What was a Hero?

A question for the ages, even before those with ‘superpowers’ appeared some half century ago. It was a difficult question to answer, in its essence. What necessitated the label of Hero? Did you merely have to save a life, either directly or from an abstract perspective? Did you need to act heroic, to stand tall and to do right at a cost to self?

Would that mean that someone that comes from ultimate power can’t be a Hero? How much cost to one’s self do you need to incur before an action is suitably heroic? Those without a link at all might save another person at the cost of their own life, or very near to it. Is that action inherently more Heroic than someone with a powerful link stopping another Linked from killing hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents?

Where is the line? What is the line?

Walter was no fool, but he was also idealistic. He wanted to go back to a world that revered the icons of strength, justice, and morality that the comic book characters of yesteryear represented. They had been massive, world spanning names that more people knew of than was strictly necessary. There are old, vintage films made on these characters, a story created to show the struggle of good against evil, morality against the chaos that lacks it.

But they had disappeared now. Even those who once loved those films in their childhood denied having ever seen them, or even knowing the names of the Heroes that star in them. Walter always wanted to know why? Why would you abandon those ideals so suddenly and try to rid the world of them so completely?

Now, at least a little, he understood.

What had Aaliyah been to him? Not a Hero, certainly, not much of a friend either, even after all of their interactions. Maybe he had been interested in her, romantically, but that was as fleeting as any of those emotions are.

At the very least, he had counted her as someone that at least pretended that she wanted something similar to what he did. Walter wanted to help people, Ajax wanted to protect people, Mirah wanted what Mirah wanted, and Aaliyah?

He wasn’t so sure about Aaliyah, never was. Her motives and interests had always been a mystery, and one that was hidden from immediate sight, unlike Mirah’s own, which the girl herself probably didn’t know all that well. Walter had worried that Aaliyah was using their interests as a springboard, to simply include herself in the group as they got stronger and leave it when the moment was right for her.

He had counted on some level of selfishness from her, especially as more of Aaliyah’s true, rather acerbic, and somewhat ugly personality started to shine through the cracks of her veneer around the rest of the group. Especially as Mirah was the equivalent of a social blunt weapon, and there wasn’t much of anything significant you could hide from the woman without her taking a swing and seeing where it landed.

It had been Mirah that had uncovered Walter and Ajax’s… heroic intentions with the training they were receiving, after all.

So, colour Walter surprised when Aaliyah herself was the one to open up. To the whole team, no less. None of them had done that yet. It was a massive leap of faith, to reveal their darkest past, the reason for their Awakening, their greatest sins…

And sins they were. Morally conflicting, horrifying, sins.

Aaliyah’s talk had wounded Walter in a way he wasn’t quite sure he could fathom. Walter could claim up and down that he wasn’t naïve, that he understood the ramifications, socially and societally, for the introduction of a heroic element into the mixing pot. He could even say that he understood, morally, that there were times where evil in measured amounts must be committed to save the world from more evil.

The death of a man who very well may be just extremely unwell, who could possibly recover to even be a force for good within the world, might simply need to die because of the danger he possesses. It might seem cold and callous to believe so, but Walter could agree with the idea, though hesitantly.

Mentally unwell and extremely dangerous were one and the same with Linked. How long would it be before someone with a psychiatric disorder, who was only a few small pills away from becoming someone good, loses control and begins a wave of mass killings?

It had already happened once. In fact, Suicide wasn’t even the beginning, he was more the prophesised child, to be born and to die by the predictions made by the repetitions of history. Before him was far too many mass murderers to count, and since there have been even more.

So why? When he can make such an easy moral choice between the death of one man who has lost control and the safety of others, why was it so hard to reconcile Aaliyah’s actions within himself?

Maybe it was the reality of it. It was the sick feeling in his stomach as she had described each step she’d taken, each moment in time that lead her to her next inevitable sin. It was the reality of her father, and the torture that she had inflicted upon him, that had really hurt Walter’s ability to rectify it against his morality.

It was revenge, plain and simple. Aaliyah hadn’t even tried to pretend that it was anything but the ultimate revenge that she could sow for her father’s demise And her father had deserved it. The Monarch was an evil, evil man, without a shadow of a doubt.

How many had her father killed with the drugs that he had slowly got much of Melbourne hooked on? Kids with parents who had died from their drug use, which those kids would then fall into themselves, repeating the cycle because the Monarch’s drugs were always there. Not to mention cutting those drugs with all sorts of things so that they could reduce the costs of the drugs in the most vulnerable neighbourhoods without eating into the profits.

It was disgusting. In fact, Walter couldn’t possibly think of much worse than someone who was so willing to distribute drugs that killed incessantly, and then have the gall to be heartbroken when his own drugs killed his daughter.

The mere thought of the man and his actions made Walter’s blood run hot, and the fire that always seemed to sit just below his skin burned with the rage. Walter had never unintentionally let forth a burst of fire, and he didn’t do so now, likely a sign that no matter how enraged he became, the flames would always remain under his control.

But that visceral hate, instead of propelling his mind into the swirling rage that would have possibly led to the torture that Aaliyah had inflicted upon her father, it instead only made Walter more sceptical of his emotions.

Walter hated this man, yes. He hated him for not what he had done to Walter himself, but to those who had ever been affected by the Monarch’s rule over drugs. Because there had been a lot, and it was beyond a possibility that Ajax’s own parents, namely his father, had died due to the Monarch’s drugs.

But if Aaliyah had simply killed the man, as she could have done instead of keeping him restrained in her home’s basement, Walter would be able to rectify this that much easier. Because it needed to happen, the Monarch needed to disappear for her to take his place and then destroy his empire from the inside out, causing what would have been irreparable damage to the supply chains in those areas for at least a while. Though Walter held no doubt that they’d long since been rebuilt, at least to some degree.

Walter was willing to bear the moral burden of all the indirect death that Aaliyah had caused, the Linked that had died along with those who had ended up in a gang and had risen through its ranks to earn money of off the pain they inflicted on others and their lives.

Were they pitiful? Sometimes. Did it make Walter feel horrible, right down to the very core of his being, his mind being affronted with the reality that he might just have made the very same choice that Aaliyah had.

Would he have done everything the same way? No. He would have tried to give people more outs, to try and make as much good out of the horrific situation as he possibly could.

But… would he have been able to do anything at all? Aaliyah’s torturing of her father, no matter how bad it had made her feel, was something that Walter found unnecessarily cruel. Whether he deserved torture isn’t important, it was the morality of the action itself.

Yet was that the barrier that Walter would have found himself up against? Would he have been able to do any of what she had done, knowing that ever word he spoke, and every moment spent was focused around destroying empires made of people. People who he’d have to kill, however abstracted he was from the act itself.

So, he was lost within a mire of indecision. He didn’t know how to feel about Aaliyah’s actions. He didn’t even know how to properly frame them in his mind, to get the most authentic idea of them that he could.

Walter blinked back to reality, finding himself sitting at the cafeteria table that was reserved for his team, with no clear memory of how he’d gotten himself there from the bed in his room. While he might be confused, his body told him that he had indeed managed to make the short trip almost entirely unconscious.

He’d even ordered food, which was eggs on toast, and had been in front of him for so long that it had gone stone cold. Walter sighed, placing down the knife and fork that he’d picked up at some point and running his hand through the hair that he usually kept at a semi-short length, though it’d grown out quite a bit since his arrival at the AASAU.

It was early in the morning too, having never really gone to sleep—and he’d expected that the others hadn’t slept either, though they weren’t down at the cafeteria so early. In fact, almost no-one was. It was almost calm in comparison to the hustle and bustle attitude most took in the early morning.

Now that he looked at the food in front of him, Walter realised that he really didn’t feel hungry. His stomach was sick to its deepest point, mocking him with the simultaneous requests to eat, and the slight pang of nausea when he even thought about doing so.

He felt bad for doing so, but he stood from his table after crossing the knife and fork over the food, leaving it untouched along with the cup of coffee he had started drinking in the morning, more for its taste than any real energy benefit.

Walter began to walk a little aimlessly, choosing to go down to the Underground and walk through its grid of walkways and doors, all of which were obscenely clean. He’d always wondered how that was done, but there was no janitors room that he’d seen, so as far as he was aware, it was either linktech or someone with a link. It was impressive either way.

Walter didn’t even really know what time it actually was, and his perception of time was thrown off significantly by the increased amount of energy that he’d found access to after training for a month or so. Waking up and going to sleep was always going to be a struggle for Walter, but he could probably stay awake for twenty-four hours and be totally unaffected. Forty-eight would be pushing it, though.

Whatever time it was, it was early enough that the late nighters had gone to bed, and the early birds weren’t awake yet. He was surprised that the cafeteria was even making food at that time, but maybe they had someone on call overnight. He had heard that some morphed Linked go nocturnal after they Awaken, but that sounds pretty rare.

Walter’s feet eventually take him down the long hallway to where they had been training with the team of morphs since a few days ago now. It was a long walk, but his whirring mind made it feel like only a few moments before he found himself at the door of the arena, opening it with an idle curiosity.

He didn’t know if anyone would be inside and using the arena so early, but he was surprised to find the lights on as he opened the door. Really, Walter was interested in looking for a place to himself that wasn’t his room, and the large arena—though still smaller than the capital ‘A’ Arena—was perfect to give him the physical space needed to think.

Walter opened the door more, pushing out one of its two doors and peering through the linktech created material the walkway was made from, trying to get a decent look up the steps to where the main area was.

Failing to see much more than the walls of the arena and part of its high ceilings, Walter decided to walk in quietly and take a look at who might be inside. The walk was short, leading him up the steps to allow him to gaze over the arena’s wide field. Immediately he recognised the arena’s single occupant, sitting in a cross-legged position in the middle of the arena, eyes closed and breathing at a consistent rate.

“Osmium?” Walter whispered, his own mouth getting ahead of his mind and just blurting out the first thing that came to the forefront of his brain. He could feel his eyes widen as he stood stock still, desperately hoping that the legendary Linked hadn’t heard his voice. A moment passed, and then another, and the man in the arena didn’t seem to have notice Walter’s vocal misstep at all.

With a quick breath of relief, Walter turned slowly, trying to make his feet as light as possible as he retreated down the steps, fearing that he’d disturb the man.

“Yes, though I do prefer David, nowadays.” The clear, distinctive voice of the man echoed easily over the arena, meeting Walter’s ears with a shock of panic, before Walter’s face pulled itself into possibly the most intense grimace of his entire life.

Well shit. What a way to make an impression on your childhood hero at three in the morning.