Hello dearies.....
Another chapter for you all.
Enjoy...
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The heat in the town square was becoming more and more hotter. Aryan stood perfectly still in the crushing mass of bodies, sweat trickling down his back and soaking into his faded cotton shirt.
He ignored the physical discomfort and kept his gaze locked on the stage where Mayor Pillai was still speaking.
The man had been droning on for twenty minutes about the benevolence of the United Pokémon Nation and the great opportunities provided by the asian administration, but his eyes kept darting to the news cameras stationed at the perimeter.
It was a performance, the twenty eggs sitting in their incubators were not gifts. They were scraps thrown to starving dogs to keep them from biting the hand that fed them.
Aryan adjusted his glasses and focused his attention back on the table.
The Data Eye remained active, a faint blue overlay that dissected reality into cold, hard numbers, he watched the other candidates around him who were all sixteen, all poor, and all desperate.
Some were praying, their hands clasped tight and others were staring at the incubators with a hunger that was almost frightening.
They saw monsters that could breathe fire or cut steel, they saw terrifying power but Aryan saw data, they were biological dead ends, destined to be household pets or manual laborers rather than League champions.
The Mayor finally finished his speech and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
He gestured to a large glass bowl sitting on a pedestal next to the podium, Inside were hundreds of folded slips of paper.
The lottery system was simple and brutal. If your name was drawn, you walked up and picked an egg. Once the twenty eggs were gone, the remaining hundreds of teenagers would be sent home with nothing but a commemorative pin and a pamphlet on "Civic Duty." Aryan felt a knot of anxiety tighten in his stomach.
The Beldum egg was there, sitting unloved and unnoticed at the end of the table, but he needed to be called to claim it. If he wasn't called, his journey would end before it even began.
The drawing began.The first name echoed over the loudspeakers.
"Vikram Singh!"
A lanky boy erupted from the crowd with a shout of joy, pushing his way to the stage. He scrambled up the stairs and practically ran to the table and didn't hesitate. He grabbed the incubator containing a red-spotted egg, Aryan scanned it as the boy lifted it high in victory.
Species: Magby
Potential: C
It was a Fire-type,with the colour showing that, a crowd favorite.The boy would likely evolve it into a Magmar eventually, but it lacked the genetic capacity to go further. Still, the crowd cheered. Fire-types were flashy and they represented raw power to the uneducated masses.
The process continued with agonizing slowness. Name after name was called and the eggs were claimed one by one. The blue-spotted egg (Poliwag, Potential B) went to a girl who looked like she might faint from shock from getting a Pokemon.
The jagged brown egg (Geodude, Potential C) was taken by a burly boy who looked ready to punch anyone who came near him. Aryan watched as the table emptied.
The good looking eggs...the ones with bright colors or interesting patterns which could be identified of their types were the first to go. The rejects remained.
A pale, sickly looking egg that housed a Caterpie, a small, speckled egg that held a Spearow and the heavy, metallic grey lump at the far end.
Ten eggs gone,Aryan's heart was pounding so fast.The odds were dropping with every second. He clenched his fists, his fingernails digging into his palms.
He had planned for everything for the future, analyzed the geopolitical map, and memorized the league structures, but he couldn't engineer luck.
He was at the mercy of a random drawing in a corrupt district town.
"Aryan!"
For a second, he didn't move. He stared at the Mayor, who was already reaching into the bowl for the next slip, then the reality hit him....he had been called.
He was number eighteen, he exhaled a breath he didn't realize he had been holding and stepped forward.
The crowd parted for him, not out of respect, but out of indifference. He was just another lucky rat who won a prize.
He walked up the wooden stairs, the sound of his worn sneakers on the planks feeling incredibly loud.
He approached the table, there were only three eggs left. The Caterpie, the Spearow, and the Beldum. The Mayor looked at him with bored eyes, gesturing vaguely at the table. To the Mayor, this was the bottom of the barrel as they were the leftovers that nobody wanted.
Aryan stopped in front of the metallic egg. Up close, it looked even less like a biological entity. The surface was cold and pitted, resembling a cannonball that had been left in the rain. There was no movement inside, no soft glow of life. It looked like a rock.
[Target: Beldum Egg]
[Status: Dormant, Magnetic Core Stable]
[Estimated Weight: 12.5 kg]
He reached out, his hands hovered over the incubator. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Mayor smirk.
The official probably thought Aryan was hesitating because the options were so terrible. Aryan ignored him. He gripped the sides of the incubator and lifted, It was heavy...Shockingly heavy.
The density of the steel-psychic type was immense even in its embryonic state, a hum vibrated through the casing, a low frequency magnetic resonance that only someone touching it could feel.
"A rock?" someone in the front row shouted. Laughter rippled through the crowd.
"He picked the rock!"
"That's not even a Pokémon," another voice jeered. "It's a dud! Put it back!"
Aryan turned to face the crowd, he held the heavy incubator against his chest. He didn't smile and didn't try to defend his choice.
He looked out at the sea of faces....the exhausted laborers, the envious teenagers, the corrupt officials and felt a strange sense of detachment. They were laughing at a future Metagross, they were mocking a creature that could calculate trajectories faster than a supercomputer and could crush a tank with its mind.
Their ignorance was his shield, If they knew what he held, he would never have made it off this stage alive.
"Selection confirmed," the Mayor said into the microphone, his voice dripping with amusement. "Next!"
Aryan walked down the stairs, the weight of the egg pulling at his arms. He shielded the incubator with his body as he moved back through the crowd.
The jeers followed him, people patted him on the back with mock sympathy, telling him better luck next time, or asking if he planned to make an omelet with the stone. He kept his head down and kept moving as he needed to get out of here.
He needed to get back to his apartment. The System had said the egg was Dormant. That meant standard incubation wouldn't work. A Beldum didn't hatch from warmth; it hatched from energy.
He finally broke free of the crowd and turned down a side alley that led toward his old detached building.The noise of the square faded into a dull roar behind him. He looked down at the grey sphere in his arms.
[Hatching Requirement: High-Voltage Magnetic Induction]
Aryan smiled for the first time that day.
He was a mechanical engineer in a world that barely understood the concepts and this was a problem he could solve.
Authors Note:-
Well that's the second chapter darlings.....
Hope you are liking it.
I will put some auxilary for the world concepts.
So support with power stones and collections for more chapters.