A Farewell Battle

With the Solaceon Contest over, Bai Shi and Ash's group parted ways with Zoey and stayed in town to train together for a while longer.

Bai Shi's Pokémon finally made some progress through this training.

As he had hoped, Buneary successfully mastered Ice Beam.

Even Dunsparce had more or less learned Flamethrower.

Only Zangoose ran into an unexpected development.

Instead of learning Thunderbolt, Zangoose picked up Thunder Punch.

It seemed all of Zangoose's talent lay in those paws.

Of course, learning a new move was always a good thing.

Bai Shi was extremely pleased with the results of their training.

He wanted to drag Ash into training with him every single day.

He nearly forgot all about searching for Mega Stones.

Unfortunately, Ash still had to head to other cities to challenge their Gyms.

Their several days of intensive training would have to end when they parted ways.

"Bai Shi, how about a battle?"

With their departure drawing near, Ash suddenly made a suggestion to Bai Shi.

His Staravia had learned Brave Bird through their training.

He was eager to find someone to help him test the results.

"Sure, no problem. Let's make it three-on-three."

Ash's idea was exactly what Bai Shi had in mind.

So he agreed without hesitation.

The two hit it off and quickly settled on a battle.

Brock and Dawn were happy to watch, too, and took their places at the sidelines.

"Staravia, I choose you!"

Once the battle began, Ash sent out Staravia without a second thought, eager to put that new move to use.

"Starting with Staravia? Just what I wanted!"

"Go, Staravia!"

Bai Shi smiled and sent out his own Staravia.

He believed his Staravia was the strongest of them all.

"Staravia!" (Little buddy, let me show you who the king of Staravia