Summary: The Omnic Crisis strikes a world totally unawares, leaving two astronauts, one human and one Omnic, stranded in a research station orbiting the sun. Completely on their own, they battle isolation and deadly solar flares in their struggle to get home-but arriving back on Earth is only the beginning of their journey...
Hey folks! I fell in love with the excellent worldbuilding Blizzard did for it's new game Overwatch and made an OC hero. This is an origin story taking place pre-game. Enjoy and review!
My trigger/tagging/warning policy: I err on the side of caution. I tag and warn for things like ableism, depression/self-harm, PTSD, and the like even if I don't think they'll be "triggering" per say, because 1) I might be wrong, and 2) some days you just don't need that kind of negativity in your life now matter how good the story is.
Rated for canon-typical violence and traumatic backstories.
Disclaimer: Blizzard owns Overwatch and all associated characters.
Warnings: prejudice against Omnics that can be easily read as symbolic for prejudice against numerous minority groups, ableist views on prosthetics tied up in the Omnic issues, severe depression, implied dissociation, severe PTSD, manipulation by a medical professional
Part 1: Backstory
Four months before the Omnic Crisis, Alma Charo has spent the last eighteen months in the International Solar Research Station, surrounded by layer upon layer of protective shielding and state of the art equipment designed to allow the station's crew to study Earth's star from a range that ten years ago would have burnt them all to a radioactive crisp. Alma is still occasionally awestruck by the near-magical technology that has become a part of her life, and in those moments she reminds herself that she saw it coming—the whole world did, with the rise of Omnic technology, everything else was bound to follow. The world is surging towards the future at a dizzying pace and shows no signs of stopping.
The station is still a bit too warm for some of her co-workers' tastes, but Alma grew up in the desert and feels right at home under the massive gaze of the sun. It's almost a pity to be finally going home, switching out with another team from the ISR's growing waitlist. The upside is that Alma finally gets to say goodbye to some faces she's definitely gown tired of: being surrounded by the same five people for nearly two years is trying under any circumstances, but when one of those five is a curious Omnic under her charge and the other four are brilliant but somewhat arrogant human scientists of varying breeds—an astrophysicist, a molecular engineer, a mathematical theoretician and a woman who calls herself an architectural engineer but mostly talks about light as far as Alma can tell—who all suffer from varying degrees of prejudice against artificial intelligences… well, it's not an ideal work environment.
Alma is not a robotics expert, although that's her job title. She's more of a psychologist of sorts. (So help her god if someone calls her Susan Calvin again she can't be held responsible for her actions…) She acts as a handler, training various young Omnics for prolonged association with humans in specific fields. Her trainee for this little jaunt around the sun has been Vix, a bright, charming Omnic with an unfortunate proclivity for bad Dad jokes who's been having trouble assimilating human social customs like bathroom privacy. Vix is a darling and they've come far over the last eighteen months, despite hiccups with their co-workers. Their looking forward to going home and showing off their new prowess to their friends at the Omnium. Alma is proud of them.
So when it turns out that the shuttle sent to pick them up has room for only five passengers and cargo, and it becomes apparent that Vix is supposed to travel as cargo, Alma is livid. She storms and rages and makes several strongly worded calls to the higher-ups back home, determined to stir-up trouble that she would never stir up on her own behalf, and in the end it doesn't do any good. Vix is not a person, and that is one way in which the world is not surging towards the future.
Alma does the only thing she can think of: she stays behind. The station can support her for the six months it will take to send a shuttle for her—and send one they will, because Alma has a very sharp Omnic lawyer and can afford to pick a fight with her employers when the battle are right. Being alone won't be a problem. She's an introvert anyway. It'll be fine.
Alma knows when she's lying to herself but it becomes a moot point when Vix elects to stay with her. Alma is exasperated and grateful and maybe cries a little bit after the others are gone and she's alone with Vix. Vix thinks they've upset her and Alma doesn't know quite how to explain the variety of meaning to tears but manages to reassure them that she's fine.
They both settle into a routine much like before. Alma teaches Vix what she can about people. Vix beats her in one million games of virtual scrabble and in a leap of understanding lets her beat them once. Alma surfs the web, watches the news and plots with her lawyer. Vix tells too many dad jokes and designs a game where the two of them each adopt a sunspot and bet on whose will live longer. Alma gets word that their original shuttle has reached home safely and a new one is scheduled in two months. She gets homesick, and Vix does too.
Then the Omnic War breaks out. All Vix and Alma can do is watch the news and the web as the world erupts into chaos. Alma can't understand what's happening—why it's happening—and Vix realizes quicker than she does that neither can anyone else. Alma watches Vix carefully for signs of distress, and they mistake her vigilance for mistrust. They have several arguments. Vix is becoming more emotionally mature at the worst moment and Alma is too distressed to help them work through it properly.
They get word that all space programs have been put on hold; no shuttles are going or coming from anywhere. Alma spends days panicking and calling everyone she can: her company, IRS headquarters, NASA, ISS, the UN space division… Everyone tells her to sit tight. She's too far away to collect when resources are stretched this far. The ISR station can support her and Vix for the duration. It'll be over in a few months, they say.
A few months turns into a year and Alma's lawyer stops answering her messages. Vix's friends no longer answer theirs.
Alma and Vix are practically glued to the communications terminal, save for when one of them gets overwhelmed by the chaos on Earth and they both avoid it for days on end. They are never separated nowadays, which leads to more frequent fights, but they both are afraid of being alone. Alma confides in Vix and laughs at their dad jokes and they bounce increasingly existential questions off of her despite her limited knowledge of philosophy.
Fifteen months after the world goes crazy, just under three and a half years after Alma and Vix left Earth, the station's autonomous systems alert them of an incoming collision with a solar flare. The kind of solar flare the shields wouldn't be able to handle even if the station hadn't gone a couple years without deep maintenance. A specialist could do something about it, maybe. A sharp astrophysics engineer could possibly create a way to cant the station's orbit out of the danger zone. Any number of the bright scientists who used to frequent the station could have whipped up a fantastic bit of science to save the day—but the scientists and heroes were all on earth and they were having a hard enough time saving the day there. Alma and Vix were all alone.
They try anyway. Vix learns several Ph.D.'s worth of science scanning at high speed through the stations database and Alma learns much less but tries to support them however she can. They toss ideas back and forth, break them apart and smash them together again, desperate to find something in the two months they have before Day Zero. They stop watching the news; there's no time.
The clock ticks down and they're grasping at straws. They decide to try insulating one tiny section of the station, beefing up the shields in that area as much as possible with parts stolen from the outer edges of the station. Alma focuses on making their bolt hole livable for as long as possible while Vix takes over the science. They're both stressed and desperate and Alma slowly gets the feeling that Vix is not telling her something. She catches them on the Overwatch medical database once and never finds out why because they distract her with a piercing question about the ethics of an international police force like Overwatch. Alma realizes later that Vix hasn't needed her to explain humanity in a long while.
Their two months are up. Alma has prepared the bolt hole as best she can and briefly wishes that, like Vix, she didn't need air or food. A distressingly large section of their new home is full of supplies strictly for her. The rest is taken up by a large amount of equipment from the station's medical facility that Vix insists they'll need, in a tone that makes Alma think they've got a specific purpose in mind for it.
Once they seal themselves inside Vix turns to her very seriously and tells her the secret they've been keeping. The shielding will not be enough to keep the two of them from being irradiated; very specifically, the electromagnetic forces in the solar flare will completely wipe out Vix's systems. They're going to die. Vix doesn't give Alma time to say any of the things she wants to—that they can't just die on her, that they're a bastard for keeping this from her, that there has to be another way, that she can't do this alone—Vix just takes her face in their hands and asks Alma if she trusts them.
She does, and Vix helps her into the veritable cocoon they constructed from the purloined medical equipment. When Alma realizes that Vix is about to shut her inside it, she throws out an arm to stop them, calling his name. There's so much she wants to say, so much swirling inside her, but she can't put it all into words.
"I'm scared," she says.
Vix winks at her. "Hi Scared. I'm Vix."
Her breathless, nervous laugh is very loud as Vix closes the lid.
Alma doesn't know how long she spends in the cocoon. In the beginning she counts down to their interception with the solar flare, since it's the only thing she can do. She doesn't get far, though, because the cocoon starts doing things. First it gets smaller. It's a tight space to begin with, but Alma suddenly feels like she's wearing a wetsuit although she can't actually feel anything touching her. Then the low lighting seems to grow dimmer until Alma begins wondering if it's the lights failing or her eyesight. After a moment she realizes her breathing has slowed and the air tastes funny and she's sure it's her own eyes dimming. She's passing out …or not. Alma hovers in the twilight zone, thoughts gradually slowing until she no longer has the energy to feel bewildered or panicked or anything else.
That's when it happens: hot dull pain like a migraine the size of the sun rippling through her, like her bones are sloughing to pieces, like her skull is eight times too small, like she's burning from inside out. It must be the solar flare. Alma is in too much pain to spare a thought to the fact that Vix is probably dead.
It takes forever to die. Eventually Alma gets used to the burning feeling and the ache in her skull. She waits, wondering why she's lasting so long. At some point she stops thinking, very suddenly, like someone forced her head underwater.
Alma wakes up and notices that her bones are still too hot and her skull is still too small but she's breathing and she can see. The lid of her cocoon is cracked open, ever so slightly. She can hear the whir of machines working.
Her thoughts are strangely disconnected. When it occurs to her to get up and eat something, it's almost like the thought belongs to a stranger. Alma has been out of the cocoon for twenty-one minutes and has chewed through three protein bars before she notices Vix, unmoving, lights dark, sitting against the hatch. She chokes, and has to flail around looking for water. She tries not to throw up and spends an indeterminate amount of time crying.
Slowly, slowly, Alma comes back alive. Set back each time she glances at Vix's lifeless body, she follows the prompts of her strangely calm inner voice: to eat, to drink, to check the life support systems. She establishes that that the rest of the station is fried and that most of the more delicate equipment they tried to save inside the bolt hole is useless. The communications systems, particularly, are irreparable, which means that she can't signal for help. She counts her supplies and establishes a new Day Zero, the day when she will run out of food.
Her calm inner voice tells her she has to do something to get back to Earth. Her actual voice, raspy with tears and definitely not calm, promises Vix that she'll do it for them. She folds her emotions together as best she can and tries to leave them in the useless medical cocoon as she starts working on a plan. She talks it out with Vix, even though she knows he won't answer.
Moving Vix away from the hatch to get out of the bolt hole takes three days.
Alma works like a machine. She repairs the station's solar panels and jerry-rigs the bolt-hole into an unconventional and highly dubious shuttle. The whole time Alma works she barely thinks, just follows the quiet, insistent inner voice that tells her to keep going and occasionally supplies a surprising solution to an obstacle. She begins to think she's going crazy. Her body never loses its hot feeling and her migraine never goes away. Eventually she's ready to fly back to Earth.
Alma crashes into her planet's surface with the force of a meteorite—literally. The shuttle had no landing capacity, Alma doesn't have a way to contact Earth for a pick up, and she doesn't have to the patience or faith to wait to be noticed.
The Omnic Crisis is over. The world is still shaking off the aftershocks of a near armageddon but Overwatch is at the height of its power, leading way forward to an era of peace and recovery. Nobody is prepared for a meteor strike outside Denver, or for the strange, secondary explosion that follows seconds after. All told, the damage is catastrophic and the causalities are in the thousands. Overwatch is at the site in minutes, and not even they are prepared for what they find there: a hollow eyed astronaut who doesn't realize that she runs an internal temperature that two hundred degrees higher than normal or that nearly fifteen years have gone by.
Unfortunately, Alma doesn't know what to do now that she's among people again. Her inner guiding voice seems to be drowned out by the presence of so many others out loud. Even when Overwatch quarantines her to their secure medical facility Alma is overwhelmed by all the people. She feels lost. This Earth is so different from the one she left. Alma knows she killed a lot of people landing and that others are out for her head, so she takes the deal when Overwatch offers to make it all go away.
The first two people Alma actually remembers meeting are Dr. Zeigler, who is pleasant but too busy to notice that Alma is slowly unraveling, and Winston, another Overwatch scientist (and gorilla!), who tells her that her tenacity in returning to Earth is inspiring but can't help looking at her like an exciting new project. They discover that her unending migraine is a result of her brain activity quadrupling; there's just not enough room in her head. What they can't tell her is why she's running in mental overdrive, or why her temperature fluctuates wildly enough that she causes explosions occasionally.
A few weeks later, Dr. Ziegler seems apprehensive, as if expecting an outburst, when she suggests that Alma install cybernetic implants in her brain to ease the pressure, and Alma is confused until she remembers that a lot of people in this new world hate Omnics, and with good reason. She thinks, with a small, bittersweet smile, that it would be a reminder of Vix, and surprising Dr. Zeigler by asking her to leave off the cosmetic half of the surgery, to not hide the implants. Waking up for the first time without a pounding skull is beautiful.
Alma still feels lost, and now she feels like she has a debt to pay. Overwatch took her in, and after all she'd promised to at least consider becoming an agent. She couldn't help but think, every now and then, that if Overwatch was so wonderful, they should have come to rescue her and Vix.
She doesn't make up her mind until after a few talks with other Overwatch agents: Winston, who is actually really sweet and who believes so strongly in making the world a better place for humans and Omnics, and Tracer, who is almost too much excitement but also offers, slightly awkwardly, to reminisce personally about body-altering accidents. Alma even has a brief conversation with the Overwatch second in command, Jack Morrison. She actually smiles when twice in five minutes a passing agent teasingly refers to him as "Dad" and he pretends to growl at them about professionalism. She thinks it's the kind of family she'd like to have, even if she's not too sure if she fits in.
To commemorate her induction into Overwatch, Winston makes her a super suit that allows her, on good days, to control and direct her internal temperature for defensive and offensive purposes. On bad days Alma has to stay in her fireproofed room on base. They call her Sunstroke, and if some people treat her like a live grenade—perhaps rightfully—there are others, like Winston and Tracer, who treat her like any other agent. Typically Alma is called in as a "big gun" like Reinhart, and never for diplomatic missions—she still has trouble talking to people. For a while, it's something like having a purpose.
For a while, she is able to pretend she's not still unraveling.
Alma's part of the team that rescues Genji Shimada from the jaws of death and she has her first major fight with Overwatch and with Dr. Zeigler when she realizes that the organization is dangling medical care in front of the man's nose as bait in return for joining up—and that it was, essentially, the same thing they had done to her while she was vulnerable. Her doubts about the organization start to resurface.
A few years later she makes her first request, first of Jack, and then of Gabriel, who is still tenuously in charge: an Overwatch initiative to specifically aid Omnics suffering from human prejudice.
Sit tight, they tell her. Resources are stretched thin right now.
It's the last thread Alma had, and Overwatch pulled it out. There was no more unraveling to do; she could no longer pretend there wasn't a supernova hiding inside her. She left, unceremoniously, without saying goodbye. She flees to the scorching outback of Australia, hoping for quiet and camouflage, but things are more exciting there than they seem and her very visible implants make her a target for anti-omnic violence. She drifts.
Genji finds her, later. They had never been close, but Alma can tell he's different, more settled than when he left Overwatch ashamed of being a cyborg. He doesn't stop to talk to her; all he has for her is a name. Genji tells her: Find Zenyatta.
Why she does it, Alma doesn't know. Genji's command reminds her of the soft promptings of the inner voice she lost when she crashed into Earth years ago. She goes looking for Zenyatta.
He's a hard person to find, although legends of his passing trail everywhere like bread crumbs after a messy picnic. Alma traces him through Southeast Asia, across the Middle East, and finally finds him praying at an interfaith mosque in the ruins of what was once Istanbul and is slowly becoming a hub of Omnic/human interaction and good faith. Zenyatta's not the same model Vix was, but Alma feels a chill when he tilts his head at her and asks what she wishes to speak to him about. Her mouth goes dry.
"I had a friend," she began.
Zenyatta takes her with him as he meanders through the world spreading his message of unity and synergy. She's not quite sure why she follows, but follow she does. He listens to her talk, talk more than she has since crashing into the Earth. He doesn't ask her to do anything, doesn't force her to sleep like Dr. Zeigler did at Overwatch. He doesn't give her platitudes. There agre moments, moments that grow in frequency, where Alma feels like Zenyatta is having a discussion with someone else through her: her words feel strange in her mouth. She asks him about it, once, twice—the third time he looks at her for along minute and then gives her his first command: Come.
They find their way into the middle of the Sahara, where the solitude is so intense that Alma almost feels like she's in space again. Zenyatta teaches her how to breathe, how to open her mind, how to feel every part of her body in minute detail.
Then he tells her that someone else is sharing her brain.
It's Vix. It has to be Vix. They somehow downloaded themselves into her brain before the flare and that's why her brain is too small and it's them who was her inner voice and—Zenyatta has to spend days calming her down again before they can prepare for her and Vix to start sharing their body properly. The first time Alma hears Vix talking to her, clearly, it's like her first breath after ten years of drowning.
They both come alive then, as Zenyatta guides them. They learn to take turns first. They practice communicating with each other and maintaining their own mental space. Vix learns to use their body as naturally as Alma does and she learns to sleep while they take over. They learn how to calm themselves and each other. At that point Vix and Alma believe they're done, but Zenyatta just laughs softly at them. How can you be done, he challenges them, when you are not yet One?
He teaches them how to think and move and be together, not taking turns or sharing space, but as one person. Being together brings them clarity, control and confidence. They are able to move, to react, to manipulate their temperature effortlessly and instantaneously. They are seamless.
They accompany Zenyatta for a time after that, still contemplating what their path might be from here. Overwatch has recently disbanded, and the world has grown a bit darker. There are many places where they could do good. During a rare visit to Zenyatta's Shimbali brethren, an Omnic asks their name, the first person to do so. They look to Zenyatta, a courtesy and an offer from student to master, but he tilts his head in the familiar way that means no way is he doing this for them, so they think for a moment.
"I am Solarix."
Part 2: Solarix's game & character profile
SOLARIX
Real Name: Alma Charo Alvarez & Vix
Pronouns: they/them/theirs
Real Age: 76
Personal & Apparent Age: 46 [b/c of time loss due to dissociation and isolation]
Occupation: Robotics Expert/Psychologist
Base of Operations: Lima, Peru
Affiliation: Overwatch [formerly Sunstroke]/independent vigilante
Combat
Class: defense
Primary weapon: "Searing Strike" mixed-martial-arts melee attack, either unarmed or with metal weapon/tool/enhancement, amplified with searing heat transfer
Secondary attack: "Heat Shield" a temporary mantle of superhot air absorbs incoming damage and blows back enemies
Ability: "Corona" buffer of hot air around body makes them invulnerable to melee attacks
Ultimate: "Supernova" massive three-hundred-sixty degree explosion
Passive: "Unity" Alma and Vix become one person in combat, increasing their reflexes and movement speed
Weaknesses: sticks out like a sore thumb on infrared, less effective in cold climates, no ranged capacity, low armor
Fun Stuff
Skins: Mech Suit [built by Winston and includes fire cannon], Student Garb [Asian/Zenyatta inspired w/metal conducting bands], Hometown [Latinx-flavored combat dress]
Emotes: "Watch out for that sunburn!" "Stand down or I will burn you down."
Victory pose: sunrise pose to battle-ready stance
Voice line: "The sun always rises." "El sol se levanta de nuevo y con ella la unidad."
Highlight Intro: a flurry of kicks and elbow jabs ending in a sweeping heat shield
Map: South America
Music theme: folk strings, folk rock, Latin folk and rock
MO
Solarix travels the world seeking ways to protect Omnics and human civilians, promote unity between Omnics and humans, and diffuse anti-Omnic prejudice. They consider themselves even less of a teacher than Zenyatta but will point people to appropriate resources for their questions, existential or otherwise. They are a very calm, balanced presence. Stopping them is like trying to stop the sun from rising.
Solarix prefers peacekeeping to violence. They often try to use displays of power to stop a fight before it starts. They try to end a fight quickly and with the minimum amount of force necessary; when with allies, they prefer to run civilian-duty, protecting non-combatants in order to minimize causalities.
They have a strong bias against collateral damage and sees it as a personal failure when they cannot reduce the casualties of a conflict to zero. Because protecting civilians is their primary mission, Solarix is unapologetically but politely independent and neutral. They support Overwatch's mission but are wary of it's former failings and dislike Talon for is disregard of life.
At any given moment either Alma or Vix could be "in charge"—or they can be practicing unity and be operating as one person. Alma is the more tactical and practical of the two and Vix has higher social and emotional intelligence.
A collection of fics in an Overwatch universe which includes my OC, Solarix. Not all fics include Solarix, as they are just one member of a fascinating team, nor is reading Solarix's story necessary for understanding the others.
Dedicated to Hyourin MaruIce
Notes: This work is unbetaed, so feel free to be helpful and shoot me the typos/inconsistencies you see, esp. w/pronouns!
Spanish Translations:
El sol se levanta de nuevo y con ella la unidad: The sun rises again and with it, unity.
Don't forget to review!