The skies glowed a gentle blue, and only a few clouds roamed the sky that day. And though much of the city remained in shambles, most seemed to forget the chaos that occurred just the day before, and instead shifted their focus to the reconstruction of their beloved city.
Jackhammers plowed through rubble, tearing it apart into smaller chunks. Excavators across the city revved up, clearing the streets in an orderly fashion. The city was much noisier than usual, with construction workers getting their power tools up and running. One worker looked ahead of him, observing the char spreading across several blocks. Then he turned in the other direction and strolled away. Better for someone else to report this to the brass.
The task to restore order in the Caligo City would certainly prove to be a daunting one. It was a belief shared by many of its residents, but despite knowing this they pushed forward, intent on restoring the city to its former glory.
Of course, they all remained unaware of the greater task, which had been hastily shoved into the hands of Overwatch.
The Mk. 3 Overjet. Designed to reach international locations with ease. It was a feat of engineering that only Overwatch had access to.
Several sonic booms above the city of Caligo served as the Overjet's only hint of existence. The people below looked up to the sky in curiosity, before returning to their business.
By the time Genos looked out of the window, Caligo City was already replaced by the vast ocean. As he leaned on the glass, Genos slid his hand across the seamless metal frame. The amount of detail put into this vehicle was immense. The only other person who had this much technological expertise was Dr. Kuseno.
"Like it?" she asked. Compared to before, she donned her regular clothing. Assuming that a blue skintight bodysuit could be considered 'normal clothing' according to Hana. "Torbjorn built it himself. Even put his name on it."
"I see." Genos looked to his left, where his master sat on a cushioned seat, staring down at the blue carpet. Against all logic his blank stare seemed to be even blanker than usual. Something seemed to have occurred while they were separated.
He turned towards Hana, and wordlessly jabbed his finger at Saitama. Hana's smile contorted into an uncomfortable cringe. "Yeah… about that… Winston introduced him to our uh… recruitment program special."
"Recruitment… program… special…?" What did that even mean?
"It's uh… something Tracer told me about a while back. It's a children's program Winston made to boost our reputation and gain potential recruits in the future."
"...And?"
"And, uh… well, let's just say there's a reason they cancelled it halfway through the first episode. Hell, I couldn't even get through the first 45 seconds." She shuddered visibly at the abhorrent memories. Genos blinked several times.
"...Is that why you left Winston behind?" Hana nodded slowly. Master Saitama seemed to have interesting experiences with gorillas.
Genos turned turned away from the window, gazing at the rather spacey hallway to his right. For an airborne vehicle to flaunt extraordinary speeds yet encompass this much size signaled mastery of the engineering arts.
At the very end of the dim hallway was a blue-tinted metal door with white strips. Genos gave it a sharp glare.
He strolled the hallways of the Watchpoint, observing the level of quality and detail put into every inch of this base. The building architect must have been an extremely talented man. He stopped from the next door down, his augmented hearing picking up some arguing coming from inside. Whatever it was it probably didn't concern him.
"I'll have him report to the Committee. Today." Genos turned back towards the door, and glowered. He leaned against the adjacent wall and slid closer.
"-ponsible for that incident." There was a pause. He was most likely talking on the phone.
"Yeah. We always liked to go on about how fragile the balance was between the leading powers, especially when taking groups like Talon into consideration. And Overwatch served as a critical factor in disrupting that balance. But I know now more than ever that I was just lying to myself." There was another pause. This time it was longer.
"The world's a dangerous place. And sometimes peace comes at a cost. But the day's come that we remind the world it doesn't have to be that way. I just didn't think it would come so soon."
"...Alright. Good." His auditory sensors picked up a short beep. It seemed the transmission ended.
The door slid open, with Jack walking outside. He stopped when he spotted Genos leaning in the hallway.
"...You heard?" Jack asked. Genos' piercing gaze answered that for him. Jack let out a sigh.
"Head to the docking bay three. We're boarding for New York as soon as possible. I'll explain on the way there." Jack slowly walked down the hallway, without sparing a glance. "And don't tell your master, either."
As Genos scrutinized the blue door, he decided it was time for him to get some answers. He gazed back toward his master sympathetically, before heading into the corridor.
"Hey, where are you going?"
"To ask a few questions. Wait here." he ordered. Genos passed through the hallway, past all the other doors, stopping once he stood in front of the door. There was a lot of yelling coming through the other side, though much of it was muffled by the door. Genos waited several seconds for the arguing to dissipate, but eventually his patience thinned.
The blue door slid open automatically as he approached it, and he was immediately bombarded with the piercing yells of two individuals in particular. Frankly he was surprised the door managed to muffle it at all.
Reinhardt stood at one end of the interactive table situated in the center of the room, directly opposite Pharah and Jack who yelled and pointed fingers at each other. It seemed as though Reinhardt was attempting to bring tranquility to the situation, but his pleas went abruptly ignored. Genos took his place beside him, capturing the larger man's attention.
"How long has it been like this?" asked Genos, having to glance up to match gazes with Reinhardt.
"Uh, for a while actually." he awkwardly answered back. He took a deep breath. "Didn't actually catch what started it though." Genos stared at the bickering duo. He tried waiting for the argument to reach some conclusion, but once again his patience reached its limit. Holding his hand to his mouth, he cleared his throat.
Both of them stopped yelling at each other, caught completely off-guard by the cyborg's presence. Slowly, they situated each other a considerable distance across the circular table.
"Great! So, uh, can we start the meeting?" Reinhardt's jovial persona went underappreciated, but they all silently agreed to his statement. Jack tapped the interface twice, and the entire surface glowed a bright blue. Several three-dimensional displays immediately popped up, the diagram of Caligo City's current condition taking up the most space.
Jack's crimson visor met Genos' orange glare. "You're already aware of this, but I got a call from the United Nations Headquarters. It's about yesterday's events."
"Still don't get why we have to attend a lousy Committee." complained Reinhardt. He was never one for the political world. "Titan's been toppled, day's been saved. But they couldn't leave it at that, now could they?"
"Well, it IS the UN." Pharah spared a glance toward the hefty man. "This isn't something they can just overlook. I hope you can understand that Genos."
"I understand. The citizens here are not accustomed to the magnitude of power my master displays."
"And that brings us to the topic at hand." Jack waved his hand over the table's interface, and a chart popped up. "As you can see here, public approval for Overwatch has skyrocketed in the last several hours, since the incident was resolved." He pointed to the line transfixed on the graph, focusing on the area where it suddenly shot straight up.
"Ha…! It's a new record, actually." Reinhardt pointed out, with a hearty grin. "Thanks for that, by the way." He gave Genos a friendly pat on the back, accidentally generating a few sparks as metal collided against metal. No one seemed to be in a good enough mood to give an actual reaction.
"It's still bothers me though." They turned their attention to Pharah, who leaned her elbows on the table. "I thought most of the Titan Omnics were decommissioned and dismantled, especially after the Boklovo disaster. If Talon managed access to one…"
"Then there's a chance that they have more." Jack finished. "No doubt there are some strings being pulled. Something that large isn't easy to conceal. Even harder to transport covertly."
"Talon's only gotten stronger since their debut." Pharah observed. "Honestly, I'm not sure Overwatch is fit to deal with them at the moment."
"We'll look into that later. Right now…" He turned to Genos, whose gaze intensified as they met Jack's once again. "...There's the UN we have to deal with."
"Yeah. You mentioned you had some kind of plan." said Reinhardt. "You were pretty vague about it too. It kind of makes me worried, honestly."
"Well it should. I've been informed of several allegations, regarding our performance in repelling the Omnic threat in Caligo, as well as the unprecedented interference of our two 'guest's.'" All eyes were on Genos, Reinhardt especially.
"Allegations?" Reinhardt's eyes widened with disbelief. "What kind of 'allegations?'" he almost yelled across the table.
"Most have to do with collateral, but, basically, they think Overwatch, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is in illegal possession of some kind of superweapon. They want most if not all active members of Overwatch to report to the Committee regarding this matter."
"What! But that's nonsense!" Reinhardt contended, as he leaned on the table.
"True. Thinking about the situation we're in, we technically don't possess a superweapon, and we technically we didn't orchestrate yesterday's happenings."
"And I garner that the Committee has no evidence backing their claim regardless." observed Genos. "Yet you didn't press on that fact during yesterday's conversation. Is there a reason for that?"
Reinhardt looked at Genos. "Huh?" What conversation?"
"If it were that simple, then I definitely would have just gone with that approach. However…" Jack tapped the interface several times, bringing up various digital articles, all of which contained flamboyant titles like 'Overwatch obliterates Titan in a Single Blow!', or 'Omnic Threat: Conquered by Overwatch!' Reinhardt's eyes darted between them in confusion. "As you can see, the media has already pinned us as the perpetrators of this event. And whatever the mass media says, goes."
Everyone silently agreed on that point. Reinhardt raised his hand, but Jack stopped him.
"I know what you're thinking Reinhardt, but revealing the media's exploits will work against us."
"How so?" he asked.
"Events of significantly lower magnitude would have been less damaging. But an event as big as this will have no doubt reached the corners of the world by now. So we're treading on thin ice. If we aren't careful about how we answer to the Committee, then Overwatch's biggest achievement will turn into its biggest scam."
"We could try to convince the Committee to remain silent about the situation." suggested Pharah.
"That's assuming the Committee would be willing to cooperate with us. And do keep in mind that not all of its members are supportive of Overwatch's reestablishment."
"So what are we supposed to do then, if we're not allowed to tell the truth?" asked Reinhardt.
"I didn't say we're not allowed to tell the truth. We just need to leave out part of it." Reinhardt tilted his head in confusion.
"I… don't follow."
"Basically, I am to be declared to be solely responsible for the incident regarding the Omnic Titan, as an unofficial member of Overwatch." Genos clarified for him. Reinhardt gazed at him in bewilderment. "Jack told me in the docking bay. Not that I actually agreed to it."
"But what would that even accomplish?"
"For starters, it would preserve the 'truth' that Overwatch was responsible for saving Caligo City. But the Non-Proliferation Treaty doesn't account for cyborgs, so they can't hit us with any transgressions regarding it." Pharah explained, in a rather bitter tone. Reinhardt began to understand what their previous argument was about. Then he glanced down at Genos.
"One thing's kind of bothering me though. You said that he and he alone would be declared responsible for this event. But we know his friend- Saitama, was it? We know he was involved too, so why isn't he standing here listening to all this?"
Pharah let out a sigh. "It's because whether or not he should get involved is up to him. There was never a point in getting him involved since their existence is still a secret. Most of the power lines in Caligo City were destroyed, after all."
"I still haven't agreed to this 'plan' of yours." Genos stated firmly. Pharah swallowed the lump in her throat, and replied,
"As much as I hate to say it, our hand's been forced." Pharah couldn't bring herself to look Genos in the eye.
"Don't worry. It'll work out." Reinhardt did his best to be reassuring, resting his hand on his shoulders, only to find that he was already bent on leaving the room.
Genos glanced behind him, almost running into who stood right at the doorway.
"Ah!" she screamed. "Um, I was just uh…" But Genos simply walked past her without saying a word. stared at his back for a few seconds, and looked back into the corridor.
"Eavesdropping as usual, I see." ignored Jack's admonishments, and approached the table. She leaned on the interface, beside Reinhardt where Genos was standing.
"...Are we really going to do this?" she asked. Pharah looked her in the eye solemnly.
"I'm not exactly happy about it either, but the Committee's going to come down on us hard if we don't do something about it. And then there's the media to top it all off."
"I still don't think it's a good idea to drag them into this." Reinhardt crossed his arms. gave him a weak smile. At least one person agreed with her on this.
"Maybe it isn't But it's already set in motion. " Jack stated firmly. Reinhardt, instead of arguing, decided he heard enough and left, with following suit. She gave them one last cursory glance before the door shut behind them.
Jack stared at the door. Overwatch was on the line, and trust was one of the last prices he'd be willing to pay to get it back. With a gamble like this he hoped to regain at least one of them in the end.
He turned to Pharah. "...Thanks back there."
"One of these days one of your crazy plans is gonna get us all killed." Her voice took on a sterner tone, before it lightened. "But I really hope you know what you're doing Jack." He couldn't think of a good way to reply, so he settled with a simple nod.
"I've already P.M.'d the other agents. With luck most of them will rendezvous at the designated coordinates." He tapped the bottom of the interface, revealing the profiles of the currently active Overwatch agents. Of all of them, three in particular glowed red.
He clicked the profile with a picture of a woman wearing orange goggles, and smiling brightly. Under the photo the name 'Lena Oxton' was spelled in bright white letters.
Beside the message board, the inbox remained empty.
"Still nothing from Tracer?" asked Pharah.
"Still nothing." Jack sighed as he closed the profile. "Last I contacted her, she was handling things at Watchpoint: Gelus."
"Gelus? An eco-Watchpoint?"
"Yes. She's currently working with Mei and Hanzo to re-establish the perimeter. It was Mei's idea, after all." Jack gazed at the floor emptily. He tugged a piece of paper in his pocket, holding it in place before stuffing it back in. Then he began to mutter under his breath. "Talk to me Oxton… What's happening up there?"
Her breath was rigid, and broke the silence surrounding the darkness. Her hand trembled, and the words she scribbled down became crude and messy. Sweat dropped down from her forehead, staining the lined paper.
"Day 372. Our transmitter's been active for several weeks now. But we still haven't gotten any signal. We need to try and preserve the battery as much as possible, but our chances of rescue will lower if try that." She swallowed the hot air as she wrote. It tasted disgusting.
"Despite our attempts to be conservative, supplies have been dwindling rather fast, especially with the number of people in our group. One of them may be planning a mutiny, but I've got my eye on him just in case it'll come to that. At least it means one less mouth to feed. And if it really gets desperate, then we may have to… well, it's better if you don't hear me say it."
"I tried going out to hunt for food, but there's nothing to hunt in this barren wasteland. I may have expended precious stamina over nothing, and now I feel colder than ever. I feel so empty… Everything feels so woozy…"
"One of the others started to go crazy. Tied her up to try and give her some time to cool down. Heh. Cool down. I'm funny. I'm also very hungry at the moment." She paused, her pen stuck on the last word. "This may very well be the end of good ol' Lena Oxton, Lieutenant of the Third Battalion, Supreme Athlete and Legendary Monster Hunter. If, by any chance, someone were to come across this journal, please, go to the enclosed address. Go there, and tell Emily that I-"
Before she could copy down her latest thought, all eight of her comforters came flinging off of her. She groaned as she slowly rolled on her back to stare at Hanzo in peculiar clothing. She got a laugh or two out of seeing Hanzo in orange pajamas for the first fifteen minutes or so, but his uptight manner managed to overcome it in the end.
"I knew you weren't sleeping." he scowled. He gazed at the pink multi-colored pen in Tracer's hands, then toward the journal on the futon she was lying on. His scowl deepened. "Has your boredom really driven you this far?"
"Oh come on, my tablet died!" she pointed to the Galaxy sitting at the far end of the room, beside a large black monitor. "What did you expect?"
"Well for starters, maybe you shouldn't have wasted the entire battery on Netflix." Tracer bit her tongue. She hadn't exactly been in the best of moods, getting holed up inside the Watchpoint's main control room. It only worsened when her 'Vampire Diaries' session came to an abrupt end, thanks to the limitations of technology. "Come on. It's only been six hours. Go eat something."
"Ugh. Fine." She was hungry, after all. And at this point she welcomed anything that would pass the time. In a blue flash she blinked toward the small mountain of ramen noodle cups, and blinked a second time toward the portable oven on the floor.
She grabbed the kettle beside it, and placed it on top before turning the oven on. She blinked a third time to grab a bottle of Mountain Dew from the small pail made of ice, courtesy of Mei. Then she downed the whole thing in ten seconds, traveling back in time just to down it again. The sweet, stinging taste improved her mood somewhat, although she still had no idea what she was supposed to do for the rest of the time she was stuck here.
"You know, all this sodium going to catch up to me sooner or later." Tracer commented as she stared at the empty green bottle longingly.
"Tell that to Mei. She was the one who raided the kitchen before we got here." Hanzo sat in the center of the control room, sitting in a meditative pose.
"What's she doing by the way?" Tracer glanced at the massive wall of ice isolating them from the rest of the base. In front of it stood Mei, who held a brush in one hand and a small pick in the other.
"Supposedly 'checking on the perimeter.'" The stoic archer did not break his meditative pose. Tracer wondered what he meant by 'supposedly', before turning back to the wall to discover Morgan Freeman's perfect face staring back at her. The attention to detail included every hair of his beard, which Mei gently placed onto him after carefully crafting it.
Tracer intelligently decided not to ask about it.
She stared back at the kettle on the small stove. As it continued to spew fire, she unconsciously began to tap her foot impatiently.
"Try some breathing exercises. It may put you at ease." Tracer stared at Hanzo for a few seconds, before taking a deep breath. Then she released it, as though she were trying to imitate a drunk wyvern.
"...Nope. Not working." Hanzo's eyebrows furrowed, and the number of creases on his forehead multiplied.
"You're impossible." A bit of malice came with his words. "Can you at least make yourself useful and check on the transmitter?" Tracer blinked away into another corridor, near to where several monitors were situated. Then she immediately blinked back. "...Well?"
"Nothing. As usual." Tracer sighed and slumped onto the floor, with her legs crossed. "It really makes you wonder if they're really coming or not."
"They're coming. Just have some patience."
"Well what about Talon? They're probably still waiting outside that barrier, for all we know."
"It's impossible to inform them of the situation at this stage in time." Hanzo opened one eye to look at Tracer. "They'll just have to deal with that when the time comes. But we need to be prepared to make our move too. The moment they catch us off guard is the moment we lose."
"Yeah…" Tracer's eyes went to the floor, and toward the wall of ice once again. "Still, it's kind of strange, don't you think?"
"What is?"
"Do you really think it's a coincidence they attacked this Watchpoint while we were here? After all, the eco-Watchpoints were cleared out decades ago, and they've been out of operation ever since. What do you think their goal is?"
"Assuming they knew about our location beforehand, it's not surprising for them to launch a surprise attack." Hanzo closed his eyes, deep in thought. "Still, to send such an overwhelming amount of forces to such an isolate location… What exactly are they planning?"
"Hmmm… Beats me." Tracer shrugged. "Guess we'll just have to hold the fort until then, huh?"
"So it would seem." As Hanzo returned to his meditating, a certain whistling caught Tracer's attention.
"Oh! Water's ready." She peeled the lid off her ramen noodle cup, and lifted the kettle from the stove. Then she poured the boiling water in. The aroma of ramen noodle cups made her day somewhat worthwhile.
Hanzo turned his head slightly to witness Tracer slurping the noodles, far too quickly for it to cool down. "Careful, it's hot-" He raised his hand as a means of warning, but it was far too late. Tracer immediately did a spit-take, sending the clump of noodles and soup soaring across the room like an unbound missile.
It darted past Mei, just barely missing her coat as she turned towards her box of sculpting tools. An audible squelching sound immediately destroyed the peaceful silence and replaced it with unfounded tension as the ramen noodle missile splatted directly onto the glorious sculpture of Morgan Freeman's face. Mei's entire body suddenly froze at the sound.
She slowly turned back to her sculpture to find steam drifting off of Morgan Freeman's facial features, as the hot substance dissolved and disfigured them in a matter of seconds. Before long what used to be a wonderful masterpiece transformed into the face of Mark Fischbach after willingly shoving his face into a cotton candy maker designed to operate at speeds topping mach 10.
Sweat dripped off Hanzo's face, while it poured out of Tracer, the former slowly reaching for his bow. For the next minute or so Mei continued to watch her masterpiece self-destruct. Then, by force of will alone, her entire body rotated 180°. Not one muscle moved.
Most disturbing of all, however, was how her grin seemed to be plastered on her face, lacking any sense of genuinity at all.
The room, once full of tranquility and peace, suddenly erupted into unfounded chaos the moment Mei's eyes began glowing an eerie red.