Author's Note: This is my very first story, so I ask that you keep it in mind. This story is kind of near and dear to me as I've been developing it in my head pretty much since Overwatch came out. The general story was inspired by a combination of the high-class parties and galas that always seem to prevalent in spy fiction (e.g. James Bond) and the plainclothes fight scenes in movies like The Winter Soldier and Civil War (those two in particular).
I hope you enjoy this and if you have any ideas for improvement, feel free to review.
The first thing Jesse McCree felt as he came to was the pattering of rain on his hair.
As he regained a slightly better degree of consciousness, he also noticed that he had a splitting headache. His temples were throbbing incessantly, the back of his head felt like it had been thrown into a concrete wall, and his ears were ringing as though someone had just fired off a full clip from a machine gun three feet away.
He tried to reach up and rub his forehead to try to calm down the screaming pain receptors, but he soon found that his hands were securely handcuffed behind his back and moving one without bringing the other with it would be impossible. He next tried to stand up, an attempt rendered unsuccessful by the fact that he was dazed from this mysterious blow to the point where he could barely see.
Nothing here was particularly unusual for him; Waking up like this was something that came with the territory for a barfly and an outlaw such as himself. What was unusual, however, was that he was having a hard time remembering just what had led up to this blackout. All he remembered was that he had stepped outside of a very decorative-looking building for a smoke break, he'd heard a pair of guys talking not far away, and that he'd gotten a bit closer to eavesdrop on them. After that, it was straight blackness.
He strained his head up from his stomach-down position to try to get a look around, hoping that the brief period he'd been conscious for had cleared his vision enough that it wouldn't be too blurry. As his eyes refocused themselves, he saw through the dark curtain of rain and clouds that obscured what had once been a starry night. Before him was a long, deep row of intricately trimmed hedges in a massive garden courtyard, each one in the shape of some winged creature or a woman in a long robe. Behind them, off in the distance, was a seemingly endless row of city lights, arranged in tall, symmetrical rectangles, highlighted by a massive triangular tower strewn with lights from top to bottom at the very back of the row.
Paris, he remembered. The sights before him now opened the floodgates for all of what had happened leading up to his blackout. The events of the last thirty-six hours spread across his mind, jumbled up like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. As his disoriented mind slowly put the pieces back together and a sequence of events was recognized, he felt a sudden surge of fear and urgency: He had to get back inside the palace and warn everyone. NOW.
But before he could even start to pick himself up, two gargantuan arms appeared from behind him, wrapped themselves under his shoulders, and hoisted him up to his feet. He began to struggle in his captor's grip, hoping to wriggle his way to freedom, but this was cut short by a quick punch to the nose by a second aggressor which sent his head tilting backwards at high speed. As he brought his head back into position, his eyes refocused again and locked on the two men dressed as security personnel standing directly in front of him and armed with assault rifles. One of the men was short, somewhat pear-shaped, and had a thin face with a light brown duster on his upper lip, while the other was mid-height with a strong build and a round, clean-shaven face, but with a long, hooked nose and oversized ears. McCree knew these faces instantly and he couldn't help but chuckle.
"Well well, if it ain't 'Cobalt' Kowalski and the Lollipop Brigade." he said mockingly to the two men standing in front of him and the thug holding him in place. "I wouldn't a' guessed that I'd see some old Blackwatch trash here. Don't you guys have an old lady to trip or-"
McCree's snide comments were concluded by the long-nosed man punching him again. "Shut it, traitor!" he barked in a thick Lower New York accent. "You ain't in a position to make fun of us!"
"Um, yeah, about that; I kinda am." McCree replied calmly. "When you get a nickname 'cause ya drove yer mom's Cobalt to the base on the first day of work, it's right about guaranteed you're gonna get a few jokes pointed at-" Another punch from Kowalski connected, this one sending McCree's face rotating rapidly to the right. Along the tall walls of the palace, less than a hundred feet away, were bright lights refracting out of immense, ornate windows and an open doorway and casting their glow across the courtyard. His amusement with mocking Kowalski was replaced by a flash of urgency again.
"Well, kiddin' aside, I best be on my way. I kinda got a party I need to keep your boss from crashing; You know how it is." As the words left his mouth, he could see Kowalski and his pear-shaped friend crack a sneer, which soon turned into a smile, and then a snide laugh. This got McCree on edge; When the bad guys laughed like this, it was never a good thing.
"You stupid cowboy, the party's already been crashed. Every gussied-up can opener in there is dead and your little Overwatch buddies are about to follow them." Kowalski gloated through a wide, thin smile.
McCree knew right away that he wasn't lying as he backed away and snickered; guys like Kowalski never looked happy when they lied. Whatever self-confidence and condescension was left on the cowboy's face swiftly departed and was replaced with abject terror; If the Omnic guests were dead, then the peace agreement that the party was celebrating would be shattered. Dr. Zeigler and Genji's months of work would be undone instantly. All of Overwatch's planning and effort to protect it, gone in a flash.
Despite the grim thought, a small voice inside his head was calling out. It was urging him on, saying "It's not too late! You can get back there and save them! This is the chance to be a hero you've wanted for years!" His fear and hopelessness, upon hearing these thoughts of self-encouragement, were put on the back burner for now, replaced with a renewed sense of hope. He knew Talon had carried out their plan, but they hadn't counted on him being out of the line of fire. The time to turn things around was now and goddammit, Jesse McCree wasn't going to let it pass by!
Quickly, his eyes sped around, looking at his captors and the area around them. The outer wall of the palace was only a few feet behind the giant goon, close enough that stepping backwards would run him right into it. Not only that, but on the belt of the pear-shaped minion was the Peacekeeper, McCree's signature six-shooter. Almost immediately, he had formulated a plan. His eyes lingered on the gun for a moment, long enough that he knew Kowalski would see it.
"'Hey Tepesch, looks like McCree's found his hardware." Kowalski then removed the six-shooter from the belt and flipped it around so that he was holding it by the barrel and the grip was pointing at McCree. He closed the small distance between himself and his prisoner, locking his sickly green eyes on McCree's mud-brown eyes and stopping just over a foot away from the cowboy in his clutches. He raised his left hand high above his head, ready to bring it down any moment, and declared gleefully:"Oh, the irony. I am going to enjoy this a LOT.".
That's when the trapped outlaw sprung into action.
In an instant, McCree used the humongous arms under his shoulders as an anchor point, curled his back, lifted his legs so that they were at an equal level to his waist, and delivered a heavy two-leg kick to Kowalski's ribcage, sending him flat onto his back as Tepesch jumped backwards to avoid being caught up in the tumble. The force of the kick also sent the massive cronie holding the cowboy colliding with the wall behind them in a hard thud.
With the thug dazed, McCree delivered another kick, this time to the side of the shin on the immense thug's right leg, which was followed by a loud shatter. The goon howled out in pain as he raised his leg to relieve the pressure on the splintered bones. This allowed McCree to, by shifting his own weight and again using the huge arms that entrapped him, bring the both of them forward and send them to the ground, the goon's massive frame in front of his own. It came not a moment too soon.
"Shoot him, you idiot!" Kowalski screamed with what air hadn't been knocked out of his lungs. Tepesch opened fire with his assault rifle, but McCree's maneuvers had made the towering thug into an impromptu shield that absorbed every bullet sent its way. The pear-shaped man ran closer to grab a new angle, but not before McCree had slipped his arms under his tucked-in legs, allowing his cuffed hands a wider field of movement and the ability to fight back. The outlaw jumped over the still body of the large goon, lunged at his gun-toting attacker, slipped around him and choked him, using the energy chain of his handcuffs as a garrote.
Tepesch dropped the rifle and pulled out a small pulse pistol, firing it wildly behind his own head in the hopes that a lucky shot would find its mark. Instead, McCree saw it as an opportunity; He moved his hands forward, his metal left hand and the inside edge of the handcuffs where the chain met the shackle just at the edge of the pistol's barrel. In this position, one of the pistol's shots was sent directly into the irons, shattering it and freeing his hands. The moment after the shot had pierced the handcuffs, McCree brought his metal fist back towards Tepesch, striking him directly on the face and rendering him unconscious in an instant.
The more immediate threat removed, he whirled around to where Kowalski had made impact with the ground, only to see that the patch of ground's occupant was now standing up and pointing its own pistol at McCree at point-blank range. Before he could get off a shot, however, McCree grasped his left arm with his metal hand and snapped it like a toothpick. As he dropped his gun and yowled in pain, McCree's right delivered a punch that knocked the thug out cold and left his hooked nose a bloody, crumpled mess, something that three punches had been unable to do to the now-victorious gunslinger.
"Ain't never much been a fan of irony." McCree said to the unconscious man who had tried to kill him two seconds earlier. He then, reaching for the ground, picked up his Peacekeeper where it had been dropped after his first kick. The white, large-caliber pistol was a little dirty and rain-soaked, but otherwise in perfect working order. A quick check of the bullet chambers showed that the three idiots that now lay strewn on the ground hadn't even bothered to unload the gun after relieving it from their prisoner. He then placed it in the shoulder holster under the jacket he had on in place of his usual poncho and gun belt.
After using the mechanical strength of his prosthetic left to tear off the remaining shackle on his right, he turned his attention to the palace and began sprinting back alongside the wall to the entrance a hundred feet away. Placing two fingers from his right hand on a small earpiece, he frantically said into it:
"Winston, we were right. The Junkers were a red herring to lead us away from the rest of Reyes' guys. Talon's got an EMP and they're gonna set it off on the Omnics."
No response came, only static. "Winston, you there? Lena? Genji?! Fareeha! Anybody!"
Still no response, only the static and the sound of rain on the grass and the pavement. At that point, thunder rumbled off in the distance, and a flash of lightning could be seen shooting through the sky.
As he rapidly ascended the small set of steps leading to the doorway, rain pelting him as he ran, he nearly tripped over something small that seemed invisible. Looking back at where his foot had met the unseen object, he saw that it had indeed been invisible, but was revealing itself. The technological cloak that had previously shielded the object from sight frazzled, sparked, and then shorted out entirely to reveal a small, circular, purple-coloured object approximately one and a half feet long attached to the wall. On the display panel on the top of the device was an image of a pixelized, lavender-coloured sugar skull. Upon seeing the device, McCree felt another surge of fear; It was an EMP, Talon-designed, and worse still, it was activated.
"No." the gunslinger whispered. The feeling of dread grew inside him, but he didn't linger on it. The EMP was there, activated, and well beyond what McCree knew how to shut off, but something inside him told him that he had to see for himself just how bad things were inside the palace. As he reached the top of the steps and peered inside, what was confirmed looked like a scene straight out of his worst nightmares.
The doorway led to a massive ballroom, with ornate decorations, old mirrors, and priceless works of art covering nearly every inch of the gold-coloured walls. On the ceiling hung immense chandeliers, each fitted with dozens of lightbulbs where candles had once been centuries earlier. The open floor of the room had been filled up at the front with tables and a large stage with a microphone stand and a bigscreen display, while the back of the room was left open as a dance floor, accompanied by a small production stand fitted with chargers for remote control drone cameras at the very back. However, the room was now mostly empty except for the terrifying scene confronting him.
All of the human guests sitting in the tables were gone and left behind, slumped over in their chairs, were the metallic bodies of nearly two hundred Omnic dignitaries, each one periodically sparking and twitching with pulses from the EMP. On the stage, seven more Talon cronies dressed as security guards were holding assault rifles to the heads of Dr. Angela Zeigler and Lucio dos Santos. Standing out from even this awful scene, though, were two particular sights that made McCree's blood run cold.
Tracer was at the foot of the stage, sprawled stomach-down on the ground, her chronal accelerator sparking from the same pulses that had done in the Omnics. She desperately tried to stand up, but the high-heeled boot of Widowmaker came down on her lower back. The assassin then aimed her sniper rifle to Tracer's head as a cruel smile spread across her cold, thin lips. On the stage, Genji was in an almost identical position with his cybernetic supports weighing him down, only the Talon agent over him was armed with a semi-automatic shotgun in one hand, clad in black body armour and a hooded overcoat, and wearing a white spectre-like mask on his face. It was a thing that McCree knew far too well: Reaper.
McCree was frozen in place by the sight before his eyes. The dread that had gnawed at him now consumed him entirely, but only for a second. He'd never run from a fight before and there was no way in hell he was ever, EVER, going to let those bastards get away with this. He couldn't bring the Omnics back and there wasn't even a guarantee that he himself would survive this, but he was definitely going to take a few of them down with him. With this desperate courage fueling him, he drew his revolver, lined up a half-dozen targets, and let six shots ring across the room.