Ash and his friends arrive in Mistralton City for Ash's next gym battle. When they arrive at the gym, however, there's a whole line of trainers in front of them. They are told that Skyla, the gym leader, uses Flying Pokémon and is supposedly good enough to take on multiple challengers on the same day. Ash watches Skyla's next challenge; she reveals all of her Pokémon, Swoobat, Unfezant, and Swanna, while the challenger does the same. However, all Skyla does is analyze her Pokémon vs. the ones her challenger shows, and decide what she believes will be the outcome of the match in advance! She calls them "air battles" and suddenly her ability to handle up to fifteen challengers in such a short time makes sense. Ash is both angry and dumbfounded but Cilan, being a gym leader himself, is absolutely FURIOUS. Skyla is satisfied for the morning and gets ready to fly her plane, but she's stopped by Ash and Cilan who angrily approach her. Cilan demands an explanation but Skyla blows him off.
Ash and co. are greeted by Miles, Skyla's grandfather and the previous gym leader. He invites them inside and tells them that at one point, Skyla took her job as gym leader very seriously, and she was famous throughout the Unova Region. But as more and more challengers came, she had less and less time to pursue her love of flying her plane, so she invented her air battles so she could have more time to fly. Cilan is not satisfied with this answer, believing what Skyla is doing is inexcusable and an embarrassment to their profession, and he resolves to confront her further. Outside, Cilan greets Skyla, now going out of his way to be more courteous. He reveals that he is one of the gym leaders of the Striaton Gym, which excites Skyla, who has never met a leader from another gym before. Cilan challenges her to a battle, even showing her his Pokémon. Skyla does her air battle and claims that she would win, giving her reasons for thinking so, but Cilan is confident that he could win and that battles can't always be predicted ahead of time. With some encouragement from her grandfather and her fans, Skyla agrees to a battle. Unfortunately, she ends up winning. Cilan is horrified and upset that his plan to make her see reason backfired. At this point, Ash has finally had enough and calls Skyla out, not for air battles being against what a gym leader should stand for but because "they're boring", officially issuing his gym challenge.
Tropes
- Berserk Button: Not taking your job seriously as a gym leader is this for Cilan. As a gym leader himself, he considers such behavior to be an embarrassment.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Ash challenging Skyla to a gym battle. Wanting to prove her air battle technique is wrong, he even calls out the three Pokémon in advance that he intends to use, though his choices are not revealed until the start of the next episode.
- Scissors Cuts Rock: Swanna easily taking the hit of Thundershock, despite being 4x weak to electic-types. To be fair, Thundershock is very weak that even Skyla noted that Thunderbolt would be better.
