Digestion

FY-099 reassessment case referral.

So read the label of the floating file hologram, quietly turning in the center of the meeting room. Seated in the spotless and smooth armchairs were not people, but holograms.

"You've read the files. Moon-eyed Pogeyan is a sure fit for Internal Ops." A smooth and deep female voice came from the symbol of a floating grey feather. "Night Class."

"He stayed conscious and coherent with a GGE of four!" A booming voice interjected, the corresponding symbol of an eye with a compass as its pupil. "Precisely material our Frontier is made of!"

The simple circle containing an equilateral triangle whose corners touched the circumference lit up. "Intelligence is a good fit as well," an androgynous monotone voice sounded, but you could hear amusement lying underneath.

"Why, thank you," a light and cheerful voice answered, gender uncertain. The corresponding 0 glowing, a zero horizontally bisected by a line. "We'd be happy to have him."

"Ugh, meddling nerds," the Frontier representative groaned, but the insult was without any heat. "C'mon, the Frontier is a gathering place for Anomalies. I'm sure he'd be happy with like-minded people!"

"You already have that many, leave us some soup to drink, bro!" Intelligence was unhappy, you could practically hear their pout. "Hmpf, if you're like this… Oh, nevermind."

"Cut to the chase," the monotone voice said.

"It's a wonder you're a recruiter with both facial and vocal emotive paralysis," Intelligence muttered under their breath.

"We like to play to stereotypes and then subverting them later, the data has shown that-"

"They know," Internal Ops interjected. "Stop helping them stall for time. Just send the update."

Intelligence sighed. "You've interrupted my training with R&D-chan."

"Cut it," R&D was curt.

"Fine, fine… Here you go."

A new file hologram appeared next to the turning file. It read FY-099 reassessment addendum.

The meeting room was lulled into a short silence as they processed the information, save for Intelligence, who was waiting.

Five seconds passed.

"Yeah, they're going to SP," Frontier drawled. "Feel kinda like an idiot for fighting over them when we'll be teaching them anyway."

Intelligence only had this to say: "Hakuna Matata, yo."

---

"Sit."

"I'd rather not," Anxi smiled nervously and inched towards the door.

Anwei pointed at the chair while she sat on her bed. "Sit, dear brother, and explain to me why I have digestive problems."

Anxi was stunned. "Digestive problems?"

"Among other things," she admitted. "But health comes first. Why the hell did number two stink to high heaven after the reassessment?"

An enlightened look appeared on his face. "Oh… I was wondering when it'll happen. Congrats, it'll last for a few days."

Anwei was not amused and crossed her arms, awaiting the desired explanation.

"BBT," he said simply.

Click, something sounded in her mind. She closed her eyes, pained, and wanted to bash her head against the wall. She is an oblivious idiot after all.

BBT stands for Basic Body Tempering, a series of public exercise sets released by the Union to improve the physiques of their citizens. It was compatible with every anima and built a foundation for any fighting style. It was the pinnacle of body cultivation. If even a tiny improvement was added, the submitter would gain great fame. There hasn't been any updates for the last three decades.

The only problem was that it was too damn painful to endure for the average person. So a new branch of exercise sets was derived, called the BBTLs. L stood for light. They branched off into different focuses like stamina, dexterity, toughness, speed… The list goes on and on. There is a ranking of BBTLs that is regularly updated, but the top twenty spots are quite stable. A martial school that taught a high-ranking BBTL would gain a lot of prestige.

Therefore, the BBT case was very well studied. The higher your aptitude and willpower, they easier it is for you to progress without pain. To increase word count and show off in math terms, if the normal person's progress to pain was graphed with f(x) = x, then those high willpower would have a y-intercept above zero such as w(x) = x + 5, while those with aptitude would have exponential instead of linear growth such as a(x) = 1.5^x.

Okay, done with showing off and back to normal speak: Better aptitude resulted in a growth curve instead of a line, while higher willpower increases overall pain tolerance.

Physique specialists also gained the nickname of stinkers. Everytime they made great progress or broke through a bottleneck, they would expel a lot of impurities instead of the usual trace amounts. Of course, it stank like hell. There are many horror stories of physique specialists breaking through in a hotel room and paying high damage bills both for the contamination and therapy bills. Ironically, they are actually the cleanest and most hygienic people around, for others still had those impurities within them.

The agricultural sector, however, very much prized such good fertilizer material. Of course, it needed to go through filtering and processing first.

"I don't think I improved that much, though," Anwei muttered in confusion. "And it was contained in my digestive track as well… Instead of… You know…"

"That's because you're still starting out," Anxi said, thankfully not going into detail either. "Though you also have to thank the Union GGE simulators. The pressure must have compressed a lot of impurities for you, or something like that."

"Sounds like pseudo-science, bro," Anwei snorted, before holding back hysterical laughter now that relief replaced anxiety. "It was such a large-"

Anxi quickly covered her face with a pillow, disgust on his face. "I don't want to hear it."

Anwei held her two hands up. "It was that-"

"Nope!" Anxi grimaced and pushed her so that she fell onto the bed. "Don't want to hear it!"

"Are you sure?" Anwei giggled as she pulled the pillow away. "It's like diarrhea, you don't even notice-"

His hand covered her mouth, blue eyes narrowing in warning not to test his patience.

Her own blue eyes twinkled with mischief, and she bit down on his hand.

Aunt Natalia was both appalled and relieved when she found her niece and nephew roughhousing like two wild wolf pups on the dusty floor. Not relieved enough, however, to save them from a good scolding from Naming.

Uncle Friedrich just smiled, the nostalgia reflected in his equally blue eyes superimposing his own childhood over the scene, of Dieter and himself roughhousing playfully in the park.

It will be okay.