After Larry parted ways with Dwebble, he finally felt invigorated for his new life, like this wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to him and he was simply going along with it. He wasn’t sure if he felt excited, but there was certainly more pep in his step than before as he made his way down the walkway.

By now Larry knew of the dangers of the cave, the Pokémon he was bound to encounter, and all the dangers they posed, he was ready.

‘Wait, I’m going to have to fight, don’t I?’

‘How do I use moves anyway?’

…

‘Damn it!’

Larry seemed to have forgotten a crucial part of the Pokémon experience in his little adventure with Dwebble, Larry hadn’t fought a single day in his life, not as a Pokemon and not as a human. Even his little meeting with the Geodude during his first few hours alive luckily seemed to go down entirely verbally.

Larry groused to himself while making his way down the mountain cavern, “Great, just great. I’m the only Larvitar in existence to not even know how to use attacks… Way to go Larry…”

“But wait, can’t I simply learn any attack I want? I mean, for Pokemon it's also just instinct, why can’t I just do the same?”

With a plan set, Larry continued down until he found another outcropping. The dent in the wall continued to dig inwards until it abruptly stopped at a seemingly random stone. It wasn’t Larrys best plan, but for now he needed to make sure he knew how to defend himself, so he consulted himself about viable moves.

‘Alright, I’m not entirely sure what moves a Level One Larvitar that just hatched are supposed to know, but I’ll start with the bargain bin stuff, can I do a Tackle?’

Kind of awkwardly shuffling over, he readied himself like a footballer, going down onto a single knee and supporting himself with a single arm.

Larry put on a drill sergeant voice and gave a half-hearted, “One! Two! Three! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hah!” and with a spring in his step he raced towards the boulder. He sped up as much as his short stubby legs allowed him to, which was surprisingly fast actually.

Maybe a bit too fast, because soon Larrys legs couldn’t keep up anymore, ‘Woaah- gonna cra-‘

BANG! With a hit that seemed to echo around the cave endlessly, Larry crashed into the wall just left of the boulder he was aiming for. The wall itself seemed fine afterwards. Larry was smarting quite a bit though.

“Ouch! Alright, note to self, learn your limits before going over them.” He nursed a hurt nose while seated on the cold stone floor.

GGGRRRGLLLLL…

As he sat there on the floor, another move to try and perform came to Larrys mind, ‘I still need to learn how to actually eat anything, don’t I? Else I’ll just starve!’

He realized he hadn’t eaten a single thing in his second life. Sure, he had stuck that rock into his mouth while searching for an exit on his own before meeting Dwebble, but there was no way he could eat that thing. It was the size of a jawbreaker, without ever actually beginning to melt in his mouth, because why would it, it's a stone.

‘Alright, let’s try and learn Bite, maybe I’ll have some more success!’

Larry scooched a bit close to the rock he’d been planning to tackle and bit down. Once again though, reality is cruel and nothing particular happens and the amazing-tasting stone simply didn’t budge. Larry simply sat there on the ground helplessly sucking on a stone in the middle of a cave.

‘There’s got to be more to this… I actually ate stones before, didn’t I? How else would I have been able to dig my way out of the ground?’

Larry didn’t have the faintest idea what he’d done differently that time, but back then he’d been able to simply eat his way through the loose gravel his egg was covered under. He thought over the specifics of moves.

An image came to Larrys mind, in the anime even just using a move like Quick Attack resulted in the Pokémon being surrounded by a white energy that coalesced around them. Moves like Dark Pulse also seem to not be physically occurring and simply use some type of Dark-type energy to damage the opposing Pokémon.

‘Bite is a dark-type move, dark type is primarily used by rude or evil Pokémon, it’s meant to be a morally ambiguous type, with the Japanese translation even simply calling it the evil type instead of dark. So maybe I have to think about a specific image when I want to use the move?’

The idea that there is some sort of energy Pokémon call upon was his best chance to pull off moves.

‘Maybe I really need to call upon some sort of energy instead of simply recreating the move physically and hoping it will happen? I can tackle and bite all day, but if they’re not infused with that weird energy I remember it won’t have more effect than my physical body can output…’

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Removing himself from the suckled stone, Larry closed his eyes and thought about all the things he considered ‘Dark’, being brash and loud, acting rude to others, fighting unfairly, and just generally being evil.

He felt it inside himself, a dam had cracked open. An energy flowed out of his core, he could feel it travel up his neck and into his mouth. He opened his mouth and could feel it, the muscles in his jaw were stronger than before and his teeth had a different form now.

With a loud CHOMP Larry bit down on the stone and like a sharp knife going through stale bread he could feel himself gaining ground and actually cracking into the stone. As his mouth slowly clamped down he ripped his head to the side, like the stone was an especially hard piece of bread, and to his surprise, it actually worked and the rock in his mouth cracked away from the larger boulder.

Larry stood still with the stone in his mouth for a second, ‘Woah…’ and then continued chomping on the piece in his mouth like it was a stale piece of bread.

CHOMP CRACK CHOMP

GULP!

“I. AM. A. GOD-DAMNED. GENIUS!” Larry raised his arms into the air in victory as the wonderful taste of rock in his mouth slowly subsided. ‘Holy crap! Larvitar are crazy! I just bit off an entire piece of rock and ate it like a piece of stale bread!’

Larry thought about the implications of that before another thing interrupted his thought process.

GGGRRRGLLLL…

‘I think I’ll go ahead and eat myself full for now. Let's just try not to eat up the entirety of Mt. Silver for dinner today… Hehehe...’

Larry repeated the same process as before, Dark thought, energy moves and he took another bite.

CHOMP CRACK

Then another. CHOMP CHOMP CRACK

And then another. CHOMP CRACK

Before long the boulder Larry had been planning on using to train his Tackle had disappeared, Larry though couldn’t complain, he felt satisfied.

‘Haa.. Ahahaha! This is the life, isn’t it? Relaxing, eating good food… I’m living the dream!’ Larry thought to himself as he lay in the groove he ate himself into and nursed his stomach.

‘Larvitar are bound to be above heavy they’re just eating boulders and stones all day!’

“Haha! This is great!” Larry laughed to himself while comping down on more of the sheer rock face around him, but eventually, the stone became harder to chew.

Before long, Larry was fighting for every single bite and the energy reserves at his core started to feel like they’d dried up. He inspected the place after his feeding frenzy and realized he’d eaten the entire stone which was around 4-5 times his size.

‘Damn, I really am insatiable! Let’s hope this doesn’t affect my figure...’ Larry thought to himself half-jokingly as he sauntered back from the wall. ‘Let's keep going, I still need to find a place to hide away into to sleep.’

Larry made his way back onto the larger walkway and kept to one of the sides, Dweeble had taught him a lot in their time together, even if he’d never told him explicitly, and seeing how carelessly he’d walked around made him cringe now, the Bug-Type definitely was onto something.

Larvitar have superior eyesight in the dark compared to humans, but the high ceiling along the walkway was still shrouded in darkness to Larry. He occasionally glanced upwards only to find a gaping nothingness staring back, the darkness in front of him wasn’t much better, but at least he was walking into it and slowly revealing it. It made Larry realize how vulnerable he was.

As Larry advanced down the walkway a new side cavern was revealed and Larry curiously peered into it, it seemed like a low tunnel that small Pokémon could walk down, so Larry made his way inside, being forced to duck down due to the large fin on top of his head.

The inside of the tunnel was far larger than the entrance and Larry looked around the darkness with clear interest. As he advanced down the tunnel, he could see how the tunnel had been made. A large basin of water was revealed on the lowest part of the tunnel, ice and snow from the top entrance had thawed, flowed down the walkway and had carved itself down into this hole over a long, long time. This small side cave seemed to be one of the basins the water collected in.

Gazing down into the water from above, Larry was amazed at how incredibly clear the water was, it reminded him of looking through Plexiglass. The water itself was completely untouched with no ripples or movement to disturb it. He smacked his dry lips together in thirst.

‘Now that I’m looking at it, maybe I am a bit thirsty...’

Suddenly feeling far thirstier than before, Larry knelt down to the lake and took a few tentative sips of water. When the first drops hit his mouth, he finally realized just how incredibly thirsty he’d been as he dunked his entire mouth deep inside and gulped down the clear liquid with reckless abandon.

‘Oh, you never really know how thirsty you are until you get a sip of cold, crisp water on your tongue! It’s like it's 2 AM and I just went into the kitchen for a drink!’

Larry reveled in the moment, every sip bringing energy back to his newborn body. He felt it deep in his core, the energy he’d used freeing himself from his egg, exploring the underground, and much more, like eating apart the rock face, was slowly being refilled with every sip. Before long, Larry actually began to feel sated for the first time in his second life, the pebble he’d put into his mouth never really did anything but taste good and his one-day-long adventures with Dwebble had really tuckered him out.

‘I feel like I could still eat even more if I wanted to, is a Larvitars stomach really that limitless?’

He rose back up and then found a spot in the side of the cavern to sit down, this cavern was probably Larrys best shot at security if he needed to stay somewhere, so he decided to make camp here.

During his first bit of downtime in a while, security, safety, and the new world Larry found himself in came to his mind again.

Escaping the caverns of Mt. Silver was still a terrifying prospect, he’d have to fight, and probably kill another Pokémon. There was even a good chance that Larry himself might be killed. He wouldn’t even want to know what he’d do if some human caught him, would he like it, hate it? Would they free him if he didn’t?

‘Larvitar might eventually evolve into Tyranitar, but I’m not that strong yet. I just found out the basics, I might know what's out there waiting for me, but even I know that I haven’t seen or felt even half of it yet...’

‘...Saying you’ll kill someone to save your own life and actually performing the actions connected to that really are two entirely different things...’

Larrys mind was going a mile a minute, bouncing from one topic to another as his predicament came to mind once more. As his eyes finally began to flutter close for the day, a single sentence was slurred out in his sleepy state, “I’ll make this second life worth it, no sitting at home all day. I’ll live, I’ll survive.”

With that promise made to himself, his eyes finally fell shut and he fell asleep.