Spicy flew home back to the island with confidence eager to show Garlic that he had not only learned Expand but did it his own way. Last time Spicy had seen his brother he couldn't do much other than being able to release and suppress it as a whole and use the Death Ball technique their father taught them as well as sense others and the recently taught skill Splitform from his brother of course. Spicy opened the door to his brothers house and walked inside instantly making eye contact with Garlic. "Br-" Spicy muttered before being interrupted "Where have you been?" Garlic said. "I've been doing my own special training..." Spicy replied with a confident grin on his face. "Oh yeah? That's good to hear. Make any progress?" Garlic asked. "As a matter of fact brother...I've learned to Expand the same way you do." Spicy said eagerly waiting for his brothers response but Garlic had an expression of surprise and disbelief "Hm? Is that so? Im waiting." Garlic replied. Spicy then admitted a large amount of condensed neutral energy around his body before taking it all back in at once and his muscles grow while his raw power spikes a great bit. "Heh...What did I tell ya?" Spice said with confidence before seeing the look on his brothers face. "..." silence filled the room for a small moment before Garlic responded "I'm actually quite impressed. You've made great progress since you left...But this...This is not Expand." Spicy was shocked "If you really think that then fight me...Ill prove it." Spicy said. "Very well little brother." Garlic said standing up and the two brothers went outside. Garlic used the true Expand and took Spice down. "I take my energy within myself and expand it outwards. You're sending energy out. That's an unnecessary step thats holding you back a great deal. You need more training. But like I said...You have made great progress. Im glad you're starting to further your knowledge in energy use." Garlic said to his little brother before walking back inside.
   Being put into his place by his brother fired spicy up but also greatly embarresed him "I cant believe I did that..." Spicy said to himself "I should've known..." He then flew off in anger. Spicy began to feel the same way he did back when his father was training the two brothers, simply not good enough, the only difference was that instead of his father pushing him to his limits it was himself trying to catch up with his older brother and make him proud. Spice landed on top of a mountain again training to master this technique staying gone for another three weeks doing nothing but his own sad version of expand over and over trying to figure out a way to skip this step he had already grown habit too. He just couldn't seem to grasp hold of that much energy inside of himself. After the long three weeks of training with almost no pay off he returned home to the island.
   When Spicy returned home instead of following his normal training routines throughout the day instead he would just meditate. He spent the majority of his time for the next few weeks meditating and trying to even gain an even further grasp of energy manipulation. Instead of sending his energy into multiple parts of his body seperately he tried manipulating his inner energy as a whole. At first this did little to nothing. Although he had the focus to manipulate his energy along with his splitforms he still wasn't used to manipulating his energy as a whole as he had been shifting it to specific points up until now. But after some practice he was able to expand his energy from within outwards causing his muscles to slightly grow increasing his strength without any spike in raw power draining him but it was just a slight increase. This was not expand but it was however a step in the right direction.
    Spicy continued training his ability to manipulate his own energy as a whole shaping it in different ways for another two months. At this point he had made a lot of progress but still hadn't tried using Expand again yet. Deep down he was afraid he would fail and he thought that if he failed again then he would lose faith and stop progressing. He felt for sure that he had mastered his brothers technique and was so exciting to show him but then made a fool of himself and felt like a dissapointment to his brother although this was more than likely not the case. But one day when he was strolling through the forest he came across a couple kids talking about the Turtle Hermit. Apparently they had seen him use his expand ability in a match against somebody because they were talking about how "sweet" it was. This triggered a fire inside of Spicy fairly quick and on a whim he returned to the bald mark he left in the forests a few months back in his training trip. It had slightly grown up now. There were no trees but it wasn't quite as bald. He spread his legs apart and closed his eyes focusing on all of his inner energy as a whole and condensed it before causing it to expand outwards causing his muscles to very noticeably grow in mass increasing his strength to extreme amounts while a powerful layer of energy surrounded his body greatly increasing his durability. His power stayed relatively the same just barely spiking. "This..." Spicy muttered "This...is expand..." He said before releasing his energy reverting to his normal state. He had so much confidence that this was the real thing that he didn't need to test it out. At least not on anything but his brother. He then returned home to the island with a new found confidence in himself.