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New World: Chapter IV: Ashton

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The egg proved to be very untalkative indeed.

Dust had gone home after spending the rest of the evening discussing what creature might be in it. Dust thought that the orange coloration meant it would be a fire Pokémon, like a Slugma (hopefully not) or a Charmander (slightly better). Maddie insisted that the egg's color had very little to do with whatever was inside. Mona thought it was an "Igaboo!" but Dust had long ago learned that Mona rarely said anything worth paying attention to.

And then life went back to normal. Dust worked on the farm, feeding the Tauroses, planting cabbage, fixing the fence after the Tauros broke it, corralling the Tauroses, cursing at the Tauroses after one of them almost impaled him, and generally just doing as he always did.

All except for the egg, that is. Dust would watch it at night, lying on the floor of his room. It had been about two months since the egg ceremony and the damn thing hadn't so much as shaken lightly.

The more frustrating thing was that the other eggs were already hatching. On the rare nights that Dust was able to go into the village proper, he could see the other boys showing off their newly hatched Pokémon to anyone who cared to look. Some of them had already come back with the other one from the wild. Of course, they were no longer boys anymore after that. He had been unlucky enough to be there when Ashton had come down into the village with his brand new Pichu, having it shock people with weak little jolts of electricity. Dust's hair stood on end for almost an hour after that night.

And through it all, he could only look despondently at his unmoving egg and wonder if maybe he had been stupid to choose it. He certainly felt stupid having the only egg in the village that hadn't hatched yet.

A gnawing edge of worry was beginning to creep in on him. What if the Pokémon inside would never hatch? What if it had died inside the egg on the way to the valley? He had seen Tauros eggs that never hatched. What if this embryo was like one of them? What if it just lay there until it finally rotted? He would have to wait a whole other year before he could get a new one!  

He stared at it.

It did nothing.

He continued to stare.

It continued to do nothing.

Dust was beginning to get angry. "Open up, you worthless sack of dried up yolk!" he shouted, and then realized he was talking to an inanimate object.

He reached out and grabbed it. He could vaguely feel whatever was inside stir slightly. Alright, so it wasn't dead, but that didn't mean it wasn't frustrating.

Dust flopped back on the bed. He hated that egg and he hated the unborn creature inside of it.

He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. In his dream, the egg hatched into a giant Gyarados and ate him. It wasn't encouraging.

When he opened his eyes, it was still dark. Dust had always been a light sleeper and he had heard something in the night that woke him up. He looked at the egg. It sat unmoving. It must have been something else, probably a Zigzagoon prowling around. He was about to go back to sleep when he heard it again. That wasn't the sound of a Zigzagoon at all.

Dust got out of bed and exited through the door to the outside; pausing to grab the club he used to fend off Poochyenas and other predators. The moon was down to a tiny sliver, but Dust's eyes were well enough adjusted to the dark that he didn't have too much trouble seeing. He was grateful it was late spring and the air wasn't cold.

The rustling was coming from the Tauros pasture. He climbed over the fence and dropped into the tall grass, staying low and trying to keep out of sight. He crept past the sleeping Tauroses until he could make out three decidedly non-bovine shapes. They definitely weren't Zigzagoons, unless the little raccoons had grown to almost six feet, stood upright and learned to talk. Somebody was sneaking around the cattle, but Dust couldn't think of anyone who would have any business here. They were whispering to each other with words too quiet for Dust to make out.

They were moving in on the inert hulk of Rampage, the very aptly named prize bull.
Dust crawled through the grass, taking care to make as little noise as possible. He was less than five feet away from the intruders. The smallest one, who appeared to be the leader, pulled a small round object out of his jacket. A pokeball. The bastard was going to steal his family's best Tauros.

Dust couldn't wait any longer. He lunged at the thief and tackled him to the ground. The guy was wearing a black mask over his face. Dust pulled it off and found himself staring into the heterochromatic green and purple eyes of Ashton. This night was steadily getting worse.

"'Ello, chummy." The Baron's son said. Four large hands grabbed Dust by the shoulders and pulled him off Ashton. They belonged to Burke and Durke, the two entirely interchangeable and mountainous thugs who accompanied Ashton everywhere. Dust suspected that those weren't their real names, but he wasn't sure. Durke (or maybe Burke, he forgot which one was which sometimes) slammed his fist into Dust's gut. Dust sank to his knees, the wind completely knocked out of him.

"Now, now, there's no need for that, Durke." Ashton said, picking himself up off the ground. "The poor boy is jus' tryin' to protect these 'ere Tauroses from rustlers an' whatnot. For all 'e knows, I could've been a dangerous criminal."

"What are you doing here?" Dust asked.

"Rites of passage, chum." Ashton answered. "Even us nobles got to observe tradition jus' like all you common muck dwellers. Noblesse oblige and whatnot. If we don't set a good example for all you filth mongers to follow, we got no business rulin' ya. That's what the old man says."

"And why are you obliging your noblesse in my pasture?" Dust had a feeling he had no idea what those words actually meant.

"Catchin' my very firs' Pokémon, old bean." Ashton tossed a pokeball on the ground and the little Pichu came chittering  out. "I was all set to go out into the world, make a real man o' me self, when I suddenly thought, 'that Tauros out on that farm sure is a mighty fine beast'. Thought I'd pop in and take 'im off your hands, mate, seein' as you got a whole field o' the things. I'm sure you won't mind."

"You can't just take our bull, Ashton!" Dust said angrily.

Ashton smirked at him.  "Actually, I can. This 'ere valley belongs to my family along with everythin' in it. In a way, this bull is already mine, an' your jus' borrowin' it."
He cracked his knuckles loudly. "Now if you don't mind, I've got a noblesse to oblige."

Dust was thrown hard to the ground. While Ashton picked up the pokeball that had been knocked out of his hand.

"Pichu, use thunder wave on this galoot."

Pichu's cheeks began to crackle with electricity. A jolt of lighting surged out of its jagged tail and hit Rampage in the face.

In the space of a second, the massive Tauros changed from an unmoving mound to half a ton of red hot fury, kicking up dust and bellowing angrily. Its big dumb eyes focused on the first thing it saw and it charged.

That thing happened to be Dust. Burke and Durke dove out of the way as Dust ran for it, running as fast as he could through the tall grass. He jumped over the fence one step ahead of Rampage, who slammed into it, and nearly knocked the entire section of sturdy fence over. Another jolt zapped the bull in the flank and it turned to face the new annoyance.

Ashton stood in front of the angry Tauros, Pichu crackling with static on his shoulder and a manic grin splitting his face ear to ear. He reached for another pokeball and released a seven foot tall humanoid Pokémon, nearly as wide as it was tall, with enormous three fingered hands and narrow, intelligent eyes. Under its thick layer of fat, Dust could tell that it had powerful muscles.

Ashton pointed at Rampage. "Hariyama, show this thing who's boss."

Rampage bellowed and charged at the enormous newcomer. Hariyama waited for it to come close and grabbed it by the horns. It lifted Rampage almost completely off his feet and threw him to the ground.

By this time, the other Tauroses had begun to wake up and were slowly surrounding the scene. None of them were as large as Rampage, but that comparison was like the difference between a volcano and a chain of slightly smaller volcano. They were all big, and if set off, could easily ruin the day of anybody in the vicinity. They surrounded the four humans, mooing loudly. For now they were just curious, but a Tauros was very easy to anger.

Rampage tried to get to his feet, but the Hariyama was stronger even than him, and held his struggling bulk down. Rampage was getting tired, and his throes were becoming weaker. That was the least of Hariyama's worries though. Some of the other Tauroses were starting to snort and shake their heads violently. There were very few places in the world worse than in the middle of a herd of enraged Tauroses, even for a seven-foot super-strong Fighting Pokémon.

A loud bark sounded out and many of the Tauroses began to back off. They knew from experience that that bark was bad news for misbehaving cattle. A big blue and yellow dog came bounding through the herd, its tall mane bursting with electric power. Dust immediately recognized it as his father's Manectric.

Manectric growled at the assembled Tauroses and they almost sheepishly went away. Dust's father came huffing and puffing up, a rifle in his hands.

"What the hell is going on out here!?"

"They're stealing our Tauros!" Dust said pointing at the trio of intruders.

Dust's father took a moment to appraise the situation. He sighed deeply. "I'm sorry for any trouble my son caused you." He said to Ashton.

"What?" Dust said indignantly. "You're just going to let him walk off with our best bull?"

His father pulled him aside. "Dust, I want to go back to the house. I'll handle this."

"Dad, you can't be serious!"

"He's the Baron's son, Dust. If I try to stop him, we'll just get in trouble with his father. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's just the way it is."

"But-"

"There's nothing either of us can do, son."

"You should listen to your old man." Ashton chimed in. "If either of you lay a finger on me, my dad'll 'ave you both thrown in prison!"

"Go back to the house, Dust." His father said again.

"It's not right." Dust said.

"I know it's not, but it's the way it is."

Dust trudged back to the house. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that he had to work and toil and sacrifice for everything he had and those nobles, those lousy, thieving rat-faced bastard nobles could just come and take whatever they wanted without so much as a thank you.

He entered his room and slumped down on the straw, cursing the unfairness of it all. He had a prize bull that he had helped raise from a calf and returned to a pile of straw in a two room shack, while that son of a bitch Ashton had stolen that bull and would be returning to a feather mattress in a stately mansion. If Dust had owned anything he didn't mind destroying, he would have kicked it. Since he barely owned a thing a thing in the world though, he contented himself with glaring at that damn egg as if it were the source of all his problems.

If looks could do physical harm, Dust's glare would have cracked the egg in half, which was why it came as such a shock when the egg actually did crack. Dust stared in surprise as a tear opened along the egg's top and grew along its leathery surface.

Dust could hardly believe his eyes. After all this time, the egg was finally hatching!
Dust peered over the large orange egg as its occupant ripped its way out. Dust arched his eyebrow when he saw what came crawling out.

"You are not what I was expecting." He said.
And so the egg finally hatches! What will Dust's new Pokemon be? You'll have to wait until next time to learn that! I am such a cocktease. Figuratively at least. I really hope that that expression doesn't apply here in any literal sense. Eww.

Sorry for the rather long wait. I suffer from periodic writers block and a whole lot of laziness sometimes. I had planed on finishing this chapter on Christmas night, but I ended up staying at my brother's house and playing with his cat instead that night.

Just consider this a late christmas present.

Speaking of Christmas. You'll never guess what I got this year. What's that? No.
Nope. Wrong again.
Oh, now you're not even trying trying!

Since you are clearly awful at guessing, I suppose I'll just have to tell you. It was a remote control warthog with the Chief and the Arbiter included. For those of you who don't know me me personally (ie: all of you) Halo is my absolute favorite thing tied with the Seattle Seahawks and Mac & Cheese and I was absolutely thrilled when I got it.

Anyway, enough of my inane babble. I hope you are enjoying the story, theoretical reader. Seriously, does anyone actually read this? Nobady ever comments on it.
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