章 4: Shadow

As the days went by, Liam was happy and always playing with shadow. Ash and Gary were jealous of their friend had a Pokemon, and they didn't. Professor Elm went back home to Johto, and Professor Oak kept doing tests on Shadow every day to find out what abilities he has. The days went by pretty quickly by the time they knew it, it was five years later and time for all the kids to go on their journeys.

Shadow was a shadow to Liam; they were always together. They were never apart; they ate together, bathed together, played together, and train together. Shadow had four moves for now, which was Shadow Movement, Thundershock, Water Gun, and Ember. Shadow was at a level 14 now, so he didn't have that many moves as soon as Ash and Gary got the starter Pokemon, they wanted to have a battle with Liam.

Liam just laughed at this because he knew that they were both just getting started, so he had an advantage over them. Liam quickly gave them the battle that they wanted, starting with Ash and his Pikachu. Ash gave a command for Pikachu to do a Thundershock, but it just ignored him, and then when Ash tried to go pick him up, Pikachu used thundershock on him, which made Liam laugh, so he gave up on that and Ash immediately lost.

Next was Gary; he had a Squirtle, so they started the battle with tackle. At first, Squirtle tried to Tackle Shadow, but he went right through him, which shocked him. Shadow had used Shadow Movement, so Squirtle went right through him and ended up behind him, and Shadow used a quick thundershock to make him faint. Ash and Gary both complained that it wasn't fair that he had his Pokemon years before they did, but Liam paid them no mind and said: "you guys asked for it, not me. I knew this was going to happen."

They went to say their goodbyes to everybody, and they got their Pokedex from Professor Oak. Liam went back home to say goodbye to his mother, Marie, and then went to get some supplies like potions and antidotes. After finishing everything, he headed out to the forest where he saw Ash and Gary and Gary told him that he'll beat him one day legendary or not he's going to be the best and Ash said the same thing with fire in his eyes that he's going to be a Pokemon Master. Along the way, Liam saw the two other trainers that professor Oak provided the other two starters to.

A girl called Green, who had Bulbasaur and a guy named Red, who had Charmander. They asked to battle, but Liam told them that they were going to lose right away, but they didn't believe him. Liam brought out Shadow, they were shocked to see him, and they didn't know what kind of Pokemon he was, but they still wanted to battle. Liam faced Green. First, she brought out her Bulbasaur and used tackle as soon as he tried to touch Shadow, Liam called Ember out using his mind since they learned to communicate with each other using their brains.

Bulbasaur got burned and fainted, and then Red came up with his Charmander. He tried to use tackle on Shadow too. Still, Shadow used Water Gun, which Red asked Charmander to dodge, but the water gun was so quick it hit Charmander on his tail quickly diffusing the fire on it, which made him pass out. Red quickly picked up Charmander and ran to a Pokemon center to make sure Charmander was okay. Liam apologized several times, but they were both angry with Liam and thought that he was cruel.

Liam passed Route 1 and saw several Pokemon like Pidgey, Nidoran, Rattata, etc., but he was not interested in any of those Pokemon because he had Shadow with him and that's all he needed for now. Liam didn't make too many stops and went straight to Viridian City. Liam needed to level up Shadow because he didn't have any Pokemon to battle during these five years. After all, they wouldn't let them out of town unless they got approval from Professor Oak.

Liam started to battle with everything and everybody in the forest for the next several days until he reached the next city, at that time Shadow had leveled up to 20 and learned a few moves. Now with the Pokedex, Liam was able to see what level shadow was and which moves he knew, but it wasn't accurate because professor oak didn't have too much information on Shadow. This is all information that Professor Oak assumed through his experience from his old days, so Liam just goes with it.

During one of the battles, Shadow started to beat his wings fast and unleashed a gust by accident on a Mankey, making him learn Gust attack. One time they had met a Traveller that Liam didn't know about. Still, his Pokemon were super strong, Liam got beat right away, but during the battle, the traveler wanted to probe Liam a little because he had never seen Shadow before so he went a bit easy on Liam trying to see what kind of moves Shadow had.

His Pidgeot was so strong that it triggered Shadow to learn the dragon rush during that battle due to such a strong presence and almost hurt pidgeot. Still, this guy was very experienced and quickly made his Pidgeot dodge using a double team and after he used Brave Bird to knock Shadow out. It was the first time Liam had seen Shadow hurt, and Liam didn't even say anything to the guy or got his name and rushed to the Pokemon center. This traveler was the previous champion of the Johto region who had just retired and decided to travel around the Pokemon world. Nurse joy healed Shadow for Liam, and he decided to call it a night and rested in the trainer lounge while Shadow was recovering.