Digital Love
The normally fully and noisy metro tubes of the London underground were silent now. The metal behemoths that stretched for blocks and normally carried people from one side of the old city to another were sitting in their stations, dormant, and unoccupied. The mechanical uprising in the King's Row district had grounded all commuter travel to a swift halt.
Well, all except one.
While barricades kept the English ground forces at bay, Omnic fighters kept the Air Force out of the airspace, and Anti Air emplacements made an air insertion a death wish, four brave souls commandeered what could possibly be the last train to ever travel to King's Row, right to the heart of the power plant as it began approaching Critical Mass.
Chief Engineer Torbjorn stood at one of the seats, looking over the mobile foundry that he had set on it as he inspected it one more time before lighting the crucible. Opposite him, Cadet Lena Oxton sat in another seat, checking the diagnostics on her Chronoal Accelerator, a large Quantum-Fission based device which she wore on her chest that kept the young singularity tethered to a consistent place in space and time while also allowing her to manipulate her own position in the space time continuum. Standing in the center aisle was Chief Medical Officer Angela Ziegler, the doctor standing to accompany the expanse of her long healing staff, inspecting the vial of Nanobiotic healing juices and the fogger which she predicted would receive a full workout by day's end. Last, but not least in any sense of the word, was Lt. Reinhardt Whilhelm, the titanic man was currently standing at a window, checking his hair in the glass' reflection.
To the cadet's fascination, the Lieutenant's jet propulsion rocket hammer sat across the entire expanse of many seats as he stood with a small black comb and in one hand while his opposite held up a picture of a muscular Caucasian man in a lifeguard outfit, running mid stride on a beach.
"That's David Hasselhoff," the doctor whispered, sitting down beside the young English girl. Like the German Crusader, the Swiss doctor likewise had patted down her hair before reapplying her white beret, "It's his idol." Lena gave her a sideways glance, not sure if the gigantic man was aware that they were speeding towards a warzone. Understanding her confusion, the doctor finished by whispering, "you don't want to get him started. Trust me."
"So, Lena. How are you feeling? Nervous?" Angela announced.
Lena gave a shy smile, "No… not really. After well… This happens," she tapped the device that occupied most of the space on her front, "I'm pretty sure I'm ready for anything. What about you?"
The doctor shrugged, "To be honest, yes. I always am before deployment. I've gotten used to it, but it's never gone away. I guess it's an omen to remind me that I'm still human."
The junior woman felt a conviction grow within her, the same conviction that made her face down all those bullies in grade school, enlist in the Royal Air Force, and climb into the cockpit of the Slipstream. In a strong and proud, yet still soft and confidential as to not embarrass the Medic, Lena declared, "Don't worry, Dr. Ziegler, I'll be there to protect you. I swear."
Angela smiled, she had no doubt that the Cadet was earnest in her oath, but it was unnecessary. Out of all of the people on the train, the medical practitioner carried the most bandoliers and assault webbing on her. But instead of guns, grenades, ammo and knives, the doctor had crammed as many of her medical supplies into every single pocket that she could. Snap pouches for magazines were stuffed with white gauze, a knife holster held shears and metal picks, a bandolier for shotgun shells instead had vials of morphine, and the long pouches for grenades held replacement heads for her Caduceus Staff's Nanobiotic mister. Of all these things, though, one still held its original purpose.
"Thank you, Lena. But don't worry about me. " She patted her hip and the pistol holstered there. "I can take care of myself."
The Cadet smiled, but then her eyes wandered, deep in thought and asked, "Dr. you said that your nerves reminded you that you were human, do you think that Omnics feel fear?"
Angela put a hand up to her chin, pondering the nature of their robotic opposition. "That's hard to say. From my understanding since they can be programmed, they aren't declared a person, but since the rampant A.I. Yahweh corrupted their autonomy programs to become sentient, I don't think the argument applies very much anymore. What I do know is that these Null Sector radicals will show no fear and no mercy."
"Bah!" spat Sweedish Dwarf, "Just a bunch of uppity bots that need to get scrapped." Not looking at the two women, he held up his hammer and proclaimed, "Never get complacent, Rookie. If a nail sticks out, you gotta hammer it twice as hard. They're just a bunch of oversized typewriters with no brains and no feelin's. 'Radicals on the edge fightin' for Omnic rights' what a bunch of hooey!"
Lena motioned to stand, but the doctor grabbed her by the wrist and kept her in her seat. The last thing they needed was their team taken down to only three members.
Angela wasn't lying when she said that she was nervous, but she didn't necessarily share why either. After so long deploying alongside the brave men and women of Overwatch, it had become second nature. But what made this day so different was the scale. Before, she landed with protection details, bodyguards, brave souls specifically ordered to watch out for her, but that was not true today. The covert nature was not for the Omnics, but for the British Parliament. They weren't supposed to be here, there was no backup, no Plan "B", no Medivac. This, for all intents and purposes, was going to be a one way trip.
No doubt there were brave soldiers willing to take her spot, qualified combat medics that would volunteer without a second thought. The only problem was that they weren't her. She was at the top of her field, and Commander Morrison was counting on her to make sure that everyone came home by the end of the day. She trusted no one else to do the job better.
She didn't fear death. Like the scourge of war that had taken both of her parents, she accepted whatever fate had instore for her on this day. But what she feared, what had her nerves on edge and bit at the back of her mind, was the pistol's heavy presence on her hip, and the inevitability that she may have to use it by the end of the day.
The bright yellow flash from the muzzle of the null trooper's gun-hand clashed against its purple chassis. It was almost as if time slowed as Dr. Ziegler watched the bot round the corner, aim and fire. Almost as if she herself had time manipulation powers, things seemed to slow to a crawl as she stood paralyzed in the moment, body numb and unresponsive until a deep burning pain penetrated straight through her shoulder tunneling like a corkscrew through the armor, muscle and bone and then exited through her back.
Time resumed as her left arm recoiled with the shot, leaving her to aim the healing staff in one hand. In a quick cry, she shouted, "I'm hit!"
The bot, eager to finish off a wounded prey, took aim once more, crosshairs lighting up on its front facing LED display. He extended his gun-hand out in front of him as the slide closed once more.
As he took aim, a higher priority target broke his connection to the wounded human. Inexplicably, the smaller target which had been reading as being behind him on his background threat monitoring system was right before him, appearing out of nowhere.
Before the burst could begin, the crosshairs switched targets, but no sooner had the crosshairs locked onto the new priority had she raised her own dual machineguns and a light blue fire began from within the firing chambers. Before he even knew it, he was one with the 1's and 0's in the sky, leaving nothing more than another decapitated robot on the side of the road.
"Keep me covered," The doctor called, leaning against the bomb that the unit had been protecting. "Just… Need a moment to regenerate."
Having disabled the anti aircraft guns keeping the King's Row corridor suppressed, the team had secured a breaching charge of highly explosive thermite air dropped into the district. Now, all they had to do was escort the breaching charge through streets filled with deadly robots to the heart of the Powerplant and then extinguish both the power reactor and the flames of the uprising once and for all.
Using said explosive payload as cover, Angela slipped behind the bomb to recover, bringing a sanitary compress to her shoulder to help seal the open hole.
Believe it or not, the wound was nearly an inconvenience. In a sick and twisted way, she had been shot so many times in her life that she had gotten used to the pain. All she had to do now was assist the Nanobiotics being supplied by her winged armored chassis in her blood as much assistance as she could to clot the bleeding, replace the bone, and regrow the meat that had been drilled out by the hastily shot 5.56 millimeter round.
What did make her heart beat fast and cold sweat stop her in her spot were the scurrying footsteps of metallic feet on oil soaked asphalt. From around the previous bend came a robot, hardly as tall as her knee and bopping around on its tiny purple bipedal legs. The bot saw through her, and focused with pinpoint tunnel vision at its true target.
"We have a slicer behind us!" The doctor called.
No one responded. All the doctor heard was the intense conflict on the other side of the charge. The *pew pew pew* of the Cadet's machine guns, the belch of the Engineer's slag gun, and the muffled smothering of high velocity rounds impacting against the Lieutenant's heavy hardlight shield.
Oblivious to the call for reinforcements, the little slicer bot charged on.
"Lena? Torbjorn? I need assistance!" She called again, but received no answer.
In range, the Slicer stopped, the primary housing of its main laser canon began to warm up, the barrel slowly beginning to glow red.
The doctor, whether it was intended or not, came to the realization that she was standing in the trajectory of the beams path to the armored casing of the bomb. Dropping the compress and cracking the new bones and stretching the reborn muscles in her arm, she reached down to her side and drew her sidearm. Her long fingers wrapped around the grips and safe action trigger, bringing up the gun in a teacup stance.
With one last look at the igniting cauldron of lasers, she closed her eyes and looked away, pulling the trigger four times and feeling the recoil push her against the mighty hull of the bomb each time.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the Slicer down, writhing on the pavement with one of its legs dismembered beside it. From the front facing optical lens, the bot seemed to unfocus, disabling its programmed tunnel vision and seeing the woman standing in front of its objective, gazing up at the one who had ended it.
An X formed on its LED display, and Mercy raised her arms over her face as the Slicer bot did the last thing its little body could and detonated its battery.
Now dead, Angela lowered her arms, seeing bits and pieces of the bot littering the street much like its fellow Slicers and other bots. But then she felt a pain in her arm. Looking down, she found a thin wire, one of the many innards of the robot turned makeshift grenade, imbedded into her forearm. Holstering the pistol, she grabbed the exposed bit of wire and began to pull, the hot line stinging as she removed its long expanse from her skin, her machine medicine acting quickly to fill in the hole that the foreign metal had made.
Unlike the bullet, or the stray piece of shrapnel, Dr. Ziegler jumped when a firm smack was laid across her bottom. Unsure if it was a disciplinary slap or an advance on her she looked around until she met the eyes of the Chief Engineer standing at her side with an extra foul scowl on his face.
She realized that the slap was intended for the back of her head when the Swedish Dwarf barked, "Keep your eyes open next time!" before heading back to the spearhead of the assault.
Angela was about to join him, but found herself giving the hot wire that she had removed from her arm one last look. Closing her eyes, she repeated the Chief's words from earlier, "No brains. No feelings."
Within the confines of the King's Row Power Station, Torbjorn hammered away on his turret. Using the slaved machine unit as both his sword and his shield, he took cover behind the automated emplacement as its duel heavy caliber machine guns returned fire at the Omnics that wished to kill its master. With his impact hammer equipped, he hammered the dents and shredded armor back down into the chassis as enemy bullets penetrated and reflected off the armored casing, the heavy incoming fire reopening the wounds that he healed soon after he had resealed them.
After finally shouting unrepeatable phrases in his native tongue, he pulled a cord on the mobile foundry on his back, unleashing the molten core and causing the miniature workshop to burn as bright as the midday sun.
Slipping his welder's mask down, He brought great swings down onto his protector, the metal melting off his hammer as the unit became reenergized and revitalized, reaching the next stage of its evolution by expanding out and unfolding additional armored plates and a rocket pod between twin large bore machine guns.
Its blue laser pointer traced throughout the room, a marker of death selecting the mobile null sector troopers out one by one, delivering a high explosive 7.62 incendiary round into their core and causing them to explode.
After dismissing the peasantry to the afterlife, the auto turret selected a new target, a BS-17-better known as a Bastion- unit. The Purple Omnic glowed with a Red-ish purple, the purple being the remainder of its paint job and the red being the incredibly amount of heat that glowed from its eight barreled minigun that it had been trying to use to rip the Engineer and his invention to shreds.
Locking on with all four pods, the turret recoiled as the missile salvo was released. The Bastion saw the incoming barrage and transformed, gears and gyros turning as the tripod and front facing armor unfolded and twisted into a pair of legs and the minigun slid to its back, allowing the Omnic to become a biped and run away.
It covered its retreat with the machine gun built into its right gun-hand as it ran, sidestepping out of the trajectory of the incoming rocket salvo.
But right into the bomb left behind by the time traveling English woman. The Bastion looked down, ocular lenses widening as it recognized the glowing blue explosive that it had stepped on, and looked up, seeing the salute as she sprint by, giving a giggle as it stood in shock before the explosion rocketed the unit across the room, dismembered at the waist.
The Bastion landed at the feet of an OR-15 unit, a quadruped centaur Omnic that stood a head above the average man. The last command unit behind the King's Row Uprising that was still standing, The OR- 15 looked at the dismembered bastion that landed at its feet, another one of its units for the scrap heap.
It shot out a device from its left hand that created a triangular hardlight barrier to protect itself and the wounded robot. Next, it fortified its armor, locking down the ports to reflect as much incoming fire as possible. Finally, it raised its right gun-hand, a triple barreled rotating machinegun and took aim at the Cadet.
She was fast, sprinting to outrun the moving aim of the OR-15 to reach the safety of Lieutenant Wilhelm's hardlight shield. But even as fast as she could run, she couldn't outrun a bullet.
A green projectile left the Omnic's gun and entered the back of the Cadet's ankle, kicking the leg out from her and causing her to spin to the floor. Recoiling from the wounded limb, she tried to back up, crawling away to the safety of the rest of the team, but was no use. She raised her arm up over her face as the OR-15 took aim once more.
Although it looked like young Lena's Overwatch Career was to be cut short in the reactor room of her home town, Reinhardt begged to disagree.
The massive German Crusader retracted his shield and charged forward, the Jet turbine reactor on his back propelling him forward and blocked the bullets intended for his comrade. The OR-15's bullets simply deflected off of his heavy armor as he closed the distance between the two in mere heartbeats. The machine had no time to react, just keep firing in hopes to stop him in his tracks.
Without stopping, he smashed through the hardlight barrier by the sheer force of his incredible momentum. In one swift motion, he swung his hammer down, jet engine rocketing the head forward as he arced it up into the jaw of the OR-15. Supports snapped, gears separated, gyros broke, metal tore, and save for a few wires still connecting the head to the body, the strike had nearly decapitated the Command Omnic.
Oil shot forth from the gaping wound, spraying the black lubricant across his shining blue armor, covering his face, and staining his immaculate moustache and perfectly combed hair.
Suffice to say, he looked glorious.
The centaur stood for a moment, awaiting commands from a CPU that had been largely severed. After having the corrective measures from its balance control system unanswered for several seconds, the unit toppled over, falling onto its side. With its fall, the King's Row Uprising had been successfully suppressed.
Dr. Ziegler disengaged the healing stream that tethered her to the Lt., healing through any stray rounds that penetrated through his armor and slid to the side of the grounded Cadet.
With a weak smile and feverish clutching of her wounded leg, Lena asked, "Mission accomplished, Eh Doc?"
"Yes, yes. You did wonderful, Lena." She answered, extending the leg out to assess the damage that the round had done to her flesh. Granted, no one was actively trying to kill them now, but they were still standing within throwing distance of an unstable reactor. But, while she cared for the team and Reinhardt celebrated the victory, she had faith that the Chief Engineer would take care of their second objective.
"You know," the junior woman added, "Its probably not much. Nothing a burst of your staff wouldn't fix."
Having checked all of the open pouches on her assault webbing and found one last roll of gauze, the doctor replied, "While not false, it's better to allow the wound to heal in a more holistic and permanent way. " She wrapped her final roll of gauze around Lena's ankle, binding the hole closed in the armor before producing a small hypodermic needle of glowing yellow fluid.
Lena cringed as she saw the needle. She looked away as it was brought down into the back of her leg. She winced, but then gave a sigh of relief as she felt a burn extend through her leg. When she looked down at the wound, she saw the white cloth glow yellow as the machine medicine fixed, regrew, or replaced the damaged flesh, bone and tendon leading down to her foot.
The Doctor helped her up, and watched as she stood again. She flexed her ankle, and took a practice step, feeling for any discomfort.
When satisfied with her treatment, she gave the doctor a thumbs up and said, "good as ne- Watch out!"
Lena pointed behind her, Angela spun around. Angela berated herself for letting her guard down. From the pileup of metallic corpses on the floor, a legless BS-17, the one Lena had blown up with her time bomb, was still very much alive. Throwing one arm in front of the other, crawled its way toward the downed OR-15. Angela's hands darted to her side, grabbing both her pistol and holster at the same time and ripped the two apart.
The Swiss doctor raised the pistol at the same time as the Bastion unit raised its gun-hand. Without aiming, the doctor pulled the trigger five times.
The Bastion set its gun-hand down pulling it towards himself and scraping against the metal floor. With its actual hand, it reached forward once more, reaching towards the nearly decapitated OR-15 centaur Omnic. The first three shots missed completely, ending up harmlessly landing in the floor. The fourth bullet chipped the armor of its back, causing minimal damage. With the terminal ballistics of a .45 Long Colt, the final round found into the back of the BS-17's Head, breaking through the external chassis and shattering the motherboard. The unit recoiled as the Hardlight projectile shattered its processors and then fell to the floor, its front facing LED fading to black as reached out towards the Command unit.
The Lt. stopped his celebration to see what had happened. Angela slowly lowered her gun. In a way, she was astonished. Battle over and critically wounded, the Bastion still attempted to fight. She thought on the Engineer's words once more, "No brains and no feelings". The dreaded BS-17, a model of Omnic that had killed so many in the Omnic Crisis still fought even though the battle was over. It was a war machine after all, what else could it do? The Omnics of Null Sector, the insurgents that demanded to be heard lest they detonate the heart of London, what did they truly want? Could a war machine really demand rights? Did it really seek independence? Or was this fight just an excuse to go to war once more? The only way for these Omnics to fulfill what they were meant to do?
With a flash of sparks leading from the OR-15's severed neck, the centaur unit began to move once more. Angela raised her gun once again, but watched as the OR-15 looked around. With what little motor control it had left, the OR-15 reached out to the Bastion's outstretched hand. Reaching as far as it could, the OR-15 wrapped its hand around the Bastion's metallic digits and squeezed, staring into what remained of its front display until its own Ocular Lenses began to close and lights slowly died as it became one with the Iris.