The Training Room was blisteringly hot, like it had been for weeks now. At least when Walter was inside of its metal containment walls.

Willem had told Walter that training his link was going to be difficult, and an act of sheer will in many cases, but something part of Walter had chosen to ignore the mans words—no matter how truthful he knew they were.

That was clearly a mistake.

Walter’s training was gruelling, consisting of days upon days of the same action, over and over. He would begin with his pillar of flame, and slowly work it down to a smaller and smaller size over the course of the day.

It didn’t seem like a difficult concept and Walter had even been so fanciful as to believe that he could control it in record time. But no, he couldn’t. It wasn’t for lack of willpower or concentration, but just time and adjustment.

Walter’s link, at least the fire element, wanted to be on full-bore all the time. It was almost an emotion that the element itself held, a materialisation of what it embodied. The fire wanted to roar with as much power as it could, burning away anything and everything that it could with abandon. And with the seemingly unlimited power that Walter had access to, being an infinite type link, it had all the fuel in the world to do just that.

It was something that Walter could swear would pair better with a power usage type that exemplified being able to dole out the amount of power you could give to the element at any one time. But Walter’s link, for whatever reason, had infinite access to the energy from beyond.

That didn’t make it any less brutal to train, though. With no real control over how much power the element had access to, Walter was left to learn to control it in other ways. Walter had chosen a sort of pseudo meditation to do the trick, sitting there and slowly enforcing his will over the unrestrained flame.

It was a slow but sure process, the benefits extremely visible and obvious to the naked eye. In fact, it struck at a very specific part of Walter’s brain, giving the intense and monotonous training a very game-like feel. How many times had he done tasks just as grindy or repetitive as this in a game?

Walter had played games his entire life, and if he was allowed to toot his own horn, he was pretty fucking good at them. Of course, it was an escape from the world that surrounded him. A school that he excelled in, but had no friends to enjoy his success with, a homelife that was amazing until a ‘client’ walked through the doors and made the room freeze in paralysing fear.

So, Walter had retreated into games, just ones on the computer at first, games that were free and competitive, that made him feel like he was truly besting someone or something. It stoked a fire inside Walter, a competitive spirit that he’d never been able to find in his academics or in the sports he had tried as a child.

He had become exceptional at games, not the best of course, but among them. He had faint dreams of going pro one day, making his way to Korea or Europe to really compete with the best that the world had to offer in the games he played. Russia was the end goal of every aspiring pro in the world, being the conglomeration of the smartest and most skilled players on the planet. It was even a nice place to live; stable politically, one of the wealthiest countries in the world—better yet, it was far, far away from Righteous Order and all the other gangs who had his family under their thumb.

The fire in Walter’s hands sputtered out, flickering inconsistently before it disappeared altogether. Walter would have been frustrated, if he weren’t so focused on his training. There was no time for frustration, it was something that’d only slow him down in progressing to where he could actually do something with his link.

Once again, he summoned the fire in his palm, the element coming out of wherever it sat with barely any protesting. It had been a little difficult to do so at first, maybe just a part of Walter’s own nervousness about his link, but now it was almost second nature. The pillar of fire formed quickly, shooting upwards towards the tall ceiling with a greedy flame.

Walter didn’t let it grow to its full height, quietly hampering the fire’s enthusiasm and simmering it down to less than the height of a tall person, shorter than Ajax too. It was easy enough to get it to this state, and if Walter were really focusing when he summoned the flame, he could stop it from being bigger in the first place.

With Walter enacting his will on the flame, it slowly lessened in size over time. There were diminishing returns of course, the flame requiring more and more of the right willpower to lessen it as it grew smaller. The right kind of willpower had to be added too, it couldn’t be an overpowering iron-grip willpower, it had to be calm and quieting. The sort of willpower that came from doing something for so many hours that it becomes second nature to do it. A willpower that forms without you realising it has.

Something Walter has tried very hard at manufacturing. It worked, to an extent, but what really leant itself to success is actually doing it, over and over. Something that Walter was even better at.

Walter was good at the grind. He was excellent at setting his brain on something and doing it. He had done it with his academics when he was younger, when he had once wanted to be just like his mum and dad. He had set himself up for life when he’d done that, able to coast his way through almost any test someone could throw at him. After high school he had wondered what he should do with his life, especially after he’d found himself with a link. But he just fell short of truly wanting anything.

Now, though, he had been given that chance. He had been excited when he first arrived here, and he secretly wanted to start training his link right away but was met with the wall of physical fitness and other little physical training. Walter had persevered, mostly because he was waiting for the time when he could really sink his teeth into training his link.

It was like when you started up a new game with a friend who already played and while you slogged your way through the boring main quest and levelling process, they would swear up and down that it got better in the endgame. Walter had to promise that to himself while he ran, creating another little voice in his head that said as much.

Now though? It was worth it. This training, as boring as it was, is exactly what Walter wanted to do with his time. He let it eat up every moment of his day that he could surrender to it. For weeks, he had almost exclusively dominated the Training Room in his team’s little private gym, and now it was starting to show.

Today, Walter knew that he was going to hit a milestone. He could feel it in his bones.

The flame, the same one that had been just shy of Ajax’s height, was now only as tall as his hand if place upright. The flame, instead of the wild and unpredictable thing that he had been desperately taming for weeks, was now almost smooth in appearance. If someone took a single glance at the flame in his hands, they might even think that it was a solid object, if it weren’t for the heat and light coming from it.

The smooth consistency of the flame was paramount now, Walter’s willpower was honed with a precision that he’d only experienced in the most difficult matches he’d ever player in his life—against true professional players. Now, the flame grew smaller and smaller, lessening my a little bit every few seconds and wavering slightly before settling underneath Walter’s careful and watchful gaze.

He was taming the flame. It was a wild and rambunctious being by nature, a literal embodiment of the element itself. He couldn’t remember his Awakening dream, a stipulation in the contract that he had signed within it, but he could remember the impression that it had given him. He knew that he had met the embodiment of the elements within his dream, Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. It had been a surprisingly pleasant experience—but now the flame in his hand gave him a distinct déjà vu as it writhed almost playfully underneath his mind’s power.

Walter almost grinned in response to the hidden memory, the feeling of an infectiously exuberant aura flooding into his mind. The flame grew smaller still, now only capable of filling Walter’s palm despite its struggling. This was the furthest that Walter had ever gotten in his training, and it felt like the last one-hundred metre stretch after running a marathon—simultaneously filled with drive to finish and drained to the bone.

There was no warning when it happened, no moment of exaltation or even so much as a moment of clarity. When it happened, it simply was.

Within Walter’s hand sat a small and docile flame, barely bigger than what would sit atop a candle’s wick. He quickly realised that it wasn’t taking any mental power for it to stay that way, the flame was complying with him almost completely.

Tentatively, the man prompted the flame to grow in size and it complied easily. Within a blink, the flame was as tall as Walter’s own arm, burning brightly and gleefully. But, instead of taking the rope he had given it and pulling, it stayed in that exact form, happily flickering away with an inherent cheer.

Walter allowed it to grow and shrink a few times, not quite believing that the same fire that he’d struggled with so fiercely was now happy to go along with his whim. It would even increase and decrease in its heat if he asked it to, though that did require more coaxing than just changing its size.

In fact, the flame was so malleable that Walter could even make it bend, however that was supposed to be possible. Though, Walter had well and truly suspended his disbelief once he could sprout pillars of fire from his hand.

With a few hours left in the day for training, Walter spent it on trying to figure out what the new limitations were for the fire he could wield. For one, it seems that Walter could control two at once, one in both hand. The flame was more difficult to control and separating them in his mind was even more difficult. If he commanded one to grow, more often than not the other would as well. So, for the moment, it was more of a duplication of one fire node than two individuals.

But, even as Walter really tried to push on further, excited by the new advancement in his link, he was stopped by just how tired he was. Walter was notoriously terribly at keeping track of time, but the entire process to subjugate the fire would have probably taken him five hours, even if it had only felt like thirty minutes.

Regretfully, Walter dragged himself away from the shiny new toy and called out the command to leave the Training Room. There was no-one in the private training area, the lights still on and just as bright as during the day, but there was a slight darkness that lingered in the room that was distinctive of being night—even in the Underground.

Walter walked out of the private area, finding himself amongst the rows and rows of machines surrounded by the track that Walter had run over and over to gain some fitness. Walter had neglected the physical fitness aspect of his training for the most part, only really doing the work when Willem told him to.

Walter walked through the rows, silently making his way towards the corridors that eventually lead to the elevator. There was almost no-one out here this late, most of the crowd that get in early also go to sleep a little earlier, leaving the thick of the night to those who are really pushing themselves.

The few that Walter could spot were all a fair amount older than he, and probably more senior in the training programme. Most of them were using weights to train, probably just the result of superhuman strength being the most common link by a longshot.

One man, so heavily muscled that he would put a bodybuilder to absolute shame, lifted a bar that carried hundreds of kilograms with one arm, curling it without any perceivable strain. A woman, not that much older than himself and a little shorter sat underneath an apparatus that probably had something to do with the weights resting on her shoulders as she squatted with difficulty. She wore skimpy exercise clothes, giving full view of her abdominals clenching with the effort.

Though, her sleek figure quickly changed into a wall of muscle, each centimetre of her skin was covered with a bulging muscle, so extremely defined that it almost looked alien. Walter, so consumed by the odd sight, didn’t even notice the massive man as his own body was subsumed by the man’s mass.

Walter bounced back off of the man’s stomach like you would off of a trampoline. He only barely managed to keep his footing steady as he tried to regain his composure with the sudden interruption.

“Oh, shit man. I’m sorry, I–” Walter began, but a deep, resonant chuckle halted the flurry of words that were appearing in Walter’s mind.

“It’s no big, man. I take up a lot of space.” Walter looked up at the man who, while tall, wasn’t quite as tall as Ajax. What he lacked for in height, he made up for in girth, however. The man was, frankly, the largest man he’d ever seen—there was no contest. He hadn’t even seen a caricature of a person as overweight as this. The large man, the fat on his face so pronounced that it almost covered his eyes, even though he was smiling happily.

“Oh, wait!” The large man’s eyes lit up with recognition, “You’re one of the new kids that ended up on floor eight, right? The one that Baxter has an issue with.” Walter froze a little but nodded hesitantly. The man seemed to realise that Walter might be coming to less that stellar conclusions and waved it away with a meaty arm—the man’s clothing so amazingly oversized that it hung off of him in strange places, yet barely constrained his bulk in others.

“Ah no, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to Baxter. I hope you find some way out of that mess; truth be told. It’s a hairy situation to be in.” The oversized man grinned jovially, “But you guys have been the talk of the town. Floor eight, like, never gets used, y’know? And for a team of undefined? You’re a collection of ‘we’ve never seen that before’.” Walter didn’t know how to take that. As praise? In the end he settled on a wry grin.

“Yeah, well. The amenities are nice, for sure.” The fat man scoffed, his bulk shifting easily with he action.

“I’d bet. We haven’t learned much about you all, truth be told. As much as everyone blusters about putting the undefineds in their place, or even those who wanna get to know ya, they all seem to come up dry. I know that Dean talked to one of yours, though he’s a bit of a weasel and won’t give out info so easy.”

“Why…” Walter’s face twitched with disbelief, “Why are we such a big deal right now? It’s not like we’re all that special, man.” The man snorted derisively, the sound loud enough to echo in the massive underground gymnasium.

“Come on, mate. You guys are the mystery of the year; undefineds, lots of sponsor money, floor eight. Not to mention just one of your guys took apart Baxter’s crew in, like, thirty seconds. If you’re all as strong as that guy?” He whistled lengthily, admiring the image in his mind.

“Ah, not all of us are as strong as Ajax. I don’t think I am, anyways.” A slight bitterness came to mind with Ajax. It had been weeks and Walter still hadn’t talked with him after that talk at the cafeteria table. He could understand the response that his little reveal had garnered from the man, but he was still a little hurt by it nonetheless. If Walter was good at anything, it was letting little wounds sit and fester until they were gaping holes.

“Oh, not strong, are you? That why you’re training, like, three times what you’re teammates are putting in?” Walter nodded easily.

“Had to try get control of the fire I can summon. I can control, elements and stuff, by the way.” The man’s face stretched out in surprise so much that his eyes were clearly visible, the brown sclera filled with interest.

“You’re telling me that you’re a magic type link?” Walter, familiar with the term, nodded shyly, “God man, that’s fuckin’ awesome! I never thought I’d meet someone with one in my lifetime. Show me what you can do!” The large man said excitably, but Walter recoiled a little bit.

“I dunno, I just got a handle on it. I don’t want to catch you with a blast of fire to your face, or anything.” The man actually laughed this time, his giant belly shifting too and fro as he did so.

“Trust me, you don’t need to worry about that.” With a wink from the man, Walter felt strangely reassured. There was something about the nigh-absolute confidence that the man spoke that hit him as genuine confidence, rather than bluster.

Walter held out a hand and quickly created a small flame, pointing as far away from the other man as he could, just in case. The small candleflame appeared easily, and just as the large man went to comment on it, the flame shot up a few metres in size, gleefully lapping at the air, looking for something to burn with its heat.

“Wow, that’s… pretty damn impressive man. And you can do this forever?” The man asked idly as he stared at the flame with a wonderous expression. Walter laughed with a little embarrassment colouring his cheeks.

“Yeah. I had to control it down from being a massive pillar of fire all the time.” The man nodded, eyes attached to the dancing flame. However, before Walter could react, the man reached out and placed his hand within the burning fire, and Walter could feel the flame quickly acting to eat away at the man’s flesh.

“What the fuck, man!” Walter squawked as he retracted the fire immediately, but when he looked back to the man, and looked more closely at his hand, he found it unmarred. In fact, the massive man had noticeably lessened in size, not my much, but enough to be noticeable.

“Ah, sorry mate. I don’t always think before I do shit like that,” He placed his hand on display closer to Walter’s face, the skin entirely untouched, “I can sacrifice stored fat for damage I take, so it woulda taken quite a fair bit more damage than that to really do me dirty.” He grinned widely, the slight lessening of fat on his face making it obvious that the man was probably handsome underneath it all.

“G’day, I’m Richard, or just Fat Rich. You?” He greeted as he placed the miraculously unburned hand between the two of them. After a long moment, Walter grabbed the hand tentatively and shook it.

“Walter, or just Walt, I guess.”