This chapter introduces one of the more prominent OC's of this story. Along with our main villains.
Two days earlier:
Perth. Often billed as the most isolated metropolitan city in the world. Thousands of kilometers from even the closest other major Australian cities, separated by the vast barren, radiated outback. It was the only sign of any kind of civilization in this part of the vast Australian continent.
Leslie Martin was taking the train back to her apartment after a day of work for Lucheng Interstellar's Perth branch, located along the beaches of the Indian Ocean. Working in a laboratory all day is grueling work. Making sure all tests go according to plan, making sure no one gets accidently killed, seeing if all the calculations used for whatever new aerospace travel devices were correct.
The day was long and the work arduous. All Leslie wanted to do now was to go home to her girlfriend.
Leslie undid her dusty blonde hair down from the ponytail it was done up it so it could drape across her shoulders and the top of her blouse. She couldn't wait to change out of her work clothes into something more comfortable. Even if she did wear a labcoat for most of her job's duties, she was still required to wear proper clothes. Even if no one could actually see them.
The train reached her stop in West Perth, as Leslie walked down the main boulevard straddling West Perth and Subiaco. Her apartment was in one of the mid-tier high-rises near King's Park, one of the many developments built to keep Perth on pace with the rest of Australia in post-crisis development. It was on the third floor, not at all out of reach from walking up a flight of stairs in the central area to reach.
"Emma, I'm home!" Leslie called out, wondering if her girlfriend was in the place. It wasn't that late yet, and she didn't have to work late. "Emma?"
"In here sweetie," Emma replied from the kitchenette, waiting for her with two Swan beer bottles in hand.
'Thanks babe," Leslie kissed her girlfriend on the lips, taking one of the bottles and leading her to their couch.
Their apartment was what you'd normally find. A living space with a tv and couch, kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom. At least it would be considered normal if it weren't for the massive amount of Overwatch paraphernalia littered all over the place. Simply put, even thought they were mature adults, the couple were huge fans. Hell, they had plenty of action figures of the heroes scattered about in various poses.
Posters filled in whatever empty space the walls had, the most prominent heroes featured were Tracer, Zarya, Lucio, and Winston, though he was only there do Lucheng's association with the Horizon moonbase Winston grew up on. The other three were their definite favorites, the largest poster they had depicted them in outfits of their respective countries as part of the Summer Games promotion. In others, Lucio was depicted either DJ'ing in front of a large crowd or gliding across walls on his blades. Zarya would be shown either lifting weights or surrounded by a shield-bubble as she fired her particle cannon. And all the posters they had of Tracer had her showing a two-fingered salute in whatever pose she was in, either casually or in action. The place they bought these from just had it labeled "salute," but the two women had other ideas as to what it really meant.
"How was work?" Emma asked, after they clanged their bottles and did a brief chug.
"It was rough," Leslie lamented. "Just more tests for the new Slipstream model, but nothing was going right. One of the test pilots came close to being flipped inside out."
"Well of course it wasn't going right. If our girl Tracer couldn't pilot it, what makes you think anyone else can?"
"Oh we're nowhere near close enough having someone pilot it yet. Still working on time-jumping aspects of it."
"Don't say I didn't warn you when there's so many more Tracers around."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"Well Tracer herself is our little gay cinnamon roll. You don't know what other people having this tech can do."
"Emma, it's not the same thing. Plus no one's gonna steal it. No one can if the public doesn't know it exists yet."
"Oh sure, that helps. Let me remind you we live in a country with a bunch of outback nomad thieves that can just take whatever they want at random."
"Babe, you're worried about the wrong parts here. When this is all said and done, when we finally perfect this, Overwatch'll be able to put down any chances of whatever terrorist uprisings happening."
"It's gonna backfire, I'm telling you."
"You do know there've been 10 years of improvements since our gay sunshine got in her accident. That's what I was trying to say."
"Say what?"
"We've pretty much figured out what malfunctioned in the original slipstream. Some miscalculations with the quantum drive. Ended up being too powerful and harmful for the pilot. So we're working on toning the tachyon field down, bring it back up one babystep at a time, and insuring all our test subjects get the adequate projection they need."
"What kind of protection?"
"We're still working on developing that."
"When will it be finished?"
"Not for a few months at least. With prototypes, testing, all that shit. All that on top of finally presenting the thing to Overwatch. Hell, we don't even know if they actually want the thing."
"So what if they say no?"
"Sure some lower-level national military wouldn't mind buying some. These jets are fucking expensive to produce."
"Well, if anyone can do it, I'm sure it's you."
"You're too optimistic, you know that?" Leslie chugged down more of her beer before kissing Emma again. "Anyways, I'm parched. Wanna get something to eat?"
"I don't feel like sitting down and waiting."
"Could just be take-out."
"How 'bout we just go the first fast-food place we like?"
"Sounds like the boring usual."
"Come on, you like our boring usuals."
"Could be worse. It's better than trying whatever tea-infused crap you're trying to make."
"Hey, I worked hard on those!"
"Did you? I don't believe it?" Leslie reached in to give Emma another kiss.
"When we get back, how's 'bout we do a gaming marathon run?" Emma suggested. "I'd at least like to reach gold before the season's over."
"Just let me change into something else, then we can go."
Leslie went into their bedroom, and a few minutes later, re-emerged wearing jeans and sleeveless top with an atom on it and the phrase "My favorite compound is Gallium Yttrium," offering her arm to lead her brunette girlfriend out.
The couple headed east towards downtown as they leave their building, as the sun was setting over the outlying areas on the coastline. They passed a movie theater showing the 100th anniversary re-release of the first Star Wars movies, reminding themselves they had to see it at some point. After walking a few blocks, the couple found a Mad Mex's taking up the bottom floor of an office building, one of their usual places, with the line starting just inside the main entrance. The two argued what kind of salsa to get with their chips, since they liked to share. Leslie was more inclined to have the spicy, soupy kind where you had to dig around for the veggies, while Emma just liked the kind that was essentially Pico de Gallo. A quick game of rock, paper, scissors decided that they'd get Leslie's option. The dusty blonde ordered a burrito with most of the fixings inside while the brunette got an order of tacos. They sat down at two open stools near the entrance facing a wall with a ledge for food hanging off it.
"You know what Leslie," Emma said as they sat down, the blonde already preparing to take a bite out of her burrito. "What would happen if you did join Overwatch?"
Leslie bit down awkwardly as she chewed, biting her tongue amidst the food in her mouth. "Ahh," she moaned with the food still there. "I bit my tongue!"
"Didn't mean for that sweetie," Emma rubbed her shoulder as Leslie tried drowning out the pain more by eating more of her burrito, swallowing before talking again.
"Emma, everyone in the world wants to be part of Overwatch. It doesn't mean they can. There's a whole process of vetting and going over qualifications for non-military people."
"No really, I think you'd make a kickass scientist, or engineer like Torbjorn."
"Building little turrets around a battlefield isn't my strong suit."
"Then you can help the scientists then. I'm sure Winston or those Vishkar people could use whatever ideas are in that head of yours."
"I deal in particle physics. I don't know if that stuff is in my area of expertise."
"Isn't everything, including that Vishkar hard light stuff, made of particles?"
"I suppose, but I haven't' the faintest idea how that works."
"I'm sure it's not that hard. And when you do, you can crank it up a notch."
"Vishkar people have whole academies dedicated to that sort of thing. You can't just pick it up on a whim."
"Then learn how."
The innocence Emma gave off amused Leslie as she ate more chips.
"And you can find out if Tracer actually is gay!" Emma insisted.
"Oh come on! I'm not gonna join to fuel your obsessions."
"If Overwatch isn't gonna tell the public who is and who isn't, we have to figure out through other ways."
"What about you? Am I just supposed to leave you here in Perth?"
"There has to be shore leave or something like that. Plus, I'd visit wherever you'd end up."
"The nearest bases are on the east coast, and I don't think I'd end up there. Don't think that's a journey you want to make all that often."
"Ah, it'd be worth it. Not to mention all the dirt I'd get."
"You're awful, you know that?"
"Oh I know," Emma took one of the chips and booped Leslie on her sharp nose with it before dipping it into the salsa.
Out on the streets, a siren started going off. Normally, this sort of thing would happen during the day, testing for the event of any sort of attack on Australian cities, like a citywide fire drill done at schools. It's what the country implemented after the Omnic crises and the occasional appearances by the Junkers. This was only a problem on the more heavily populated East coast, with the likes of Brisbane, Sydney, and occasionally Adelaide dealing with them in the decades past. Nothing like that ever happened in Perth, due to its isolation.
But the fact that the sirens went off in the evening seemed odd.
"Damn siren tests," Leslie muttered as she lead Emma out, following the rest of the Mad Mex's crowd from inside onto the streets, the sirens from the streetposts still blaring. "We get it, it's a test. Will you shut up!?" Much to Leslie's chargan, the sirens didn't stop, leading her to kick one of the metal posts.
But a noise came from the north heading east. A large crowd numbering the thousands was heading their way, all shouting, screaming, gasping for air, with most of them looking behind to keep pace and run away from what was pursuing them.
"What's going on?" Emma asked, constantly turning her head back and forth to keep track of the crowds.
Then, another noise growing louder and louder came down from the Northwest. The noise of combustion engines and revved up motorcycles. The kind no modern person had anymore.
Oh god, Leslie thought to herself. Junkers.
"Run goddamnit!" Leslie shouted, grabbing Emma's hand and running along with the crowd. Emma didn't look ahead to where everyone was running to, she just continued to look behind her at the group of Junker trucks appeared in her field of vision. Motorcycles carrying a single junker each ran ahead of the main pack. They wore black and white facepaint with bizarre designs on them, had rounds of ammunition around their chests and wielded crude, homemade looking submachine guns.
"Who among you's ready to be judged?" one of the junkers shouted, firing his gun into the air and occasionally into the crowds.
Leslie led Emma down one of the sideroads, trying to make it to the next street over, still making their general way to the bridge across the Swan river. The situation was the same there, with crowds fleeing the grotesque looking trucks this band of junkers possessed. Among each one, with large tires, rusted exteriors, and designs of skulls, guns, and worms decaled on them, a man or woman with tattered clothes and facepaint was standing on top shouting about judgment has come, the Australian people have lost their way, and there was no use fighting. Leslie and Emma didn't hide for long, returning to the fleeing crowd making their way to the river.
"What the fuck is happening?" Emma shouted, trying to keep pace. "I thought the junkers were supposed to be peaceful now."
"Clearly these one's aren't," Leslie quickly replied, not looking back. "Just keep running."
"Where are we even running to?"
"The river, by the looks of it. Just away from these savages."
"Can't we run back to our place and wait this out?"
"We'd be going straight back into them," Leslie got out before the crowd abruptly stopped, causing the two to collide into the people in front of them. That gave the pack of junkers more than enough time to surround the fleeing crowd, at this point Leslie guessed was in the thousands. They were just short of a bridge going across Heirisson Island and the Swan River. And motorcycles, cars, and trucks encircling them shocked them into not moving with their firearm displays.
Leading the pack was a souped-up picked-up truck painted in a similar black and white fashion as the people driving the cars. But Leslie couldn't be sure of it being another truck since the loading area had a retractable cover over it. And the cover started folding back in.
Standing up in the space was probably the fattest man Leslie saw in her entire life. His body was covered in tattoos of designs she couldn't sure of, though some did resemble the shapes painted on the cars. Worms, skulls, and some hammers too. Given the tussles of obviously dyed long black hair along with desert worm wrinkles on his exposed skin, he's seen some shit. And next to him was a similarly middle-aged woman, wearing only stitched together leather pants, a black crop top, and sunglasses against her bleached hair.
"Citizens of Perth," the fat man started proclaiming, speaking into his truck's built-in radio, with the words coming out of some in-board speakers. "Tonight, you are witnesses to what the future of our proud country holds. What started with destroying the Omnium will come to an end soon. No more will we revel in what other powers have decided for us. We're taking control of our nation's destiny, one free of the control of the U.N. and their lackeys! Now,"
"Piss off," an Asian man near the front shouted.
"What?" the fat man got off his radio to address the man himself.
"Why don't you piss off back to the Outback and let us live in," he didn't finish his sentence, as the woman pulled a shotgun out and fired right at his chest. He collapsed to the ground out of Leslie's sight.
"Damn chink," the fat man muttered to the woman before returning to his radio-mic. "That kind of behavior won't be tolerated. Acts that go against the unity we're trying to promote. Australia has lost its way in putting our decision-making above ourselves. We are the ones who'll take that power back. Now who will join us and be spared?"
More sirens sounded out, which everyone thought at first was just coming from the streetposts again. But they were coming from far away, and approaching closer and closer. Followed by flashing lights of police cars and military vehicles heading their way.
"Maggots, take care of them!" the fat leader shouted, directing the motorcycle-riding junkers to leave and deal with the law enforcement heading their way. But the break in the loose circle of maniacs was all that about 30 of the crowd needed, Leslie and Emma included, to try and run for it on a bridge across the Swan River.
"Run!" Leslie tried shouting amidst all the other screaming happening.
"Maggot, after them! Waste them!" The fat man instructed one of the trucks, to follow across the bridge.
The group had run about halfway across when the junker truck came back into their field of vision. The painted man standing up through the truck's sunroof wielded a submachine gun, shooting whoever was lagging behind with untempered fury in his eyes
A crack when off from in front of the running group and the truck driver slumped onto the steering wheel and the car started serving before crashing into the right barrier, the momentum sending the crazed junker on top over the bridge into the water below. The crowd was too busy running to pay attention to what caused that.
At the end of the bridge, they found a group of seven covered trucks and one man with a black goatee standing with a rifle. This must've been the cause of that car serving off the bridge.
"Anyone who values your life, get in these before more junker's come along," the man shouted. And while the crowd did disperse and followed his orders, filing in the canopied back of the trucks, Leslie and Emma were briefly confused. Why this person was saving the mass of people by loading them into his trucks.
"Hey, you," he called to the dazed scientist. "What's your name?"
"Um, Leslie?"
"Hey Leslie, I'm Bruce. You wanna get out of here?"
"Of course, but,"
"Well, yer coming with us," Bruce picked Leslie up and slung her over a shoulder, walking towards a truck with a canopied back, with others inside. "Hey Cait, start 'er up!" he shouted. The sound of the truck's ignition followed.
"No, let me down!" Leslie shouted, pounding on his back with her fists and trying to wiggle out of his grip. "Emma!" she screamed.
"We've got plenty of other trucks. Your friend can tag along in one of those."
"Put me down right now!"
"Ain't letting you die miss."
Emma saw her girlfriend being carried away and ran towards her, but Leslie pointed at one of the other trucks, urging her to get in one of those. Not before Bruce threw her into the back of his truck, along with other people with as much fright on their faces Leslie had inside herself. Bruce hit the side to let whomever Cait they were ready. Pretty soon, as Bruce took the driver's seat, the truck started moving and heading it's way along the highway heading north, passing by suburbs where people were still panicking in the streets out of fear the junkers would head their way.
"Was only a matter of time," Bruce started ranting. "We knew at some point, those Junkers would end up here, tearing up the place like they'd used to do back before the second crisis. Course this ain't like the ones who showed up in Cairns, Townsville, Newcastle, or even the ones in Melbourne or Sydney. Those ones just wanted to rob and disrupt things for a day. These wankers, they're something else."
Looking at the open view behind the truck, Leslie saw that of all the seven trucks that the convoy started off with, only one was still following them. "Where are the other trucks?" she nervously asked, crawling from the back to a little window behind the driver's seats.
"Making it harder for those Junker freaks to catch us," Cait said from the passenger's seat. "Too wrapped up destroying whatever they find to follow separate convoys."
"Okay," Leslie continued, rubbing her fingers against her temples. "I'm only gonna ask you this once. Where are we going?"
"To where we can get to the bottom of this," Bruce explained as the truck started to make it's way through the northern city limits. "There's only one place those savages could've come from, and they have to answer for what,"
"Shut the fuck up and say where already!" Leslie shouted impatiently.
"We're going to Junkertown."
Junkertown? Now? Smack-dab in the middle of the Outback? Right where these monsters came from? The destination, on top of not knowing where Emma was, sent Leslie into a panic.
"We'll never make it," Leslie started panicking in rapid succession. "This truck'll run out of fuel. The Junkers will catch back up to us. There's bound to be more along the way! We'll starve!"
"Shut up back there, will ya?" Cait shouted back at the passengers in a way that didn't help the situation, then dialed back her tone. "If you want to get out, we'll gladly stop for you. But for one thing, I'd like to imagine all of ya want to get to the bottom of this. Why these lunatics attacked our city. Well, Junkertown's our best chance of figuring out. Besides, we can get food, water, and fuel along the way there."
"But the people who live there are supposed to be peaceful. We haven't heard anything from there in months."
"Well maybe they cracked. You'd think with all the weridos out there someone'd be spreading crazy ideas."
Leslie stopped spouting what harmful thought came into her head and paused, trying to think this through. She saw behind her the convoy was now passing through the forests that dotted the eastern parts of the city. And soon, in a few hours or so, they'd reach the mountain ranges that'd mark the beginning of the outback. Sure it won't be that bad, Leslie kept thinking and reassuring herself. We'll end up wherever Junkertown is, meet up with whatever truck Emma ended up in, and get everything settled so we can go back to Perth. Shouldn't be that hard. Hopefully, none of our stuff is damaged.
"Do you have a plan for when we get there?" she asked the drivers.
It took the two people up front a few seconds of silence to think of something before Bruce replied. "It's a three-day drive. We'll come up one on the way."
Soundtrack:
I Predict a Riot- Kaiser Chiefs