1.
Torbjorn Lindholm walked through the streets of Stuttgart, Germany all alone. How was he going to tell Reinhardt he lost his job at the factory? And to an Omnic no less? That was the most humiliating part for him. To Torbjorn, Omnics were built and used to serve humanity, not to completely replace it. No wonder there were so many protests happening around the world.
As he reached his apartment building and took the elevator up to his floor, Torbjorn still tried to find the words to explain the predicament. It wasn't my fault it was the Omnics' fault. I yelled at my boss to make a point. Looks like I'll have to find a more menial job now.
Torbjorn walked into his apartment on the fourth floor to find his roommate, Reinhardt Wilhelm, deadlifting 200 kg weights while blasting David Hasselhoff's cover of "Hooked on a Feeling." With no one to spot him. Again.
"Reinhardt!" Torbjorn shouted as he saw this. 'What did we talk about? No weightlifting when I'm not here! For God's sake, you could snap yourself in half if those slip."
"Relax, my dwarf friend," Reinhardt said as he put the weights on their stand. "What can harmless weights that can't fight back do to me?"
"They crush your body by weighing so much. That's how they fight back."
'Torbjorn, I'm in the best shape of my life," Reinhardt said as he stood up flexing his muscles. "How else can a man in his 60's fight off local punks and protect the innocent of this city?"
Torbjorn couldn't bring himself to respond to the last part. He yelled at Reinhardt for getting involved in so many petty skirmishes he realized he couldn't change the man. Besides, there were more important manners at hand.
"Reinhardt," Torbjorn started out. "I lost my job at the factory."
"What do you mean you lost your job?" Reinhardt said, now in full attention of what Torbjorn had to say.
"My boss said they were bringing in Omnic labor to the assembly lines. He said it would be best if Omnics designed other Omnics since they know themselves better than humans. Really, I think it's because they know I'm too good for them."
"Of course my imp friend. Any factory would be happy to have you? So what are you going to do now? Find another factory job?"
"Erase factory from there and you have a better idea."
Both Reinhardt and Torbjorn sat on the couch, turning on the English-language news. The anchor read off the day's news
"Explosions simultaneously rocked the city centers of Mumbai, Johannesburg, Mexico City, and Jakarta today as hundreds of thousands are now estimated to be homeless or at the very least without basic amenities."
"Seems like every day, the world's getting worse and worse," Reinhardt said dourly. "And we can only do so much about it."
"Renewed violent Omnic activity is occurring in Russia. Omnics are believed to have taken control of some Siberian cities and are pushing towards Tatarstan and Chechneya.
"What would you do if the world got to the point where it got worse than when Overwatch started?" Torbjorn asked.
"I'd do the same thing I do when dealing with street punks. Demand justice as I reign my hammer down."
'And finally tonight, a break-in at the Overwatch museum showed some strange characters fighting for the doomfist gauntlet, and stopping them." Reinhardt and Torbjorn gave their full attention to the sceen.
"While the perpetrators themselves were a blue woman and a man in black robes and the skull mask, the defenders were a gorilla and a woman who appears to teleport." The footage on the screen caught the two of them by surprise, with Winston the gorilla and the girl they knew as Tracer fighting off the robbers.
"Is that Winston? And Lena?" Reinhardt asks.
Torbjorn looks at his message device, seeing the message Winston sent him.
"Hey Reinhardt?" Torbjorn asks. "You didn't get a message from the monkey, did you?"
2.
Winston and Lena returned to the Overwatch base in Gibraltar. It's been a few hours since they've stopped Widowmaker and Reaper from taking the Doomfist gauntlet, and Tracer still can't contain her excitement.
"Oi Winston," Lena says, "We sure gave them a show," as she blinks all around the scrambled main lab. "Reaper was all 'Death comes for you and I'm taking this gauntlet'" she said hanging upside down from one of the ledge bars. "And Widowmaker was like 'I'll just be hanging out up here while you get it,'" she said hanging from a light fixture.
"Calm down Lena," Winston said, typing on the main computer. "And get down from there. We have import business to go over."
Tracer blinked down to the floor and walked toward Winston "What business?" she said. "There's only two of us here."
"Not for long," Winston replied. He pulls up a video on the screen. It's the same footage that Torbjorn and Reinhardt watched of the museum incident. "If we are more out in the open the next time we fight Talon agents, it won't just be them coming after us."
"But the news clearly shows us stopping Reaper and Widowmaker from stealing the gauntlet," Lena remarked. It's bright as day. I don't think you're given humans enough credit in figuring out who the good guys are."
"I've been through enough Overwatch history to know how some people like to overreact to our presence," Winston said. He wanted to feel the same way Tracer does, all excited to be back in action. But they're lucky that the attack didn't result in any casualties or more property damage.
There's a beeping noise coming from the screen, with the computer saying, "Two new messages." Winston and Tracer both pay attention. It's Dr. Angela Ziegler, Mercy as she's better known. She was the former team doctor who went on to help crisis areas around the world. The prerecorded message has her talking from her home in Zurich, sitting on a coach and in front of wood paneling.
"Hello Winston, Dr. Ziegler here," the message starts off with. "I got your message about Overwatch coming back together. And I'm happy to say I'll be joining. By the time you get this message, I should be traveling over. Hopefully, the rest of the team will be there. Auf Wiedersehen." The message ends.
"One new message," the computer says immediately after. This one is from Mei-Ling Zhou, the Chinese climatologist who was once frozen at an Overwatch outpost in Antarctica. Her video was clearly shot at an airport as she was waiting for her flight. Typical of Mei. Leaving important things undone until the last minute.
"Hello, is this thing working?" Mei said into the recording device as she was adjusting the camera, trying out various different angles before settling on just a straight-on shot of her. "Winston, if you get this message, you can clearly see I'm at an airport right now in Xi'an. I'm on my way back to you Overwatch guys. Oh, my flight is boarding. See you all soon. Zaijian. Zaijian." The computer screen goes back to normal.
"How many messages did you send out, Winston?" Lena asked.
"To every Overwatch member in the database, living or dead," Winston responded.
"Why the dead ones if they're, you know, dead?"
"It doesn't hurt to try. I wouldn't be surprised given the amount of enemies we've made if someone tried to fake their deaths to escape."
"Oh Winston," Lena said as she started teleporting around the room again. "The team's coming back together! We're going to save the world so many times again. Talon won't know what hit them! Those wankers won't see us coming from a mile away when storm them all over!"
Again, Winston wanted to share the same jubilation Lena has. But since he was the one who sent out the messages, he had to wait and see who responded back. What if no one else did? What if this team doesn't work out?
3.
The limousine entourage travelling down Sunset Boulevard was right on schedule and should reach the Mandarin Theatre a good 45 minutes ahead of the screening. While the motorcade was the moving along smoothly, the atmosphere inside one of the limos was anything but.
Hal-Fred Glitchbot, the famous Omnic film director, started out the window at the famous homes and buildings before they entered downtown Hollywood. His new film, "Six-Gun Killer," was sure to be a success given his previous film, "They Came from Beyond the Moon," was a landmark in Omnic cinema. It became the first Omnic-directed film to be nominated for any sort of award. Granted not for any Academy Awards, but any progress is progress. It wasn't the premiere himself that worried him. It was his bodyguard sitting across from him that was giving him trouble.
Jesse McCree, former Blackwatch agent and current gunslinger for hire, kept a constantly full glass of the limo's liquor. It became a concern of Glitchbot's for the wrong reason.
"Must you drink everything that's in here?" Glitchbot asked. "Pretty soon you'll have to jump to the limo in front for more."
"No, the supply in here is fine," McCree responded. "Since it's your event, I'm sure you can cover all of it."
"Omnics don't drink, you know that. This is all coming out of your paycheck."
"Funny how you think of it as a paycheck. You should still owe me more in royalties."
"McCree, we've been over this. The movie isn't based on you. It's a fictional creation. Rooster Cogbot is just an amalgamation of different cowboys."
"You know that if it weren't for my exploits, people would not have remembered cowboys were a part of America's past."
"Ah yes, because people pay attention to what a former secret agent with a BAMF belt buckle does on his secret assignments."
McCree had to deal with insults like that everyday he spent as Glitchbot's bodyguard. And everyday he heard these, he thought to himself how much of a better man he was than to have to deal with petty Omnic insults.
"You know Glitchbot? Once this night is done, I'm done being your escort everywhere. I'm going someplace where my talents can be appreciated."
"No you won't. That's just the liquor talking. I told you you were drinking too much. How can you humans suckle down so much of this poison?"
"It helps us forget the times we've been screwed over by the bossman."
Glitchbot moves in closer to McCree. "Look Jesse, we're almost at the Theatre now. All I'm asking from you is to keep me protected. To stop anyone that tried to harm me. That's all I'm saying. If you do want to leave, well, I'll give you a generous financial package. But only if I'm completely unharmed. You got that?"
Their limo stops in front of the theatre, with the fans, celebrities, and paparazzi waiting for Glitchbot to make his entrance.
"Alright, you can have you special event," McCree said waiting to leave. "But again, I'm hightailing it out of here once it's done."
Glitchbot couldn't respond since the limo door opened. The two got out and walked down the red carpet to the theatre entrance, McCree behind Glitchbot. But there weren't just adoring fans there. A fair number of protestors were there too. They were holding signs that said, "Not your history," "Omnics don't understand film," and "Leave art to the humans." The cheers and jeering melded so perfectly together that Glitchbot has a hard time telling what was coming from where.
Then, six of the protestors broke through a security barrier, rushing to Glitchbot. McCree tried to hold the ones coming from behind off, but his fists couldn't do enough frontier justice in this fight. All six had rushed Glitchbot and knocked him to the ground, kicking him repeatedly. They were shouting insults as they kick him like "Where are your built in guns now?" "You machines don't know what makes film special," and "Why can't Omnics make films about their own history? Because they don't have any!"
McCree, lying on the floor a few feet away from the violence, pulled out his pistol. Without looking down the barrel to see if his aim was true, McCree's six bullets managed to hit all their targets. The protestors lay on the ground moaning in pain while ssecurity carried them away from the crowd. Glitchbot gets himself up, his left arm severely broken.
"Hey look," McCree said as he stood up. "We have matching broken arms."
"McCree!" Glitchbot yelled. "You can forget the package I promised you. Because you're fired! All that booze must've gotten to you because you didn't stop a single one of those thugs."
"Did you not see how I managed to shoot them all while drunk?"
Glitchbot didn't acknowledge the last remark as he walked towards the entrance. "Security," Glitchbot told the door guards while pointing at McCree. "See to it that man isn't allowed inside."
McCree, embarrassed by what happened, walked away from the theatre towards the closest train stop. He thought about how he might be losing his touch. If the bodyguard business is something he really wanted to be involved in. Did the world really need a man dressed up as a 200-year-old relic? The questions kept running through his head as he got off the train at the stop near his apartment. Once he was inside, he turned on the news. The reports continued to show footage of Winston and Lena fighting off Reaper and Widowmaker, angling it as the return of some good to the world. Other reports dealt with rising militaristic Omnic activity in Russia and mysterious explosions in the cities of Johannesburg, Mumbai, Jakarta, and Mexico City. Seeing the TV footage make McCree pick up his message device, where he played back the message he received from Winston. After listening to it twice, McCree decided to point it as himself and hit the record button.
4.
Upon returning to the Talon headquarters, Reaper and his men were reprimanded for blotching their recent operations. The higher ups at Talon have lost faith in the man who hides himself behind a skull mask and black robes to carry out operations on his own. So he was given another assignment. Reaper and his associate Sombra will be going out to recruit new associates. It was not an assignment Reaper was happy with, as he preferred to work alone. And when he was part of a group on missions, he felt like he needed to be the one in charge. But this time, he was fine taking a break from combat missions, as Overwatch appearing so quickly to stop the museum robbery caught him off guard.
In one of the Talon male locker rooms, some of Reaper's men talk about the punishment he just received.
"Reaper doing diplomacy missions? That something he's just not good at."
"Well at least get a break from him talking about how much he hates Jack Morrison and saying 'Die, die die.'"
"Who's going to be our commander then? Widowmaker?"
"You kidding? She's more of a lone wolf than Reaper. Sniping on rooftops. Sneaking in on her targets. Singing to herself."
"Wait, what was that last part?"
"You didn't know? She sings to herself in French. Some guys say she's possessed by the ghost of her husband."
"Ghosts? Really?"
"Yeah. And that's why her skin is blue. Her dead husband's soul tried to freeze her to death, but failed."
One of the high-ranking Talon officials overhears this conversation and joins in. "Comrade, I was there when Talon made Widowmaker's skin blue. They made her heart run at 45 beats per minute to dull her emotional reactions.
"And what about the singing? Is that something you did to her as well?"
The official takes a few extra seconds to respond, "Well, you got me there. We don't know why she does that. All I can say is she sings when she thinks she's alone."
Meanwhile, in the women's locker room, Widowmaker is taking a shower, recovering from the blotched museum mission. Dealing with that annoying British girl again who teleports wouldn't be a problem again. She would make sure of it next time they met.
Her routine isn't all that dissimilar from regular people. She cleans her body with body wash gel and hair with shampoo. And like most humans, she sings to herself in the shower.
"Les gens me demandent pourquoi je ne trouve jamais un endroit pour arrêter et s'installer, vers le bas, vers le bas. People ask me why I never find a place to stop and settle down, down, down
Mais je ne voulais plus jamais toutes ces choses les gens ont besoin pour justifier leurs vies, des vies, des vies." I never needed all those thinks people need to justify their lives, lives, lives.
It was an old French song stuck in Widowmaker's head, but she didn't know why. She didn't know why songs came out of her mouth when she was alone, or at least thought she was. There were images going around in her head as well as she continued to sing when she got out of the shower, dried herself off, and stared at her reflection in a mirror above a sink.
"Que nous sommes nés, né pour être vivant." Cause we were born, born to be alive.
The images were of events Widowmaker couldn't recognize. A bright sunny day. A picnic in a park in Annecy. Boat riding on Lake Geneva. Fancy dinners in Lyon. And the face of a man she couldn't quite make out. None of it made sense. She was a perfect killing machine. She couldn't possibly have such sweet memories floating around her head. Yet there they were.
Widowmaker briefly admired the tattoo on her right arm, saying "cauchemar," the French word for "nightmare. "Que vais-je faire avec vous?" What am I doing to do with you? Widowmaker asked her reflection as she dragged a comb through her long, blue hair.
5.
Fareeha Amari, the soldier known as Pharah, expected a typical day of duty. Her employers, Helix security, needed extra protection after an Omnic intelligence they were guarding in the Temple of Anubis went haywire. Pharah managed to put an end to the threat, but the backlash was immediate. People in Cairo were saying the Omnic intelligence should be shut down, posing too great a threat to the people of Egypt and the historical landmarks.
On this day, Fareeha was guarding her boss as he prepared to make a speech addressing the situation at Helix headquarters. The need for protection is necessary, but having your bodyguard be a woman in a metal suit capable of flight and shooting rocket barrages didn't inspire the onlookers this would be a peaceful event.
The Helix CEO reached the podium to make his speech. "Murhaba. Qad yakun alllah mean. Hello, may God be with you. Recently there was an incident regarding the Omnic intelligence resting in the Temple of Anubis. I'm here to say the facility will not be shut down."
With the last sentence, protestors started to rush the stage, with Fareeha alternating between throwing them back and aiming her rocket arm at the crowd.
"This facility is vital to the world's understanding of Omnic intelligence. If we can understand what made it go haywire in the first place, we can prevent a future incident from happening again."
Amid the speech and the jeering from the crowd, gunshots rang out. The CEO was hit by one of the bullets, falling to the stage, wincing in pain from his left shoulder.
Fareeha saw one of gunmen on a rooftop three blocks away. She activated her flight pack and landed on a nearby rooftop. She could see five men jumping across the rooftops away from the scene of the crime, and gave them pursuit.
"Tawaqquf! Stop! In the name of the law!" Fareeha yelled as she approached the assassins. One of them turned towards her with a laser submachine gun and started firing at her. The laser did no more than warm up Fareeha's suit, which, in the middle of the Cairo heat, was still an inconvenience. She knocked the one gunman away off the roof onto the street below.
The four remaining gunmen continued leaping across the rooftops. Fareeha flew into the air to give better chase, firing her rockets down on them. Granted the rockets destroyed whatever innocent items were in their blast radius, but that wasn't on Fareeha's mind at the moment. Only getting the people who shot her boss.
Another one of her rockets managed to knock another gunman off the rooftops onto the streets below. Fareeha decided this chase was taking too long, so she flew higher into the air and activated her rocket barrage.
"Al'amtar aleadalat min fawq!" Justice Rains from Above! Fareeha shouted. When all her rockets had been fired, she plenty of destroyed rooftops with the top floors of some buildings exposed. But there were the three men she was after, lying dead in their tracks.
As Fareeha landed on the rooftop with the three bodies, one was still moving. With face and hands bleeding out, he crawled closer and closer to the rooftop's edge, ready to go over. Fareeha put a stop to that idea as she picked him up and held him by his chest area.
"Who are you? Who do you work for? Why did you shoot at my boss?" Fareeha questioned angrily in quick succession.
The gunmen spoke in a drawn out voice, no doubt from the bleeding he suffered. "He was going to ruin our plans. We need the Omnic chaos to spread."
"Who does? Who do you work for?"
Before the gunman could say anymore, a bullet when through his head faster than Fareeha could comprehend. She dropped the body, now with a hole clean through the man's cranium, and looked around for any snipers. But she couldn't see any.
When Fareeha got back to headquarters, the CEO was being attended to and was prepared to be loaded into an ambulance. He gives Fareeha the rest of the day off for her dedication. As he was loaded inside and ambulance drives away, Fareeha flew towards her apartment, with plenty of questions running around her head about what the gunman said. What Omnic chaos? Does it have to do with what's happening in Russia? Those other explosions? She would need to sleep on it before investigating further.
She entered her apartment building and walked up the stairs like every other tenant there. She had no trouble at all moving around in her suit in tighter spaces like this, having done so for years. But as she reached her room on the third floor, she saw her door was slightly ajar. After what had happened today, Fareeha was taking no chances. She approached the door and moved it open slowly with her rocket arm out, but stopped doing so when she saw an old woman with an eye patch sitting on a chair in the middle of the room.
"It's a shame really," the old woman said. "I expected my daughter to become more than some corporation's lackey."
Her daughter? Was that what this old woman said? But that's impossible. She's supposed to be dead. Shot through the head by an enemy sniper.
"'Ami?" Mom? Fareeha questioned.
"Yes Fareeha," said the mother, Ana. "Mother's home."
Something clicked in Fareeha's mind she just had to ask. "Did you snipe the man I after today?"
"Oh please, that man wasn't going to tell you anything of value. And get out of that robot suit of yours. But that's not important right now."
Fareeha interrupted her, "We all thought you were dead."
"Yes, and now is the time to get rid of that lie. Listen. This will lead you to what you want." Ana stood up and pulled out a recording device, showing Fareeha the message she received from Winston. Fareeha, in the meantime, stepped out of her suit. "It must be like a dream to you," Ana said as the recording finished. "The team you wanted to be so much a part of together again."
"Why are you here? Why are you telling me this? Why did you lie to me?"
"I plan on going back to Gibraltar to be part of this team again. The least I could do is invite my daughter, who's become quite the soldier I must say."
"But why did you lie to all of us?"
Ana shifted her tone to be more consolatory, "Because humanity was turning against Overwatch. Gabriel and Jack were at each other's throats. It was better to go underground."
"Oh, and now's the perfect time to show up again," Fareeha said sarcastically.
"You watch that tone with me. Besides, this is something you've always wanted to be a part of."
"That was just a dream I had as a child. Besides, I do plenty of good now with Helix."
"Given what I saw today from your rooftop chase and the crowds you held back, you're nothing more than a hired goon. And what wrong with embracing your childhood fantasies? At least you know where you stand if you come with me. There's something dangerous brewing in the world right now, and you'd be better off by my side than an inactive company pawn. You say you fight for justice? Well prove it."
Fareeha took a while to ponder the matter. After a few minutes, Fareeha hugged her mother for the first time in years.
"It's good to see you again, Mom."
"I take it this means yes?"
6.
The Mexican jungle outside of Dorado was filled with laughter. Criminals running the local drug ring celebrate the day's business. They talk about new shipments of heroin and cocaine, big scores they looted from pretender drug dealers, and what women they'd like to spend their earnings on. A good ol' party far away from the city.
One of the gangsters decides to go take a leak. He walks away far into the woods where none of the light from the campfire could reach him. He was the kind of person who didn't need his friends peering at his dick. As he made his way and found a suitable enough tree to piss on, he noticed an odd red light. Putting aside his need to pee for a few seconds, he went further into the woods to find the source. As he came closer and closer to the red light, he found the source. An odd shaped visor complete with a red lens, nose and mouth cover. He picks up the visor to look inside, seeing the world through red, with tactical information displayed on both sides. He finds out how to switch to heat vision, which showed a man walking towards him with a gun.
"That's my visor you got on," the man said in a deep, rusty voice before shooting the gangster.
The other gangsters hear the shots and draw their guns. They don't move towards the shots since it caught them so much off guard. After standing for only a few minutes, but what must have felt like hours, a flashbang flies at the gangsters and blinds them. The man in the woods charged into the camp, now wearing the visor, alternating between shooting the thugs and punching them to the ground. The ones who regained their sight were shooting at the man. But despite the fact his visor left his greying hair exposed, he was faster than they could manage.
When they were all on the ground wallowing in pain, the figure walked up to one of them, pointing his heavy-duty submachine gun at him.
"What do you know about Gabriel Reyes?" the figure asked.
"Who?" the gangster responded. "Man, I have no idea what're talking about."
"I know Reyes and Sombra have an operation here. Using drugs to fund their Talon activities. Now I'll ask you again. What do you know about Reyes?"
"I'm telling you, I have no idea. I'm just a drug pusher. I don't ask questions about my bosses."
"Your bosses? So you do work for them?"
"I swear I know nothing. I know nothing! I know," the gangster's sentence was cut off as the figure shot him in the face.
"Does anyone else here know anything?" the man asked to a crowd of moaning. "Tough luck then." The man took one of the logs from the campfire and threw it at one of the cars. As the fire spread in the car, waiting to explode and spread the fire even further, the last thing the thugs saw was the back of the man's jacket, bearing the number 76.
7.
Fareeha and Ana arrived at the Overwatch Gibraltar base. Getting a flight from Egypt to Gibraltar was the easy part. Making their way to the believed to be abandoned base was the hard part for Ana, having not been near any Overwatch base since she went into hiding.
"I never thought I'd see this place again," Ana said as they made their way to the southern tip of the peninsula. "Oh the missions I had that started here."
"I thought the Overwatch base was destroyed," Fareeha said. "And in Switzerland."
"Overwatch had many bases, child. This might be the only one still intact."
On the base's grounds, they walk towards a group of 5 people already there. Strange faces to Fareeha, but old friends to Ana.
"Ana!" Reinhardt said as he saw the woman and gave her a bear hug. "I missed you so much! When I heard you were dead, I cried myself to sleep for days."
"It's good to see you too, Herr Reinhardt," Ana said, quite flattered.
"And who is this fair fraulein you brought with you?"
"Everyone, you remember my daughter Fareeha right? Well she's here to join the team."
Ana went about introducing Fareeha to the rest of the team, reminding her of the people she once recognized as a child.
"This is Angela Ziegler, our resident doctor who's come up with quite the medical breakthroughs. That's Jesse McCree, a silly American traditionalist. But he's quite good with a gun. That's Mei-Ling Zhou, a Chinese ice scientist who in my opinion spends too much time inside. Reinhardt you've already been acquainted with. And there's Torbjorn, a real life dwarf."
"It's a pleasure to meet all of you," Fareeha said once the introductions were over. They all said it was a privilege to meet her in response.
Lena dashed out to the assembled group hugging and shaking everyone's hands as fast she could, "Hi McCree. Aw, you're still sporting that cowboy look. It suits you love. Dr. Ziegler! You look as young as the first time I saw you. And Mei! Sweet adorable Mei. Playing with ice as I recall. Torbjorn! You garden gnome! How've you been? Reinhardt! The man in the armor! Hope you haven't gotten too old for lugging that armor around? Ana! Oh my god you're still alive! It's so wonderful to see you again. Who's this lady you brought with you?"
"Lena," Ana responded. "It's good to see you too. Still chirpy as ever. This is my daughter Fareeha. She'll be joining us as well. She has proper military experience and wanted to be part of Overwatch since she was a little girl."
"Mom, she doesn't need to know that," Fareeha said with the tone of a teenager.
"Aw, is that true, love?" Lena asked. "Well you're part of the team now, so you get to be that young self of yours again. Now if I can just have everyone's attention, I need to go fetch Winston. He has himself another speech prepared for us."
Lena raced back inside to find Winston sitting in front of his computer, immobile.
"Winston dear," Lena said. "Everyone's here waiting outside. I told them you had a proper speech ready to go."
Winston hesitates before responding, having the same hesitation as he speaks, "N-no I don't have anything prepared. Maybe you should send them away until tomorrow."
"Winston, ol' chap. You sent messages out to these people. Bringing Overwatch together again was your idea. And now you can't face these people you've had conversations with before?"
'Well what if this was a mistake, Lena? What if Overwatch falls apart like it did before? What if we fail? What if the world doesn't need heroes like us anymore?
"Now listen here, big guy. Surely if you found the strength inside of you to call these people together, you at least have it inside yourself to talk to them. And don't say to yourself for a minute the world doesn't need heroes like us. It needs us more than ever. If it didn't, we wouldn't be here."
Winston got out of his chair, put on his glasses and picked up the speech he was working on from the table.
"Um, buddy," Lena said. "As far as speeches go, you're not necessarily the best at giving scripted ones. How about you leave this one here and just say what's inside yourself?"
Winston lets Lena put his script down on the table. "Alright then, I'll tell everyone you're ready now."
Lena blinked back outside, with everyone still talking to each other. She whistles to get their attention.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Lena started out loudly. "He's the world's smartest gorilla. Our foremost expert in bananas and peanut butter. He's seen more of the moon than any of us." Her introduction was interrupted as Winston appears behind her and taps her shoulder, motioning at her to stop.
"Well, here's Winston everyone," Lena said to the crowd. "Go knock 'em dead," she says to Winston before joining the group.
With the 8 people looking at him, Winston took Lena's advice and started talking from what was inside himself.
"When I look out at what's assembled before me, I see people of all walks of humanity who've already achieved great things with their lives. Enough for a hundred lifetimes of any normal human. But now, I'm asking you all to come back help the world again. Omnics are rising up again. Talon no doubt has more nefarious activities planned. And we need to be active in a way normal forces can't be. We need to show the world still can have a use for heroes."
The small crowds claps as Winston finishes. Lena whistles some more and says "Atta boy, Winston!"
"Now," Winston continued. "Let's get started."
Author's notes
This is my first fan fiction in the Overwatch fandom. I know this chapter is kind of long, but that's how I intend future chapters for this story to be told. Any foreign languages used come straight from Google translate, so apologies if I butcher something.
I'm the kind of writer that likes to drop in songs to enhance whatever is happening. In each chapter, I'll have a list of songs used so you can go listen to them.
Soundtrack for this chapter
Hooked on a Feeling - David Hasselhoff
Born to be Alive - Patrick Hernandez
The Dream Police - Cheap Trick