Julia’s morning was as standard as it could be, with the week of sudden and very intense combat training being effectively forced upon them. Not that she or her team were complaining, of course.

It was actually extraordinarily difficult to get good combat training with other teams, especially when the good teams were all holding their cards close to their chest and trying to keep any advantage that they might have against the other teams. The same couldn’t be said for the lower-level teams, but they were weak enough that there was no real challenge in fighting them, and they weren’t ever likely to be able to match them any time soon.

Julia’s team sat somewhere in the middle of it all, having only really completed half and a bit of their training overall. So while they weren’t necessarily expected to be astounding combatants, the impressive teams would have already shown themselves to be as such by now.

It was just another systematic failing of the AASAU and their approach to ‘training’ Linked, if you asked Julia. While, sure, they should spend time and money on those that delineated themselves from the rest of the pack, there were so many of those that sat in the middle who could easily shine if they were given the resources to train.

Their coach had done the best she could, but she was only a small cog in a large system, so when Osmium himself had shown up to take them to training, there had been a small amount of hope that they were being recognised. Recognised for having potential, or anything really.

The truth was slightly less flattering. David—as Osmium now preferred to be called—had simply been paying out on a favour he owed, and they were going to be fighting one of the aforementioned weak teams. A team that had only just started actual combat training on an accelerated path.

Initially they’d been dismayed, having been paired with a team where they would effectively be teaching the other team just by fighting them. The deal was clearly lopsided, but even when Ren had raised the issue to David, he’d simply been shot down with a solemn sentence. They’d felt as if they were being used for a while, a few days where not much was changing, even if they were getting better in general.

They were mostly pleasant to be around, and it was way more fun than the other types of training that they could have been doing by a country mile, but it still wasn’t all that beneficial to them. Sure, it gave them all some benefit, with control and general fighting tactics, but it wouldn’t help them at the end of the week when they needed to go up against another team, one that was likely going to be a stronger than their training partners.

Then Wednesday came and things changed, so severely that there was no way that they could be ready for it. Whatever they had seen happen that day while they were eating had changed everything about them.

That day, Ajax had beaten Ren. Not just a little bit either. He had beaten Ren handily, and continued to play at an even playing field with Ren. What had changed to allow Ajax to beat Ren so easily, who had shown himself to be far better in a fight over days of practice?

Julia probably wasn’t the first to figure it out, with that particular honour likely going to June or Jamie, but she was first to vocalise it at breakfast on the Friday.

“Do you think…” Julia piped up at the almost entirely silent table, each of the team members sitting around it too busy thinking about the upcoming training than speaking, “well, something happened right? To the Undefined team.” Julia said eventually, backpedalling from her point rather than jumping straight to her conclusion first.

“Clearly.” Jamie droned sardonically, though Ren gave the slightly irate woman a warning look and turned to nod himself.

“Ajax was hesitant about using his axe in combat before, but now he uses it freely,” the green-haired man ran his fingers through the freshly cut hair that he put in the compost bins that administration had set up for him just this morning, “though he hasn’t become cruel or angry. Just focused.”

“So they needed something to ‘focus’ them up, right? There was an incident that made it all real for them, because before…” Julia internally grimaced at the memory she’d pulled up, “even after I’d explained what happens on Saturday, Walter didn’t seem too worried about it.”

“Mirah is now dodging three of my hits before I take her down.” June said, her voice quiet and continually surprising due to its high tone in comparison to her looming, spindly form. The rest of the team filled in the sentence that should likely had surrounded those words, making even the sour-faced Jamie nod in her high collared hoodie.

“Aaliyah is scary.” Jamie said softly, “She’s not good at fighting like I am, but she pulls these tricks out of nowhere, and I can’t see them coming. I don’t even think she’s showing her full hand with her link either.”

“Walter…” Julia didn’t shrink exactly, but she got close to it, “he was so sweet and enthusiastic at the start. But now he trains like he’s going to try and kill someone.”

The table’s atmosphere darkened a shade deeper, each of them remembering a moment where they had looked in the eyes of their training partner and wondered—just for a split second—whether they were training, or actually fighting each other.

“Do we say something about it to David? Maybe we could ask to stop training with the–”

“No.” It was June’s words that sliced through Ren’s conciliatory gesture, shredding it before the team’s eyes. Julia could only watch as Jamie’s face crunched into a menacing scowl as she eyed down the taller woman.

“Oh shut it beanstalk, you’re only saying that because you want to win one over on Mirah. You’re not even training anything worthwhile like that!” Jamie kept her voice just below a yell, not quite travelling to the other tables that surrounded them. The tall woman glared back at Jamie, seemingly preparing herself to fight against at least her and her tagalong, Julia, with Ren usually electing to take no side and simply guide the argument as best he can.

“I agree with June.” Julia said, her voice crystalline clear in the muddied beginnings of the argumentative atmosphere. Jamie whipped her eyes to her, shock and a slight hurt marring her expression. Julia usually sided with Jamie, not only because they were friends, but because Jamie usually made the right call.

But in this case, the ‘right’ call, may very well be the wrong one. Jamie looked for safety and reliability, and this new situation was not exactly either. But it was an opportunity, to grow and learn instead of taking what came to them easily.

“I think we should continue to train with them as much as we can. Something big happened to them, and it’s driving them through the roof.” Julia was surprised with how clear and decisive her crystalline voice was, but gave each of the table’s shocked occupants a steady look to hide it, though they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

“I think we should ride their wave.”

Julia bounced desperately away from a beam of fire that spewed forth from Walter’s hands, only just managing to dodge the fire that seemed to work differently than most fire control abilities that she’d seen talked about online. Most either had the ability to create fire, or control fire, where Walter seemed to be close to possessing both. At least to some extent, where flames not created by him where impossibly difficult for him to manipulate with any efficiency it seemed.

The fire was usually created from some physical reaction, usually chemical in nature, which came along with a significant morph to the Linked’s body, and the control was linked strongly with hypercognitive abilities like the different types of control over object, gasses, liquids, and energies, such as telekinesis.

Walter, though, seemed capable of both, and he was getting better at it fast. At first, he’d just try to follow her bounding form around with one of his hands, aiming to hit her with the end of his flames, but that was almost entirely useless. Not only was she a small and quick moving target, any of the lower-temperature flames that would scathe her would do next to no damage to her at all.

She was extremely resilient against heat, and even intense heats would take a good while for them to come close to affecting her. She could likely survive the combustion of jet fuel, though it wouldn’t be pleasant.

But Julia quickly began to realise that Walter’s flame? It could get really, really hot.

Slowly, as he worked out just how much heat she could take, the man continued to increase the temperature bit by bit, soon making the flames so hot that even having it scathe her skin would quickly start boiling the liquid that she instinctually used as a layer of defence against fire, regardless of her resiliency.

From what was almost just a game of Julia playing along and dodging the man’s beams of fire as she tried to get anything out of training, to what was now scarily close to a mortal game of skip-rope. If the man could raise the already bright white flame to beyond that heat? It wouldn’t take much for it to go straight through her outer layer and begin to eat into whatever that might be important within.

Thankfully, the man hadn’t raised the temperature of the much slimmer beams of flame, with either there being a trade-off too large to make for it to be practical, or that Walter understood from her reactions that he had well and truly reached dangerous levels for her.

The next step after that, however, had been the control element of his link.

Julia jumped over yet another beam of flame, it swinging underneath her as Walter’s hand angled the beam while he ran to where he believed to be a safer location. Julia, however, had other plans. With a massive bound, she rocketed towards her opponent like a rubber ball, making his eyes widen as he struggled to get the best information to his brain as quick as possible.

She stretched out her form, sacrificing the speed she had for the wide, blanket-like form she took to smother Walter into the ground like she had every match so far. But just as she drew close enough to see the exact minutia of his face, she realised that he was far too calm in comparison to the expression he normally made when he knew his time was up after a fight that had gone on far too long.

It was with a momentary horror that Julia noticed that both of his palms were spewing white flames, but even worse, he had tricked her with the lack of movement from his palms. The beams of flame themselves, though…

Two pillars of white fire appeared within Julia’s vision, both of them being right in the path of her spread out body, and not wide enough apart that she’d be entirely safe even when she pulled herself back into her regular form. However, she had no choice, with her spread form probably not being resilient enough to withstand the flames without some sort of injury. She pulled her body in, relinquishing all control to pull in her as tightly as she possibly could, going a dark purple to only just be scathed by the burning pillars.

She desperately tried to regain control from the forced, almost instinctive action of self-preservation, but she’d lost a massive amount of momentum, making her fall just short of Walter’s body where she might have been able to smother him to eke out a win, but it looks like she’d have to rely on a backup strategy.

As her body touched the ground, she compressed herself slightly, preparing herself to make a jump and use all of that force to ram straight into Walter’s chest, but just as she looked towards where she wanted to batter into him, all she saw were two, glowing hands.

And then fire.

But not the white-hot fire that she’d been accustomed to, something that she could feel with the boiling of the liquid on her outer membrane, though she felt no pain. This fire was warm instead, a much lower temperature to the point where she stopped dead still in her tracks, the moment of shock overcoming her need to bound into the man, or away from the flame.

As the flame battered uselessly, she heard Walter’s voice call out with a powerful yell.

“Death blow!”

And that was when there was a sharp snap of fingers from David’s direction, mutely demanding the end to their round of combat. Julia sat, frozen as she watched the flames disappear from her vision, only Walter’s hands remaining only thirty centimetres from her surface. It was with a sudden rapture that she realised that he could have very well killed her, if only he had raised the temperature of his fire.

She looked towards June and Jamie, both of them still fighting with their own opponents, but knowing, deep in her heart, that they would fall soon as well.

It was only a matter of time, in the face of people with so much willpower.