Chương 115: Battle With Falkner

The next day, Liam prepared to head to the gym. Shadow woke up and felt quite refreshed from this new change. Liam discussed about the new changes with Shadow and how he was feeling since he was able to communicate with him. Shadow said he felt at peace and didn't feel quite angry anymore. He could feel the natural energy around the air, and he could also feel the same thing Liam felt. Like he could draw energy from the air in order to power himself up with it and thought that it would be pretty cool to go on a rampage with it.

Liam left the Pokemon Center and went to the gym. Riolu was just following behind Liam as they made their way into the gym. Riolu and Eevee did not get along due to them both being pet type Pokémon. Eevee felt like Riolu was going to take his place so they never got along as they kept fighting for Liam's attention. Liam just returned Eevee to her poke ball as he went through the gym trainers to get to Falkner the gym leader.

When he arrived, Falkner was just hanging out smoking weed and seemed like he was very relaxed as his bird Pokémon were just flying over his head. It seemed like he was just gazing into the air as he watched his Pokémon fly around. Liam then came and asked for a battle. Falkner looked at the referee and told Liam to start it off. Liam was surprised by the laid-back attitude that he had but he ignored it and brought out Kabuto.

Falkner had brought out a Pidgey and Pidgeotto which were both low levels, but Kabuto made easy work of them due to his rock type moves and ice type moves. He froze up their wings until they fainted. Falkner was amused as he thought he finally met a trainer strong enough to take on one of his strongest Pokémon Noctowl. He told Liam that Noctowl was a level 80 and one of his strongest Pokémon and if he's able to beat him, because he could tell that Liam has even stronger Pokémon, he will give Liam the badge.

Falkner was extremely bored from this small town and beating all these small-time trainers, so he wanted a bit of a challenge. As he summoned his Noctowl, Liam brought out Omanyte. Liam told Riolu and Kabuto to watch the match as he also brought out his Charizard to face off with Noctowl. Falkner got excited to see a Pokémon not common in Johto as he started another round.

Falkner quickly asked Noctowl to use hypnosis. Charizard fell asleep but Liam woke him up right away. This shocked Falkner as he thought Charizard would be asleep for much longer than this. Charizard woke up and charged towards Noctowl and used slash which Noctowl dodged the attacked by flying up higher and used a psybeam to try to blast Charizard away.

Charizard simply dodged the attack and sent out a flamethrower which did great damage to Noctowl when it hit him. After that attack, Falkner had sobered up a little as he noticed that the Charizard was a different color and even his attacks seemed different. Even the way he dodged the attacks reminded him of Elder Li.

And so, Falkner asked Liam if he had been to the Bellsprout tower.

Liam nodded as Falkner now understood what was going on. He himself had lost against Elder Li once and didn't want to train with him. But it seems like Liam had trained with him and benefited from it as he was able to be as nimble as one of those Bellsprouts. The battle continued as Charizard continued to send more flamethrowers. Noctowl was now tired of dodging the attack but Charizard seemed like he was brimming with energy as he kept shooting on and on without getting tired.

It seemed like Charizard was drawing more energy from the natural air as time went by. He was perfecting it. Falkner saw that this was a losing battle, so he forfeited the battle and gave Liam the badge. Falkner thanked him for the good battle and thought that maybe he would go get some training from Elder Li one day. After that Liam took his Pokémon to go rest at the Pokémon Center. He wanted to go to a bar to relax but they only had small restaurants there. It seemed like that City wasn't quite a City as they didn't have much to do there.