The arena that the two teams had trained in for a week was eerily quiet, in comparison to the harsh sounds of fighting that had filled it at most hours of the day. Today, only two members of the teams remained within the arena, Ren and Ajax.

Even though they continued to fight, and Ajax continued to make his point about being capable of winning the vast majority of the time, the drive behind it had quelled significantly. There was good reason for this of course, neither of the two men being one to deny themselves a good bit of training.

It was Saturday. Just a regular old Saturday that would pass like any other day in the week, except for the fact that tomorrow was different. Sunday was the day of the match, at midday sharp.

Ajax wasn’t going to pretend that he knew or cared for the politics that underlaid the way that their opposing team was being decided. In fact, maybe none but Aaliyah was actually privy to the progress that Willem and Tracker had made on that front since it’d been decreed that they would need to partake in the combat training matches.

They had known that the match would take place on a Sunday, but when they had been told this, long ago, it’d felt like years away. The idea was almost ethereal to them, and maybe that’s partly why they were capable of dealing with it all with so much bluster and confidence. Instead of simply being thrust into combat with an already advanced team—Baxter and his team having been trained for much longer than they had—this time the team that they would face wouldn’t be much more experienced than themselves.

In comparison, it was almost achievable, even if they had needed to ditch almost all conventional training with Willem and theory study with Tracker to do it. They had trained hard, taking advantage of the extremely beneficial situation that Willem had set up for them with David, or Osmium’s, help.

They’d all risen in strength much faster than any of them had imagined, with even Willem occasionally showing some minor signs of surprise. The gruff-faced man was decidedly difficult to impress in such a way. Ajax might not know who Willem was, just another mystery that they had yet to uncover the barest truth of, but it was obvious that he had been around for a long time.

He was powerful, probably the most generally powerful person in the building probably only rivalled by David. He was older, older than the average age of a Linked by a large margin. If he was a trainer, then he wasn’t some poor sod that had Awakened recently as the age demographic for Linked slowly widened. The likely reason was that he was old guard, probably having been Linked long than they’d been alive.

Even at a quick glance, the man was experienced. He just about oozed confidence in the way he approached all of this, even when he was being thrown so far off the intended route for their training. He seemed capable of taking just about everything in his stride and moving forwards without a hint of hesitation.

It had made it infinitely easier to follow the man, to simply follow what he told them to do and to reap the benefits of his occasional words of advice. Now, however, they were only mere moments away from the reality that would face them as the future raced to meet them. Fighting, matches, mystery, injury…

They’d tasted it for a moment with the fight against Baxter’s team, the grudge match that’d apparently been a month in the making. It had blindsided them, and they had been totally unprepared for anything near that level of combat. The most competent between all of them had been Walter, and that had been an ugly fight no matter how you had looked at it.

Now, though, they had developed significantly, becoming far more competent overall. Now, Ajax was even somewhat confident that he’d be able to go toe to toe with the speedy dickhead, though whether he’d be able to win wouldn’t be a sure bet. Though the plan seems to be that Willem will do everything in his power to leave the best till last, which means that by then, weapon combat will be on the table.

Ajax could use his axe in training, but it wasn’t something that he was allowed within the actually matches, not until they were permitted to use weapons. Thankfully, Ajax’s link wasn’t predicated upon the actual use of his axe, and it could just be hanging on his hip and he’d be able to use his strength just fine.

It was a bit backwards, in Ajax’s opinion. There were examples like Walter and the telekinetic, who hardly needed weapons to be deadly as all get out, but at the same time, the idea of giving someone like June a knife or baton would be mortifying. The death she could sow would be immense, and it’d all happen in the blink of an eye.

The two men had trained late into the night unknowingly, leaving them tired and more than willing to just leave the arena in silence, only to grab a decent meal before heading back to their respective rooms with barely a wave in each other’s direction. Whether it would be the last time that they’d train together wasn’t strictly important, and they may very well continue to do so despite not being commandeered by Willem and David’s whim.

Ajax entered his own room a moment later, the door clicking open with a quick swipe of his keycard, letting him stumble into his room wearily. He wasn’t exhausted, of course, he hadn’t done enough exercise for him to truly be tired, but just the thought of tomorrow was tiring enough to promote the cloud of weariness hanging over his head.

He took his quick shower before bed, neglecting to wash his thick, brown hair like he might’ve on his normal schedule. Ajax just didn’t have the brain power to sit and desperately try and dry his head of long hair before he went to bed. It was something that took almost no attention at all, but today it was just too much.

The moment that Ajax hit the hay, he was put in that strange space between sleep and consciousness, floating just inches above the surface of the lake of unconsciousness. As he skimmed across the surface, the slight whispers of dreams and thoughts flittered through his brain like an overheard conversation.

It was a place of strange comfort, but even as Ajax slowly skimmed the water deeper and deeper, there was a resigned feeling in the back of his mind. An acceptance that tomorrow would come, with all the challenges that it might bring.

Though, if he were being entirely honest, Ajax hoped that they would show the rest of the trainees that, no, they weren’t simply going to fall over in a gentle breeze.

He hoped.

The morning sun split the sky above Melbourne, which wasn’t necessarily a rarity, but it was nice for what was meant to be a somewhat tense day.

Aaliyah was just about as ready as she could get for the day, having taken the entire day before off, just to sleep and rest as much as possible before she was to fight her little heart out. She’d worked with Tracker to some degree, mostly just sending a message between each other every now and then while Tracker and Willem found them an opponent for the match.

When she’d figured out who it was going to be, she’d tried to grab as much information on them as possible, and was pleasantly surprised with their luck, and their opponent’s lack thereof.

The other team had been here for quite a while longer than them, but still ranked deep into the lowest numbers there was here. It was almost impressive that they’d managed to remain so lowly ranked, but they weren’t sponsored, and it seems like most of them were there on their own dime, or maybe paid for under the promise of a government or army position.

You’d think that the army would do their own training, and Aaliyah had heard that they sometimes do, but apparently military Linked still undergo training at the AASAU as part of their requirements to be let into the forces. It was odd, and Aaliyah wasn’t going to pretend to understand exactly why it was done that way, but the likely answer was just good old bureaucracy.

The team of four were all men, again putting them as somewhat of a rarity, especially since there was a roughly sixty forty split between women and men in AASAU training. Mostly likely reason for that was that the men all ended up in gangs, and much fewer women took that route. Though it was hardly as if working for a corp was much better than being involved in a gang.

They didn’t really have specifically interesting links either. Except for one of them, Aaliyah supposed. The leader was just a little stronger than average, at least in comparison to Ajax. He did have quite the regeneration, putting him at an impressive level in that category, though it still wouldn’t matter for the sake of the fight.

The second team member could apparently throw things extremely accurately, which she could imagine worked with other things you had to aim, such as guns. Though, while it might be impressive if he had a weapon, he was limited to paint balls for the practice. If you were hit by them in an unguarded area, then you were instantly defeated in the match, so they adjusted for it somewhat. As soon as the man was given an actual weapon, like a slingshot at least, then he’d become scary really quickly. The third was, again, not that impressive. He could redirect physical blows, even really big ones, but against anything else he was almost useless.

The fourth was where things got interesting, at least for Aaliyah. Sure, they weren’t necessarily going to be someone particularly strong in combat, and the man was only slightly more physically powerful than a regular Linked, but it was the sheer utility that his link held that pulled her interest.

He had the ability to create a clone of himself. As far as she could tell, it was only one, and there was no infinite propagation as there was a time limit, but it came with its upsides. They were distinct beings from one another but held a complete telepathic link that seemed uninterruptible. Aaliyah had no idea how someone with a link like that ended up in the lowest possible training bracket, but the truth was sitting right there in front of her.

The mountain of possibilities that his link held from espionage, to literally almost anything was immense, and as her mind started to delve into the darker possible uses for the link, she almost began to scare herself. The idea of a suicide bomber, totally incapable of being significantly hurt by their bombs, was something that kept itself ultimately present in her mind.

Others had to have seen his link in action, so maybe it wasn’t as scary as she thought, especially since she was getting a lot of this information straight from an AASAU science server that she’d gotten access to. She was trying to get into the more restrictive stuff, but the office workers that she’d been able to phish hadn’t had access to those servers.

So, instead of wasting time, she’d managed to phish one of the on-hand scientists that they have, one ironically specialised within linktech IT infrastructure, and broken into the info that they have on the bulk of the trainees and their links.

Funnily enough, Aaliyah couldn’t even get access to her own files on that server, with the different grade of ‘sponsor level’ guaranteeing more secrecy. Files of those being trained by Willem, or even anywhere close to that, were probably held on their own private servers, or in physical copies. The fact that she could even get so far into the infrastructure was almost hilarious. If she didn’t already know that files on sponsorships, even for the smallest of sponsors, were always held in physical files rather than any digital file, then she’d already know who was sponsoring their team. It’d be that easy.

Aaliyah grumbled for a bit, feeling the time slowly leak by as it went from early-morning, to mid-morning, and then quietly to the point where she needed to eat now or she’d miss her breakfast before the fight. She struggled out of bed, quickly throwing on some comfortable training clothes over the underwear that she had slept in.

She spent another few minute finishing the necessary components of her morning routine before leaving the room with a little pep in her step. Today, she almost dared to be confident about their outcome in the match, and while she thought that she might be jinxing it by thinking that way, it was almost an unshakable feeling.

Confidence wasn’t something she’d genuinely held within herself for a long time, not since she’d held complete confidence in destroying her own father’s empire. But now, this was a confidence that wasn’t marred by darkness and hate, but one that was almost pleasant to have within, reassuring and calming against the screaming chaos that constantly surrounded her.

Confidence was nice.