It was an easy start to the day for Ajax, having been a trained morning person for the vast majority of his life. It also probably helped that Linked needed to sleep less on average, something that just came along with the general health benefits of being a Linked, though it certainly didn’t stop Walter from sleeping criminally small amounts.

Ajax stood outside of his little apartment with the others in his team, minus Walter of course, both Tracker and Willem being present for the big occasion. With almost no time to spare, Walter stumbled out of his room as he was still pulling on his shirt properly, giving the team a quick display of the lack in fat on his formerly chubby form.

“Glad you managed to make it.” Willem said dryly as Walt slumped his form like a turtle would into its shell.

“Sorry guys.” He squeaked out, though he’d said the same every morning for the entire week. Aaliyah rolled her eyes at the boy but didn’t bother to make fun of him like she had the first few days, the joke having become stale long ago.

“Well, now that we’re all here,” Tracker began with a wide grin, “we’ll all be going down to one of the more private arenas and meeting up with another team to train. This isn’t a normal occurrence, but we pulled some strings.” She said, proudly, though Willem shot her a glare.

“I pulled some strings.” He clarified, though Tracker lost none of her pomp, doing a one-eighty and walking towards the metal doors of the elevator and pushing the call button with vigour.

“We’ll have to skip breakfast for the morning, but we’ll have an early lunch instead!” She stated, ignoring Willem’s correction altogether, moving to enter the elevator that was opening directly in front of her. Willem sighed minutely, but Ajax and the rest of the team followed him into the elevator and waited the mere moments it took for Tracker to input the code needed to access the underground, and then for the elevator to go down deep underground without the slightest feeling of dizziness with the movement.

They followed the lead of Tracker and Willem, only having been to the main Arena once, but never the smaller arenas. The only reason that Ajax knew that there even where smaller arenas was the rough directional map that rested on the extremely clean walls of the Underground.

The trip was, again, surprisingly short for just how big the Underground felt at times. The optimised path that Tracker took, an alternate path to one that had passed through the Gym, sent the team past the line of rooms that they had been using for their lessons with tracker on their off days from training. Then further through a corridor that was line with rooms that almost seemed like scientific monitoring rooms—though Ajax was hardly one to make any real determination about that. All of the tech in there seemed pretty advanced, and if it wasn’t linktech, then it was probably something close.

They passed by those rooms quickly, each of them seeming to have a slightly different purpose than the last. After pushing through a set of double doors that Ajax thought would be right at place within a high school, they found themselves in a far more populated hallway.

The hallway had the same lingering smell that the Gym possessed, the distinct smell of sweat and exertion. On a blue sign hanging from the ceiling, the letters ‘A-1’ were listed which signified the beginning of four doors that likely lead into a locker room, or equipment room.

“We’re in B-3 today.” Willem said, clear enough that the team could hear it, but alluding the ears of the few people inhabiting the hallways this early in the morning, clearly all getting ready for some match or another.

The walk continued with the numbers counting up every fifty or so metres, then at ‘A-4’ there was a longer gap, then another set of doors that lead to the beginning of the B block. After only a few more moments, Ajax and the rest of his little group filed into one of the four doors underneath the ‘B-3’ signage, finding it to be exactly as he’d expected.

The locker room wasn’t quite as spacious as the one they’d been granted in the main Arena, and the equipment was likely separated into its own room sitting beside this one, but it was comfortable enough with six people inside, though fitting more than ten would get cramped and uncomfortable pretty fast.

Willem motioned at the slatted metal benches that stood isolated from the wall that contained a row of lockers, and probably very general equipment. The team sat, shimmying onto the bench, and having to cuddle up a little to fit in front of where Willem was standing.

“Alright, so,” he began succinctly, “I called in a favour with a friend of mine who’s also a trainer here at the AASAU. I gave him a rundown on what your links were, and he’s bringing the team that could potentially challenge you most and give you the most growth in the least amount of time. Now,” Willem gave the team a harsh glare, making sure to impress the importance of his next words into them with gusto, “I will not accept a poor performance from you all. I do not care how many times you struggle against your opponent, or how frustrating fighting against a counter might be, but you will continue without complaint.”

Willems eyes dragged over the members of the team, Ajax being totally unperturbed by the proclamation, Mirah being basically the same, though even Willem had some difficulty reading her, Walter was just anxious, and Aaliyah pulled her lips thin with a little sourness in her expression.

“This team and their trainer’s time is valuable, and until you are good enough to go head-to-head with them, they’re going to be punching down and losing out on a lot of training time to help you. If you bow out, you’ll have me to answer to. Am I understood?” The group nodded, having gotten the gist of it. Ajax watched as Walter’s mental state dissolved ever so slightly under the new pressure that Willem added to the pile, though he didn’t know what the man was worried about, he’d been one of the most dedicated to his training so far, despite his struggles.

After another moment Tracker, who had left the room a few moments into Willem’s speech, popped her head back into the room, drawing the team’s attention with a wave.

“They’re ready! Get yourselves into some protective gear and come on through.” She called, before returning out to the hallway. Willem soon followed, giving them all a nod and letting them get into gear.

Ajax quickly opened up one of the lockers on the wall randomly, but finding it full of equipment, nonetheless. He searched through the sizes on the equipment’s tags, however none of them were the 2XL that he found most comfortable, though the 3XL was technically his size.

“Anyone got a 2XL in theirs?” He asked out loud, and after a few seconds of the others opening and rummaging through their own lockers, Walter piped up.

“Yeah, got one here. You have a medium in there?” Walter asked, his own locker somehow not having the most common size. Ajax grabbed the medium off of a hanger and traded with the much smaller man. But as Ajax turned to quickly strap himself up with the protective padding, he caught a look at Walter’s conflicted face. Before Walter could turn around and move back to his own locker, Ajax reached out and gave him a firm pat on the shoulder.

“Hey, we’ll be fine Walt. These guys aren’t looking to actually hurt us badly.” Walter, while not entirely mollified, at least nodded along with the reassurance before pulling away from the large hand and going to change.

It was only a few more minutes before they were all out in the hallway, having changed into the navy-blue protective equipment with a practiced ease, something Mirah had struggled with momentarily when they’d started doing fighting more. Willem didn’t bother to give another speech, instead leading them towards the door directly diagonal from their own with a little plaque on it saying, ‘Arena B-3’, which made perfect sense when the door opened to a hallway that opened up into a much smaller arena than the last one, they’d fought in, though it was still pretty impressive all told.

Instead of the sandy floor that they’d had for their gladiator fight, it was a solid, but still slightly springy material that was probably linktech to some degree. It wasn’t something that Ajax expected would be hard to move on but would probably stop any of them getting injured too bad if they were slammed into the floor, or just fell.

However, the smaller arena, with its lack of seating instead going for the drawn sideline approach, was hardly the most interesting part of the view.

“Julia!” Ajax called out, speeding up and passing by Willem and Tracker as he moved closer to greet the amorphous, purple woman. The other team, none of whom Ajax could immediately recognise, turned to look at him as he jogged up to greet them.

“O-oh, Ajax.” Julia’s crystalline voice warbled with surprise, “Are you the other team we’re training with?” Ajax frowned for a moment, looking over the faces of each of her teammates. There was one other man in the team who had strange plant-like hair down to his shoulders, an incredibly tall woman with very dark skin stretched over a skeletal frame, probably from some African heritage, and one other woman, much shorter than the rest of her team­­—barring Julia—who wore a baggy pull-over with a high collar and long sleeves underneath her protective gear.

“Yeah, I guess we are.” He moved his immediate attention away from Julia and instead looked to the others in her group with a wide and welcoming grin, “Nice to meet you all, I’m Ajax. I’ve hung out with Julia a few times now.” There was a sharp snort from the shorter girl, though when Ajax looked towards her questioningly, she didn’t meet his gaze, instead looking anywhere else.

“I, uh, yeah we know about you.” She stammered out, before noticing the odd smile on Ajax’s face, deciding to push forward with her own greeting, “I’m Jamie, by the way. Julie’s bestie.” Ajax grinned widely as he stuck out a hand, prompting her to shake it with a flick of his gaze.

Without thinking, Jamie took the hand, and he shook it solidly and then let it drop to her side. It was only till a moment later that Jamie realised her misstep, panicked eyes looking up towards the much taller man’s form, terrified of the expression that he might possess.

Yet, he wasn’t even looking at her anymore.

“Ajax,” the man introduced again to the green haired man, who quickly introduced himself as Ren, along with a solidly powerful handshake.

“June.” The last woman said easily, her tone given spice by an open and rounded sounding amalgam of an Australian accent with whatever else, only adding to the mystique of the woman for Ajax.

“Nice to mee you all,” he said after shaking her frail looking hand, and finding her strength to be similarly weak. He turned back to see his team standing behind him, waiting somewhat awkwardly to be introduced by the sometimes painfully extroverted man.

“Alright, I’m Ajax, as stated earlier,” He then began to gesture at each of his teammates in the order of appearance, “this is Mirah, Walter, and Aaliyah. Guys,” he turned back to the new team, “this is Julia, Jamie, Ren, and June.” He thought for a moment, “That’s a lot of ‘J’ names.”

A grin exploded onto Jamie’s face, only visible around her eyes and nose as they scrunched, with the high collar hiding her lower face. Ren rolled his eyes as the rest of the team gave him a look that could only be an allusion to an inside joke. The two teams waved at each other, murmuring more personal greetings.

“Yup, there definitely is.” Ren said as he ran a hand through his hair, making it rustle like the leaves on a tree. However, any further conversation was cut off by Willem walking from between Mirah and Walter, his movement prompting another man to walk from between the Jamie and Ren, meeting in the centre of the space.

“Good to see you again.” Willem said gruffly, and the other man nodded. As Ajax looked at the bespectacled, middle-aged man, only just reaching average height, that his face was oddly familiar. He looked over the rest of his group, seeing that both Aaliyah and Walter were having the same strange moment of half-remembrance, though Mirah didn’t seem to be experiencing any emotion at all, as per usual.

“My pleasure.” The man spoke with a clear rhythm and tone that added yet another piece to the jigsaw puzzle. In fact, there was almost no-one of Ajax’s generation that wouldn’t at least recognise the distinctive pattern of speech. There was a small gasp from behind Ajax as Walter clearly figured it out, drawing a querying gaze from the other team, though when they saw his face, their expressions changed into something more empathetic.

“You’re Osmium?” Walter said, a mixture of disbelief and pure shock entwined with his already nervous voice. The grin from the members of the other team was instant with the proclamation, finding yet another to share in their mutual disbelief. The plain looking man, who was once the most powerful government aligned Linked in Australia, turned a candid gaze towards Walter’s expression of bewilderment, then nodded.

“Ah, yes. Though I prefer to be called by my given name as the Osmium name technically stays within the Linked Crime Unit at the AFP. David Braker, nice to meet you all.”