A/N
So, another case where I take the gag lines of a character from Heroes of the Storm and convey it in narrative format. This time, for Tracer.
The World Could Always Use More Heroes
"I've been all over my world, so it's good to see some new ones."
"Yeah, tell me about it. I mean, with the Nexus, I get to see a new world every fifteen minutes or so."
"Fifteen minutes? Crikey."
"Well, sometimes it's twenty. Or there was this one time we defended some ancients and the match took an hour." Li-Li shuddered. "Nasty stuff."
Tracer didn't have a response to that, but her smirk said it all. And Li-Li decided that unlike the last visitor to the Nexus, this new vagabond would be a friend worth having. Because in the past few days, Tracer had demonstrated two things. One, she was very handy with those pistols of hers. And two, unlike said last visitor (a brute of a creature called Dehaka), she could enjoy her company without having to worry about being sent back to the Hall of Storms in a handbasket. So in the midst of such comradery, they continued to sit on the wharf of Blackheart's Bay – listening to the waves, looking at the fish, and trying to ignore how skeleton pirates were drinking rum without it spilling out of their rib-cages.
"So," Li-Li said, watching a seagull perch nearby. "How'd you end up here then? Dimensional storm? Hand of gods? Cross-promotion?"
"Eh?" Tracer asked. "Oh. Can't really say." She shrugged before leaning back on the wood. "But hey, being stuck here isn't the worst thing that's happened to me."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah." She pounded the strange, metal object that was fixed onto her chest. "See this thing? Chronal accelerator. Only thing that keeps me fixed in the present."
"Um…"
"My friend Winston gave it to me. Bit weird, but hey, least I'm always on time for things."
You weren't on time for that grave golem last week. But Li-Li remained quiet. This was the Nexus, she reminded herself. Chronal accelerators and time travel surely couldn't be the strangest thing she'd encounter. After all, hadn't Tracer spoken of a strange world called Earth, where no orcs or elves or dwarves existed, and where there were a race of robots and spaceships? Some of those weirdos from the K-sector had tried to get in on the action, claiming that they were from Earth, but Li-Li knew a liar when she saw one. Nova was sociopathic, but at least she wasn't Tracer.
"So then I realize that I'd left Winston's extra peanut butter in Reinhardt's helmet. And he was trying to take it off, but it just wouldn't budge. And Torbjörn laughed and laughed and laughed."
On the flipside, Nova, unlike Tracer, wasn't crazy. And she didn't go off on tangents about peanut butter.
"Mrggglgll!"
The healer and assassin watched as Murky jumped into the water, sending the seagull squawking, the fish swimming, and the skeleton pirates…Li-Li glanced at them. They were drunk. Somehow.
"Heroes, adventurers, oddities…" Tracer mused, as the pair watched the frog creature get his morning snack. "Looks like they've all made it to the Nexus."
"Gwaap!"
"Little heavy on the oddities though."
Li-Li shrugged. Murlocs capturing and eating fish was something she was used to. What really sucked as that Murky was the only murloc here, so she couldn't take out any of his kind for easy loot.
Least I'm not as desperate as those nephalem weirdos.
Li-Li glanced at Tracer once more. Yes, she decided, Lena Oxton would be a good friend. She was crazy, she was quirky, she came from a world where the only sane thing was a talking ape, but at least she wasn't a loot-hound. At last she wasn't some covert assassin from the depths of space (even if that assassin had dressed up differently this morning, calling herself "Widowmaker" for some reason). At least…well, what else was needed.
"So then?" Tracer said, getting to her feet. "You know if they have a good chip sarnie here? I'm starving."
Li-Li shrugged helplessly.
Sometimes, she could do with a little less weirdness.
"Gawaargle!"
Or a lot less.