Hana was reading Warcraft novels when the guard came to tell her the news. She was reading Warcraft novels because she couldn't play WoW. She couldn't play WoW because ever since the Omnic virus there was very little technology that could be trusted. Recreational technology at any rate. The Shimada family had anti-virus firewalls specifically made to combat the Omnic virus, and had managed to save most of Japan's economic tech. Not to mention their machines of war…

Hana was, ever so slightly, proud. Her MEKA drone was one of the only non-Japanese items that had been cleared for use. That was, of course, because they needed her. Needed it.

'They're landing now.' The guard said.

'You mean…'

'Yes.' He smiled at her, as one might smile at a small child. She hated that, but would forgive it on this occasion. She knew what she looked like; how the older men thought of her. 'Genji and Hanzo are back.'

She was on her feet in an instant. 'We must see them at once!'

The guard raised a single, inquisitive eyebrow.

'Yes.' She agreed with a purposeful nod of the head. 'You're absolutely right. Clothes first.'

Her pyjama boxers and loose, oversized shirt were not appropriate for a reunion. Even if the shirt did have the most adorable picture of Pikachu, now slightly coated in Dorito dust.

A few minutes later they were on their way to the docks – the landing platform. It was by far the biggest, emptiest space on the entire military base, but Hana was not allowed to play on it. The risk of damage to the war machines was, as General Shimada put it, too great. They didn't quite trust Hana. She hated that.

She was the best damn pilot in South Korea. Well, with a console controller in her hand at any rate. The odds of her running into a parked spaceship was about as possible as Gollum fishing the one ring out of the volcano with nothing but his shoelaces. Pretty flippin' slim.

The warship hovered lower, lower, and touched down. Dust and hot air was thrown out like wave after wave coming in, a tide of exhaust. The powerful drone of the engine slowed to a deep pitch before finally cutting out. And, finally, the loading bay doors fell open.

Hanzo was first out. He looked older than he had when he left, Hana thought. He'd never looked young, of course, but something was putting age on him in a bad way. Worry for his younger brother, perhaps? Still, Hana had been worried for Genji too, and she didn't look any older. If anything she looked younger. But that was probably the strict diet and training regime General Shimada put her through. These days she barely got an hour to herself each day. And when she did it was invariably spent on Doritos and books.

She had a few Gameboys, rescued from before the Fallout and far too old for the Omnic virus to affect. But she'd finished each game a dozen times, and was now hoping someone salvaged a super Nintendo, or Sega. They might not be confiscated by General Shimada the Strict.

Hana knew her place. She hated her place. Hanzo greeted his father first, clasping their thick muscled arms and nodding. There was a sadness, a regret, in Hanzo's eyes that Hana didn't like the look of. She tried to read his lips when he spoke, but it was too hard from this distance.

Hanzo and his father looked about the same age. Too much grey in his hair for someone so young. Hanzo was going to worry himself to an early death.

And speaking of early death, where was Genji? They'd gone to America to rescue him, after all, hadn't they? He should have been the guest of honour, strutting down the stage Han-Solo-style. The prodigal son. But…

Hana shrugged. Maybe he was injured. She'd catch up with him later.

Hanzo continued shaking hands, bowing, nodding, smiling grimly as he did, until all of the General's staff had their little moment to congratulate and welcome the warrior home. All this was, of course, to the sound of ecstatic applause from the rest of the crowd, a mixture of deck hands, soldiers, staff, and civilians who had been invited into the military base for this event. Hana started forward, hoping to catch Hanzo's eye and ask him about the dangerous territories, but she was interrupted.

Staff had already begun unloading the equipment from the warship the moment Hanzo stepped onto solid ground. But only now were they delivering the item of honour, the real piece de resistance – the sword. Hana knew nothing about it, but she knew it was important to the Shimada family. The woman carrying it was one Hana recognised – Maya, one of Hanzo's closest and most trusted allies. She got on her knees and held the blade up with great deference. General Shimada took it from her, bowed with deepest respect, and then gathered his retinue with a brief wave.

So, that was that.

As the General retired to other matters Hanzo turned to direct his staff, his army. There seemed to be almost no one injured, which was good.

Hanzo skipped her way over to archer.

'So, how was it?'

'Dangerous. Very dangerous. North America is overrun by the hungry dead and the Omnic horde. Japan may be the only safe space still remaining in the world.'

Hana had suspected it for a while, simply from the way General Shimada and his followers acted. They were prepared for anything. They were prepared, somehow, even for the Fallout. Even for the Omnics. How could they have known?

They couldn't. They'd been lucky. Hana was lucky too. If she hadn't been on the Miyazaki tour with some friends she would have been in South Korea when the Omnics rose. She would still have been there when the bombs were detonated. She wouldn't be anywhere now. Or, maybe, in a lot of tiny places all at once.

'Well,' she smiled, and wrapped Hanzo in a hug. 'I'm glad you're back.'

She could feel the deep purr of his chest as he hummed a smile; a smile which did not quite make it to his cheeks. 'I'm glad to be back. But not all is well. There is certainly no cause for celebration.'

'Why, what happened?'

Hanzo prised her tightly clasped, tiny fingers apart, and they walked to the Headquarters together. He was almost a foot taller than her. That would change, though, in the MEKA drone. She grinned at the thought. There was a Totoro reference there, somewhere.

'Nothing good. The other warship was destroyed.'

Hana stopped dead in her tracks, and felt immediately sick. 'The entire warship?' There had been hundreds of people on that ship. She'd met a lot of them. Possibly all of them, at some point, either in training or playing basketball in downtime. She'd watched movies with them, shared stories with them, tried to describe her favourite Final Fantasy characters to them…

'But… but…' She struggled for words. 'The ship is gone, but surely the people are…'

'We saved no one.'

Now she knew why Hanzo's eyes were so dead, his face so slack and grim, his hair so grey.

'No one?' she whispered.

'Genji had taken up with a small army of Americans. Violent Americans. We tried to reason with them, invite him home, but the rest of them… they started a war.'

'And then?'

Hanzo shrugged wearily. 'We finished it. There was a hell of a battle. The auxiliary warship landed in front and attacked in force. They broke through quickly, but the enemy occupied a narrow and difficult base of operations. Hard to get into. Hard to navigate. We lost many men in the fight.'

'And your warship?'

'The plan was for us to attack from behind, but we never got there. The moment we landed we found Genji trying to escape. We picked him up and called the retreat, only took a few minutes.'

'So why didn't the…'

'By that time the Omnic army had arrived.'

Hana felt even sicker than she had a moment ago. She'd seen Omnics in action a few times, either in training or in live combat. Despite General Shimada's reservations she was, after all, a valuable asset. And the suit was only coded to her DNA, to her body size. But she'd never seen an army of them.

'The scary ones, or the…'

'Mostly the Duds.'

Hana and the Shimada brothers had discussed Omnics before, and come up with two terms of classification: Scary, and Dud. The scary ones were those built like real people, lithe and strong and fast. They had been built years ago as substitutes for humans; to do dirty jobs, difficult jobs, dangerous jobs, menial jobs. But the Omnic virus had been their awakening, and most had upgraded themselves a thousandfold since. Now they spent their days creating Duds. Duds were also robots, but they looked like pretty much anything, because they were built from pretty much anything. Sometimes vehicles, sometimes household appliances. Anything that could be given some wheels and a weapon. They all had a processing unit, designed by the Scary ones, and a mission: kill all humans.

Hana had only seen one of the Scary ones once. It had torn her MEKA suit half to pieces before Hanzo took it down. No wonder they'd become so close.

'Tell me what happened next.' Hana said.

'Are you sure?'

There was a little water in her eyes, but she pursed her lips and nodded once, firmly.

'The rest of the forces were trapped, halfway through attacking the enemy base. The Omnics caught them from behind and decimated them. There was no way forward, no way back. I do not believe anyone could have made it out alive. We did a quick lap of the facility before we left. The warship had already been half torn to pieces.'

Hana wanted to swear, but managed to stop herself. She wasn't very good at it. Still, the thought of the Scary ones possessing a warship worth of the most updated Japanese tech was not a happy one. They could combine it with an apartment worth of dishwashers to make a thousand more Omnic Duds. Or, even worse, they could rebuild the warship and learn to fly.

Maybe in a few years even Japan would not be safe.

'What about Genji?' she asked, almost too afraid to speak aloud.

Hanzo took a deep breath, stopped, and clasped Hana's shoulders. 'He is very badly injured, but he's on board the ship. He…'

'Your father didn't even stay to see him.'

'Believe me, it would not be good for father to see him now. Or for you. Shunladi believes we can help him to regain his quality of life, but only if…'

They stood alone on a vast and empty landing platform. Most of the crowd had dispersed now. The spectacle was over. A few vehicles were reversing from the warship, a tank behind them, and several crates of supplies which had been loaded in case of emergencies.

'Only if what?'

'I hate to ask. Hate to say it.'

'What?' She pressed.

'If Genji is not healed, the entire trip will have been for nothing.'

Hana couldn't help but think that the sword had been the primary aim of the mission. General Shimada had been pretty pleased to see it, after all. She hated that about him. Everything was about weapons.

'Is there anything I can do?' Hana asked, her voice quiet.

'Actually, yes. We need to borrow something from your MEKA suit. Not permanently, just to get an idea of how the motion control works. Genji is going to need some…' he licked his lips, searched for the correct word. 'Robotic implants.'

Hana opened her mouth to respond when they were interrupted by a loud, cackling yodel noise. They looked over to see a cowboy being dragged from the warship by three Japanese soldiers. His hat was flailing wildly above his head, and he was using what little momentum he could muster to jump and thrash in the arms of his captors. It was utterly ridiculous. They shrank into the distance, taking him straight to the Holding Cells on the other side of the landing platforms.

'Who was that?' Hana asked.

'A crazy American I captured.' Hanzo replied. There was a brief pause before the warrior added, 'he's the one who hurt Genji.'

Hana scowled, her delicate features becoming a mask of righteous, indignant fury. She hoped it looked as terrifying as it felt, but she doubted it. Hanzo usually compared her to a vaguely annoyed rabbit when she tried to look mad.

'Well, I hate him. And if I ever meet him alone he better hope I'm not wearing the MEKA.'

'Hana,' Hanzo got down on one knee, imploring her. He was still almost at her height. ' …'

He only called her that when he really wanted something. It was her gamer tag. Most people in Japan didn't know about her past life as an international gamer. That was probably for the best. She'd embarrassed herself a little at the end there. The MEKA commander had never told her she wasn't supposed to stream the combat operations.

' ,' Hanzo repeated, 'I need this from you. I need this from you, or Genji will never…'

'Yes.' She nodded, glad there was something, anything, she could do to help. 'Yes of course. Take what you need. Just make sure you put it back.'

Hanzo smiled, but there was a darkness to his eyes. 'Thank you. This is a great thing you are offering, a second chance for one who many would say does not deserve it. He will not let us down. I will make sure of it.'