Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

The hours flew by as Ceres progressed from design to manufacturing. The first batch of parts were produced and assembled, before Ceres tried to wear it. He wore a protective skin-tight mustard suit as parts of the exosuit clamped around his limbs and main body. Immediately upon wearing it he knew he had to redesign it.

“Section D-8 of the wrist is far too small… The spine’s length does not match my new body… What’s this weird sharp corner that keeps jabbing my thigh when I move?” An entire slew of deficiencies was logged down by Ceres as he tried moving around.

He sighed as he took off the prototype exosuit parts, putting them to one side for reference while he cracked his knuckles, preparing to start on the second iteration of the design to fix all the issues.

“Teacher! I’ve completed my homework!”

Ceres was stunned as he heard this, turning to see Mercer standing outside the workshop excitedly, holding a practice spear in his hand. Not recalling teaching Mercer, Ceres just looked at Mercer blankly. “What homework?”

“To focus on my foundation! Your pointers and lessons were very effective. Please watch!”

Before Ceres could protest and try to sort out the misunderstanding, Mercer began to demonstrate his spear striking pattern, which exuded both force and consistency.

Ceres was surprised to see such dedication and skill from a 15 year old. Not even Ardan would be able to perform such a spear move with precision – not that Ardan liked spears anyway. Ardan was always the more defensive type, bunkering down. “Huh, Ardan would be 21 years old by now…”

But soon, confusion returned to Ceres, who rushed forward to stop him. “Stop stop stop, I don’t recall teaching you spear moves, and isn’t the instructor in charge of that?”

“Yes, but I only found inspiration from your teachings!”

Ceres couldn’t even begin to comprehend what in the world Mercer was saying. “Maybe everyone in this town is a little bit off their rocker,” Ceres thought to himself, finally relenting, and playing along with Mercer. He recalled the paranoia of Zhang, shaking his head in resignation.

“Very good. Again, I don’t have a teaching plan for you, so please come back tomorrow, it’s been less than a few hours.” Ceres tried to shoo Mercer away.

Mercer cocked his head, looking at Ceres with a weird expression: “Teacher, it’s been three days since you assigned me the homework?”

“That’s impossible, I barely started a few hours ago…” Ceres checked the time on his multi-terminal, realizing that Mercer was telling the truth. How could his body stay awake for so long and yet he felt like he had infinite energy? He did not even feel hungry at all.

“Something is wrong with my body… I felt intense hunger when I was alone in the chasm for barely a few hours, yet now I’m perfectly fine after not eating for three days? What in the world is going on?” Ceres thought to himself, though he could not wrap his head around it. It broke all the laws of how a normal human physiology worked.

Energy always had to come from somewhere, somehow. Ceres did not believe that his body had become some perpetual motion machine that produced infinite energy. Yet why did he feel like he was brimming with strength, as though he had an entire reservoir of excess force?

He looked at Mercer again, who was brimming with expectation, waiting on every word that Ceres said. “Mercer, was it? Is there a sort of training ground somewhere?” Ceres asked. He wanted to test if his body truly had the energy he felt or was he going mad or being deceived internally.

Mercer’s eyes lit up even more, excited at the prospect of being personally taught by his new idol. “Yes Teacher, follow me!”

The two headed to the sparring arena, where Captain Kai was training the remaining two guards.

“Ceres, you finally came out. You must have been so engrossed in your exosuit project to not eat for three days. I tried calling you out for meals too.” Captain Kai smiled, while the two guards were exhausted, lying on the ground after being bested by Captain Kai.

“Sorry, I guess I can really focus if I want to.” Ceres decided to not to mention the fact that he did not sleep at all, nor even drink any water. Wouldn’t a normal human feel thirst way before reaching that point? Yet Ceres felt perfectly fine, as though he was in tip-top condition.

“Teacher Ceres, I’m ready!” Mercer ran over with two practice spears.

Ceres glanced around, noticing that the training ground was literally an open airfield. Dummies were basically heaps of trash that had long been melted to scrap by energy rifles. “Err, I would rather not spar with you right now…”

“Don’t worry about Mercer, he can take a beating. As long as you don’t go as wild as you did against the mawsie, he should be okay.” Captain Kai reassured Ceres.

Ceres frowned, pondering for a while. There was a chance he could hurt Mercer with his attack, but after seeing Mercer’s excited expression at the sparring, he decided to compromise.

Ceres and Mercer stood apart from each other, each holding a practice spear. “Okay Mercer, we’ll start with you trying to hit me first. I will only dodge.” This way Ceres would not have the chance to hit Mercer and risk injuring him.

Mercer nodded, immediately lunging forward with a first surprise strike right as Ceres finished.

Ceres was caught off-guard, not expecting Mercer to be so decisive in the attack. However, his body reacted before his mind did. Mercer’s practice spear barely missed Ceres’s arm as Ceres quickly sidestepped it in an instant.

Mercer’s eyes widened upon watching Ceres’s movement technique. He had been practicing with the town chief for the last three days, and even the town chief did not react nor move this fast with the new prosthetic. “The town chief was right!”

Going through the motions, Mercer focused on his foundation, planting his feet before delivering strong, simple spear jabs. Ceres could feel the force of the spear every time it shot past him as he weaved steps, circling around Mercer.

If any other normal human were to be hit by Mercer’s attack head-on, Ceres could guarantee that they will be severely hurt or even disabled without protection.

Unfortunately, Ceres was not a normal human. Without anything weighing Ceres down, Ceres literally moved the minimum required to avoid attacks, not performing any exaggerated movements to dodge, his leg muscles tense.

“His posture is great, giving him a good base that prevents him from toppling over or extending too far to be exploited. Seems like the instructor has done a good job,” Ceres thought to himself as he slightly shifted his waist to avoid a strike.

Soon, after a consistent five minutes of sparring, Mercer was panting hard, tired out and barely able to deliver another strike. He had failed to hit Ceres even once.

“Why… why can’t I hit you? How are you always avoiding at the last minute?” Mercer breathed heavily as he slumped to the ground, trying to catch his breath.

Ceres could not really explain it. From young, he had already been able to dodge effectively, a reaction speed and thinking process that had been trained and unconsciously improved on. His stronger body now only made it even more monstrous, so Ceres did not know where to begin.

Captain Kai noticed Ceres was at a loss for words and decided to step up. “Perhaps you can watch a spar between me and Ceres and understand a bit.” He walked into the sparring arena with his own practice spear, standing opposite Ceres.

“I hit pretty hard, so I don’t want you to get hurt.” Ceres tried to avoid fighting Captain Kai. With the amount of energy he had in his body, Ceres was slightly afraid that he might end up injuring or maiming Captain Kai.

“I may not have enough strength in my body to impale a mawsie through its armour, but don’t underestimate me. Give it a try. Try to hit me.” Captain Kai smiled gently.

Ceres nodded, before walking up towards Captain Kai with his practice spear held loosely on his right hand.

Mercer watched in anticipation as Ceres approached Captain Kai like a friend would, when Ceres suddenly slashed in a one-handed position, his right arm swinging upwards with the spear outstretched, aiming at Captain Kai’s body.

Despite Ceres’s speed, Captain Kai somehow managed to dodge it. From Mercer’s point of view, it felt like Captain Kai moved even before Ceres had moved.

The next five strikes from Ceres were all the same, unable to land a hit on Captain Kai. Ceres himself was shocked that he could not hit Captain Kai once.

“Mercer, notice this. I do not dare to counterattack nor try to attack Ceres, but yet I am able to predict his actions, simply because of me understanding how humans fight and watching his muscles. It’s the same for fighting mawsies. Once you understand the basic habits of your opponent, it is easy to dodge.” Captain Kai spoke while continuously dancing around the ring, watching Ceres’s body.

He focused on Ceres’s human physiology, already considering the fact that Ceres moves much faster than anyone he had fought before. Not even feral Chosen moved as fast.

But for the experienced battle-hardened Captain, he simply overestimated Ceres, acting before Ceres even knew he had showed off the intention of attacking.

“You may not reach the same instinctual level as Ceres can, but by studying far in advance and accumulating combat experience, you will be able to dodge as I can. This is how I have survived every expedition so far till this age.” Captain Kai explained to Mercer, who nodded vigorously as he took note.

Something within Ceres started to bubble, raising his battle sense and excitement. Ceres had previously thought that the town was in great danger and had terrible combat experience, yet Captain Kai proved him wrong. Ceres smiled as he went into a fighting posture, his emotions running high. He still had a competitive spirit!

Suddenly, Ceres’s vision went into grayscale mode, highlighting Captain Kai’s body against the black and white background. “Shit, why is this happening again?” Ceres tried to get his vision under control, but as he looked around, he could now clearly see other humans in the towns as human-shaped forms of colour.

He recalled that his vision always went into this mode when he was fighting seriously. The brilliant red hue he saw during the fight in the research lab as well as the dim blue sphere that turned out to be a grodaw were all due to this new vision mode.

Ceres gasped as he reached a realization as he managed to somehow perceive the townspeople through walls like an infrared camera. The colour that he saw from a single human was consistently changing as he scanned around, looking at each and everyone around him.

“I can view their emotions through walls!” Ceres exclaimed to himself.

“Ceres, are you okay?” Captain Kai asked concerningly as Ceres seemed to have frozen in the sparring arena with his eyes darting around the area, seemingly looking for something.

Ceres seemingly woke up, his vision changing back to normal as he stood up straight. “I apologize, I have something important to do. This spar is my loss.” With just that, Ceres left the sparring arena and headed back to the workshop.

“Is something wrong with Teacher Ceres?” Mercer asked concerningly.

“I do not know. Every surface dweller who ends up here all have a story to tell. Even our ancestors who first came to this town had their own story as well. It is not right for us to pry too deep.” Captain Kai said wisely. “Now it’s your turn to practice! Watch the movements of my body rather than the weapon, and you can predict the strikes! Now dodge!”

“What?! OUCH! I’m not ready!”

Back at the workshop, Ceres was fumbling around, trying to get his thoughts together. He finally pieced together why he had been seeing others in a sort of colour hue – it was their emotions at the time.

He had never heard of anything like this before, and it seemed to only activate during periods of combat so far.

“Wait, but my vision was also switching while I was alone in the chasm. No one was next to me and I was not fighting anything. Why did I immediately dive for the grodaw?”

Ceres recalled digging hard as though his life depended on it, but the hunger he felt back then was not stomach hunger – it was more like a yearning that every single cell in his body was calling out for.

His augmentations were starting to confuse him more and more. Ceres felt like reading emotions was not useful at all in a combat scenario – yet a combat scenario triggered it the most often so far. What use was there to see a hostile person in red when he was already actively fighting him?

“Perhaps it would allow me to detect hostility far beyond my normal vision. When I’m negotiating with someone, I will be able to pick up on hints a lot quicker!” Ceres started to consider all the good points of his newfound vision, except he immediately hit on one glaring problem: he did not know how to activate it normally.

He had already tried it during the mawsie horde fight, but nothing worked.

Ceres suspected it had something to do with the ‘hunger’ he felt. Thinking back to when he was lost in the chasm, how the hell did he even dig an entire tunnel towards Oswa’s grodaw farm?

“I must have already activated the black armour without knowing… must I really let the ‘hunger’ take over?” Ceres was afraid of any potential side effects. Would he go completely feral or even worse?

“Perhaps if I go back to where I first met Oswa, I can find out what really happened and try to re-enact it.” Ceres resolved to head back to a known location where he activated the grayscale vision. Maybe he could simulate or figure out what was unique in that environment.

Ceres did not feel joy over having achieved such superpower that he fantasized about before. What did he give up in exchange for this? Everything that happened to him was because somebody else wanted to, not because he wanted to.

If what the instructor said was true, then he had instigated a city-wide riot and perhaps caused deaths. Ceres also vaguely understood that the rebellion most likely stemmed from the subsequent oppression that the inners placed on the outers, which means it was slightly his fault.

His friends were most likely either in danger or dead, so how could he be happy about this? Ceres felt even more sad that despite having so much power now, he had lost contact with everyone he previously treasured. He could not even use this power right now to run to the surface lest he was captured again.

“No, I can’t think like that. They must be alive out there somewhere. I won’t rest until I see their dead bodies, and if it comes to that, I’ll find out who killed them!” Ceres vowed.

However, whatever Ceres found out today still did not solve the problem of his body having infinite energy. He did not even feel an ounce of sleepiness and instead went to work harder on the exosuit’s second design. He had a few hypotheses for now, but he needed to go somewhere secluded to test them.

Only by completing the exosuit could he then venture out to find all the answers he needed.

M.G.Driver

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