"Klaatu barada nikto."
- Omnese for "Let's doodle with this chick's brain."
D. Va's worst fears had come true. The machine was sitting right in front of her, looming over her like a smaller but just as threatening version of the Omnic that had attacked her own city.
"Python" was the supposed codename that had leaked through the Overwatch. It was the empty shell of a weapon, not unlike the MEKA she was currently piloting, but something about its stealth black paint scheme and the sharp way its armor was angled made it appear infinitely more diabolical. The only redeeming thing about it was, at least according to her data, the Omnics had been struggling to build a skilled enough pilot drone to control it.
D. Va curled into her controls like she was racing a motorcycle, pointing the crosshairs of her fusion cannons directly at the Python. She pressed her thumbs inward to slowly charge her shots.
The intruder alarms suddenly screamed to life. The bulkheads to the assembly room flew open and an infantry of Omnics poured into the room. The robot guards had barely humanoid shapes and marched in a jerky, systematic rhythm.
D. Va diverted her half-charged blast to the closest group of Omnics and cleared the way. She activated her unit's boosters and plowed through the hateful machines until nothing but puddles of oil and broken power cables were left. Cautiously, she moved her crosshairs and checked each door, anticipating the next wave of machines.
D. Va was caught off guard by a faint whistling sound. The next thing that entered the room wasn't an Omnic battalion, but rather pale white steam piped through the base's ventilation system. Metallic sparkles dotted the clouds and gradually settled downward. D. Va could feel her eyelids growing heavy as her fingers slowly slipped away from the mecha's throttles.
Oxygenated dinitrogen silicon. Or as the Omnics more simply called it, "Fairy Dust." It was designed as a non-lethal way to knock out human personnel while protecting their equipment from moisture and corrosion so it could easily be salvaged. And in a few short breaths, D. Va's lungs were filled with it.
The pink MEKA hunched over on its hydraulic knees before it came to rest. D. Va's arms dangled limply out of the open cockpit.
The bulkhead doors opened again and more Omnics entered the room, completely unfazed by the chemicals in the air. This time they were pulling a gurney. In place of wheels, magnetic propulsion made the device steadily hover a few feet off the ground.
A few of the Omnics eased D. Va's unconscious form out of her cockpit and laid her on the floating bed. A breathing mask was placed over her mouth to keep her in a peaceful and helpless sleep. An Omnic with scissor-like fingers trimmed through the neck of her pilot suit, split the rabbit emblem over her collarbone in half, and continued to rip the form-fitting material open down to her navel. Omnics with more delicate manipulators planted vital monitors along her chest. A larger Omnic oversaw the whole procedure with beady mechanical eyes.
The robots communicated through a series of nondescript digital noises. If one were to listen to them with a universal translator, it would have sounded like this:
"Move the MEKA unit to Hangar 7," the leader of the Omnics said. "Let mechanics take it apart and try to find out more about it before it's thrown in the trash compactor."
"And the woman?" one of the robots tending D. Va asked.
"Surgery, immediately. Take her apart."
"Wouldn't disposal be more appropriate?" another Omnic asked. "The OmniPsych interface is completely untested."
"She's the only option we have left if we're ever going to get the Python up and running, None of our own combat drones could even pass the test flight. Do you think she'll just hop in for us if we ask her nicely?" the commander bleeped in uneven tones. "Most of the Python's schematics were stolen from her Exo-Suit's blueprints. The pilot is just another piece of equipment that can procured and adjusted."
The Omnic leader touched a keypad on the floating gurney, causing the whole rectangular frame to glow in bright LED lights. The device's sensors weighed D. Va like a slab of meat on the checkout aisle and displayed her weight in Omnic units.
"Good. She's already optimal," the Omnic commander said. "We won't have to remove any organs to get her under the weight limit."
The medic-bots quickly pushed D. Va out of the assembly room. The more durable worker-bots covered D. Va's MEKA in a static-resistant sheet and hauled it away. The Python was left by itself, hunched on the floor in an idle slumber, waiting for the right pilot to take control of its vacant cockpit.
It wouldn't have to sleep for much longer.
It was the dead of night. A thick blanket of fog masked the spot where the Omnic mothership had dropped D. Va. The Python's all-black exterior made it virtually invisible in this environment. A few miles away, the denizens of a small Overwatch settlement had no idea a monstrosity was lurking at their door.
The Python's cockpit layout left D. Va's arms and face exposed in the same way as her original MEKA armor. She was clad in a black and silver pilot suit to match her new equipment. Just below the neck of her jumpsuit, she bore the personal insignia of a grinning rabbit's head hovering over a pair of crossbones. The only evidence she was ever captured and picked apart by cold, mechanical hands was a small carrot-shaped scar on her left temple.
Tiny radar blips flashed across the surface of her irises. Wires ran between the cockpit computers and the sockets in her pointed headphones, streaming intel directly into her cybernetically-enhanced brain.
Just at her side, rigged to the wall in titanium bars, was a massive assault rifle. She could carry the weapon on foot if she ever had self-destruct the unit and wait for the Omnic to respawn a new Python. A little overkill, but an upgrade from her tiny handgun.
She couldn't remember anything about the day she broken into the Omnic base in search of their rumored secret weapon; that had been the first part of her mind they lobotomized. All she knew was a pilot for the Omnic forces, and a sort of conscripted "liaison" between the humans and machines. It was her job to eliminate anything that was deemed a threat by her robotic superiors.
The last of the Overwatch convoys faded into the night, leaving the human encampment with scant security. The timer on D. Va's dashboard reached the designated hour. Under the pitch black sky, she leaned into her controls and activated her radio.
"Target in range," she said in a cool but somewhat excited voice. "Activating all weapon systems."
The headlights on opposite sides of the Python's fuselage opened up like two curved eyelids, cutting through the fog like the laser scalpel that had cut through D. Va's brain. The thrusters around the mecha's ankles peeled open, sending the unit in a full sprint toward the city.
D. Va cleared the city walls in a single hop and steered toward the town square. She cranked a secondary lever below her main throttles, and the Python dropped an EMP grenade powerful enough to affect a 20 mile radius. The bubble-shaped blast disabled everything: Power lines, appliances, defense weapons, and medical equipment. The inside of the city was as pitch black as the outside when D. Va made her landing.
The weapon pods on the Python's back all opened at once. D. Va mowed down everything in her path with a combination of machine guns, plasma turrets, rocket launchers, and a flamethrower.
Thousands of miles away, in the cloaked safety of their mothership, the Omnics had panoramic front row seats to the massacre. The machines began privately conversing with each other.
"What's her reaction time?" the Omnic commander transmitted to the other robots on the bridge.
"Right on pace with the Python's systems," one of thesupport droids answered from the diagnostic panels. "She's synching better than any of our mass production drones."
"No hesitation this time," the commander said, keenly computing the digits that appeared on D. Va's feedback monitors.
"We fixed her ability to feel remorse after the issues in the last run," another Omnic said. "Now her brain associates killing human targets with killing the simulated beings in one of her video games. It was a simple matter of analyzing her mental architecture and linking together some basic moral associations."
Another robot standing at the top of the bridge rotated its neck gyros back and forth. The machine's mono-eye changed to a disappointing dim color.
"Don't you feel the least bit ashamed that we have to rely on this sweat-covered flesh bag to make the Python functional?" it said in its native electronic tongue.
"What is there to be ashamed of?" the leading Omnic asked. "She gives us the perfect infiltration unit, and all we have to do is give her a comfortable little living space and keep her fed. There's no reason humans and omniums can't reach some sort of compromise."
On the screen in front of them, D. Va was gleefully vaporizing a mother and child with the Python's shoulder-mounted photon blaster. The chaos was only complete when the entire city was in flames and there were no life forms detected.
"Hostiles neutralized," D. Va said calmly. She let go of the controls and stretched her arms from the long workout. The Python emitted a low-pitched whir as it cooled down.
"Any more headaches?" the commander asked over her radio. The automatic interpreter buried deep in her frontal lobe made its voice transmit in perfect English.
"Nope," she said in relief. "I feel great." She playfully wiped away a few small drops of blood that sprayed out of one of her targets and splashed on her face during the attack.
"How do her neural waves look?" the commander asked his automated staff.
"Everything is green. Her stress level is all the way at zero. She's experiencing mild fatigue, but that's to be expected for a human."
"Good," the commander said "Her brain cells aren't rejecting the implants anymore."
His optical sensors focused back on the image of the Python on the holographic observation screen.
"Good work, D. Va. Return to base for refueling."
"Roger that," D. Va replied.
The Python grew even taller as it straightened its legs. Its black, clam-shaped back compartment opened to reveal a complex arrangement of thrusters. The mecha launched straight into the air and began its flight toward the Omnic mothership.