Disclaimer: I do not own Overwatch.

Prologue: The Beginning

My name is Dayner Stuge. Call-sign Stryke. I am a Major in the British SAS, specializing in hostage rescue. But before all of that, I was an agent of Overwatch.

Overwatch. The international task force hastily assembled to end the first Omnic Crisis. Back in its early days, I was merely a private, just another grunt in the front lines of the Omnic Crisis. We heard of it through the pipeline, while bogged down under heavy fire from the Bastion units. I remember one of the corporals scoffing at this new international task force, laughing bitterly as he recounted how he watched one of the elite SAS units get mown down by a single Bastion unit. I remember how that corporal, who was also a field medic, break cover to try and get to a wounded soldier. He never got there.

My unit barely made it out of that battle. It was a bad beat, and we lost more than two-thirds of our attacking force. Our air support had been decimated, and we had left hundreds of wounded on the battlefield. Their fate was unknown to us. Not too long later, our unit was despatched to the German front, to assist the legendary Crusader unit in defending Stuttgart. My unit was a reserve, and we were assigned to Stuttgart's perimeter. Across the forest, we could see how the sky turned red, how dust and smoke filled the air. We could hear the relentless chatter of the Bastion units' guns, we could hear the screams of jet engines and the endless explosions. We could track the battle as it advanced towards the old town on the outskirts of the forest, into the castle.

Not long after the battle had breached the castle, all became eerily still. The blood-red mist still hung low over the battlefield, but there was not a sound. No gunfire, no heavy armoured footsteps, no pained screams of the wounded. Word then reached us that the German defending force and the Crusader unit had triumphed, but with heavy losses, including the Crusader unit's commander, Balderich von Adler.

I fought hard during the Crisis. I lost many of my fellow soldiers, most of whom I had grown close to over the course of the war. In our final push against an omnic-held fueling facility, we had gotten word that the omnics were holding some employees of the facility hostage, and against our commanding officer's orders, my unit commander decided that rescuing the hostages should be our top priority.

While the rest of the forces dilly-dallied about how they should approach the well-fortified facility, our captain led our unit and two other infantry units to flank around the back of the facility, to where the blueprints indicated there was a service hatch leading to the innards of the facility.

We spent two days belly-crawling across the open field. Though we were far out of range of the Bastion units set up on the balconies of the facility, our captain was taking no chances with the threat of omnic snipers. For one, being robots, they never missed.

After we had breached the service hatch, there had been a long and bloody battle inside the facility. Many good men fell, but for each soldier felled, they brought down three or four omnics with them. We had lost half of our team by the time we reached the hostages. By this time, word had gotten out that three of the attacking force's infantry units were inside the facility, and support started to arrive. High-altitude dive-bombers pummelled the facility, while artillery units targeted the balconies, forcing the Bastion units to retreat inside.

Under cover of the bombings and the artillery fire, a convoy of armoured vehicles arrived at the front gate. We had loaded the hostages and were getting ready to evac ourselves, when the omnics launched a counterattack. One of the armoured vehicles was hit with a rocket, and I lost my right arm shielding my friends from the blast. After that, everything was a blur. I remember the medic wrapping my cauterized stump of an arm in a bandage, then a sharp prick as he inserted a hypodermic needle, followed a soft pneumatic hiss as morphine pumped into my system. Then, nothing.

I woke up on a hospital bed, my right arm missing and surrounded by wounded soldiers. I spent a few weeks recovering, and then I was fitted with a mechanical prosthetic. During one of my rehabilitation sessions, a nurse came running into the room, tears of joy running down her face. She turned on the television, and the news headline was hard to miss. The Omnic Crisis was over. Overwatch had accomplished what everyone had thought impossible.

A few weeks after being discharged, I returned to my army camp. My commanding officer called me into his office to congratulate me on winning the Medal of Honor, and also notified me of my transferral to Overwatch Hostage Rescue and Extraction division, effective immediately.

And thus my story began. Sit back, and let this old soldier tell you a tale of wonder.

A/N hey guys, sorry for not updating in quite a while, exams have just ended for me and it has been hella hectic. Sorry for not updating the PJO story, but having played Overwatch since launch, I had been toying with the idea of an OW fic for quite a while. As always, critical comments and plot advice is always welcome, and I hope you will enjoy this story.

have fun reading this one, and stay tuned for more updates on this story and my others

Peace out,

Darkrai