//------------------------------// // Don't Blink // Story: Recall // by SirDeeviant //------------------------------// I remember feeling blades of grass underneath me, hearing birds chirp around me, and smelling the aroma of nature around me. It would have been relaxing if not for the splitting headache and the knowledge I was absolutely not where I was supposed to be. I slowly opened my eyes, after adjusting them to the light; low and behold the beautiful blue sky was there to greet me. It was the most peaceful and cheery looking sky I’d ever seen. I half expected the sun to actually come up to me say “Morning love! Have a nice nap?” I got up from lying on my back and looked around. My senses don’t lie; I was in some kind of creepy looking forest. I’d been in a few woods as a kid, but I’m didn’t remember if the constant feeling of something watching you was normal in that situation. “Where on Earth am I?” I asked the air. Instinctively I checked my ear… and my com system was still attached! Naturally I tried to radio Winston. “Hello? Winston? This is Tracer here.” I knew better than to use my real name outside of Overwatch “Can you hear me? ...Hello?” Static. That was… odd. Overwatch coms are supposed to work worldwide so why weren’t they working now? Maybe it had something to do with the malfunction? I shrugged that off and pulled out my holographic GPS to find my location. Stranger still not even that was working, instead of a map or even a ‘you are here’ symbol; there was just a blank screen. “Oh just my luck!” I grumbled “Stranded on God knows where with no coms or map. Can this day get any better?” I immediately covered my mouth and looked to my sides. I’d seen too many cartoons as a kid to know saying things like that was begging for trouble. I even checked above me for falling pianos. I laughed at myself thinking, “Stop being so silly, this isn’t a cartoon. Things like that don’t happen in real life remember?” I turned to walk in some random direction, “Saying things like ‘what could possibly go wrong’ won’t cause anything to–” My thoughts were cut off when I came face to face with a thing I could only describe as strangely terrifying. Or terrifyingly strange. It was some kind of wolf like creature made of what looked like wood (it looked like it was wood when I saw it, there were twigs and leaves coming off of it so that’s what I assumed it was). I tried to figure out what it was. Maybe some new omnic attack dog? But that’s just absurd, why would omnics try to build attack dogs when they have much stronger weapons and robots at their disposal? Maybe some junkers’ new crazed invention? But the junkers were out in Australian outback, nowhere near any woods. Whatever this thing was it looked mean, and hungry. “Nice doggie… Good doggie… You don’t want to hurt little ol’ me do you?” It was obvious that it did, I guess I was just taking a shot even if I knew I’d miss (metaphorically speaking). That’s when I noticed two more at its sides. They were all growling. I heard more growling behind me and looked back to see FOUR more of them. I reach for my pistols only to feel them not there. I left them on the table in the lab darn it! I wanted to blink away and run, but I looked at my accelerator to find it unlit. Considering I was not fading out of time it was clearly just recharging. My day just got infinitely better. The one in front of me lunged and I rolled to my right, I spotted a loose branch and grabbed it when I righted myself. It didn’t feel very sturdy. Two more jumped at me, I could only dodge one so I raised my arm to block the other. It bit down on the metal plating on my lower arm, not breaking any skin. I whacked it with the branch and kneed it in the gut knocking it off, and boy did that HURT! They really were made of wood, REALLY tough wood. I bounced on one leg and tried to nurse my poor knee. I just realized then that I had my back to a tree and had gotten myself cornered, oh and the branch snapped. Lovely. I beat on my accelerator; I was in full on panic mode. “Come on, please wake up!” No response. Things were getting desperate. One of the wolves tackled me and went for my neck; I barely managed to block it with the remaining half of the branch, catching its jaw. I struggled to fight back as it pushed, like it was trying to break through the branch just to get me. My head turned to the side, trying to look for a way out, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Right there, right out of my reach were my pulse pistols! My saving graces were a few metres away! My view was cutoff when another wolf stepped in front of my face. I felt my arms start to give and I actually believed that was the end. Then out of nowhere some blur raced by and knocked the wolf off my chest! Then it circled back and flew into another by my side and knocked it into a tree! It was moving so fast I could barely see what it was, all I could make out was a rainbow colored trail. I didn’t waste too much time gawking and made a beeline for my pistols. Heck there were even a few of my pulse bombs there too! I didn’t see those! As I was running to them a stray wolf flanked me from my left and lunged right at me! Now I wouldn’t have had time to react but at that moment time slowed to a crawl. Normally people would think this is the part where life flashes before their eyes or something, but I knew exactly what that meant. The familiar hum of the accelerator rang in my ears, and I smiled. “Back in business!” I thought. I blinked right past the bugger and he fell flat on his face, didn’t even know what happened I bet. I kicked my guns up in the air then snagged my bombs and put them in my jacket’s pocket. I caught the pistols easily, aiming them right at the bugger who tried to cut me off, he looked pretty mad. But I wasn’t scared anymore, in fact I taunted him, “Come on love! Show me what you’ve got!” waving my arms at myself for emphasis. Silly thing took the bait and ran right for me, so I blinked right past him and kicked him in his gut (this time with the bottom of my foot, Genji taught me that was a better way to kick) and he went flying. I pumped him full of pulse energy as he fell emptying my clip. I reloaded as I saw him turn to twigs just before he landed. “You messed with the wrong girl.” My moment of victory was interrupted by the sound of fighting behind me, I finally got a look at my savior and honestly, it was the last thing I expected to see, much less be rescued by! It was literally a weird… horse (I guessed) with wings, and it was as bright blue as the sky. It had this long mane of all of the colours of the rainbow (which to this day I don’t believe is natural) and had the biggest cutest eyes! It looked like something out of a book I’d read if I was still 3 years old! If it wasn’t in the middle of fighting for its life I’d probably try to snuggle the little thing it was so cute! It held its own in a fight pretty well despite looking like something out of Candy Land. Have you ever seen anyone do a mid-flight dropkick? Let’s just say that the wolfie on the receiving end won’t be having kids ever again (if those things even could… scratch that I don’t EVER want to know). Little Rainbow (that’s what I decided to call it) was too busy taunting the downed wolf to notice one of them was trying to jump her (I guessed it was a girl) from behind. Of course that’s when I blinked in front and gave him a face full of pulse, crumbled to twigs right there. Little Rainbow sure looked surprised to see me behind her; I just gave her a smirk and said, “What? You think I was just going to leave ‘em for yourself?” I reloaded my pistols and turned to face our remaining adversaries. I counted two, so there were three behind me, and two of us. I liked those odds, it made things interesting. The two in front got smart and tried to tag team me, they used a pincer manoeuvre to try and cut me off, clever dogs. Too bad they were too slow, I blinked twice to get behind them and aimed each gun at both of their backs and unloaded. Chips and holes lined their back sides as they scrambled to get their footing. Little Rainbow knocked one of her dogs into one of mine. The one still standing turned to me and rushed me in a zigzag pattern trying to throw me off, I blinked into the air and shot at it, but only landed a couple of hits. So as I fell back to the ground I reloaded and aimed at a wolf that Little Rainbow was wrestling with; the entire clip entered its back and it howled in pain. She then pushed the bugger off her and bucked into a tree, it turned to twigs on impact. Those dogs learned fast though, because right when I landed, three behind me all jumped out from behind to catch me, and I was all out of blink charges for the moment. Blinking and shooting weren’t the only tricks up my sleeve! I tossed one of my pulse bombs and recalled putting me back in the air mid flip. I could hear the sound of the overloading pulse energy as I fell. Not a second after I landed did the satisfying sound of an explosion ring behind me, a few of their twigs landed by my feet. That only left one mangy mutt, and he didn’t seem quite as confident after he saw his buddies just get blown up, and being outnumbered two to one. I holstered my pistols and yelled, “Alright, beat it!” while pointing in the opposite direction, Little Rainbow emphasised by aggressively snorting; the pup ran away whimpering. Why did I just let it go after it tried to kill me? Mostly because I don’t like to hurt the weak. I mean he clearly was outmatched; he wouldn’t be able to take us down if he tried! And it just wouldn’t feel right to do anything unless he was actually crazy enough to try. Plus it looked like just a young one… I’ve got too much heart to do anything to a pup. Once it disappeared from our view, Little Rainbow flew in front of my face and started babbling away. She made motions like some kind of fighter and the some of what looked like me shooting. I guess she was just celebrating the victory, but I couldn’t understand what she was doing. I wondered if it was a method of communication… I turned on my coms automatic translator. It never works on animals (they don’t have communication patterns similar enough for any translator to recognise) but the way it was babbling and moving so… human like it almost seemed like a language. In hindsight it wasn’t the smartest decision to try and talk to an animal, and I confirmed that right away with the com's static. It made noises signifying that it was calibrating, the system first accesses a database of languages and runs through them while listen to the language to see if there’s a match, if not it registers it as an unheard language and tries to recognise vocal patterns in order to translate, but it usually didn’t take so long. Little Rainbow was waving her hoof in my face, trying to get my attention since I was more focused on the coms’ translator then on her all while still babbling gibberish. “Of course” I thought “it’s still just an animal, the translator will just come up as an error. I don’t why I thought this would work… it’s not like she can actually–” “Are you even LISTENING to me?!” An unfamiliar voice said. I jumped back, surprised to hear someone speak in the middle of my mental debates. I looked around and called out, “Hello? Who said that?” “Me! Who else?” I looked at Little Rainbow, and she was looking quite miffed. “What’s with you? Why did you decide to just ignore me like that?” And yes, that was Little Rainbow talking. No I didn’t believe it either. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open for a moment. “It…actually worked?! Huh, I don’t give those scientists enough credit.” “HELLO?! Equestria to weird sonic monkey thing?” She said. “Huh? Oh sorry! I was ...uh... just thinking to myself.” I nervously scratched the back of my head and chuckled. “To be honest I really didn’t think I’d be able to talk to you.” “Why’s that?” “Well the reason behind that’s filled with all of this high tech mumbo-jumbo that I don’t fully understand, and I probably wouldn’t even be allowed to talk about it if I did.” “You ‘wouldn’t be able to talk about it?’ Why?” She got in my face for this part “Are you working for some kind of special organization?” “Well actually yes but– ” “I knew it! You ARE a spy! Who sent you, huh? Why are you here? What are you after?!” Now I would have been offended, if I didn’t find the angry face she was giving e hilariously adorable. I struggled to not burst out laughing but when she said that I was a spy I lost it. “What’s so funny?” I made an effort to at least try to stop laughing, “Sorry, sorry… ha! It’s just nobody’s ever called me a spy before.” “How is that funny to you?” “Don’t you know who I am?” “I’ve never even seen anything like you before!” “Well, if you must know…” I blinked behind her and around her, (I like to add a WOW factor when making introductions.) “Special Agent Tracer of the Overwatch task force at your service!” I gave a little bow as I finished my sentence. “Special Agent? …You sure you’re not a spy?” “Positive. Would a spy come back and fight with the one who just saved them?” She didn’t buy that, “Totally! A spy would come back and make themself look good, because if they ran away they’d look bad and wouldn’t be able to get close to who they were spying on. But since you did come back that means you look good but I know that you’d be trying to make yourself look good… which means you could be bad or good… or you could be…uhh.” She clearly overloaded herself, and I couldn’t help but laugh some more. She did not like that one bit. “Sorry again love, you really don’t like me laughing do you?” “I don’t like it when anypony laughs at me.” “AnyPONY? She’s making it way to hard not to seem adorable.” I thought. I even believed she was trying to use that against me, and it worked. I felt bad for laughing. “There there, I didn’t mean to be rude.” I said, “Tell you what: if you want I’ll let you take me to your local investigator and then I can prove I’m not a spy of any sort. Deal?” I extended my arm hoping she’d shake, but I realized that she might not know what that means. “Deal!” And she shook my hand, okay then! Signs of friendship might be a bit more universal than I anticipated. “But I’ll do you one better than some lousy investigator. I’ve got a friend who can read anypony like a book and if she says you’re legit than I’ll say you’re legit.” “Sounds good to me! But I guess this kind of makes me your ‘captive’ doesn’t it?” “Yeah… I guess? So you better not run off, because I will catch you!” “Will you now?” I blinked behind her again “You sure you can keep up?” I said smugly. Little Rainbow circled me faster than a jet; I struggled to stop myself from spinning myself. When I regained my balance I saw her lying on a tree branch just overhead with her own smug grin. “Huh, maybe you can…” I said. “They don’t call me ‘the fastest flier in all of Equestria for nothing.” She said. “I really hope that isn’t your name, it’s quite the mouthful.” “Nah, that's just what I am, that and awesome! My name’s &@#<%*(: ^@/=!” “Huh? I’m sorry, can you say that again?” That was odd… “I said my name’s RAINBOW DASH! Is there something wrong with your hearing?” “No… well kind of. It’s nothing really.” That was strange, I assumed the translator would work fine… but science isn’t exactly perfect so there might me some bugs and recalibration that needs to be done. “If only Winston were here…” I thought. “We’d better get moving” said Miss Dash “Those timberwolves aren’t the only things in these woods.” “Is that what they’re called? Nasty little buggers…” “Oh believe me they are!” We both laughed and talked as we walked (well I walked, she hovered by with her wings) I was glad to be able to talk to her, both because it would help the translator grow its language library and having someone there was always a pleasure. Even if it was a little girl’s fantasy toy come to life. I was slightly worried as to why I still couldn’t reach Winston. “If they went offline because of the accident then how come they haven’t rebooted yet? And how did that accident put me in the middle of the woods?” I tried not to focus on too many questions in my head, lest I incur the Rainbow wrath upon myself. A small part of my brain put the idea in my head that I might be much further from Arkansas than I thought. (Is that the American state that old movie is in?)