Lena enjoyed exercising. She enjoyed the burn as she went through a good run. She relished in the knowledge that she was bettering herself. It was why she was one of the few pilots that also enjoyed the initial stages of the RAF as much as the actual piloting.
But this?
This wasn't exercise. This was torture.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" A voice shouted from the distance, "You think we have time for that? Hurry up! If any of you don't finish those laps in the next five minutes, that's another ten for everyone!"
This was the third time he'd said that. And if the previous two were of any indication, this would be the third time he made due on that promise.
Gabriel Reyes was a taskmaster and a half.
There were about thirty others with her, running laps around Overwatch's training grounds. It was surprise to know just how large an open area there was in the middle of London, all of it dedicated for just Overwatch training.
That surprise didn't stifle the groan that she, and several others, sounded out at Reyes' threat.
"Having fun?" The voice in her head might've been a sign of genuine exhaustion for anyone else, but for Lena, it made her perk up despite her burning legs.
'Archer! You're back? What did you even need to do?' She couldn't imagine what a veritable ghost would need that he would willingly ride the tube.
"I am." She could imagine him nodding next to her watching as she ran, "As for what I did, it's nothing to worry about. I just wanted to check up on something."
'Huh. Alright then.'
"Two minutes, you hear me? Two minutes!"
"Sir, yes, sir!" She instinctively called out with everyone else. The military never really left you, and Reyes used that to his advantage any time he could.
"Have you been running since I left?" His voice was tinged with amusement.
"Sod off you ruddy asshole." She muttered to herself. She didn't bother to ask if he heard her - he definitely did.
"I would not let Commander Reyes hear you." A different voice, this one having a distinct robotic tinge to it, startled her as it sounded beside her. A quick turn and she was greeted by an admittedly odd sight.
Lena had seen cyborgs and cybernetics enhancements before. She had not seen someone that needed so much of it though. The running beside her had most of his body covered in some white-black-red cybernetics, some tubes going in and out of various places.
His legs were clearly completely replaced, with the only thing differentiating him from an Omnic being his human left arm, and the human head that she could see poking through the helmet he wore. Even then, the red-tinged grey eyes implied that even those had been replaced at some point.
"Ah sorry." She sheepishly told him even as they continued to run, "Just slipped out is all."
"You're lucky only I heard you. The others might not be as lenient." There was an undertone of arrogance there, one that put Lena on edge. Still, she figured that he couldn't be a bad person if he joined Overwatch. She stretched out an arm, awkwardly holding out for a handshake, "Lena Oxton, at your service!"
The man stared at her arm almost warily, before hesitantly taking it in his cybernetic one, "Shimada Genji, or I suppose Genji Shimada to you."
"Oi, what are you two doing?" Reyes hollered at them. He'd clearly seen their interaction, "You've got time to talk later. Right now, I want you to run!."
"Sir!"
Lena picked up the pace, and she could absently pick up that both those in front, and those behind did the same. She really wanted this to be over already. Regardless of how he put it, Reyes had a point. Being fit was something that every Overwatch agent needed to be, no matter how much she wanted otherwise.
Genji, or Shimada, or whatever he wanted to be called, snorted beside her and similarly kept up with everyone.
She'd talk to him later. Who knows, maybe she'd make another friend besides Angela and Winston here?
A mess of a few dozen people milling about in the mess hall was oddly comforting for Lena. Lunch, it seemed, was standard fare for everyone despite the ongoing relief efforts. She could see Morrison and Reyes talking in the back, Winston in line to get his own food, and more and more Overwatch agents coming in by the second.
She'd seen more people in the headquarters in the past hour than she had for the past few days.
It was a thought that brought a small smile to her face. Despite what other people might think, that Overwatch was nothing more than a relic of the past that didn't need to exist, people still joined. People still wanted to do good for the sake of it.
That said, it was getting annoying trying to find a place to sit.
With all of the people around, she could hardly find a space to eat her own meal. Not only that, but WInston needed his own seat, and with her being admittedly shorter than average, she couldn't see through the mass of heads at all.
"Five tables down, two to the right."
Sometimes, it really does pay to have a ghost on your side.
She hurried to the spot that Archer mentioned. There, sitting suspiciously alone, was the cyborg she'd met earlier.
Everyone had given him a wide berth. Nobody even wanted to look in his direction, even those sitting closest to him on the other benches were slightly turned away from the man. Lena frowned.
She knew the man looked intimidating, but that wasn't a reason to ostracise him.
"Hey there!" She walked over to the startled man, "Mind if I sit here?"
He looked fairly startled that someone had come along to greet him, "...If you wish."
"Great!" She wasted no time in sitting down and taking the first bite of her meal. As much as she loved Emily's cooking, and as good as Archer could make something as spicy as mapo tofu, nothing beat eating just about anything after a workout like what Reyes put them through.
Swallowing quickly, she nodded at the cyborg across from her, "Right, now that we've got some time to talk, you new here?" He must have been. She was sure she'd notice someone like him before, and if not, then Archer would've pointed it out at some point.
"No," He shook his head while keeping both eyes on her. He was suspicious of her, not that she could blame him. If someone just came up and asked questions when everyone else was avoiding her, she'd be more than a little suspicious herself, "I came with Commander Reyes."
He didn't say anything else, content to eat the relatively small amount of food on his own plate. Lena nodded despite that, "So what, you're part of the Commander's special unit?"
"You could say that." His eyes narrowed at her.
"Huh. Neat." She chewed at her porkchop, "I'm gonna guess he still runs you guys into the dirt like this?"
"Why are you doing this?" His words were sharp, even as he glared at her with those oddly grey and red eyes of his. Lena tilted her head in confusion.
"Doing what, talking to you?" She was genuinely confused. It hadn't seemed like the cyborg was actively avoiding others, if anything, it was the complete opposite.
"This." He gestured at her. She still didn't understand.
"I…don't get it?"
"I've told you my name." He said by way of answer, "Do you not understand what that means?"
"Not really?"
"I'm a Shimada."
"Yeah, I'm an Oxton. Your point?" The cyborg stared at her in incredulity. And for a moment, it felt as if the entire room was looking at her in the same way.
"No, that's not your imagination." Archer 'helpfully' told her, "They really are staring at you like you're stupid. Mind you, I'm also doing it. Staring at you like you're stupid, I mean."
'Gee, thanks.'
"Seriously, how the hell do you not know the Shimada?"
"You seriously don't know who the Shimada are?" It was a point of annoyance that both Archer and the man in front of her were more in sync than they realised.
"They're a yakuza family in Japan, based in Hanamura." A female voice came from behind her. A tray was set down right next to Lena's rapidly emptying one, just as Angela sat down with more grace than Lena could ever pull off.
"Indeed." Shimada was quieter now, staring at the both of them in puzzlement, "Which is why neither of you should associate with me. Nothing good ever comes out of it." The last part was bitter, tinged with a regret that made Lena frown.
"Oh, stop that, Genji." Angela stared at Shimada with hard eyes, "How many times do I have to tell you that you may be a Shimada, but you aren't them."
Lena was getting a weird sense of deja vu. First the meeting with Commander Reyes, then this meeting with Shimada. Was there something with the mess hall that made meeting people so much more common?
"...Too many, I suppose." He glanced down at his half-eaten meal, one he couldn't even properly eat with his helmet on, "I've lost my appetite." The man quickly left the room, the eyes of just about everyone else following his form.
Angela sighed beside her, sighing morosely at the left behind plate. She turned to Lena, smiling a sad but grateful smile at her, "Thank you for trying to talk with him. Genji's a good man, once you get past his brooding."
"You know him then?" At Angela's nod, Lena groaned, "Why the ruddy hell does everyone know him but I don't?"
"Oxton, when was the last time you read international news?"
'Uh…'
"Point: made."
"The Shimada are fairly infamous, I'm surprised you haven't heard of them."
"Heh."
'Dammit Archer!'
Lena breathed in as Archer somehow projected a smirk into her head, "Well don't keep me in suspense!" She had finished her food at this point, and was staring at Angela in genuine interest. And it really was genuine. There was no way that the Shimada wouldn't be some smalltime crime family if the entire mess hall acted like that.
The doctor hummed in response, a thoughtful look on her face, "The Shimada clan is perhaps the biggest criminal syndicate in Asia." She started as she cut into her own porkchop, "They grew from almost nothing around thirty, thirty-five years ago. They started rapidly expanding, not just in Japan, but internationally as well.
"Now, that may sound like a stereotypical crime family, but the rate at which they expanded was immense. By the time the public was made aware of their existence, they had spread to all seven continents on the planet. And yes, that includes Antarctica, I believe they funded a research team there."
"You're telling me that a crime family had a research team?"
"Yes. I can't recall the details, but they did. At any rate," Angela drank some water as she continued, "It wasn't the research teams that made them public, however. It was everything else. The arms trafficking, assassinations, they were fairly public knowledge as something the yakuza did. It all came to a breaking point though when some whistleblowers exposed the extent to which the clan was rooted throughout the world.
"To say it was deep would be disingenuous." The doctor frowned, "Quite a few members were found to be high-ranking individuals in several governments, the most glaring one being nearly twenty of the United Nations representatives being a part of them."
"That's-!" That criminals in the UN were found out wasn't an issue. Lena knew that politicians were just as liable to be one than anyone else, it was just a matter of finding out who really was one. The real question was, how long had they been there?
And how much did they really do during their time there?
"Yes," Angela chuckled bitterly, "You may not remember it, but it was a massive scandal for Overwatch when it was found that the Shimada may have had a hand in creating it."
Lena's eyebrows may as well have shot up straight past her hairline with how high she felt them to be. She did remember a time when Overwatch just didn't exist. She remembered going to sleep one night as a kid, watching an Overwatch cartoon play as she fell asleep to it.
Then, nothing.
She didn't think much of it at the time - she was a kid, what could you expect - but thinking about it now, where before she could remember action figures of Overwatch agents proudly on display at the mall, t-shirts with their logo, anything and everything Overwatch, it all just, disappeared one day.
Her parents never mentioned it at all, and whenever she'd ask for something Overwatch related, they'd go 'Maybe next time.' every time. Or whenever she'd talk with her friends about it, they'd go 'My parents don't really like them.'. Small things, little things she never paid any attention to.
Had that controversy really affected the organisation that much?
"Regardless, I suppose you can see why Genji is being treated as such." The doctor gave a nasty glare to all the listeners around the mess hall, who made no effort to even hide their eavesdropping. They quickly went back to whatever they were doing, "But make no mistake. Genji is not part of them, not anymore. Yet all anybody sees is a Shimada."
The last part was spat out. It was odd to see Angela be as angry as she was for someone else.
"So Lena, please," Angela looked at her with pleading eyes, "Please don't do that to him. Genji, he's not in a good place, even though he may not look like it. I believe a friend will go a long way, no matter how much he protests. Just give him a chance."
Lena gave her a smile, "Already planning on it."
And indeed she was. Nobody deserved to be known only as a shadow of their past. That even here, Overwatch of all places, they would do so stained her view on the organisation. It was people like Angela that proved that that wasn't the case for everyone.
Shi-Genji. She'd seen it in his eyes. Regret. A crime family like the Shimada wouldn't raise someone just for them to regret everything they stood for. To go against them. No, Genji truly regretted, and possibly even hated, his clan.
Sure, he seemed rough around the edges, a bit more confrontational than anyone else, but she couldn't help but see herself in him, when she was trapped on that hill of swords. Afraid. Unlike her, who was afraid of the future - of being trapped endlessly with nobody but a silent companion - he was afraid of the past. Of how it clung to him like a parasite. He'd be desperate to get rid of that, no matter the cost.
If Angela felt she could help with stemming that desperation, then she'd be glad to help.
"Thank you." A small smile on Angela's lips as a great weight seemed to lift from her shoulders.
That being said, a thought popped up in Lena's head as a mischievous smirk wormed its way onto her face.
"So," she started after a moment's comfortable silence, "You and Genji, huh?" She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
It was a stammering and scarlet Angela and a grinning Lena that greeted Winston as he finally came over with his own lunch.
A/N: If you like what I do and want to support me, check out my P-atreon at P-atreon•com(slash)Almistyor.
Thank you to my newest patron: Tassimo.
And a special thanks to: Oliver vazquez, brutalcrab and Tassimo. Thank you for all the support.