The Bitterest of Cold [Mei]

The weight of memory in the monumental entrance hall buckled her knees, as it if had clung to the rafters waiting to overwhelm all these years. Mei was breathless. Perpetual grin faltered as her jaw hung agape, wide doe-eyes scanning the ruin wrought by neglect. Her internal clock jarred. She had been here what felt like mere weeks past, but wall panels marred by rust and floors slit with errant stone and impressive dunes evidenced the idled time spent in stasis. This was not the warm home of memory, but a memorial. The bustling hub of scientific endeavor and hope had fallen still. Silent.

Or so she had thought.

The distant ping of metal on metal stirred her from melancholic introspection, startling her into a small hop that sent her glasses sitting cookedly at the base of her nose. The small robot nestled to the cylindrical canister strapped to her back took notice as well, blue eyes blinking online. It disconnected, and whirred into flight, hovering with on high alert behind her shoulder.

A low thud echoed from the same direction. With a glance at Snowball, a gloved hand fell over the cartoonishly rounded pistol weapon at her hip. The two began their slow approach toward the occasional rattle punctuated by a grunt.

She’d only glimpsed a gangly figured hunched low across a room lined with derelict computer banks and lab equipment in various stages of disassembly when the robot emitted an enraged series of bleeps, blasting toward the stranger at full thrust. It encircled his head in a frenzied loop before trying to deliver a knock to the side of his skull.

What was that?

The tall man jerked his head in the direction of the sound of movement, or he thought it might be movement, coming from another room. Was someone else here? His metal hand twitched towards the weapon on his back, but after a moment he shrugged it off as being the sounds of an old as hell facility creaking under the weight of its years, and went back to his digging and picking.

Thus far the only thing he'd managed to find was some prime scrap metal, which he'd stowed in a sturdy sack for carrying back to his pick up point, where an Overwatch transport was waiting to take him back to base. He'd be glad to be warm again, this place was too fucking cold and he didn't bring any mittens.

He jerked his head up again when another noise sounded, this time it resembled footsteps and made his hair stand on end, "Oi!" He called out, waiting for a human greeting. What he got instead was a frantic beeping as something flew at him at a blur, "wot th'hell?!" He made a frustrated sound at the circling little gnat, swatting at it with his hands before the thing clocked him right in the side of his head, causing a yelp as he rubbed where he'd been hit, "why yew shitty little heap of scraps!" He growled furiously, reaching for the weapon now, "I oughta' make mince of yeh!" He paused from his raving for a moment when he caught sight of someone else, turning on her, "oi yew stay where yew are! This scrap heap's spoken for!"

His personal mission a definitive success, Snowball emitted a series of chips sounding strangely of laughter before whizzing back to take refuge behind Mei’s shoulder where he continued to regard the junker through narrowed slits. Mei, now with white-knuckled grip on her endothermic blaster, was far less composed.

“SCRAP HEAP?!” Cheeks tinged pink from the cold grew angry crimson. A string of Mandarin tumbled over her lips as, for a few incensed moments, her grasp on the English language lapsed. After a jagged breath she awkwardly grasped at words. “You… You stupid thief! You have no right to just… just destroy!” She snarled, gesturing at the dissected machinery with a violent wave of her thick glove. This was not only her lifework, but that of countless colleagues. Some dead. Some missing. All gone.

Every watch point she had searched thus far had yielded precious little, but she’d not relinquished hoped of unearthing something, anything that would make their sacrifice worthwhile. The move for his weapon did not go unnoticed, but her reaction was to press forward… right into the maw of a waiting trap. Steel jaws sprang from the rubble lining the floor and latched onto her ankle in a fierce snap. She could barely feel more than an uncomfortable pressure through her the reinforced sides of her boot, but it was enough to send her to a stumbling halt.

Junkrat let out a last hiss at the robotic chortle of the little thing as the small bot zipped triumphantly back to his master. But his annoyance turned to a satisfied amusement at just how angry she got at his quip, "heh. Yew mad?" He snickered with a shit eating sort of grin, clearly not intimidated in the least by the small, angry woman.

At the accusation of thievery he put a hand to his chest in an offended gesture, frowning and sticking his tongue out rather childishly, "I'll have yew know I'm'ere on official bidness!" He smirked and leaned in to regard her with a mocking smile, "I got every right yew got, shiela." Though his weapon was drawn, it was clear by his loose stance that he wasn't the least bit worried about her presence, and she was quick to find out why when she stepped right into one of his traps.

"tried t'warn yew." He shrugged nonchalantly and snickered, making a rude gesture at her, "If yew gotta know...Jack sent me t'scope this place fer information." He chuckled, "Overwatch seemed interested in these Eco-places y'know?" He turned from her to continue digging around and bagging useful bits and pieces, "so if yew gotta problem with this, take it up with them." He gestured in a vague direction, "gotta transport waitin', I kin' take yeh right t'Jack meself." He was especially unconcerned with her now, stuck to the spot, and he was clearly amused by this.

“Grah! You shameless ape!”

Jaw set with grim determination once the stranger’s back was turned. She had no doubt in her ability to disassemble anything this pedestrian junker cobbled together, but that would take time and he seemed to be readying to leave. The thought of boarding any vehicle with this parasite was laughable. She was naïve, but not stupid.

As her shoddy luck would have it, he was just out of range of her blaster. Brown eyes darted from behind her black frames. A solution presented itself with an electric crackle of enthusiasm. Tearing the cryo-stasis inducer from her gear, she tossed it at his feet. It rattled there like a failed, weak wristed throw. Its purpose only became clear when activated, encasing his leg in a long bed of ice the size of a toppled human.
Very dense. Extremely cold.

She had done the very same to her arm earlier that week. It was an unpleasant experience to say the least. Exuding obnoxious pride, Mei stood erect, smug smile stretching across her face. “If you are going to tell such ridiculous lies, you should get your stories straight. I don’t even know anyone named Sheila.” She scoffed with a “gotcha” smarm of superiority. Snowball chipped with obnoxious laughter, flying in erecting uncontrolled loops.

Shameless ape? That was a new one.

He was ready to just leave her there to figure out how to disarm his trap, since she seemed quite against the idea of accompanying him back to the base, "well thas' a shame." He lied with a snort, giving her a mocking grin, "lemme know how long it takes yeh t'get outta that then, snowpuff." He was just reaching to grab his sack of pilfered tech and leave when he heard something land just behind him.

He only got to gasp in surprise when his good leg was encased in a thick, freezing mass of solid ice, "shit...Well this is fuckin' gravy..." He seethed through his teeth, "yew realize now neither of us are goin' anywhere?" He smirked and waggled his brows at her mockingly, "if yew wanted t'get t'know me yew jus' had'ta ask." At her words, he fell into a fit of laugher so wild that he fell into an uncomfortable heap against the frozen ground, leg still awkwardly frozen, "yew ain't been 'round many Aussies have yah?!"

When he finally got a handle on his laughter, he glanced at her, "yew look so proud. But a shiela ain't a person...It's slang...This is fuckin' rich..." He struggled into a sitting position with a disgruntled expression, "okay wot's it gonna take fer yew t'let me go? An' I ain't lyin'...I'm here on a mission from Jack Morrison 'imself! He wont be pleased with yew attackin' one'a his agents."

Snowpuff. She couldn’t fault him for that one – despite how the moniker made her nose curl. As deep as her desire to be taken seriously as a scientist may have been, there was no denying her gear made her look the part of a well fed blue-tinted panda. Snorting, she dropped to her backside with a cushioned thud and began examining the trap in bitter silence. The only indication she’d heard anything he had to say about her motives for holding him in place was another flash of red across her downturned features.

Mei did not take well to gaps in her knowledge being pointed out, let alone met with roaring laughter. “I’m not afraid of Jack.” She scoffed, as if she’d been threatened with the wrathful ire of a Buddhist monk. “He is a great man, and a great leader.” Though she knew he must certainly have changed since they last crossed paths, his name still conjured imaged of a cavalier, fresh faced hero. A man who had overcome the impossible for the betterment of the planet, a man who always knew how to inspire others to be their best selves and band together to… Oh, dear.

Mei suddenly looked up from the steel teeth grinning back at her, regarding the junker through narrowed slits. If there was one thing that made the Morrison of her memory invaluable, it was his ability to get agents of all backgrounds –no matter how disparate- working cohesively.

She pursed her lips, and gave the man a curt nod. “You could start by expediting my release. Tell me how to get out. I will then let you go, and we can both go our own separate ways after you let me have what I need from your takings.”

She was relatively confident she had a handle on how the mechanism might work, but this was an opportunity for the so-called agent to demonstrate a show of good faith. She waited with arms folded across her chest.

Junkrat chuckled as he rested his arms behind his head, lounging against the cold ground looking every bit as casual and unfettered as he actually felt about this whole situation, "nat'rally." He glanced over at her with a curious look when she spoke of him, chuckling, "sound a bit star-struck, shiela."

His expression was serious and he turned to rest on his side, propping his head up with his hand, "lissen. Yew heard'a that mess wot happened in Hollywood, eh?" He pursed his lips in an expression that was unusually thoughtful, "we're tryin' y'make sure that don't happen again."

He grumbled as he sat up and knocked his knuckles against the ice holding his leg, it was getting a bit TOO cold, a bit numb even, "I sympathize with yew losin' everythin'...I lost everythin' too, back home in th'Outback." He glanced up at her, "but wot d'ye think yer gonna find in these skeleton remains?" He shrugged, "yew oughta use th'time yew got t'help us."

He pointed to the trap with a smirk, "there's a release right there, Snowpuff." He knew he could drag this out, but his leg was going uncomfortably numb and he was eager to get back home to the warmth and out of this icy hellscape.

Mei was taken aback by the apology – in no small part because she had a habit of keeping her loss close to her fur-lined sleeve. Either this junker really was an agent of Overwatch already briefed on her past, or he’d managed to see the details of their conversation coupled with her presence here through the lenses of his own professed loss. Either way, his unanticipated insight into her motives made her uncomfortable. She felt a sympathetic stirring somewhere in the misdt of all that anxiety, but all was brought to a standstill by the indication of the release’s location.

“What…?” Her brows knit. The release was not at all where she has suspected. She fumbled with the trap, baffled by how such a rudimentary invention could have deceived her. When the heavy jaws rattled to the ground beneath her touch she suddenly appraised the stranger anew. Had he made this?

She rolled her ankle a few times, stretching away the tension. Mei had spent a few inconsolable days in mourning after the bombing. “That mess in Hollywood is why I am here. My research pertaining to climate manipulation could reclaim some of the scarred landscape… I hope.”

“I may not have had the, uh, time to update Mr. Morrison on all the activities of this site before I… before it went out of operation.” She admitted sheepishly, palming the back of her neck in transparent shame. She’d never intended to withhold this vital information, but the ends were just the same. With a small reluctant sigh she shrugged, gesturing around the room with a sweep of her glove. “This was my home station. It was fitting to house our most secure backup facilities here, deep inside the mountains. We did not complete construction on the vault, but the servers were operational. If... If you were to come with me, I would inform Mr. Morrison of your part in retrieving any of the data we might recover.”

This was the best she could do to make some sort of amends. Well, that and release him of course. Unthinking, she trigged the cryo stasis recall, inadvertently depriving the man of any support he may have had from the ice in an instant.

Junkrat chuckled and tapped his chin from his incredibly awkward location on the floor, "yeh...When I designed them traps I didn't want 'em easily gotten out of." He tapped the side of his head, "ye learn t'be smarter then most people give yeh credit fer out there." He was referring to the irradiated Outback, of course, a place where the landscape was almost as unforgiving as the people still living there, if one could call that scraping for survival living.

He looked to the side, getting a more serious look on his face at her confession, "yeh...I was on base in Gibraltar when it happened." He put his hands on the side of his head, over his ears, "It took me back, y'know?" He let out a soft huff, "I was...Like 7 or 8 when I last heard those sirens goin' off...I was sure th'whole world was about t'fall around me...It kinda did..." He struggled into a sitting position, "then they went off on base an'...I never been so fuckin' scared..." He shook the thought away before turning to her with a wry smirk, "well we all make mistakes, eh mate? Jack understands, I'm sure."

He looked up when she proposed they t reversed the vaults, chuckling, "well, I suppose tha--WUH-" He grunted when he was released, and thus the support the ice had been offering, yelping as he laid stunned for a moment before rolling into a sitting position and rubbing over his still numb leg, "warn a bruv, mate..." He chuckled, getting to his feet when he could feel it again, "an' maybe a little less frostbite...I only got th'one leg left yanno." He chuckled and waved it off, turning to her, "alright, I'll come with yeh, Snowpuff." It would be useful to have a partner who knew her way around this place, because he sure didn't.

The conversation moved in ways most unpredictable to Mei, oscillating between notes of naked sincerity and irreverent humor. Guilt, sympathy, suspicion, surprise, offense. Her muddled features couldn’t seem to settle on an appropriate expression. She nearly darted to the junker’s aid once he’d fallen, but he righted himself all his own. Any concern on her features was soon swept away with an irritated roll of her eyes. Before she could make heads or tails of whether he was even being truthful, she was back to being Snowpuff again. “My name is Mei.” She sighed with a roll of her eyes. “It would be nice to have your name too, Mr….?”

Junkrat laughed as he brushed away the frost on his coat, "alright alright then, Mei. Nice t'meet yeh!" He laughed as he went to fetch his trap, snapping it closed and slinging it back over his back where he kept most of his weapons and other tools, "Oh haha!" He turned and gave a dramatic bow, grinning, "Jamison Fawkes, at yer service!" He straightened up and tapped his chin, "but a lot'a people call me Junkrat!" He glanced around before resting his gaze back on her, "yer leadin' th'way, Mei, I dunno me way around this scra--uh--this place."