This is loosely based on the Jackie Chan Adventures episode 'The Lotus Temple' . It's also my first time writing for McCree and Hanzo, so please be gentle with me ^^
The people of Hanamura knew better than to step foot in the old castle. They had been born to the whispers of curses, to the dark clouds the circled over it for all but one day in the year. Their children played games, dared each other to touch the gate, to look upon the stone dragon that wrapped itself around the gates and glared down with eyes that warned of a storm. None of them were foolish enough to cross over the wall. None of them were foolish enough to dismiss generations of promises to never enter.
To forsake their lives just for a glimpse inside.
None of them were international weapons smuggler sprinting through the city with a target on their back. None of them were strangers jaded to the world and it's supposed curses.
None of them could recognize something ancient and powerful for what it was. And so they scrambled over walls, throwing backpacks and bodies over into a pile of weapons and limbs.
One boy dropped down, landing on his ankle wrong. It was visible even from the vantage point Jesse McCree had taken up residence in. He leaned on the tree trunk, watching the kid scramble to pick up a bag when the one in charge, a nasty piece of work that called himself Glitch.
The Blackwatch operative narrowed his eyes. If they got into the castle proper and fortified it, he'd have to cave and call for some back up, or say fuck it and just destroy half of the building in a firefight. If he took them out now, he'd be making a mess of a courtyard, but it would be quicker and over faster.
Too bad Reyes wanted him to bring in Glitch alive. Too bad some of them were kids.
You were a kid too, in Deadlock, he reminded himself. He hadn't been doing kid stuff then and these kids weren't doing kid stuff now. If they'd come all this way from Germany, they knew what they were getting themselves in. No one worked for Glitch for long without knowing what it was going to cost them.
Jesse idly wondered if they knew that Glitch's real name was Iverson Bemesderfer.
Probably not.
Jesse breathed in deeply, mourning that he couldn't smoke on the clock, and drew his piece. He was readying himself to jump from tree to wall when a sound invaded his ears. It was almost too low for him to notice, at first.
His implants picked it up before he really did. Typically they dulled the blast from gunfire so it didn't blow his eardrums out, but they also caught and amplified certain things. Things that might register as a threat.
Things like the low roll of thunder that beat inside the castle walls. The sky was clear, the castle was empty, save the invaders.
Jesse blinked.
Something moved. A flash of lightning through the courtyard, an explosion of action that cut through the crooks, leaving blood and guts in its wake. Blue caught the light, thunder grew louder, echoing in tandem with screaming. A gun went off, then another, a flurry of bullets flying at the flash of light that tore through the crowd.
To the side a grenade went off, tearing through five men and throwing the blue back into a wall hard enough to crack it.
For just an instant the carnage stilled. Jesse knew moments like these, when the fight went from hot to cold, bodies frozen in motion where the only things he could hear was the pounding of his heart and the world zeroed in to the sight at the end of Peacekeeper.
This was different.
The sound he heard drowned out his heart, the beat of thunder on the horizon. Peacekeeper stayed down, at his hip. That didn't stop the ice in his veins. That didn't stop the way the world darkened until there was only black and white and red and for the first time in his life blue.
Blue. Brilliant, glowing, blinding blue burst through the Deadeye he didn't call upon, burning itself into his memory. Scales shimmered in his vision where they fell to the ground, blue warring with red. The serpentine body curled in against the wall, stone collapse frozen around it.
One of the kids had turned a machine gun on the creature when it impacted.
Jesse blinked and the world returned. Peacekeeper smoked faintly in his hand and six bodies hit the ground. A girl who had hefted another grenade, the boy with the machine gun and the four people closest to Glitch. For an instant his eyes locked with the creature's.
His heart beat once and the beast erupted once more, red and blue lashing across the ground, cutting through bodies. It felt familiar, the death, the massacre, watching his targets fall. Not at his hand, true, but he knew folks that favored the blade over gun smoke or bare fists. It felt like that.
Glitch had sense enough to turn tail and run, for the wall. Jesse couldn't bear to tear his eyes away from the scene but he forced himself, vaulting to the ground to intercept, jogging to where Glitch would end up over the side. The shadow of his head fell over Jesse's shoulders and he stepped back so he could be ready to subdue him. The target managed to get almost all the way over the wall before he screamed.
Jesse met him beneath the red shingled, catching the part of his body that came down. Most of him, at least. His legs had been sheared off.
Jesse touched his comm and called for a medic, focusing on what he knew. He coudln't think about what he'd seen, what he'd learned was real. He had to keep his mind on the job, or he didn't think he could keep from trying to catch one last glimpse of the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen.
The Dragon inside Hanamura Castle.
What Jesse saw never made it into his official report, the one that went into the files that Blackwatch sent to Morrison. Jesse had almost withheld it from even Reyes, but in the end he told him the full truth, if for no other reason than he couldn't think up another way to explain that he'd only shot six people and when extraction had been completed there was no sign of anyone having been inside of Hanamura Castle at all.
Jesse had no idea why Reyes believed him. As long as he didn't send him to Mercy for a head check it was just fine by him. .
After Glitch he had stuck mostly to the America's, north and south. Hunting down other rogue agents, taking down gangs one at a time. Usually he was partnered up with someone, Genji preferably, or even Reyes on a couple of memorable, explosive, occasions.
The next time he went to Hanamura it was on his own terms.
Jesse passed the castle three times the first day. He knew that going the same place on repeat was a messy mistake, it made it easy to track him. Easy to make a target out of him. Jesse just couldn't help it. He was drawn to the building and the being inside of it.
He wanted to know more.
He asked around, but his Japanese was terrible and the english explanations he got were mostly centered around staying the hell away.
The second day he climbed the tree he had been in two years before to look inside. There was no sign of the carnage, no sign of dragon. Nothing at all.
Jesse left with a stone in his guts.
He hung around his hotel room for the next few days, checking out where he was going next and berating himself for not just hopping the fence and going in.
He cleaned his six shooter about a dozen times, polished his boots, mended his serape and anything else he could do to keep his mind occupied and off the castle. He wanted to go in. He wanted to see the dragon again.
He did not want to die.
Every time he almost got up the courage to poke his head into the dragons den he remembered Glitch's legs. A single snap of massive jaws and they were both gone. Jesse was already missing one arm, he wasn't sure he wanted to lose any more parts.
He was putting Peacekeeper back together after her fourth cleaning of the day when a knock sounded on the door.
"Housekeeping!" was announced. In a voice that didn't match the one that had come every day before. Jesse had time enough to grab his hat before the door came off its hinges and he was shoved out the window from the power of the explosion.
He hit the ground running.
Jesse McCree was not known for his brilliant ideas. Genji thought he was ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag and had delusions of immortality. Reyes thought he was a punk with a penchant for ignoring common sense. Morrison… Jesse didn't even want to know what he thought.
Maybe Genji was right. Maybe, Jesse was just totally insane and had diluted himself into thinking he could make plans that wouldn't end up in his death. Jesse had always been a few steps ahead of the reaper, kept there by the bodies he dropped behind him. He'd only ever been good for talking shit and shootin folks, which probably explained how he'd gotten this hair brained scheme in his head in the first place.
His boots beat against the back alley, splashing though he-didn't-want-to-know-what. Footsteps followed him second behind, just far enough that he didn't have to start dodging bullets yet. Peacekeeper rested heavy in his fingers, hammer pulled back, waiting to be released.
He bolted around a corner, his aim coming into sight. The rooftops rose high in the setting sun. Jesse took a deep breath and poured on more speed so when he threw himself at the wall it was the momentum carried him halfway up. His free hand caught the top, metal clanging audibly and he swung himself up, over the top. A gun raport broke through the sounds of the city around just before Jesse rolled over the roof and dropped to the ground below.
He crushed some poor, unsuspecting bush under his weight before he pulled himself out of the clawing foliage. Blood ran down his arm from the new hole in his shoulder, slicking his grip on his piece. Heat burned through his shoulder and along his ribs.
He touched his side with his metal hand, hissing. Damn. He hadn't been counting on being hit.
Voices crowded around the wall he'd just dropped over, accompanied by the clinking of metal and the clicks of weaponry.
At least that was going according to plan.
Jesse wiped his bloody palm on his pants before he went back to running, steadying his grip on the pistol. Behind him, pursuers had started to climb the wall.
"Sorry about all this, darlin," he told the castle. " Ah, wasn't expectin' all this trouble."
Which was ridiculous. He should have. Trouble followed him in a shadow of misfortune.
More bodies dropped down behind him. He picked up his heels and ran. The front gate was in sight when he turned the corner. Blood trailed behind him. For a long minute he wondered if he really had lost his marbles those years before. If he had imagined the blue dragon.
Then the thunder beat through the earth. Someone screamed behind him. Jesse threw himself forwards, against the gate, managing to scramble up. From the high ground he turned his sight back, to the dragon that tore through the pursuers like they were nothing more than paper. It was incredible, awe inspiring.
Jesse lifted his hand, pulled back the hammer and shot. One by one his targets fell, crumpling to the ground. Never once did he strike the dragon that coiled through the intruders. Jesse had seen rattlesnakes slower than this.
The last of his pursuers crumpled to the ground, a bullet in their head. Wind blew through his hair, tugging at his hat. The thunder beat harder in his heart.
Jesse opened his mouth to say something, anything. All that came out was a shout when the gate beneath his feet cracked and fell, collapsing backwards, sending the cowboy down with it. The air rushed from his lungs, leaving him choking desperately.
He barely got his breath back when something cast a long shadow over him. Jesse brought his shooting hand up on instinct, levelled in between two gold eyes. The dragon loomed over him, baring its teeth. Thunder rumbled around him, growled from between the dragons fangs.
"Well, don't that beat all," Jesse breathed. He sat up, slowly, letting the weapon drop. He could shoot from the hip just fine. The man drew his legs away from the creature's fierce claws. His heavy boot knocked some stone, sending it clattering off the door and into the street. Tight muscles tensed under thick hide and the dragon moved a threatening inch closer. He didn't think he'd ever seen anything so pretty in his life.
Pretty like a rattler with it's scales shining in the sun. Pretty like the barrel of Peacekeeper after he'd just polished her. Pretty like Ana Amari.
Pretty and perfectly capable of killing him.
Up close he could see it's eyes in the burning light, golden, flecked with brown. Surrounding that was pale scales, practically white, beneath a slim patch of fur that could have been spun from his mama's wedding band. Whiskers of the same color flicked in front of him, floating in the air with a serenity that was sharply opposed by the massive, pointed teeth being shown to him. Under the drawn lips was a beard that chased backwards, edging jaw that could have taken Jesse in whole. It edged up along with sharp point, horns maybe, that crowned the dragon's head till the point of a blade of fur that drew from the tip of the head to the end of a long, long tail.
"Ain't you somethin'?" Jesse slowly moved, so as not to startle the creature, pushing himself into a stand. The dragon made no move to stop him. "Thank ya' kindly for the help," he nodded to the bloody mess behind the dragon and took a respectful step back, his heart beating hard.
It released a growl that shook him to the core, one that rolled through the scales that flashed beautifully. Jesse realized that where the scales faded from the near-white around the eyes and lips into a deep, ocean shade they were tipped with the same gold he could see in the dragon's eyes.
Jesse took another step away, watching the dragon the whole time. As soon as his boots were off the door it jerked, twisting, and disappeared. Doors that been broken repaired themselves and lifted back into place. It shut hard.
Jesse was left with a bullet in his shoulder, a graze in his side, and a pair of shaking knees.
Something caught in the light, the stone he'd kicked earlier. It sang blue in the dimming light. Jesse did a recount.
He also had a scale.