Hana Song lay slumped across the hood of her mech, defeated. What was it that had finally felled this intrepid hero, so much beloved by the South Korean people and the world of online gaming? A hoard of omnics, overwhelming in numbers? A final battle, glorious in its ultimate failure? A moment of reckless bravery that for once she wasn't clever and lucky enough to survive?

That, at least, might have been more dignified.

Currently, Hana Song was laid low by technical difficulties.

She had only been with Overwatch a few months so far, and it was both everything she could have dreamed and nothing she had expected. They were doing so much work. Hana valued what she contributed to the front lines of the Crisis, of course, she was here first and foremost to defend her people, but... sometimes when you were getting up every morning and being deployed again and again before a persistent press of omnics, you began to feel like you weren't making any headway. A constant grind with no objective in sight. Overwatch was different. Overwatch wasn't just playing the game, it was rewriting the rules. It was exciting. It was full-tilt, life-or-death, world-hanging-in-the-balance sort of work, and Hana was thriving.

Her mech, unfortunately, was not. Because this wasn't Overwatch of the golden days, this wasn't like the heroes her dad had told her stories of as a girl. They had no funds, no support, no legitimacy. Winston (an actual, talking gorilla, how cool!) was sending out hooks all over the world and they were getting bites – people were slowly, covertly, trickling in, but it meant that the great workshops of the Gibraltar Watchpoint were still almost entirely empty. One corner, near the massive bay doors, now housed her and her mech. Over these months, she had been alone in her efforts to repair the damages as they appeared; she fixed what she could and ignored the rest. But now that one of the mech's arms had gone dead (in the middle of a fight too, with everyone watching! Uh, she must have looked like such an amateur) she couldn't really look the other way anymore. Something needed to be done, and she couldn't figure out what it was.

In another section of the room, Lucio had a table that was covered in wires and tubes – for maintaining his skates and amp. He smugly told her all about how he'd pilfered and repurposed the tech from some company called Vishkar, and he at least seemed to know what he was doing. More so than her at any rate, though even he had been rather helpless when she'd brought her mech problems to him.

Then there was that weaselly guy, Junkrat. Hana wasn't sure how she felt about him. He could be pretty funny, but she also couldn't shake the feeling that if push came to shove he wouldn't hesitate to render her a smoldering crater. He was given a space the furthest away from everyone else and very explicit orders from Winston about conduct. Because Junkrat? He worked with explosives. Hana didn't know much about explosives beyond the “stick in mech, fire at bad guy” side of things, but she couldn't help but feel that someone so... twitchy shouldn't be messing with them. She knew for a fact that he was someone who shouldn't be messing with her mech, so he was no help either.

And then there was that short, grouchy guy, Torbjörn. His portion of the workshop with filled with a massive forge and huge work tables – he was the only one who really seemed to know what he was doing in here, the only one not self-taught or learning on the fly. He had a tendency to mutter when he caught anyone else trying to work in the shop, as if they were all just little kids trying to play with lego in his workspace. Rude.

Though, Hana thought, rather moodily as she kicked her feet accusingly against the hull of her mech, she did feel a bit like that right now, like a kid pretending to know what she was doing. She was a soldier though, not a mechanic!

The fact of the matter was simple and unavoidable: the mechs weren't made for the sort of sustained abuse. Normally, with MEKA, they had micro-rotations. They'd be deployed, hit hard, and as soon as the battle was finished or relief was deployed, the previous pilots returned so that the mechs could be serviced, strengthened, and readied for the next deployment. After a certain number of rotations, the entire mech would be replaced with a new one. The mechs were made to take damage, but they were still complicated, delicate machines and for that sort of tank role to be maintained, the mech must be as well.

So what options did that leave her? She was, technically, on loan to Overwatch. Sort of. It was very hush hush, under the table. Overwatch wasn't supposed to be operating at all, but someone in the South Korean government (or military, or something) must have decided that if the omnic-crushing force of old was looking to reassert itself, it would help to have Overwatch as friends. Hana was very aware this was conditional though. If it looked like things were going to go bad with Overwatch, or if it became too complicated or too inconvenient, all association would be denied and she would get pulled... and that had quickly become an unacceptable outcome. She needed to be here. So she really didn't want to ruffle feathers in HQ by requesting her mech be taken halfway across the world for servicing. So that left figuring it out herself, or capitulating and asking Torbjörn. He got a funny look in his eye when he stared at her mech though, and so far she had avoided letting him feel it up.

It might be a case of the lesser of two evils though, she had to admit.

She was saved from needing to confront this sad reality by the sound of the workshop doors sliding open. Without looking up, she called out “That you, Lucio? Please tell me you had an epiphany because I don't know what to do.”

“Uh, sorry to disappoint, but I'm not Lucio,” said a clearly strained voice, its accent one that sounded familiar but which Hana couldn't quite place. Given that this was a secretive paramilitary base on a mountain that a bare handful of people had access to, the fact that this was an unknown voice at all was, frankly, alarming.

It was with this shock that Hana jerked up and swung herself around, peering down from her mech to stare at this strange newcomer. It didn't actually tell her much, because the person was almost completely hidden behind a towering stack of strangely shaped hunks of metal.

“Who are you?” demanded Hana, before she could think better of it.

“Brigitte,” said the person as she staggered across the room. “Brigitte Lindholm.” It was strange, just like her accent there was something almost-but-not-quite familiar about that name. Brigitte was still talking though, “Is Reinhardt in here?”

“Who?”

“Of course he isn't,” she grumbled. “He said he'd bring the rest of the armour in here so I could get set up and start repairs but no, of course not. Ugh, knowing him he's found some old friend already; I was hoping to avoid that until we got set up, or else I'm never going to pry him away. You have no idea how much that man can talk.”

Hana slipped down from the hull of her mech and landed heavily on the ground. “Who's Reinhardt? Are you new members? Do you need any help with that?”

Brigitte seemed to take the barrage of questions in stride. “Massive bonehead,” she said. “Also just massive, trust me, you can't miss him. And, uh, yeah, kind of new memebers, I guess? Lena just dropped us off like twenty minutes ago. I mean, technically Reinhardt used to be a member before and he's just coming back to it – again, because he's a bonehead – and so I guess I'm here too. Dad's going to throw a fit but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And oh god, yes please.”

Hana was already reaching for whatever was in this new woman's arms and so didn't register the following warning: “Be careful, this stuff is pretty heavy–” until she'd tried to heft one of the pieces, was completely thrown off by exactly how heavy it was, and promptly dropped it on her toe.

It was a good thing she was the only one who spoke Korean on the base; her tongue hadn't exactly been squeaky clean as a professional gamer but joining the army had not helped matters and there was nothing like an unspeakably number of kilograms of metal falling on your foot to encourage one to show off that sort of vocabulary.

“Sorry,” said Brigitte, “let me just...”

With a deafening clattering, the rest of the woman's load was dumped onto the nearest work table, and Hana got her first real look at Brigitte Lindholm. She promptly forgot about the pain in her foot.

It took her a moment to remember to close her mouth because wow... which was pretty much the first thought that managed to flash through her head.

The second thought had been: arms. Because Brigitte definitely had those. Two of them. Two very, very, very muscly arms. Yes sir.

Hana double checked to make sure her mouth was closed.

Brigitte was also getting her first look at the room.

“Wow, I've heard stories of this place but it's really nothing like actually being in here, you know? Seriously, there is so much room... I mean, nothing like the Ironclad Guild, but considering I've been working out of a truck for the past few years this is like – whoa! Whose is that?”

At first Hana assumed she must have caught sight of Lucio's gently thrumming amp, which was partially disemboweled and casting beats of yellow and green light across the ceiling, or the terrifying toxic waste dump that was Junkrat's corner, so she felt herself swelling with pride when she realized Brigitte's gaze was hard-locked on her mech.

“Mine,” she said, as if it was no big deal, what girl doesn't have a spare, million dollar, top-of-the-line battle mech sitting around. “I'm Hana. Hana Song? Top pilot in MEKA?”

“Oh my god, I've never seen one up close before,” said Brigitte, a little breathlessly. “These are amazing. Like a mix between power armour and a proper combat vehicle – you've got the protective hull of an armoured assault vehicle, but way more mobile than anything imaginable in that class... it's even got the Crusader beat on that front. It's almost as versatile as power armour, but it's not going to crumple like paper towel if it gets caught in a firefight. These are brilliant. And adapting them to be piloted by people – MEKA is seriously working on a different level with these.” She rounded on Hana, her eyes gleaming with fascination and admiration; Hana beamed right back. “And you actually pilot it? It must be unbelievably difficult... it was originally designed to be run as a drone after all, the sheer number of functions for one human to keep on top of...”

Hana shrugged with as much modesty as she could muster. “I was the number one StarCraft player for three years in a row. That's why they went for gamers, you know? Better response times, multitasking, on the fly strategizing, working in teams and solo... It was a pretty natural transition, when you've got a knack for it,” she said, leaning against one of the mech's pink legs. This would look much more impressive if she was actually wearing her flightsuit rather than grease-covered work jeans and a baggy old sweatshirt that used to be her father's, with a faded picture of a drooling murloc printed on it.

Then again, Brigitte was wearing what looked like steel-toed boots and a shirt with the sleeves (gloriously, gloriously) torn off so maybe Hana could pass this off as an aesthetic and not just grubby laziness. She wouldn't know unless she tried, right? So with the same sort of confident bravado with which Hana faced most problems in her life, she jumped in feet first and hoped for a good landing.

“You, uh... you want me to show you around it?”

“Absolutely!”

Hana could have crowed with delight. Nailed it. Of course, the next problem was that this was a compact, single-person mech and there was only so much “showing around” that you could do, but Hana would happily use it to stall for time while she thought out her next smooth step. Besides, she loved talking about her baby. With practiced ease, Hana used one of the mech's arms to swing underself up first onto its crouched leg, and then so she was perched in the crook of its elbow. Brigitte followed suit, and Hana tried to resist watching the swell of her biceps as her feet searched for purchase on the mech so she could haul herself up.

And so Hana talked Brigitte through the ins and outs of the battle mech. Brigitte peered in at the complex array of controls inside the cockpit, listened in rapt fascination as Hana described its features and the battles she's seen with it.

Soon it became much less about impressing a really gorgeous woman, and more just... talking. Brigitte was really, really nice. She laughed easily, and had a sharp, snide sense of humour, and kept up with Hana effortlessly as she got into the more interesting minutia of the mech's features. Oh, lots of people were interested in hearing the exploits of Hana Song, South Korean MEKA defender, and they would ooh and aah at all the right parts when she told stories about being flung into the ocean by a towering, twenty foot brute of an omnic, or when she had had not choice but to self-destruct her own mech, barely escaping that one with her life, but she had never had someone stop her mid-tale to ask about the actual model variants of said omnic or what expulsion mechanism the mech used that managed to get her clear of such a blast. It wasn't even annoying to be interrupted – it was exciting. Like someone was taking the time not to speed run the conversation but to poke around and unlock all the secrets along the way. Or something.

Completely oblivious to the emotions banging around in Hana's head, Brigitte peered at the newly upgraded missile system Hana had been pointing out and said, “I knew I was behind on the latest and greatest, since I was following the big guy around the boonies for the past few years, but how did I miss this? MEKA must have gotten a new energy core if they managed to pull something like this off! Keeping this thing mobile, flight-capable, and defensive was already pretty much clocking their core as much as you could safely expect... how the heck they did keep all that up and add a missile system? I mean, you can't just go make the core bigger with a living pilot in there, that'd be getting way to chancy, you'd have to somehow rework the whole thing.”

Hana rolled her eyes. She'd commented about the mech's wimpy power core before, sent her complaints as far up the chain as she could manage, only to get a reply back telling her to stop being a fool-hardy daredevil that wanted to throw her life away and to smarten up... or, well, the professional, military equivalent. It seemed to her the only way a bigger power core would really be that much of a compromise was if you were letting omnics blow you up, and Hana had no intention of letting omnics blow her up, thanks, so really it was a non-issue. High risk, high reward. But whatever.

“Nope, same old, same old,” she told Brigitte. “It was more of a... remodeling. I'm the first to test it out. We diverted some of the power that would have otherwise been used by the defense matrix and fed it to the missile systems.”

Brigitte's eyebrows went up. “What? You're compromising defense for this? But the defense matrix is one of the things that actually makes a mech remotely viable against heavy projectile damage, otherwise you're just a big,” she gestured vaguely to the mech, “pink target waiting to blow!”

“Pssh, no. We're supposed to be mobile, that's the whole point! We're not there to shield, we're there to hit hard and fast and get out before too much damage is laid down! The defense matrix just makes us sitting ducks – with the missiles we can actually attack from a distance before needing to get up close. Way better strategy, trust me.”

Brigitte hummed, but seemed to be considering it.

“Any chance I could see a test run?” asked Brigitte. “I've only ever seen video. I'd love to see it in person.”

“Absolutely!” said Hana, without hesitation. How was she supposed to say no to having the admiring gaze of a cute girl on her while she did what she did best?

And then came the crushing recollection of why she was here in the shop in the first place. The arms, while not as crucial for movement as, say, the thruster system, still acted a little like rudders; they were directly connected to the yokes which controlled all movement.

...Though, flying the mech was technically still doable, even with one arm down. A little clunky, maybe, but she'd managed to get herself through that last battle with it down, right? And it's not like there would even be Talon agents trying to shoot her down this time. It would be fine. Completely fine and totally worth it.

She hesitated again. Common sense was screaming at her to listen for five seconds.

Because on the other hand, she couldn't help but suspect that an genuine, bona-fide mechanic might not think it was brave or daring or romantic to get into a damaged craft and push it even harder than it already had been, rather than running maintenance.

Damn her and her bad luck. She was going to have to say “no sorry, I broke the super cool mech and am grounded” and watch this amazing woman say “oh no problem” and then remember she had her own work and leave and never get another chance to talk to her ever again!

Better than never getting another chance to talk to her because you fly yourself off the cliff face and burn to deaths on the rocks below, her mind rebuked, in a voice that sounded frustratingly like her father. He was the one who'd taught her to slow down while playing StarCraft and take the time to think out her moves, rather than only rushing in on instinct, to think about the long-term strategy and not just the short-term.

“Actually, I can't,” Hana admitted bitterly. “I'm having some issues with one of the arms. Kinda goes past my expertise. I'm probably going to need to contact MEKA and see about getting it replaced or something before I can start pulling tricks and flips again.”

“Well in that case you're already doing better than Reinhardt on that front,” said Brigitte dryly, with a nod towards the pile of metal she'd hauled in. “You have no idea how long I've been hounding on him to take a break and get some actual replacement parts for that scrap metal he keeps insisting on strapping himself into. But if you like, I could take a look at the mech with you? Maybe we can figure out what's wrong together. No idea when Reinhardt's going to actually show up and I can't work until I've got the rest of the armour, so I've got time. We could make an afternoon of it, get to know each other a little better... And give me an excuse to dig into some really awesome tech,” she offered cheerfully.

Hana couldn't actually believe her luck. This was too much. “You know how one of these is built?” she asked.

Brigitte shrugged. “Not really, no. Not besides for the basic schematics that anyone can access with a bit of digging. But I didn't know how the Crusader worked either besides for some of Dad's stories, and most of those were just complaining about how Reinhardt treated it and which bits he'd needed to bang out that today. I'm pretty good with this sort of stuff. Let me poke around a bit, and I'll bet I can figure out what's wrong and how we can get you mobile again. ...Um, you okay?”

Hana wasn't even trying to hide her staring. What were the odds – she was lamenting about needing to contact MEKA and risk losing everything over this stupid mech, and here comes with woman with her pretty eyes and pretty hair and pretty arms and pretty impressive knowledge of high-tech combat systems offering to fix all her problems.

“I could kiss you,” said Hana, words shooting cheerfully past her mental filter and straight to her mouth.

Brigitte laughed, but Hana still hadn't decided if she was joking or not when the workshop door opened and a voice boomed.

“Brigitte! There you are!”

Brigitte rounded on the speaker, hands on her hips. “You mean right where I'm supposed to be? Yeah! Where were you?”

This had to be Reinhardt. When Brigitte had said massive, she'd been understating it. The man had to be nearly as tall as her mech, with a shaggy white beard and huge, blinding grin. Tucked under his arm like it was a jacket on a warm day, was more of the insanely heavy armour Brigitte had been lugging when she first got here.

As Reinhardt moved further into the room, Hana caught sight of who was with him – oh joy, Torbjörn.

“Brigitte!” he called.

Brigitte eyes immediately locked on him, and the stern face she'd been directly at Reinhardt immediately melted. “Papa!” she called, and raced over.

Papa?

Hana watched with a sort of mute horror as Brigitte wrapped her father – her father – up in a hug and pressed her face to his shoulder, clearly ecstatic to see her family – her family – again. Torbjörn was patting her back warmly, and the conversation quickly switched to a low, affectionate Swedish.

At some point during this, Reinhardt had ended up closer to Hana, giving the other two space. He introduced himself, and offered Hana a massive hand to shake; his grip was bone-crushing, but Hana was still too shocked by all the revelations she had been hit with in the past half an hour to care.

“They have a big family,” he told her companionably. “They would never admit it, but I think both have been missing it. Very protective over each other.” He chuckled a deep, rumbling chuckle. “It's a good thing I brought her back in one piece, I'd hate to think what Torby would do if I hadn't.”

Hana made a vague noise of acknowledgment. Good. A protective, grouchy fauther who didn't like her.

Brigitte and Torbjörn were no longer hugging, and by the tone it sounded like things had descended into some sort of disagreement over something or another. But it was that familial sort of disagreement, the sort that was half-choreographed before going in, a routine, a tradition. Hana chose to take that moment to make herself scarce. If Brigitte was sticking around, she could always find her later for engineering help.

-

Hana Song lay slumped across the length of Lucio's bed, defeated.

“Were you... flirting vicariously through your mech?” said Lucio from where he was perched on the edge of his desk, amusedly watching the unexpected guest who had thrown herself into his room half an hour ago.

“You're really not focusing on the important part of this story,” Hana told the bedsheets.

“Right. She's apparently Torbjörn's kid. Which is... bad?”

“Yes it's bad! It's so bad! Can you imagine needing to go up to Torbjörn and saying 'Hi, your daughter's arms are built and I would love for her to cradle me sensually in them'? Huh? No! I'm doomed!”

“Uh, yeah, no, I would really not recommend that being your opener for like... anything, ever. Especially if you want to actually get a date with her first.”

Hana groaned pitifully into the mattress.

Hopping down from the table, Lucio gave Hana's shoulders a sympathetic pat.

“Just don't think about how awkward breakfast is going to be tomorrow, when you're sitting across from him and trying not to project how into his daughter you are,” he said cheerfully.

A groan. Hana Song was doomed.