"This wasn't easy to get, you know." She held a thick plastic case between two hands, fiddling with it. Hana's fingernail ran over the bumpy edge, rattling and scraping. "I had to have my dad snail mail it to me."

"Of course, kid," Sombra said. "I owe you one." Sombra moved to take it, but as she did Hana flinched back.

Sombra paused with her hand outreached, clawtips hovering within grasping distance. "Having second thoughts?"

"…Maybe."

Sombra's face tightened, lips pressing firmly together to try and fight off a smile. She failed miserably, smirk coiling up like a snake.

This was ridiculous. If Sombra was going to run off with anything, it wouldn't be an old game from a system no company built anymore. Then again, Hana could distinctly see in her mind's eye a vision of Sombra sailing away with everything– all of Overwatch's secrets, and her favorite game, adding insult to injury.

"I'm only going to borrow it so I can make a copy."

"I know!" Hana pushed the game into her hands. "Just bring it back quickly, okay?"

The woman saluted her with the square disk, winking. "Te lo prometo, mami. But more importantly, we need to discuss the price of your help."

Again, alarm bells started ringing.

None of them were sure how this happened, to be frank. One day, Sombra appeared in their life, offering services and information in exchange for clemency. Any and all attempts to capture her had always failed, and here she was, deciding before they did that Overwatch would win the upcoming conflicts.

In any case, getting rid of her was almost harder than trying to catch her.

(Sombra often mentioned something about stray cats, half of it in Spanish too quick and low for Hana to understand.)

"I'm not selling it," she firmly reminded Sombra, about to snatch the disc back. But Sombra turned, tutting at her and waving her finger.

"Not what I mean. You did me a solid, now I owe you one."

She opened her arms out wide, almost taunting as she vanished into a haze of glitching air.

"I'll leave you to think about how you want me to pay you back."

Hana lunged forward, waving her hands through the spot where Sombra had disappeared. But her fingers combed through it and found nothing but air, and she was left quietly fuming.

This cryptic motherfucker!

No more, Hana decided firmly, heading back to her room. It doesn't matter if Sombra always had the shiny versions of her favorite pokemon with perfect IVs. No more trades!

True to her word, though, Sombra returned the game as quickly as possible. It appeared on Hana's desk the next day.

And when she booted up her computer to play Starcraft, she found an inbox full of heart emojis and skull ascii art. Under a particularly, viciously long string of that, Sombra attached a link to an emulator she'd created "so they could finally play together."

Hana was disgusted. Keeping up the cutesy act while streaming was one thing, but Sombra was near-constantly theatrical.

"Can you grow up?" she muttered under her breath, deleting the emails.

Then her inbox pinged again, the low bloop custom noise of an incoming message that just said one word

No

And another ascii sugar skull.

Hana unplugged her mic.

It was a bit of an open secret on base that Sombra was trying to break into their classified records. Clandestinely at first, so as to not tip her off, they upped the security. Then she escalated. And so the arm's race began, and by the end of the year Sombra was satisfied that Overwatch was impenetrable.

Still, she liked to poke at them from time to time. If they defeated her, then Overwatch was safe. If it wasn't, then Sombra had something to dangle over their heads as they scrambled to patch the leak.

She won either way.

Winston in particular found it to be a source of unexpected inspiration. Hana could hear them, casually chatting over which one of them would prevail during that day's scheduled cyber attack.

"Come on Athena, cut me a little slack. You know I've got a soft spot for AI with sexy voices."

"Winston, please tell Miss Sombra that flattery will not persuade me to lower my firewalls."

"Admit it. You liked it when I was inside of you."

Winston pushed the monitor away from Sombra as though that actually did anything. He spoke softly, sounding almost heartbroken in his chastisement. "…Sombra."

"Whaaat?" Delighted, Sombra grinned, a big full smile that showed all her teeth. "I have to be thorough. If someone can hack us by seducing Athena, we need to know about it!"

Leaning over on Winston's desk, Sombra lowered her voice to a purr.

"And Athena, have I mentioned that you could literally just spout code at me and I'd be putty in your hands?"

"I don't have hands, Sombra."

Rolling her eyes, Hana knocked on Winston's open office door. He swiveled around in his chair at her approach, giving her a short wave. With his foot, he opened up on of his desk drawers and pulled out a hunk of what looked to be scrap metal, faintly flickering with inlaid lights.

"Is this what you had to show me?" Hana wondered, picking it up and examining it from side to side. "Is this really supposed to be an improvement on my shield matrix?"

"I wouldn't offer you a faulty product, Hana." He frowned deeply. "Especially if it might put you in danger."

Sombra laughed under her breath at that, though Hana didn't see anything funny about it. The older woman ambled over to the other corner of Winston's office, making a big show of examining the photosets and knick knacks on his bookshelf as if she wasn't in here every day.

"Still." Hana tore her eyes away from her to focus on her friend. "You have no sense of style, Winston."

"Tell me about it," Athena said.

Winston glanced between the two of them. "I'm feeling distinctly outnumbered here."

"Women," Sombra said knowingly, pulling up her holovid to peruse through what looked to be fifteen different blogs. Hana recognized a few of them as conspiracy websites just by the font color alone. "Can't live without em. Can't press the mute button. Need help installing that?"

"I think I know how to install new features onto my own M.E.K.A.," Hana said.

Sombra blew out her cheeks with a huff. "This is what I mean, Winston. Do you hear this?" Before Hana could question her, Sombra continued. "She's always like this. Never asks for help." She waved at the new hardware in Hana's hands. "Unless you're a scientist, evidently."

"I ask people I trust for help," Hana clarified. "Thank you Winston. I'll let you two get back to…" she let her gaze drop from Athena to Sombra. "…Whatever it was you were up to before I arrived."

When she turned and left, Sombra followed her outside. The woman was light on her feet, nearly bouncing around until she maneuvered herself in front of Hana. "Hey, hey, hey," she said, one hand on Hana's shoulder to halt her. "No need to be so pissy with me. I thought we were getting along pretty well. What happened?"

"You hacked into my microphone," Hana said stiffly, holding the new shield to her chest.

Sombra waved it aside. Her shoulders rolled, neck cracking as she arched it from side to side. "Is that it? That was like three months ago."

"I don't take breaches of my privacy lightly. Now get out of my way."

Sombra's grip tightened. With a loud slam, she shoved Hana up against the wall, free hand pinching her cheeks together and holding her face up.

"There you go again," Sombra said with a faint smile, eyes narrowed. "How am I supposed to pay you back when you act like you don't need anybody else?" Hana wrenched her head free, speechless with fury. Sombra let her, only to trail her palm down the center of Hana's chest. "Maybe I wanted you to hold it over my head a little, huh?"

Shoving past her, Hana left back the way she had came, livid, and flushing red all the way up to the tips of her ears.