A/N: All OC characters are based off the hero concept videos made by BlameTheController on YouTube. I do not own the rights to the characters and will take this fic down if he contacts me and asks me to.
Chapter 1: El volver del sol
The usually dark alleyways of Dorado laid desolate and calm as the smell of seasalt filled the air. The faint sound of the bell clanging in Misión Dorado could be heard from its courtyard, showered in the rising morning sun. There, among the brick walls and cacti, stood a number of soldiers, scientists, adventurers and oddities. They made preparations to move, an old woman securing her biotic grenades, a young DJ tuning his sound equipment and a flying scientist intently listening in on the healing music of his excited teammate as he prepared his barrier. As usual, Sombra knew more about the other four party members than she let on.
There was Ana, the old woman, a soldier who led Overwatch in the Omnic War. She, like many other ex-overwatch agents was trying to fight for the right thing. Fate led her to unknowingly work with two members of Talon, Sigma and Sombra. Ana Amari sat on the steps near the bushes, preferring her lone wolf gear preparation. Her metal eyepatch glinting in the morning sun as she sorted her healing and poison darts.
Then there was Ashe, the queen of the American Southwest, the scourge of mega-corporations, the reason trains in Texas had armed guards with them. She united the criminal organizations near her and bent them to her three golden rules. Sombra had much respect for such a master manipulator, able to build a gang powerful enough to take on anyone. Ashe polished her Viper Rifle and strapped dynamite onto her belt, her omnic partner in crime, B.O.B, loading his arm cannons. She was here for the same reason as Sombra, to get paid.
As opposed to Ashe, Sombra saw the pumped DJ as less of a threat. He may have liberated his city from a big corporation using stolen tech, just like her, but they were far from the same. While she did respect his ability and merit, he was a walking motivational podcast, never shutting up about how good they were going to do in battle. Lucio stood on the top level of the Misión Dorado blasting his tunes every now and then to test out the sound, leaning dangerously close to the edge since he could always wallride back up.
Lastly, the naïve and broken Sigma. The good doctor was either too nice or too traumatized to protest against being used by Talon. He was there of his own free will of course but she had a feeling that Talon was just around the corner, ready to move in if he tried to run away and start a life outside of Talon. As a man that always hears imaginary music, he was the only one who wasn't constantly annoyed by Lucio's happy-go-lucky attitude and tunes.
"You still have any contacts with Los Muertos?" a suave American voice said from behind her, hijacking Sombras train of thought. A smile spread across her face.
"I might, what's in it for me?" She responded, turning around with her standard mischievous grin.
"I'd offer you money, but I don't think that's what you're after." Ashe replied, leaning on her unloaded Viper Rifle. B.O.B clunked over and stood against the wall, sweating a bit of oil.
"No. So..." Sombra mused. "Any good stories about the cowboy?" Her grin deepened but they were interrupted before they could finish.
"Let's get going people! Let me hear that fighting spirit!" No one responded to the frog themed freedom fighter but he jumped out the door to the nearby truck none the less.
"Later, Carnala, you tell me some stories and I'll hook you up." Sombra activated her stealth and slipped into the shadows letting Ashe and the others escort the payload as she kept an eye on the alleyways, awaiting the inevitable ambush.
She threw her translocator up to the rooftops, teleported up and looked down on the route through the Mercado smiling at the sight of the Festival de la Luz decorations still spread across the market. It was good to be reminded where she came from and to remember the path she took to become the badass infiltrator she was. As she sat on guard, she picked up the scent of the Panadería Las Nieblas down below, baking the early morning bread, something she missed dearly from her younger years. Her stomach grumbled which made her realize that food had become a second priority, nowadays she always had a plan cooking before she had food cooking. Not that she was particularly good at cooking...
With no activity below other than her teammates, the hacker jumped from rooftop to rooftop and made her way to Banco de Dorado where a few people ran about getting their early morning bank errands done. She could see the payload along with its mercenaries come around the corner from where she sat on the massive stone arch as she hacked the peoples' phones from above looking for threats. She once again typed on her purple holo-screens and as her Stealth temporarily disabled she felt a chill go down her spine as a blade pressed against her throat.
"You're gonna let us take that payload, Olivia." a thin piece of leather barely covered the assassin up and his bare chest pressed against the cybernetics on her back. His voice was both throaty and hoarse, she could feel the slow beating of his heart through his rough drum-like skin. Her breath hitched in her throat as her brain quickly processed the danger, her pupils dilated as the instinctive activation of her translocator led nowhere. He grabbed the nail on her left index finger with his free hand and pulled until the cyber-nail broke in half and the holo-screens shut off along with her tech induced translucency as her system displayed an error in her field of vision.
"I think you got the wrong purple haired hacker Cabrón." she spat out with all the strength she could muster. She turned her head ever so slightly and felt the pressure of the knife increase. She saw blood red hair put up into a ponytail and an orange neon tattoo on his face and bare chest, clearly a member of Los Muertos.
"Just a little cut..." the man spoke slowly as he followed along with the movement of Sombras neck. The cold steel sliding across her neck and twisting around the veins ready to cut. "...and you're dead." she tried to keep her calm.
"Olivia is dead and you people better get that through your thick neon lit skulls." she said as the smell of sourdough and seasalt in her nostrils turned into cigarette smoke and cardboard.
"Vidal is here, get out of our way or get run over." the man jumped off the roof down towards the payload and pulled out a suppressed pistol. He rolled as he landed and fired at Sigma, quickly trying to take him out. The man moved, smelled and looked like a malnourished street kid but he somehow knew exactly when and how to strike. Sombra, seeing that her broken friend was in danger, rubbed her neck where the knife had been and got to repairing her system as more enemies arrived from the massive LumériCo Ziggurat up the street. As her system rebooted she took a closer look at the arriving enemies.
"It's time to fight! Forward!" a massive hulk of a man with gray armor and a white-as-snow beard approached and swung a huge rocket-hammer at B.O.B who tanked the hit like a champ. Ashe retaliated and fired her Viper quickly at the fast-approaching man, barely doing any damage to him due to the armor. She swapped targets to the newly arrived Los Muertos members as they approached from all sides, B.O.B squaring up with the loud crusader. His companion, a young woman in yellow armor, threw some repair packs on his hulking frame as she engaged Lucio and Ana to distract them from healing Sigma and Ashe. The knight put up his shield to let a man behind him shoot arrows towards B.O.B who rotated around the truck to take cover and help his partner with the surrounding gang members. Sigma had his hands full with the Los Muertos assassin lunging and dodging his attacks leaving Ana and Lucio unprotected as the amber-dressed squire swung at them.
"Ay, seriously? A bow?" Sombra got her system up and running again, reprogramming it so that the broken nail would be counted out. She jumped off the roof behind the hardlight shield, engaging the archer and causing him to split off from the fight to pursue her. Her machine pistol peppered fire onto the lightly armored man, but he dodged around an old car in the road gaining the advantage. People on the street took cover in the bank and courthouse, pulling out their phones to start recording, thankfully it didn't seem like anyone got hurt. Behind the archer and the hammer wielding knight Sombra could spot Vidar joining the fight but she didn't have time to focus on him as her foe shot blue colored arrows of light towards her which she was barely able to dodge as they grazed her shoulder and hip. She used her cloaking device to flank around the car but was faced with a bow and arrow to her face when she turned the corner, as if he could see right through her invisibility, an electronic arrow was imbedded in the hood of the old car.
"Checkmate." the man said with a thick Japanese accent.
Sombra cursed internally at distracting herself with the details of the fight and forgetting to put down a translocator before she jumped down from the roof, she had no other choice than to surrender or get an arrow through the skull. At the payload behind the archer both Lucio and Ana had fallen victim to the Los Muertos members and the assassin she had previously encountered while the knights along with Vidar had pushed up to pressure Sigma even more. With no healing Sigma was forced to retreat using his power over gravity to take to the rooftops and retreat. Ashe had fought as valiantly as she could against the horde of Los Muertos but B.O.B eventually dragged her from the fight when she couldn't fire another bullet without collapsing. Her team was spread too thin to win this fight and there was nothing she could do about it.
The Japanese man brought her to the payload where Los Muertos started to hotwire the truck with the energy core and grab Ana's biotic equipment, much to her dismay. He tied her up with some loose rope a gang member threw him. The armored crusaders looked on in despair, not knowing Ana would be escorting the payload but happy she was alive and well, Sombra could see some semblance of familiarity between them. They pulled Vidar to the side to talk to him briefly before getting paid and leaving with the archer who left without a word, throwing a look of malice towards Sombra as he did so. The civilians around were getting rowdy with the Los Muertos members having a hard time controlling the gathering crowd. The assassin tied up Sombra but was barely able to push her onto the ground with her teammates. How such a weak man did so much in one fight was baffling to her. With her back to Ana and Lucio, Sombra used her nails to try to slowly whittle down on the ropes holding them all together, but the assassin called over Vidal before she could finish her escape.
Vidal was a wide-shouldered man with a strange short braided beard. He towered over the three defeated mercenaries, tattoos glowing purple, looking sour and bitter. His sickly olive skin camouflaged with the stone archway under the Palacio de Justicia and made his yellow eyes glow along with the rising morning sun. He looked stern, weathered and disappointed, like a father who just caught his daughter stealing a piece of candy. Vidal was staring straight into her soul and if The Doctor himself being present during a heist wasn't strange enough, Vidal and his protegees' fixation on Sombra was a cause for concern.
"First you go and hang with those Talon folk..." His tattoos glowed a deeper shade of purple as he spoke. "then you go and take a job supplying LumeríCo with an energy core." the man started wandering "And the worst part is, everyone will be okay with you actively working against us." he grabbed his forehead and took a seat. "Why is Sombra, the hero of the people, the liberator of Dorado now working for LumeríCo?"
"Huh? We got this job through less than legal channels..." Ana stated weakly from her tied-up position. "A corporation didn't hire us." she spoke cautiously, not wanting to trigger the man more than she had to.
"Maybe not officially." Vidal replied curtly.
"Okay listen, I didn't mean anything by it compa. I'm working to get money, if I knew it was against you, I wouldn't have taken the job." Sombra gets out "And no offense but Atlas News called me a hero wrongly, they also thought it was the work of a hacking group." she finished with the rope and stood up, breaking free from her bonds. Vidal, surprised but distracted, shook his head and opened his mouth to speak as his hands twitched a bit. His neon tattoos turned yellow while his demeanor and aura completely changed, he moved with grace and calm.
"We're happy to have you back Sombra! We kept your hacking den in top condition." his tone of voice sounded completely different.
"This is Leech, he's Malo's favorite enforcer."
Vidal pushed the assassin forward in a rough but careful way, like a dog pushing a beach ball. The thin assassin looked away at the other Los Muertos members and threw a quizzical look to Vidal. He answered it with a head-nod indicating that he could go help out.
"He's all work no play, come along now Chica, we must throw you a feast!" the tattoos shifted between yellow shades, settling on a lemon-like shade. Vidal threw out his arms in a welcoming gesture and untied the defeated heroes. He winced in pain as he bent down, paying no mind to one of Ashe's bullets still lodged in his thigh.
"You have good friends, be happy for that, reduced pay for your safety!" the two healers didn't need to be told twice. They ran off towards the Mercado, Ana stripped of her biotic grenades and darts but still with her trusty rifle and sleep darts intact.
"Vidal! Let's move before the federales get here!" Leech yelled from the truck "We're right outside a bank let's go."
"You coming?" Vidal looked at her quizzically.
She had nothing to gain personally from hanging around the gang, but maybe she could set Ashe up with a deal while reconciling with some old friends.
"Convince me, Ese."
"We have new tech and we're not a dictatorship anymore." he put on a plain expression, as if he was hiding something.
"How does that affect our deal then?" she asked, worried about her return.
"We'll see when we get there."
She rarely had that little information to make a decision with, but considering she had no idea the ambush was orchestrated by Los Muertos up until it happened, her information on Los Muertos could all be considered outdated. She needed to go to the belly of the beast to find out what was going on with the gang.
"Hope your new leadership has a more positive opinion of me." she patted the man on the shoulder, letting him lead the way to the cars.
The Los Muertos crew moved out in a van and two cars, the same vehicles they arrived in. The neon green lev-rim van was big enough to fit a little over half of the crew that had moved in during the ambush. They transported the core on the truck her team had used, putting Leech in the driver seat and another high-ranking gang member in the passenger seat to keep their paycheck safe. One of the cars seemed to have been unofficially dubbed the "meat wagon", all four of the gang members in that car were injured enough to where Vidal couldn't heal it. One man had part of his face burnt from one of Ashe's dynamites while another had been knocked unconscious by a stray floating rock and the driver had been sleeping half the fight when she was woken up by hardlight soundwaves and a punch to the head. Vidal, Sombra and two neon tattooed crooks took the last car, a rusty orange car with no lev-rims and multiple spray paint designs on the hood and doors. As the crew left the crowd of people and the streets of Dorado, sirens filled the air behind them as the city finally woke up to properly deal with the situation.
"You look tired, tough business today?" the corrupted Curandero turned smoothly in the car to face her, not unlike the grace she was used to seeing Maximilien exhibit.
"Hermano, I'm not tired because it's been tough, I'm tired because the future will be." Sombra stared at her broken nail while The Doctor in front of her lost his grace and slumped against his seat.
"You should be, I bet Malo's gonna give you a real hard time when we get there." he glowed purple "And what was that Vaquera on? Just use pulse munitions like normal people, no need to go all Wild West..." Vidar fidgeted around with the bandage as he put it on his leg "...now I have to consult the spirits more than I usually do."
Sombra looked out the window of the car, stared at the passing trees and closed her eyes for a while. She hadn't slept for 46 hours...