She did what she was told.

The truck crawled to a halt just behind a small restaurant, the noisy growl of its engine almost drowning out the gentle patter of rain on the roof of the cab and the squeak of the wipers across the windscreen. Satya let the vehicle idle for a short while after it stopped; Driving wasn't something she'd done very much of before, especially since public transportation was a major focus of all Vishkar projects, so there was a sense of pride to be found in knowing how to do so.

Besides, the sounds of the engine and the rain were proving to be rather soothing. I might start doing this more often, she thought.

Newfound joy aside, there was still a job to do. Turning the key, the diesel rumblings clanked down to nothing and the hover-wheels floated down to the asphalt underneath, backfirst because of the load that necessitated the usage of the truck in the first place.

As Satya reached for the door, she mentally ran over Reaper's instructions one last time. As terse as their delivery had been, they were appreciably simple and easy to follow: We've got business at the tower. Park the truck, wait for the signal, and don't let anyone touch it, especially if they're Overwatch.

Overwatch. It was a name that stirred an uncomfortably mixed reaction in her mind and crinkled her face to match. She was old enough to remember when they were around, but young enough that her memories of them were vague and unclear. There were any number of televisions mounted on market tables that displayed men and women of all sorts striking a pose in front of their logo as an orchestra swelled triumphantly and the newscasters recounted their latest heroic exploits. There was even a time when, just like basically every other child she'd ever known, her dream was to join their ranks as another guardian of peace and justice under their banner.

But as years passed and age and experience brought cognizance, her perspective had changed. Over time, the newscasters had spoken more and more often about how civilians died in buildings collapsed during battles with gauntlet-wearing supervillains, or about how the so-called heroes had flaunted international laws and taken it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, and executioner. It was talk that had picked up substantially as sightings increased during the Null Sector attacks, and seemed to reach a frenzy after the massacre at Versailles. In the end, though, it all said the same thing to Satya.

Overwatch was a chaotic good. Well-intentioned for sure, but disorderly all the same, and as such she could not stand for them. Not when Vishkar had always been the better option.

Recomposing herself with a long breath she let circulate in her lungs for several seconds, she opened the door and stepped out into the rain, conjuring an umbrella to keep it off herself. A quick walk to the back of the truck reassured her that the box was still safely tucked into the back and that the tarp she'd fixed over it to keep any prying eyes away was serving its purpose well. For a moment she wondered what was in the box that Overwatch of all people would want, but it was a question that was quickly shut out of her mind.

There were other things to focus on.

Despite the rain, there was a sort of peace to the urban environment she found herself in, one where twisting fire escapes led up several shadow-covered stories to minuscule residences perched above quaint businesses. These were the rarely seen parts of a city, the ones that didn't need neon light to show their true colours. In her years as an architect she had found that many a city could be defined by the state of such places. A marketplace or city center could be made orderly through careful calculations, but to do so to the underside required a more direct and sensual approach. She had to know what she was working with like a painter would know their canvas or a musician their instruments; It had to be seen, smelled, heard, and touched. Then, and only then, could she strain order from chaos.

With the twist of her palm, her umbrella floated just above her head and she twirled a full three hundred sixty degrees in place. Parallel to the darkened store-backs, the laneway she'd just driven down diverged on two paths, each one dotted with puddles interpreting the peeks of moonlight out from behind the clouds. One path circled back around to the market square, while the other led to a pagoda that could be just made out over the tops of most of the surrounding shops. Satya remembered passing by it earlier; It seemed to be a public area of some sort, where people could gather and enjoy a slice of peace within the bustle of the metropolis all around. A nice touch, she mused.

To one side, the moon shone low over fences, more parking lots, and the occasional empty clothesline, illuminating a grey pragmatism indicative of the blue-collar state of this district. To the other, just beyond the marketplace and where the streets turned away, a colossal drop-off down a dizzying distance, a man-made ravine that separated this portion from the city's shining heart: Lijiang Tower, the gleaming point that touched the sky, but was far out of reach of everyone here. This was where Reaper and Widowmaker had said they would be, though to Satya's curiosity they declined to share what their business was.

Having seen what she could, Satya closed her eyes, cutting off one way of perceiving the world as so to enhance the others. Now came the tricky part, the part where she had to open herself up and be ready to accept whatever she was given. It was a way that had overwhelmed her in the past, but recently she'd grown accustomed to new experiences. For the first time in a very long while, she welcomed the chance. "Show me," she murmured as she raised her head. "Show me what you truly are."

She circled again, and again, and again once more, letting it all come to her.

The warm touch of rain on her outstretched arms.

The soothing din of shoppers making their nightly rounds.

The rich scent of hot food wafting from the restaurant's kitchen.

After several minutes she stopped and opened her eyes again. She placed a hand over her chest; Her heart was racing and her breath was heavy, but looking down at a puddle on the asphalt below purveyed the smile that had stretched across her face.

The city had opened up, and shown her that her trust was well-placed. This was a city of peace, calm, and order.

And she loved it.

"'Allo there, love. Whatcha got in the box?"

An unfamiliar sound struck her from out of nowhere. Satya gasped as she raised her arm and summoned her projector; This time, she circled with adrenaline-fueled intensity, searching for the source of the sound. "Where are you?" she called out in no particular direction. "Who said that?"

"Would you believe me if I told you 'no one of consequence'?"

This time, Satya got a better sense of what it was: A voice with a British accent, maybe Cockney, belonging to a woman possibly in in her late twenties. Whoever they were, they sounded high-pitched, energetic, playful.

And annoyingly cheeky.

"Was that supposed to be clever?" Satya replied.

"I was gonna say glib, but that was the idea, yes," the voice laughed. It sounded genuine, but it still got on Satya's nerves. "Though you sound like you're being a bit of a party pooper, love."

Satya rolled her eyes. "Do you even know what you referenced?"

"Indeed I do, love. Great movie, though Winston doesn't get it one bit. Every time he has no clue what they're doing, but hey, that's the risk you run with movie night. Though on the same sort of topic..."

An iridescent streak of blue shot past Satya, coming to a rest right next to her and revealing the source of the voice. As she'd predicted it was a young British woman, one with messy dark hair wearing a brown jacket, white gauntlets, and some kind of glowing device on her chest over an orange jumpsuit. Satya thought the look was familiar, but she couldn't place just where she'd seen it before.
The person leaned against the back of the truck. "I'm kinda wondering what you're doing lolling around back here."

Satya jumped back, nearly colliding with the truck herself as she trained her weapon on the intruder. "Nothing you need to know about," she stated bluntly.

The woman backed up slightly, her smile unwavering. "Hey, I didn't mean anything by it. I'm just curious, that's all."

Satya's scowl didn't move an inch, but the woman seemed undeterred. "Y'know, maybe we got off on the wrong foot, you and I," she said, extending her hand out for a shake. "Name's Tracer, don't wear it out. And you are..."

"Again, nothing you need to know."

"Oh come on; What have I done to make you so angry, love?" Faster than the eye could blink, Tracer zipped over to the truck in a flash of blue and sat on top of the box. "Love your hair, by the way, and that arm of yours looks wicked cool."

Satya jumped again, but by the time she'd recovered Tracer had blinked off to the other side, overlooking the ravine. "And that dress?" she smirked playfully as she outlined Satya's figure with her hands. "You make it work in all the right ways; You know what I mean?"

By this point, Satya's annoyance had boiled over to frustration. "Enough!" she shouted, loud enough that Tracer dropped her smile for the first time. "If you're just going to chatter like an incessant little brat, then I suggest you leave. NOW."

Tracer gritted her teeth together and breathed in through them in a way that seemed like she knew Satya wasn't going to like the answer. "Ooh, sorry. Dunno if I can do that, love. Not until I get a look at what's in that box."

"Get used to disappointment."

"Do you even know what's in there?"

Satya snorted angrily. "I don't care, and neither should you."

"Yeah, you're probably right." She motioned to turn away, but came back no sooner than she'd begun as though she'd never actually meant to leave. "But then again, I was always the kid who peeked at their Christmas presents so, whaddaya say: Just a peek?"

Satya didn't have the patience for even a long answer. "NO."

"Aw, pretty please?" Tracer blinked over right next to Satya, giving her voice a sing-song tone. "It'll be-our-little-secret..."

Finally, Satya had had enough. With her blood running hot she screamed at the top of her lungs "I said NO!" before she shoved Tracer to the ground, a puddle splatting underneath the impact, and pointed her projector directly between the peppy little nuisance's eyes. "Now, for the last time," she growled. "I suggest. You. Leave."

When her point was accentuated by the rising hum of her projector charging, a quick surge of fear crossed Tracer's face. For the first time in their encounter, her voice went low and calm. "Okay then, love. Take it easy. I'll leave. Sorry about all this, honest."

Satya, on the other hand, wasn't buying it one bit, and it showed as her eyebrows formed to an even sharper point. Words weren't going to be enough, not so long as they weren't backed up by actions.

A tense moment passed where no one said or did anything. The only sounds came from the night's ambiance, the threatening hum of Satya's weapon as both parties waited for what the other was going to do next, and the crackling tension between the two.

At last, like before, Tracer broke the silence. "But," she said as a sly smirk curled up one side of her lips. "You'll have to catch me first!"

Satya was swift on the trigger, but to the extent that her shot did anything but leave a smoking hole in the pavement. By the time she realized that Tracer was gone, her voice popped up from above and behind. "Over here!"

Satya spun on her heel and fired again, but the beam only shot into the air. This time Tracer's voice came from her left. "Too fast for ya?"

Again and again Satya matched her opponent's movements, only to be one step behind and taunted for it with snarky quips and giggles that infuriated her even more. Within ten seconds her hand was shaking with fuming rage as a blue, intangible, chaotic blur circled her mockingly.

But then it hit her.

Lowering her hand, she let the projector dissipate into nothing and closed her eyes. If she was going to beat this chaotic force, she had to do it the right way.

Tracer's laughs faded out into distant echos as her mantra mentally repeated itself. Order through peace, peace through calm, calm through order.

Next went the sounds of the city. Order through peace, peace through calm, calm through order.

Then the feeling of rain. Order through peace, peace through calm, calm through order.

The tempest of adrenaline. Order through peace, peace through calm, calm through order.

The chaos of everything, everything but the sound of the next blink. Order through peace, peace through calm, calm through order.

With the reflexes of a striking cobra she raised her hand directly in front of her, stopping Tracer in her tracks just at the edge of the ravine with a glowing blue wall. Raising her other hand, she lined up her thumbs and index fingers into the shape of a rectangle, closing the annoyance in before she could regather her senses and dust herself off from the collision. After she did it didn't take long to realize she was trapped inside, feeling over her transparent box like a mime acting out its routine.

Satya opened her eyes to see her work and smirked. "Does this answer your question?" she taunted.

This time, Tracer rolled her eyes. "Alright, you got me. What is this anyway? Is it like hard light or something-"

"Shut up," Satya interrupted. "Now that I've caught you, you said you would leave."

"Hold on there, love. See this thing here?" Tracer tapped at the device on her chest. "There's a lot of science-y stuff involved, but long story short it basically anchors me down in time and lets me control my own."

Satya eyed her with a distinct and blunt lack of understanding for what her point was.

"Which means," Tracer elaborated. "that we're gonna give that one a do-over."

She gave Satya a wink as the device's dim glow turned vivid, encompassing Tracer in a blue shadow that led by just an instant in retracing the path she'd just taken, only to be stopped cold by the confines of the construct and send Tracer to the ground, disoriented and confused. When she got back up, she found Satya giving her a wink in return.
"Oi! What gives?!" she hollered, seeming angry for the first time that night.

Satya raised her hand, summoning a diamond-shaped construct that she manipulated like cat's cradle. "You might be able to control time, but time is a concept defined by reality." The weaves of the shape were crushed as she closed her fist. "Long story short, I control reality."

An odd combination of impressed and flustered contorted Tracer's face. She placed her hands on her hips as her voice became tinted with sarcasm. "Well, I can't say it isn't a neat little trick, that's for certain."

Satya crossed one arm under the other in derision. "Glib does not equate with clever, child. Now, I'll only say this once more. Leave,"
Tracer's cage skated along the pavement by the force of an invisible hand, pushing her along with it towards the ravine, and the hundreds of stories of open air there was between her and the streets below, until she was close enough that the overpowering instinct to want to cling to the far side like a spider on a wall kicked in. Her eyes darted downward, then over her shoulder towards her opponent, then back down, and then towards Satya again.
"or face the consequences."

Underneath the hum of her accelerator, Tracer could hear the progressively growing thumps of her heart against her ribs, while on the other side of the box's transparent walls the wind whistled and swirled down the dizzying height, teasing that her time had come much earlier than she'd ever hoped. But another sound, a quiet but piercing beep on her wrist, let her know a crucial fact.

Even in a prison where time was under lock and key, time was still on her side.

When she turned back around, she raised her eyebrow again to accompany a sly grin and placed herself as though she were bracing her shoulder. "Y'know, love, if you were looking for a fight, you could have just asked. I would've put down my weapons, you could've dropped your... thing, and we could've tried to kill each other like civilized people."

As infuriating as the brat was, a begrudging piece of Satya was willing to admit that she was, at least, mildly amusing. "I could kill you now. Besides, why are you making deals," She inched the box closer until it was just beginning to teeter over the edge. "when I hold all the cards?"

Tracer shrugged. "Well in that case, I guess I won't hang around. It's been a real pleasure stalling for time with you, really it has. Now if you'll excuse me, the cavalry's about to arrive." She put two fingers to her forehead in a salute. "Cheers, love."

After a final push, the wind whipped underneath the box and toppled it like a statue, sending container and containee plummeting below.

But Satya hadn't been the one to push.

Her eyes shot open and she reached out reflexively, but it was too late. In just a few seconds, Tracer was good as dead, and by her own hand no less.

A knot tied tight in Satya's stomach as the notion of murder leeched into her thoughts, but she purged it quickly. I didn't kill her, she told herself. That woman pushed herself off like she was mad.

Regardless, she mused as she turned back towards the truck, at least there was no one left to annoy her.

Until the box came back.

Without warning it came flying up back over the ledge, sailing through the air out of Satya's notice until just after she'd looked back to see what was going on. Before she could even make any sort of reflexive movement, the box hit the pavement less than three feet in front of her, shattering like glass into a million tiny fragments that spread in every direction before evaporating into nothing. It was here that she finally reacted, yelping as she jumped back and covered her face with her arms. By the time the pieces of the box were gone, she'd also re-summoned her projector and aimed it at the point of impact, only to see that there was no Tracer to be found.

"Looking for me?"

Satya seethed as she looked up to see the woman standing at the ledge with a pair of pistols drawn. This person, this Tracer, was nothing but pure, annoying chaos, and as such she could not stand for it. She leveled her own weapon and readied to remove that pest for good.

But true to her word, the cavalry arrived.

Satya was given pause to her actions yet again when something else soared above the ridge as well, though its touchdown kicked up pieces of asphalt and scattered the remnants of rainwater puddles over Satya. Pursing her lips in rising anger, she pushed the soaked locks of her hair off her face to see that Tracer had been joined by what appeared to be, at least at first glance, a giant gorilla wearing an armoured spacesuit, a jetpack, and thick-rimmed glasses while holding a massive gun of some sort that crackled with electricity.

Almost as hard to believe was when two others came from out of the sky, though their landings were substantially more graceful. One appeared to be a highly advanced Omnic with a holographic face more akin to a human's than any other machine Satya had ever seen, a gleaming and almost dainty-looking white frame with limbs that floated at the shoulder and thigh joints, and a set of butterfly-like wings on her back. She hovered just above the ground as she let the fourth person down; This one appeared the most battle-ready of them all, wearing a suit of gold-coloured armour like a knight, holding a mace in one hand, and with her long brunette hair tied into a short, practical braid.

Having been surrounded, Satya backed slowly towards the fork in the road, her projector raised towards the ravine, her prosthetic arm at the fences, and her eyes swiveling between the two. This must be what that girl meant by 'the cavalry'.
"'Stalling for time', you said?" she called out. "Is this who you were waiting for? An Omnic, a knight, and an ape?"

"Um, while you are technically correct that I'm an ape," the ape suddenly spoke up much to Satya's surprise. "I consider myself a scientist first and foremost."

"We're not all scientists, though," the knight added. "and we outnumber you four to one."

It would have been a lie if Satya had said the notion being implied hadn't crossed her mind, and an even bigger one if she'd said it wasn't tempting. But before she could mull it over too seriously, she was struck by a revelation.

Now she knew where Tracer had seemed familiar; It had been all over the news, surrounded by the same people who she stood with now.

Overwatch.

She couldn't give up, not when the world's most famous source of chaos were the ones threatening her task, whatever well intentions they may have deluded themselves with be damned. For the first time since Sombra had left she was mixing business with pleasure, even if there had to be a better name for it, and it made her confidence swell like the crescendo of an orchestra.

Simply put, she wasn't going to miss this for anything.

"I'd answer if I were you," the Omnic said. "According to my personality modules, you might not get much more time."
In rapid succession came the heavy clunk of the knight's weapon on the ground, the chain connecting the two ends indicating that Satya had been slightly off earlier. On the other side, the bolts arc'ing from the ape's gun intensified.

Even with the circumstances though, Satya's attitude wasn't spoiled. She looked over at Tracer as her weapon powered up. "You seem a decent person. I hate to kill you."

The pesky girl laughed as the ape gave both of them a confused look. "You seem a decent person," she bantered back. "I hate to die."

Satya gave a final nod, added to by a thin smile. "Then, let us begin."