The world stopped and his heart beat in his chest like a jackhammer as Larry stared down below his feet. Just under his foot laid a corpse, a Misdreavus, bite marks covered its incorporeal form as it slowly began to turn into smoke or dust.

‘I-I just killed someone! Or do ghost Pokémon not die?! Oh god, oh god! Wha- what do I do?!’

Larry’s breaths became short and laborious, no matter how much air he took in, it felt like he was suffocating. He removed his foot and stepped away from his first kill.

Or was it? This was a ghost-type Pokemon, could they even die? Larry didn’t know and it gave him pause.

“Y-You’re not actually dead, are you?” Larry cautiously said out into the darkness around him. He didn’t know for sure, but the Misdreavus in front of him had begun dematerializing, this felt weird to Larry.

He remembered them being knocked out like any other Pokémon when beaten in a fight. Larry just hoped that wasn’t just the sensibility of a children’s show.

‘I did use a dark move, which should do a lot of damage since it's super effective, but Bite is one of the weaker dark-type moves, there is no way two Bites would kill a Pokémon that had been surviving on Mt. Silver.’

A snicker from behind him startled Larry, and when he turned around, he saw the Misdreavus floating a distance behind him.

“Sure got some moves,” The Misdreavus said haughtily with a feminine voice, “try defending against this!”

A purple energy coalesced around a small light that floated away from the Misdreavus and Larry could guess what move this was, ‘Confuse Ray! I’m not going to get confused again like with those Wooper!’

He dodged to the side and saw the floating light dim and go out quickly after. He was just about to counterattack again, before hesitating, the image of the fake corpse replaying in his mind, ‘I don’t want to kill this Misdreavus…’

Larry suddenly stopped and looked at the ghost-type stoically, “I don’t want to hurt you. Can you stop attacking me? Else I’ll be forced to fight back.” Larry diplomatically said to the Misdreavus.

The Misdreavus looked shocked, before breaking out into a giggle, “Pfft! Haha! Well, guess I can’t say anything against that! Alright!”

Larry was happy that this could be resolved amicably, “Phew, thanks! I thought I’d have to hurt another Pokemon. Up higher in the cave, there were some young Wooper who were just a straight-up gang of hooligans, y’know! One of 'em even used Swagger on me!”

The Misdreavus floated closer to him, “Really? Well, that just sounds horrible!”

He looked a bit confused by the Misdreavus acting so theatrically, but he was more curious about the move the ghost-type used, “By the way, what was that move you used to create a double of yourself?”

The Misdreavus snickered to itself, “That was Substitute, and you can’t be asking people for their moves just like that! There are a few nice Pokémon out here, but they never live that long.”

“Hm? Why?” Larry asked.

The Misdreavus broke out into another giggle, “Fufufu! Well, if you’re nice to everyone then you’re bound to get stabbed in the back sooner or later!” She laughed to herself as she floated up and down giddily, “Just like THIS!”

‘Woah! She tricked me!’

The ghost-type charged ahead immediately, it shimmered with white Normal-Type energy. When the Pokémon's face began to morph back into the gaping and monstrous face it had been on the Substitute. Larry immediately felt himself involuntarily stiffen, he couldn’t run away anymore, he was stuck.

With no other avenue, he charged ahead. The energies in his core stirred and began to move, but it was too late. The Misdreavus shimmered once more, this time with purple light, probably Ghost-type energy, it turned around and then immediately returned with an even more horrible face grafted over top of the previous one.

Just when he was entranced in the new face shown to him, he felt a hit throw him backwards. Larry skidded along the stone floor away from the rock face he’d used to hide behind. His body hurt, but he needed to move if he wanted to live, so he fought to get his feet back under himself.

He heard a giggle from behind the rock face and could see the Misdreavus slowly meander out from behind it. She was confident, this wasn’t a real hunt, she was playing with him, and he hadn’t even realized it.

The Ghost-Type had been playing with him as all of them had done in the anime, ‘Damned Ghost-Types and their mind games, why do ghost-types have to be such assholes?!’

Larry panicked in his mind, as he unsteadily readied himself, ‘She’s a Ghost-Type, so I can’t use Tackle, I’ve basically only got one move right now. I need a really good idea right now! Else I really am done for!’

Larry picked his brain for any effective moves that he could try his hand at right now, if he didn’t learn them now, he’d be dead, ‘New Moves, new Moves... C’mon brain! Work!’

The Misdreavus was already going for another attack, and that was when Larry finally found a thing that could work. He once again began melding his energy, this time into his core, refining it, like a hard candy machine would meld and mix the candy over and over until it was finally mixed.

Another attack by the Misdreavus hit him, but he couldn’t stop now. As the ghost-type impacted him, the energies from her attack once again invaded his body. He flew backwards once more, holding onto the energies inside his body with everything he got, the energies outside his body from the ghost-types attack also began getting sucked into his body, and the pain subtly diminished, but he wouldn’t stop now, as he still needed to release the attack.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

As he got to his feet once more, the Misdreavus mocked him, “What’s wrong? Lost your will to fight again, want to call another time out? Hehe!”

But as Larry stood up and readied himself, the energies inside his core were finally released as the hatred for the Misdreavus who had tricked him. A dark, black shimmer surrounded his body, and he shot forward faster than ever before.

‘The perfect move if someone faster than you keeps attacking you, Payback!’

The Misdreavus couldn’t even act before Larry impacted it, as she had attacked him beforehand, the energies from her attack added onto the one Larry unleashed. Payback as a move deals double the damage if used after the User is attacked, making it perfect for a Pokémon like Misdreavus which has a weakness to Dark-Type and had the higher speed stat in this fight.

The Misdreavus yelled out in pain, the move had hit it hard, and it seemed to be feeling the damage. Before it could do anything else, Larry did his best to activate another move, pushing the type-energy to turn into another Bite.

He bit down on the Misdreavus floating form and heard another yelp escape her. More confident in his chances Larry tried his hand at another move he felt he could do, a new type of energy.

His power moved down instead of upwards and out through his feet. A rock near his arm grew straight out of the ground and he grabbed it, he finally released the Misdreavus from his jaws and she quickly floated away in the hopes of outranging him.

But Larry pushed more energy out of his core and into his arms, the rock in his hands began to glow with the beige type-energy of Rock and as Larry reached back as far as he could he planted one of his feet back.

‘Rock Throw! Kind of self-explanatory but every good Larvitar needs a good, ranged option!’

With an almost comical level of effort, he pushed the stone forward and threw it at the floating Misdreavus, who skillfully dodged out of the way, tracking the trajectory of the rock the whole way back down.

“Haha! You MISSED!” The Misdreavus taunted from her place floating above him, but Larry wasn’t about to let her flee now.

His energies began to stir again, he felt himself slowly become winded, so he needed to end this quickly. The energies surrounded his legs and arms, empowering his muscles. Larry could do it now, so he began running up to the wall of the walkway before compressing down and pushing upwards into a giant jump.

“Huh?!” the ghost-type seemed confused by the sudden increase in skill for this young Larvitar, but Larry was being driven by his instincts at this point, letting the energies in his body dictate his actions.

When his foot hit the side of the wall, he bounced off it, like a spring into a literal wall jump, headed straight for the Misdreavus.

‘Pursuit, when a Pokémon is fleeing or retreating this move does double the damage!’

The ghost-type didn’t move, simply gaping at the incredible athleticism, when he impacted the floating Misdreavus, he took her down onto the ground with him. The two of them rolled uncontrollably for a second before Larry began hitting her with his tiny dark-type energy empowered arms.

He sat on top of her and simply hit her with one punch after another and before long the small yelps and pained gasps from her stopped as she passed out.

Larry had worked himself ragged and was gasping for breath sitting on top of her, he could barely breathe. He raised his head and simply stared at the ceiling, before triumphantly raising both of his arms and yelling out, “I. AM. A. GOD-DAMNED. GENIUS!”

He stayed there for a short while, simply relishing in the feeling of the fight, ‘Haa... Haa... That was some of the most exhausting stuff I’ve done my whole two lives, I could’ve died, right? I just fought for my life?! I feel so... I don’t know, so, ALIVE!’

His heart beat in his ears and he could feel the blood rush through his veins, Larry felt like he was about to go feral with sheer adrenaline passing through his veins. He dismounted the ghost-type, who seemed to still be out for the count, and simply lay on the ground, unconscious but not dead.

Larry was still fighting for breath and to stay upright, all those new moves of his had needed a stupid amount of energy and he felt himself start becoming faint a few times just keeping upright, so he slowly fled.

‘I… I need to get away from here before she wakes up. I honestly don’t know if I’d win that a second time.’

He dragged himself away from the fight, limping further down the walkway until he literally couldn’t walk anymore, with his legs feeling raw and beaten and wobbling like jelly he placed himself down in the next outcropping, a small cavernous hole barely big enough to fit him, it was at most a twenty minute walk away from the downed Misdreavus.

Larry wanted to do nothing more than fall asleep but was time to review his day, ‘Alright, met a band of two-bit bandit Woopers basically bullying anything living on their mom's turf, fled from that place, and somehow got jumped by a literal ghost. Ghost gets outed by me as a Misdreavus that wanted to mess with me, goes full killer, and tries to murder me, I somehow go fully feral and flip the script on the Misdreavus, barely getting away with my life.’

Just like that Larry had learned three entire moves, from just Tackle and Bite, he now also had Payback, Rock Throw, and Pursuit. How had he done it? Honestly, he just remembered what the moves were supposed to do, felt like a Larvitar might be able to perform them, and then applied their concepts. It would’ve probably taken him a lot of time to apply the moves concepts if he hadn’t consumed hundreds of hours of media with the moves inside them.

‘Type-Energy is crazy, no wonder there are legendary Pokémon out there that are basically able to rewrite reality using it.’ Larry had somehow, just through the application of TE, made himself into a wall-jumping ninja. He didn’t know what to think of it, the TE made him move in particular ways and shaped his actions, it felt more like a figure inside of a videogame performing an animation than Larry actually doing these things himself.

His instincts had shown him practically all his Pokémon parts as of now, from freeing him when he was hatching, to shaping and moving the TE around his body. It felt scary, like an involuntary action he had no control over, but he knew he needed it if he wanted to survive.

Larry scoffed to himself, before just massaging his eyes and temple, ‘All of that was so stupid… Why’d I never even properly talk to the Woopers?! And the Misdreavus might’ve gotten a tad nicer and actually told me something if I would’ve given her a chance after beating her, wouldn’t she?’

A memory came back to mind, it was of Dwebble looking at him grimly as he told him about the dangers of the wild Pokémon lifestyle, ‘It’s either hunt or be hunted.’

What the Misdreavus said before their fight also came back to him, ‘Fufufu! Well, if you’re nice to everyone then you’re bound to get stabbed in the back sooner or later!’

“…Maybe they wouldn’t have been that understanding…”

‘Maybe my mindset is just completely incompatible with the way these wild Pokemon think. When the time comes, I don’t KNOW if I’ll be able to kill. What it will do to me…’

He’d gotten lucky with the Misdreavus, the way his blood turned to ice in his veins as he looked at the lifeless corpse of the substitute she had created.

Larry thought to himself as he began curling up into a ball.

“Hunt or be hunted, huh…” The last thoughts on Larry’s mind, as he drifted to sleep, were about the comfortable bed he would’ve slipped into back home on Earth.