When his mom finally stirred awake, Larry was finally able to free himself from her grasp. He quickly untangled himself from his mother’s clutches before she fully woke up.

Larry still wasn’t sure how he was supposed to act, should he go cutesy and hide his intelligence, or should he just cut to the chase considering he was talking to his own mother?

‘Nah, I don’t think I would be able to fake my way through the whole time, I’ll slip up eventually.’ Larry thought to himself, ‘Let's play coy for now, but keep it safe.’

“Mmgh, ugh!” His mother groaned as she woke up, he knew she must still be feeling herself. Rampaging does nobody any good.

“Good morning, mom! Or? I don’t know what time it is right now!” Larry chimed in in a chipper voice.

She cracked one eye open and looked around before her sight fell on Larry. Seeing her child seemed to wake her up as she quickly got up and composed herself.

“Ugh!” Her quick rise led her to a headache, as she blearily stumbled around in front of him. As she caught her balance, she looked down at her Larvitar son, before speaking up in a deep rumbling voice, “I really found you?”

Larry yelped as he was picked up by her, his mom checked him all over, even smelling him for confirmation.

“Umm, Mom?”

“You’re the right one.” His mom nodded to herself, before pulling Larry deep into a hug.

He felt his mom’s breath shudder for a second before she breathed out and spoke resolutely, “Never.”

“Never?” Larry parroted back.

“Never run away like that again.” She continued, leaving no room for argument.

Larry silently sighed to himself, ‘Guess I’m not getting away from here as quickly as I hoped…’

“Yes, mom!”

…

His mom started walking away, and Larry followed. The two of them walked far away from the destroyed hallways, continuing deeper into the large open cavern where Larry had been born.

With these parts of the cavern not having been rampaged through, it seemed that most parts of the open cavern Larry had been born in came out of the rampage unscathed except for the occasional fallen stalactite or crumbly bit of roof.

The mood was tense and his mother didn’t seem interested in conversation, only nonverbally urging Larry to follow her.

With the tense mood bearing down on him, Larry tried his luck at breaking the ice.

“Um, Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Where are we going right now?”

“Home.”

“Oh, ok.”

‘Well…’ He thought to himself.

It seemed Larry’s mom was a quiet person, she didn’t talk until spoken to and always seemed to be introspectively thinking to herself.

When she talked, it was in short sentences. Larry had tried to start a conversation, but it didn’t lead anywhere, simply leaving Larry to the echoing noise of their footsteps as they continued to walk.

He'd never had a problem like this, in his previous life his mom was the kind of person who’d never shut up, so this was a new dilemma for him.

‘Is she mad I ran away, or is she always like this?’ Larry thought to himself.

They walked a long way through the cave system but never descended. It seemed his mom also made her home somewhere deep inside the third level.

They came upon a massive archway and finally, as if throwing him a lifeline, his mom spoke up, “Come, we rest here.”

“O-Oh, ok!” Larry tried to keep up the chipper attitude as his mom began to saunter under the giant archway. She inspected the walkway with extreme scrutiny before nodding to herself.

His mom stomped her foot and suddenly, Rock-TE shot out of her and ebbed over into the wall of the archway. The wall immediately fell like a curtain, and the rock in the archway dropped straight down and into the ground, it disappeared like a magic trick with only a small cloud of dust forming. Larry shielded his face from the dust and debris that was falling, his mother didn’t seem to care and ducked down and climbed inside the impromptu hole.

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‘Woah...She just did that like it’s nothing...’ Larry was amazed by the simple show of his mom's power. Larry knew Rock Throw, so he had an idea of how hard it was to move stone only using Type-Energy, it showed him the sheer difference between a newborn Pokémon and an experienced Pokémon.

“Come here.” His mother urged him inside.

Larry waddled over into his mom's lap; he couldn’t hold himself back though. It was time to investigate and try and get a hold of some juicy Tyranitar secrets, “You’re really strong Mom! How did you get so strong?”

His mother took his question seriously, she looked up at the ceiling as he sat down in her lap. She looked back down at him with a fire in her eyes, “I fought for my life, and I survived.”

He wanted to ask her to elaborate, but it seemed the topic got her talking, “All my life, I’ve fought.”

“But now,” She looked down at Larry and caressed his head, “I feel like I have something else to look forward to...”

“When I came back to the place where I laid your egg, and you weren’t there...” His mother's arm stopped on top of his head for a second, “...I thought that maybe another Pokémon had come before me, and...”

“Mom?” Larry asked timidly.

The Tyranitar huffed and she continued petting Larry, “It doesn’t matter.” She caressed his cheek using her arm, “You’re here now.”

Larry understood his mom a bit better now, she wasn’t an evil Pokémon, she simply wanted to be a mom and didn’t have any idea how to go about it.

There was hope and ambition in her voice when she talked about laying his egg which was replaced by a clear fear and dread when she talked about not being able to find him after he hatched.

‘I think she needs some encouragement, right now she is disappointed in herself for what happened.’ Larry thought to himself, ‘I should tell her about what happened to me, maybe finding out what I’ve been up to will help her a bit.’

“You wouldn’t believe what I saw while you were looking for me, Mom.” Larry opened, and he began regaling her about his adventures, as they relaxed inside the hideout. He told her about hatching, looking around the caverns, stumbling over the Geodude, and meeting Dwebble. His mom scoffed when he mentioned how the Geodude had threatened him, clearly not worried about a bunch of Geodude beating a Larvitar.

His story continued with his adventures down the cavern, his training of moves, and the gang of Wooper who woke him up rudely. But when the story came up on his meeting with the Misdreavus, he stopped. ‘Should I tell her how I fought against the Misdreavus?’ Larry thought to himself, ‘I don’t know how she’d react, does she want to hear about that?’

The stroking by his mom had stopped again and she looked down at him, “You went on a little adventure.” She said matter of factly, she didn’t show it, but he knew what she wanted when she asked him, “What happened next?”

“U-Umm, as I was walking down the walkway, a Misdreavus suddenly ambushed me. I learned some new moves in the fight, but...” Larry stopped for a moment, “...it was a close fight.” He continued to tell her about the moves he’d learned impromptu and how he’d used all the Dark-Type moves to finally do the Misdreavus in.

The tense atmosphere and scolding Larry expected never came and after a tense silence his mom finally spoke up, seemingly sensing her son's fear, “Is something wrong? You fought well.”

“I, umm, I thought you might be angry at me for getting myself into trouble like that.” Larry sheepishly admitted.

The hand on his head lifted away, “Fighting is bound to involve danger, I would’ve liked to have trained you beforehand, but you did well.” The hand returned to his cheek and caressed it lovingly, “I'm proud of you.”

‘Maybe, having a good relationship with your mom is better than whatever I had with my previous mom.’ Larry thought to himself, he never really had this in his previous life.

His story continued, from finally reaching the second layer to sneaking his way past all kinds of Pokémon using new moves like Dig, then finding out how it was completely useless when he befriended a small Phanpy and his father. The two told him about the friendly relations of most of the Pokémon on the second layer.

The story ended when he talked to the two about the roars he kept hearing, only to find out from them that this was probably his mother, it all coalesced in his quick ascent back upwards using everything he learned and their eventual meeting.

“...And that's how we met each other!” Larry finally concluded, he looked up and back at his mother expectantly, ‘She must have some opinion on this.’ He thought to himself.

The Tyranitar looked at him fondly before simply announcing, “I’m glad we finally did. We’ve rested enough, let’s continue.” as she stood back up.

“Oh, right!” Larry hastily followed, he’d completely forgotten that this was only supposed to be a simple rest spot to catch their breath. He hadn’t even noticed as he somehow managed to turn it into a long Storytime instead.

‘Well, at least mom didn’t seem to mind.’ Larry thought to himself as they continued their long walk back home.

...

The third layer according to most Pokémon who lived there was a simple large walkway to the top of Mt. Silver, with small tunnels interspersed in-between which connected an intricate cave system that snaked around the large middle walkway.

As Dwebble had described back then, only smaller Pokémon, at most to hip or stomach height to the average trainer lived up here in the cave system surrounding the walkway, simply because the walkway wasn’t any bigger to accommodate them.

Larry's birthplace was the special exception in that case, as the large cavern stuck behind the walls of the third layer had a high ceiling, larger pools of water that occasionally dotted the cavern, and a large gathering of different Pokémon inside it, like the ever-present Zubat, which Larry could largely avoid until now, Geodude and Graveler which were spaced between and seemed content to simply laze about in their life.

What Larry and nobody else had known was that this larger cave system he’d been born into was part of a larger underground network of open space that spanned the entirety of Mt. Silver and according to his mother, allegedly much more.

Just as the second level had a multitude of entrances from every side of the mountain, the third level had them as well. The only difference is that they were either completely frozen over and buried underneath an unknown amount of snow or buried literally by landslides and much more, only occasionally opening by chance with the outside weather.

“We’re almost there.” Is mother tersely commented as they kept walking and before long, they arrived, as they rounded a corner and a giant cave entrance stood before them. The highest point of the entrance was so far up, Larry could barely spot it in the darkness, ‘This place is so huge it feels more like a tunnel used for cars than a simple cave entrance.’ Larry thought.

Or at least it would’ve if there wasn’t a giant wall of ice and snow blocking off the entire entrance hole.

“This...” The Tyranitar dramatically paused for emphasis, “...is my home.” She turned back to Larry, before pointing at the gigantic wall of ice blocking off the entrance hole.

“I think this wasn’t here before though.”