Walter and the rest of the team rushed down to the waiting area from their spots in the rows of seats, bursting into the room and waiting with bated breath as they waited for Aaliyah to return through the door. As soon as the door cracked open, Aaliyah stumbled in clutching her stomach.

“Aaliyah! Are you okay? Do we need to–” Walter began but Aaliyah growled at him, red blotches of frustration dancing across her skin.

“Shut it, short stack. Help me lay down.” Walter rushed to do just that, and Ajax stayed close, just in case. The tall blonde woman was laid on a nearby bench that sat a metre or two from the wall, allowing her to simply sit and breathe, the bench wide enough to trust that she wouldn’t spontaneously fall off.

“Do you want me to call for first aid?” Ajax’s voice cut through the fog of pain and sudden exhaustion that Aaliyah was experiencing, though it wasn’t a yell. Ajax’s voice was a gentle thing when it wanted to be.

“I’m fine. I might not recover fast as I might if I was happy, but I’ll be up and about in thirty minutes. Pretty damn hard to be happy when I feel like a train hit me in the gut.” Ajax nodded solemnly, moving away from Aaliyah’s side to give her space and sitting on another bench across the way.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know he could do that.” Ajax said simply but Aaliyah just snorted in response, denying him any real verbal one. Walter spoke up after a moment, concerned.

“Well, I guess he couldn’t have done that in the cafeteria.” He sighed as he raked his fingers through his short black hair, “I’m up next, so we can only hope that whoever they send out won’t be hiding the ability to turn into a mass of tentacles.”

“How long do we have between matches?” Ajax asked, and Walter replied. It was about five minutes between them, almost no time to do anything but wait. In fact, while it only felt a like a few seconds, those five minutes passed. There was a light that went a bright green next to the door that led into the Arena’s main stage. With a gulp, Walter pushed himself towards the doors with nervous energy coursing through his veins.

“Stay safe.” Was the simple encouragement Walter received as the doors closed behind him, the scarred girl on the other end of the words looked towards him with her usual stalwart stoicism. He gave the girl a nod as he turned his back on the softly closing doors, walking up the small incline towards the beginning of the large open field of sand.

As soon as he was a few steps from the entranceway, part of the Arena’s wall moved to cut off his exit, forcing Walter to move forward further. A glance around the outside of the Arena put into context just how many people were here to watch.

It couldn’t have been a normal turnout, having at least a majority of the trainees present. When you see people in the cafeteria, you only see a certain percentage of the trainees at any given time, but now you could see them all seated together at the section at the Arena’s border that was allocated for seating. It must have been somewhere in the realm of two hundred people, all of them linked. If the stats that Walter had found on Linked populations were correct, then this was probably a good percentage of the Linked population within Australia.

It only solidified within Walter’s mind that what Ivan Vasiliev had said in that interview was correct, the population of Linked was only increasing as time went on. Having this amount of Linked in one place, all here for training at one time, just meant that more Awakenings were happening as time went on.

Out of the corner of Walter’s eye, he spied the instantly recognisable form of Fat Rich in the crowd. Even from this distance, the man’s face was pulled into one of worry as he looked down from the seating with his own team. Walter hadn’t met with the rest of the man’s team yet, but if they were anything like Rich, then they were probably nice.

Walter nodded towards the man, making eye contact for a few seconds, but then turned his attention to the other side of the Arena as the bulky form of his opponent walked out.

“Team A and Team B, please approach your starting positions.” The same smug voice called from the balcony above that looked over the entirety of the Arena, though it sounded a little more tense than earlier. Walter did so along with his opponent, unconsciously comparing himself to the bulky man as he did so.

This was the telekinetic that Ajax had talked about, and he didn’t have much to actually say about the man other than he could wield a lot of force, and that maybe only Aaliyah and himself would be able to actually sustain underneath the force.

Walter cursed under his breath; this was the worst matchup he could have gotten. Not that any of the other matchups would have been great. They stood across from each other awkwardly, the other Asian man’s eyes wandering over Walter’s form and clearly finding him lacking.

“The match will begin in ten seconds!” It seems that you were expected to have listened to the rules when they were stated the first time. The anxiety built as the beeps slowly counted them down, Walter feeling his own body tense with the anticipation. Each count of the buzzer caused a small shock in Walter’s brain, but when the longer sound that signified the start of the match, everything went quiet inside.

“Begin!”

The call from Domain was a little too slow for Walter, who had already let fire sprout into existence within his hands. The other man, however, didn’t seem to care all that much for the fire. Walter could feel himself being pushed back by a wall of unrelenting force as his opponent’s body tensed in concentration.

The wall of force, while not an actual wall, certainly acted like it. Walter tried to increase the length and heat of the fire in his grasp, but it battered uselessly against the wall in front of him, as if he were trying to actually melt a wall of metal.

With no other choice, Walter turned from the wall of force and sprinted in the direction it was pushing, then quickly circling around—hoping that the wall wasn’t actually that large. Walter’s general fitness was hardly anything to write home about, but doing quick, little movements like this were where he shined, agility always having been surprisingly good throughout his childhood.

Walter raced past where the wall of force had been pushing, managing to dodge the invisible wall and continue running towards the bulky man. Walter stretched out a hand, preparing to grow the flame into a long beam of fire, hoping that it’d reach the man and maybe cause some damage.

“Not so fast.” The cold voice called, and Walter quickly found himself almost entirely entombed by force, squishing against his body severely, forcing him to be entirely still.

“God damn, man!” Walter growled, allowing his competitive spirit and adrenalin override any social anxiety he had. He glared at the other man as his flame spread out uselessly against the telekinetic force he was gripped in.

“You are weak.” The man said plainly, standing stock still as he watched Walter struggle. “Your friend made a foolish mistake when he provoked Jeremy Baxter.” Walter scoffed as he struggled more, to no avail, eventually letting himself go slack against the force.

“You think we don’t know that? We’re not idiots.” The man didn’t respond for a moment, letting the force around Walter close in even further and crush against his body, squeezing like a tube of toothpaste.

“You certainly act like idiots.” The man’s voice called out eventually, his voice continuing to be the neutral and droll tone that he’d spoken every word with. Walter yelled something barely comprehensible, but it wasn’t meant to be.

In fact, Walter was acting. It was something that even Walter would more easily attribute to Aaliyah, with her proclivity to shift between ‘characters’ being one of the main points of contention between her and Mirah. Walter wasn’t good at acting in social situations, but simulating a bit of pain to seem weak? That was easy.

Walter was collecting information; vital data that Ajax couldn’t give him before the match. Sure, Walter knew that the man was telekinetic, but not how much force he could control, or how he controlled it. In only a few moments, he’d been able to figure out that the man wasn’t able to do anything but focus on his control, making him unable to physically.

The man’s control was impressive if Walter could relate at all. He was likely fighting to keep the force intact at every moment and if that was true, it was impressive that he could even speak aloud. In a way, there were some parallels between Walter’s own link and this other man’s telekinetic link. Why his elemental link was considered an undefined magic type and the other man’s link wasn’t was due to telekinetic links repurposing the kinetic energy in the surrounding area, rather than Walter’s own link which seemingly conjured energy out of nothing.

In short, all Walter really needed was a way to break the man’s concentration, which was easier said than done.

“You think we look like idiots?” Walter growled through the faux pain, “What do you think you look like, beating on a team of newbies? Has there even been a newer team than us come in yet?” The comment, while serving to legitimise Walter’s act as genuine, did little else but make the other man increase the force crushing Walter’s body. Walter groaned as it constricted, forcing him into an even smaller and more disadvantageous spot with every passing second.

However, the shift did allow for one good thing, along with all the newfound and very genuine pain. Walter’s hand which had been stuck at an odd angle was now placed up against the invisible wall completely, the palm which the flame floated upon was not flush with the oddly shaped wall.

“If you could actually fight worth a damn, I’d consider that an insult.” The man’s voice didn’t noticeably change, but Walter could swear there was an undertone of malice in there somewhere. Walter grinned, he was getting through the stoic mask and it was buying him time. Rather than just crushing Walter until he passed out, the other man was prolonging it, though he didn’t seem to be enjoying it, lending to the idea that he wasn’t as interested in this as he would like to seem.

He was being ordered to do this.

“O–oh, is that right?” Walter said, struggling for breath against the crushing force as he desperately tried to conjure the flame further away from his palm than he ever had before, “So you’re just fighting the weak guys because your master said so?” The man’s face twitched, but the crushing force only solidified, pushing in further.

“Be quiet.” The man said, the neutral voice unwavering in its calm disposition. Walter couldn’t help but to sweat, finding the man’s will almost unbreakable despite the insults actually getting to him. Walter tried to conjure the flame again and again, but he didn’t have enough time. The neutral voiced man was pulling the walls in tighter ever second or two. Walter’s knees were now pressed against his chest tightly, restricting movement almost entirely, his head pressed against the painful point of the bony knees. However, even with all the restriction, Walter managed to push out one last word, using absolutely every ounce of distaste he could.

“Dog.”

The rage in the other man didn’t extend to his face, but his eyes burned with it, and the kinetic walls closed in ever so slowly, taking pleasure in the horrifying feeling of being confined, trapped.

Walter found himself almost useless and any tiny bit of movement he’d been able to use before was entirely gone now. Even keeping his palm up against the kinetic wall cause an ungodly amount of pain, the kinetic wall sadistically crushing at his elbow and palm at the same time. He could feel the bones in his arm creak with displeasure, straining with everything they had to stay intact against the unrelenting force.

All Walter had been left with was the conjuring of his flame. All he wanted was a little flame, a candle was all it would take. Time and time again it would conjure itself against the wall, smashed between his hand and the almost impassable wall. But Walter could feel it. It was only a few centimetres of space between the interior and exterior of the wall. If he could just conjure the flame outside, he’d win. He could do it.

Walter couldn’t even scream as the bone in his arm began to splinter, but it was in that pain that Walter succeeded. It was a failure at first but somehow the flame managed to pass the wall, conjuring barely half a metre from his hand. The moment that Walter realised he had done it, the pain flooded away from him, regardless of the force of the walls as they destroyed his arm further.

With one last push of willpower, he begged the flame to grow, to burn the man’s body so bad that he’d lose any modicum of concentration. And so, the greedy flame replied.

There was a tremendous woosh as the flame brew big and bright, even more terrifying than what he’d ever conjured before. Walter’s vision was clouded by the intense glow as he could hear the screams of the other man, the faint sickening smell of burning flesh managing to waft through the kinetic barrier.

The barrier was almost immediately dropped after, Walter also banishing his flame back to wherever it had come from. Walter’s body flopped to the ground, landing unfortunately on his destroyed arm. The pain made Walter give a short scream of his own before he bit his lip to keep it down.

He looked up to see the other man, still standing where he had been with a massive patch of his skin-tight suit missing, leaving a clear view of his scorched flesh beneath. The wound was too severe to be called superficial, but with how Linked generally healed, it’d barely be a week before it was basically normal again.

However, the intense scowl on the man’s face was enough to tell Walter that the other man didn’t care.

There was an explosion of sand right next to Walter, the force of the impact sending a shockwave of vibration through Walter’s body. One second, Walter was laying in the sand, and in the very next second he was flying through the air at blistering speed.

The last thing that Walter saw was the Arena’s wall as he smashed into it.