Not even 10 seconds after Larry had dug himself down underground, he started feeling the tremors of a fight and it didn’t seem to be going well, ‘Wasn’t a fight supposed to be a quick thing? Punch someone's lights out or slash someone with something?’

  Whatever, he needed to get out of here, ‘I have a promise to keep.’ Larry continued to munch away at the earth, as loud booms and cries sounded out above him. He needed to make it out of here, he had promised his mom they’d meet again. Biting down on the earth, he noticed that the soil he bit down on started to taste far muddier than normal.

  It made sense, as he was underneath a large body of water, ‘Better dig down a little deeper I wouldn’t wanna drown down here…’ As he dug down further, the soil became harder and harder, it was obvious, since there was an entire mountain pressing down on the ground above him. It felt far weirder that he was doing alright down here since all the times he’d used Dig previously had been in close contact with cave pathways.

  It seemed that instead of the rubble, debris, and gravel the ground and walls most of the caverns consisted of, it was nothing but completely hard rock down here. When he’d dug up to meet his mother for the first time, the gravel of the walls and ground of the caves had caved back in after he’d dug through it. His tunnels practically disappeared behind him if he dug too far. Down this deep, the tunnels he dug were carved into stone, allowing him to crawl around freely.

  Larry had a hard time trying to eat the stone, instead of being able to simply shovel loose soil and stones into his mouth to chow down on them. With the stone, he instead was forced to bite off pieces before breaking them apart in his mouth. It took far longer to make any headway down this deep compared to near the surface.

  Another smash sounded out and Larry felt the earth rumble above him as loose pieces of gravel started to roll down into his tunnel. He kept digging, as the occasional thump or smash echoed through the earth above him. Another boom, then a roar. He didn’t have a good internal clock, but the sounds quieted just a few minutes after he’d begun.

  ‘That’s good. Or is it good?’ He thought anxiously as he kept munching away, ‘Seriously, is this good? I don’t know…’

  With the sudden bout of silence, another noise came to the forefront. A cracking, followed by an aggressive dripping of water, until the drip slowly turned into a running of water.

  ‘Seriously? I don’t believe it…’

  Now Larry wasn’t stupid, but drowning in the depths of his very own cave system felt like such a stupid way to die that he simply couldn’t believe it. He was forced to start believing when a wave of water crashed around a corner behind him.

  ‘Oh shit!’ Larry immediately dug upwards, his heart thumped in his chest as the dirty brown water sloshed against the corner in his tunnel where he’d just been a few seconds ago and began to rise upwards, chasing after him. He’d stopped to look down, but before he could even look back up properly, he felt a swish of water nip at the tip of his feet underneath him.

  “Eep!” The water was rising and rising quickly, ‘I have to get out!’ Pushing even more Ground-TE into his jaws and arms, Larry began to bite chunks out of the stone far more frantically than before. Larry could still hear the water slosh around behind him, but he was so panicked he didn’t even think to check if he was making good progress, as long as he wasn’t underwater he had a feeling he was going to do just dandy.

  ‘Can’t go straight up either, because I’m under the lake!’ He realized as the stone slowly began to give way to the rubble, dirt, and gravel from the surface. He would need to continue digging horizontally instead of digging vertically up and he wasn’t sure if he could escape the water that way.

  Muddy dirt passed by his tongue and he knew he had to turn, he stopped and quickly allowed himself to look down and he saw that he had made headway on the rising water, it wasn’t close anymore, but still rising unfortunately. Larry continued to dig horizontally, trying to make his way out on any side of the lake. Unfortunately for him, in his panic to escape the rising water, he didn’t know which way was which.

  Larry shook his head annoyedly, ‘Damn, it doesn’t even matter, does it? Let’s go before this water rises anymore!’

  He looked to the side with the driest dirt and simply decided to dig in that direction. With his surroundings once more not consisting of solid rock, he was lucky enough to speed up his digging, the rubble also looked to be collapsing back down behind him and blocking the water as he dug. Loose dirt was far easier to eat, as he could simply shovel it into his mouth to dig his way around instead of needing to bite pieces off of it.

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  The water behind him finally subsided, stopped by another part of the collapsing ceiling, small droplets of water still leaked through, but it seemed the rocks had managed to stem the flood.

  ‘Phew! Thought I was done there for a good while!’ Larry thought with a sigh of relief. Inspecting the wall, it seemed to be holding the water back properly, so Larry took a few short seconds to calm himself. He turned back around to continue, but just after a few mouthfuls worth of soil, a giant flood of water crashed into the tip of his tunnel, ripping it apart and pulling him outside and into a rushing underwater river.

  “MM-!” He yelled in surprise as the rushing water pulled him along, luckily he had quickly managed to hold his breath, so as not to drown. Larry had shut his eyes instinctually but he wrenched them open inside the water, the water was weirdly warm, being far warmer than water deep inside a cave in winter had any right to be. He couldn’t see much in the dark underwater tunnel, but rushing waves were pulling him along somewhere as he spun around frantically.

  The tunnel dug up and the waves pulled him upwards, launching him up until he suddenly surfaced. He managed to breathe a single gulp of air before gravity pulled him back under the waves. ‘Air! Air!’ Larry swam with all his might for the small pocket of air he’d found, but the current was far too strong for him to resist and it seemed like his body wasn’t even buoyant enough to float underwater, as his attempts at swimming didn’t seem to have any sort of effect.

  Just as quickly as he was pulled underwater, he suddenly was propelled to the surface of the current again. He was swung along with the waves wildly and completely uncontrollably as he gasped for air. Pulled back underground into some sort of tunnel, he once again panicked for a breath of air. For a split second, he saw a bright light shine out above him; it dimmed back down to complete darkness shortly thereafter.

  Larry knew that the current was transporting him somewhere and that he needed to stop it. He tried to grab hold of anything he could find in the current, but with the murky water impairing his eyesight, it was a far bigger challenge than he had imagined. So far, he had managed to pull loose pebbles from a wall as he rushed along. He had also managed to touch the banks on the surface of the river with one of his arms. It just turned out that his piddly little arms were far too weak to stop his entire body's momentum.

  In his periphery, he saw another large boulder he could stop his momentum with and he readied himself. As he rushed past, he pushed himself off of one side of the underground tunnel using his legs. He spun wildly upwards towards the rock, reaching for it using his hand, he realized he’d overcorrected and shot into it with the side of his head. Larry saw stars in his eyes and he ricocheted off the stone into many more just down the line. He bounced wildly inside the current now, smashing from one side of it to the other between the walls.

  Taking another hit to the head, a few to the chest and his legs clipped another stone, somewhere along the way he’d managed to lose the breath he had been holding and sucked in some water. He smashed into another rock, and his vision dimmed, ‘’Air! I NEED AIR!’ A paddled around in panic as he clipped another rock, but the current didn’t surface anymore, it was only going downhill by now, speeding the water up significantly.

  A sharp turn in the current smashed Larry into the side of the underground river hard, his arm gave off a sickening crunch and he blacked out for a second, before regaining consciousness.

  Luck wasn’t on Larry's side, he was hurt and utterly exhausted from flailing around underwater, ‘Is- am I dying again?’ He thought dazedly as his view grew dim.

  …

  Larry woke up to lungs filled with water, his eyes shot open as he started to cough incessantly, “Ack-! Cough! Huurgh! Wha-!” His everything hurt, far worse than ever before, just moving his head to the side and coughing up water felt like stabs in his chest.

  “Gah! Wha- What the hell?! Cough!” His entire body felt as if it had been thrown into a dryer, his rocky skin felt muddy and weak from all the water and he was still completely out of breath, it already felt like a herculean task simply staying awake.

  His eyes finally fell on his surroundings. An empty nothingness of white stared back at him. There wasn’t any ground to speak of and Larry floated around helplessly inside a great expanse of white.

  Almost immediately, Larry panics, ‘What? What is this place?’ He tried to raise his head to get a better look, but a stinging pain didn’t permit him to.

  He is in some sort of endlessly white space, the entire place is completely white, and the water he’d coughed back up was floating off into the distance above him. Instead of moving, he strained his ears, it was unsettlingly quiet, he could even hear his own heartbeat. The weirdest part was how utterly featureless the space he’d found himself in was, with no walls or creases of any kind. Now that he’d situated himself, he realized there wasn’t a door or entry of any kind to be seen.

  ‘Where is this?’ Larry's eyes fell on his stubby arms, ‘I know I didn’t die. Else I probably wouldn’t be a Larvitar,’ His thoughts spiraled and he started to hear his own heartbeat quicken, ‘Probably, right?’

  Larry coughed up some more water into his mouth, before swallowing it back down in thirst, he was still far too hurt to properly assess the situation. One thought immediately came to mind as he lay in the white expanse, splayed out on his stomach, ‘Maybe it's man-made…’ He shook his head and admonished himself, ‘I’m going crazy here and I can’t even move…’

  So he closed his eyes, ‘Let’s sleep.’