Fancy meeting you here

[moonshadows]

The first mission we get after Reaper's recovered from being vaporized is practically in Tia Ana's backyard, so naturally I shoot her a warning and an apology for the suddenness while we're en route. The site is a sniper's haven; Widow's practically purring over all the spots she can shoot people from. But that's to be expected when there's a half-constructed building and we're there to get the blueprints and kill some people. Reaper's pretty pleased despite this being my mission; it's going to be on me to snatch the files from the office. He and Widow are here as backup and distraction, but being my distraction means they get to kill as many people as they want. Anyone that moves. The more corpses, the better.

Widow vanishes into the scaffolding and Reaper's headed in to start eliminating witnesses when two things happen. A secure frequency we're not using blips across the top of my visualization, and Reaper growls for no apparent reason.

"What was that?" I ask him sharply, taking a closer look at the local spectrum from my own hidden perch and shaking the frequencies to see if anything echoes.

He growls again. "An annoyance."

"Want me to go looking?"

"You have a job to do," he says, like he's not going to tell me yes but he's not saying no, either.

Then he starts shooting, which is fine because one of the frequencies does echo and the active node is...somewhere in the sniper's haven. There's encryption, but that hasn't stopped me since I was twelve. After a minute, the line opens and a familiar voice tells someone that Talon has arrived but everything is fine.

"Ana?" I say on her channel once the line has closed again. "I thought the point of warning you where we were going to be was so that you could not be there."

There's a pause, and then she says, "Sombra?"

"It's me." Judting by the gunshots and screaming coming from Reaper's comm, it's time for me to start moving into position. "You better watch out, Widow's up there with you."

"I am aware," she answers. "I understand you had...quite the discussion with Winston."

That's one way to put it. "Sorry if it makes things awkward. I know Reaper's not innocent but he's not guilty of everything that ever happened, you know?" The door opens fawningly before me, and I start looking for the server. It's easy to find.

"Is it true that you encouraged Gabriel to..." Ana trails off, but remembering the conversation with Winston, I can guess.

"To eat people? Tia Ana, Talon starved him. No one fed him anything until I started worrying about what would happen if he got seriously hurt." The server gives up its secrets like a drunk tourist. I copy everything. "He starved himself until he couldn't hold himself together anymore, and then he sulked around base as a black cloud and ate a few Talon people who crossed his path. If he gotta eat a few poor grunts on missions to keep himself in one piece, I'd rather he do that than punish himself until I have to make him sit in the can for a day and a half because he dropped below eighty percent mass." I've got what we came for, and I didn't even leave tracks to hint that this is what we came for. Time to get out. "Besides, I'd rather he know that someone is concerned with his wellbeing than think he gotta punish himself." There's nothing but gunshots and small, contented sounds on the Talon channel, so I stealth back out of the office and head back into the scaffolding. "I mean...let's face it, he gonna kill those people anyway, whether he shoots them or his swarm harvests their nutrients."

"You make a good point," Ana says reluctantly. "I don't like it, but..."

"He gotta get used to eating regularly before I can wean him off live food. I'm working on it."

Reaper grunts and growls in frustration, but it doesn't quite sound like he got shot and there's that weird blip on the higher frequency. This time, I was listening and I start processing what was an encrypted, data-heavy transmission.

"Reaper, status?"

"That annoyance again," he snarls.

Checking with his swarm, I can see the nanites going crazy and the transmission decodes to....medical data on Reaper? Oh, that could be bad.

"I'm on it." Then, while I'm climbing towards the destination of that transmission, I flip back to Ana's channel. "Is there anyone up there with you? Someone just shot Reaper with some sort of diagnostic and-"

"That was me," she answers calmly, and I rock to a halt.

"That was you?"

"I came here to get fresh data on Gabriel's condition. If it seems necessary to temporarily incapacitate him, I wish to have a reliable method available."

Reaper's swarm going crazy. Remember the clots of useless code sitting like tumors in the swarm's programming. His resignation at being shot rather than the paranoid and violent reaction I would have expected. Flash to planning the in-person meeting, and Ana's confidence that Reaper would not harm her. Ana's been doing this for a long time, and he knows it's her.

"I make you a deal?" I ask, sighing and resisting the urge to hit my head on an I-beam. "You give me the code for what you trying to do, and I program his swarm to not fight it? Whatever you shooting him with, it making his swarm furious and they concentrating on fighting it instead of all the other things they supposed to do."

There's a pause I like to imagine is startled and maybe a little guilty before she says, "You have a deal. I will send you the schematic within the day. I apologize; it was not my intent to goad his swarm into counter-productive behavior."

"I'm just glad it was you and not someone who might use it to find a way to kill him. You got a good spot, you want me to call them off?" I ask as I start climbing back down. "Or you want a minute or two to get out of here?"

"I'm fine," Ana says. "Thank you, though."

"All right. It was nice talking to you. I'll be in touch." Switch back to the Talon channel. "Mission complete. Status?"

"All clear," Widow purrs.

One final gunshot, and Reaper growls, "All clear. Heading back to the ship."

As I make my way back to the ship as well, I hear Tia Ana report that Talon is leaving the area.

===

The file is waiting for me by the time we get back to base, and I immediately head to my corner chair, absently flipping Reaper the data stick containing the stolen blueprints so he doesn't have to ask me for them before he reports. 

He takes the stick, but stands there watching me surround myself with screens. "New project?" he asks shortly. I just nod. "And the...annoyance?"

"Took care of it," I tell him absently. "Shouldn't bother you again."

Reaper is suddenly wisping heavily enough that it registers in my peripheral vision.

"Not like that!" I shove the screens aside to see him better. "I didn't kill her! Geez, Papi, she my friend and yours, who you think I am?"

The wisping dies down with a guilty little start. "Then..."

"We talked." Soothingly, I tell him, "She not gonna shoot you anymore. Your swarm is as paranoid and angry as you are and being shot makes it angrier and more paranoid."

That makes Reaper wisp slightly in pleasure. He crosses his arms to hide it, but we both know it's not hiding anything.

"So now that I know what that looks like..." I grab a screen and wave it at him. "I can clean up your programming some. Should be able to update your swarm later tonight."

A few more wisps leak out from between his crossed arms. "Fine," he growls shortly, and stalks off to report.

=

Naturally, the first thing I do is dissect the schematic Tia Ana sent me. The clumsy, redundant code suggests that it was developed over the course of several sessions, probably by the biotic swarm used to perform a diagnostic before Papi's nanites literally ate it for lunch. When I finally get through all the layers, it looks like it results in a state of what should be forced sedation. But with the way Reaper's biology - such as it is - works, what it actually does is disable what in a normal person would be nerves until the swarm replaces those disabled cells.

It paralyzes him. That has to piss him off.

Part of me is itching to clean up the improvised sleep dart, but the rest of me isn't completely comfortable with the fact that it exists. The thought of Reaper lying there, unable to move his own body or even dissolve and flow away...even if Tia Ana is watching over him, which I'm sure she would be, everything I know of both Reaper and Gabriel Reyes says that he would loathe being helpless like that.

Well. I said I'd tell his swarm to not fight it. I never said what else I may or may not do.

It takes some digging and cross-referencing, but I find the knotted code that represents the record of Reaper's swarm encountering the makeshift sleep dart and make some changes to the response section. The next time Ana shoots to incapacitate, the swarm will allow muscular control to be disabled - but only so long as no other bioelectrical signatures approach within a three-meter radius. Anyone thinks they can take advantage of a helpless Reaper, they gonna be sadly mistaken.

Once that's done, I find all the other knots and tumors resulting from the swarm fighting off invading nanites and start getting those cleaned out. I'm still working on it when Reaper comes back from reporting, faster than I expected but wisping in irritation and anger. I wonder what happened - the mission itself went off smoothly, did he mention Ana was there? - but we've never discussed his reports and starting now wouldn't calm him down any. I pretend I'm engrossed in my screens, watching him through them, and he gives me a long look before sitting on the far end of the couch.

He wants company. He may want to talk, if he can bring himself to open up. I give him a few minutes before quietly moving from my chair to the other end of his couch, screens still open. It's over an hour and a half before I get the last knot worked out and rub my hands in anticipation of applying updates. Reaper turns to me finally as I close my screens, but doesn't say anything until after I've pressed pink-glowing hands to his chest and the update has been distributed to the entire swarm.

"What did you do to me this time?" he growls, but the resentment isn't aimed at me.

"Price of getting Ana to stop shooting you with biotic darts was making sure her knock-out shot worked," I answer quietly. "I know you gotta hate it. I told your swarm to behave, but only if no one else gets near you. Anyone gets within three meters, all bets are off."

Reaper chuckles quietly, a few wisps from his chest joining the ones from his upper back. "Does that include her?"

"Anyone, human or omnic or even animal or biotic, that wasn't within three meters at the time."

"And she doesn't know you've done that," he says in what's not actually a question. "Could you disable it completely? Keep it from working at all?"

I give him a hairflip and eyeroll. "Of course. The code is messy and loose. And now that I know what it looks like, I can tell if anyone else tries to gather data on you the same way. I also know what it sounds like when a biotic dart reports, and I should be able to track the receiving end. Maybe patch the coordinates straight to Widow's rifle, if it's not Ana or one of her people."

"And you would know this how?"

"I'm just that good," I tease. He growls in mock-irritation. "Kidding. I know the secure frequency they use. If I don't hear Ana, I'll crash their party. I trust her. I trust that her people are afraid of making her angry. I don't necessarily trust her people, especially not when it comes to being able to hit you with a knock-out dart."

A wave of surprised, gratified wisping rises up and falls again, but all he says is, "Good."