The totality of the Empire's jurisdiction is greatly exaggerated.
Or maybe that's not an honest way to go about it. More accurately would be to say that the Empire's ability to subjugate a planet down to the smallest microorganism is well within their purview, but to actually go about it is real boring. Every troll, from the lowest rust to the most vibrant purple, likes it when things are interesting, when things are still untamed on the worlds they claim if only for the spice of life. Alternia has left generations longing for solid footing underneath their boots, for fauna that tries to kill them, for flora that…also tries to kill them. However, it should be noted that "untamed" is only viable in the most literal sense; there are no pockets of calm forest, beetles and bugs allowed to thrive in stagnant pools left behind by the war machine. No, like everything in the bureaucracy, even the wild is meticulously intentional.
Which means the only things alive are those creatures deemed the most essential by the Empire. More concisely: anything that can tear you in half without a second thought.
I fan my gun, sending a whole clip into the insectoid's head. It rears up, waving its multitude of squirming legs, looking like it might just try to crush me with its dying breath, but then it falls in the wrong direction, tearing through the underbrush and landing with a mighty slam.
"Well," I say, pushing up my hat. "Ain't that a nice 'welcome home'."
The path from Symmetra's office to the main campus of Slopnest is neat yet winding, cutting through the deadly forest within the confines of the city, intending to keep folks on their toes. Well. On my toes I am. I wipe a bit of slime off my poncho and step back into civilization.
The Mirthful Tree towers thirty stories tall in the center of the main plaza, named for the purple hue of its leaves and kept standing for their propensity to come loose in times of great wind. They're sharp as razor blades, and a storm could very well chop an unlucky troll to pieces if they were caught out in it, so the small group of purples that resides on JS71C thinks the stupid plant is about the funniest in the world. Folks make it a point to pretend like they don't care, passing through the sprawling park with their faces in reports, ignoring when a stray leaf comes and scrapes a line of teal along their cheek. I don't got nothing to prove though, and I take the stone path around.
"Miss me already?" I ask as I pick up the message already waiting for me on my squackcatcher grub.
"There is no need to be crude," Symmetra's drawl responds, already tiring mere words in. "I am calling you as a favor."
"Favor?" I lean against the wall dividing my meal block and quarters, less than six frondspans between the two rooms. "Since when do we deal in favors?"
"A friendly notice then. On someone you like to keep a keen ganderbulb on."
I exhale, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Well. Lay it on me then."
"Three clicks north of Slopnest."
"She in trouble?"
"Do you even need to ask?"
Which is how my welcome home is cut short. Barely a minute to set down my bag, no time to change my clothes which wrinkle with space air at every movement, only a moment to recharge my piece and then I'm on the road out of there, leaving the brief reprise of the city for the wilds once more.
The Mirthful Tree's squatter and pissier cousins have taken over this north grove, clipping at my face coverings and suspiciously seeming to aim at my eyes. Speaking of squatters, the natural inhabitants of these trees are apparently a type of brightly colored primate, skin sleek with bioluminence and also poison, and boy howdy to they got a bone to pick with me.
So that's how I see her, rifle in hand, hollering up a storm at any of the stupid monkeys that dare to come near the hill she seems dead set on dying on. What remains of her squad isn't much, and I wonder what they were doing out here in the first place. Symmetra didn't say. Only it seems to be a mighty ill-fated cause with the rivers of rust staining the forest floor and the team's only working drone barreling off into the trees in a murderous rage, hot on the tail of the creature that had dared insult his mistress.
"B.O.B!" Ashe hollers. "B.O.B get the fuck back here-"
If the killer windstorms aren't enough, I also have to suffer the rain of fruit being pelted at me from above. Oh, and the fruit is also poisonous.
Hat pulled down to shield I from the worst of the acidic juices sloughing from the spherical artillery, I sprint my way through the crossfire, back slamming beside hers and we both press ourselves into the meager cover of a fallen log.
"Don't we keep meeting in the strangest places," I say.
"McCree-?" She shrieks as a pool of corrosion lands near her custom-made headburrybird boots. She aims up at the offender and blasts, but it only gets the branch underneath, and the monkey leaps away with a hoot. "Gogdamn! Y'know what? I don't even care. Help me kill these gogdamn varmints and I won't even ask what the hell you're doing here."
I grin. "Now that's what I like to hear."
The log provides adequate leverage for the point of my elbow. I scan, finding a single target leaping through the branches, trailing it with sweeps of trained precision. I fire. The creature falls into the underbrush with a crash.
"Showoff," Ashe grunts.
"You know," I say as the two of us begin trading fire with our assailants, blaster shot right after another, falling into an ages old rhythm, "I've missed this. The two of us, barely one step away from killing each other, settling for killing everyone around us instead."
"Uh-huh," she says as she turns a monkey's head to goo.
"Fifteen sweeps we've known each other now. Makes me wonder. Why ain't we ever made it official?"
"Kismesisters? With you?" She lets loose one of those high, grating laughs that I despise and yearn for in equal measures. "I got more people that hate me than I know what to do with, get in line Jessse."
"I'm talkin' about ashen, Ashe."
If her laugh was offensive before, it's even more annoying now, and the not-quite-hate bubbles up in me. She jeers, "why would I ever let you mediate something for me, cowboy?"
"Try again darling." I aim over her shoulder, shooting a fruit out of midair and turning the resulting explosion painful instead of deadly.
The wheels turn in her head, and she glares. "Me? I think I'm going to roll over and auspistize you like some yellow-bellied-"
As she growls and chitters and bemoans, my grin only grows wider, even as our comrades fall, as the forest closes in around us and killer leaves swirl in for another strike. The call I asked Symmetra to make thrums in the back of my torso column and I know that at any moment-
The sky splits open.
An indigo-grade ship tears through the sky faster than the speed of sound, its sonic boom sending the monkeys into an uproar and turning every troll face to the heavens. Ashe stops mid-rant and her jaw hangs open, the familiar ship swinging into view.
"Is that…" she asks.
Frozen in mid-air, hovering perfectly over the canopy, the sleek white ship opens fire, it's grav-joined joints letting it move perfectly, with grace beyond what most planet-side tolls can even imagine. The whole forest is ablaze, hostiles dropping with perfect holes in their skulls. The bastard of a tree at the center alights with a great FROOM.
"Well I'll be." Ashe pushes up her hat, an exact mirror of me as the pair of us watch our savior settle amongst the burring wood, its pilot emerging from within.
"McCree," Echo greets me with the tightest of hugs.
"Well ain't that swell," Ashe rolls her eyes. "They order backup, but poncho boy gets out here first? Tell Sym to just send the ship next time."
"Didn't hear you complaining when I was saving your hide," I point out.
"Hah! You'd be dead if I hadn't killed that dang varmit that had you 'round the neck."
"And if I hadn't pushed you out of the way, that fruit bomb would've eaten clean through your carapace."
"You didn't push me out of the way, you dang tackled me, look at all this dirt on my vest I-"
"Damn ungrateful-"
"My friends please," Echo places a hand on each of our shoulders. "It is good to have you home, McCree. Ashe, I am glad you are alive. Is this not a thankful enough night that we can just enjoy each other's company?"
The tension goes out of you. I can see it leave Ashe as well, and she looks at the triangle of arms that have now joined the three of us. She narrows her lookstubs in an amber-hued seethe. "…I suppose."
"Wonderful!" Echo declares as I grin in victory and Ashe's slowly twisting face. "Now come on, I have enough space to take you all back to Slopnest. We'll certainly all be cozy together!"
The two of us wince.