“Limitations.” Tracker said, ponderously, “Limitations, as we have discussed before, mostly lay in the specific way that a link uses the power it is offered. But, there are a few limitations that generally,” Tracker paused for a moment, giving even more emphasis to the word, “generally apply.” The woman clicked the small remote in her hands.

“The most common is simple. You generally can’t use your own link inside someone else’s body.” The graphic behind here displayed two men, where one tried to use an ice formation power inside and outside the other man. When it was tried to use inside, the other man’s innards were covered in a nebulous golden glow.

“So, you can’t summon things inside people, or necessarily suck the water out of their flesh. But sometimes that is possible. Either because you have no power left, which all of you are infinity types—or close enough—so that won’t be a problem, or there is someone whose link comes with a minor nullification aspect to it.” She looked towards a slightly dumbfounded team and sighed.

“If you run out of energy, or have it blocked from you accessing it, then you are vulnerable to Linked doing whatever they want with your organs. If someone’s link is capable of bypassing the inherent barrier that having power within you poses, then they are classed as low-level nullifiers. These Linked can be extremely dangerous.” It wasn’t hard for any of the team to think of an example of a link that would be terrifying if it could be used directly inside someone else’s body.

“This also means that non-Linked are vulnerable to this. So, be careful if you are using your link to create or ‘conjure’ anything at all, especially if you are interacting with anyone that have no link of their own, you could accidentally kill them quite easily.” She made sure to give Walter a longer glance, making him sweat a little as he thought of the pure destruction of the pillar of fire he could summon burning inside someone.

“Another limitation you may find is that some Linked had natural resistances to your link. For example, I have met a collection of linked that I cannot track using my link. No matter how close I am, or how much I focus on them, there is something fundamental about the way that their link works that prohibits me from viewing them.” Tracker looked over the team for a moment, realising that they were a little high-strung on emotion at the moment. Mirah and Aaliyah specifically seemed one shade of distraught or another.

“More relatable examples may be Mirah, Aaliyah and Ajax.” The two girls and one man perked up from their half-listening, though Aaliyah hid it significantly better than Mirah—and likely remembered the lecture regardless. Ajax was always listening and attentive, though even he had been lacking a little of the quiet enthusiasm he usually brought to the table.

“Mirah’s is a little more abstract, but the limited telekinesis may very well be impeded by someone who your link simply can’t sense, or their link nullifying your ability to interact with them. Aaliyah’s is simple, some people may just be immune to the emotional effects that you are capable of—though you have hardly tested with anything other than anger as of yet, and that particular emotion seems localised to you. And Ajax could just have his axe taken away from him.” The two girls nodded woodenly, the assessment of their powers helpful, even if it was abstract. Ajax just grinned the obvious limitation of his link, being something he’d had in mind for a while.

“Then there are counters too, of course. Aaliyah will need to be worried about emotion controllers in general, it could very easily change your link into a boon for the enemy instead. Walter would flounder against someone who can simply avoid or tank his damage, especially with his currently limited repertoire. Ajax’s counter could be any number of other physically based Linked opponents and Mirah is the same, just across the board.”

Tracker stopped and sat on the top of her table, having come to the point where the mood of the group was significantly impeding the flow of the lesson. She sat and stared at each of the team, waiting until they all noticed that she had stopped and was staring at them. Mirah looked confused and conflicted, underneath the stoic expression that Tracker had learned to peel away when she assessed the girl. Ajax sat next to her, his large form sitting with remarkably good posture, arms crossed with a general look of consternation on his face.

Mirah and Ajax had been in a small conflict, but both parties were introspective enough to at least realise that they weren’t directly at odds with each other. They were having a disagreement of perspective, something that Tracker had helped Mirah come around to with that horrible little worm she’d planted in her head.

Walter and Aaliyah were smouldering, Walter visibly so. Tracker had been dealing with furious Linked for the better part of her entire life, she knew all the signs of anger on the almost inherently damaged preternatural ability users. Walter was the more classic example—he was pissed at Ajax. Of course, Tracker knew why—with how real the threat of the High Order is to Walter and his parents and Ajax so blatantly stepping on their toes without a second thought. Aaliyah was the opposite now that she had aired her grievance with Ajax. She was still angry, but she hid it behind an air of neutrality even if Tracker suspected that underneath the conniving woman’s clothes her body was flush with dots of red, the anger only just being restrained from her face.

“So, you had your first real argument, then?” Tracker said neutrally. She didn’t receive a direct reply, but she didn’t need one. “That’s good. I had expected one earlier, but now is better than later. The teams that don’t argue never come together, the ones that argue incessantly fall apart. Such is the nature of teams.” Walter, specifically, seemed a little surprised that the team weren’t getting a scolding for fighting or disagreeing and Tracker could see why. More than one of the other trainers in this place would have done just that, but it was always a futile gesture.

“Well then, now that I have your attention,” Tracker clicked the remote and the image behind her turned off, leaving only herself for the group to focus on, their minds a little sharper now, “we need to talk about the very topic that make most Linked hightail it out of the room as soon as its broached. Awakenings.” And, just as Tracker expected, the mood of the room soured just as quickly as she said the word. No-one liked talking about theme, there is almost never a truly good experience with an Awakening, and nobody wants to relive those memories.

“Let’s play softball with it for a second.” Tracker relented, “Why do we call it an ‘Awakening’? Even if we could call it ‘linking’ or something just as fitting?” She looked to the crowd of four—well three, since Mirah couldn’t know the answer if she tried.

“Because it feels like one.” Aaliyah said eventually, her voice cutting through the heavy atmosphere like a razor. Tracker nodded, happy she managed to get any response at all.

“Precisely. Though not all forms of Awakenings come with that feeling, the vast majority of Awakenings feel exactly as if you were suddenly enlightened. Not always a good sort of enlightenment, but one all the same.” She paused to let them process, “And also because that was what reached the press and they ran with it.” That got a snort out of some of the team at least.

“So then, the types of Awakenings. There are three or so categories, and there are some derivatives within them, as always. First!” She clicked the remote, pulling up a graphic of a man sleeping in bed and a thought bubble floating above his head, containing esoteric imagery. “Is the most common. Awakening within a dream is how the vast majority of the Linked population come to be—but that doesn’t mean that their experiences within the dream are at all similar.” With the grudging interest of her small class, Tracker clicked to her next slide, pie chart. The interested eyes of the team, most of which had never looked into the hard data behind Awakenings before, frowned at the simple graph before them. There were only three delineating colours within this chart, each labelled with a small legend at the bottom of the graphic.

“Of those that Awakened during a dream; fifty-two percent experienced a vison without a person or identifiable object, many of which described it as ‘standing within the universe’. After that, twenty-eight percent experience a memory that is significantly altered and contains some relevance towards their link. Lastly, twenty percent experience an interaction with a being. This being had been recorded to be Gods of various religions, beings that embody certain things or sometimes a being that is unknowable and incomprehensible.” Tracker let the graph stay there for a moment. She could see the eyes of the trainees focus when it was their own category being called. Aaliyah was in the second category and Mirah and Walter were within the third, though Mirah’s eyes became almost fearful at the talk of an unknowable being.

“We all know that Awakenings typically coincide with both hardship and teenage to young adult age groups, and while there are more outliers than ever, the majority stay ever strong. Awakenings typically occur directly after or close to moments and situations of great trauma—though some Awaken belatedly for whatever reason. Our only guess as to why this is done within a dream is because the mind is more malleable to the rush of power, and it’s safer for it to be done while sleeping. However, some undergo an Awakening while conscious.” Ajax’s expression perked up with interest at his own experience being called upon.

“Our best bet for why this happens is that a person is ‘slated’ to Awaken, but when they are faced with a dangerous situation, their brains enact the Awakening early. We don’t understand how Awakening works enough in general to know anything for sure. In the instant the conscious Awakener receives their link, they are flooded with a massive amount of power which is typically used to try and deal with the dangerous situation they Awakened in. However, this initial power is not necessarily the actual strength they will be afforded after the initial burst of power. Many go from being potential natural disasters to very little more than a regular human.” Everyone’s eyes narrowed, a faint air of disbelief. From being equivalent to an earthquake to being totally normal? That was a big step down.

“The final category are the Remembrances, though they are prohibitively rare and are almost always considered part of the first category. If a Linked cannot remember their Awakening at all—or show signs of not even knowing they had one—then they are likely part of this category and are typically at great risks to themselves or others. We have no good data on why that is.” The room went silent as all of the trainees resisted the urge to stare at Mirah but Tracker relieved them of the urge as she quickly moved on to the last, and shortest topic.

“The last topic we will talk about for the day are Morphs, and they are exceedingly simple. They are Linked who, after experiencing an Awakening, change physically as part of their link. A large minority of Linked have morphed on biological level to allow for their link to function—such as a hypercognitive’s brain—but there are a few that change very significantly, sometimes to where they cannot even be biologically called human anymore. Why this happens to some is just as unknowable as why people Awaken to different types of links. A particularly terrifying example of this is Gigantesca; a Brazilian woman who Awakened to become a mindless stone being, standing at almost four-thousand metres tall—she now perpetually walks the world with seemingly no rhyme or reason.” Tracker looked at the class one final time, the final example she gave being a harrowing one. The sort of example that made you think ‘that could have been me?’

The class was dismissed for the day, the weary trainees either going up to their rooms or, in the case of Walter, down to the Underground.

Ajax was left alone in his room. The day, which had been short by most metrics, had somehow drained him of any energy he had to train with that stupid silver ball that was sitting on his bedside table, menacing him.

He had spent hours and hours the day before trying to get his strength more consistent, and he technically had—though the consistency he had gained was pitiful. He had seen Walter make his way down to the Underground, an unusual move in the boy’s pretty standard routine. Walter had always been enthusiastic about training, though he never seemed like it in the mornings. But the deceptively motivated man was now even going out of his way to train more than he had to, which seemed like it was going to be more than Ajax as well—at least for today.

Today, Ajax had too many things to think about. Too many confused emotions and crossed wires—arguments and conflicting views. But even still, Tracker’s words rang true for Ajax, that teams had to argue. In Ajax’s eyes, any interaction that involved emotions connected the ragtag team that had been thrown together at what seemed like the drop of a hat.

He just wished it didn’t need to create such a conflicting whirlwind of emotion.

Just as Ajax was about to flop back on his bed and take a nap, there was a concise knock at the door, making him pause.

“Walt? You can come in, man.” Ajax called, but received no answer. After a long moment of waiting, Ajax walked out of his bedroom and to the door, opening it to reveal Mirah, standing there silently with those piercing green eyes.

“We need to talk.” She said, as Ajax couldn’t help but let out a massive sigh. Apparently this day just didn’t want to end.