"I read up on your Gym before coming here," Josh retorted while smiled back, though much of his face probably could not be seen over his visor. He watched a series of rings rose up from the ground, some stretching almost all the way to the "top" of the aviary. "Yep, very similar to my own course. You should race me sometime! Might be fun!" he half-teased the Leader.

Those similarities ended when the numbered rings were set alight. Bladestorm flinched; while little gave the Metal Menace caution, fire was one of those things. Quite understandable for a Steel-type. Alex was making his challenge about as easy as Josh was his own for his challengers, and that was not very. This course, from what he saw, didn't have too many sharp turns; it was just contending with flying center through them.

That is, until the Leader mentioned Josh pissed off his secretary. As a result, Alex arranged for the difficulty of his challenge cranked up to the maximum: despite Josh possessing only one Hoenn League Badge, he was tasked with the same challenge as those with nine Badges!

Furthermore, the Leader had picked a tremendously windy day; as soon as the whistle blew and Bladestorm leaped into the air, both the Skarmory and rider could feel a turbulent crosswind buffeting them. It had to be around 30 knots, gusting to 40 knots. The only reason he had a smidge of confidence was his experience flying a family home from Mt. Pyre in even uglier weather conditions. Bladestorm's saddle would protect Josh from getting singed by heated metal, but it wouldn't protect him against the blazing rings being blown about by the wind. He tugged gently at the avian's reins, trying to make adjustments for both the crosswind and the rings that moved at the mercy of the strong winds.

While there was no lightning and hail to contend with at this course, the wind high up was absolutely ripping. It was strong enough that even Corviknight Taxis would avoid at all costs. If it were a much more timid Skarmory Josh was astride, he was sure there would be a lot more nerves running through both of them. Bladestorm was different, though. He was headstrong, fearless, and even a touch reckless.

A sudden updraft sent the two flying well above the level of the next two rings, Josh forced to lean forward on his mount to get him to shed altitude. This caused the steel-type to gain far more speed than Josh was comfortable with, given the relatively sharp turns required to fly through the rings in sequence. The turbulence had crossed well into the territory of "strong" by now.

Unlike his own aerial course, which allowed for the challenger to miss a certain number of rings nonconsecutively, Alex's did not allow Josh to stray from the intended flight path at all. As the wind shifted from a tailwind to a crosswind again, Josh knew he was going way too fast. He performed a daring maneuver, leaning Bladestorm in one direction and tugging on his reins in the other, pulling him into a side slip.

The advanced technique would create a lot of drag and rapidly slow Bladestorm and his rider down, fixing the timing issue the sudden wind shift caused and putting them on a course with the center of the next ring. The danger was in coming out of the side slip; because Skarmory were largely just efficient gliders and didn't have a lot of thrust in their metallic wingbeats, stalling after facing forward again was a real risk. The racer trusted his instincts and released the side slip as late as possible before flying toward the burning ring, following Fenrir at a safe distance.

Bladestorm had just barely cleared the last ring, Josh's skin singed from how close he had come to contacting its flames. They had made it through, and whilst avoiding a deadly stall at that! The Leader had come over on little Josh's comms unit. It seemed he had passed the ring course by the skin of his teeth. Taking a moment to catch his breath during the brief downtime, he didn't get much of a break before he realized it wasn't the facility that was driving the strong winds; it was Mother Nature.

The strong wind gusts were now sustained, accompanied by a precipitous temperature drop that signaled only one thing: he was about to be in his favorite element. He loved lightning, as was evidenced by his penchant for electric-type ride Pokémon. Unfortunately, the only electric-type ride Pokémon big and strong enough to carry him into the air was the Legendary Pokémon Zapdos, and that angry bird was not one particularly willing to wear a saddle.

Conditions were about to get really rough, Josh able to feel Bladestorm's hollow metal frame vibrating after a loud peal of thunder. He tightened his hold on the reins as large raindrops pounded the two of them. If he wasn't in his full racing suit, that rain would have hurt. A lot. He took advantage of the strong wind gusts to get his Skarmory back up to speed.

When the Leader pointed out a bright red flag in the distance, Josh had to squint to see it. He barely caught a glimpse of it before the rain got so heavy that it disappeared from view. Fixing his eyes on the spot where it was at, he kept the steel-type in as level of a flight path as possible, constantly tugging at the reins in one way or another to account for sudden changes in wind as well as the field of unidentifiable black objects the Leader asked him to weave around.

Josh's visor was completely covered by one of the unidentifiable black objects! It definitely wasn't solid; semisolid at best, considering it hit his visor with a splash. Thankfully, Bladestorm didn't seem to be affected. "Try to fly as straight as you can while I get this cleaned up!" Josh cried over the storm. Thankfully, the Metal Menace's blades seemed to slice right through whatever these objects were. It was just unfortunate that one of them was at the perfect angle and speed to completely obscure the racer's vision!

Josh put complete trust in his steel-type to handle all navigation, holding the reins in just his left hand, and only for support at that. He rubbed the outside of his visor's plastic "windshield" with his right hand, trying to clean off whatever goop was keeping him from seeing. This was taking a lot longer than he thought it would. If this didn't work, he wouldn't even know whether or not he passed the checkpoint. The storm didn't make matters much easier; every time a gale-force wind gust came, he had to stop what he was doing and grab the Skarmory's reins with both hands just to maintain the balance needed to avoid being blown off his mount.