Reaper glared up at the massive barrier of rusted steel that rose out of the dusty bushland, the harsh Australian sun just barely peeking over the edge of the reclaimed structure. His claws flexed just inches from where his shotguns were holstered under his jacket. He got the feeling that he wouldn't be getting out of this god-forsaken place without a fight, whether he meant to start one or not. For once, he would prefer to have this done as quickly and cleanly as possible… not that he wouldn't have enjoyed the opportunity to take out his pent-up aggression on a few of these insufferably obnoxious outlaws, but he was here on a specific mission.
As he approached the gate, a porthole squeaked rustily open. There was a crackle of static before a gravelly voice addressed him over an old P.A. system.
"Whaddaya want?"
Straight to the point. Good.
"I need a word with your boss," Reaper rumbled in response. There was a pause during which he could feel the unseen gatekeeper sizing him up.
"Leave yer weapons at the gate."
Reaper narrowed his eyes behind his mask at the order.
"No," was his flat reply.
"Then ya ain't getting' in, mate!"
And with that, the porthole slammed shut, leaving him standing there with only the desert wind to keep him company. A low growl rumbled in the wraith's throat. Hard way it was, then.
Reaper stared up towards the top of the city wall, focusing his attention on what he supposed was the most stable portion he could find. A miasma of black mist swirled around his feet before engulfing him entirely. The mist then dissipated, taking his disintegrated body with it, and snaked its way up towards the top of the wall. The black fog congealed on the spot he'd isolated before, and his imposing figure solidified once more.
Reaper found himself staring down into the cauldron of the old Omnium, shabbily-dressed scavengers milling about the improvised streets. A cacophony of brash and colorful language rose up from both men and women alike, and at such a volume that they could be heard over the banging of metal from innumerable salvage shops. Watching all of this, it would be clear to anyone that this was Junkrat's hometown, though these Junkers weren't nearly as obnoxious as their infamous unofficial ambassador.
Lucky for Reaper, the residents of Junkertown rarely had reason to watch for attacks from above. Why would they? The whole area was still a no-fly zone, one holdover from the town's past as a warzone that no one was prepared to complain about. Because of this, the deadly mercenary was able to hop from point to precarious point without raising an alarm.
He continued on through the ramshackle town unseen until he reached the former Omnium's core at the heart of what the locals apparently called "the Scrapyard." His ghostly form slithered over to the edge of the gargantuan hole in the top of the dome, wherefrom he could peer down into the heart of what served as Junkertown's government.
He spotted her almost immediately. She lounged in a makeshift throne that seemed to have been salvaged from an old Victorian-style armchair, one long leg hooked over one of the armrests in a bored, decidedly unfeminine way. She seemed to be doing her best to ignore the pudgy little old man before her, preferring to play with the end of her long red braid rather than listen to him prattle on about the upcoming events of the Scrapyard. Perhaps now would be the optimal time to ease Her Majesty's boredom.
The Reaper leaned forward and let himself fall from his perch, landing on the ground below in a burst of black smoke. By the time he reconstituted into his solid form once again, he found himself standing face to face with the Queen herself, a huge axe blade held just centimeters from his throat. A full second elapsed before the clatter of readying weapons sounded around them.
Reaper and the Queen stared each other down for a tense moment, each sizing the other up. He was slightly annoyed that he had to look up to meet the woman's intense gaze. They sure did grow them big in Junkertown. Must be something in the water.
"Ya sure went to a lotta effort to make an entrance like that. Can't help but wonder why." The comment sounded conversational enough, but he easily detected the underlying demand.
"My client sent me to deliver a message. He wants to make a deal with you," the wraith hissed in reply, the added malice in his voice making it quite clear how much he resented having been reduced to being Vishkar's glorified messenger boy. He wouldn't have bothered at all if he wasn't the only one available that didn't fear Junkertown's radiation.
"Oh?" the Queen replied, clearly intrigued by language that hinted at money. She lowered her axe and motioned for her Enforcers to stand down as well.
"Alright, Grim. Let's hear it."
Reaper growled lightly at the giantess' use of the diminutive nickname, but complied with her request nonetheless. He reached into a pouch on his belt, retrieving a small device that had the clear style of Vishkar's sterile hard light construction. He placed the device on the rust-riddled floor before taking a step back. This instantly raised the suspicion of the Junkers. The Queen's grip tightened around the handle of her axe, and he could hear her Enforcers taking aim with their guns once more. Rather than explode as the Junkers surely expected it would, the device instead spewed forth a thin pillar of light from the opening in the top. After a moment, the pillar of light scattered into the holographic image of Abhisara Vishkar.
"Greetings, Your Highness," the businessman began in his usual amicable manner, his voice crackling slightly due to the distance and local interference affecting the transmission. "I must apologize for this abrupt meeting, but I'm afraid what I must discuss with you is quite an urgent matter."
"Oh yeah?" the Queen scoffed, arching a thin brow at the man's image. "And just what would a high and mighty Suit like you need a bunch of 'savages' like us for? Here I thought you rich cunts could just snap your fingers and get whatever you want."
Vishkar let the Queen's clear distain for his social status roll off him like water off a duck's back, responding to her little jab with a friendly chuckle.
"As it happens, money can't buy everything. It can, however, buy people who can acquire just about anything, which is why I have come to you. I have discovered recently that you Junkers are quite the resourceful group. In fact, it is this very trait that has been vexing me of late."
"Uh huh. Yer after Junkrat, ain't ya?" she replied without missing a beat. Vishkar bowed slightly to indicate that she had guessed correctly.
"As perceptive as you are beautiful, I see."
In response to this, the Queen spat at the floor near his hologram projector.
"Empty flattery only buys you a punch to the jaw. Ya wanna hire my boys? Ya better start talking numbers. Fair warning, though; it ain't gonna come cheap, especially if yer wantin' us to hunt down an annoying prick like Junkrat. I kicked that fucker out for a reason."
"I assure you, payment will not be an issue," Vishkar responded, though all he got for his assurances was a hard, distrusting stare. He let out a sigh before continuing on.
"Fifty million Australian dollars in gold at current market price for the safe retrieval of the target."
That number was enough to raise the Queen's eyebrows. However, she didn't agree just yet.
"Define 'safe.'"
"I need him alive, as cognizant as possible, and preferably able to speak. Beyond that, you may do with him what you will."
This stipulation brought a smile to the Junker leader's lips.
"Alright, mate. Ya just bought yerself some mercenaries."
Bruce had been watching uneasily from the safety of one of the repair pits of the Scrapyard as the deal between the head of Vishkar and the Queen of Junkertown was brokered out in the main arena. He didn't much care for the Suit or his hooded messenger boy purely on gut feeling alone, but that gut feeling was quickly vindicated when he heard who it was they were hunting. Junkrat… He knew the boy well. The lanky loudmouth had worked for him for years as a child, back before he'd traded his job as a lowly scavenger to pursue a life of crime.
But it wasn't Junkrat's potential fate that had Bruce's stomach tying itself into a nervous knot. Roadhog had been in the boy's employ for over a decade now. The two of them had never been seen apart for nearly fifteen years, and the old engineer doubted that the arrangement would have fallen apart now of all times. If they were going after Junkrat, then they'd be after Roadhog as well.
Losing a good scavenger was always a shame, but Bruce could get over such a loss without too much heartache. That was just the nature of the job. Mako, on the other hand… Mako was a friend. He'd fought side by side with the giant bruiser for the liberation of their homeland, a bond he hadn't formed with any other living Junker. Old Mako was one tough bastard, but not even he could single-handedly keep the Queen's army at bay. He couldn't let a friend go out like that.
Bruce slipped out of the Scrapyard and made a bee-line for the main gate, trying his best to avoid the gaze of any of the Queen's Enforcers he happened to cross paths with. There wasn't anything particularly suspicious about him stepping out of town – though it was admittedly rare – but he was pretty sure the Queen wouldn't be terribly pleased if she knew why he was going out there.
Mako's farm was just on the edge of the Junkertown outskirts, the last thing you passed before entering the barren, unforgiving wasteland that the Northern Territory had become. It hadn't functioned as an actual farm since before the conflict between the A.L.F. and the Omnics. The fields produced nothing but dust, the livestock reduced to sun-bleached skeletons. It was a dead place befitting its owner.
The small shack that Roadhog had gifted to Junkrat for use as a workshop was especially barren. An early attempt to loot the place after the two of them left had resulted in a few deaths, but once all of the traps were either disarmed or detonated, it had been more or less cleaned out. Roadhog's barn had been spared for the most part, mostly due to the specter of his intimidating form looming in the mind of any who dared to approach the place. Bruce held no such superstition about the place. Besides, Mako had left him his key.
He undid the massive padlock securing one of the smaller side doors, taking one last peek back over his shoulder before slipping inside. The air within was musky and stale from months of being uninhabited. Bruce stifled a cough and immediately had half a mind to open up all the doors and windows to air it out before its asthmatic owner returned. That could wait for another time, though. Mako wasn't likely to return anytime soon, given the current circumstances. Besides, he had more pressing business to attend to.
The old engineer set to work rummaging through the many drawers of Roadhog's garage area, picking through tools and bomb components and bits of scrap. It was quite difficult trying to tell the difference between Roadhog's and Junkrat's stuff in all the jumbled mess, but he supposed it wouldn't really matter if he could. What he was looking for could have belonged to either of them.
Finally, wedged in the corner of one of the bottom-most drawers, he found it. It resembled a business card, though it clearly belonged to no Suit. It was made from a glossy purple material that seemed to emit its own glow, a pixel-style sugar skull design fixed in the center. The old engineer felt sick just thinking about how much it would cost him to enlist the elusive hacker's help, but he had no other way to get a message out to Mako in time.
Tracer let out a pained groan as she slowly regained consciousness. Her head was throbbing, her face felt like it had been split open. Her vision was blurry even as she attempted to get her wits about her. It took her a while to even notice that someone was talking to her.
"Lena? Lena, can you hear me?"
Finally, Tracer managed to force her eyes to focus, revealing a broad, dark face above her. Winston's expression instantly shifted from panic to relief once she was able to focus on him. The gorilla moved to one side just enough to let Mercy attend to her injuries, but was otherwise glued to the plucky Brit's side.
"Thank goodness…" he breathed out in a sigh of relief, "I thought they'd killed you!"
"Uhh… Who?" Tracer replied, at first confused. She then took a look around her, and it all started coming back to her.
She was in her pajamas, lying on the cold bare floor of the main hangar. The morning sunlight streamed in from where the main bay doors once stood, the smoldering remains of which lay scattered all around. If the chaotic destruction wasn't enough to jog her memory, the distinct absence of a certain cobbled-together motorcycle certainly did the trick. She sat bolt upright despite both Mercy's and Winston's protests.
"The Junkers!" she exclaimed urgently. "They've escaped! Or… they've taken off… Th-they're gone!"
"We know," came the gruff reply from the Overwatch commander. Soldier 76 was nearby the Orca dropship, presumably inspecting its hull for damage from Junkrat's explosives.
"Shouldn't we go after them? They'll be exposed to attack from Talon out there on their own!"
"Why should we?" came the semi-synthetic voice of Genji from somewhere over by the ruined hangar door. "They're the ones who came to us for help in the first place. If they don't want our protection anymore, why bother?"
"Can't say as I agree…" McCree retorted as he kicked at the rubble by the gaping hole in the wall. "Sure, those two can get into whatever trouble they want, but it's Junkrat's treasure we were really protectin' by lettin' them stay here. That's what we can't let Talon or Vishkar get their hands on."
"Jesse's right," Soldier agreed, which seemed to physically shock the gunslinger. "What happens to those two idiots is still our concern so long as that 'treasure' of theirs is still unaccounted for. Gear up, team. We're going after them."
"How are we going to manage that? They could be anywhere in Europe by the time we clear this mess and get the Orca out of here," Winston said somewhat skeptically, though the commander didn't seem too worried about that.
"Just get it all ready to go as soon as you can. I'll handle the destination."
Tracer couldn't stop her leg from bouncing nervously as she stared down at her barely-touched dinner. She didn't have much of an appetite, and not just because the gauze taped over her broken nose made eating anything a pain in the arse. What could have gotten into Junkrat and Roadhog all of a sudden to make them take off like that? Sure, there was that incident at the Grand Canyon, but if their faith in Overwatch's ability to protect them had waivered after that, then surely Roadhog would have dragged Junkrat out of there the instant he'd been roused from his coma. Something had happened in the interim, but she couldn't for the life of her figured out what.
"How are you holding up?"
Tracer jumped slightly as she was suddenly addressed out of nowhere. She glanced up to find Soldier 76 standing over her shoulder. The tone of his voice had lost some of its commanding edge, an unspoken invitation for her to speak freely with him, if only for the moment. She let herself relax as he sat down in the chair next to her.
"I dunno, if I'm being honest… I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything that's happened."
"Did you manage to talk to them at all before they took off? Did they give you any indication of why they left?"
Tracer shook her head in response.
"No, nothing. All they said was that they weren't our problem anymore."
Soldier gave a small grunt of acknowledgement as he considered the new information. Tracer wasn't too keen on letting him silently mull it over, though.
"Any idea where they've gone? You mentioned before that you could find out by the time we head out."
The commander gave a small nod of his head, though he didn't seem terribly happy about it.
"I had Torbjörn put a tracking device on their motorcycle. I figured it would be in our best interest to track their movements even after all of this was over with. They've been heading east all day, making surprising progress considering they're staying away from major highways and highly populated areas. They've nearly made it to the border of the Ukraine already. They know these roads surprisingly well, which is starting to concern me…"
"Why would that concern you? Staying away from people seems pretty smart of them, given the circumstances. I wouldn't be surprised if Roadhog planned out that route for that very reason. Besides, if we have a tracker on them, what does it matter where they go? We just have to wait until they stop and go get them."
"That's just it. I don't think they'll stop until they reach their destination, and if they're going where I think they're going…"
Tracer furrowed her brow, unsure of what he was trying to hint at. After a moment, he pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket and unfolded it. It was a map of eastern Ukraine with an area near the border of Russia circled in red marker. The names were all in Cyrillic, but she knew just enough to sound them out in her head. Once she deciphered the name of the area that had been circled, she gasped so hard that she almost choked on it. Her eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets in utter horror, and she stood up so abruptly that she knocked over her chair.
"Bloody hell! You can't be serious!" she squeaked out, "They're going to Chernobyl?!"