Disclaimer: Overwatch and all related characters are property of Blizzard Entertainment, I'm just telling what I think would be a cool story with these characters.
I am trying to write this as if it were one of the animated shorts.
Megamafan16 presents...
BETTER
Before Vishkar came to Rio de Janeiro, there was chaos.
Drug gangs ruled the streets of the favelas, and violence ruled the hearts of everyone who lived on them. The child that wasn't a killer lived in poverty or addiction. Often both. The sound of gunfire was a constant reminder to all parents that the next day might be their child's last. And the police? They only came to the slums to sell weapons to these underage barbarians.
The Omnic Crisis only made things worse. By the time Overwatch shut down the Omnium the city was devastated, and the gangs became more horrific to compete with the terrors the Omnic army was capable of.
All that has changed, and it is all thanks to the Vishkar Corporation. Vishkar rebuilt the city with its innovative hard-light technology, brought jobs to people who otherwise could only rely on selling drugs, and funded a new police force that didn't have to turn to the gangs for cash. The notions of 'quiet night' and 'safe street' entered popular consciousness. Order came to Rio at last.
Vishkar. We make the world a better place.
"Aaaand...Cut!" said a voice into her earpiece.
Phew. Finally, she was done recording her lines for the publicity campaign. She dissipated the sentry cameras with a flick of her wrist and walked off the platform, to the applause of no one. Not even Sanjay, the voice on the other end of her comm bud.
He did however, start complimenting her. "Well spoken, Satya. And with such grace, such sincerity! I am truly honored to-"
"Sanjay," said Satya Vaswani, cutting off the voice, "You know this won't stop the protests. Is he on his way?"
A pause. Satya figured he was looking at security feeds back at the Center. Then, a response: "Got 'im. He's not on any cameras, but noise monitors are picking up a massive disturbance. It's like an entire concert's closing in on the broadcast tower at breakneck speeds."
Satya smiled. "The dance begins. I'd better suit up."
With another flick of her mechanical wrist, her clothes – made out of the same hard-light material as the cameras – changed shape. From the formal business dress of Vishkar employees to one reminiscent of a dancer from her native India. No longer was she dressed as Satya Vaswani, chief architech of Vishkar's Brazilian operations, but as the ghost that helped Vishkar from the shadows.
Symmetra.
"I don't want any distractions. How about I call you back when I'm done?"
"You have total discretion with this job, but remember, 'MC Anarchy' must be silenced tonight. Sanjay out."
"Symmetra out."
Satya steeled herself for the fight ahead. She never imagined this would be her life when Vishkar took her to the Architech Academy, drawn in by her natural affinity for the light-manipulation technology they had developed.
On one hand, she missed her home and family. On the other hand, Hyderabad was a poverty-stricken nightmare not unlike the favelas she was in now. Living meal-to-meal was chaotic, fearful, and altogether unbearable for her, and the structured lifestyle of the academy was, despite the isolation, like a breath of clean air after walking out of a burning building. Only in an environment such as that could she grow into her full potential.
And grow she did. By dancing rather than stacking her creations into existence, she developed a level of skill far beyond that of a typical architech. Vishkar was so impressed with her that they made her their secret weapon in addition to the level of prestige she already commanded. As Symmetra, she could eliminate the enemies of Vishkar, and thus the agents of chaos and disorder, whenever honest business practices could not.
And tonight, that enemy was the outlaw DJ Lúcio Correia dos Santos.
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She was using ear protection, so she didn't hear him coming...but she definitely felt him. A low vibration shook the entire building and steadily grew more pronounced. Buildings shouldn't vibrate like that except in earthquakes, she thought. Earthquakes are destructive. Therefore, Lúcio is just as destructive and must be stopped.
The more she knew about this Lúcio character, who the Vishkar executives have taken to calling 'MC Anarchy', the more her mind screamed chaos about him. A lowly street musician, performing and playing songs that glorified crime and violence. A thief who stole advanced sonic pacification technology from Vishkar police. A leader of a protest against the orderly society that was brought to Brazil's most troubled city.
How the people could rally behind such a chaotic figure was beyond her, and something she did not want to think about. So instead she focused on her goal: incapacitate and arrest him, proving once and for all that the protests are not only futile, but run counter to the people's best interests.
The music got loud enough that she started to hear it slightly even through her ear protection. Such atonal garbage nearly made her sick to her stomach. With some effort, she added a little extra mass to her ear protection via her Architech arm. She couldn't afford to be distracted like that.
And just in time too – no sooner did she finally clear her head than the door was disintegrated, its parts blown into the room by incredible force. Either she missed the knocks, or Lúcio had no desire to be polite at all.
Looking at the hoodlum for the first time, it seemed like the latter. His cybernetic leg-enhancing armor reminded her of the kind of 'baggy pants' that hung below the waist, exposing bare behinds. He stood on a pair of hyper-skates that glowed in the dark. His color scheme, while explainable via outdated nationalism, looked garish and possibly nauseating – no self-respecting fashion designer would ever associate yellow, green, and blue like that. He even painted the Vishkar sonic amplifier in his hand with the same scheme to add insult to injury. His hair was styled in a series of dreadlocks that reminded her of exposed wires.
He was everything she expected and more.
He started moving his mouth. Remembering she couldn't hear anything, she tried to read his lips. While a little rusty doing this with Portuguese, she did get his message: "Where is everyone?"
"Gone before you came here, ruffian," she answered. "Technically, they haven't even been here for a few days, after your protesters scared them off."
"And yet, here you are, a pretty lady who just made a mean propaganda 'cast. Love the outfit, by the way, perfect for shakin' it on the floor." And just to demonstrate, he performed some breakdancing moves right then and there. "Aw yeah, check out these flares!"
Symmetra's response began with a glare. "Even if such crime-glorifying dances weren't outlawed, I'm much more comfortable dancing Mohiniyattam. And furthermore, this is what I wear when I'm on business."
"Alright then, let's talk business." And with that, Lúcio skated on inside...
...right into Symmetra's trap. Six little sentry turrets, positioned just above the door frame, took aim and slammed into his back with photon force beams. The hoodlum was pinned to the floor instantly.
Symmetra slinked towards the helpless man, and pulled out her impressive-looking handheld photon projector. Loading it with hard-light capsules from her Architech arm, she set it to drain his energy and make him easy to transport.
"Your reign of terror is over, MC Anarchy."
But before she could turn on her projector, she saw him saying something: "Babe, the name is Lúcio!"
Suddenly. a blast of force slammed into her legs, sending her falling on top of her helpless target. She quickly realized what happened: Somehow, despite being pinned, he had grabbed ahold of his weapon and hit her with a sonic blast.
Unwilling to target their master, the sentry turrets shut down...allowing Lúcio to use his sonic amplifier to target them. Bursts of sound resonated through her every fibre, and pushed the very air into the delicate constructs, with such force that it shattered their hard-light matrices and made them fall apart.
Symmetra flipped off of Lúcio's prone form, who just smirked as he pulled himself off the ground: "It'll take a lot more than that to muffle my beats!"
In her frustration, all Symmetra could enunciate was "Ngaaaah!" as she turned on her photon projector's beam. Lúcio recoiled in pain, but only for a second before he turned his sonic amplifier on her.
Concussive blasts of sound battered her personal light-based shielding. Her ear protection ensured she didn't go deaf, but the tingling was just enough to unnerve her, allowing Lúcio to move out of the projector's beam path. Symmetra barely recovered her senses before Lúcio could attack her, but she bent over backwards and dodged the lariat.
She turned around and tried to lock on her beam again, but he flipped out of the way. She added 'unexpectedly agile' to her mental list of things about this guy that made no sense. She swung her projector around, chasing him as he skated around the room, pounding her shields with occasional blasts from his sonic amplifier.
She spun around in the opposite direction, hoping to catch him off-guard...but instead, she added another thing to her mental list. Lúcio jumped over the projector's beam path, and instead of coming down into it like she expected, he stuck to the walls!
Apparently the sight of this made her drop her attack, because Lúcio saw an opening and exploited it: He dashed out the door and into the hallway. A frustrated Symmetra followed him out, and chased him down the hall...
...towards a window. Where, to her shock, he blasted – and jumped through – the glass! Her mind raced with worry; as much as she hated everything he stood for, she had no stomach for killing (this has been a point of contention with her superiors on many occasions). She rushed to the window, fearing the worst...only to see her quarry sliding down the side of the building, and jumping off to 'wall-ride' along the neighboring buildings.
Relief turned back to frustration, and Symmetra once again brought her photon projector to bear. But this time, since Lúcio was out of range of the draining beam, she instead charged up a photon orb. After releasing it in Lúcio's direction, it carved a slow but steady path through the air, hopefully towards where he would be riding next.
It was not to be, however, as Lúcio apparently knew where it would be before she did; he jumped towards another wall, dodging the orb. With the same effortlessness he dodged the other orbs that Symmetra sent his way, occasionally blasting her with sound to mess up her aim. In short order, he was out of sight.
Satya cursed under her breath. The whole plan to lure Lúcio out with a broadcast and capture him had failed. When he tells his story to the people, they will be inspired and flock to his cause. More and more people will be lost to Vishkar, and the utopia they built will unravel.
Satya removed the ear protecting gear from her head, and the sounds came back. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. It was horrible, but she knew she was going to be hearing it a lot more now that he was free.
...But on the other hand, she realized, she could track the sound now. Perhaps following it to its source...maybe plan B could be enacted sooner than she thought...
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"Hey, don'tcha know this party's invite only?" Lúcio said as he blasted the Vishkar-owned police into unconsciousness for trying to enter his headquarters.
He kept his base secure, resisting every attempt to raid it and silence the voice that has inspired such civil disobedience. Even when he was out being lured into Symmetra's trap, it apparently was impregnable as ever. Its doors only opened when Lúcio's sonic amplifier was plugged into a specific area on the door, and played a specific outlawed tune (a classic of Brazillian early-21st Century funk, Chapa Quente by Os Tchutchucos) as a password.
After a few seconds of this, the door opened...
….and suddenly Symmetra appeared from thin air, and tackled Lúcio into the compound before the doors could close...which they did, automatically.
She couldn't see his lips at first, but once she did, she caught the tail end of his sentence: "-can't run that fast in that outfit!"
"As preferable as capturing you at the broadcast tower would have been, I did acknowledge the possibility of you fleeing to your hideout. So I hid a teleporter outside your front doors, just in case."
"Dayum girl, you fah-reaky! First date ain't even started, and already at my house. Guess ya can't resist that roguish charm." Lúcio said with a disgusting smirk.
The thought of being in a relationship with him made her sick, almost physically so. "Do you flirt with everyone sent to arrest you?"
"Only the hot ones."
"Well, then let me outline every reason a relationship between us just won't work out!" exclaimed Symmetra as she pulled out her photon projector once again.
Lúcio blasted her a few times as he moved to cover, and Symmetra followed suit as she began the list: "First, you're a criminal!"
"Only by Vishkar's laws!" he responded.
"Just laws made for the good of your people! And you make it your mission to subvert and mock us at every turn! You play illegal music, you stole sonic pacification technology, and you lead unsanctioned protests!"
"Oh I did that all right, but I don't think its a crime to stand up for the sake of music!"
As they traded shooting photon orbs and sound blasts, she continued: "Second, your music glorifies crime and violence, and its painful to listen to!"
"You're not supposed to listen to it, you're supposed to dance to it!"
"Dancing encourages underage intimacy, that's why it was outlawed!"
"When you took away the music and the dance, you took away the soul of the people!" Lucio said (probably shouted, but she couldn't hear) as a particularly large blast of sound blew away part of her cover. "Yeah, the flirtin' was just to rile you up; even I gotta admit it would be strange dating the girl who destroyed my home!"
That struck a nerve. It reminded her of the fire at Calado's complex that devastated the neighborhood but secured Vishkar's contract. The fire she always suspected was endorsed by Vishkar.
She pushed those thoughts out of her head, and retorted: "We took your rotting buildings and gave back something better! Clean, safe neighborhoods!"
"Really hard to enjoy all that from prison!" Lúcio said as he disappeared down a corridor.
Symmetra chased him, and when she found him again, took cover, resumed shooting, and gave her retort: "Prison is where we put the gangsters that once ruled this favela! Do you want them back? All the violence, all the dead children?"
"At least when people smiled back then, they weren't faking it!"
"So the transition's been rough for some people, what of it? Vishkar creates order, and order is what makes a functioning society! But you would see devolve into anarchy and chaos!"
"I would free the people!"
Again, Lúcio vanished, and Symmetra gave chase, shouting after him "Freedom is the cause of every evil in this world! We restrict it for the greater good! So if you truly care about your neighbors you will give yourself up and stop inspiring them in this destructive revolution!"
Symmetra entered a dark room full of equipment – no doubt related to his awful music obsession – but ran into no sign of Lúcio...until he dropped from the ceiling, turning his equipment back on (and restoring the glow-in-the-dark nature) in the process.
"Maybe I will sometime," he said, "but there's one thing I wanna do first."
"And that is?" she asked, using her Architech arm to strengthen her shields as she prepared for his next move...
"...DROP THE BEAT!"
Symmetra braced herself as Lúcio slammed his sonic amplifier into the ground...but felt nothing but a slight tingle! Thinking he missed, Symmetra trained her photon projector's beam on him...
….only to have it harmlessly fizzle out centimeters from his body.
"Huh. It actually worked."
Symmetra didn't have any time to respond before he blasted her photon projector out of her hands, and rushed towards her.
Symmetra drew in a sharp breath. This was the first time in a long while she's been forced to fall back upon any close combat skills. She flipped backwards, and then launched forward with a spinning kick which failed to connect...because instead of Lúcio, her leg touched a field of pure energy that bounced her back.
A couple more blows later, and Lúcio had her pinned to the ground. Using a form of Capoeira combined with his hyper-skates and his barrier of sonic energy that tingled whenever she touched it, Symmetra was quickly overwhelmed. Several punches later, and her shields were all but gone, and all she could do was clench up and endure the next punch.
But instead of punching her, Lúcio instead pulled off her headgear, removing her ear-protection in the process.
"Well, you knew I used sound so you used these to keep from goin' deaf. Plannin' ahead." he said as he stood up off of her.
And finally Symmetra heard his voice. It was what she expected a favela hoodlum to sound like. What she didn't expect was the low hum emanating from his sonic barrier, nor the soft thump-thump-thump of the music coming from his sonic amplifier. It was a series of sounds that did not mix well together.
"Give that back!" she exclaimed in anger and desperation. She pulled herself up and tried to grab them, but Lúcio brandishing his sonic amplifier put a stop to that.
"Nuh-uh. It's been fun dancin wit ya, but I really need to get down to what I broughtcha here for, Symmetra."
Symmetra's confused expression prompted Lúcio to continue: "I knew that whole broadcast thing was a trap the minute I saw your face. I heard the rumors – The Calado fire, the Juju Club crackdown, and all those other things had one thing in common: Symmetra, Vishkar's golden girl. The rumors also say you truly believe you're doin' the right thing. Well, let me show you the truth."
And with that, Lúcio backed away and closed the door, leaving Symmetra confused...until the lights came on. And with them, on came a bunch of vidscreens as they slowly booted up...
...and then came the sounds.
From everywhere. From every direction, the sounds assaulted her eardrums. High sounds. Low sounds. Loud sounds. Soft sounds. All at once.
Pieces of music. Pieces of dialogue. Pieces of violent crashes. Layered on top of each other.
It all came so sudden. She couldn't associate sound with source. It all came from nowhere. She was confused.
Her orderly world came crashing down and in its place was uncertainty.
Disorder.
CHAOS.
Satya threw herself against the doors. "Let me out! Let me out!" she screamed. She pounded at least a dozen times with her fists.
"The truth hurts, don't it?" was the response she heard.
Her heart was racing. She was hyperventilating. She tried to form new earplugs from her hard-light, but couldn't concentrate enough.
She screamed again: "Help me! Help me! Help!"
The screams grew louder, but she didn't receive any response. She tried to think of a new strategy, but all she could focus on was how scared she was. It felt like every cell of her body was being pressed inwards in unpredictable ways, and she hated it.
"I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die! I'M GONNA DIE! I'M GONNA DIE!"
Suddenly, the door burst open, and the sounds all stopped one by one. Satya collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Whoa, baby." she heard. "When I said the truth hurt, I didn't mean it literally!"
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It was at least half an hour before Satya could form any intelligible response. She took a look around, and she was lying on a couch, with what appeared to be a pitcher of water and a glass balanced on a small table next to her. And there was Lúcio standing above her, his normally smug face replaced with an expression of worry.
"Y'okay now?" he asked. And when Satya nodden in the affirmative, he asked: "What happened?"
She paused to gather her thoughts, and drink some water. "I think it was...sensory overload. So many different sounds on top of each other. Couldn't make anything out...it was chaos. Pure chaos. Gave me a panic attack."
"Hm, so you're literally chaos intolerant?"
"It's why I work for Vishkar in the first place, I guess."
Lúcio's eyes narrowed, and that smug grin returned to his face. "Well in that case..."
Before Satya could make sense of that statement, Lúcio pulled out a plastic waste-bin, and a portable holo-projector.
"If seein' people do the wrong thing makes ya sick, you'll need a barf bucket or two for this. This is what I wanted to show you back there, but now we're doing it one at a time instead of all at once."
Satya briefly wondered whether she should try to flee...but the combination of her still feeling the aftereffects of her panic attack, plus the fact that Lúcio's armed but she's not, made her reconsider. So she sat and watched...
"There's nothing on Calado; no gang ties, no backroom deals, no nothing."
"So we move to plan B: Blow him up. Start the timer, then RUN!"
...
"You're under arrest for breaking curfew!"
"What? I've never broke curfew in my life!"
"Tell that to this security camera footage!"
"What? That was before the curfew! I swear! Ya gotta believe me!"
"You calling us liars? Now we can arrest you for libel!"
...
"Your choice, scumbags. Rot in prison, or work for 5 micro-creds an hour."
...
"It's a board game!"
"It uses dice, therefore its gambling! Now get on your knees!"
...
"It's not libel! It's evidence that a Vishkar employee is selling technology and slave labor to Talon! I'm on your side!"
"No you're not. I'm one of the guys makin' money off that deal. And you've just given me a reason to make sure you disappear forever."
...
"You've searched all over, and there's no drugs, no guns, no banned music! We're doing nothing illegal here!"
"You're still dancing to music I don't like."
"There's no law against it!"
"Ya hear all that, boss?...got it. There is a law against it now. Round em up, people!"
...
Finally, Lúcio saw fit to end the show. Satya wasn't sick...but she was heartbroken.
"Before you ask how I got this, I know a guy."
"They...they're no better than the gangs! They were supposed to make their lives better, and they're making them worse!"
Lúcio replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm "Impossible. They're Vishkar. Vishkar brings order, remember? Makes the world a better place, remember?"
"...Am I the only one who actually practices what we preach?"
"Peace in our time is a goal I can get behind. But sacrificing freedom to get there is something people can't do, even when forced. And until Vishkar learns that, they're part of the problem."
Taking in Lúcio's words, Satya sat up. This man was insinuating that she had been living a lie. Very convincingly. It took her a while to come up with a retort:
"Vishkar's not the problem...it's the people in Vishkar who don't care about the people, who are sabotaging their noble mission for their own profit."
"Yeah, well, until Vishkar gets its act together, it is not welcome in Brazil. Maybe not even then." Lúcio said as he handed her the headset and photon projector he took from her. "We might even get along without you."
Disgust, both at what he represented, and what he showed her about her beloved Vishkar Corporation, made Symmetra's voice incredibly bitter as she said: "We'll see."
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The instant the door closed behind her, she made her call.
"Satya, is it done? Is he out of the-"
"Sanjay, I need to take a vacation."
"Is he dead or arrested?"
"Sanjay, I've been compromised. I'm no good to Vishkar in this state. I need a vacation."
"Define 'compromised,' please."
"I can't beat him, and even if I could it'd make things worse. Doing anything to him would make him a martyr. He showed me that the people of Rio hate Vishkar, believing we lied when we promised them a better world. I can't convince him otherwise. Hell, he almost convinced me we were no better than the gangsters we arrested!"
"...Wow, that's pretty compromised. I've seen that kind of talk cut short many a career at Vishkar."
"But I want to continue. I believe we can turn this around...just not now. Not until we can prove we really have the people's best interests at heart."
"All right. Let's see about getting you some unpaid leave. If the CEO asks, I'll say its punishment for your failure."
"Thank you, Sanjay."
And with that, the call ended. And Satya changed her clothes back to regulation architech wear, walking back to her office to pack up.
On the way she passed a vidscreen playing her previously-recorded broadcast.
"Vishkar. We make the world a better place."
Looking back at Lúcio's hideout, she said: "Someday that'll be true. Just you see."
Is it wrong that I ship these two, tsundere-style?
Praise/constructive criticism welcomed!