Chapter Text
“Yo, doctor!” Lúcio shouted from halfway across the corridor as he raced to catch up with Mercy, “Dr. Z!”
“What is it, Lúcio?” Mercy answered, mildly annoyed, “I’m very busy.”
“It’s D.Va…” He said whilst trying to catch his breath.
The mentioning of the name caught Mercy’s attention, anything else she was just in the middle of doing was no longer relevant. “What about her?” She asked, partially expecting an answer she didn’t want to hear.
The smile on Lúcio’s face made her reconsider, “She’s awake.”
Seeing that the door was still open, likely from Lúcio rushing out without thinking of closing it, Mercy was assured that he was not joking. The young woman was sitting upright on the small bed, her light brown eyes open and aware of the people entering the room. It appeared that she had just been looking out the window which framed a beautiful view of the sunset hitting the Alboran sea.
The both of them almost immediately noticed something strange with her. She didn’t at all seem happy or excited to see either of them, even though she’s known them for almost a third of a year. Instead she looked confused and somewhat scared.
The moment Hana asked who the two strangers in the room were, it seemed all sense of optimism had vanished.
“D.Va it’s me,” The DJ answered, keeping a smile, “it’s Lúcio, your friend!”
“Lúcio?” Hana repeated, her eyes narrowed “I-I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to remember…”
This was one of the many possibilities that Mercy feared would happen, “Please tell us, Hana. How much do you remember?”
Hana visibly struggled to recall something about herself, or anything really, “I know my name is Hana, but that’s pretty much it…” She answered, much to the doctor’s dismay, “but you called me a ‘diva’.” She said, looking at Lúcio.
Lúcio couldn’t believe what was happening, the celebrity that he once looked up to and had the privilege to meet and befriend couldn’t even remember the alias that millions of people around the world got to know her by. But at least she could recite the name that her parents gave her. “Not ‘diva’,” Lúcio replied, trying to remain positive, “‘D.Va’, it’s your celebrity name!”
“I’m... a celebrity...?” Hana asked.
“Yeah!” Lúcio lit up, “You were a professional gamer, but then you became a mech pilot when your home was terrorized by the Omnics.”
“My home...?” Her voice began to slur as her heart rate noticeably increased at the receiving of such information and unrecognizable fragments of her memory all began to hit her at once. Her head suddenly felt like it was going to explode and she began breathing rapidly.
Realizing the distress Hana was experiencing, Mercy ordered a deeply confused and concerned Lúcio to go and find Ana while she attempted to calm her down. She tried getting her to lay still but it was almost impossible with her erratic and violent movements. The monitor beside the bed was beeping rapidly, the sound rivaled with Hana’s cries. Ziegler was mainly worried that the poor girl would accidentally remove one of the IVs that were keeping her from going into shock.
“I’m here.” Mercy heard Ana say as she finally arrived to her aid. Without hesitation, she injected a needle containing a sedative dosage into one of the tubes penetrating Hana’s forearm. The effect of the drug didn’t take long as Hana quickly slipped back into unconsciousness, her vitals stabilizing. It seemed just one moment she was wide awake from a two-month coma, and then the next she was back under.
“She just needs a few hours to rest.” Ana said calmly, as if she were used to this sort of thing happening.
Lúcio felt a personal responsibility for what had happened, if he had just given her more time to process everything around her… “I’m so sorry,” He said with a tremble in his voice, “I should have just kept my mouth shut…”
“We just need to be patient with her, Lúcio,” Mercy consoled, “in given time, her memory should return piece by piece. Then she’ll be back to her old self.”
“You really think so?” Lúcio asked, still feeling like a pile of trash.
A part of Mercy desperately wanted to give him the harsh truth that she really had no idea. If Hana were to be without her memory forever then there was nothing that Ziegler could do, even with all the medical breakthroughs she had accomplished in the past. She could repair one’s body, but not their mind.
“I’m sure of it.” Mercy lied, hoping that would’ve been enough to give Lúcio a little bit of hope. But she would regret those words as she saw a trusting smile return to the DJ’s face.
-
“How long do you figure?” Jack asked the familiar question as he and Mercy watched Hana through the one-way window. It had been an hour and a half since she awoke from the sedation, during that time she was just laying quietly in her own bed-ridden prison, staring at the ceiling fan and occasionally sipping a spoonful of the soup Ana brought for her, her first meal in a while that had not been fed through a tube.
“You asked me that question before and I will tell you the same answer as before…” Mercy remarked.
“You brought people back from the dead-” Jack reminded her.
“I brought people back from the verge of death,” Mercy calmly retaliated, “there is a difference, you know.”
“-and you can’t give an approximation of when she will remember anything about herself?” Jack continued, despite Mercy’s protest.
Mercy sighed deeply. Why was Jack making this argument now of all times? “I’m not a miracle worker, Jack. You want my prognosis? I’ll give her, say, two months at the very least.”
Jack didn’t seem very satisfied with that answer. He made that clear with a loud groan.
“What do you want me to tell you, Jack? When you can throw her back out on the field?”
“She’s a soldier, Dr. Ziegler…” Jack admitted, “like the rest of us.”
Mercy wouldn’t have believed a word Jack was saying if they hadn’t had a similar argument a decade ago, but why here? Why now? “She’s a child, Jack. You should have stopped her from coming with us on that mission. I should have stopped her.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything when she first joined?”
Mercy had nothing to say to that. Partially because she was tired and didn’t feel like having this petty discussion, and also because Jack was right. Overwatch was formed for what reason? To stop the first Omnic Crisis. Why did it fall? The people demanded it once they found out that the organization weren’t the heroes they believed they were. With the world plunging into chaos once again, Mercy felt the revitalization of Overwatch would only do more harm than good. D.Va was only be the beginning.
-
“Lúcio… Me, I think… Tracey…? No, that’s not right…” Hana said to herself, holding the framed collage of photographs she discovered on her bedside table. Her consistent headache was keeping her from sleep so she spent an hour trying to remember the names of the unfamiliar faces in the pictures.
Lúcio she knew for sure, because he was there when she awoke and had been visiting at every opportunity he could. The way he talked and acted around her, it gave her the impression that they used to be a thing. But Hana didn’t want to assume, at least not yet.
Herself she only recognized from her reflection when Ana was showing how her wounds were healing. But why did she have pink markings on her cheeks? They looked ridiculous.
It has been two days since she woke up, and despite the daily exercises she had been going through with Mercy she had not made any progress on regaining any of her lost memories. Yet, she was making stellar performance of being able to stand and walk without much help, so at the very least she could make bathroom trips all by herself, thank god. That stuff that they’ve been pumping through the IVs had to have been good for something, though while it did help with rejuvenating her body it didn't do much in terms of repairing her mind.
Frustrated with herself and the unrecognizable world she was in, Hana threw the picture frame on her lap and sank her head back into the pillow. How long must I be like this? She asked herself and whatever other force may have been listening. Was she religious? She didn’t know. She knew she had friends here, but did she have any family? A mother? Father? Any brothers or sisters? If so, where were they? If they were here, they’d surely have visited her by then. And what about this ‘celebrity’ nonsense? What exactly was she famous for? How famous was she, and how many people are looking forward to hearing from their biggest star again?
Too many questions with zero answers. She didn’t want to risk another panic attack so she tried forcing herself to go to sleep. She turned her head and her eyes finally met the tall silhouette in the corner of the room.
Before she could scream or even ask for the intruder’s identity, she felt a tight invisible force keeping her from moving or making any sort of noise.
“Don’t worry... just a little something to keep you from alerting the others.” Said a sinister, almost mechanical-sounding voice. As if he were speaking through a fan. The darkness of the room hid the face of Hana’s visitor.
The IV, she realized, he injected something into my IV...
The dark shape took a step forward, revealing a pale skull-shaped mask that concealed his face. Hana knew she recognized that veil from somewhere, but where? “When I release this button, the nanobots will let go of your senses.”
Hana looked down at her assailant’s hand and saw the remote switch. The small red light shone against the white sheets of the bed and blackness of the man’s coat.
“When I press down I can lock you in place again, and with a double-click...” The man in black paused, making sure Hana was paying attention to every single word, “...well, let’s just hope Ziegler still knows her old tricks if it ever comes to that. Just as long as you remain quiet... got it?”
Hana was terrified. She didn’t know who this intruder was and why she would want to hurt her. Hana was defenceless, all she could do was his bidding. The second the man released his finger off the switch, she was able to move again. Hana wanted to scream, she wanted to call for help, but what if she did?
“Well, we’re off to a good start... tell me Hana, do you know who I am?”
Hana didn’t even bother with lying, she somehow knew if she did he would know. She shook her head.
A quick answer. Very good. This was going to be much easier than Reaper had already anticipated. “I’m the one who’s going to bring you home.”
-
Her back was killing her. Combined with the nausea weakening her senses, it was a struggle for Hana to even sit up. Her eyes stung at the sight of an endless whiteness surrounding her. When she finally mustered the strength to stand, she searched for any clue as to where she was. A wall, a door, a window, a light, anything. But there was nothing. Nothing at all. Even her own shadow failed to meet her eyes.
“Hello?” She called out, her voice echoing across the vast emptiness, “Ana? Mercy? Lúcio? Anyone!”
Am I dead? She immediately thought, like any sane person in this scenario would. The last thing she remembered was that man with the skull mask, and him saying something about ‘bringing her home.’
Home. As soon as she thought of the word, two silhouettes in the far distance caught the corner of her eye. Finally, something to interact with!
With no other choice in the matter, she began making her way toward the two figures. Despite a lack of fatigue, it seemed like she had been jogging for miles before she could make out more of their features. A man and a woman, middle-aged. They both had their backs toward Hana, but she could see that he had short black hair and the woman’s was long and auburn. She had no recognition of these two individuals, but she felt as if she had known them her whole life.
Hana reached her arm out to the pair in front of her and before she could say a word the white void malformed into a black abyss. A low, mechanical ‘purring’ vibrated Hana’s eardrums as a red light shone behind her. A cold breeze crawled against her backside as she reluctantly turned toward the source of the glow.
What was this familiar sense of terror she was experiencing? A sharp chill ran down her spine as she looked up at the light, the machine’s ‘purring’ transitioning into a menacing growl as her vision was painted red.
She awoke with a start, her body dampened in a cold sweat. Hana went to sit up but the restraints on her forehead and chest prevented her from doing so. This time she was greeted with darkness and an uncomfortable claustrophobic feeling. She was in some sort of cylinder pod, and the white room she was in was likely some sort of simulated dream.
“Her brainwaves are through the roof,” she heard a faint male voice coming from the exterior of her chamber “she’s woken up.”
“That’s fine,” replied a female’s, her accent was rather distinct, “the poor girl could use some fresh air. It must get awfully stuffy in there.”
A blinding light met Hana’s eyes as her capsule opened, a blast of cool air filled her lungs. She wanted to shield herself from the piercing brightness but her arms were also bound. All she could do was wait for her pupils to contract until they met the yellow irises of the tall blue-skinned woman looking down at her.
“Bonjour, little girl.”
---
Jack stared at the vacant bed, his mind filled with anger and confusion. Mostly the latter. He came as soon as he heard the news of D.Va’s disappearance. No one had seen her leave and Athena could not find any trace of her vitals or heat signatures within the facility.
Looking for answers, he decided to go through the security footage with Winston. They examined the timeframe from when the blackout occurred between exactly 02:37 and when the power returned at 03:00 in the morning. It appeared as if in one frame Hana was laying in her bed with the photographs tossed on her lap, then in the next she was gone. Vanished without a trace.
“She couldn't have just got up and walked out on her own,” Jack stated the obvious, “someone had to have taken her.”
“There are no signs of a security breach, and without any video evidence it’s hard to know for sure.” Said Winston. This wasn’t the first time the Watchpoint had been trespassed, and since then he had made sure to install additional measures to ensure that such an event would never take place again. Whoever was able to cause that system-wide blackout knew what they were doing.
Athena’s voice came up on the intercom in Winston’s office, “I did have limited access to the security systems, but I was still able to initiate the backup monitoring protocol.”
Winston had completely forgotten about that feature. Honestly he never thought they would have need of it until then. Though it appeared Athena was only able to activate it in a single camera as only one holo-vid appeared in front of them, a barely-ten-second loop littered with visual noise from the black-out, but it was all they needed to confirm their suspicions:
Reaper, his legs showing no form other than a black shroud flowing behind him like a cape, gliding through the corridors of the medbay with an unconscious Hana tossed over his shoulders. The very sight of this infuriated Jack.
“Reyes... dammit! Why didn’t you do anything to stop him?” Jack barked at the sentient computer.
“Believe me, Jack, I wanted to do everything in my power to seize him...” Athena explained, “but I had detected traces of a foreign microscopic substance in Hana’s circulatory and nervous systems. I fear that if I had intervened, Reaper would most certainly have killed her.”
“Nanobots...” Jack realized, putting the two and two together. Blackwatch used them for their interrogations, so it made sense that Reyes would've kept a sample of such technology from when he led the branch. But Jack thought all traces of the group, along with their heinous means of torture, had been wiped out with the rest of Overwatch’s Swiss headquarters ten years ago. When he and Reyes had their “final” conflict.
But if Athena’s suggestions were true, then they could use the bots to their advantage. Pinpoint exactly where Hana’s being held, or at the very least make sure that she’s still alive. Though in order to do that they would require a sample of what Reyes had injected her with, and if there was one thing Jack remembered about him, it was that he always made sure to leave no evidence behind.
Winston let out a loud rumbling sigh, “So, chances are Talon has their hands on D.Va...” He laid back in his chair with utter defeat in his face, “There’s no telling what they could be doing to her.”
Jack came up with a theory that his primeape companion would definitely not want to hear, “They saw what she’s capable of back in King’s Row... An ace mech pilot with no memory, may as well be a blank canvas.”
“On which they could paint any picture they wanted of her.” Winston finished, an unfathomable dread filled his stomach.
---
It didn’t get much better for Hana. When she wasn’t enduring in her closet-sized cell comprised with nothing but a mattress and a bucket, she was regularly thrown in to what she came to know as “the White Room.”
The “dreams” were meant to restore her lost memories, or at least that's what the people in lab coats claimed, but something in her gut told her that wasn't just the case. Perhaps it was the lack of empathy they displayed and the fact that they were treating her more like a test subject than a patient. At least her meals were half-decent, if she cooperated as expected.
She played along, only because she had very little choice in the matter. She knew that at the double-click of a button they could end her life as soon as she would attempt to fight back. She was completely at their mercy, and she hated herself for admitting that.
As part of the daily routine, they put her into the pod, strapped on the restraints - Really? She thought - and as soon as the the lid was closed she was surrounded yet again by an endless vanity, which would soon materialize a simulated time and place. Continuing from where she last left off like a video game, starring herself as the player character.
Most of the “dreams” were from the first-person perspective, as in she got to re-experience a good chunk of her life. Every major event, from her first word to her first kill.
South Korea was devastated when the Omnic first attacked, many innocent lives were lost. Hana was only nine years old at the time. It wasn’t until the age of ten when she became familiar with the other kids in the orphanage.
But the menace didn’t stop there. Every other month it seemed, it would rise up from the ocean and destroy everything in its wake, like those old movies Hana used to watch with her parents. At age eleven, she moved into her fourth institution.
Eventually, the military developed a way to fight back. Mobile drones, equipped with machine-guns, rocket-propelled boosters and state-of-the-art defencive capabilities, all controlled via artificial intelligence to avoid any further casualties. The branch in control of these mechs came to be known as the Mobile Exo-force of the Korean Army (MEKA)
With their Defence Matrixes, the drones could dismantle any amount of projectiles that came within range. Any missile or pulse munition launched by the mechanical beast was rendered utterly useless.
The drones weren’t easily enough to completely eliminate the Omnic, but they did their job at keeping it at bay. For the following years Hana had the chance to live a relatively normal life.
Her only distraction, her one escape from the chaos that was her youth, was an old computer game called Starcraft II. Her dad owned a copy of it and she used to play against him on countless occasions. Not once has she ever beaten him and she would often get frustrated, to which he used to say “It’s only a game, Hana. No need to get angry.”
The game was the closest thing to a memoir she had of her family. Every day she played, from the minute she finished her studies to curfew. Every day she would attempt to reach her dad’s ranking, getting better and better along the way.
She played in her first tournament when she was fourteen. Nothing professional, just a small league ran by one of her schools. That’s when she started to get noticed. No one had ever seen anyone play like her before. She decimated her competition, never showing a sliver of mercy to her opponents.
She loved it. For the first time in her life, she felt like she had a purpose. It wasn’t a surprise when she accepted the offer to go pro, and in the following years she became the #1 ranked player in the world. Soon, everyone on the planet came to know the gamertag “D.Va.”
But no matter the adoration she received, nor the alarming number of followers she had gained in such a short amount of time, a part of her still wasn’t satisfied. She wanted revenge. She wanted to personally destroy the monster that had taken her family away from her, and it wasn’t until she was eighteen when she got her opportunity.
The Omnic had begun to adapt to her country’s defences. Somehow, it managed to hack into the AI that controlled the drones, shutting them all down simultaneously. Overnight, the drones were nothing but heaps of metal and carbon fiber, and Hana’s hometown was to face catastrophe yet again.
Desperate for a solution, MEKA turned to the country’s professional gamers to pilot the drones. Of course, D.Va was among the top candidates for the job.
After just half a year of vigorous training, Hana got to experience the comfort of a mech for the first time. The drones were completely reconfigured to meet the standards of their new pilots, and with the addition of the twin joysticks to the dashboard, D.Va truly felt like she was playing a first-person shooter, with an ultra-realistic-definition monitor right before her eyes.
The Fusion Cannons bursted with every squeeze of the triggers and the walking tank maneuvered in whichever direction she tilted the sticks. When she was in the cocoon-like pod of her mech, she couldn’t have felt more alive.
By some insane logic, the military believed that their professional gamers would possess the reaction abilities to match that of the AI that used to control their drones. When D.Va went on her first field mission, they weren’t just proven right... their expectations were far beyond met.
Much like her enemies in the tournaments, or the countless baddies in the video games she played, she mercilessly slaughtered the lesser Omnic units that were ransacking a small village. If they had lacked the programming to feal fear, D.Va made sure to give them a first taste.
The tin cans attempted to fight back, but their efforts fell short as D.Va’s gamer reflexes kicked in with her Defense Matrix. With every press of her controls’ buttons, not a single bullet from the Omnics’ mounted machineguns managed to scratch the surface of her mech.
Then it was her turn to attack.
Her mech’s cannons tore the machines to shreds at close range. In less than a second their circuits were laid out upon the snow. When one of them dared to fire at her, she would immediately retaliate with a boosted charge, slamming it against the closest wall, it’s insides exploding from within by the impact.
As she laid waste to the metallic cannon fodder before her, she felt something that she had never felt before... a stimulation that not even becoming the best Starcraft player in the world could ever match.
The sight of these machines, that had caused so much pain and suffering to innocent civilians, reduced to mere piles of scrap by her hands, made her quiver with delight.
Outside the simulation pod, the people in lab coats were satisfied with the results they had found after weeks of searching.
“We found it,” One of them said to the blue-skinned woman observing them, “we found the key point.”
“Magnifique,” She replied with a cold smirk, “ensure she remembers that sensation, make her crave it.”
-
Weeks went by like vehicles in rush hour traffic. To Hana, they felt like months. Every day they would go through that same scene in the simulation, over and over again. After each session the men in white would ask her how it felt to slaughter those Omnics, and her responses were always the same: “It felt good.”
When they asked her how she felt about the Omnics, she’d say “They deserved to die for what they’ve done. Every single one of them.”
Then they asked her if she would do it again: “In a heartbeat.”
Hana didn’t care what happened to them. To her, they were nothing but walking buckets of bolts. Targets to be eliminated. Enemies to defeat. And most of all, she held them responsible for her parents’ deaths. Not just the one that rose from the sea. To her, they were all the same. And she wouldn’t rest until she destroyed them all.
Fortunately for her, she was given the tools she needed. A new bodysuit for starters, dark blue in color with an extra black layer covering her upper-torso, shoulders, forearms, and legs starting from her outer-thighs. A similar design to that of the suit MEKA fitted her with, but given the “Talon touch.”
An automatic pistol, complete with a holster that she strapped to her right thigh for easy access. Test firing proved it to be a handy sidearm, capable of a high fire rate with precise accuracy and minimal recoil.
But the main event that Hana was looking forward to, was her new mech. Based on what Talon had managed to recover in King’s Row, they had not just succeeded in replicating the design and the technology, but they were able to develop a weapon that could easily surpass any of those flying mini-vans MEKA could muster up by tenfold.
The armor was dyed black with a red-tinted bullet-proof window for the cockpit. Additional antennae-like appendages were added to the hull and wings, likely for a more intimidating portrayal. The “feet” of the mech were fitted with claws - or talons if you will - for extra traction on any type of terrain, or for gripping on to enemies. The Pulse Cannons were also upgraded to fire more condensed shots with far less recoil, making precised long-ranged onslaughts for achievable.
And for the cherry on top, a third weapon was equipped to the bottom-front of the mech: a high-powered laser cannon capable of firing concentrated microwaves that can cut through any surface like silk.
Hana couldn’t wait to get behind the controls of her new toy. As she finally got to feel the cool metal of the cocoon against her body for the first time what felt like an eternity, she felt a sharp object poking between her backbones.
The sensation quickly went from a mild yet shocking pain, to absolute lividness. She suddenly felt the instinct to kill everything within her sights. If the engineers hadn’t decommissioned the mech’s mobility and weapon controls beforehand, she would have surely destroyed the entire loading bay within seconds.
“Have patience, little girl...” The blue woman teased as she walked right up to the feral pilot’s face, her skin was getting pale and veins were popping on both sides of her forehead. “Just a little something to make sure you do your job effectively and correctly.”
Hana wanted, no, needed to tear this woman to shreds, but the straps that bound her arms to the controls stole any opportunity of doing so from her.
“You idiots might want to tone down on the chems a bit, I fear this girl’s going to tear her own arms off.” The woman said to the scientists and engineers behind her, before turning back to Hana, “Listen to me, you stupid girl... we are not the ones you want to kill.”
Using the device on their wrist, the lead scientist lowered the dosage of the chemicals flowing through the tube connected to Hana’s spine and she became visibly more calm, but she maintained a stern face. She tried to look intimidating, but the blue woman just found it cute.
“Remember the machines that killed your family? They are the ones that deserve to die... understand?”
Hana remembered the Omnic that laid waste to her country, she thought about all the Human lives that were lost during it’s regular onslaughts. She had to avenge them. She needed to.
“Understood.” She said.
The blue-skinned woman smiled with delight. After several months of agonizing anticipation, it was time for Hana’s first test run:
Numbani, Africa.