Summary: When a glitch in the recently implemented respawn system leads to the potential loss of a valuable member of Overwatch, a decision must be made.
The problem wasn't that Athena couldn't be trusted. It was that the resurrection failsafe made them cocky, made them reckless. In place of the usual requirement of hundreds of dedicated men and women dying for the cause, the same handful of willing soldiers could die hundreds of times. It was, to put it in the simplest terms, a miracle.
However, the nature of the innovation raised a few questions, the most important of which being whether or not it constituted as true resurrection, or something more along the lines of duplication. Could the essence of a human be stored in a computer's database, even one as advanced as Athena's, and still laugh and scream and roar and fight in the battlefield?
It ended up being one of those things Overwatch tried not to think about too much or too often.
Their lives became expendable, disposable. But Overwatch became immortal.
Death could take them, and take and take and take, but it could not keep them. And so they threw themselves into every mission, growing callous to the accumulation of injuries both superficial and life-threatening, because despite Mercy's best efforts to explain and thereby offset the psychological side effects before hand, the human mind was not equipped to experience and cope with repeatedly coming back from the dead.
Brains needed to be rewritten, changing the death of a comrade from an event worthy of debilitating grief to a mere setback.
It was their greatest advantage, a technology they needed to take advantage of to turn the tide of the war against injustice and fear before Talon either got their claws on it or learned how to duplicate the effect of Reaper's own nanites, as they were an early prototype of the resurrection technology that prevented permanent death at the steep price of constant, agonizing pain.
And yet… Using it felt wrong, somehow.
They were shot down, blown up, disassembled and torn to pieces. They watched their teammates, their comrades fall to the wayside, and were expected to keep moving, let Mercy heal those who could be saved and wait for those who couldn't to reappear amongst the fray, whole and unharmed, As though they hadn't just bled out on the tile. As though you hadn't just watched it happen.
Living in a world where Death had lost its teeth threw the value of everything into question. Where was the honor is sacrificing your life for a worthy cause or the friends who fought by your side if life was a renewable resource?
Not for the first time since Overwatch had integrated this technology into their missions, Genji had witnessed the last gasping breaths of his allies, seen them fall to injuries they'd have easily avoided if they'd only been more careful.
He knew – knew they would fine, but even still, seeing Hana limping away from the battle, with her slender arms wrapped around the scarlet spreading over her middle, as though something precious were to come loose should she be jostled ever so slightly… he'd hesitated. Faltered.
And it'd almost cost them the mission.
Despite his initial absence and later distracted state, 76, McCree, and his own brother had managed to successfully prevent the weapon's cash from falling into the wrong hands. Afterwards, he'd ardently apologized for his shortcomings, but was met with disbelieving scoffs and tuts, as though he had done no wrong, as though he were making a big deal out of nothing.
Most of the team had piled into the kitchen to celebrate this latest victory when he'd quietly slipped away, seeking solitude, so that he may have some time alone with his thoughts.
As it was in his nature to strive for higher ground when the mood struck him for privacy, he quickly scaled the smooth wall, locating hand and footholds with an ease that made the climb little more difficult to him than walking in a straight line, then balanced atop several thick pipes until the sight greeting him when he looked down was the very edge of the cliff and the roiling waters below.
If he were fall from this height, the waves would crush him, smash his body against the rocks and pull the remains in a million different directions. He would die, and that would be the end. The thought, for some reason, offered small comfort.
He lowered himself onto the water pipe, distantly aware of the heat seeping in through his armored plating, and let his feet dangle as his thoughts gradually began to drift…
"So this is where you were hiding." Genji made a quiet noise of complaint when Hanzo's head appeared above the walkway, followed shortly by the rest of his nimble body once he swung himself from the hanging position to land on the platform in a crouch. Instead of immediately initiating a conversation, he strode over to the edge to join Genji, who begrudgingly shifted to accommodate him. They sat in silence for several minutes, each of them content to simply exist in the ocean's calming rhythm, the flow of the world and its creatures.
It was a peace that ended too soon. "I checked with Athena after we landed," Hanzo mentioned without looking his brother in the eye. "You died today."
Genji shifted slightly, thinking back to after he'd gotten Hana to safety, when his world had exploded in flames. "I was aware." It came out shorter, sharper than he'd intended. "The novelty of it is beginning to wear off."
Instead of flinching or responding in kind, Hanzo merely studied his growing agitation, appearing thoughtful. "It is not your death that concerns you." Genji had forgotten how perceptive he could be when it suited him. "There is no shame in feeling unsettled by the sight of your comrade's deaths." He turned to see Hanzo staring out at the horizon, his dark eyes trained on some distant point only he could make out, but though his gaze strayed, his words were near and present. "These people are close to you. You care for them." At last, he turned to face Genji, who stifled the urge to inhale sharply at the uncommon warmth gently emanating from Hanzo's weathered features. "Rather than think it strange to be so affected, would it not be far stranger if you weren't?"
To hear it finally said aloud was a relief. But Hanzo had not experienced firsthand the artificial death the rest of them had. He was careful. He treated his life as though it were his first and only.
"Are you upset with me?" Behind the vivid green visor, Genji blinked.
He backtracked through the conversation thus far to find what might have prompted the question, but came up empty. "Upset with you? Why would I be?"
Without hesitation, Hanzo replied simply, "I have not died."
Pulling a knee close so that he could rest his chin, Genji glanced sidelong at him. "No one asks it of you."
It was his decision to make, after all. To give up his life was a choice that could not be forced upon him by anyone, regardless of their intentions. Genji had invited his brother to join Overwatch so that he may fight with them, not die with them. With each new mission, however, the difference, once clear-cut, was admittedly beginning to blur.
In the distance, the sun had begun to pitch below the horizon, staining the ocean's surface with pink and lavender hues. A flock of seagulls picking the shore for crustaceans and insects craned their necks towards the falling orb with a curious tilt, as though picking up on the last notes of melody that rose and fell with the day.
One by one, they beat their silver-tipped wings and took flight, intent on returning to their nests for the night.
Behind the brothers, a loud boom rattled the walls and pipes, suggesting that either Torbjorn had found the alcohol or Reinhardt was walking around Winston's lab. Despite his age, Reinhardt had a tendency of underestimating his size when outside of combat, like an overgrown Labrador with paws too large for his body.
There was a shout, followed by a series of giggles and snorts that floated idly as soap bubbles on the warm ocean breeze.
Were it not for Mercy's medical knowledge and Athena's resources, the base would have been empty.
"Genji?" Judging the roughness creeping into Hanzo's voice, his own thoughts had followed a similar path. Reluctant to speak, the cyborg merely nodded to show that he was listening. After mirroring the gesture, Hanzo continued, "Do you truly believe that your scientist's machine can bring the dead back to life?" Immediately, Genji bristled, his mind leaping to the implications, but Hanzo was quick to reassure him, "I only ask because I do not know." And the thought of finding out…
Genji knew well the questions and fear that plagued his mind, as despite his own experience with the resurrection process, he was no closer to knowing the answers than he'd been before. But he couldn't let that stop him from giving Overwatch everything he had to give and more. As many times as it took.
At the end of the day, he didn't expect Hanzo to do the same.
Hanzo's death, when it finally happened, didn't receive more than a passing thought, a brief mental note to talk to him about it after the mission's completion. It wasn't until the cargo had been safely secured that anyone thought to even ask where he was.
76 hailed Winston on the comm link to check his status, only to be met with a harried growl, "Get them back to base, 76," that was quickly cut off by buzzing static.
The problem with the resurrection tech was that it was just as fallible to error as any other process. When utilized as frequently as Overwatch's activities demanded, there was bound to be mistakes, bugs, mishaps. Which wasn't a problem when it was a coffee machine or a car, but this was a man's life in the balance. It was a risk they had all accepted without ever truly grasping.
It was one thing to fall in battle. There was, at least, some measure of honor in that.
It was quite another to, after the smoke had settled, be deleted.
Through Winston and Athena's combined efforts, they managed to locate and isolate Hanzo's BioData from the current of the relentless information stream long enough for the team to return to Watchpoint. By the time of their arrival, Winston had rigged a flat screen to Athena's mainframe. On its pixelated display, a single line could be seen rising and falling in jagged spikes.
Tapping rapidly at multiple keyboards, with sheets of scrolling binary code reflected in his lenses, Winston grunted, gesturing offhandedly towards the monitor, "Those readings represent the current brain activity of Agent Shimada." Outstripping the rest, Genji strode soundlessly towards the device with long, measured steps. While he might have been seen as unperturbed to an outsider, those who knew what to look for could tell that his movements were a little too stiff, his bearing a little too controlled when he stopped just short of colliding with the screen. Winston tracked the movement in his periphery, reluctant to split his attention when even a moment's distraction could result in the digitized mental and physical mapping of a fellow agent being scattered to the four winds. "Athena had to scour the entire database to find hide or hair of him."
Although she wasn't entirely sure of details, D. Va had no issues determining that whatever was going on, it was getting Winston all worked up and frustrated, which was never a good sign. "You can get him back, though, right?" She asked, shifting her weight slightly as her gaze flitted from the steady line on the screen to their resident genius. "He promised me I could braid his hair after this mission."
Winston glanced back at her, visibly hesitated, then heaved a heavy sigh. There was no point trying to shield the younger members from a reality they were already well aware of, except… This wasn't a causality of war. It was a technical error. A glitch. Something that shouldn't have happened on his watch – shouldn't have happened at all. "There… seems to be some kind of corruption in his data." He paused, briefly confounded by a tricky bit of tangled code, before continuing, "It is vastly hindering the conversion process." And as a result, what should have been instantaneous was instead taking hours and shaping up to be an all-night endeavor. Or it would be, if there were any hope of Hanzo lasting that long. "The problem is mainly that the systems are registering him as a temporary file, which would be fine, if Athena wasn't updated with a constant influx of information at all times. Thus, low priority files are generally discarded to make room for more recent data."
Standing with 76 towards the back, McCree made a strangled noise. "Low priority-"
But Winston, unconsciously curling his lips to reveal the gleaming fangs beneath, overrode him with a snappish, "Your bio information wasn't meant to reside within the database long enough for the influx to become a problem."
"Shouldn't there be some kind of emergency measures?" McCree insisted. "A back-up plan?"
Rubbing fiercely at his aching eyes, Winston answered with a tinge of desperation, "The resurrection technology does not have a failsafe because it is the failsafe."
The flickering pixels that formed the monitor's screen glowed a soft blue. Genji hovered his palm over it, so close the lights played over the rounded edges of his fingers. If he closed his eyes, he could almost feel the sensation of the device humming beneath his palm. It occurred to him like a bolt through the chest that this could be the closest he would ever come to touching his brother again. "What can we do?"
"Talk to him." Stress and worry lines marked the scientist, standing out in stark contrast against his skin and black fur due to the pale illumination surrounding him on all sides. "Tell him to hold on while we figure out a way to bring him home."
It was telling them all that there was nothing they could do but wait and pray in the kindest way possible, but even knowing that, Genji clung to the suggestion, because when you're drifting out to sea, a piece of flimsy driftwood was better than nothing.
Since there was little to no adequate technical expertise to contribute amongst the lot of them – not even Hana's quick mind and deft fingers could keep up with Winston at his current pace – they settled into stations. McCree and 76 instinctively settled towards the main exit, seated on the floor with their backs propped against opposite walls. The cowboy had his wide-brimmed hat tipped forward, scarlet serape wrapped around his chest like a blanket. Across from him, the soldier kept his posture rigid, his visor gazed unerringly at the clusters of insulated wires and metal pipes that powered Watchpoint. But despite their differing demeanors, they each shared something very important in common – their trigger fingers were dangerously close to their firearms at all times.
As any fool crazy or dumb enough to try to disturb their teammates right now would soon find out.
The rest of them gathered close to Genji, whose silent nod was all the permission they needed to launch into tales of home, on the off chance that the archer could hear and focus on the sound of their voices. With a curtain of bronze hair swaying from shoulder to shoulder, Hana rocked idly, falling easily into a rhythm as she chatted about Korean food she missed. Although the meals served at her military base hadn't exactly been gourmet, she admitted that she missed her mother's stew and kimchi, missed bibimbap and, "and spicy food that's actually hot."
Beside her, Lucio bobbed his head in tacit agreement. "Got that right. Tabasco doesn't cut it. You ain't never had heat 'til you had a good ol' ghost pepper in your mouth."
Their conversation had a calming effect on the others, who sank into its ebb and flow, allowing the words to become an indistinct hum that kept the persistent blip blip of the monitor from filling every space and corner. It was almost enough to distract from the increasing intervals between each spike, the gradual shortening of their apex that pointed to a lessening in the archer's activity.
It could have been nothing.
They knew so little about this technology that it could have been an indicator that the archer had, impossibly, found a way to mimic the sleep cycle. No other member had existed in their data form long enough for such a thing to be necessary, nor had they ever shown signs of consciousness.
But the other, more likely possibility was that the archer's collective identity was being chipped away as random bits of code were broken off and flung through cyberspace.
Suddenly, the readings on the monitor became erratic. A keening shriek echoed through the lab as the jagged line jumped all over the screen before slowing to a crawl.
Though he hunkered down further over the keyboard, somehow shrinking in size as he did so, Winston's rapid typing came to a halt. Glancing at the monitor with a grave, haunted expression, he muttered, "It seems we've run out of time." Turning to face his team, he continued clearly, so that all of his fellow Overwatch agents could hear, "If we wait any longer, the degradation will become too severe and there won't be enough of him left to save." When he put it like that, the appropriate course of action seemed obvious. If only it were that simple. "However, if we try to force the conversion, he may very swell vanish entirely. We might very well lose the only chance we have left of saving him."
"The decision is ultimately in your hands, Genji," Winston said gently, and not entirely without pity. "If you need time to-
Before he could finish, Genji squared his shoulders, his visor flaring a brilliant green that hungrily consumed the shadows in its wake, "Do it."
After taking a moment to gauge his seriousness, Winston began inputting the code for the conversion sequence. He could only hope that the cyborg understood the ramifications of what he was doing.
There weren't any bells or whistles to mark the start of the process, but there should have been. There should have been flashing lights and sirens, dramatically timed music to enhance the atmosphere. Instead, a button pressed with slightly too much force was determined to either be the archer's saving grace or the final nail in his coffin.
The monitor spiked, causing Winston to wonder briefly if a consciousness converted into floating data could feel fear.
Then, with a sad whine, the line fell flat.
Time stretched. Expanded. Then it sped forward, and Winston dropped his head into his hands. Holding back tears, Hana reached for Genji's arm, seeking to comfort, seeking comfort, but he pulled away, shrugging her off without a word, and left.
Two Months Later
Remember, Winston's voice crackled over the comm, you're there to make an assessment of anti-omnic sentiment in the area and determine if there are any indications that Null Sector's been recruiting. You are not, by any means, to interfere.
It wasn't a mission Genji had volunteered for, but that hardly mattered anymore. He went where Overwatch sent him. It was easier that way.
The only difference was that Zenyatta had personally requested his presence, which made considerable sense, as a cyborg and an omnic were far more likely to gain access to the underground circles of discontent writhing beneath the city, but though there was plainly more to it than that, the monk was not to be rushed when it came to enlightening his pupil on the motives behind his methods.
For his part, at least, Genji was content to wait. In truth, it took more effort than he currently had any desire of mustering to care more than a fraction about what was expected of him. As long as he was always moving, his mind too busy planning his survival from one breath to the next to dwell on the past, the details were irrelevant.
And so, it was with a dispassionate air that he surveyed the graffiti layered over the crumbling sidewalks, the single-level dwellings clustered so closely the inhabitants couldn't spit without hitting their next-door neighbor's stoop. Or, occasionally, their next-door neighbor.
Children dressed in rags played barefoot in the streets, each of them coated in mud and dirt so thick it was impossible to distinguish the brownish tinge of sun and wind exposure on their rough skin from the telltale signs of poverty and neglect. Their limbs are too thin, too fragile – birdlike and covered in sores.
Their dull, shadowed eyes flick to the omnic pair as they passed, curiosity momentarily sparking in their depths. Genji held no illusions about how long their presence in the irradiated outskirts of the former Australian Outback would go undetected by the local anti-omnic terrorist cell, if there truly was one. Kids like them wouldn't think twice about trading information for clean water and food scraps.
Weathered, prematurely aged faces followed their footsteps from the threshold of every doorway. Genji stared at each of them without flinching. It was unwise to display any signs of fear or weakness when surrounded by starved scavengers. "For what reason," he said lowly, for Zenyatta alone to hear, "did you insist we come to this forsaken place?"
After pausing to offer the group of children they'd passed a friendly wave – they'd stopped playing their games, Genji noticed, and were instead standing frozen, locking them with blank stares like sharks smelling blood in the water – Zenyatta replied with his custom serenity, "To remind you of what it is you fight for."
Tension settling in his shoulders, Genji spared the wild, nearly feral children little more than one last brief, appraising glance. "I do not fight for them."
They were remnants of a dying world, playing amongst the dilapidated structures that would one day be their tomb. There was no saving this town, no saving its people.
At his side, Zenyatta hummed softly, as though he'd voiced a valid point, but didn't press him on it. Which was just as well, as something told the ninja that company would soon be arriving.
That Winston believed they could step foot in this festering wasteland without drawing attention showed how naïve he still was, though a leader who needed the support of those he led to stand at his tallest held its own appeal.
Even so, when the streets mysteriously emptied, Genji knew it was time to leave.
The residential district had transitioned into something more industrial, with the wreckage of boxy office buildings and factories bordering the widening road ahead.
There was evidence of bullet-holes in the windows that weren't lying in shattered pieces on the sidewalks, and charred craters in the stone walls and gouged out of the ground.
Tapping his comm to activate the microphone, Genji called in for an immediate extraction. The only response he received was static, meaning they were already within range of a signal jammer.
Men swarmed out from behind corners, doorways, and the rusted corpses of vehicles long abandoned to the elements. Most of them were missing teeth, others were missing patches of hair from their scalps and dry, stringy beards, but that didn't stop them from leering at the master and his student with gumless maws and crazed, bloodshot eyes.
"You're early." Genji was surprised by how self-assured he managed to sound when his mind was racing through potential escape routes. "Scavengers usually wait until the prey is defenseless or dead before revealing themselves, but I can assure you," deciding that there was no way to end this conflict without a fight, Genji unsheathed his blade in a single fluid motion, "that we are neither." The declaration was greeted by devilish cackles.
Undeterred by the threat, the men drew closer, tightening their circle, forcing Genji and Zenyatta towards the center of the ambush. To them, omnics and those like them weren't truly alive, meaning they would harbor no qualms about dismantling them and selling them for parts. While Genji had fought tougher opponents under steeper odds, the sheer number of humans, their penchant for explosions, and little regard for their own lives complicated the task ahead, especially if putting them out of commission permanently was off the table.
The closest of the men took a menacing step forward, tossing several grenades carelessly in the air and catching them like they were harmless toys, but before Zenyatta could unleash an orb to disarm him, a youthful voice, brimming with self-assuredness and a trace of mischief, called out from the closest rooftop overlooking the scene, "You look like you could use a hand."
A tremor of apprehension worked its way through the gathered crowd. They glanced up warily, with Zenyatta following suit, as his curiosity had been peaked by the young omnic. Genji, however, had gone very still. He didn't look up, could scarcely even trust himself to stand.
His instincts screamed that he knew that voice, but it was lacking the roughness characteristic of age and grief, rendering it both less and more familiar to him than he could possibly begin to process under the circumstances. Even so, there was something off about it, a mechanical distortion reminiscent of synthesized speech.
"Get stuffed, Rusty," a lunatic with stringy blond spikes shouted at the top of his lungs. "Ya missed your chance and now you're just gonna have 'ta wait yer turn."
A bright chuckle drifted down from the rooftop, followed by the atmosphere becoming strained as an unnatural silence descended, along with a charge, as though the world were poised at the edge of a pin's head, teetering towards an abyss. It was that dread, that potential, that finally exploded when the silence was decimated by the sound of a bestial roar. "Ha! You Junkheads never learn, do you?"
Hope burst within Genji, shattering with razor edges that embedded themselves into every vulnerability they could find, drawing blood and oil in equal measure. His head shot up to see azure dragons gleaming with streaks of gold flickering over their scales as they twisted across the roiling clouds of a perpetual sunset. In a moment, they circled around, returning to the omnic's side to nudge him playfully with their massive muzzles. After releasing a peal of delighted laughter at their gentle insistence, the black and white-plated omnic placed his palms upon their snouts, then whispered in tones just below the range of an unaugmented human's ability to grasp, "Don't hurt them, okay? Just give them a good scare."
As though eager to please, the ancestral beasts surged over the roof's edge, pouring down the building's side with a radiating force that shook the ground and surrounding structures. Shards of glass rained down on the Junker's heads, forcing them to throw their arms up in a defense that proved itself to be meager and downright ineffectual when the dragons swooped down with their fangs bared.
Shrieking, the wild men scattered without a thought for the safety of their comrades, skittering like roaches back to whatever hole they'd crawled out of.
"Hey, are you okay?" Once the dragons had dissolved, returning to the ether with a growl of satisfaction at their enemy's retreat, the omnic slid down the exposed framework of the building he'd stood on, knocking off more glass as he went. Now that he was closer, Genji could better make out the featureless armored plating that constituted his face, and the cross of light blue that cut through it. There were stabilizing antenna on the sides of his head, much like his own, and his right arm was reinforced with the chipped and battered remains of blue armor, giving the impression that the omnic was wearing the sleeve of a kyudo-gi. "Those fools have less than a brain between the lot of them," he continued amiably after his feet had touched the ground, "but that doesn't make them any less dangerous. Alone, they're a handful, but that's nothing compared to the damage they can do when they gang up on you."
"You asked the dragons to spare them," Genji heard himself ask tightly. "Why?"
The omnic stopped his careful approach through the minefield, tilting his head curiously to the side as though he didn't quite understand the question. "Isn't it obvious?" When Genji remained silently yet intensely focused on him, the omnic nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Oh. I guess it's not. Well…" He raised upturned hands in a small shrug, unaware of the concern emanating from the cyborg's companion, "everyone deserves a second chance, right?"
Stomping down on an urge to hold his head and groan, the cyborg instead snapped, "How did you come into possession of those dragons?" It came out harsher than he'd intended, almost accusatory, but rudeness was so low on Genji's list of concerns at the moment that he either didn't notice or didn't care. "None but the Shimada can wield them."
"Are they yours? I'd give them back, but…" He sounded sincere, like he really would give them back if he could. His shoulders slumped, "I don't really know how. I actually only discovered how to summon them a short while ago, but it feels like they've been with me for as long as I can remember." Though it was depicted with flaking gold paint, swirls of clouds and scales decorated the omnic's armored right arm. Compared to the original, the design was nothing but a cheap and soulless imitation.
And yet, it had channeled the might and will of the dragons flawlessly, and to a degree that not even Hanzo had accomplished since...
Floating serenely above the ground with his legs folded, Zenyatta gently addressed the omnic, "If you do not mind my asking, young one, how old are you?"
He didn't appear to mind the question. "A little over a month, I think?"
"I see." There was a lull in the conversation as the monk deliberately hesitated to continue, but Genji exhibited no desire to once more involve himself. Indeed, it was as though he was hardly present at all, instead retreating deep within his own mind. After promising himself that he would check on his student's well being as soon as the opportunity presented itself, Zenyatta turned his attention once more to the young omnic. "And what shall we call you?"
Flicking its blank and featureless face plate towards the quiet cyborg, the omnic replied, "The Junkers call me Rusty, but only because it's short for Rust Bucket." He paused, thinking it over. "I'd actually prefer it if you didn't call me that."
Chuckling, Zenyatta warmly agreed, "Indeed. Such a name hardly suits you."
It was a petty omnic slur, certainly not something that could be regarded as a name, but the omnic had never been referred to as anything else. He ventured to ask if Zenyatta had any good ideas, since he'd been trying to choose his own for some time, but nothing felt right. He was hoping for something a little more dignified. Something strong. Something like-
Without lifting his head, Genji breathed, "Hanzo."
Its quiet intensity jarred, catching the young omnic off-guard and briefly brought the conversation to a grinding halt as the attention fell on him. But the cyborg didn't elaborate, didn't acknowledge the weight of Zenyatta's worry weighing down on him. When it became clear that he had slipped back into silence, the young omnic made a thoughtful sound, "Actually… that feels like it fits. Do you mind if I use it?"
Like a marionette spurred into motion, Genji turned sharply, beginning the long walk back to the extraction point before the pressure in his chest threatened to expand and overwhelm him. He focused his emotions to a single, compact point, heavy and cold but distant to a degree that he could concentrate on navigating the dangerous terrain long enough to get his master back to Watchpoint.
The young omnic reached for him, "Hey wait, what's-" but was immediately rebuffed when Genji yanked his arm out of reach. With his shoulders hunched and his green visor flaring as his fingers gripped tightly the hilt of his blade, the cyborg appeared to be on the cusp of an assault.
His katana flashed with a brilliant light, and in its sharpened, curved edge, the young omnic saw fangs.
"Genji!" Zenyatta's reprimand cut through the tension, effectively ending the conflict before it could begin, as Genji forced his back to straighten out of the crouch it'd instinctively fallen into. Knowing he'd nearly lost control, he stalked off, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the artificial life that wielded his brother's dragons, leaving the young omnic, confused and upset by his behavior, to wonder what he'd done to offend him.
A/N: Usually, I'd leave this up in the air, but I'd like to give you a heads up on what's coming. The next chapter will be a Harry Potter au, followed by the last chapter of The Rift, and then the second and last installment of if i could save you.
Well, that's all I have for now. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.