The man sat stock still only metres away from Walter, the man having invited him to sit just across from him. The man was shorter than Walter had expected, even after having read all of the information that various wiki pages had on him, even if the only half decent page was on an Australian nineties and two-thousands television wiki.
Walter had managed to keep his cool when he’d first encountered the man, the shock and awe being somehow diffused throughout the rest of the people present. A few—like Mirah, Tracker, and Willem—didn’t seem fazed by the man’s sudden appearance, but everyone else was suitably flabbergasted.
But now, with only Walter and the Osmium in the large arena, there was nowhere for the starstruck feeling in Walter’s stomach to go. He struggled against it, trying to push it down and make himself seem as normal and unfazed as he could, but his hands were betraying his efforts with their tremoring.
Walter’s entire body felt light and airy and his legs, if he were standing, would be shaking hard enough that he wouldn’t be able to stand and look normal at all. It was almost a blessing that the man had asked him to sit, and somewhere in Walter’s adrenalin addled brain, he realised that it was probably for this exact reason that David had asked him to sit down. Saving at least some of Walter’s dignity.
“You are… Walter, yes?” The man said in his ever-precise tone, including its distinctive light nasal tone to accompany it. Walter swallowed heavily as the man picked his name correctly, a pang of giddiness in his stomach forcing a weak smile to his face, even as he tried desperately to push it down
“Uh, yes sir. That’s me.” He said, his voice a lot clearer than he really felt inside, but he wasn’t about to complain that his voice was holding up. A voice crack right now would send this memory straight into the cringe compilation that played late at night when he couldn’t sleep. He really didn’t want that.
The man nodded a little, opening his eyes to look at Walter with his piercing gaze. “You and your team have started to grow in power now. I don’t think it will be long before you easily rival the team under my charge.”
Walter’s eyes widened a little, a shock of dread running through his organs like lightning. “Oh, I’m sorry I–” But as he started to uselessly apologise, David shook his head sharply.
“There is no need for apologies. They are for when you’ve done something wrong, Walter.” The man relaxed slightly from his upright sitting position, slumping over into a position that you’d never have seen Osmium in, at least not on camera. “Your team has more motivation than my own. Where they are unsure about their future, your team has a goal. It’ll be the reason your team will soon be stronger.”
“I, well, I don’t know about that.” Walter stammered out, and he felt it was truthful, too. “Only Ajax has beaten anyone yet, and we always forget just how strong he can be. His link is hard to get a grasp of but depending on the situation he could probably go toe-to-toe with Willem. Maybe.”
The old Linked turned to Walter solidly, one eyebrow raising speculatively. Walter couldn’t quite decipher what the eyebrow was supposed to mean, throwing him into a quick cycle of anxious thoughts before David spoke.
“If he were capable of that, then he would be extremely impressive. I won’t profess to know the inner workings of a link so complex, not when my own is so straight forward, but being able to match Willem is a feat in and of itself.”
Walter narrowed his eyes at the man, pushing aside his starstruck anxiousness for a moment and readying himself to ask the question that rested on his lips, but David turned his gaze away from him and continued to speak regardless of the obvious question.
“Your team is created from Undefined, correct?” He asked plainly, pushing forward the conversation with a question he clearly already knew the answer to.
“Yes, sir.” Walter said slowly, taking his time with the words, “I was the only one who was actually labelled that by the AASAU, though. We don’t really know why we were put together, not when the AASAU hates using Undefined like they do.”
“They do not hate it,” David corrected calmly, “they are just overly concerned with the numbers. They let it all overwhelm them, and that is a fatal mistake, one they have been making for years.”
Walter wasn’t about to disagree with the man. Public consensus was that the AASAU should be taking a larger part in policing those that hold the certifications and licenses that they hand out. But it was so plainly obvious that the AASAU was corrupt to its bone, probably even more so than the government itself.
The only way to govern linked is with the support of either someone so overwhelmingly powerful that they had no option but to obey, or to have powerful and continually upgraded infrastructure that allows for prisons and other facilities needed to restrain Linked. The first option was something that Australia simply didn’t have. There was no Centerpoint equivalent, not really, only a lot of powerful individuals all doing their own thing in their own little gangs.
The closest equivalent would be the Wastelanders, but they were so far into the insane that there was absolutely no way they’d possibly agree to help someone. As far as anyone knew, the three Linked lived somewhere out in the middle of their self-created hellscape, far too comfortably for Walter’s liking.
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The second… well, that was only something that could really happen if the corruption that pervades almost every system in modern Australia were to be relieved, or someone were to do it themselves as a private individual or group. Maybe someone with an extremely powerful hypercognitive ability specialising in infrastructural tech along with someone capable of setting it all up somehow.
They were only two of the most obvious, clearest solutions, and there was already so many issues with them that simply just took them off the table. Which only left the harder, gruelling, and potentially war-like options.
“How’d you deal with it all?” Walter sighed out, pulling the man’s gaze once again, a questioning gaze this time. Walter didn’t need to elaborate further, though. David, who was once Osmium, knew that expression far too well. On his teammates, colleagues, friends and family… himself, on occasion.
“We do what we can.” He replied, the simple advice being just as cliched as it could be, though Walter was still quick to listen to Linked. “I retired for that reason, as many have suspected. The Federal Police were interfering more in who our team could go after, tightening restrictions to their limit. I left when I realised that nothing was going to change.”
Walter swallowed heavily. He had known it to be true for years, the wikis and forums had speculated on the choice, especially with rumours that he was intending to go rogue with a collection of former partners.
“Was it ever true that you were going to start doing it all on your own?” He asked tentatively. David had never once confirmed any of these rumours, always simply having ignored the questions entirely, or dodged them with a skilful ease that somewhere around a decade of PR training would give you.
“Never with any solidity, though there are moments that I wonder if I should have.” The man mused, almost wistfully. An odd tone on a man that was revered as a stoic symbol of exact justice. At least, he was quite a few years ago.
“Why didn’t you?” Walter asked, trying to hide the ravenous need for the answer. After all, he was aspiring to be a Hero in the modern day, a task that not many entertain, and even less have pursued in any real capacity.
“Too messy.” David said with a crisp finality to the words, “Procedure has no place in vigilante work. Information is scarce and hard to come by, with no system of contracts that the police have, especially with tools that can do so much as look through walls. The amount of money and time someone would have to spend to rival the police’s resources would be astronomical, especially when they are going to be one of a few people working on it.
“The reality is that justice and procedure go out the window as soon as you step out on those streets with a goal to take down someone big and nasty. There are people who certainly need to be stopped, sometimes at all costs, but when you go out there and start pushing and shoving, it escalates into having to kill someone in minutes.”
Walter felt his face almost go cold as the blood drained from it. He had no doubt that, even with his warmer skin tone, he looked totally ashen in that moment. Osmium, a Linked of legendarily ironclad morals, gave Walter a sad smile—breaking the image of a stoic expression.
“I can see what you plan, Walter. It’s written all over you and your team, and I can just about spot an idealist from a mile away.” Walter began flush with a shame so intense that he could feel his stomach turn into a raisin, but David interrupted the man’s decent into anxiety.
“I am an idealist too, of course.” David’s face was back to its classically stoic expression now, though Walter could swear that he was the tiniest glint of a teasing amusement in the man’s eye.
“However,” he continued, pausing intermittently to let the man recover for a moment, “I’m not idealistic enough to overlook what I would be doing out there. During my time as Osmium I can count on one hand the amount of times I needed to kill someone, or injuries I gave someone resulting in their death.” He held up four fingers, giving each of them a pertinent look, clearly remembering names and face.
“But out there you don’t have that choice, or the leeway to make that choice. I wouldn’t be able to sleep a night if I started to forget the names of those I had to kill.”
Walter frowned, staring into the ground by his crossed legs, not able to force himself into meeting the legendary man’s gaze. The words David had spoken hadn’t changed Walter’s mind, because they hadn’t been a new revelation for Walter. He would have had to have this talk two days ago for that to be true. What it did do, however, was solidify his mind on it. It stripped it of the emotionally and morally confusing elements and put it into a stark reality.
“I know.” Walter said, mirroring the man’s clear and concise tone, “I know that it’ll be dangerous, and it’ll cause harm. I might even be forced to kill, maybe more than just once. But… no one else seems to want to do it. There’s no one to rally behind or look to when they need to be shown that there’s more, that there is hope.”
Walter paused for a moment, grimly clenching his jaw, “You were that for us.”
David’s expression didn’t change, giving Walter nothing to work with, until he spoke. “I was a police officer, before I Awakened. It was my job, and I was good at it. I only worked in a small town, and everyone knew everyone, and even the worst offenders in the town liked me. They would be willing to take a trip to the station with me, rather than try and punch me out. I was never ready to become what I did, and I’m not sure anyone would be.”
“But you were a Hero.” Walter said calmly. He’d have thought he’d be more angry as the man of his childhood belittled himself, the man that he’d dreamed would one day enter his home and put a stop to those that threatened his parents with what amounted to death.
“I tried to be.” David responded, “And it worked, for a while, but I was never able to stay that way. I had the power and the vision… but I didn’t have the drive. So instead,” He waved his hand around the arena, gesturing to the AASAU as a whole, “I decided that I would train the generations of Linked as best I could, and hopefully someone with the drive would come along to fulfill what I couldn’t.”
The man stood before Walter could ask anymore question, brushing off his casual grey slacks, then beginning to walk away with Walter watching his form recede away from him, down the steps and hearing a slight rush of air from outside the arena as the door was opened. Though it stayed open longer than the moment that the man would need to walk through it.
“I will see you in a few hours for training. Work hard.” And then the flow of air ceased, leaving Walter in the arena all alone.
“Work hard…” Walter repeated idly as he stood, looking around the empty arena, then summoning a small flame to sit just over his palm, totally uniform and unflinching, almost as if a gem of light were sitting in his hand.
“I guess we should train a bit before then.”