His mind slowly came back into focus and Larry felt a freezing cold bite into him, where to had he kicked his blanket again? And why was his mattress so damn hard, it felt like he was sleeping on a damn gravel patch…

He blearily cracked open an eye, ‘Oh yeah, still a Larvitar…’ Larry almost chuckled, but he really wasn’t feeling up to it right now, he had a headache, he was cold and as he tried to turn over in his little hidey-hole on the side of the walkway he felt all of his muscles ache.

‘Ack! Well, at least it isn’t a Wooper trying to bite my foot off.’

Fighting for one's life really does tend to get you closer to death's door, and the fight yesterday had literally required everything from Larry, he felt it today.

‘I think I should be approaching the second level soon at least, if everything Dwebble told me is true then it going to be even worse than my time up here.’ Larry adjusted his lounging Position while casually planning out his day.

He sure didn’t enjoy knowing that his life was going to be even harder soon than it has been now, but Larry still had some fight left in him.

GGGRRRGLLLL…

‘For now, I think I’ll get some food…’ With practiced ease Larry conjured up a Bite and bit down on the Wall just behind him, the hard-candy sweet and sour taste of goodness in his mouth told him that it was the right choice at the moment and he started eating away, slowly and surely expanding the tiny crack in the wall he’d slept into a sizeable hideout. He still didn’t know how it all fit in his stomach but he wasn’t going to complain.

CRACK CRUNCH CRUNCH

CRUNCH CRACK

CRACK CRACK CRUNCH

‘God, I don’t even remember what stones are supposed to taste like, makes you wonder why it tastes like everything nice right now.’ Larry absentmindedly thought to himself as he stuffed another mouthful of gravel into his mouth.

‘Alright, after my fine dining in here is done, I’ll go out, check if the Misdreavus or any other Pokémon has come to stake out my hideout and if she hasn’t, I’ll quickly continue to make my way out of the cavern.’

Larry thought about the second level, ‘A giant funnel with lots of lighting from snow-covered cave exits that lead out all over Mt. Silver. From the way I was freezing my butt off at the top, I’d say I would probably freeze to death out there. So I’ll have to make do inside and sneak down as quickly as possible onto the first level.’

His energy was slowly running out, so he popped one last pebble in his mouth and finally got up, he had eaten apart so much of His hideout he could stand up now.

Touching the ceiling, Larry had an idea, ‘If I can’t find any places to hide, why don’t I just make my own? I can eat my way into practically any surface, I don’t need to look for hideouts!’

He wanted to admonish himself for not thinking of it sooner, but it just seemed so asinine. He wasn’t as fast as a Drillbur and he didn’t have the move Dig, but he could dig pretty well.

‘At least not yet, hehe…’ Larry thought menacingly, ‘Just you wait, wildlife of Mt. Silver, I’ll dig my way out of here if I have to!’

Just as Larry meandered his way out of his hidey-hole and into the walkway, it happened.

ROOOAAAR!

A rumbling and loud roar echoed down the walkway, seemingly reverberating off of every single surface until the entire cavern shook, as small pieces of dust floated down from the ceiling.

Larry immediately went cold, his heart sped up in panic and he looked around frantically.

‘What the hell was that?!’

The roar was strong enough to make the entire cave system rumble, whatever made that roar was mad, Larry felt it.

‘Considering that it came from above, I think I’ll just make myself scarce really quickly…’

He quickly and silently extradited himself from his hidey-hole and made way for the second level of Mt. Silver.

…

Larry had stopped at a stalactite that was dripping water into a small basin on the side of the walkway, it had been a lucky coincidence that he’d found it.

He wasn’t sure if he needed to Drink water considering he only ate rocks, but every time he did it felt refreshing, so he wouldn’t hold himself back either.

This watering hole was especially tasty, it seemed water high in Minerals like the dirty and cloudy basin of water under the stalactite he’d decided to try was delicious.

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‘Wouldn’t have given roadside Slurpee a try back on earth, but the Calcium and other minerals in this one here just make this taste like a Soft Drink!’

The variety of earthly minerals diluted into the water from the stalactite above gave the water the same qualities as the dirt he loved, only without all the effort of eating.

Before long Larry had almost sucked the entire basin dry and righted himself back onto two feet, content and happy. Larry wiped away a small ‘mudstache’ he’d gotten before thinking to himself,

‘Isn’t this really disgusting? I just sucked up a little puddle of mud, I didn’t even think twice about it, did I?’ He debated changing his eating Habits before shrugging, ‘Well, maybe I’ll do something about it if the taste gets worse…’

Larry continued downwards, jumping from rock face on the side of the walkway to rock face. He’d become more confident in himself by learning new moves, but he wasn’t a moron or a battle-junky.

He’d been lucky enough to not get spotted by a single Pokémon yet, or to be more accurate, he hadn’t spotted anyone even using the walkway in his entire stay on it.

There are a few reasons this could be, but Larry thought that most likely any other Pokémon that was using the walkway simply wasn’t a big shot enough to show itself, bad enough at hiding to get spotted by Larry or vying so much for a fight that they’d attack Larry.

Misdreavus had been a ghost-type, one of the most confrontational types, which loved to play tricks and mess with others, but most Rock, Ground, or Water Types that could be found on Mt. Silver were bound to be less hotheaded. That goes for practically all Pokémon able to be found in Mt. Silver, except for Larvitar, with it being the Pseudo-Legendary of the generation.

In the games Mt. Silver was an area designated for high-level Trainers because of the high level of the Pokémon inhabiting it, this wouldn’t mean that all the Pokémon in Mt. Silver are inherently powerful, but that the experience level of Pokémon in Mt. Silver was higher than in previous places, meaning Pokémon live longer here and learn more here.

With Levels not translating into real life, that had been the most logical explanation Larry could come up with using his limited experience in this new Pokemon life. The games also showed Mt. Silver as being at most a thirty-minute walk if you sucked at the game. Meanwhile, in real life, Larry had spent two sleep cycles simply walking through the third level of the Mt. Silver caves, scaling the mountain from the outside was bound to be the easier feat if you just wanted to see the top.

Now, granted Larry had no way of knowing how long he’d actually spent as a Larvitar yet, Dwebble had insinuated that in their time together, they hadn’t spent more than an evening together and Larry had felt spent enough to sleep two times out of exhaustion after that, with one probably being cut short by a gang of rude Woopers. If he was just guessing he’d say this entire panicked second life as a Larvitar had at most been around thirty to forty-eight hours.

It felt weird like he couldn’t clearly remember every part of his human life and like his new life had redefined who he was in more ways than one. He still didn’t know if this was something he should be having a panic attack about, but it was so late at this point that it would feel illogical too.

‘I’m all over the place, aren’t I? Maybe I need someone to ground me a bit more?’ Larry thought. Dwebble was a long walk back up the mountain, and if he saw anyone else, they’d be bound to run because he was apparently the apex predator of this cavern.

This damn cavern, the well-used almost carved through walls on both sides of the walkway, Larry didn’t like it when he woke up and he still only tolerated it now. ‘I’ll get strong enough to both fight my way out of here, I’ll do whatever I have to.’ he vowed.

With the promise made to himself, he began circulating his type-energy and using the moves he had taught himself while moving forward, if nobody else was going to jump him he might as well use the time for something productive.

...

Larry had taken some time to get acquainted with his new moves while trying his best to stay undetected and what he could tell is that both were incredibly useful in very specific ways.

Pursuit made for the perfect move if he ever needed someone beat that either had backup waiting or was already fleeing, but unfortunately, it was very weak in Larry's testing resulting in him not wanting to use the move outside of its niche.

One great bonus he’d found out about while remembering his fight with the Misdreavus, was that a Pokémon didn’t particularly need to be switched out of the fight or flee, but also just retreat in general.

Since the games didn’t have a way to indicate retreat in a fight, the move had never applied to it, but the Misdreavus hadn’t been intending to flee, it was vying for a fight and only retreated to dodge attacks while being hit by the doubled damage of Pursuit.

His other new dark-type move, Payback seemed far more useful, with it being stronger if Larry gets hit by an attack before attacking himself. In the games, Payback was far less used because the speed of your Pokémon's attack was set in stone, but in this world, he could simply let himself be hit and then counterattack if Larry was confident in his defense and bulk.

It meant a lot to Larry, because his speed wasn’t his strong suit, and he knew that this wasn’t going to change in the future. His slower attacks mean he is going to need to take every chance he can get for a little more damage.

With Payback, Pursuit, and Bite for his Dark-Type Attacks, Larry's last new move gave him slightly more coverage and was far easier for him to train without another Pokémon being required to train the attack, Rock Throw.

Another Rock-Type-empowered Pebble flew across the walkway impacted the walkway wall and hit the walkway wall with a loud crack. His throw for the Misdreavus had for sure been a fluke, his rocks now flew far quicker than before. He still felt that it wasn’t a particularly strong move, but he did like that he wasn’t forced to wait for enemies to attack him anymore and that he could do any semblance of damage from a distance.

‘It also made for great time killer...’ Larry thought as he flicked another pebble at a stone in the distance, the TE in the stone shot out of it on impact and the sharp tip of the stone exploded off it.

‘Next up, I’ll try my hands at some status moves or other non-attacking moves.’ Larry’s brainstorming was interrupted as he looked up, trying to spot the next stone in the distance. In the distance though he finally saw the walkway widen and expand before it suddenly simply dropped.

‘Woah! Wouldn’t wanna fall down there.’ Larry approached the edge of the walkway. As he peeked down, he saw the spiraling walkway continue downward all the way to the middle into another hole. He could see the entirety of the second level from up here.

He could also spot a gigantic Ursaring enter from one of the many cave exits, trailing behind it were its Teddiursa cubs. At another exit a Donphan rolled violently into the cavern, smashing off stones and boulders every which way. The Ursaring looked over to it from the other side of the funnel with clear hatred in its eyes.

‘Yeah, they probably never heard of ‘Love thy Neighbor’ around these parts...’ Larry thought to himself as he started on his journey down the funnel.