Overwatch: Jinxed

Chapter 9: Tour

"I see you've been busy," Mei said as she walked beside Isabell, giving her a tour. Currently they were watching Mercy and Lucio play tennis again. Lucio wasn't having much luck.

Isabell raised an eyebrow in question, tilting her head as Angela scored again.

"The light was on all night," Mei said sprightly, "And you ate so much this morning I was worried about your health."

"I eat a lot," Isabell said without much interest. "But yeah. I was up all night. I'm still trying to synthesis the perfect material for my suit. It's an issue, because..." she gestured to her skin, and shrugged. "It needs to be able to conduct electricity, and harbor the radiation without overcharging it, and needs to be extremely heat-resistant."

"This may be an intrusive question," Mei said hopefully, "But will your radiation harm anyone else? If you truly can create the radiation-stun-bubble thing, will the radiation from that--"

"No," Isabell said, clapping as Lucio finally scored. "I've tested it. It doesn't cause radioactive decay - well, I mean, it kind of does but doesn't at the same time. I think it's able to regenerate particles as it goes, which is why I'm still in one piece, but the radiation itself only disorients and, well, jinxes."

"I would love to experience that," Mei said wistfully.

"No, you wouldn't," Isabell told her. "Just ask Lena. I feel bad that I had to do it with her there, because... you know... it created some pretty scary effects. It makes people throw up a lot of the time."

"You've tried it out before?" Mei asked.

"The prototypes, yeah," Isabell said. "I used to keep them like charges on me, and throw them like bombs. They weren't nearly as big - maybe the size of a bicycle - but they did some pretty scary stuff to the enforcers who tried to catch me."

"Enforcers?" Mei asked. This was the closest that Isabell had come to revealing much about her situation at home. All that Mei and the others - even Lena - knew was that she hadn't been in a good place and was rejected from the Junkers and the normal members of society. But maybe it was time to speak. Just a little.

Let them know that she had her own scars.

"Enforcers were people who enforced the no-Junkers rule in the city," Isabell explained. "To survive I had to go into the city sometimes, and if they caught me, I threw one of those suckers at them. They never caught me."

"How is the Omnicrisis over there?" Mei asked.

"Nonexistant. Especially with the Junkers. It made no difference to them - steel, flesh. I was thrown out less because I was a smartass and more because I... I guess it was because I was better than them."

Mei blinked. "In what way?"

Isabell loosed a breath. "Technology wise. I could make things that were better than theirs, I was a threat to their empires. I could take the junk that we lived off and I could make things centuries superior to theirs. I lived in Junkertown for a while, but then I was thrown out because I made the first prototype of the bomb that I now use as my Ultimate. I tried it and it worked, and then someone else tried it and their radiation didn't fit it. It killed them."

Mei put a hand to her mouth. "...Who were they?"

"I don't know," Isabell said miserably. "But - even though the brawls and fights are common, killing someone inside Junkertown is strictly forbidden. I was..." Isabell swallowed. "Bad things happened. Then I was thrown out, and because of the glowing, nobody wanted me in their town to the point where I nearly starved to death. I found a lucky break after finding a massive stash of gold, and I stole as much as I could carry before the owners got back. Then I used it to buy myself the parts I would need, and I flew to the north-east cities."

Isabell knew Mei was waiting for her to go on.

She didn't.

"Do you want--"

"No," Isabell cut her off. "I don't. I've lasted this long without anyone to talk to so I'll be fine."

Mei sighed. "Well, the rest of the facility you can explore yourself, if you want. It's just the sports courts and the outdoor training areas. I have to get back to my laboratory."

Isabell said nothing as Mei got up, Snowball circling around her head, and walked away.

After she was just a speck and the doors had hissed closed behind her, Isabell got up and headed for the small building on the far end of the compound.

As she got closer, she could hear things. Loud, metallic noises - the constant sound of swords being unsheathed, metal hitting wood with a loud thok and the scuffing noise of feet in the fine dirt. She could see now that it was a wooden barn, and though it was made of many different kinds of wood, it was all perfectly made. There were no holes to peek through despite the decaying state of many of the planks, and the roof offered the only window - a skylight. But it looked far too precarious for anyone to attempt to stand on.

It was pretty big. About the size of a small house. At that moment, Isabell spied a cut-out hole in the far wall, up high enough to be on some kind of second level. A fire escape, maybe.

Isabell scaled the eucalyptus tree behind it. The tree... so far away from the rest of the compound. It was her home in every way - isolated from the rest of the world, recognizable anywhere, just a loner. The cool whisper of the breeze through its leaves, the smooth bark beneath her fingers... it reminded her too much of the early days. There weren't as many gum trees in the Rainforest where she'd lived, but there were plenty in the irradiated outback.

She dove through the window and landed softly.

She was on a railing - a viewing platform that ran all the way around the large room. It was supported with twisted poles, and the floor didn't look particularly safe.

But it was below that drew Isabell's attention.

The floor down below was covered in straw, but the middle of the room had barely a few strands from someone walking and shuffling along it, casting the straw out to the edges. The back wall - from which she had just come in - was reinforced with at least six layers of more wood planks, covered in cuts and holes and gouges. There was three spinning wooden dummies in the middle of the floor and on the other side of the room - to the right of the normal entrance and the left of the way Isabell had come in, hidden under the viewing platform, was a weapons rack.

The soft hiss of dirt was the dust scattering from his feet, rustling in escape from the metal.

The loud thok of metal on wood were the shurikens, hitting the thickened wood on the far side and the katana and other swords mercilessly beating the wooden dummies.

The shing of metal on metal was the loud hiss of the katana sliding from its place in the sheath on his back.

Genji was practicing.

Isabell hardly dared to breathe.

It was entrancing. He was fluid, pure grace, unblinking and unfaltering. His movements so fluid they were more like a single movement, never breaking, never ending.

This was who had inspired her.

This was who terrified her.

And then Genji paused.

And he looked Isabell dead in the eye.