Breakfast with the Junkers was always quite the experience. It usually consisted of at least a dozen fights over food, several of which would devolve into physical altercations that the bodyguards like Roadhog would have to break up. The food wasn't even that enticing – they were apparently still stretching out the canned goods they'd looted from a food bank that was blown to smithereens in the omnium explosion. None of the food went together flavor-wise, and it all had a funny aftertaste, but when you were starving any crumb of food apparently became worth stabbing someone over.

Hana was just sitting down with Junkrat and Roadhog when she noticed Ana slip through the crowd with a cup in her gloved hand. "Hey!" Hana instinctively called out to her. Ana paused and glanced over in her direction. Hana beckoned her over.

"Oi, we're gonna invite that weirdo to breakfast with us?" Junkrat whispered as Ana approached.

"They're not that weird."

Ana stopped beside their dingy caf table. She did not sit down until Hana tapped the stool seat beside hers. The old woman cast a glance over Junkrat and Roadhog before reluctantly taking a seat beside Hana. Immediately Hana noticed Ana's cup had a tea bag in it. Ana meticulously dipped it in and drew it back out of the steaming cup a few times. After a minute or so she removed it completely and set it on a napkin on the table's surface. Junkrat and Roadhog watched her as she lifted her mask just the tiniest bit, still obscuring the majority of her face, and took a delicate sip of the hot tea.

"So, uh, you and DVa are pals now or somethin'?" Junkrat took a bite of his oddly-discolored canned peaches. Hana glanced from him to Roadhog, who had removed his mask to chow down on some smoked rat meat. The first time she'd seen Roadhog without his mask she'd been quite surprised – he was older than she'd expected, with scars all over his face and a bushy gray beard matted down from being covered so often. She wondered what his story was, if he had as much to hide as Ana apparently did.

Ana, of course, did not answer Junkrat. She instead took another sip of her tea and glanced over at Hana.

"We made a good team yesterday." Hana purposely kept her response vague. Ana nodded, perhaps in approval of that.

"Ah I see. When Roadie and I first met up we didn't exactly hit it off right away." Junkrat elbowed him in the stomach. Roadhog shook his head. "I, uh, had some stuff goin' on…I'm a pretty popular guy, turns out." He snickered to himself. "Anyways, we're thick as thieves now. Literally. Heheh."

Roadhog gave a silent thumbs up.

"There's nothin' quite like havin' a pal in this hellhole." Junkrat took another bite of his meal, but it did not stop him from talking. Hana grimaced and looked away as he continued talking with his mouth full. "Oi, that reminds me Deevs. Me and Roadie had a bit of a proposition for ya." He glanced over at Ana, then leaned across the table, jerked a thumb at her, and conspicuously whispered to Hana, "Are they cool? Can we trust 'em?"

Hana looked over at her newest companion. She wished she knew if she could trust anyone these days.

"Yeah," she eventually said. "They're cool."

"All right. I'm takin' your word on this, Deevs." He leaned in closer to them. With widened eyes and a wicked grin he whispered, "Roadie and I found a way outta here."

Hana tilted her head. "Out of where? The Junkers?"

"Out of Australia."

Hana raised her eyebrows. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. On our last scavenging run Roadie and I came across a couple of guys. Government guys, or at least they used to be. Apparently they're shippin' survivors out by boat to south Indonesia. 'Course, they want something in exchange for it…"

Hana didn't even have to turn to feel Ana's stare boring into her from behind that mask. "What do they want?" She was careful not to let too much emotion creep into her voice, positive or negative.

"They said they go on a case-by-case basis. So I guess we'd bring 'em something and they'd decide if it was enough."

"That doesn't sound very safe. What if they get us to bring them stuff and then they just kill us?"

Junkrat and Roadhog exchanged a look. Junkrat snickered. "I don't think they're gonna be in much of a position to refuse."

"Why won't they–" Hana trailed off as the realization struck her. "You're going to kill them."

"Those saps have it comin'! They're charging people an arm and a leg just to get to safety – and I only got one of each!" He held out his prosthetic hand and stuck his peg leg out from under the table, then cackled at his own joke. "But seriously though, yeah, we're gonna kill them."

The old Hana would recoil at the thought of taking a human life, or even associating with someone who could. In the several weeks she'd been living in the wasteland of the Outback, however, she found that something within her had changed. Her actions were no longer governed by laws, or even by a strict moral code. Refusing to give refuge to survivors of a radioactive meltdown unless they paid their way was pretty shitty. Maybe people like that were better off dead.

Hana glanced to Ana. "What do you think?"

Ana set her cup down on the table, its tiny porcelain clink her only response.

If she could get back to the normal world she could get medical treatment. She could take a shower. Hell, she could get back in touch with her array of internet friends and let them know she was still alive. Maybe one of them would even take her in and let her stay with them for a while.

"Are all of the Junkers gonna go?" she asked next.

"No, no, hell no." Junkrat shook his head vehemently. "There's a lot of stuff you don't know about this place. Heck, there's a lotta stuff I don't know, because I forget half of it. But I'll tell ya one thing – Boss likes things the way they are right now. She's always talkin' about rebuilding – rebuilding the world, or society, or whatever. She loves the Junkers. I don't think she'd be crazy about the idea of even just some of us up and leaving on her."

"Oh." Boss had been talking like that last night to Hana. "So we'd be sneaking out?"

"That's the plan."

Hana's gaze drifted over to the far table where Boss was entertaining some of her inner circle with loud storytelling and vivacious hand gestures. She didn't seem like a bad person. Hana felt a little bad at the thought of sneaking out on her, but she quickly reminded herself that it was her life, not Boss'. They weren't Boss' personal pets.

"Give me a little time to think about it," she ultimately responded.

Junkrat shrugged. "Well all right. We'd be happy to have ya along, though."

She smiled just a tiny bit. "Thanks. I'd like to stay with you guys if I can."

They finished breakfast the usual way, with Junkrat rambling about some nonsense while the rest of them half-listened. Ana seemed disinterested in any of them, instead staring off into the distance most of the time. Hana wondered how she felt about the possibility of leaving Australia. Did she have family anywhere? Hana herself had grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all still living in South Korea. She would like to visit them, but their names and faces were a blur in her microwaved brain. She'd most likely end up wandering lost through the streets of her home country until somebody reported a dirty, suspicious-looking teenager sleeping on sidewalks and yelling at random passersby to ask if they knew a Hana Song.

There was so much to consider. Hana missed the days when her biggest worry was a broken button on her keyboard, or a nasty wrist cramp. Everything was so much simpler then.

After breakfast Hana spent some time tuning up her mech in its storage cell beside hers. Roadhog had surprised her the other day with a license plate from the press inside the prison. It read "WR3KD", which made Hana laugh a little. She welded it to the back of the mech with her subpar, self-taught welding skills. Considering part of the junk mech's exoskeleton was literally just a truck bumper with a winch still dangling from it, the license plate fit right in.

"Hey, kiddo."

Hana was cleaning out the makeshift guns on the mech's arms when a soft voice caught her attention. She lifted her gaze from the charred metal to find Boss lingering outside the cell. "Oh, hi."

Boss held out a large cardboard box. "Are you busy? If not, can I show you something?"

Hana glanced back at her mech for a moment. "Well I was cleaning out the guns on my suit…"

"Oh." Boss took an awkward step back. "Well if you're busy I'll leave you to it. Maybe come back later–"

"What did you want to show me?"

That was all the encouragement Boss needed to pull open the cell door and stride in with the box. She dropped it onto the unused cot. "I've been working on something."

Hana stood up. "Oh?"

With a tiny smile, Boss pulled back the flaps of the box. From within it she retrieved a pair of…some odd yellow things that looked sort of like speakers, but clearly weren't.

Hana didn't even bother asking, because Boss' expression told her the other girl was about to launch whether asked about them or not.

"You know, I was studying engineering in college." She picked the mystery items up and held them up to the mech. She must have used the same can of paint Hana had used for the mech body, for they were the exact same shade of yellow. "If I made these correctly, and I'm pretty sure I did, they should be able to power your mech forward, possibly even off the ground. They're basically boosters."

"Boosters?" Hana watched as Boss strapped them around the "shoulders" of the mech. She then fed two wires through a space in the mech's junky exoskeleton, into the cockpit. "I should be able to rig them to a button…"

The thought of someone else tampering with her mech raised Hana's hackles a bit, but she reluctantly allowed Boss to rewire it a bit. After a minute or two Boss hopped down from the cockpit, a triumphant smile brightening her face. "I think I did it. You wanna test it out?"

"Here?"

"Nah. Let's try it outside."

Hana kept an eye on Boss as she climbed into her mech and roused it to life.

"All right, so ideally you should just be able to press the buttons on the top of the control sticks and it'll kick the boosters into action." Boss stood a safe distance from the newly-modded mech. "Then just push the sticks in the direction you want to go."

"All right." Hana took a deep breath. "Here we go. Boosters engaged–"

As soon as she pushed the buttons the mech went rocketing forward. In a panic Hana pulled back on the sticks – but instead of stopping, the mech instead launched itself into the air. "Aaaaaaghhh!"

"DVa!" Boss ran after her. "Hitting the button to fire your cannons should interrupt the signal to the boosters!"

Hana immediately pulled the makeshift trigger she'd installed on the right joystick. Thankfully the mech stopped accelerating. It dropped to the ground with a clank, leaving her momentarily dazed.

Not a moment later Boss appeared at her side. "It worked! They worked!"

"Ungh…" Hana clutched her stomach. "I feel a little sick."

Boss averted her eyes as Hana scrambled from the mech just in time to empty her breakfast rations out onto the pavement.

"…You okay?" Boss sheepishly offered her a hand. Hana remained on her hands and knees for another few moments, making sure her stomach was truly empty. Then she allowed Boss to help her up.

"I'll live. Wow, that was really, um, something." She glanced at the boosters, which were still glowing a greenish color. "They smell really strong. And bad."

"Oh, yeah, they're uh…" Boss massaged the back of her neck. "I mean, they might have some radioactive…residue. I made them out of hovercar parts I looted near the omnium a couple weeks ago."

"Oh. Great."

Boss climbed up onto one of the arms of the mech and sat atop the metal limb. "So, wanna try them again?"

"With you sitting on the mech?"

"Yeah. I'll hold on."

With a shrug, Hana engaged the boosters again. This time she made sure to travel in one straight path so as not to make herself too nauseous. Boss clung to the arm of the mech. Out the corner of her eye Hana could see her grinning, her long, dreadlocked hair flowing behind her as they blasted across the sunny former parking lot.

When they finally slowed to a halt across the lot Boss hopped down off the mech. "That was awesome! Man, I need to find myself a power loader out there. Who knew they could be this cool?"

Hana wordlessly nodded, feeling a pang of guilt at the knowledge of what was to come should she agree to leave with Junkrat and Roadhog. Boss had no idea, and probably thought Hana was going to develop into a friend and confidante to her. Or hell, maybe she did know and was trying to guilt her into staying. Who could tell with these Junkers?

As if reading her mind, Boss then said, "Sorry if I'm acting like a big dweeb, by the way. It's just, I guess I didn't really realize how much I missed having girlfriends. Not that I had very many to begin with..." She shrugged and chuckled a little.

Hana was tempted to respond by sympathizing, by revealing that she herself had never had many friends either, but Ana's words lingered in her mind. These people are not your friends. She didn't much trust Ana either, having been given no real reason to do so, but oversharing personal information to anyone out in this wasteland couldn't be a good idea anyway.

She opted to remain silent.

After several long seconds Boss must have realized Hana was not going to respond. She coughed awkwardly. "Um, so anyway, we should probably go back."

Hana offered her the arm of her mech again. Boss clambered back up onto it and thanked her. Opting not to use the boosters again, Hana trudged across the long, boiling hot parking lot with Boss in tow.

"You said I shouldn't trust anyone here."

Hana swung her legs over the edge of Ana's cot. Ana was preparing some sort of solution in what looked like a small, very sharp blue hypodermic needle.

"I did say that. And I still stand by it."

"So am I supposed to, like, assume everyone's out to get me?"

"One can't be too careful." Ana screwed a cap onto the dull end of the needle, sealing the mystery liquid inside. She added it to her belt full of other various needles and yellow tubes of…something or other. "Are you planning to leave with Junkrat?"

"Um…" Hana stared down at the floor. "I was thinking about it."

"They're planning on taking the lives of the men offering them a way out." She picked up her rifle and began idly polishing it with the same rag she had used last time. "Are you willing to take a life? Possibly several?"

"I can do it if I have to."

Ana held her rifle out to Hana. Hana looked it over, not sure exactly what she was supposed to be seeing. Then Ana ran a gloved thumb over the tally marks engraved along the side of the gun's barrel. Hana glanced up into Ana's single, enigmatic eye, awaiting an explanation.

"Every mark here is a life I've taken," Ana said quietly. "Each one weighs heavily upon me. It is not something to be taken lightly, or viewed as anything but an absolute last resort."

Hana's eyes drifted across the long line of tally marks. "You killed all these people?"

Ana nodded.

"Why?"

"I had a responsibility to my people. To my country." She drew the rifle back into her arms. "But that does not make it any more right or just."

"Were you a soldier?" Hana studied the woman curiously.

Ana hesitated, but then nodded.

"With the Australian military?"

"I can't tell you more than that. I'm sorry."

"Okay. That's okay." Hana hopped off the bed and stood at Ana's side while the older woman stared down at her rifle. After a few moments of silence Hana said, "Can you teach me how to use a gun?"

Ana stiffened. Her uncovered eye momentarily flared with some undisclosed emotion, but it faded before she replied. "…I suppose I could give you some pointers. But you must remember what I said. Taking a life is something you will never forget. It will remain with you for the rest of your life."

"I'd only use it for self-defense."

Ana raised an eyebrow. Hana squirmed under her stare.

"You want me to teach you how to use a gun while you're considering a plan that hinges on murdering several people." Ana folded her arms. "I may be old, child, but I'm not senile."

Hana sighed. "All right, fine. You got me. Will you still teach me, though?"

Ana massaged her temples. "I suppose."

"Cool! Thanks." Hana reached for Ana's rifle. Ana yanked it away from her, warding Hana off with her other hand.

"Not here. And not with this gun. Meet me outside in a few minutes, I will train you with a simple pistol."

"Okay. Thanks!" Hana hurried for the door. Before she exited the cell, she turned around for another brief moment. "You know, for an old lady you're pretty cool."

"Go, get out of here before I change my mind." Ana shooed her out. Hana giggled as she dashed from the room.

As it turned out, spending hours and hours of your life playing video games actually did have some benefit – she was a natural with the light gun Ana lent her. Ana seemed more than a little surprised when Hana was able to hit nearly every can and bottle she set up for her.

"Boomshakalaka!" Hana laughed as a glass bottle exploded upon contact with her shot. "I'm good at this!"

Ana watched her silently. "Wha-pssh!" Hana whipped around and fired at one of the cans. The shot just barely grazed it, but it technically did hit its mark, spurring her to pose triumphantly afterward.

"Nice shooting!"

Hana turned around to see Boss and a couple of her close Junker affiliates moving a big hunk of scrap metal inside the base. Boss was staring over at her, smiling just a little bit.

"Thanks!" Hana called back. As soon as she turned back to Ana she realized the older woman had lowered her mask and angled herself away from both Boss and Hana.

"You know," Hana said in a quieter voice, "she's not that bad. I think she's just a little messed up. We all are."

Ana held a hand out to Hana, palm up. After a moment of confusion Hana held up the light gun. Ana waggled her fingers indicatively. "Oh, um, okay." Hana dropped the gun into Ana's open hand. Ana tucked it back into her belt – then withdrew her sniper rifle from its sling on her back. Hana started to hold her hands out, thinking Ana was offering it to her, but quickly drew back as she realized Ana was taking aim at something so far off in the distance Hana couldn't even see what she was aiming for. The old woman held the scope up to her good eye, hesitated a moment, then pulled the trigger.

Hana waited several long seconds as Ana put her gun away and started to walk in the direction she had fired her shot. She followed silently as Ana crossed the entire parking lot, slipped through the bars of the unmanned gate, and finally stopped just before some dead bushes on the opposite side of the street.

At their feet was a dead rabbit with a bullet hole right through its head. The ground behind it held a splatter of blood in a near-perfect line.

"Oh my gosh." Hana looked from the rabbit to Ana and then back again. "You headshotted it from all that way off!"

Ana knelt down to the animal. She picked it up with gentle hands and looked it over. Then she lifted her mask enough to say, "We should eat this out here. It won't make a proper meal split up over thirty Junkers."

Hana was still awestruck. "You just…hit this tiny moving target from that far away? And you're not even making a big deal out of it?"

Ana disappeared past the bushes, out of sight of the prison. Hana scrambled after her. "Hey, wait for me! I want some!"

A rabbit wasn't much of a meal, but compared to canned food and stale rations it was gourmet. Hana gnawed eagerly at a leg, tearing off whatever bits of meat it held. She'd begun to notice some time ago that it was getting easier for her to tear into the animals she ate. A look in her cell "mirror" had revealed to her a strange mutation she seemed to be undergoing – her teeth were getting sharper, and seemed to be growing out in a more jagged pattern, like crocodile teeth. She didn't totally mind – it did make eating roadkill and other assorted dead animals a lot easier – but she supposed one surviving flicker of her old self deep inside felt a little sad about it. As shallow as it sounded, she had built her life around looking and being cute. She knew at least half her audience didn't watch her livestreams because they cared about her gaming strategies. For better or worse, it gave her an edge over her male competitors for stream views. Now even if things ever did go back to the way they were before, she knew they would never be the same for her.

Hana spat a tiny bone out onto the ground. Ana kept her portion of the rabbit clutched close to her face, obscuring her mouth as she nibbled at it. Hana watched her eat quietly. The old woman sitting across from her at this makeshift fire pit was clearly a skilled soldier, or former soldier at least. She could be some decorated war hero for all Hana knew. Hana could scarcely imagine surviving the hellfire of war just to end up eating wild rabbit with some crocodile-fanged teenager in the middle of a nuclear wasteland.

"Thank you," Hana said.

Ana paused at her meal. "Hm? For what, child?"

"For teaching me how to use a gun? For getting this rabbit? I don't know, for a lot of stuff."

"Ah. You're welcome." She sighed and lowered her shoulders a little. "I never thought I had much in the way of maternal instincts, but I hate seeing children, or even 'young adults' like yourself, thrust into such a miserable situation as this. I'm acclimated to it, but you…"

There was a long, heavy silence between them after that. Hana finished off the last of her half of the rabbit, licking her fingers loudly to break up the silence. After a while Ana finished her share of the meal as well, and dropped the bones into a neat pile on the ground. Neither made a move to get up.

"Do you wanna leave with me and Junkrat and Roadhog when we go?" Hana finally asked.

"So you've decided?"

"I mean, if we decide to do it, I guess."

Ana folded her arms and leaned back a little. "I should return home eventually. But I've been running for so long now…"

"Where's 'home'?" Hana decided to ask.

Ana hesitated, as if debating whether or not to answer. "Cairo."

"Isn't that in Egypt?"

Ana nodded.

"Wow, that's far!" Hana tilted her head. "How did you end up all the way down here?"

"Sometimes it feels like it wasn't far enough." Ana took her rifle into her hands and inspected it idly, a seemingly frequent habit for her. "I suppose there isn't a single place in this world to run from the things I have seen and done."

Skipping over her characteristically cryptic answer, Hana decided to press a little further. "So do you have family in Cairo?"

Ana lifted her stare back to Hana. "You're a nosy one, aren't you?"

Hana shrugged, grinning sheepishly.

The old woman smiled just a bit. "I do. Or rather I did. They believe me to be dead, as does much of the world."

Hana blinked. "Why do they think you're dead?"

That spurred a tiny laugh from Ana. "Probably because I faked my own death."

"What?"

Ana waved a hand dismissively. "I shouldn't be telling you all this. You just – you remind me of…someone, in some ways. Not all ways, but…" She shook her head. "Anyway, that's really all you need to know in regards to how a soldier from Cairo ended up a scavenger in the Australian Outback. The rest is my secret to keep."

"Okay." They fell into brief quietness again. Then Hana said, "I'm in Australia because my parents moved here from Korea when I was a kid."

That garnered a genuine laugh from Ana. "What a scandalous backstory!"

"I know, right?" Hana giggled. "Heh, but now they're dead and, so, uh…yeah." Her tone shifted midsentence as suppressed emotion bubbled to the surface. She laughed a little louder in an attempt to cover it up. "Haha so, y'know, just me now! Bet they never thought I'd be out here all alone at nineteen years old!"

The concern on Ana's face reminded her of her mother. Maybe that was spurring the memories back to the surface. Something certainly was, because for the first time in ages Hana felt tears sting her dried-out eyes.

"Oh, Hana." Ana reached out for her, but hesitated. Hana buried her face in her gloves and tried to let the tears slip out as quietly as possible, despite how obvious it must have been that she was crying. Her bony shoulders quivered as several quick, shallow breaths escaped her.

A hand settled on one of her shoulders. She peeked up from her gloves to find Ana kneeling in front of her, still wearing that motherly look of concern. Hana hugged her knees and kept her face as buried as possible.

"I'm sorry, Hana," Ana whispered. "Your parents surely loved you. They didn't abandon you on purpose. Sometimes…sometimes things just happen. I'm sure they would be with you now if they could."

Hana bit her lip. In an attempt to move past the tears, she asked Ana, "Do you have any kids?"

Ana visibly tensed. "I…have a daughter."

Hana locked on to her through teary, blurry eyes. "She thinks you're dead?"

Ana withdrew, her gaze falling to the ground at their feet.

Hana continued to stare her down, even as the tears continued to trickle down her face. "She would be so happy to know you're not actually dead."

Ana got to her feet, facing away from Hana. Hana got up and moved to stand in front of her, moving with her when Ana tried to avert her gaze.

"You should come with us. Once we get out of Australia we can go wherever we want. You could go back there. You could tell her you're alive!" Hana sniffled, the tears drying up as her mind moved forward to her next train of thought.

Ana turned back toward her. "…You're right, child. I should never have left her." She pulled her hood up over her snow white hair. "I don't know that she wants me back, but I should at least give her the option, shouldn't I?"

Hana slid her goggles down to cover her reddened eyes. "She'll want you back. I bet you're a good Mom. Um, other than faking your own death and hiding halfway across the world."

To her surprise, Ana chuckled dryly. "Ah yes, other than that minor parenting flaw…"

Hana reached out and gently grasped one of Ana's hands in her own. Mustering a smile, she said to her, "Come on, let's get back. We should talk to Junkrat and Roadhog and start planning what we're gonna do."

Ana glanced down at Hana's hand in hers. Hana tugged gently in the direction of the Junker base. After a moment's hesitation, she allowed Hana to lead her back to the prison.