Archer was pissed.
Well, maybe not pissed, but it was as close to frustrated as she had seen him before. Even when he'd dropped down to fight Ramattra, he hadn't looked as grumpy as he had been the past few days. And the reason for that was apparent when she'd asked.
They'd denied his request to meet with de Kuiper. Even after all that he'd informed them of, after the help he had freely given, they had flat out said no.
Of course, she had asked why they didn't approve. They certainly owed him enough to at least give him a reason, one that didn't just boil down to 'they didn't want him'.
Well, after hearing how de Kuiper managed to spaghettify a person after subjecting them to gravity that was usually reserved for a black hole? She agreed that maybe meeting him without proper precautions was a bad idea.
Lena didn't know the exact details of the accident that the doctor had been in. Such details were still kept hidden by Archer and the commanders, and for good reason. From the little she'd been told, she could piece together he could control gravity and space around him.
Their situations were somewhat similar, even if they didn't seem like it at first. They both had accidents, leading to getting ludicrous powers straight out of a comic book. The main difference came from what happened after the fact.
The doctor went clinically insane, leading to his detention. He likely couldn't control his abilities, given everything she'd been told. He likely didn't have anyone else either, as they would likely have shown up in the news reports when the world had first been told about his 'death'.
He didn't have anyone that could help him.
Whereas she almost immediately met Archer. She had Emily. She had Winston. She had everyone working to help bring her back, finding some esoteric tech then building on that.
Lena couldn't help but feel bad. Everything that went right for her went wrong for him.
Maybe, had things just gone a bit differently, she'd be in his position. Feared, isolated, and alone. It was a thought that burrowed itself deep in her.
Made even worse by the shame she felt in still thinking that they shouldn't meet him.
She knew that he didn't have a choice in the matter, and yet, the immediate fear that she felt was almost instinctual. Hearing what de Kuiper could do was enough to put her on edge. Despite the fact that Archer could probably raze the entire cities to the ground by himself, she couldn't help it.
Maybe that was why Archer didn't seem like he had a problem with the doctor? That he was confident that his own bullshittery was enough of a counter to whatever de Kuiper could dish out, accident or otherwise?
It didn't matter. Not anymore, anyway. She very much doubted that whoever was in charge of the doctor, be it the UN or Commander Morrison, would be willing to let him find that out any time soon.
What's more is that she and the others had more pressing matters to attend to, namely that they had a meeting first thing tomorrow morning, and all she wanted was a good night's rest before the inevitable shitshow that was going to happen.
She wasn't blind to the sudden flurry of activity that had overtaken the base. Even if the individual person didn't know what exactly was going on, everyone knew it had to be big. Big enough that Captain Vivian Chase had been called onto the scene, when she normally operated in Canada.
Right now though, she intended to milk the free time she still had.
And that meant snuggling even more with her fiancée as the sleep took her.
…
Turns out, when they said that the meeting would be the first thing that they'd be doing, they weren't kidding. Even before she and Archer had clocked in their IDs, Morrison was already waiting at the lobby.
"Meeting's about to start. Finish up here, quickly." That was all he said, before he'd left as quickly as he spoke.
The two of them looked at each other, one accusing and one throwing his hands up.
"Don't look at me, I haven't done anything since he denied that meeting." Archer shrugged helplessly, causing Lena to frown. The commander, while normally serious, was often not as cold as people would think.
"Really? That would be a first." She gave a dry glare at the white-haired man. While Lena believed him, Archer also had a tendency to twist her words as much as possible. Racking her brain as they walked to the war room, she thought of how she wanted to say what she wanted to say.
"Did you do something before he talked to you?"
"Oh, I've done a lot. Walking, cooking. You've probably seen me do at least half of those."
"Right, let me ask again." The war room was barely two minutes away and she was already getting a migraine from Archer's smirk, "Have you done anything that may have pissed the commander in the past week or so?"
Letting his smirk drop, Archer shrugged again, "Honestly? No. I've mostly been keeping to the kitchens. Not much I can do without getting too much attention."
Lena frowned. The fact that he was telling the truth gave an odd feeling. He was definitely in the kitchen for most of the, if not the whole, day. If he wasn't, then the complaints would be as loud as the one day that he had to take a pause from cooking, having been too busy putting out what Archer called fire hazards.
Thinking about it, it was scary how in the short time Archer started cooking here that most of the base more or less became dependent on him for food.
She shook her head.
Well, if Archer didn't do anything, then it had to be whatever Captain Chase was here for.
"Really? That's a surprise." They were interrupted by Genji, his cybernetic voice distinct. Turning around, though, Lena was taken aback by what she saw.
"New look?"
Indeed, where just a few days ago, the cyborg was still clad in red and black metal, exposed tubes everywhere, he now sported the complete opposite.
Green and white armor plates overlapping over his torso. Where his eyes and hair were previously visible, there was now a helmet, complete with a glowing green visor, that covered his entire head. His sword was still strapped on his back, with the shorter one near his waist.
Had she not known him before, she doubted that she would have pegged him for a cyborg. If anything, he looked closer to an Omnic than human.
She didn't know how she should feel about that, if she were honest.
"The PR department was getting on my nerves." Genji shrugged helplessly. Both Archer and her nodded in understanding.
Lena knew that good PR was an important part of Overwatch. Part of the reason why she didn't stamp down on all the Tracer talk was that she knew that it was good PR. As such, the PR department didn't talk to her as much as some others.
Namely, she knew Genji was an entire PR nightmare.
Outed as a member of Blackwatch, with rumors of being a Shimada, and looking like an edgy teenager with the black and red?
She was surprised it took this long for anyone to have a problem with it.
"That said, I was already thinking of going with this for a while. Green dragon and red just clashed way too much. This just gave me more of a budget to do so."
They made more small talk as they continued to walk. If someone had told Lena that she'd be friends with a cyborg and that they were walking into a meeting with her magic ghost friend, she'd have called them an ambulance for hitting their head too hard.
As it was, it felt like just another Tuesday morning.
The moment they stepped in the meeting though, she could tell that the pressure was on.
The usual suspects were already there, with the addition of another person that could only be Captain Vivian Chase. They were all looking at a map, though of where, Lena couldn't tell.
"Glad you could make it." Contrary to Morrison's grave countenance however, Chase gave a small chuckle and smiled warmly at Lena and the others, "Not everyone's a morning person, thought maybe we should've rescheduled."
"Vivian." Reyes called out, arms crossed.
Rolling her eyes the captain cleared her throat, "Fine, fine, let's get this started." Standing up, she crossed her arms, Lena noticing only then that most, if not all, her limbs were cybernetic, "As some of you may know, I am Captain Vivian Chase. You can call me captain, Chase, Vivian, or Sojourn - I really don't mind. I'll be leading this operation."
The screen behind her shifted to show a red stylized T, along with portraits of a woman and an Omnic.
"For the record, our target is Talon, an international criminal organization known for its mercenaries. We have reason to believe that an Overwatch agent, one Amélie Lacroix, is being held in Havana. Along with her, one of Talon's secretaries, one Maximilien, no last name, is suspected to be enroute to visit."
Lacroix. Her eyes shifted to one of the people she'd briefly met the last time she was here. Gerard Lacroix. Judging by how the man was touching the ring on his finger, Amélie was likely the man's wife.
"Your primary task is to locate and extract Lacroix, with a secondary objective being to capture Maximilien - alive - and bring him in for interrogation. Due to the sensitive nature of this mission, the strike team will consist of five members, including myself. The others shall be Oxton, Shimada, Ziegler and…'Archer'." She raised an eyebrow at the Spirit as she spoke the last part.
For his part, Archer gave that trademark smug-ass smirk of his.
"I'll be entertaining questions before we go over the plan of action." Despite the whole thing being a serious operation, Chase was more relaxed than the other commanders, even including Ana.
The first to ask was Angela, raising a hand nervously, "With all due respect, captain, I do not think that I'm qualified for stealth missions." Left unsaid were the glowing yellow wings that her Valkyrie suit came with.
"It's not a stealth mission." Chase shrugged, "We expect this to be loud, especially since we're going to be engaging Talon when they're at the height of their paranoia. As such, we're prioritizing mobility over stealth more than anything."
"You must know that it's likely a trap." Crossing his own arms, Genji spoke up.
"Yes, it is. It's almost guaranteed that it is."
"Then why are we risking so much?" The implied 'for a single person' was not missed by anybody. Especially by Gerard, going by how he very noticeably refused to look at Genji.
Thankfully, the situation was defused as Chase continued talking, "She is very much an asset that's irreplaceable." She gave a side glance to Morrison, who nodded after a moment, "Right, this stays classified. She's our mole inside of Talon. When we lost contact a couple months back, we feared the worst. Now that she's resurfaced, she likely has information on the current situation on Talon's internal structure, especially if the rumors of Talon having something to do with Null Sector have any ground."
Clicking a few buttons, the images on screen changed, this time showing a dark skinned man wielding a gauntlet of sorts. Lena knew who this was. It was hard not to.
"Akinjide Adeyemi. The second Doomfist. Few years back, he killed the original Doomfist, and stole the gauntlet. He then proceeded to join Talon as one of its leaders, essentially becoming a warlord within the African continent. And, as of two weeks ago, very much deceased."
Another flicker of images, this one a series of news articles about some prosthetics company, and all of them featured a hulking figure of a man, one of whose arms was obviously cybernetic.
"Akande Ogundimu, former heir to the now defunct Ogundimu Synergies Incorporated. Ever since the company went under, the man has been out of the public eye. However, Lacroix made it clear that he had been picked up by Talon around a year back."
Finally, one last picture. Of the same man, now wielding the infamous gauntlet. Though blurry, and taken from an angle that showed that the person was hiding the camera, it showed Ogundimu standing over what could only be a corpse, hand raised as Talon operatives watched on.
"And, according to some of our other spies, he is the one that murdered Adeyemi, taking the mantle of the third Doomfist."
…
A/N: If you like what I do and want to support me, check out my P-atreon at P-atreon•com(slash)Almistyor.
And a special thanks to: FireRogueWolf25, brutalcrab and Tassimo.