Chronal Disassociation Ch. 63 (Patreon)

There were way too many cameras for Lena’s comfort. Big, bulky ones that floated with some form of maglev tech, bouncing around and getting the ‘best’ angles they could. Each of them remotely controlled by one of the techs behind the one-way glass of their training room.

All so they could stream her bloody face to the world.

Okay, maybe not her face specifically, but that was a moot point! Nobody told her that she’d be performing in front of who knows how many people! It was already bad back in the aftermath of the Uprising, when news crews hounded them relentlessly. Back then, it was a shared block of ‘Overwatch saving the day’, whereas now, it was exclusively her and her team.

Emily would find this a riot.

Lena most certainly did not.

Still, nothing she could do about it now. The only thing she could do is try to ignore it. Hopefully, everyone’s attention would be on the MEKA Squad instead of Overwatch, seeing as it was technically MEKA’s training they were watching.

“Viewership is currently totalling over one hundred thousand across all social media and rising.” Overlord spoke up beside them, “With the rate that it’s going, we’re on track to reach five hundred thousand concurrent viewers.”

Lena could feel her breathing start to pick up speed.

“Bit lower than expected.” King shrugged as he swapped out his glasses for a sturdier looking pair, “Then again, this is a guerrilla stream.”

“It’ll pick up once word gets out.” D.Mon shrugged, “Give me a second to put up chat.”

“Oxton, are you alright?” Archer’s concerned callout hit her like ice cold water. Except she was already drenched in a cold sweat, so nothing actually happened other than Lena wanting to curl up into a ball in panic.

That he hadn’t bothered to contact her through their mental link was telling.

“Of bloody course not!” She hissed out, which maybe was the wrong decision, as the lens of the nearest maglev drone swiveled toward Lena, its autofocus mechanism whirring like an agitated wasp. Lena did her best to show her smile. She didn't think she did too well.

Archer tracked its movement, his steel-gray eyes narrowing imperceptibly. To the untrained eye, Lena was simply vibrating with her usual energy. But Archer, and the rest of the team, knew that she was nervous. She had thought that this would be a normal training session, maybe viewed by some number of live viewers.

Lena’s usual training at the London Overwatch base usually was recorded and reviewed, which she already knew about. Sometimes, there’d be a tour that passes by - a high school field trip or two - that she and her fellow teammates show off for. Nothing too egregious.

This was on a different scale.

Never had she thought of herself as a streamer of any sort. It was all the rage back in Reinhardt’s time, sure, but the Omnic Crisis had put a lot of people in situations where it was a struggle to survive, let alone get time to livestream, play games, or even watch those streams. As such, while the generation before Lena’s was filled with streaming personalities, those same individuals eventually were the ones that had been in life-or-death situations in the first wave of the Crisis.

Like Reinhardt, apparently.

Either way, the resulting effect was that streaming had once more become a niche for Lena’s generation.

Some places like South Korea, however, never changed. Throughout the early 2010’s, video games and streaming were all the rage. Professional esports was a lucrative, if mentally demanding, niche that they never got rid of, even under the threat of the Gwishin.

Before anything else could be said between them, panels popped up on the visors of the MEKA Squad members. Lena blinked, the sudden flash of light breaking her stare-down with the hovering maglev drone. The panels were densely packed with scrolling text, flashing emotes, and cascading donation alerts. The teenagers instantly lit up, their postures shifting from relaxed to energized in an instant.

"Oh, wow, the main room is already at capacity." D.Va chirped, her eyes darting back and forth as she read the rapid-fire text. She reached up, adjusting her headset with a practiced, photogenic tilt of her head, "Thanks for the ten months, Overclock! Dang, has it really been that long?"

"I've got the secondary streams moderated." Overlord added, his fingers dancing across a holographic keyboard projected from his wrist, "Engagement metrics are spiking."

"Perfect! Oh, chat's asking about the Overwatch team." D.Va swiveled, her mech's hydraulics hissing as she turned to face Lena and the others. The pink mech's camera array focused on them with an almost predatory precision, "Should I introduce everyone? Give them a proper MEKA welcome?"

"Maybe let them introduce themselves." D.Mon said dryly, finally looking up from her panel, "They're our guests after all, not exhibits." 

"Exhibits are more interesting." D.Va's gum popped, "No offense, Overwatch. You guys are just so serious. Are you always like this? Do you ever, like, relax?"

Before Lena could formulate a response that wouldn't come out as a strangled shriek, Reinhardt's laughter boomed across the hangar, "Relax! We relax! Why, just last week-"

Lena tuned out the old crusader's flamboyancy, as the cameras turned to him. Really, this was him not being good at streaming?

"All systems nominal, ready for deployment." Casino nodded from where he was checking another panel, graphs and numbers flitting through, "D.Va, your left thruster's calibration is still off by point-oh-three percent."

"Oh no." D.Va pressed a hand to her chest in mock horror. "Point-oh-three percent? Whatever shall I do?"

"Fix it before we drop?" Casino's voice was flat, utterly unimpressed. "Or do you want your mech to drift into a building again?"

"That was one time."

"Last Tuesday."

"The building was empty!"

"The point still stands." 

They were completely, utterly distracted, and yet, they were also completely, utterly at ease. They joked about crashing into buildings. They talked about viewership metrics like other soldiers talked about ammunition counts. They had built an entire culture around their own absurdity, and somehow, impossibly, it worked.

Lena stared at the teenagers, her mind struggling to reconcile the scene in front of her.

They were soldiers. Technically. They were drafted by their government to fight off gargantuan, city-leveling omnic monstrosities that adapted to conventional warfare like a virus. Yet, standing in the middle of a high-tech staging ground, mere minutes before a combat simulation, they looked like kids hanging out at an internet cafe.

The absurdity of it temporarily short-circuited Lena's rising panic.

She watched D.Va blow a pink bubble of gum, the holographic light of her chat panel reflecting in her eyes. D.Mon was typing something or the other while talking quietly with a smile. King was adjusting his hair in the reflection of a minimized window, while Casino and Overlord discussed engagement algorithms.

For all intents and purposes, their situational awareness had plummeted to absolute zero. If a Null Sector drop pod had crashed through the ceiling right then, the MEKA Squad wouldn't have noticed until the dust cleared.

A shadow fell over Lena, blocking the harsh glare of the hangar's lighting.

The sweeping flare of Archer’s crimson coat completely eclipsed Lena from the maglev drone's unblinking lens. He didn't swat the camera away or acknowledge it verbally, only closing his eyes and crossing his arms.

Thankfully, whoever was piloting the drone got the message, and headed in the direction of Reinhardt and Winston.

She had to suppress a wince, giving the scientist a mental apology.

"Thanks." She muttered towards the Spirit. Had it been anyone else, they wouldn't have caught it. Archer's enhanced senses clearly did, with the man giving her a small nod of acknowledgement.

Lena took a deep, shuddering breath, the stale air of the hangar filling her lungs. With the camera drone now hovering around a highly uncomfortable Winston and a boisterous Reinhardt, the oppressive weight of the cameras lifted just enough for her to think straight. She rolled her shoulders, the chronal accelerator on her chest humming with a steady, rhythmic thrum.

"Alright, chat, we're about to drop into the simulation." D.Va's voice echoed, overly bright and perfectly modulated for the microphone. She was leaning against the leg of her bright pink mech, completely exposed, "Gonna show these Overwatch chumps how MEKA carries the lobby. Don't forget to hit that sub button!"

"D.Va," D.Mon sighed, though Lena could hear a teasing lilt to it, "You're going to scare them off. They're not used to our energy."

"They're soldiers," D.Va pointed out, gesturing vaguely at the Overwatch team with one pink-gloved hand, "They can handle a little trash talk. Can't you?"

She directed the last part directly at Lena, and Lena realized that, maybe, just maybe, this was D.Va's - and by extension MEKA Squad's - way of easing them in. You couldn't be a public personality without noticing stuff going on around you, and they must've noticed that Lena was uncomfortable.

Dammit, they were kids. But they're good kids. Lena opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"We'll see." She managed, and it came out steadier than she'd expected. "Just try not to crash into any other buildings, yeah?"

A beat of silence. Then D.Va's grin widened, sharp and delighted, "Oh, I like her. Chat, you hearing this? The Brit has spine."

Lena exchanged a look with Sombra. The hacker was leaning against a stack of munitions crates, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised in a look of profound disbelief, coupled with no small amount of amusement. Even Genji, standing perfectly still with his arms folded, seemed to radiate a quiet sigh.

They were briefed about their training before they had started the stream, though only the bare basics. The Korean Army had access to a state of the art projection system. A system that had Winston desperately wanting to pour over the schematics of.

They'll probably get those schematics at a later date, all things considered. If the ROK Army didn't want it to be shown, then they wouldn't have approved of its use. If anything, this was likely to be some sort of advertisement for their system, one that told everyone watching that they're willing to play ball.

Lena didn't see the strategic advantage, but she wasn't in charge, so the point was moot.

Archer seemed to suspect something was amiss though. That he hadn't told her anything was sign enough, as were his subtle motions to Sombra. Not that anyone else noticed. She only did as she had spent an inordinate amount of time with the annoying asshole.

Nevertheless, as the five members of MEKA Squad finished up their preparations and entered their mechs, so too did the five members of Overwatch position themselves appropriately. It would have been better had Angela been here, but they would make do.

“Starting simulation in three.” The intercom sounded out, “Two. One. Starting.”

The world expanded into blue. Blue cubes, millions of them, tessellating outward from the hangar's far wall like a digital flood. They twisted and reformed, snapping into place with a sound like shattering glass played in reverse.

Then the blue receded, and Lena was standing on an aircraft carrier.

The smell of the sea, salty, humid, assaulted her nose. The sound of the waves, the heat of the sun, all of them were simulations, but her senses were completely fooled.

It all felt so real. The others that hadn’t experienced this likely felt the same, going by the looks on their faces. Archer was the only exception, like he almost always was. Instead of looking around in wonder, he was staring in the distance with two raised eyebrows.

Lena followed his gaze, and could see a massive oil rig in the distance. Crude oil had been more or less gone by the time that Lena had been born. Cleaner replacements had eventually completely replaced them, and plastics were far less common. Fusion energy had solved most of the world’s energy issues, while hardlight did the rest.

The oil rigs around the world were not completely dismantled, though. Nobody could afford it, as the oil companies that ran them went bankrupt. As such, abandoned oil rigs still polluted the open ocean, and had actually become something of a horror movie trope.

"Alright, everyone, here's the situation."

D.Mon's voice cut through the ambient simulation sounds with practiced clarity. Her mech had positioned itself at the edge of the aircraft carrier's deck, its camera array sweeping across the simulated ocean before settling on the distant oil rig. The mech's speakers projected her voice, crisp and professional, with just enough warmth to keep the audience engaged.

"Standard extraction simulation. The objective is that oil rig about two klicks out. Hostile forces have taken control of the facility and are holding civilian personnel hostage." She paused, and Lena could imagine her reading the chat feed in her visor, "No, before anyone asks, this isn't based on a real-world scenario template. Thank you for the five gifted."

Lena listened as D.Mon continued her explanation. She made it sound effortless, breaking down complex tactical information into digestible pieces while acknowledging donation alerts and chat questions with seamless transitions. It was, Lena realized with a mixture of admiration and unease, a genuine skill.

"The simulation's AI will adapt to our actions in real-time." D.Mon continued, her mech gesturing toward the rig with one articulated arm. "The hostages are marked on your HUD as green icons. Hostiles are red. The extraction zone is on the rig's helipad, marked in blue."

"Any other parameters we should know about?" King asked. His mech was running diagnostics, weapons systems cycling through check sequences, "Like, I don't know, a time limit? Environmental hazards? Surprise boss fight?"

"Always with the boss fights." D.Mon sighed, though Lena caught the hint of amusement in her voice, "But yes, there's a time limit. The rig's structural integrity is compromised - the initial defense of the rig damaged the supports. We've got fifteen minutes starting on touchdown before the whole thing goes up."

"Fifteen minutes?" Reinhardt's voice boomed from somewhere behind Lena, his massive frame still adjusting to the simulation's spatial constraints, "That's barely enough time for a proper entrance!"

"Then you better make it count, old man." D.Va called back, her mech's boosters flaring as she lifted off the deck, "MEKA Squad will take the aerial approach. Overwatch, you're on ground insertion. We'll clear the upper decks and draw fire while you extract the hostages."

Lena blinked. That was...actually a solid plan, considering they didn't know Archer could probably wipe everything off the map. Acknowledging Overwatch's ground capabilities, leveraging MEKA's mobility and firepower. And it came from the overly bubbly D.Va?

She may have to reassess the teenager sooner rather than later.

"Alright, before we engage, are there any other questions?"

A hand was raised. It was...Archer?

"Are you sure this place isn't based on a real scenario?" The Heroic Spirit was entirely serious about it, even as D.Mon uncharacteristically scowled.

"Yes, I'm sure." The leader rolled her eyes, "Didn't you hear me earlier? Anyway, this is just the default setting of the simulator. They just tweaked the hostiles' settings to account for the increase in people."

Archer acknowledged her with a nod, if one that was unconvinced. Lena noted that for later. She’d ask him what that was about, especially since it was unlikely he would have asked that question if he hadn’t recognized something or the other.

What are the chances that he’d recognized a random oil rig for a simulation like this, after all?

…