Chronal Disassociation Ch. 64 (Patreon)

Hana took a mental breath as the carrier approached the oil rig. This wasn’t the first time they had run this course, but the thrill of shooting stuff IRL compared to behind a screen was massive. It reminded her of those VR pods that got banned because they were too good at simulating real sensations.

The fact that it was the virtual sex that got it banned and not the pain emulators would never not be hilarious.

“D.Va, sound off.” Yuna’s comms came through, and while Hana rolled her eyes at her friend, she did as she was told. As far as they were both concerned, this was nothing more than a formality for the suits. As she did so, she could see that the guys from Overwatch had separated into a small group, talking to each other as they all checked their own equipment.

For her part, thrusters were green, triggers were just the right tension, DM was full - she needed to get new gloves though, her thumbs were getting too sore - and her chat was zooming by her HUD. With experience, she easily caught a few that deserved a bit more attention. 

[Overclock99]: 10 MONTH SUB! LETS GOOOOO![Tokki_Simp_No1]: TOKKI LOOKS SO CLEAN TODAY[Gwishin_Slayer]: OW boomers look lost already LMAO[BobaKnight]: Is the British girl okay??? She looks like she saw a ghost[JunkBall]: whos the guy in red? cant find anything about him[Salt_Free_Gaming]: 500 bits says D.Va takes top frag by 30%[PewPew_Norepeat]: 100k views on a pop-up stream? MEKA DIFF[remsleep12]: @JunkBall probs a boomer that doesnt have any socmeds[Bookwyrm]: Who doesn't have socmeds nowadays??[JunkBall]: doesnt make sense tho overwatch is public so all members are as well[Giwshin_Slayer]: tell that to blackwatch[Gwishin_Slayer]: @Giwshin_Slayer IDENTITY THEFT!!!

“Thanks for the ten months, Overclock99! And simp, I know you gotta live up to the name, but pipe down will ya?” Hana rolled her eyes exaggeratedly for the camera, “We’ve got some normies here that are gonna look at you weirdly for that kinda stuff.”

A series of random emotes, mostly laughing at good ol’ simp. Still, that one comment…

“Actually, I don’t know anything about that guy, do any of you?” Hana directed the question towards her own team, barring Yuna - and since they were starting soon, she should probably stick to calling her D.Mon - who was now talking with said person of interest. Her leader would probably tell them what it was about after she was done.

Overlord, predictably, pulled up the files that he had. The youngest member of MEKA Squad was the one usually in charge of things like that, as the others (including herself) preferred to get into the action more often than not. It had gotten to the point where chat was…

[lagswithc]: Imagine having zero digital footprint in the big 75 :skull:[Tofu_Titan]: Red coat guy looks like a final boss ngl[Pixel_Paladin]: ITS HIM ITS THE LOREMASTER HIMSELF[seraff]: overwatch background check speedrun any%[ceroCooldowns]: LORE DROP LETS GOOOOO[LaSombra]: wait who's the purple hair girl behind him tho :looking:[matrixwasbad]: WAITER WAITER MORE LORE PLEASE

…Yeah, like that. It had actually gotten to a point that Hana had felt she was bullying her teammate for a while, until she had talked to him privately about it. Turns out, he found the entire thing funny and went along with it for the fun of it.

That didn’t stop D.Va from making Overlord promise to tell them if they went too far. She didn’t want the excess fame to let her lose sight of her friends, after all. Dae-hyun would kill her if she acted like a bitch. It’s a shame that her childhood friend couldn’t be here with them, she knew for a fact that he had a bit of a crush on Tracer, and it would have been great to watch him squirm!

Contrary to the quick response that Overlord would usually give, however, the other pilot only furrowed his brows as he scrolled and scrolled. This caught the attention of both King and Casino, both of whom were entertaining their own chats.

Overlord not having intel on things was very much uncommon. Enough so that any sign of it was a matter of concern for them.

“Weird, none of the dossiers that Overwatch gave us has any mention of him, bar some involvement with…Tracer?” 

"Involvement?" D.Va asked, her interest genuinely piqued now. She absently fired off a quick sequence of test maneuvers with her flight sticks, keeping her eyes glued to the data Overlord was pushing to her HUD, "Like, what kind of involvement? Are they, like, a thing?"

"No, definitely not a thing." Overlord replied, the rapid tapping of his virtual keyboard bleeding through the squad's private comms, "But my crawler just hit a cached, scrubbed file from a defunct tabloid server. There were leaks from Rome a while back. It says a man matching his exact physical description was the best man at Tracer's wedding."

D.Va blinked, completely caught off guard, "Wait, she's married? To who?" Oof. Bad news for Dae-hyun.

"Unknown." Overlord sighed, sounding slightly offended by the dead end, "The spouse's identity is completely redacted, and the photos were wiped." The young man sighed in frustration, to which Casino laughed out loud.

"Come on now, no need to keep prying." The oldest of their group waved his hand in a placating manner, "It's their personal lives you're stalking right now, you know?" Slightly admonished, Overlord nodded back sheepishly.

D.Va's stream chat, meanwhile, exploded with the new information, the scrolling speed doubling instantly as the algorithm fed on the fresh gossip.

[remsleep12]: WAIT TRACER IS MARRIED??? AAAAAAAAAAAAA[JunkBall]: lore guy just casually dropping global defense secrets LMAO[BobaKnight]: Best man?? So they're like besties?[InCoGtAb]: @D.va what’s your opinion on fries? curly or nah[Salt_Free_Gaming]: Red coat is the third wheel confirmed[Gwishin_Slayer]: WHO IS THE SPOUSE OVERLORD WE NEED TO KNOW[PewPew_Norepeat]: 100 gifted subs if @Overlord finds the marriage certificate

"Curly, obviously, what kind of question is that?" D.Va shot back to the random chatter, flashing a quick, practiced wink at her internal stream-cam, "And chat, cool your jets! Casino is right, we’re not the paparazzi. No digging up marriage certificates, or I’m handing out timeouts. We respect personal boundaries in this lobby!"

[BobaKnight]: curly fries based[InCoGtAb]: W take[Gwishin_Slayer]: booooo we want the lore[PewPew_Norepeat]: fine keeping my 100 subs :angry:[hirys]: D.Va protecting the boomers, how sweet

"I'm not protecting anyone, I'm just being a professional." Hana scoffed playfully, though she did shoot a curious glance over at the Overwatch team. D.Mon had finished talking to them, and had sent them the minutes. How professional of her. Winston, the gorilla that was also a scientist(?) that was carrying a freaking tesla gun was the most obviously nervous, weirdly enough.

The cyborg ninja guy, who D.Va was certain was the same one from the Blackwatch files, was standing with his arms crossed. There was no way of determining how he felt with that helmet of his.

Reinhardt was now engaged with King, the two’s boisterous attitudes becoming the center of attention for the freecams all around them. The crusader was the most excited out of everyone here. Whether because he was on stream or because he was just playing to King’s personality remained to be seen.

Tracer, having been the center of attention way back when the Slipstream scandal came to light, was handling the cameras better than Winston. Which wasn’t saying much, as D.Va could still see that she was forcing a smile more often than not.

Sombra was busy typing on a holoscreen in front of her. No, scratch that, that was five monitors in front of her. Hana was definitely impressed by the efficiency of whatever tech she had, cause the amount of energy throughput to display that many holoscreens would need a bigger battery than what D.Va could see. Maybe she was hiding stuff beneath her clothes?

Of everyone though, the person that they had been talking about had the most interesting reaction. Archer was busy looking towards the oil rig. If D.Va didn’t know any better, she’d have thought he was tracking the enemies on the platform already!

“Everyone, we’re launching in thirty seconds.” D.Mon called over the comms, “Standard formation, I’ll take point. King, we’re counting on you for targeted missile barrage while we secure the Overwatch team’s landing.”

"Copy that, fearless leader." King's voice crackled over the private channel, punctuated by the high-pitched, electric whine of his mech's weapon systems spooling up.

Hana cracked her knuckles inside her haptic gloves. Her secondary screen was a blurred waterfall of hype, the stream's algorithms pushing her metrics higher by the second. It was kind of weird that they weren't coordinating more with Overwatch, though this was more of a secondary concern.

She wasn't much for politics, true, but MEKA Squad needed to prove themselves. Their fame from Starcraft was immense, yet that was only the case in Korea. Outside of it, all that anyone could see was a bunch of kids playing soldier. It was...aggravating to say the least. 

If they deferred to Overwatch, then it would solidify that MEKA Squad was subservient to the UN team. She didn't want any of that. Neither did the rest of her team.

At least D.Va was self-aware enough to know it really was an ego thing.

The automated voice of the carrier’s AI cut through the roar of the ocean wind, snapping Hana's focus back to the present.

“T-minus ten seconds to drop. All units, brace for insertion.”

Hana tightened her grip on the flight sticks, a familiar, electric thrill shooting down her spine. The lights on the fake carrier lit up red as the MEKA Squad tensed as one. On her HUD, a countdown started with a red screen.

“Three. Two. One. Mark.” The carrier lit green.

"Here we go, chat! Hope none of you get motion sick!" D.Va yelled into her mic, slamming the thruster pedals forward.

[PewPew_Norepeat]: GO GO GO GO GO[BobaKnight]: OH MY GOD THE THRUSTER TRAILS LOOK SO SICK[Gwishin_Slayer]: MEKA SWEEP MEKA SWEEP MEKA SWEEP[Tokki_Simp_No1]: STEP ON ME TOKKI[Salt_Free_Gaming]: Look at that formation tho, literal perfection[remsleep12]: Rip to the headphone users LMAO[JunkBall]: 10k bits on D.Va getting first blood![Pixel_Paladin]: :pogchamp: ITS HAPPENING[lagswithc]: wait where is overwatch???[Tofu_Titan]: @lagswithc they are taking the boomer bus down probably[ceroCooldowns]: D.Va looking like a magical girl on deployment fr[Bookwyrm]: Did anyone see the red guy jump? Bro just walked off the edge :skull:

Tokki shot out of the carrier bay like a neon-pink cannonball, instantly hitting terminal velocity. Flanking her, the rest of MEKA Squad erupted into the sky, leaving brilliant trails of green, blue, yellow, and red plasma in their wake. It was a perfectly choreographed, highly optimized, and all around flashy deployment.

Just like how they practiced.

"You better get ready to pay out, JunkBall!" D.Va wasn't the first to land - that honor was D.Mon's as the tip of the spear - but she was the first one to fire. Micro missiles flew out in sync with her defense matrix, thumbs dancing to intercept each bullet that came their way from the oil rig's defenders.

Said defenders, collectively named as Enemy Programs by the simulator, resembled large, mechanical bulls. If bulls had jaws half of their body size, glowed neon, and had guns inside their mouths. They were the usual fodder that the simulator techs would throw at them, as their quadrapedal nature allowed for deceptively quick movements that tested their ability to track multiple targets.

D.Va thought they were underestimating her team.

The barrage of micro missiles impacted the Enemy Program in the mouth, the bullets it would have spewed deleted by her defenses. 

"Twelve bulls, tanks!" The callout from Overlord was answered by Casino. The pilot swooped in fast in his La Princesse, a strafing run that forced the bulls to back up. The green mech, specialized in hit and run tactics, was perfect for the former F1 driver.

"Setting up artillery! Danger close!" King's Singijeon was the opposite. Bulkier, holding more weapons platforms than any other of the MEKA Squad, it was uniquely suited to large scale blanket bombing. As he was demonstrating now, a full volley of tracking missiles bombarded their enemies.

D.Va pulled a lever, her reverse thrusters bucking Tokki backwards as smoke filled the area. The first wave, as always, was the easiest to clear.

“Shifters, railing!”

Her fusion cannons whirred to life as she boosted upwards. The Enemy Program they called shifters were a lot more lean than the bulls, and they called them that due to their weird ability to morph their bodies. They had an almost squid like appearance, in that they used tentacles to strike at the MEKA Squad, except they really weren’t.

Honestly, D.Va didn’t know how to feel that the techs made something like these things instead of just adding actual Gwishin Omnics, but oh well. It kept them on their toes at least, as D.Va’s defense matrix was useless against the attacks they used.

Instead, Hana relied on raw reflex and muscle memory.

She inverted Tokki’s thrusters with a flick of her left wrist, sending the mech rolling backward through the air in a tight spiral. A hardlight tentacle whipped through the empty space where her canopy had been a split second prior, slicing clean through a steel support beam behind her.

"Not in my lobby!" D.Va yelled.

Coming out of the roll, she slammed her thrusters forward, burying the front of her mech right into the shifter's central mass. She point-blanked both fusion cannons into its core, the twin barrels roaring until the synthetic creature shattered into a shower of harmless digital pixels.

"Upper deck clear! Sector three secure!" Overlord's voice chirped in her ear, "Clearance time: one minute, twelve seconds."

"New lobby record, baby!" Hana cheered, letting Tokki hover casually on a crane overhang. She gave her internal stream camera a peace sign and a cute double-wink, "See that, chat? That’s how MEKA clears a deck. Fast, just like how I-"

"Ahem!" D.Mon deliberately coughed, and while D.Va couldn't see her, she could imagine her team leader raising an eyebrow.

D.Va only cheekily grinned back with a wave from Tokki. 

"Eyes open, I spot more units coming from our six." D.Mon rolled her eyes even as MEKA Squad prepared themselves for the next wave.

'I wonder what's Overwatch doing right about now?'

…

A/N: I didn’t realize that D.Mon would be releasing this soon, so that’s why I didn’t mention her mech until I was certain of what she could do lmao. And, for reference, the images down below should give a bit of an indicator of what’s happening.