"That will be 2,000 won, please."
Hana hands over the money and pockets her new packet of bubblegum. The teenage girl behind the counter blinks at her tiredly. She can only guess what the girl is thinking right now, as a strange little girl leaves the gas station she works at past midnight, carrying a large duffel bag and what seems to be a walkie-talkie.
"You got your gum, love?" Tracer's tinny voice sounds amused. Hana pads over to the sidewalk, popping a piece into her mouth. She relishes in the sweet chewiness with a low sigh. Pedestrians casually stroll past her without a second glance; a benefit to being in a large city with too many people to get to know.
"Yeah," she says, jaw working against the gum. The path she's to take is marked on her transceiver in bright red. According to the blinking blue dot marking her location on the map, she's fairly close to Jungsoo Station. "What do I do if there really are Talon agents there?"
Her transceiver buzzes in her hand as Tracer hums in consideration. Her voice is filled with scorn. "Don't get close to the bloody buggers. Just watch from a distance. They aren't gonna be dressed up in gear, so be suspicious of everyone you see, capische?"
"Already am," Hana jokes. She looks up from the transceiver to the street ahead of her. Wandering around at night alone in a city always held such a negative connotation to her, and yet the alleys she cross hold a familiar warmth to them. Besides, the strong ambient lighting of the city and abundance of street lamps make sure that nothing is ever too heavily shadowed.
It's not just the streets themselves that feel friendly. There are people here- not the oppressive crowds that filled the city in the morning, but friends in small groups, laughing and talking as if there is no difference between walking in the night and walking in the day.
Friends. Hana is a gamer, but she plays solo. There's a whole slew of people she could've become friends with if she'd just tried…
She watches longingly as a gaggle of girls around her age step from a high-end shoe store with arms linked. They giggle hysterically over something- she catches them say 'cute clerk,' and so once they're out of sight, she peers through the windows of the store.
And true to their word, there's a cute clerk there. He's tall, has dark, swept-back hair, and hums along to the tune of the K-pop song playing over the speakers, baseball cap bobbing along to the beat. It's an A-PINK song, and Hana is hit by the sudden memory of Genji. She suspects that if she were any other girl with a social life and romantic interests, she would run in, buy something small just to talk to the boy, and then run out, giggling like a fool.
Tracer's voice blares loud in the silence. "Hana? You haven't been movin' for a good minute now."
Oh, yes. Of course there's a GPS tracker in the transceiver. Feeling a little bit peeved that Tracer had been monitoring her progress this entire time without telling her, she continues down the street.
The night drifts on without much indication of letting up. If anything, the skies get even darker. Hana watches the pedestrians walking alongside her apprehensively, though none seem to be following or even paying attention to her.
One group of what appears to be high-school students do mull around the area Hana is traversing for a while. She catches one of the girls staring at her from across the street, and she hurriedly picks up the pace.
When she's just a block away from the station, Tracer speaks up. "Hana, can'ya open up your bag?"
The duffel bag? Hana kneels onto the ground and unzips it. She had already looked through its contents after Genji had been shot, trying to find something to help with his wound. "What am I looking for?"
"The side pocket. It should be hidden inside the seam of the lower right corner of the bag." The Brit sounds a little somber, which is definitely not a good sign.
A secret pocket? She hadn't noticed it. Sneaky bastards. Hana digs through the various items cluttering the bag, none of which had been useful in treating Genji, DVA thinks with indignation, before finding the telltale zipper marking the pocket. "I… didn't notice this being here before."
"I was hoping you wouldn't have to, love. Cheers to Talon," says Tracer sourly. "Have you seen wot's in there, then?"
Hana reaches into the pocket and pulls out something long and dark. A gun.
It's heavier than she'd expected it to be- a cool weight in her hand, covered in smooth black matte. It's also larger than she'd expected it to be, too, with the muzzle extending far past her hand, though her fingers close around its handle with relative ease. It doesn't look very much like a traditional gun, like you'd seen in the movies- the front is bulky and is built around her hand.
"AT-03 pulse pistol. Nifty little thing," explains Tracer without much heart. "We weren't really planning on you using it, so I'm gonna give you a quick run-down on how to shoot a gun, okay?"
Hana's killed someone before. The thought of murder- no, not murder, self-defense- it shouldn't feel so terrible to her now, should it? She'd bashed some man's head in using a fucking sidewalk. Shooting a gun, in comparison, should feel humane.
"Okay," she breathes. The gun looks chillingly similar to the one that Talon grunt had used on Genji.
"First off, don't point it at anyone if they aren't explicitly threatening you. We don't want the cops on your tail along with Talon- that would just be a blood brilliant mess," says Tracer with an almost comical amount of enthusiasm. A mechanical rustle of paper hisses through the transceiver. "Oh, and- er- there's no safety on the gun! Meaning it's all loaded and ready to shoot, yeah? Keep it pointing away from you at all times. And put it on top of the stuff in your bag, so that's it easy to reach but hard to see."
"Okay," Hana repeats slowly, "but I really don't know how-"
"That's where the good news is at! It's a fat lot easier than the movies make it look," says Tracer brightly. And just like that, she's off again, with her mile-a-minute mouth. "It's just point and click, love- point and click. The thing's loaded with pulse ammo, not bullets, so it doesn't leave behind any spent shells or lead stuck in stuff. Minimize the evidence, yeah? Feel free to fire it off like a maniac."
Hana's an RTS specialist, but she's played her fair share of first-person shooters before- all of which she had excelled at. Still, shooting up a six-bit character is fairly different from shooting up a living human being. She racks her brain for what little she can recall about guns. "Won't there be any… recoil?"
Tracer hums in consideration. "There'll be a bit of recoil but see, we've been working on that model, yeah? Got down the recoil pretty damn far. Still, just make sure you keep the gun away from your face so it doesn't bash your nose or nothing when you shoot it off. If you gotta send the recoil anywhere, you bring up your arms a little, so don't lock your elbows."
Hana understood perhaps half of what Tracer had just said, but she mumbles a "Got it" anyways. She inspects the pulse pistol in the half-light of the streetlamps before placing it with exaggerated carefulness on the top of her duffel bag, as if it were as fragile as glass.
The gun brings more anxiety to Hana's nerves than relief, and the rest of the way to Jungsoo Station is decidedly more tense. Tracer jokes about funny things she's done in past missions ("Can you imagine recalling right on top of a kangaroo?") while Hana laughs along, mind awhirl with thoughts of blood falling onto these peaceful streets.
Jungsoo Station is as brightly lit as the rest of the city, but unlike the other places she's walked through, there are almost no people meandering about. Civilians, Talon, nobody. She reports to this Tracer, who reacts with concern. "Well, something ain't right, then. Talon should definitely be there. Winston's never wrong, see…"
Hana ducks behind a stunted tree near an apartment, from where the station is clearly visible. The underground subways of Korea were always marked by a stairway that descended directly into the ground, lined with railings and signs declaring names and destination. Jungsoo Station is no different- it's so typical with its silvers and pale blues, its blinking neon sign proclaiming 정수 역, that Hana feels an innate suspicion for the place.
Part of this suspicion stems from the fact that, unlike the other parts of town, there are no people here. The back of her neck prickles at the eerie absence of motion. "You think it's a trap? Maybe-"
An unfamiliar voice pierces the quiet. "Hello?"
Hana curses and turns of the transceiver with a stab of a thumb before she looks in the direction of the voice. It's the teenage boy from the store, the one that the other girls had found so cute. He's got a maroon jacket on now, and a backpack is slung over one shoulder, marking him as a college student. The fuck is he doing here? It isn't safe.
It takes a moment for her to realize that he's directing the question at her. People never really approached Hana, and consequently never really talked to her, either. How is she to handle this all?
She tucks the transceiver into her coat pocket and tries not to scowl. How suspicious she must appear, hiding behind a tree and muttering to herself. "Er… hello?"
The clerk boy tugs at the back of his baseball cap, head slightly tilted as he smiles awkwardly. His voice is deep and calming. "I saw you… you were wandering around the store I work at, right? I was wondering if you were lost or something."
"I'm fine," Hana says shortly. How could she warn this boy? Get him out of here, before Talon suspects him of anything for talking to her? She draws herself up with what little pride she can still muster, steadying her hands and drawing her eyebrows together into a condescending glare. "Nothing's wrong. Go home."
The boy continues to hover uncertainly. "Look here-"
He reaches for the gun at his hip.
The gun-
Hana flies into motion at the same speed she sends Zergs at her enemies in StarCraft- in an instant, the pulse pistol is in her hand, and in another instant, blue blitzes of light are jetting off from her gun directly at the boy.
Zero hesitation. Shooting him was her knee-jerk reflex.
It happens all too quickly- three of the lights directly hit his chest, one after the other, and he tumbles to the asphalt like a puppet with cut strings, his gun still hanging untouched on his person. Smoke drifts from his torso, filling the air with the suddenly disgusting smell of cooked meat.
The clerk boy didn't even have time to scream or draw his gun- he'd passed with unnervingly little fanfare. She presses a hand to her mouth, silently gagging at the scent. Draws a few steps back.
And so the fight is over, just like that- a sudden and silent blur of motion. She watches the motionless lump on the ground, wondering if the pulse pistol had really done enough damage to put him down permanently. Apparently it did, because he doesn't get back up.
My second kill, she thinks dully. And it was some boy from a store. Had he always been a Talon agent? How long had he been posing at the store for, pretending to be a clerk, waiting for Hana to show up?
Maybe they forced him to do this. Maybe they threatened him, or his family-
Stop, DVA thinks coldly, and snuffs out Hana's feelings with a huff of icy breath.
She tosses the gun into her bag with none of the carefulness from before and calls Tracer again, approaching the corpse with small, quick steps. Tracer is beside herself with worry on the other side- "HANA! HANA, WHAT HAPPENED? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she reassures, and she thanks the heavens that her voice doesn't come out as shaky as she feels. "Someone…" offered help, and I killed them- "-someone attacked me, so I had to use the pulse pistol."
Tracer masks her concern with ease, and her words are straightforward. "Is this the first time you've seen them? This is important. We need to know if they're following you."
Hana wants to lie no, I've never seen them before, but Tracer's intensity convinces her of otherwise. "He was a clerk at some store I walked past." She kneels by his still-smoking body. He hadn't died as peacefully as they showed in movies- his eyes were still wide open, as was his mouth, which gaped with a scream that would never be released. And in his ear was something peculiar…
"Is he armed with anything?" Tracer asks, and Hana can hear frantic typing through the transceiver.
"A gun," she replies, and carefully plucks the earpiece from his ear and puts it in her own. Sure enough, she could hear the voices of what she presumed were Talon agents on the other side-
"-W3,TROW3, RESPOND IMMEDIATELY. TROW3, WHERE ARE YOUR COORDINATES?"
Responding with fake coordinates seems logical, but on the other hand, there's no way she can imitate Clerk Boy's deep voice. So instead, she says to Tracer: "I've got ahold of his earpiece."
"HALF OF THE GUARDS, ABANDON POST. GO LOOK FOR HER. BALLAD SECT, RENDEZVOUS TO TROW3'S COORDINATE. CUT THE LINE, THEY MIGHT-"
The earpiece pops and fizzles out. Hana tosses it away, steps on it with her foot. Grinds it into the asphalt with her heel until she feels it shatter like an eggshell. Her legs move slowly, and then gradually speed up to become a blur as she runs back towards the twisted little tree, because now they're onto her, and she's dead.
"Hana, what's going on? Y-"
"They know where I am," she says breathlessly into the transceiver. Thud, thud, thud, her boots pound into the ground to the rhythm of her heart, beating ever faster. When she stops by the tree she pulls out the gun again, clenching the handle like it's her lifeline. "They're coming for me. Tracer, Tracer, what do I- what do I do?"
TELL ME WHAT TO DO.
Tracer is quick to reply, because of course she knows what to do- she's the legendary Lena Oxton- hotshot pilot of the Slipstream, Overwatch spokeswoman, agent extraordinaire.
Her voice is full of unsuppressed urgency. "Oh, bollocks- stay calm, love, and head over to-"
BANG! Hana screams and nearly drops the transceiver when something shoots past her face, bright purple in color and too fast to clearly make out. It's launched with enough velocity to stick into the tree's grizzled bark, and Hana is bewildered to see that it's a dart.
A sniper?
The words sound ridiculous in her head, but it must be true because there's not a soul in sight- just Clerk Boy, who's still a smoking pile of meat on the ground a good twenty feet away. She looks wildly about for the elusive sniper but they wear the darkness like a mask, and so she begins to run towards somewhere with lots of people, because if the world is going to hell in a handbasket then Hana might as well seek out the crowds she hates so much.
BANG. BANG.
Don't turn around, don't turn around, just keep going-
Tracer is yelling something from the transceiver when Hana rounds a corner and slams headlong into a Talon agent.
Both let out a startled 'umph', and Hana's just slightly faster with her recovery. She's just slightly faster with her gun, too, and in an instant the agent is dead on her feet because at close range missing is impossible. All five bullets (pulses? Lasers?) she fires off hits the woman's body, sending her falling to the ground with grim finality.
The impact of their crash sends both the agent's gun and Hana's transceiver spinning away into the darkness. In Hana's adrenaline-addled mind, DVA screams No, we need that! and so she foolishly stops to recover the lost object in the darkness somehow-
Her efforts are rewarded by another BANG, and white-hot pain streaks across her right arm. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a dart has grazed her, and spine-tingling fear rises like a scream in Hana's bones-
-they can see me, but I can't see them-
-moving her to take off into the tangle of glittering streets. Leaving the transceiver forgotten somewhere on the ground.
People turn and stare as she rushes past them, duffel bag dangling from her shoulder. Not that Hana cares, really. She's so glad to see them there that she almost smiles, because miraculously, none of them are attacking her.
Until a grizzled old man steps from the awning of his DVD store with another gun. Maybe it's the darkness, maybe it's the rush of the night- not a single person notices.
He looks like-
He looks like a harmless old harabuji.
Hana draws first, because Hana always draws first. The trigger motion feels smoother now. When the man crumples to the ground, smoke wisping from his chest, the screaming starts. Some men start herding their respective groups away from the scene with almost military precision, leaving Hana suddenly alone. Her head throbs with pain; why does everything hurt so much?
The teenage girls from the store run right past her, phones clutched in-hand, adding to the din with the clicking of heels. With a sudden strike of inspiration Hana tails after them, tucking the gun into her pocket, looking like just another innocent civilian running from some crazed shooter. Like she suspects, nobody notices anything.
Nobody ever notices anything.
She branches off from the group in front of a quaint little dumpling shop, pausing to catch her breath, filling the brisk air with hot steam. Her hands are clammy against her knees as she bends over, gasping and choking for air. Her lungs are on fire from all the running she's been doing- no, wait, they hurt so much more than they should.
The dart. She'd totally forgotten about the long scratch on her arm. Now that she's stopped moving, she can clearly feel the steady creep of crimson wetness over her shoulder… and it burns like hell.
Poison? Was there some sort of toxin in the dart? That would explain why the sniper hadn't been using a traditional bullet. Hana curses, because fuck does it sting, and she manages to get into the dumpling store before she all but collapses into a seat.
It's empty- the owners and patrons must've fled at the sound of the fighting. The power is off, and the only source of light she has is the glittering lines of neon in the city.
If she doesn't figure out where to go next, this little dumpling store will be her final resting spot.
Hana hunkers down in the seat, keeping her head clear of the window, hoping that from the outside, the little shop appears abandoned. The plastic seat is cold and hard where it presses into her back. She wheezes as her throat constricts, little puffs of breath appearing like mist in the dark air.
Think of a way out, DVA urges, but Hana's mind is so done with everything that she just sits there and shivers as the night air bites through her coat.
As far as she's concerned, this is the end. It had been a surprisingly long run, as Hana hadn't thought she'd even survive the first few hours without Genji. She is a stranger in her own hometown, with nobody she can return to without endangering their lives.
Nobody to miss her when she's gone.
Mother, she thinks bitterly, and her eyes are burning, dry stones. You would laugh if you saw me now, right? You always laughed.
What sort of death is this, anyways? I'm cornered. Afraid. Tired. Lonely.
Her watch beeps- 2:00 in the night. Hana exhales a shuddering breath.
Will Amin and Tara look for me?
The clinking of metal, the soft thud of a footstep. Someone is at the door, blocked from Hana's vision by a table leg. Hana doesn't freeze up. She just reaches for her gun.
She draws first, because she always draws first-
-and then the gun blasts to pieces in her hand with a sharp ping, because for the first time today someone is even faster than she is.
Shrapnel is sent flying everywhere, cracking against the window with the sound of pebbles hitting glass, cutting up her fingers. Hana ducks back down into her seat, bloody hand scrambling for the bag. There aren't any other weapons in the secret pocket, except…
Hana spots a glint of green in the void of the bag's opening. One of Genji's shurikens are still wedged between a metal water bottle and bundle of rope.
Somewhere in her heart, she suspects that the metal of the little weapon is cold, like ice. She can't feel it, though. Her fingers are dead and numb, just like the rest of her will be in a moment.
The figure steps into the room, casual. Unhurried. A black shadow in the darkness of the room. Hana doesn't have the arm for throwing, so instead of flinging the shuriken at the agent, she launches herself at him with a wordless snarl.
She doesn't even get a foot closer to the Talon agent when fingers close around her wrist, a hand is on her left shoulder, and Hana is whirled around and slammed into the wall. The impact knocks her breathless, and the shuriken falls from her captive fingers.
She closes her eyes when she hears it clatter on the ground, as if from a great distance away. It's over, then.
Silence fills the air, disrupted only by Hana's heavy breathing.
Then-
A honey-smooth voice drawls through the still air, bringing with it the last words Hana had expected:
"Why, this pretty little weapon is Genji's, ain't it?"
Translation Notes:
Harabuji- grandpa.
정수 역- Jungsoo Station in Korean.
Bollocks- British slang that literally means 'balls. Used similarly to 'darn.'
Buggers- More British slang! Someone annoying, though just 'bugger' can be used when something goes wrong (like 'Oh, bugger' as opposed to 'Oh, darn.')
Cultural Notes:
Safety: Hana mentions that Korea's streets feel very safe. I did some research on tourist reviews on Korea to get more of a sense of city life, and many of them talk about how safe Korea feels in general- little children walk the streets on their own without parent supervision and end up fine, and people don't feel like they're going to get mugged at night. Part of this has to do with the very low crime rates in Korea, though some attribute it to the illegality of guns there. (Though it must be said that while there aren't many physical crimes or homicides, many news reports surrounding the recently impeached South Korean president show that corruption is a problem.)
Military training: I specifically included the line "Some men start herding their respective groups away from the scene with almost military precision, leaving Hana suddenly alone" to reflect on the fact that in South Korea, all males between the ages of 18 and 35 must take mandatory military service for between 21 and 24 months, depending on their branch of service. Which is interesting because we don't do that where I live (the U.S.), as we have a rather large population size that allows for an ample amount of volunteers.
Because of this, I concluded that in a situation with random guns firing off, I would expect there to be at least some people in the crowd to know what to do.
A/N:
Anyways! As always, thank you for reading this chapter, and thank you for posting so many wonderful reviews. Life is still really hectic right now, so I'm having trouble finding time to write, but I'm really excited for the installment of this chapter. Researching all this has been such a great experience for me.
McCree is a member of Blackwatch, not Overwatch, but I hinted at an Overwatch member last chapter because it would be pretty obvious if I said Blackwatch. My bad ;)
