Of the things in her old life that she remembered, there were some Hana did not miss. Little things, things that were expected of her but were not in any way rewarding or fun. Shaving was one of those things. It still sometimes felt strange to her lifting her arms and seeing a mass of wiry, dark hair under there, but honestly, when death from starvation, radiation, or any other number of grisly fates lurked around every corner, hairy armpits didn't seem too big a threat. And honestly she was thankful to have hair at all. It had been falling out of her scalp in chunks for a while after the destruction of the omnium factory.

It was probably a good thing no one else was around, too, because going a good few weeks without a proper bath didn't exactly leave her smelling like a rose. When the wind occasionally died down Hana would catch a whiff of something that smelled like roadkill, then with some degree of embarrassment she would realize it was her own stench. She may not have missed shaving, but she damn sure missed showering.

Thankfully her trusty mech couldn't judge her. She spent most of her time inside it now, roaming the wastes for food and useful bits of scrap. She tried to see it as a game, like she was piloting a military robot in a first person shooter. Relating it to fiction helped her to avoid dwelling on the horrifying reality that this was her life now. That her home was destroyed, her parents were dead, and she was probably going to roam the ruins of her city until she died of starvation or radiation poisoning.

SNAP!

Something caught the left leg of her mech and caused it to stumble. Hana was barely able to right it in time to prevent falling face-first into the dirt. What the…?

She leaned out of the mech to see what its foot was caught on. To her surprise, it looked like a bear trap. Or some kind of modified one, anyway. It held fast to her mech's heavy metal leg. Even attempting to move the leg forward didn't shake the trap off. The machine was completely stuck.

"Oi, it's a bloody omnic!"

Hana struggled to turn around inside the mech to see the source of the voice. In the distance she caught sight of an odd-looking little man with a peg leg and a giant tire strapped to his back. He was standing atop a tall, ragged rock, holding some kind of makeshift-looking weapon. He was half-turned, seemingly shouting to someone behind him. "Should I blow 'em up?"

"I'm not an omnic!" Hana shouted, slipping out the mech's exit door on its back. "I'm human!"

The man gave pause. She noticed him drop some sort of round metal device to the ground beside him and pull what looked like a trigger button from his pocket. With an explosion and a wild burst of laughter, suddenly the man was flying through the air. He crashed into the dirt a few feet away from her.

Hana hung close to her mech. The guy was probably a looter. And she had invested far too much time and energy into this mech suit to let it be stolen from her just like that.

After dusting himself off, the man looked Hana and her mech up and down.

"You build this?" was all he asked.

"Not really." She kept her tone as calm as possible. "I found it lying in a scrap heap and just fixed it up."

"Thought so." The man hopped around the mech in a circle, taking it in from all angles. "This is one of those ol' power loaders. I'd recognize it anywhere." He returned his attention to Hana after a minute. "You managed to get one of these pieces of junk working?"

Hana shrugged. "It needs a lot of...upkeep. It will break if I'm not around to fix it."

The man grinned, exposing a mouthful of rotten yellow teeth. "Oi. Good strategy there. Can't sell me the mech without the repair service."

"It's not for sale. It's mine." Hana found herself wishing she'd made time to install weapons on it like she had planned to. Even a couple of simple guns would be useful right now.

With a chuckle, the man approached the back door of the mech. After checking it out for a moment, he attempted to climb inside. He was able to slip partway in, but his lanky body could not bend enough to fit inside the tiny cockpit. "Aw hell, who's this made for anyways? Damn Chinese..."

Hana's eye twitched. "I'm Korean."

"Whatever."

It was a bit of a struggle for the man to back himself out of the mech. Once he finally managed to do so he wiped a bit of sweat from his brow and exhaled. "Well. If I can't have that mech for meself, then I guess I'll have to recruit ya!"

Hana folded her arms. "Recruit me for what?"

The man threw his arms out in a theatrical display of enthusiasm. "For the JUNKERS!"

Hana continued to stand there with her arms folded, bathing the man in an apathetic stare.

The man's arms slowly retreated to his sides, but his enthusiasm was not quelled. "We're a band a' human survivors here in the Outback. Makin' our own society. Livin' by our own laws. It's great!"

That broke through Hana's apathy a tiny bit. "Band of human survivors? There's more than just you?"

He turned back to the rocky cliff he'd blown himself off of. "'Ey, Roadie! C'mon out!"

Hana's eyes widened as a gigantic man emerged from behind the rock. Clad in little more than scrap armor made of spikes and hunks of tire, as well as a gas mask, and wielding a spiked scythe with an iron chain attached, he looked like something out of a video game. His massive stomach was tattooed with a pig and some flames, and she noticed his mask had a pig nose.

"This here's my partner in crime, Roadhog!" The small man elbowed the bigger man lightly in the stomach. "She fixed up one of them old power loaders. Think she could be useful with the Junkers?"

Hana could hear the big man, Roadhog apparently, breathing through his mask. It was a heavy, raspy sound, much worse than even her irradiated lungs sounded. He gave a wordless shrug as a response.

"I didn't say I wanted to join your group," Hana huffed. "Why should I go off with a couple of strange men I've never met before? That's like, Girl Safety 101."

Roadhog withdrew a length of chain from his side. Before he could do anything with it, the small man stopped him. "Whoa, hey, let's at least try to be, uh, what's the word? Dipla…dipla…" He scratched his head, then shrugged. "Anyway, ya can't just be hookin' everyone all the time. You're gonna make us look bad!"

Roadhog stared at him, still not saying a word. Hana took a step back from both of them. "So…yeah…I think I'm gonna be going now."

"Wait!" The small man grabbed her by the arm, his diplomacy apparently forgotten. "We're supposed to be recruitin' for the Junkers. And I'm not sure you've noticed, but we're bloody terrible at it."

Roadhog shrugged his broad shoulders, still twirling the chain he had apparently planned to "hook" Hana with.

"We're a group of survivors – some smart, some strong, all of us tough as nails. A lady with your kind of buildin' skills, well, we've been lookin' for someone like you." He paused for a moment, then, with a grin, added, "You any good with explosives, by the by?"

"I've…never tried," Hana replied.

The man's eyes widened, and his demeanor instantly changed. He released her arm, and instead slung an arm over her shoulder. His unwashed stench was even worse than hers. He also smelled like he'd recently been on fire. "Oh, you'd love it. If you come with us the Junkers'll give ya all the explosives you can explosiv…ize!"

"…Explode?" she corrected in a flat tone.

"Whatever."

She stopped to glance back at her mech, and the wasteland around it. There was nothing out here. She was slowly dying in the heat and waste, and slowly losing her mind from being alone every waking moment. Did she really have anything to lose?

"I'll check out your little survivor group," she finally said. "But if I don't like it, I'm leaving. And I'm staying in my mech the whole time, so don't try to stop me."

The man visibly brightened. "Oh, great! You're gonna love it, I can already tell." He stuck his hand out for Hana to shake. "Name's Jamison by the way. They mostly call me Junkrat, though."

She reluctantly shook his disgusting hand. "I'm Hana."

The man, "Junkrat", continued to ramble on as Hana climbed up into the mech. "We'll have to get you some guns for that ol' mech. Some guns, some boosters…yeah, it'll be great. You'll be blowin' things up in no time!"