#nyaarr

The heat from his armor’s overloaded booster needles at his sweat-slick back but he fires it again anyway, picking up speed as he rockets down the empty streets and does his best to ignore the imminent shutdown alert flashing urgently in the corner of his HUD. He can’t afford to slow down, not with that thing hot on his heels. He’s fairly certain he can’t fight it, either; only moments before the monstrosity had lashed out as he’d broken two of its legs, a bladed arm shearing through one of his pauldrons- and the kevlar and flesh beneath it- like a can opener. Adrenaline has insulated him from the worst of the pain but the wet, sticky slip-slide of his normally skin-tight suit betrays the severity of his wound. Sealed away inside his heavy armor plating, liquid warmth is beginning to pool around the fingers of his left hand. The best he can hope for is to lose the construct pursuing him somewhere in the network of narrow rubble-choked alleys. He leans into a sharp turn down an abandoned side street and attempts another boost.

It is at that exact moment the flame on his back sputters, flaring one last time before giving out completely. Several things happen all at once as he slides to a halt in a shower of brick dust and sparks, but the only one that matters to him in that moment is the crack of Ana’s rifle from somewhere in the middle distance. It is far from a guarantee, but it is enough to ease the crushing grip of the icy tendrils of dread coiling their way up his throat. He is not facing this alone.

The impact of the healing dart into his thick neck is almost enough to send him staggering.

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“Well no, of course not! I’m not glad it happened at all. But if it had to happen, I’m glad it was to him, you know? Can you even imagine what it would’ve done to someone smaller? Practically a death sentence.”

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The view from what he has come to joking refer to as Ana’s eyrie is, as always, spectacular, and it is to the faraway buildings on the mainland Reinhardt devotes his attention as his hands work mostly of their own accord. Never in a million years would he have suspected something as seemingly simple as sniping to require so much prep work. Each flechette is taken from its slot on the tray and checked for leaks before being loaded, fourteen rounds to each clip. It isn’t until his fingers brush against something warm - hot, even- that his thoughts snap back to the task at hand. The dart in his hand is noticeably diffirent than its dozens of identical siblings; temperature aside it feels substantially heavier, as if it’s been filled with something much denser than the emulsified nanities the darts were originally designed for. “Hey schatzi…” He calls over his shoulder, raising his find to admire the way the sunlight streaming in through the window illuminates the interior of the transparent body. The liquid inside shimmers in the light, pulsing gently against the points where his fingers make contact with the outside of the tube. The effect is… unsettling, to say the least; it feels like a live thing in his grasp. But before he can even ask the obvious question Ana leans over and graceful, clever fingers pluck the dart from his hand.

“Nothing important.” She cuts him off with A Look, secreting the dart in question away in one of the many little pouches laid out on her desk “Nothing for you to worry about.”

And so, for the time being, he doesn’t.

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“Thank gods the fight crippled his armor as badly as it did, or we would have been in a lot more trouble. Amari was the one who finally ended up bringing him down, if you can believe that. I wouldn’t ask her about it, though, if I were you.”

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He’s worrying about it now, though. Reinhardt is not unfamiliar with the brief sharp sting of Ana’s usual ammunition, nor with the almost soothing puff of chemical heat that accompanies their tiny nanite payloads. And this… This is nothing like that. This is teeth and venom and pure liquid fire, sharp enough to reach him even though the heavy fog of adrenaline that insulates his nerves. His hammer hits the ground with a dull thud, utterly forgotten as both hands fly to his neck, desperate to dig the dart out of his suddenly feverish flesh. But Ana has placed the shot perfectly, damn her to hell, and his armored fingers are too thick and clumsy to reach into the narrow gap where it is embedded, shielded on either side by the plates of his own traiterous armor. A burst of static in his ear signals his comm link going dead and it is only then he realizes he has been howling like a wounded animal.

It doesn’t last for long, though; within a few seconds Reinhardt’s feeble screeching swells into a bestial roar, the sensation of molten glass being pumped into his bloodstream having given way to something entirely different but every bit as overwhelming. His panic is growing sluggish, every frantic thought bogged down in a skull that feels as if it is slowly filling with hot tar. Not that he can even hear himself think over the thunder of his rapidly accelerating heartbeat, over the deafening crackle of the electricity flooding his veins.

Something dark inside of him has awoken. A vast, sinuous uncoiling in his gut, rising as ugly and unstoppable as a leviathan. His armor feels too small to contain it. His own skin feels too small to contain it, stretched tight across muscles that strain and bulge with the sudden flood of some unnamed force. The same force that tears along every last thread of his nervous system like lightning, flooding his vision with crawling sparks and his brain with white noise.

An eternity has been compressed into these past few seconds; the omnic monstrosity rounds the corner behind him before the echo of Ana’s rifle has entirely faded. The roar Reinhardt greets it with does not sound even remotely human.

His world goes black, eventually. But before that it flushes a deep, arterial red.

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