"Hey, Archer?"
"Hm?"
"When you said you met Napoleon and King Arthur, did you mean that you met them while they were alive, or when they were, you know?"
"The former, I met as a Servant. The latter, I met as both."
"I- That's- How?!"
Lena gaped at the white-haired man as they ate in the cafeteria. While a lot of people gave Archer a questioning glance, seeing as no one else bothered to ask him to leave, they must've figured someone else would do it.
Archer had snorted and called it the bystander effect.
Lena had to agree. For all intents and purposes, Archer was not supposed to be here. Sure, some of the Overwatch agents must've recognized him when he'd fought off Ramattra, but they had to have known that he was still not a part of Overwatch, and therefore, should not be eating in their cafeteria.
Though, given the grimace on the man's face as he sampled the food, he must be regretting his decision.
"Forty years to improve British cuisine and the best you could do was copy the Americans by adding more and more grease." He held up his plate for good measure, the oil on it sloshing around the fish.
"Oi, I resent that!" She pointed at him accusingly, "Our food is loads better than those bloody greasy-as-hell-"
Archer pulled up another plate and started dripping the oil.
The oil only stopped dripping after a good twenty seconds.
"You were saying?" A raised eyebrow.
"...Cafeteria food isn't really the best?" Her voice sounded flimsy even to her ears. By the look of it, a lot of people around them had seen the byplay, and were now looking at their plates in newfound disgust.
"That you people haven't died from high cholesterol is a testament to how good medical technology has gotten."
Lena sat back down, having stood up during Archer's little display. She tried to eat, but all she could see now was the grease that the fish was practically infused in. With a sigh, she pushed the plate away, glaring at Archer.
"See what you've done? You've completely ruined fish and chips!"
"All I've ruined is another visit to the doctor, thank you very much." He countered with a smirk, "Tell you what, I'll cook some fish and chips later, and it'll be a hell of a lot less painful for your heart, I assure you."
"Seriously?" Lena blinked, to which Archer nodded, "Uh, well, thanks?"
"...Hey, thanks, honestly." She settled down, her earlier energy gone. She had been avoiding it since the start of their recess, but there was no denying that she was still stuck on the fact that they had all technically died years and years ago.
Or in the case of Lena, Angela, and Winston, that they hadn't been born before the world was 'incinerated', whatever that meant.
Archer had been trying to distract her from the existential dread that she thought she had left behind when she left that hill of swords.
"I know it's a bit much. Trust me, I know." His voice had dipped to the same level as hers, his eyes staring at nothing. Glossed over, the silver that they usually were almost visually dimming.
"But you're here now, aren't you?" He closed his eyes, and the sharp silver that she'd grown used to, returned, "That's all that matters."
"Right, well, it's kind of bloody hard to think that when you drop bombshells out of nowhere."
"I felt it would be easier to get that out of the way, in a sense." Archer sighed, "It's easier to see why Chaldea made the decisions it did when you know the stakes."
"Well, knowing and understanding are a bit different, I would say." Lena jumped as a gruff voice suddenly entered their conversation, and her nose wrinkled as she smelt the acrid cigar smoke wafting all over.
"Uh, Cole, right?"
"Cassidy, please. Call me Cassidy." The cowboy sighed and waved his mechanical arm around, taking a seat next to Archer.
"Lena." She offered a hand, then winced as she had offered her left.
With a laugh, Cassidy took the offered hand, "It's alright kid, I don't mind."
"Kid?" She muttered under her breath while her eyes narrowed. While she certainly wanted to trust the man, being in Overwatch and all, him being a part of Blackwatch certainly didn't help matters in the slightest.
Case in point, she could now feel every stare being directed towards their table, even more than with just Archer there.
Actually, now that she thought about it, all of the Blackwatch members she'd met were very clearly Blackwatch. Seriously, black on red? How did nobody see that when every other Overwatch agent wore blue on white?
You wouldn't have stood out more if you tried.
"So, what is it that you want?" Archer raised an eyebrow, to which Cassidy shrugged.
"Wanted to see if you were telling the truth or not, but Reyes seems convinced."
"It's a bit out there, but then again, an entire hovercar industry would have seemed out there just fifty years ago."
"True." Cassidy admitted before letting out another puff of smoke, "So is you claiming that that Ravager unit is using tech from an alien."
"I can assure you that that is all true."
"Maybe, maybe." Cassidy waved his cigar in the air, "You still haven't really given proof of any of that. Sure, you said time travel, and that thing on Lena's chest is a time travel doohickey, but any old rat can claim they've time traveled. Bringing proof is another."
"I only have my words as proof, and my abilities as leverage for that proof."
"Feh. Fair enough. You going to finish that?" He pointed to the plate where the fish Lena had basically abandoned lay. She blinked, then passed the plate over to Cassidy.
She watched in horrified fascination as the American devoured the entire thing in seconds.
"Damn, that hits the spot." The man sighed contentedly, "By the way, Reyes is calling for us to restart the meeting."
"That quick?" Lena had to look on her phone to see that no, it was not that quick. The recess they had been in had been ongoing for the better part of three hours.
She had been wallowing in her thoughts for that long that she hadn't even noticed.
'Shit, where's Winston?'
She had Archer to talk to, Genji and Angela had each other, but Winston?
Winston had no one.
She had meant to talk to him earlier, but again, she hadn't realized that that much time had passed. She had no idea what the scientist must be thinking. She knew he was prone to self-doubts, and that was likely exacerbated by Archer's words.
They hurried back to the war room, Archer making a show of leisurely strolling, but she was certain he was watching her closely.
By the time they arrived, everyone was back in their seats, though just about everyone looked more tense than they had been earlier.
Angela and Genji sat silently next to each other. Nothing out of the ordinary there - she had expected those two to be like that.
Winston on the other hand, was…surprisingly calm?
He was deep in thought, tapping his fingers lightly on the table, his gaze fixed on a holographic display that floated above the center of the table. A diagram of sorts, one that had Lena tilt her head in confusion.
Unlike what she expected, Winston was the epitome of calm. No, if anything, the gorilla looked like how he usually did when presented with a problem he wanted to solve.
His eyes were focused, analyzing the data displayed before him. Occasionally, he made small gestures, adjusting the variables and simulations with a few swipes of his fingers. It was a side of Winston that brought a certain level of reassurance and dread to Lena.
Reassurance to know that he was still fine.
Dread to think that this was just a stopgap before everything fell at once.
"Welcome back. Take a seat." Reyes nodded at them.
"Continuing our meeting, we've managed to find some truth to your claims." Ana stood up, gesturing to the data that Winston was still observing.
That, more than anything, caught Archer's eye. There was a note of interest as he spoke, "Oh? What have you found?"
Ana pulled up a series of images on the large screen behind her, each showing snippets of encrypted communications and unusual energy signatures that had been intercepted over the past weeks. "These patterns here," she pointed towards the irregular spikes in the data, "match the timeframe that Archer gave."
"And these are spikes of what, exactly?"
"Temporal energy, the same type of energy that Lena is producing." Winston spoke up, still scrolling through the various charts, "Or rather, a whole slew of other things that follow a consistent pattern with how temporal energy affects them."
"How'd you even get those?" Lena was now prodding at the chronal accelerator with trepidation, especially as she'd seen one chart labeled as 'gamma radiation', with two titanic spikes.
She wasn't radioactive, was she?
"Sensors around the world went haywire on the same day in 2017, but no one could find out just why. Scientists spent two years researching, before another spike at the tail end of 2019. Sparked a mass panic in the scientific community, if anything. Everyone was worried that something bad was coming, even made it to the news." Winston brought up a few sensationalist articles, each worse than the last.
Archer snorted as he saw one proclaiming that they would all soon be dying to a zombie apocalypse brought on by aliens, all due to the spikes.
Nobody had any idea just how close those scenarios were to happen.
"It's utterly fascinating, just how widespread this was!" Winstone exclaimed, unrestrained in his excitement, "It was the strongest near the Antarctic shelf, then peters out the further you get away from it! In fact, Commander Morrison, isn't Ecopoint Antarctica near the epicenter of these coordinates?"
Morrison approached the screens with a frown, that deepened the more he looked at the screen. Turning to Archer, he narrowed his eyes, "Winston's right. Your friends from Chaldea have something to do with this, I'm guessing?"
"Chaldea was situated in Antarctica, yes." Archer shrugged.
That didn't stop the feeling of apprehensiveness that Lena could feel through their connection. That Archer clamped down on it was an indication that something else was afoot. But she didn't have time to dwell on it, not when Archer stood once more in front.
Something about his reply made Morrison glare at Archer, "We'll discuss this later." His tone brokered no argument,
"Right, now that we've made sure that I've been nothing but truthful to all of you, shall I continue?"
"Go on."
"Where was I? Ah yes, the planet was incinerated back in 2019." The nonchalant way in which he spoke calmed her down from the reminder. She knew Archer did so on purpose. After all, she and everyone else were still here. They hadn't died.
It didn't happen.
"As you've all surmised, we succeeded in preventing that from happening. We defeated the mastermind behind it all-"
"Mastermind?" Morrison interrupted, "As in, singular?"
"Yes." The way Archer looked at Morrison made Lena shiver in cold fear, "However, it's less to say a single person, and more of a single hive mind. A collection of Demons, whose names were recorded in the Ars Goetia."
"Demons?" Reinhardt spoke up in the sudden silence.
Archer nodded, "They possessed the corpse of Solomon, and enacted a plan that had been in the works for over a thousand years. The Incineration of Humanity. It was only due to the arrogance of those Demons that we managed to win."
He held out a hand, tiny swords forming on the table. While the others went for their weapons for the sudden display of magecraft, Lena could only stare at the swords in awe.
Or rather, stare at the figure whose statue was being formed from the swords.
White, regal robes. White haired, and floating atop a writhing mass of eyed tentacles. His face, where one could have imagined a handsome one, was instead a hideous caricature of a human's. Grotesque, a smile too wide, eyes blackened and reddened.
A monster.
"Goetia. Or, as we knew him at that moment, Solomon. A Beast of the End. We encountered him first during our investigation within 19th century London. It was only Goetia's lack of interest, and lack of confidence in our abilities, that Chaldea wasn't destroyed."
The eyed tentacles rose from the ground, sprouting into unnerving masses that Lena could imagine stretched into the sky.
"And the Demon God Pillars. In order to defeat them, we would have had to destroy all of them at the same time. Unfortunately, we just didn't have the ability to do so back then."
"How did you escape, then?" Reinhardt asked. The man was usually all for charging into the thick of it, but one look at Goetia and the Demon God Pillars unnerved even him.
"I didn't." Archer shrugged, "I died."
"...I'm sorry?" Angela was the one that spoke, wide eyed.
"It's just as I said, I, alongside a few others, threw ourselves at Goetia to buy Chaldea time to run. I didn't escape. Chaldea escaped."
"You're saying you died back then? Then how are you back?" Moira kept her gaze on Archer, in the way a scientist would observe a lab rat.
"Heroic Spirits are already dead. Dying a second, or third, or even fourth time is essentially routine. We would be summoned back if the need ever arose, and more often than not, the resummon would happen within days. Maybe even hours."
Archer dismissed the swords, staring with cold eyes at everyone in the room, "I want to stress this quite clearly. There is a reason why I'm telling you of Solomon and Goetia. Ramattra's Klironomia, he must've gotten them from somewhere, and for them to be active, tells me that wherever he got it from, they must know how to control, and or activate them.
"I don't know the limits of Klironomia on the human body. Flesh tends to not like hurling itself at the speed of sound. Ramattra though? He doesn't have that weakness. He can pile on more and more Klironomia, to virtually no end.
"If there is one, I fear that if we don't cut him off at the source, he'll be even stronger than a Beast of the End."
A/N: If you like what I do and want to support me, check out my P-atreon at P-atreon•com(slash)Almistyor.
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And a special thanks to: FireRogueWolf25, brutalcrab and Tassimo.