamiliar as it entered his mind and rolled off his tongue when he thought about it. Since when had he taken to listening to that old Kahuna's lectures, anyway? Big bad Guzma never apologized to anyone!

His mind went completely blank when he looked up and realized who the woman was.

"Guzma…?" Disbelief was plastered across his mother's aging features as she stared at him, wide-eyed. A couple of feet behind her was his ever-watching father, who harbored a bitter scowl across his face as he leaned heavily on his walking cane.

"Mom… Dad…" His words were weak and his voice thin, and under his father's harsh eyes he couldn't bring himself to face them completely. When his mother took a step forward to give him a hug he took a step back, half-turning away from them. This was enough to abruptly stop her, and hurt, she retreated back to her position by her husband.

Of course they would be here. Of course they would run into each other now, when he had just started thinking of family again. Of course it would be in the middle of the city, where all eyes were present to witness yet another of his shortcomings. Guzma didn't particularly believe in fate, but at that moment he found himself cursing at the universe for toying with him. Even now, when he had given up all he had to turn a new leaf, it was still toying with him. Of course they would be here.

Guzma clenched his fists in the pockets of his pants and turned his back on them. His slouch had grown further, to the point where he actually took notice to it. For some reason it made him feel vulnerable in the presence of his parents, as though he were allowing their eyes to bore through him by slouching, and immediately he straightened out.

"That's no way to treat your mother, Guzma." His father scolded sternly, and when Guzma remained motionless he added, "are you five, boy? Turn around and look at your father when he's speaking to you!"

Guzma obeyed. He didn't want to obey, but he found himself slowly turning back towards them and before he could stop himself he was facing them again. His slouch returned immediately.

"I see Kahuna Hala's instruction hasn't done anything for you. What a disappointment." His father scoffed, crossing his arms. "You still haven't even started to get your life together. You're pathetic."

Guzma grit his teeth, trying desperately to keep his cool, but the palms of his clenched fists in his pockets were beginning to sweat as his blood boiled at his father's words. Who was he to talk? The most he'd ever gotten from his father was a beating and a kick in the ass, and he was criticizing Hala's instruction?

"At least the old man gave me a chance." Guzma averted his gaze as he scoffed, more out of habit in the presence of his father than anything else. "He did a hell of a lot more for me than you ever did."

"What." It was more of a statement than a question from his father, and it seeped with a sort of familiar ire that Guzma couldn't help taking great satisfaction in.

"Don't say that, Guzma!" His mother exclaimed, exasperated.

She was defending him? Of course she was defending him. Why wouldn't she defend him? He was the father of the household, and what was Guzma? Nothing more than a mere boy- a nuisance in the house. For a brief moment, the image of Rachel and her happy family came to his mind again, and he almost found it laughable that his family could be such a polar opposite to hers. The cherry berry on top was that for a moment, he had actually considered the possibility of having that same kind of happiness with them. But people never changed, did they?

"In fact, now that I think about it," Guzma couldn't stop some of that caustic humor from coming through in his voice as he turned to face the two adults with eyes that only harbored resentment. His anger was consuming him, he knew, and yet he still found himself welcoming it with open arms. His relationship with his parents was a festering wound, and he was itching to start pulling the maggots. "The old man did a hell of a lot more for me than either of you ever did. Dad just beat me, and you just watched and pretended nothing was happening."

"Come on, Guzma, it wasn't like that," his mother tried to reason, but he was far past the point of her skewed reasoning.

"And you think that's normal?" He scoffed. "You think it's normal that your son tries his hardest and it's never good enough for you? You think it's normal that he got beat? You think it's normal that he stayed out late with the bug Pokemon because he had no friends at school, but he'd rather be out there with them than at home with you? Did you ever care about how I was feeling, or was I just another distraction in the house?!"

"I didn't raise such a disrespectful little boy." His father scowled. For once, Guzma found that he could agree with the old man on something. His father hadn't raised him.

"See what I mean! You don't even think of me as your son anymore, do you? Did you ever?!" Guzma almost laughed as he slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand, as though relishing in some kind of victory for hitting the nail on the head. His anger peaked into a new form of hysteria as he clenched his fist in front of him. "And then you wonder why our family is so messed up? Why I ran away? You guys never cared about me at all!"

Guzma's mother took a step closer, reaching her hand out to lower his raised fist in an effort to pacify him. "Guzma, honey, come on. Don't talk like that. Of course we care-"

"Listen to yourself!" Guzma roared, slapping her hand away with such force that the sound of the impact seemed to linger even after he had finished speaking. "Wake up, mom! It's like you're always on another world or something! You never seem to get it, do you? Ya know, reality? It just flies right over your head like a Rowlet or something!"

Guzma's breathing had become a heavy hyperventilation as he looked at his parents with his furious dun eyes, and the looks he received in return were more than he ever could have asked for. Finally, he'd shaken their world. Finally, they knew how he was feeling. Finally, something could change. As he caught his breath, he allowed his words to sink in. Silence filled the void left by his voice.

His mother cradled her slapped hand in her arm as she looked at Guzma with tear-filled eyes from her retreat by her husband. Her mouth was open but she was speechless, for she could find no words that could possibly begin to respond to all her son had said. His father looked her over with concern before locking eyes with Guzma once more, and within his eyes held a fury far greater than that of any Beedrill or Banette.

And still, the fool that he was, Guzma continued to cling to that lingering hope that after all of this, something might change. Rachel had given him that hope, and he wasn't quite ready to forsake it yet. If the kid could forgive him after all he had done to her, maybe, just maybe he had a chance at making amends with his family too.

But people never change.

"Guzma, what is wrong with you!" His father all but shouted, raising his cane a foot off the ground as he stepped forward.

Those words had conditioned him to expect a beating, and although he no longer feared his father, Guzma flinched a step back at the sight of the raised cane as his younger self would have. Like Pavlov's dog, his reaction was involuntary, and he loathed himself for it. But without notice, his father allowed his cane to lower back to the ground, and it took the Bug Type user a moment to realize that his father's goal had been to stand as a wall immovable between Guzma and his sobbing mother, not to hit him.

He hated himself even more for his involuntary reaction once he had realized that.

It was then that Guzma suddenly become very aware of the crowd that their commotion had gathered, their murmuring like a wailing Exploud in his ears as he slowly realized how many people were watching. But it wasn't until he spotted Rachel in the front of the crowd, hugging Rowlet in her arms and holding a woven basket in her hands as she looked on at the scene with eyes that only held horror, that the blood ran cold like ice in his veins. He could have taken his parents. He could have taken the crowd that had gathered -their murmurings and their eyes- but to see the kid looked so horrified by what she was watching?

That, he could not take.

Guzma's eyes burned and his chest felt heavy with the weight of all of the judgmental eyes around him. Even after the crowd had seen all of that, he was still the enemy. They knew him only as the big bad boss of Team Skull: the man who stole their Pokemon and ransacked Po town, and who's actions helped nearly bring the world to an end. Guzma, the man who would shamelessly slap his mother in public when she was trying to calm him. That was all he was. That was all they would ever know him as. And now, that was all Rachel saw him as too.

Guzma averted his gaze and lifted his hood over his head, and it gave him enough reprieve from the eyes of the crowd to slouch and stuff his hands in his pockets again. He had stuck his neck out and he'd gotten beat, and now there was nothing left for him here.

"Whatever…" Guzma mumbled, and not even anger was present in his voice anymore. Just the overbearing weight of defeat as he hastily left the scene before more damage could be done.

Hello dear readers! I'm Venus. It's lovely to meet you all, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! I apologize in advance for the long note, but with so much going on I feel it is important to mention a few things in this, my first ever published story.

I'm not new to writing in the slightest, but up until now I've been very shy in sharing my work, and as such I have little experience in this field, so please bear with me while I learn how to navigate and work in from the perspective of an author (hooray for learning how to update chapters and leave author notes!).

I would like to begin by giving some background information to this. The trouble is that this is just a fragment of a much larger story, Rachel's story, in the universe of Sun/Ultra Sun. As such, it was initially written with the assumption that a lot of background information is known by the audience. I write in fragments however, and at the request of my wonderful editor Moonlit I have done my best to amend this particular arc of the story so that I could publish it ahead of time. So, that being said, I would like to clarify some things about the summary. First is that Rachel is player Sun, and has experienced the events of Pokemon Sun and Moon/Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon from player Sun's perspective (for example, Nebby in her story is Solgaleo). Furthermore, the in-game events of Guzma in his house have already happened, and Guzma has already begun working with Hala and Rachel to turn his life around. Naturally, because of this there are plenty of character interactions that have effectively happened, but have not yet been written for you to view (such is the trouble of posting a story with background not covered). I will address these as they come up, but I have done my best to alter this story so that much can be inferred through what is said and narrated alone.

Finally, all of my Pokemon game stories are rooted in my in-game experiences. I love the Pokemon games and I love making stories out of the strangest little things that happen to me in my playthroughs. This story is an expanded take on Guzma's relationship with his parents- how it impacts him psychologically and how it impacts his attempt to have a fresh start, and finally how things are resolved. Things always get worse before they get better, and this is no exception.

I've put this note at the end instead of the beginning because I wanted you to read the first chapter and judge my writing for yourselves before I talked to you about it. For those who enjoyed it, there is more to come, and for those who read it and still didn't like it, that's tough luck I suppose. I put a lot of effort into writing and editing this story, and I look forward to sharing this with you all! Guzma is one of my favorites, and I think many can agree with me when I say I think he could really use a hug sometimes. Please do let me know what you think of the story! I will update weekly (or sooner, as I feel fit to) until the Forgotten Boy arc that makes up this story is completed.