Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

After a while, Ceres and Braton finally calmed down, saving the outburst of anger for when it truly mattered: the competition.

Why waste the strength now when they could use it on their next opponent? And who knows, for Ceres his next opponent might be Maddy.

“Hey guys, thanks again for coming by. I didn’t want to just complain about Maddy - I really wanted to say something to both of you.” Erik sat up straight on his hospital bed as he prepared an important speech.

Ceres and Braton looked at each as they sat next to the bed, signalling their eyebrows to each other: “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? “

“So I never really got the chance to tell this to you, Ceres…..“

“About you and Trissa? We already know, man, it’s like an open secret. You fucked up the first date, but you got back right on track. You guys must already be fucking each other right?” Braton joked.

“No no that’s not what I wanted to… Wait what?!” Erik almost got up, but the pain from moving his hands made him flinch and flop back onto the bed. Ceres laughed with Braton as they watch Erik struggle with words.

“Okay I used to like Trissa, but things are not the same okay? We’re not dating or anything! Just shut up and let me speak!” Erik spoke with haste. “This is probably the only time you can spare during the competition to visit me, so please, listen to me! “

He wasn’t wrong. If Ceres and Braton wanted to nail the competition they had to give it their all over the next two weeks. Braton even had a duel coming up in two days, him spending an hour here was an hour not training or resting!

“I never told anybody this, but I’ve always aspired to be a teacher since young. I only tried so hard for the competition because of you guys, Team Dumpling and the rest of Zone 17 supporting me from behind. I’m sorry I’ve let the both of you down, Ardan, Lisa, Trissa, the orphanage director. Sorry I couldn’t keep up with you guys. “

“Ceres, you were my biggest driving force, my goal to chase. Don’t listen to the shit people give you for trying to achieve more than what you have! What you’ve accomplished motivated me to my limits such that I can even stand here and say that I’m in the top 1024 of my category. Even though I failed terribly, in terms of the number of participants, I’m nothing less than the top 0.1% of our year!”

“Braton, you got to show the world what you’re made of. Don’t let Ceres be the only one who demolishes the competition! You can do it too with your body! People may laugh at you and treat you like a joke, but I respect your drive and dedication to your path.”.

“Even if this finger recovery thing doesn’t work out and my career as an exosuit repairer is over, don’t worry! I always intended to teach at the orphanage again, hoping to inspire others to greatness like you did Ceres. I don’t need precise fingers for that! You may not have actively considered what your actions have done for others, but it has done wonders for me.” Erik breathed heavily.

“Now go and win this shit and fuck the inners.” Erik smiled weakly.

Ceres nodded, unable to reply due to the amount of emotions rolling through his heart. Even his sadness seemed to be amplified by god knows what! He tried his hardest to eliminate the nagging feeling from his brain, but it lingered at the back, silently evoking a low level of depression and despair.

Braton placed a hand on Erik’s shoulder “Don’t worry Erik, I got this in the bag. No one else in this category has better muscles than me! We’ll see you after the competition as the grand champion of our respective categories! Trissa, Ceres and I, and we’ll celebrate again at Team Dumpling’s favourite place!”

He said it with such conviction that even Erik and Ceres could visualize it in their minds, the victorious orphans returning home with the trophy and the prestige. Ceres could already envision the Gladius and Zone 17 cheering their name.

The hospital visit time slot was over and Ceres got up, but not without saying what his emotions wanted him to say. If he didn’t have enough self-control he might have to yell it at the top of his lungs!

“You’ve been my best friend for the longest time Erik, of course I’m going to win this shit for you! I’ll fuck up Maddy, Chad and whatever idiot is dumb enough to get in my way. I won’t just settle for anything less than winning the whole damn competition anymore!” Ceres fist-bumped Erik’s shoulder before leaving with Braton out of the ward.

Erik smiled weakly as he watched his friends leave the room, a tear welling up in his eye as he stifled the sadness that came from losing the group stage.

He felt some sort of inevitable feeling from being knocked out of the competition and was partly relieved that he didn’t have to push so hard as he had been in the past few months.

Now he had more than enough qualifications to be a teacher, to be a good role model who had proved himself in the qualifiers to other orphans like him.

But of course, he couldn’t stop being depressed at losing, because it had nullified all of his hard work whether it was his life goal or not.

Erik cursed whoever said that hard work never betrays: the knife of defeat was already deep in his body and hands.

“Hey Erik, just wanted to say, sorry man, I know I’ve hurt you and tried to justify my actions by making myself seem more in shit than you, but you suffered too. Right now we’re all in this shit together. I hope you can forgive me.” The outer who was still sobbing gently managed to croak out slowly, to which Erik nodded and laid back to mutter.

The outer had even more trouble forgiving himself instead for what he did in the competition. What if he had been on Erik’s side, would he be as forgiving as Erik?

“Ceres will show them all, wait till you see him again and you can tell him. He’ll be the star that changes this crooked system and this shithole.”

***

[It’s been two days since the amazing group stages for each category, and now it's time for the next set of eight duels for the melee category! We have a few exciting matchups today for all our viewers, so check your local betting app for more information on how to spice it up!]

[Bets held by 999 Casino Athen are honoured and won’t run to another system, so please do bet there to save yourself the hassle today! Bearing in mind the terms and conditions of course.]

[The first of today’s duels is an outstanding demonstration of the sheer physical strength born from the harsh conditions of Athen: The Duel of Muscles! There’s really no other way to put it with both participants not claiming any martial art styles and having been making minor rounds in the bodybuilding community.]

[They are like ‘beasts’ in human skin, showing what the body can really push itself to. They have even given up exosuits without knowing who the opponent was! A radical brawl that has never happened in the history of the competition]

Braton was in the waiting room, absolutely unsure of what was happening. He couldn’t hear clearly what the announcer was saying outside with the voice muffled, completely in the dark about who his opponent is.

However, his eyes were bulging, fully locked onto the short girl who was staring daggers back into him. How did she even get into the waiting room? Wasn’t this area just for participants?

“Wait wait wait, why are you here? It was Ceres wolfing down that food, not me! Go after him!” Braton desperately waved his hands, but Lisa immediately dashed towards him, throwing a series of deft punches, which Braton parried easily as he deftly dashed to the right to avoid further aggression.

“HEY stop!” Braton hurriedly asked but couldn’t get an answer as he moved his head back in a flinch to narrowly dodge a roundhouse kick that almost nicked him in the jaw.

“You said I was going to beat someone up, here I am,” Lisa grunted as she kept attacking Braton, while Braton was confused about when he exactly told that to her.

He finally remembered where: when he was talking to Ceres in the winners’ lobby!

“Wow you really got the hots for Ceres huh, have you been spying on us? Hijacked Ceres’s multi?” Braton teased but immediately couldn’t continue as a fist was sunken deep into his gut, causing him to almost gag despite the announcer’s muffled voice echoing around the waiting room, touting how strong Braton was compared to his peers.

His body toughness couldn’t overcome a woman’s fury. Lisa grimaced as she rubbed her sore fist, her face full of fury at Braton. “You’re so fucking dense, idiot.”

“Why thanks, I built my body that way.”

***

“We’re not going to do it now.” Oliver Athen said without emotion as he continued reading his monitor for news. The headlines were screaming past the screen at a high pace, while a nerval cable was jacked into the nape of Oliver’s neck.

The principal of the Five Families College didn’t actually need to look directly at the monitor as the information was feeding into his brain directly, but it helped him consolidate the information better in some hybrid format.

Doctor Wu stomped the ground furiously at the statement of Oliver. It was fortunate that the doctor was just a hologram on his table, otherwise, the floor might have cracked at how hard he was smashing his feet into the ground. “What do you mean? I didn’t agree to this - you have to do it, and do it now! We can’t let them run rampant any longer. They are garnering more and more supporters!”

Oliver couldn’t be bothered to explain it to Doctor Wu, and just continued browsing the news. He was ‘surfing’ the empire-wide news network to understand any political or economical shifts in society that he could take advantage of, or might affect his upcoming university wager.

He was particularly concerned whether any people of note would visit the planet Athen on short notice, his eyes shifting to continuously check up on nearby ‘VIPs’ to confirm their travel routes.

As long as none of them deviates their travel to anywhere near Oliver, it was good in his books.

“Do not treat me like a dumb idiot, I’m not one of those stupid outers! This wasn’t part of the deal we had!” Doctor Wu continued shouting, which finally got Oliver to sigh as he decided to put 2% of his brain power into answering the man while the rest of his brain was dedicated to calculating a plan for a recent criminal group that suffered a setback in the greenhouse industry.

He had a few good cranial augmentations that could put him at the level of a cyborg, allowing him to perform parallel processing of tasks with defined conditions and parameters.

He didn’t need to dedicate all of his 8 mental cores to deal with this nuisance.

“The deal is what I make it, that’s it. If you keep pushing it, you will learn that the deal would change again. Drastically.”

At this Doctor Wu finally stopped whining, apparently quite aware now of what position he was in, and it wasn’t a position to make demands. Struggling to keep his fury in, he simply nodded and reached forward to end the call, but Oliver held up a finger, signalling for him to wait.

“Nobody moves until I say so. We don’t want people getting aggressive or frustrated. It will be as smooth as I say it is, and if it’s not, you will have to answer for it. And no more questioning. Are we clear?”

Doctor Wu nodded vigorously as he ended the call, finally leaving Oliver Athen to his devices. He sat back on his chair and continued browsing the news.

His face frowned at the recent police report written by Henry Lesion, who was currently touted as the hero of the enforcers for busting a major rebel operation.

But it was soon replaced with a smile as he thought about his rewards from the wager, the prestige and fame that he would soon hold in his hands in less than two weeks.

On the other end of the terminated call, Doctor Wu stormed about in his own office, his floor somehow still intact from the stamping. He finally managed to calm down after a good while, before sitting down on his chair.

A picture on his desk showed his parents and siblings in a family picture while he was still a young adult, except the edges of the photo were slightly burnt.

It had already been sixteen years since his family died in the violent mass riots after an outer won the competition.

At that moment, Doctor Wu was volunteering in Zone 31, helping the less fortunate and homeless.

As he treated some of the patients in a large temporary tent, the holoscreen showing the news showed the fire raging in the inner zone where his parents stayed. A result of the riots of the competition.

Doctor Wu knew at that time that even if he left that very instant, his family would never have survived. Perhaps he should have never gone to Zone 31.

Yet he will never remember the scorning and laughing faces on his patients as they watched the buildings in the inner zones catch fire, jeering at the inners for getting what they deserved.

“Finally those inners suffer the same as us! Haha!” The patient that he was treating at that very moment shouted in joy. The anger he felt back then still lasted till today!

Right now, Doctor Wu was much older and more mature – but he never forgot the promise he made on that day to himself.

And Oliver Athen was going to help him realize it.

However, he needed to go further as well. And there were plenty of people who were willing to help in exchange for his skill as a nerval jack and brain expert.

A voice message popped up on his multi.

[Doctor, the recent operations conducted by the enforcers have been a success. The autonomous exosuits are proving to be useful but require additional work. Your proposal for future steps is intriguing but is merely a theory for now. Any additional resources or help acquiring materials can be requested from Imperial Prince Zachary as direct funding from the Dynasty of Loeric.]

A second voice message followed: [Doctor Wu, this is Zachary, I am intrigued by your recent message. I think your research so far is impressive and would like you to explain it to me in further detail as well as future steps. Perhaps we can arrange a meeting soon. I do have a potential sponsor from the Dynasty of Hawthorn who is interested in supporting the project as well.]

Doctor Wu smiled. Finally, he could fulfil his promise!