A biting sensation forced Larry out of his slumber, as one of his feet felt like it was bound to be ripped off.

He yanked his foot away from whatever had bitten into it and cracked his eyes open just a bit when he finally saw what was going on.

“Wha-!”

In front of him stood a Wooper, it stared vacantly at him with a carefree smile plastered on its face, before hopping forward a step and once again trying to put Larry’s foot in its mouth.

Larry for his part simply pointed his foot further away from it, leaving the poor Pokémon to catch nothing but air as it chomped down. He stood up abruptly and readied himself.

‘Alright, I think I’ll have my first fight a bit sooner than planned it seems…’

Larry readied his core, thinking about the energy he’d used just yesterday. His plan was simple, Wooper goes in for a bite, he dodges and bites back with the dark-type move Bite, unlike this Wooper.

‘Does this Wooper not know what it’s doing isn’t going to do anything of note?’ Without that energy from before the Wooper hadn’t exactly hurt Larry much by biting onto his foot, he could still put weight onto it and his rock-hard skin meant the whooper didn’t even leave any marks on him.

The standoff continued and a thought came to him, ‘Maybe this is like a super young child that I’d just indiscriminately kill right now. What if he doesn’t even know what he did was wrong? Should I try and defuse the situation first?’

Just as he thought so, the Wooper finally seemed to ready its next attack and this time instead of uselessly biting down on his leg, it seemed to be planning something different.

The Wooper suddenly spit out a large ball of iridescent glowing water squarely aimed a Larry.

“Oh cra-!” Larry dodged to the side with a start.

Instead of stopping like before, the Wooper shot another, then another. Larry dodged them all, as the thing didn’t seem to even think about the fact that Larry could dodge and simply continued to aim where he stood, not where he’d be.

After its 4th shot, it seemed to run out of steam, gasping for breath in front of Larry, who took this as his opportunity and charged. He shot forward and lunged at the Wooper while channeling dark thoughts about what he’d do to it after he was done with it.

He felt his muscles tense with hidden power and he could just make out on the edges of his vision as a dark energy began to surround his lips and mouth. A larger set of teeth materialized out of the energy Larry channeled and he opened his mouth wide to bite down on his enemy.

When his mouth closed though, it was over nothing but air, he’d instinctually closed his eyes when biting down hard and when he opened them he saw the Wooper hop away from him in surprise.

It snickered to itself as it flopped back into the pristine lake Larry had drank from the night before.

When it resurfaced it was with two other Wooper on its left and right, the group was laughing to themselves as they looked at Larry.

“Hehehe! Look how scared he was! You totally scared him to death!”

The original Wooper, shining with a white energy, hollered over to Larry while suppressing laughter itself, “Yo! Maybe next time don’t go to sleep on Quagsire territory if a rock-type like you doesn’t want to get its butt kicked! Hahaha!”

All of them broke out once more in uproarious laughter, swimming in circles around each other.

Larry was absolutely furious, uncharacteristically so, he felt himself get stronger for a second, and then right after all the anger went straight to his head and he felt himself begin to sway and teeter around in clear confusion.

‘Wha-, what did th-, Wooper just doo...?!’ Even Larry’s thoughts were slurring after the clear taunt from Wooper. It took all his concentration just to keep upright as he was fighting for balance.

In his peripheral vision, he could see the three Wooper leisurely strut out of the large basin of water.

“What do you wanna do with this one bro?” The left Wooper looked over to his apparent sibling.

“Hmm, let’s just get this one done with now with some Water Guns. On my signal.”

Larry’s thoughts were swirling in panic, he couldn’t think straight as he tried to think about what had just transpired. In his confusion he lunged forward to defend himself with a Tackle, charging forward with all his strength to tackle an opponent.

The energy came to him far more easily, white normal-type energy empowering him as he recklessly charged into the group of three Wooper.

“Woah!” One of the three Wooper hollered out.

The three hadn’t been paying attention and it was already too late when they finally took action, the one on the right shot out an impromptu water gun.

The type-energy-infused water hurt like needles on his skin as it impacted, when the water bubble popped and covered his entire side Larry wanted to simply curl up and cry, but he persisted as the Tackles type-energy empowered him.

He stumbled to the left and nailed the Wooper there straight in the stomach with his large horn, on hit the energy in his body routed itself straight into the Wooper, which flew backward in a scream of pain. The little Wooper skipped several times on the hard rock floor before finally impacting the basin they’d hidden back in.

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The other Wooper quickly fled back into the water themselves after the attack, “You said this was gonna be an easy one, look at our bro! Now he’s hurt, we we’re supposed to watch over him today, not use him as a decoy!” The right Wooper chastised the original Wooper.

“Dude, they never did anything after I hit them with Swagger before, I swear I don’t know why this one was able to fight back!”

It all quickly became clear when Larry heard the move the Wooper had used on him. Larry was still stumbling, but the confusion he felt was slowly subsiding. A light went up in Larry’s mind at the mention of Swagger, ‘That’s right! Swagger! It raises the targets attack but also confuses them!’

‘That Wooper just used a damn status move on me!’ This was genuine first for Larry, the way the move impacted him made him feel unsure of himself, like he’d just done something completely out of character for himself.

He thought about the implications of that, but in his half-dazed state, he could barely make head or tails of where the ground was, so Larry quickly fled away from the water hole.

‘I’m not making my first proper fight a 3v1, I’m smarter than that!’

The Wooper seemed to be gauging their chances now, with one of them having taken a considerable hit and the other two not particularly wanting to get hit themselves. They seemed to be looking for easy fights.

It became abundantly clear why the Wooper had attacked Larry as he trundled his way away from the basin, as he heard the argument between the two siblings continue.

“Bro, you’re friggin’ stupid. Of course, he could attack you, he’s just confused. I’m so going to tell on you when we get back, that was real stupid.” The right Wooper snickered.

“Wha-, DUDE! Don’t tell on me! You’re gonna get me in trouble! I just wanted to get some easy prey like always, it was nothing but a small overestimation, dude.” The middle Wooper tried to defend itself.

Larry’s mind had finally cleared up again and he could barely believe what he was hearing as he made his way away from the basin of water, ‘The little shits are out here simply doing the Pokémon equivalent of torturing the local neighborhood pets because they’re bored?! And I thought my streak of recklessness post-reincarnation was big, these kids don’t even know how many feet they might be stomping on…’

‘Never going back in there, that's for sure...’

He made his way back out and under the small entrance hole to the basin and quickly checked for no Graveler traffic on his left or right. Another problem soon came to the back of his mind.

‘I don’t know how long I slept, I don’t have a clock and in caves, I don’t even have any daylight to know how long I’ve slept.’

His mind felt clear and the few moves he’d used in his little scuffle with the Wooper didn’t seem to make him feel any more winded, so Larry guessed that everything was alright. The Water Gun one of the Wooper had used, had made him feel like a bullet just impacted him, but after just a few minutes he couldn’t even feel it anymore, it was weird.

‘Do Pokémon just recover insanely fast when they’re not fighting or am I missing something?’

Although he felt a bit sad to be moving away from the watering hole so quickly, he wasn’t going to jump back down there and get himself killed right now either, fighting against three Wooper.

‘I did successfully use Tackle, so at least I got something out of it. It’s even easier to use than Bite!’

He replayed the fight in his head, his reckless attacks making him feel quite queasy in hindsight.

The Wooper's use of Swagger stood out in his mind, ‘Maybe next up I should try my hands at learning a Status Move? I think it would help me out in a fight, aren’t Tyranitar like the masters of map conditions in the competitive scene?’

For now, Larry continued his way down Mt. Silver, the games sure made the caves seem smaller.

…

Something felt off, Larry couldn’t exactly place it, but just something felt weird. He swiveled his head around nervously as he sneaked from outcropping to outcropping. There were no Pokémon around, else he would’ve heard them or seen them before they did him, he was sure of it. So, what was giving him that feeling?

Larry peeked out behind another rock face on the side of the walkway, hiding behind stray boulders on the edges of the walkway when he could, ‘I don’t know what it is, but some is around here. I’m not just going crazy!’

A bloodcurdling scream erupted out of nowhere from the walkway up front,

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!”

His veins turned to ice and Larry's stomach dropped down and out of his nonexistent pants, ‘What the actual hell?! What was that?!’ Quickly sinking back behind the rock face he’d peeked out of in abject horror at the banshee scream he’d just heard Larry fell into a silent panic.

‘T-That wasn’t a human, right?! B-But it sounded just like one.’ He tried to grab at himself for comfort but found himself to be shivering in utter fear.

In his fear, Larry began talking to himself to motivate himself to move, “A-Alright Larry, pep talk! Whatever's back there, check on it and then dip all the way out of there. I-I’ll even go back and grovel in front of those Wooper if they’ll have me.”

Finally, with all his courage gathered, he gingerly peeked back over the rock face he’d hidden behind. Just as he was about to though, a dark figure jumped straight at him, practically floating over the rock face he’d hidden behind.

“Oof! Wha-!” The figure had intentionally tackled Larry back, but when Larry caught himself and looked up, he didn’t see a clear creature, but a shadowy entity shrouded in darkness, like a black and purple spot floating in front of him. Two red and yellow eyes stared at him with clear malice under which a large red toothy grin spread across the entirety of the creature's shadowy form.

“AAAAHHH!!!” The thing gave off another bloodcurdling scream as it lunged straight at Larry with reckless abandonment.

Larry, in a state of absolute fear, did the first thing that came to mind to defend himself and attacked with the move he’d used the most in his second life, Bite. All the energy he could muster to drag out of his core in the short moment given to him quickly coalesced around his mouth and the thing that had been charging at him, seemed to panic as it saw the dark energy take form, it desperately tried to break off its attack but was simply too late, as it got caught in Larry's jaw.

He bit down with every ounce of strength he could muster and when he heard the thing give off a pained rasp of exhalation. Larry forced the creature down onto the ground and stamped on it with a foot, before charging up another, far stronger Bite.

The thing tried every which way to weasel away from him but could only helplessly flail around in panic. All its confidence from before seemingly having evaporated.

Every single hateful, evil, and dark thought about the creature lying under his foot was charged into this attack and once Bite wouldn’t take a single modicum of energy more, Larry released the attack. He could feel his muscles straining underneath his rocky skin and the gigantic rows of teeth manifested by the dark energy sure made for an amazing display as he bit down on the thing once more.

“AAAAHHHhhhhhh...!”

The thing seemed to be screaming in pain this time instead of intimidation and its scream quickly died down as the life drained out of it and the creature fell silent for the last time. The veil of darkness surrounding the creature cleared up and Larry was horrified by what he’d found.

In front of him laid a dead Misdreavus with teeth marks all over its feeble form. In its shrouded form and Larry's sheer state of panic he had mistaken the iconic necklace of Misdreavus for a giant smile and its red pupiled womanly eyes for the glaring hateful eyes of a monster.

Larry had just accidentally killed his first Pokémon.