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Normally he would be met with the cold silence that Shoal Cave is best known for.

However, he was more than a bit surprised to see that there was a fucking—

“What the hell’s going on in here?!” he blinked, throwing up his hands to shield from the sudden Sandstorm that was ripping through the cave. Since when had the weather changed from snow to grit?!

What was causing this to happen—

He then caught sight of a—okay, that was a Pokémon he hadn’t seen anywhere, but how in the unholy, frozen circle of Hell did that get in here?!

Lars then broke out into a run, intent on putting as much distance between himself and the strange Ground-type as much as possible.

There was a reason he hated sand…

---

passing on Hippowdon

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If Lars wanted to go on a litany on why he hated sand, he’d have done so already.

However, this time there was something that caught his eye—and a split-second decision to put his own PokéGear on vibrate had him stop to quickly silence the thing before it started letting out this weird keening noise because holy shit, there was something he didn’t have yet!

‘Oh look, certainly this one you’re not going to skip out on?’ he heard the snarky voice in the back of his mind address him, before he pinched the bridge of his nose for a few moments.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m not skipping this one because I’m pretty sure I don’t have this one yet! Just watch, okay?” he replied back, before getting another derisive snort from the Articuno as he set to work.

The moment the Sealeo saw Lars, it quickly chucked out an Ice Ball attack—which he didn’t even bother dodging out of the way of! Instead, he met the attack head-on, catching it quite literally with his ungloved hands.

This made the Sealeo stop for a few moments and gape at what the crazy human was doing in front of him, before—

Before the sphere of ice suddenly started growing in size, in this crazy human’s hands no less!

Was Lars even trying at this point? He chuckled as the initial Ice Ball grew bigger in his hands, before he casually rolled it back to the Sealeo like a bowling ball.

The dual-type sniffed at the ball, curious, before blinking and swatting at it with its paw. Instead of shattering, the ice held—and wow, he was a hard one to impress! All manner of Ice Ball shenanigans he would start previously in a bid to show off to the other Ice-types was blown out of the water—how the hell could this human do that?!

“What?” was all Lars said with a grin, before another Ice Ball was thrown his way. Catching it in the same way as he’d done with the previous one, he then chuckled before attempting to build a ‘snowman’ out of the projectile—

While not as perfect nor as refined as he wanted it to be, it was definitely more than enough to impress the Sealeo, who then waddled over to where Lars stood, admiring his ‘handiwork’.

“What do you think? I know I suck, but hey, if you want to see more… I mean… I can show you more of this, if you want.”

With that he held out his hand to the Sealeo, wondering if it was going to take him up on the offer.

---

capture attempt on Sealeo!