02/08/2025: Hello again! It's been awhile since I've updated this story, to say the least. After careful consideration, I've decided to redo it again, since my writing was crap back in the day. Don't get me wrong, it's still crap, but even a polished turd looks better when it's shiny enough. Anyways, am redoing everything starting with this one. You'll probably notice the word count go drastically low, it's because I'm trimming down the fat to make it more fast paced and easy to follow. Anywho, lemme know what you think. Enjoy the revisions!
Original intro: Hey, everyone! Hope you guys don't mind that I decided to post my very first Overwatch fic just for the hell of it. After I first played the game two months ago, I couldn't get it out of my mind no matter how much I tried. And the end result on that happened to be this. Be wary though, since I'm writing this from a USAF pilot's POV it's going to be a bit techno-heavy, and written with a lot of abbreviations. But worry not, it should be easier to follow as time goes by.
Without further ado, I bring you my first Overwatch fic. Don't forget to tell me what you guys think via reviews. Enjoy. :)
"—Dagger Three, you've got an omnic UCAV on your six!"
"—Christ, where are they all coming from?"
"—SAM launch! Wave off! Wave off!"
Tracer rounds slashed across his field of view. He pulled hard to the right by sheer reflex—left hand yanking the flight stick, right hand pushing the throttle to half power. Moments later, the twin engines on his FA-1X roared, and the jet rolled sharply starboard.
He needed to lose this tenacious pursuer: a cold, efficient omnic drone that didn't tire, sweat, or flinch. A machine that wouldn't hesitate to kill him the instant he made a wrong move.
"—Multiple bandits, four o'clock high! Engage, engage!"
"—This is Gunslinger Lead—Gunslinger Two is down! I say again, Gun—"
He grimaced at the broken radio calls echoing across the net. The thing about fighting human pilots was that they eventually slipped up—fear or fatigue would make them blink first. omnic war machines, though, only got sharper. Each engagement seemed to teach them a new way to exploit human error.
"—I'm hit, I'm hit! Dagger Five is ejecting—grid coords incoming—"
An hour ago, he'd been at K-16 Air Base on standby, just relaxing and thoroughly convinced the omnic threat had all but faded into history. Then the machines surged across East Asia in simultaneous attacks. Now, at twenty-five thousand feet over central South Korea, he was in a desperate fight against an enemy that would kill him the moment his luck ran out.
He squinted through the advanced tinted canopy, designed to reduce glare and filter harmful radiation at high altitudes. Far below, farmland and cityscapes sprawled out—Seoul's outskirts, maybe—broken up by towering clouds of black smoke from omnic strikes. It seemed unreal, as if the world below had no clue how close it was to a new catastrophe.
But it was real enough. These omnics were so lethal and erratic that entire militaries had been forced to scrap decades of tried-and-true doctrine. Gone were the days of purely human-led dogfights—now it was about who could adapt faster to a machine's near-perfect reflexes.
Worse, the omnics had hardware to match their cold logic: engines with more thrust that refused to quit, missiles that rarely missed, and cannons that chewed through armor like papier-mâché. He caught a glimpse of bright orange muzzle flashes as the drone fired again—cannon rounds snapping close enough to spark small arcs across his cockpit glass. His flight suit's temperature-regulation system struggled to keep him cool as sweat seeped down his neck.
He banked left, forcing the forward-swept wings of the FA-1X to climb slightly, but the omnic UCAV still closed the distance. If it got a clean angle on him, he'd be little more than a flash of light and some debris.
He recalled his squadron commander's last briefing. "Maintain BVR range whenever possible," the commander had said, "using AWACS oversight. If forced to engage, stick to heat-seekers in two-ship teams. Don't fight alone."
That plan disintegrated the moment the omnics appeared. They attacked from multiple angles; his wingman vanished off comms, presumably downed by a next-gen heat-seeker. The squadron's AWACS, Juliet Actual, had gone silent. And to top it off, the machines had established a SAM kill-box in territory that was supposed to be clear.
Yeah, this was going really well.
"All call signs, this is Anvil Lead," a voice finally broke in through the crackling static of his helmet's built-in comm system. "Be advised, Juliet Actual is down. I repeat, Juliet Actual has been shot down. Break."
He grimaced. So, it was official: the AWACS was gone. That explained the lack of sensor coverage, among other things. Now they were all essentially flying blind except for short-range passive detection—just how the omnics liked it.
Anvil Lead was Captain Halverson, a rookie from East Point if memory served. The man sounded rattled, and he couldn't blame him. They'd been tossed into a hornet's nest without warning.
"Also, Overwatch strike team inbound to the AO," Halverson continued. "ETA under twenty-five mikes to neutralize the omnic See-Three-Eye site. Single transport, no escort, requesting immediate air cover."
He let out a humorless chuckle. Overwatch? Here? Now? Sure, they were the UN's elite task force credited with ending the Omnic Crisis—renowned for their cutting-edge tech, specialized training, and a seemingly bottomless budget. All well and good, to be sure, but he had bigger concerns at the moment—like staying alive for the next few minutes.
He did a quick glance at his augmented-reality secondary scope, noticing sensor pings across the board. That UCAV was still chasing him relentlessly, and now he had new data: an incoming Overwatch transport, blinking a secure identify-friend-or-foe (IFF) tag. Great—they'd have to deal with them sooner or later, whether he liked it or not.
A wave of fresh tracer rounds zipped overhead, close enough for his helmet's HUD to glow red with collision warnings. The ballistic path on his display showed those rounds missing him by mere feet. One slight variance, and it would've been game over.
"Punisher One, Anvil Lead," Halverson's voice crackled again. "Sit-rep, over."
He clenched his teeth. "Anvil Lead, Punisher One. I've got one omnic UCAV on my tail, and it's not letting go. My wingman's missing, and it also looks like this bastard drone is forcing me toward their SAM zone. Over."
"Roger. Can you shake it?"
"I'm trying, sir. No promises."
"Punisher One, be advised, you're the closest asset to the Overwatch transport. The rest of us are bogged down, and they need cover. As of now, they're commandeering your bird per UN authority. Over."
He peeked at his nav console, where a blinking blue icon labeled Overwatch Transport floated only a few klicks away. His pulse spiked—he barely had room to breathe, let alone escort someone else.
"Say again last, Anvil Lead?"
"You're being retasked, Punisher One. Support Overwatch. That's an order."
"But—"
"Not our call, Punisher One." Halverson said with at least some semblance of sympathy. "Their CO cited the United Nations Omnic Defense and Security Treaty. They've got legal authority to reassign assets in an active omnic conflict zone."
He opened his mouth to protest just as his FA-1X shuddered violently. The HUD flashed a structural warning: minor damage on the left wing. Outside, black streaks lined the forward-swept surface—grazes from the UCAV's rotary cannon, probably. He inhaled sharply, fearing the wing might shear right off, but the advanced composite plating held. For now.
"Punisher One, acknowledge."
He gritted his teeth. "Acknowledged, Anvil Lead. Punisher One copies all."
Well, that was that—he'd been volunteered for Overwatch duty. Lucky him.
"Expect Overwatch to contact you shortly. Good luck. Out."
He switched off the channel with a snort. "Yeah, thanks."
The UCAV still clung to his six. If he did this by-the-book, he might try to outturn it, but that was suicide—the omnic craft could pull maneuvers that would pancake a human pilot despite his suit's limited inertia-dampening system. And without AWACS or workable radar locks, BVR missiles were pointless.
He considered how some aviators survived the original omnic Crisis. Sometimes they got creative—very creative.
All right, let's get stupid, he thought.
He slammed the throttle forward, feeling his jet lurch beneath him. The altimeter spiraled upward: 29,000 feet…32,000 feet… Mach 1.2…1.5… The thin air hammered the fuselage as he soared toward the stratosphere. Behind him, the UCAV matched the climb, apparently waiting for a perfect kill shot.
He flicked his gaze over the cockpit instruments. His smart-fabric g-suit squeezed his legs, forcing blood to his brain, while the altitude climbed well beyond normal operating parameters for standard fighters. The UCAV, however, didn't seem to mind—omnic thrusters were notoriously robust.
"Alert," droned the female monotone in his helmet. "Altitude now forty-four thousand feet. Closure distance: fifty meters. Hostile currently gaining."
He exhaled, noticing the UCAV wasn't firing. It was probably waiting for a near-point-blank shot to ensure zero chance of escape or ejection.
"Right," he muttered under his breath. "Time to see if this shit works."
He slammed his thumb on a chaff-flare dispenser switch. Four pods behind his twin engines fired, releasing a cloud of metallic polymer chaff and white-hot flares. Thousands of Mylar fragments dispersed in a glittering curtain, each designed to confuse radar returns, while the flares burned at blistering temperatures to fool infrared seekers.
The UCAV flew straight into the cloud. On his rear display feed, he saw the machine jerk—disoriented by the sudden swarm of reflectors and heat sources. That was his opening.
He yanked back on the stick, cutting the throttle to two-thirds while pitching the nose up abruptly—an improvised Pugachev's cobra. The deceleration slammed him forward in his harness. Below, the UCAV blasted upward, still locked on his old flight path.
Now the drone was dead in his sights.
He pulled the trigger. A burst of 30mm rounds thundered from the FA-1X's own rotary cannon, muzzle flashes strobing near the nose. At barely thirty meters, every round struck home, puncturing the UCAV from front to back. One shot must have hit one of the onboard fuel tanks, because the omnic craft erupted in a brilliant fireball, fragments scattering across the sky.
"Splash one omnic bandit," he muttered, a stunned mixture of relief and disbelief in his voice.
His very first gearhead kill.
He watched flaming debris spin downward, leaving a smoky trail. The entire dogfight couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes, but he felt as if he'd been wrestling for hours.
He checked his multifunction tactical display. No new hostile contacts. Finally, a moment to breathe.
He let the FA-1X drift downward in a wide split-S, returning to a more manageable altitude. A few klicks away, the Overwatch transport's IFF still pulsed on his screen, practically demanding he link up. They'd probably hail him any second now, clueless how close he'd come to being vaporized.
Easing the throttle back, he glanced once at his damaged wing. The adaptive composite looked scorched but stable. He let out a long breath, heart still racing. Surviving that had taken every bit of skill and a whole lot of luck, to say the least.
"All right, Overwatch," he murmured as he steered toward the blinking contact. "Let's hope you don't get me killed."
There was no telling what the next few minutes held. But for now, at least, he was alive—and ready to do his job.