After their little celebration, his mom put him back down and Larry slowly eased off of his sandstorm. He could feel his new TE appendage slowly dissipate and the dust and sand around Larry slowly lost its speed and gingerly landed onto the floor.

Larry himself had noticed that his sandstorm was far smaller than his mother's, with his mothers being able to fill up the entire cavern when she was still raging, whereas his measly sandstorm looked more akin to an angry breeze coalescing around himself in a circle.

‘I can barely see a thing from the outside inside the storm itself, I’ll need to keep an eye on where my enemy is if I want any chance at using this in a fight, else I’ll just blind myself’ Larry had found out that if someone was inside his sandstorm, he could feel them if he was currently stirring the storm, unfortunately if they weren’t in his sandstorm, it simply acted like a veil which hurt his view.

“You are doing amazing, Larry. I have one last move I want you to teach you for now.” His mother spoke up suddenly with a proud smile still plastered on her face, “With how quickly to took to the previous moves, I don’t imagine this one will take you long.”

“I’m ready!” Larry had had low hopes for a healthy relationship with his mother before he met her, but with how they took to each other he almost felt bad about still having plans to leave, she was lovely, if not a little bit combat-obsessed. Their relationship was far more similar to a master and student than a mother and child, although Larry couldn’t complain, he had found himself actually enjoying the training.

Sure, it was hard and had given him muscle aches and bruises like he’d never had before, but the sheer thrill of fighting made him forget it all. ‘I don’t even know if that is normal… Maybe I really should’ve taken some martial arts classes while I was still in school. Or maybe this is all some Pokemon business, with how all Pokemon seem to love combat.’

His mother turned away and walked away a few steps, before turning back, “This move will drop rocks from the ceiling in a large area. Step back a bit, I’ll show you.”

‘Rock Slide, maybe?’ Larry thought as he guessed what move this might’ve been in the games.

He quickly hopped back a few steps and then turned back to his mom, who powered her leg up with Rock-TE and then slammed it down onto the ground, the TE rushed through the ground and up to the ceiling in veins of glowing energy. When it reached a point roughly in front of her, the energy inside the veins began to spread out and drew a big circle on the ceiling which began to drip with gigantic pieces of rock.

‘Wha… How does that work? It doesn’t damage the ceiling, but only manifests rocks at the ceiling?’ Larry furrows his nonexistent eyebrows in consternation at the complexity of the move, he can’t see any way that this will be easy to learn.

When the loud crashing of boulders into the ground finally subsides, Larry is the first to speak up, “Um, Mom? This might sound rude, but isn’t this move overly complicated? And how is it supposed to work outside of the cave?”

His mom seems confused by the question, before realizing what her child meant, a grin already spreading on her face, “Ah, I see what you mean.” Wordlessly she walked over to a part of the cavern, where the ceiling heightened, Larry following behind her.

“Watch this.” With a grin on her face, she repeats the move. The TE rushed up parts of the wall again, before losing its way and simply floating into the air and forming into a ring of Rock-TE in the air. Before Larry can begin to question the move, rocks begin to form above the ring and drop down through it.

The rocks seem to simply grow out of thin air and form by themselves while floating in the air, going from pebbles to basketballs to full-blown boulders in a matter of seconds before gravity suddenly seems to take hold of them and they begin to drop. “Woah, so this move doesn’t need a ceiling to function. That's weird!’

“There are multiple ways this move can be activated,” His mom chimes up as the move subsides, “Firstly, is dropping rocks on your opponent from above, secondly is manifesting the rocks near you and then launching them.” His mother uses the move a third time, though this time, the TE rises up her body and releases behind her shoulders shooting out and manifesting rocks just above and behind her.

She eyes a particular stalactite in the distance and the boulders shoot forwards through the air without any urging, nailing the stalactite perfectly. Larry can barely contain his excitement now, “Wow! That's so cool!” He turned to his mom with stars in his eyes, already imagining himself chucking rocks like a psychic, “Teach me!”

His mom gives a grin and a shake of the head at Larry's childish excitement before stepping to the side, “Give it a try, start out with the falling rocks version.”

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Larry immediately charges Rock-TE into his legs and stomps, but nothing in particular happens, “Huh?” He stomps, once more, but still nothing happens, “Wierd…” A lighter stomp onto the ground suddenly releases the Rock-TE from his leg, resulting in a tiny mound of dirt raising itself painfully slowly out of the ground.

‘Wait, I’m not trying to use Rock Throw.’ The rock recedes a few inches, still standing tall, before it slowly continues to recede, like a faulty car window. Larry bashfully turns to his mom, “Um, how do I use Rock Type-Energy? I only ever used Rock Throw, and even that was kind of a thing I learned in the heat of the moment?”

Quirking her head to the side like a confused Golden Retriever, his mother furrows his brow at him before she answers matter of factly, “You managed to learn how to conjure a Sandstorm so quickly and you already knew another Rock-Type Move, didn’t you? Why would this be any different?”

‘Is it any different?’ Larry thought to himself, ‘I’m collecting dust from the air, in a specific spot using Rock-TE and forming it into rocks and then just dropping or even shooting those rocks.’ Larry pictured the move, but it just didn’t come to him, the most he could do on the spot was make a few rocks rise out of the ground like he did for Rock Throw or move around dust using his TE appendage akin to Sandstorm.

His mother's encouragement of, “You don’t need to learn it in a single day” and “It took me far longer” also didn’t quite help.

After a frustrating fifth and sixth attempt, Larry turned to his mom for some advice, “How do you move the TE around outside of your body? How does it move to the ceiling and create that plate up there?”

His mother thought about the question for a second before answering, “It’s intent, maybe you haven’t mastered the concept of Rock-TE yet and only come so far using it by some other factor.”

Larry wanted to smack himself up the head for a second at this answer, he’d used primarily Dark and Normal-Type moves up to this point with moves like Dig and Rock Throw being stand-out moves that worked more due to his STAB-bonus than for any talent he’d shown off for them. ‘Of course, I never actually thought up what concept I’d need to evoke when using Ground or Rock-TE, so while they worked, it was mostly because I’m already a Rock and Ground-Type Pokemon and not because I’m such a goddamn genius!’

‘Now only to figure out how to conjure up Rock and Ground-TE the same way I did with Normal and Dark…’ Larry thought to himself as he stood there, ‘Rock and Ground are both hard, they’re Rock-Hard, yet at the same time, they can dish out damage as well…’

The unchanging and immovable power of Rock, no normal damage can effectively damage a rock, they’re meant to be hard to break, hard to move, hell, just plain hard in general. Yet at the same time, the Type encompassed a certain type of training as well. Regimens not only focus on the body but also the improvement of mental fortitude and a general settling of one's mind in its base as well. Rock-Type was mostly given to Pokemon who were either part made of rock or other kinds of minerals, yet the type extended beyond that into imagery surrounding Rocks and to a lesser extent the concept of being ‘rock-hard’.

Larry almost let a ‘Snrk!’ sound escape him as he thought about it, but thankfully he held it back.

Ground on the other hand seemed far more broad in its typing, focusing on things like Mud, Dirt, and Sand primarily, being given to Pokemon who are primarily seen in deserts and other parts of the world where grass might not grow. Larry at least thought of it as a secondary typing for Rock-Types, but it was more than that, being awarded to mostly survivalist Pokemon who didn’t live in the most well-off parts of the world or Pokemon who lived in the ground. Bones and the imagery surrounding bones were also often awarded Ground-Type, because of their origin being mostly underground.

He first tried his hand at using Ground-TE, the concept came to him scarily easily, like it was imprinted into him before he realized, ‘Oh, wait. It is.’ With Larry being a part Ground-Type he’d found it as easy as breathing to conjure up Ground-TE, it seemed though that using the mental concept sped up the process even more. The Ground-TE took the places it was supposed to before he could think where he wanted it to go.

Much of the same was true for Rock, so with his mother's advice applied the TE shot out of his arms and up into the air before he could even prompt it to. The TE formed a ring in the air and Larry thought about conjuring Rocks up in the air, before long small motes of dust began to coalesce and clump together. The little pebbles flew into each other slowly, forming larger and larger stones, before an entire set of boulders floated in front of Larry in the sky.

“That looks good, now drop them.” His mother prompted Larry and he did as instructed, the boulders fell with hissing air before colliding with the ground with a loud crash, some splitting and some others staying together.

Larry didn’t need any prompting before he began to conjure the stones behind himself, although he could feel this move pull a large amount of TE out of his body. ‘Not the most energy-efficient thing, to throw dozens of boulders at your enemy's general direction…’ This move was going to suck his reserves dry until he had a bit more TE to spare.

With nothing more than a mental prompt the boulders whizzed over his head, accelerating away from Larry into one of the cavern walls. When the sounds of the crashing rocks finally stopped Larry felt his mom move closer behind him and gently pat his spiked head.

“You’re gifted, Larry. It took me far longer to learn all of these moves when I was still young. You’ll go far, I just know it…” When Larry turned around, he saw his mother's proud smile shine back down onto him. Yet, something else was behind her smile.

“Wha…” Before he could ask her though, she lifted her arm away and turned back to their hideout.

“You must be tired, Larry. Get some rest for today.” She turned back to him with a pained grin on her face, “Tomorrow will be a big day.”