A/N: This story will reference earlier stories in the series. In particular, the ending of this chapter makes less sense if you haven't read "A Mother's Diary".
Angela couldn't breathe when she was physically torn from the scientific article she was reading and hoisted high into the air.
"Angela, it is so good to see you again!" exclaimed Reinhardt in German.
"Same. Here." Angela replied in German, tapping Reinhardt's wrist until he understood that she needed space to let her diaphragm expand.
Panthera leo, lion, thought Angela as she gulped down air. Through the corner of her eye, she saw a couple more people enter the common room. Unlike Reinhardt, she didn't recognize the newcomers.
Family: Leporidae, rabbit, thought Angela. Upon hearing said rabbit speak on her phone, she added, Lepus coreanus, Korean hare. She glanced at the short man asking the Korean hare for an autograph. Order: Anura, frog. Hmmmm. Maybe… Agalychnis callidryas, red-eyed tree frog?
Recently Angela had gotten into memorizing scientific names for plants and animals just for the fun of it. Many people assumed that Angela was the kind of genius that just remembered everything. But Angela's memory worked the same as the majority of people's. It made connections through associating new information with old, and strengthened it through repetition. She was just more conscious of how it worked. To learn the Latin and Greek used in the scientific nomenclature, Angela was practicing by associating people with animal-like qualities she chose, and reciting the appropriate name.
She let her attention go back to the so-called lion in front of her.
"I didn't expect to see you here Reinhardt. Don't you think it's time to hang it up? You aren't getting any younger."
Reinhardt frowned. "Never!" he said, raising his right arm in the air and banging his left fist over his chest. "I will fight to my last breath."
Angela sighed and shook her head. Reinhardt flinched, but avoided the lecturing that was coming his way as more people entered the common room for the first informal gathering of Overwatch since the recall.
Gorilla gorilla, how imaginative, she thought as her old friend entered the room.
"Winston!" Angela cried, and threw her arms around the scientist's shoulders. "How are you? Are you experiencing any problems with your genetic therapy?"
Winston chuckled. "Aside from a devastating addiction to peanut butter?"
Angela closed her eyes as she laughed, so she didn't see the person standing behind the gorilla until Winston stepped aside to introduce them formally.
"Angela, do you remember Fareeha Amari? I personally invited her to join Overwatch."
The doctor smiled politely at the woman standing in front of her. She was about four inches taller than Angela, and unlike the other casually-dressed people in the room, she was wearing a blue mech suit.
Falco peregrinus, peregrine falcon, her brain went, without hesitation.
"Fareeha, it is a pleasure to see you again. I am sorry about what happened to Ana. I tried to contact you via hologram, but you were hospitalized…"
"You do not need to apologize, Doctor Ziegler", interrupted Fareeha with a slight tip of her head. "I am doing well, and I keep my mother close with this." She gestured to a tattoo Angela hadn't seen before under Fareeha's right eye. She recognized it as something Ana had traced on her face when she was a teenager.
"The Eye of Horus. I am sure Ana would be honoured. Your mother always hoped you'd follow in her footsteps."
Fareeha's nose flared and she gave a short bark of laughter. "She did? Funny she never mentioned that to me." She turned to Winston. "I apologize for getting here so late. My flight was stuck in Spain, so I flew the rest of the way myself", she said patting herself on the shoulder.
"No problem. I'll show you to the room you'll be staying in. There aren't many rooms available, so you'll have to share…" Winston's voice trailed off as the two walked away, and Angela was distracted by the gunslinger coming in from the other entrance.
Canis lupus familiaris, domestic dog, thought Angela. She chatted avidly with Jesse McCree, catching up like siblings that had been separated for a long time. Fareeha Amari slipped from Angela's mind.
It wasn't long before the newly-formed Overwatch had a new mission. The return of Overwatch was still deemed illegal, so they advertised themselves as a mercenary company.
Fareeha had brought warning about Anubis, a God Program that had broken free of its containment by Overwatch decades earlier. The group was sombre upon hearing the information, who had already known of the worsening state of the world and the oncoming Second Omnic Crisis. It was good that other organizations like Helix Security International were doing their best to contain emergencies like Anubis, but it was really Overwatch's responsibility to handle these situations, even if Overwatch had been outlawed.
There had been another God Program outbreak in Nepal, where previously peaceful omnics were going haywire. The outbreak had been sudden, and all available members of the small Overwatch team flew to Nepal immediately with little information.
Fareeha was already in her armour by the time Angela entered the hangar to change into her Valkyrie suit. She was talking to Winston. Angela could hear snippets of their conversation as she pulled the plates of her armour over the black, heat-repelling flight suit she already had on.
"… need intelligence… anti-air units… no defence…"
Angela didn't feel like it concerned her, and like everyone else, she didn't know what the Nepalese omnics had in store for them, so she stopped listening. She straightened the halo-shaped helmet on her head, and checked the energy level of her healing staff. She tested its balance by giving it a little twirl and tossed it in the air, satisfied when it landed perfectly in her palm. She strapped her pistol to her hip and was ready.
"So!" said Reinhardt in a voice that was too loud to ignore. Everyone on the hangar briefly turned their heads in Fareeha's direction. "What should we call you?"
"Excuse me?" said Fareeha.
"You need a call sign! Everybody needs a call sign!"
Fareeha chuckled and patted Reinhardt on the hand he held on her shoulder. "Isn't yours just your first name?" she asked.
"Yes, but Reinhardt is a magnificent name that deserves to be heard by friend and foe alike!"
Fareeha smiled. "For now, just call me Oscar Whiskey…" she counted the small number of people preparing for their mission. "Oscar Whiskey 17." Over the radio, the team referred to themselves as Oscar Whiskey, the NATO phonetic alphabet for OW, or Overwatch.
"How boring", said Jesse. "You used to have a better imagination", he said wryly, patting his hand on Fareeha's helmet.
Jesse's good humour didn't last very long.
"It's too quiet", muttered Jesse as the small unit walked through the village.
Nobody replied, but everybody agreed. It was the middle of the day, and where there should have been streets bustling with activity, there was nothing but silence. Nearby Angela heard the sound of a shutter slamming against the side of a building due to a strong gust of wind. Angela knew the village was still in mourning of losing Tekhartha Mondatta, who had been assassinated by Talon. But surely the people wouldn't just abandon their village after it happened.
Angela closed her eyes at the painful memory of hearing who had pulled the trigger at the omnic that preached for peace. Lena had described her encounter with Widowmaker – a woman once known and held dear to the Overwatch organization as Amélie Lacroix. Angela remembered when Amélie moved in. She didn't work for Overwatch, but she stayed with her husband Gérard. Angela had thought that the younger woman was sweet, and she had served as a reminder of normalcy and stability, promising everyone that they could have a normal life too. For that reason, it shook everybody up when Amélie killed her husband.
The unit was heading to the sanctum. That's where the few reports they had suggested the danger would lie.
Suddenly, through the silence, Angela heard the chattering of a robotic voice in a language she couldn't understand. Her body tensed, and that was when she knew the fighting would begin.
A loud explosion to her right confirmed her intuition.
Smoke and dust filled the air, and Angela hid behind a building trying to find her breath. She had expected screaming, but there weren't any humans left to scream. Bullets ricocheted off walls above her head, and Angela hugged the ground. Winston was largely recognized as being in charge since he had called everyone together, but he didn't have any experience coming up with strategy on the fly. For that reason and because there hadn't been time to train formally, the small group of Overwatch members scattered like cockroaches, finding cover for themselves and awaiting instruction.
Through the sound of the omnics' gunfire, Angela heard the sound of rocket thrusters, as Fareeha took to the sky.
"Oscar Whiskey 17 to Oscar Whiskey All", came Fareeha's voice into the radio earpiece fitted to Angela. "I have clear sight of the situation. The enemy is pouring out of the sanctum. We are outnumbered twenty to one."
At first nobody spoke as Fareeha confirmed their worst suspicions. Finally, a thick Russian accent responded. "Zarya copies. Zarya to Winston, what is the best course of action?"
Angela could hear the uncertainty in Winston's voice. "Winston copies… Um…"
"This is Oscar Whiskey 17", interrupted Fareeha. "I will eliminate the bulk of them at the entrance before they start splitting up. Organize yourselves into four groups of four and pick off any enemies that remain."
Ex-soldiers and old Overwatch members were the first to respond with "roger", and immediately grouped up. Angela flew to Lúcio, who had been shot in the arm in his attempt to reconvene. Without asking for permission, Angela stuck her fingers into the wound and yanked out the bullet. She held tight to Lúcio's wrist with surprising strength as he gasped and instinctively tried to pull away. She positioned her staff over the wound, and pulled a trigger, administering a small dose of nanobots that quickly sewed together the flesh.
"This is Oscar Whiskey 17. I have the enemy on my radar. Rocket barrage incoming!"
The earth shook with the heavy impact of missiles hitting the ground. Angela lay low on the ground, waiting for it to stop, and hoped that nobody would get hit by any shrapnel.
Angela waited for an update, but she didn't get one. As the air cleared, she looked to the sky, and saw Fareeha flying erratically.
"Mercy to Oscar Whiskey 17, do you have a problem?"
"They have anti-air units on the ground!" was all Fareeha could say before Angela watched a rocket hit Fareeha squarely in the back.
"Press forward while they're distracted!" yelled Aleksandra over the radio, but Angela had already spread her wings.
Her Valkyrie suit had no problem catching up to Fareeha just as her jets sputtered its last breaths.
"Are you alright?" shouted Angela as she caught Fareeha under the armpits and let her suit's momentum pull them upwards.
Fareeha's face was frozen and her lower lip trembled.
Angela had to strain to hear Fareeha over the sound of gunfire.
"… no wounds… never been shot out of the sky before… certain death."
Angela's Valkyrie suit was attracted to humans and omnics, and wasn't capable of true flight. But that didn't mean that she didn't have any tricks up her sleeve.
She wrapped her legs around Fareeha's body, pulled out a vial of blood from her belt, and tossed it into the air. Her Valkyrie suit responded, and jerked the two upwards before they began falling again. Angela caught the vial, and repeated the action.
"Stop flailing! I'm trying to concentrate!" yelled Angela, but Fareeha wouldn't calm down.
"… Raptora systems failing… nobody survives a fall…"
Angela felt Fareeha slip from the circle of her legs a little, and had to let the vial fall to readjust her hold on the panicking woman. She withdrew a back-up vial of blood.
"Mercy to Pharah, I need you to calm down!" Angela said through the radio this time so her voice would be loud and clear. Angela wasn't sure what did it, but Fareeha stopped struggling, and with a sigh of relief, Angela kept tossing the vial into the air. Their decent was jerky, but Fareeha's feet eventually touched the roof of a house.
Fareeha's legs collapsed under her, and Angela fell on top of the taller woman.
"Can you still fight?" asked Angela, trying to detangle her limbs from Fareeha's.
Fareeha nodded dumbly and held up her rocket launcher with a trembling hand. Angela froze when Fareeha touched Angela's bangs with her free hand.
"Pharah… You remembered…" Fareeha mumbled.
"Of course I remembered", said Angela smugly. "I'm a genius."