"You're one of those heroes, aren't you?!" she called to him.
Soldier: 76 shook the words out of his mind as he watched the girl practically gallop down the street towards her safe haven. Many might have had trouble catching sight of her moving on a typical, muggy night in Dorado, but the full moon gave him more than enough light that he hardly even had use for his visor. Her movement on the cobble roads was all too easy to see.
She as just a kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The pickpocket act was petty, worth punishing alone. When Los Muertos decided it was time to chuck a grenade in her direction though… Well, that was a kind of savage evil that 76 knew needed to be dealt with.
The door closed behind her as she called to her mother. He felt his face nudge slightly at the sight – was it satisfaction? No, he couldn't feel that anymore. Saving people was still the right thing to do, and deep down he knew that, but ridding the streets of the cancer that was the Muertos would have prevented him from ever having to save her in the first place. Familiarity swept over him as frustration settled in. He knew what needed to be done, and turned away.
Silence echoed off the walls in the illuminated streets. Odd, as the gunfire and explosions no doubt would have caught someone's attention. Even LumeriCo's ziggurats didn't flood out that sort of commotion. And what had they been up to, anyways?
No… best not to go down that train of thought. One focus, one mission, one problem a time. That was how he needed to conduct himself.
76 found himself in the festival circle, its lights flooding the area with a warm, soft glow. The weight of his leather jacket came to him all at once as he felt the bitter sting in his side – a reminder of his sloppiness in polishing off Los Muertos with due efficiency.
Groaning, he lowered himself and sat down on a bench. Placing the rifle down at his side, 76 grabbed a canister from his belt, popped it open and threw it on the ground. A clean warmth enveloped him as the regenerative process began. Relief swept over him as the cut on his side started closing immediately. "Thank God for these biotic fields," he muttered with his gravelly voice. It was something of a miracle he even managed to grab them in his last raid. He knew Angela's… no, Mercy's, medical technology could work wonders, but the sheer abundance of them was staggering. "What a waste."
Back in his day, these wounds wouldn't have bothered him, but he wasn't a young man anymore. He still had to come to terms with that. He had to come to terms with a lot of things. Ever since the explosion that nearly took his life finally brought an end to-
No.
76 couldn't afford to think of that. Still, Mercy had already passed through his head, and the seed had been planted. Overwatch… always in the back of his mind. Always reminding him of his failures. Failures to those he wanted to protect, and to those he loved.
That's when it happened.
The first thing he noticed was the dormant com-link lighting up. It had to be a malfunction – it had to be. No one would have the gall to re-initiate the com system and expect everything to be hunky-dory. Not even Len- Tracer , could think that.
Overwatch was dead. There was nothing about it worth saving by the time it came crashing down. Even the ones who called it a family had the wherewithal to see that. Hell, it was that attitude that caused everyone to miss the seeds being planted left and right. The clues that they missed. The clues he missed. Ana… Gabriel… Both with their demons, both so close to him that he had somehow managed to look past them. The girl's question crept into his mind again.
"Not anymore," came the quiet, hesitant response.
But was he ever a hero to begin with? He wondered sometimes.
Again, the com lit up. Then a beeping noise initiated. "Who in the world would even know how to link this system back up anyways?"
76's eyes darted around, suddenly paranoid of someone in the square – yet, still the streets remained so oddly quiet. Where was everyone? Surely the local police would've come by now. There had to be some reason these things were being swept under a rug. LumeriCo and Los Muertos… was there a connection?
The damn beeping again. "Winston…" he almost seethed. That's who would have the smarts to link everyone up, and that's the one who clung to the idea of family the most. Couldn't blame him. An ape with a PhD didn't do much socializing, he imagined.
It was the Recall… the program embedded in Athena as a fail-safe to rally the crew should things get too hectic for the world again. 76 thought on it a good long while, thinking about the memories had. Not all of them were bad, and he knew somewhere out there, that giant German oaf Reinhardt was already tearing open whatever carton held his combat armor for one last shot a glory.
And really, that's all the Recall was. Not a last-ditch effort to protect the people. People they ignored in lieu of their own advances before. Overwatch never tried to deal with local gangs. They never gave back to those who truly needed it. Their own big picture was all that mattered to them.
"Bring back Overwatch…" Bitter, he shook his head. "What's the point?"
Dorado's clay buildings remained quiet, if lit up. It was just him, alone in the aftermath of a celebration that couldn't have happened without Overwatch to begin with. The End of the Omnic crisis… it was so long ago. They had come together to accomplish something great. Things were so simple back then… just him and the Strike Team, taking on the world.
He suddenly felt isolated. Absent-mindedly, he rose from the bench and grabbed the pulse rifle once more. Whether Soldier: 76 knew it or not, he began walking towards the harbor, the girl's parting words plaguing the back of his mind as he drifted along.
"I think you are."