Chapter Text
Minami Kenjirou was five when he played his first game. His parents always tell him they remember the way his eyes lit up when he finished a level, and how he begged to play just a little more before going home. It was what probably started all of this, the only reason his life turned out the way it did.
It’s cold outside today, Kenjirou notices, as he steps outside, swinging his small bag of coins back and forth. It’s not unusual for it to be cold around this time of year, but he appreciates the weather anyway- he prefers the cold, because when it’s hot there are always people trying to escape the heat, and the arcade gets so crowded. When it’s crowded, he doesn’t get to play any games.
Of course, some would argue that he plays enough games anyway. He has all of the high scores on every machine at the arcade, and the smaller kids always complain that they can’t beat him. Sometimes one of them will challenge him, and he can’t help but let them win, just to see how excited they look. Everyone adores him, of course, especially the smaller kids. He’s basically- no, he is a celebrity, having appeared in various movies and TV shows, as well as being the top gamer in the world. He’s probably the reason their small little town gets so much attention.
He doesn’t mind being famous. Other people hate it, say that every detail of their life is spilled to the press, but Kenjirou is an open book anyway. No secrets, of course, that’s all it has ever been with him. His parents didn’t raise him to keep things from people. Besides, there’s nothing he does that needs to be kept secret anyway. No drama in his life, no scandals- only games and movies.
Even in this era- the true era of technology, people sometimes say- he’s unusually devoted to the internet. He’s not so sure why people think that’s such a bad thing. Video games are so fun, and connecting with people through them is so easy. Much better than meeting people in real life. He wonders if it’s because he already knows they have something in common when they meet through video games.
Kenjirou decides that’s enough thinking for today. He’s been walking for several minutes, and he’s approaching his beloved arcade. He has a competition later today, but that doesn’t mean he can’t beat his own high scores in the arcade for a few hours. Besides, it helps him calm down, because it’s almost like a safe space for him- he can ignore the pressure of the world and the stress of being who he is while he’s inside.
He pushes the door open gently, and the woman who runs the place smiles at him. She doesn’t talk to him anymore, but he’s not complaining, They both know he would rather run off to play some games. Speaking of games, he’s already headed over to one- Fighters of the Storm. He knows this is a very old game, but he loves it because his mom used to talk about playing it, and how happy she was that she recognized one of the games in the arcade. He runs a hand gently over the buttons on the game, then opens his bag and inserts a coin.
He’s presented with the familiar start-up screen, and that is enough to get him to grin. He moves the joystick so the ‘Single Player’ option is highlighted, and then uses one of the buttons to select it. The character select screen pops up, and he picks his favorite character. The flying one, in the mech, is the hardest character to win with, and that’s why she’s his favorite. The game starts with a cutscene, a few pieces of dialogue from both of the characters, before the screen shows a more 2D scene. Words flash on the screen, telling him the game is starting, and suddenly he’d expertly moving the joystick and tapping the buttons until he’s won the battle, and put himself among the top five players once again (all of which are him).
He’s just finished typing in his online name, MikKen, when he notices someone enter that is dressed way too formally for a casual day at the arcade. He tries to get a better look- the man isn’t Japanese, but he’s definitely asian. Korean, he thinks, as the man turns to face him.
At first he figures the man is gawking at him because he’s a celebrity, but he doesn’t appear to be gawking, just staring. And his eyes look so blank. Kenjirou doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone with such a scary stare. It brings shivers down his spine, which only get worse when the man walks over to him.
“Minami Kenjirou?” he asks, and Kenjirou can barely find it in himself to nod. The man doesn’t waste any time in speaking again. “I have a job offer for you.”
Kenjirou tilts his head lightly. This person doesn’t look like he’s an agent of any sort, or a casting director, so he’s confused. “What kind of job?” he questions, and the man looks as if he’s debating with himself internally before he finally does respond.
“A job in a special unit of the army. I work for the Mobile Exo-force of the Korean Army, and I’m here to recruit you.” Kenjirou thinks this is much too top-secret to be shared in an arcade, but when he looks around, he notices that nobody is there anymore. Not even the lady at the front desk. He wonders why he didn’t notice them leave. “We’re looking to recruit gamers to fight the Omnics with personalized mech suits, designed to fit only the person who uses them.”
Of course, Kenjirou has been hooked since mech suits were mentioned, and he’s been grinning. “I’ll join!” he exclaims almost immediately, his eyes almost sparkling as he imagines it. It’s almost like his favorite character in FotS, he realizes, and that causes him to grin more. “Uh- When do I start? Where do I start? Do I need some kind of special training?”
He doesn’t know it yet, but this is the beginning of the hardest part of his life.
Minami Kenjirou was only 16 when he flew a mech suit into battle for the first time. He remembers the horror of battle vividly, and always reminds himself that he has to do this so there can be things like video games and celebrities for all of the young people who look up to him.
Kenjirou has gotten special permission to livestream his battles after he realized that talking about it as if he was in a game made it easier for him to fight. It’s only his third time in battle, but he’s used simulators almost every day. Most people in the force with him are Korean, and well past their twenties, making Kenjirou the youngest member. He doesn’t know for sure, but he’s heard people talking about how he may be the best.
The large plane carrying everyone in their suits shakes as it lands. A few people who have never been in it before look terrified, although Kenjirou is almost certain that he isn’t one to talk. The large door opens slowly in front of him, and he thinks to himself that it almost looks like a cutscene from some game.
Already, he can hear fighting. A few older soldiers take off in their mech suits, and Kenjirou presses a labelled button on the control panel. “MikKen online,” he speaks, and he sees the number of views in the bottom right corner of his screen skyrocket up very quickly. He flies out into the battle, commenting on how civilized this place looks for an Omnic-only city.
There isn’t much time to look around. There never is, because this is real life. One of the many reasons he prefers games to reality is that games always give you time to look around, and they always show you secrets. But here, there’s only the sound of metal against metal, the soft, quiet gunfire of the mech suits and the rapid, noisy, and erratic fire of the Omnics.
“Boosters engaged,” he says quietly, boosting towards a group of Omnics that aren’t facing him. He plows through them so easily, and he lets out an excited whoops, shooting at another one and watching as it explodes. It’s so easy to pretend that this is another simulator, he realizes. Losing sight of reality is so easy when he’s in his mech. He’s very thankful for that.
A Bastion starts to shoot at him, and he turns his mech so he’s facing it, then puts up his defense matrix and flies towards it, blowing it into pieces easily. In the distance, he hears someone blow up their mech, but he doesn’t worry about it. The blast is made to only hurt others, seeing as both the mechs and everyone’s suits have protection against it. The bright neon disintegrates a huge amount of Omnics, so much that the fight from then on is easy. Only a couple of enemies- Omnics, he reminds himself, this isn’t a game - have managed to take him by surprise.
Kenjirou is amazed by how much the mech force can do in thirty minutes. In thirty minutes, they’ve eliminated every Omnic that was attacking. He’s just ended his stream and flown back into the plane when he sees that one person in particular was badly injured. One of the first-timers, he thinks, and he ejects from his mech to run over. All of them were trained in basic support, but this looked much more serious.
He can see blood on the outside of her suit, and he can see that the suit was ripped open in many different places. It frightens Kenjirou that the Omnics could get through the suits when they were supposed to be more than bulletproof. They were evolving, certainly, because nobody had gotten injured at all in the last battle. Kenjirou’s hands were shaking.
The girl who had been hurt is crying. He recognizes her, because he’d played against her once, before joining the mech force. He registers that a few more people start to crowd around her, before they’re all pushed away by the medical specialist.
He’s in the front of the crowd, so he can clearly see her wounds being disinfected, can clearly hear the medic mumbling about how there’s not enough time to get her into the tiny med lab before bandaging her up. He doesn’t see any bandages, though, and something crosses his mind that he hadn’t thought of before. The woman is going to die here.
Kenjirou doesn’t know when the tears started flowing- or why, because he barely knows this girl. He knows he’d going to start to sob, and he puts a hand over his mouth, feeling himself shake lightly. The medic is telling her she’s going to be okay, she’s going to live, she just needs to keep her eyes open. He’s overwhelmed, because he has never witnessed someone’s death before.
The woman tells the medic to come closer, and it appears as if she’s whispering something, before the hand what was gripping said medic’s arm slowly fell limp. Kenjirou hears a scream, and he doesn’t even realize it’s his until he’s pulled into a hug by someone he doesn’t even know. Without asking who they are or why they decided to comfort him, he hugs them back, sobbing into the taller person’s chest.
This is the first time he doesn’t compare life to a video game. This is something that can’t be compared to virtual reality. This is also the first time he truly sees how much danger he’s put himself in by joining this force, but he can’t back down now, he refuses to. He has to keep everybody safe. He has to keep his family safe.
The taller man lets go of him, but he doesn’t register it at all. He doesn’t register anything clearly right now, perhaps because he’s sobbing or because his mind is overflowing with thoughts, sadness, fear.
He hears the commander announce that there will be no funeral held, and his head snaps up in anger. He hears that where will be no memorial for the girl, because this is war and people aren’t always remembered. This makes him furious.
“She was fighting for you! Do you even care? She died trying to protect her country! She deserves to be remembered, it’s not fair! What about her family??” The jumble of words is spilling from his lips before he can stop himself, and for the first time he does not step down when faced with the commander’s glare.
“There will be no memorial,” he repeats, and Kenjirou knows he’s lost. It’s not fair, he keeps telling himself. It’s not fair.
Minami Kenjirou was 17 years old and more experienced with war than most people on the planet when he received a digital message from his father. It was the first one he had gotten since leaving to join the MEKA force.
He’s sitting in his bed, playing a game on the holo-tablet he’s been provided with when he gets the message. At first he doesn’t think anything of it, although he’s a little bit happy, although he decides that he can wait until after he finishes this level to read it.
The level only takes him ten minutes to finish. Most people have gone to sleep by now, but Kenjirou needs to open this message. He wants to see how his family is doing.
He exits out of the game and clicks on the message, dimming the lighting so it won’t wake up the other people in the room.
Kenjirou,
I’m sorry I haven’t been able to talk to you, but we’ve been busy trying to support ourselves on our own, and I haven’t had any time to write. I keep hearing that there are more fatalities every day, but they never mention who. I pray each night that you won’t be one of them. I watch every single one of your livestreams. I’m very proud of you, Kenji.
Kenjirou smiled at the nickname. His whole family calls him that, and they always have.
Unfortunately, I’m writing with some bad news. I don’t know if they’ll tell you if I don’t send it to you myself. It’s hard for me to type this, and I imagine it will be harder for you to read it. Your mother was visiting a family member in Korea- your aunt, do you remember her? She’s the one who bought you your own gaming setup when you were only 10. On her visit, the airport happened to be attacked by Talon, the terrorist group, which I’m sure you’ve heard of.
He’s holding his breath. He has to cover his mouth because he’s afraid if he doesn’t then he’ll scream. His mom can’t be dead, right? He hopes she’s only injured, not dead. He hopes that’s what this is leading up to.
She tried to defend those poor kids.. Kenji, she’s gone. Your mother was killed by a sniper, there was nothing anyone could do. I haven’t left the house in days, but there’s going to be a funeral. I don’t know if they’ll let you come, but please try, for me, and for your mother. Please.
He’s very much aware that he’s crying, and he bites down hard on his lip so he won’t cry loud enough to wake people up. He doesn’t bother to read the rest of the letter. Instead, he drops the tablet on his pillow and slips out of bed, grabbing his keycard from his bedside table and using it to exit the room as quietly as possible. Once he’s out, he navigates the hallways to find the commander’s office. He sees a green light by the door- the commander is in there and not in a conference. Kenjirou presses the button to notify him that there’s someone there who needs to speak to him.
The door slides open almost a full minute later- he’d been counting. The commander looks tired and angry, but Kenjirou isn’t fazed. The commander opens his mouth to speak, but Kenjirou gets there first, blurting out, “I need to go home to see my family.” He takes a breath, and then keeps explaining. “My, um, my mom just- she just died, and, and I need to be there for the funeral-”
“No.” His eyes widen in shock, he was so sure he’d be allowed to go. “We can’t afford to have you gone for even a day.”
Kenjirou understands that he’s their best fighter, and he understands that the Omnics are getting harder to kill, but he’s young and selfish and he needs to go see his family. “Please! Please, this isn’t fair!” he shouts, and the commander is unaffected, like always. He’s kicked out of the room, but that doesn’t stop him from repeatedly banging on the door, kicking it, anything that will make him open up again.
He does that for a solid 30 minutes before storming off again, but not back to the rooms. He goes to the simulator, swiping his keycard and then running to the nearest simulator. He starts it up, setting the difficulty to the highest it will go. He’s never tried that before, and none of the battles have been intense enough that he needs to.
He spends an hour in the simulator before it forces itself to shut off, telling him he needs to go to sleep. He’s to angry to sleep, he thinks, but he walks slowly back to the room anyways, stalling for as long as he can. He reaches the room and suddenly there is no more loud crying, and he enters quietly.
Kenjirou can hear everyone breathing quietly, some snoring, and he realizes that he may not be the only one that’s been told they couldn’t go home. He looks back on it and knows he was being selfish, knows that he wouldn’t be told he could go home if everyone else in the room was told no. Still, he had dared to hope. Maybe that was the reason he kept being so enthusiastic about fighting.
He crawls into his bed, and curls up into a tight ball under the covers. Tears are still flowing freely, and he wipes his eyes with the comforter. He shouldn’t think about this. He shouldn’t think about his mother anymore. Commander always tells everyone that if they have a past, it’s best not to remember it too much. He might start to follow that advice, because he knows for sure that it will help him.
That was the day he decided to forget a lot of things.
Minami Kenjirou was still 17 when he got to go back to the real world again, instead of being trapped in the large, yet empty bunker.
Kenjirou had almost forgotten that most of the world wasn’t war-torn. Of course, he isn’t back home, but Hollywood is good enough for him, seeing as he’d been there several times before. Not to mention, he loves the way everyone there recognizes him as an icon. It makes him feel like he’s still 15 and the top gamer in the world.
He was currently sat in a coffee shop, laughing at something that someone two tables over had said. He had honestly forgotten how much joy the little things in life brought him, like sitting alone in crowded shops, or just being worry free in general. Some song was playing on the radio, very quietly, and Kenjirou guessed it was from the two years he’d been gone.
He liked it a lot, actually.
He hadn’t had much access to music in the bunker, and the music he did have access to was only very old Korean songs. Not that he disliked them, of course, but listening to the same songs for two years nearly drove him mad. Sometimes he thought it had driven him mad.
He glances over at the counter nearby, observing the probably underpaid and overworked employees. He used to think that was one of the worst jobs someone could have, but he thinks it’s much better than his current occupation. Even so, he wouldn’t trade places with any of those workers. He knows who and what he fights for. He’s fighting to people can still enjoy their lives, so people can have fun without worrying about an Omnic attack. He’s fighting so that maybe he can be like the heroes in Overwatch, who he’d been doing a lot of reading about while stuck in the bunker. And, most importantly, he’s fighting so that the younger generation will have someone strong to look up to. He wants to be strong for everybody.
Not like the world will know this, though. He always keeps up a facade whenever he streams, one that makes him act just like any old gamer would when playing a video game. Analytical, sometimes, but mostly over the top and showy. It’s what the people want to see, so that’s what he gives them.
Someone is talking about the omnic war, and Kenjirou can just barely hear them. Some mention of the fighting that’s going on, and how that’s worse than whatever job they have, ‘so really you have no right to complain, Joseph’.
Some part of Kenjirou wants to laugh at that. He’d been one of those people, the kind who complained while knowing others had it worse, but he couldn’t really say that was a bad thing. Complaining wasn’t a bad thing unless people made it a bad thing. Kenjirou never complained anymore.
His thoughts continued in this way for a while, until the partner he’d gone to Hollywood with walked in and let him know that it was time for them to go. He sighed lightly, and left his drink on the table.
He missed this.
It was on Minami Kenjirou’s birthday, August 18, that he received an encrypted message from someone with no name.
This was where the message had said to go. It had only contained coordinates, and an extremely detailed plan to get out of the bunker unnoticed. So, naturally, Kenjirou had followed them here, to what looked like a wasteland.
Waiting there for him was a friendly looking man in a rather elaborate outfit, with what looked to be a holographic blue device strapped to his chest. “Hi, Minami!” the stranger said, rather cheerfully, and Kenjirou tilted his head in confusion. “So I guess you figured out my message. I’m here to recruit you!”
That reminded Kenjirou of the last time he’d heard those words. He’d been so young and so unaware of what he was signing up for. He distrusted this other person almost instantly. He couldn’t believe he’d snuck here in his mech to get recruited for something that was probably worse than his situation now. Still, though, he stayed to listen, just because he was curious.
“The Governments really don’t handle Omnic invasions well,” the stranger seemed to be talking to himself, but he continued, and Kenjirou realized that this was still directed at him, “so we want you to join us to stop that and more. But you can’t tell anyone.” He must still look confused, because the stranger continued, “We’re reforming Overwatch. We need you.”
Overwatch. He wanted to be a hero, didn’t he? He wasn’t as young, as wild, as foolish as he was when he accepted the call to be a mecha pilot, but he still knew what he wanted. “Okay,” he said, rather quietly, and the stranger’s smile seemed to brighten.
“Brilliant!” he cried, then seemed to teleport forward, startling Kenjirou. “Follow me!”
Kenjirou followed him, using the boosters on his mech every few seconds. He was tired, as it was the middle of the night, but he’d have to stay awake for this. He was more excited than he’d ever been in his life, yet also more terrified.
It took hours to get to their destination, though Kenjirou expected that. He was just glad to be out of his mech once they arrived. There was even a designated space for him to keep his mech- how had they known he’d say yes? Well, almost everyone would say yes, but still. They’d even supplied him with regular clothes, which were nice. A bit old fashioned, but nice nonetheless. And comfortable.
Nobody showed him around. An AI told him where his room was and told him that he should get some sleep. And he did.
If being recruited for MEKA was the start of his new life, then this was the start of a new him.