Author's Note: I put this together in my spare time manning my part of the MegaTokyo booth at Youmacon, having watched Sombra's short. This is certainly no attempt to create Overwatch lore, of course, but sort of a "how I would do this" sort of thing.

I hope you like it.

"Legacy" - An Overwatch Fan Short

"Numbani has devolved into chaos, as human and omnic tensions have finally reached a boiling point. Numbani Police are overwhelmed trying to contain the infighting between omnics and their supporters against anti-omnic insurgents."

I knew this time would come. Only a fool would have thought this island of peace wouldn't eventually be hit by the tsunami.

"Reports of independent forces trying to keep the peace match records of former Overwatch agents, but even they are not enough in number to squash the violence as it spreads throughout the city."

Overwatch, helping the people of Africa. There's a first. But like always, they're still only people. They can't be everywhere. They can't do everything. I understand that. My grandfather understood that. My father didn't.

"The Moroccan Military are preparing to converge if the violence begins to threaten the greater country as a whole, which seems more a matter of when as much as if."

It's time.

I turn off the television mounted in the southwest corner, and silently declare my intentions to Booku, the omnic mechanic that I had partnered with for my business. It knows. I hadn't had it help me in my secret project, because I knew how it could be received and I didn't want to put the poor thing in harm's way having to acknowledge that it had helped... but it was aware of my workings. That it did nothing to report me or stop me, despite the legacy my family held, had been reinforcement that I had been doing the right thing.

I tap in a eight digit code on a mechanical keypad on the north wall of my shop in Numbani. Ostensibly, I do machining for automobiles, bikes, buses, occasionally delicate military vehicles... you name it, I service it.

But that eight digit code; signifying the day, month, and year of the end of the Omnic Crisis, opens up a lower level of my shop where I've done a little bit more on the side.

Savior. That's what they call my grandfather, Adhubu Ngumi. The man who nigh singlehandedly saved Africa while the rest of the world worried about their own omnic problem. It was my grandfather who developed the first gauntlet and managed to overwhelm the Cape Town God AI, Gamab. It had cost him his life in the process, and that sacrifice was revered throughout the whole of the continent.

We had always been a little behind the developmental curve, and as a result had been the worst prepared to handle the God AI's when they went rampant and turned on humanity. But while the "first world" mostly rallied together to help each other, our appeals for aid went ignored.

Scourge. That was the name the first world gave to my father, Akinuide Ngumi, a man who had not forgotten how the first world had turned its back on us. So when Overwatch came to Africa to "help" us maintain the peace, their corporate interests in tow, my father understandably took offense.

He metaphorically and literally drew the line in the Moroccan sand, and issued what he called the Ngumi Doctrine. First World influence would not be welcome here. Africa had been used and abused too long by the outside world. It was bad enough it plagued Egypt, he had said, it would go no further.

Like most extremists, my father was right and wrong. Both Gamab and Anubis in Egypt presented continued threats that the people of Africa could not contain on our own. But at the same time, that defiant stand itself slowed first world appropriation, and in a way shaped the careful, measured environment that made the peaceful existence in Numbani possible.

For a time, at least.

It's three flights of stairs to the sub-basement level. Unlike the garage, which looked every part of a disheveled, everything-in-its-proper-if-odd place, the sub-basement was ordered to the point of sterility. Everything accounted for, everything always maintained. It needed to be. I wasn't working on just a machine or a computer. I was working with something unique, something that was both... yet at the same time neither.

Much like the men who had wielded its predecessors in the past.

The mechanics ran off of as few computerized parts as possible, which was why in the past the gauntlets had been so massive. Mechanical components that were also strong enough to take a beating normally meant tremendous size and weight.

Hence why my forefathers looked like something chiseled from solid rock. I'm not quite that built. I don't need to be. New metallurgy, new techniques and technology allow my gauntlets to be much thinner and not nearly as bulky, yet just as effective as anything my father and grandfather used... if not more so.

So much so that I can use two of them.

New fabrication precision also allowed for the fingerprint sensors inside the gauntlets so that only my hands would activate them, physically nigh imperceptible grooves cut into the gauntlet itself, so that you couldn't even reprogram them to different hands even if you wanted to and had the means to do it.

Not that it would feel particularly comfortable trying to use them even if you could. They're sized for me, after all. No fancy self-fitting technology on these beauties. If I change, I have to change the gauntlets to fit physically, which in many cases means a complete rebuild.

It's easier to just maintain a specific diet.

"N...na... dmi... you... have v... v... visitors..."

Booku's broken voice transmitted into my earpiece. I was expecting company, but I had thought that Booku would be smart enough to let me handle it. If either of those three had went out of their way to harm the omnic... there was going to be even more hell to pay than what I had been planning to begin with.

I knew any one of the trio could act quickly, so I had already spun my right gauntlet about, expanding into it's shield state. Even a centimeter of the special amorphous alloy in the gauntlet could stop an anti-tank missile, much less the spit from a SMG.

"Nice reaction time, boy," Sombra complimented, charging and slapping her hand over the gauntlet where my wrist was, "But what's yours is mine!"

I'm sure Sombra had experienced hundreds if not thousands of scenarios where she merely needed to touch an object for her special cocktail of malware to take hold of any sophisticated piece of computerized weaponry. But the computer cores of my gauntlets were completely disconnected from any grid. It had no ability for wireless access or even detection. They could only be reprogrammed though a proprietary connection port that was made specifically for each gauntlet.

It had been my grandfather's rather low-tech solution to what had been a high-tech problem. Sombra was no doubt a skilled hacker, but she wasn't even close to the peer of a God AI, which was what the highly isolated systems had been designed to resist.

And Sombra discovered this far too late. "What in..." she mumbled, awestruck, preparing to slap her hand down again in disbelief before I cuffed her across the temple with enough force that she left her feet and crashed into the west wall. Perhaps mercifully, I doubt she'd feel that impact until she woke up later.

I couldn't afford to let my guard down, as I know what's coming next. I bring my shield up again to stop the roar of close range shotgun blasts that were not exactly placed to disable.

"Reyes," I said simply.

The man known as Reaper huffed. "Aww... so the little boy knows some names. Am I supposed to be intimidated by that?"

He shifted into his wraith form, no doubt to try and get behind my defenses. A compression wave formed by my left gauntlet basically created a wall of air that could even stun a man broken down into a gaseous mist. As Reaper congealed back into his default state, I used my left hand to grab him by the head, cracking his mask in my grip.

"No," I answered, "I expect you to be intimidated by this."

At which point I slammed him repeatedly into the floor so hard that I left a web of cracks and four indentations. If he's lucky, he won't remember what happened. If I'm lucky, he'll remember all of it.

I collected both villains, dragging them out of my business. Thankfully, Booku seemed to be in one piece as it steps out from its hidden alcove as it hears my approach. "You are well. Did my warning make it through the woman's scrambling?"

"Enough of it," I said. "I know I shouldn't be asking this of you, but there's still a lot of chaos out there, and having a set of eyes monitoring it would be useful."

"Say no more. I would be honored to assist."

"Even if it could get you in a whole heap of trouble?"

The omnic pointed outside, where the smoke from fires in the distance was starting to cloud the air. "Like the trouble out there?"

I grinned, duly corrected. "Point made."

"I'll open a port I reserved for just such a circumstance," Booku delcared. "No worries, I've never connected it with anything inside, even myself. I'll have to operate it manually."

There's a reason why I liked that fellow. Or girlie. I don't know, it seems insulting to give it a gender neutral noun, but at the same time, giving it a male or female pronoun also seems insulting. Booku's claimed it doesn't care one way or the other, but I still don't like committing to something inaccurate.

"What will you do with them?" Booku asked, pointing down at the lifeless pair I was still dragging alongside me.

I hadn't killed them, mostly because while they were boorish and generally terrible... they weren't exactly wrong either. The entire human/omnic problem still remained, and the heart of those conflicts were still out there. Shackles only worked for so long... a more permanent solution needed to be found.

"I'm going to leave them outside," I declared dismissively. "With the gauntlets now complete but out of their reach, they aren't going to stick around."

Of course, I knew that the third member of their trio was waiting. I planned for her action too.

Normally, the gauntlets don't have enough power to operate at the same time. To use the offensive capabilities of my left side, I have to disable the defensive abilities of my right. But for short periods of time, I can overcharge the system to get the best of both worlds.

I do so as I step outside my garage, dropping both of my earlier attackers right at the landing. Widowmaker's shot clangs harmlessly off the resistant metal that wrapped around my body. I needed that first shot so that I could calculate where she was, snapping around and raising my left hand as the ceramic shell momentarily parted to reveal the magnetic rails of the personal rail gun mounted to the forearm of my left gauntlet.

It was a remarkable weapon, if I do say so myself. Capable of short bursts of five rails, something normally a rail gun would overheat too quickly to do, or in this case, one highly accelerated bolt that could hit with uncanny accuracy at remarkably long range.

It's why my shot ripped Widowmaker's rifle to what amounted to twisted scrap metal without doing much more than do some decent damage to her right shoulder. "When you feel ready to come down here, pick up your trash," I shout as the gauntlets revert to their normal operating status and begin to recharge.

"Nnmadi, I am picking up a report of a stolen police mech on Rou Soumaya, a half mile away. That seems to be the closest incident to us," Booku advised, again coming in over my earpiece, even though I could also hear him from his position back at his alcove.

"Then to Rou Soumaya I go!"

One day I should probably design some boots or something to increase my speed, though both my father and grandfather found difficulty moving effectively with greaves that had been built for that purpose. I had thought about rollerblades like I had seen Lucio use, but my balance was bad enough without roughly twenty-five total kilos of weight latched to my arms.

For now, hoofing it was the best option.

I remembered when my father asked for me in his last days. He had kept his distance from me for most of my life, mostly because he knew what was in store for him and the entire continent following his angry declaration that outsiders would be met with force. So being asked for was certainly out of the norm. I had been just a teenager, resenting how he had left me and mother behind in Numbani, become a world-infamous villain while he fought what everyone knew was a hopeless war right on the heels of the previous hopeless war.

I was brought before him, ready to give him a piece of my mind. But when finally face to face with the man who had helped give me life, I was rendered speechless by the sadness in his eyes. He had regretted having to leave so much of his family behind, how much it hurt him to know what the world said about him. If he had left one legacy, it was that no one attached him to his wife and his only son.

His last words to me were that whether I would be savior, or scourge, that he would be proud of me. And whatever choice I made with my life, to take it with conviction and never sway from it, no matter what the world had to say.

I arrived on the scene right, as the idiom goes, in the nick of time. As Booku had said, a man most definitely not a member of Numbani's Riot Police Force was operating one of the unit's mechs, and was preparing for what would be a punch capable of killing near anything in its path. I intercept the mech's fist with my left hand, stopping it cold, much to everyone's surprise but mine.

Savior. Scourge. In truth, it was always a little of both, depending on your perspective and your goals. My grandfather had truly been the savior of humanity in Africa, but at the cost of many innocent omnic lives, which he considered nothing more than machines that deserved to be junked.

My father had been the scourge of the first world until his death, but his actions resisting the corporate interests hiding behind the heroes of Overwatch borne tremendous benefits for the balance and prosperity the continent had in the present day.

But I choose neither. I choose my own path. I will be the Defender.

I spared myself the time to look behind me at what would have been the man's victims. Three omnics, huddled in the corner with fright. They saw the gauntlets on my arms, and know what they represent. I could tell they were afraid.

"It alright." I assured them as gently as I could. "I'm here to help."

A defender for all.

I ripped the mech's arm straight off, and used that limb as a club, smashing the mech's left side, cracking the canopy and effectively disabling it. I then tore away said resistant glass, and pulled the occupant out onto the street.

"Get out of here," I growled. "Don't even think of hurting anyone, human or omnic. I will find you if I have to."

He stumbled to his feet, sprinting to the north as fast as his legs could carry him. In truth, I'd never be able to track down one person in all this chaos, but it was important for him to think I could and would.

I hear the click of a rifle being readied, and I identify it for the warning it was meant to be. I turn my head to see the silvery haired man in tactical goggles and horribly garish combat fatigues holding at the other side of the street.

I knew of the man, much as I knew of most of the original members of Overwatch. My grandfather had respected his work, even as it had rarely ever moved outside of Egyptian borders. My father loathed him for much the same reasons.

"Morrison," I said in greeting. In truth... I rather was using proper names in the hopes that it would put many of these heroes off guard.

"I see your father told you a great deal," Morrison said guardedly, his head tilting down towards the gauntlets on my arms. I can almost see the indecision whirling through his mind as he tries to figure out what I'm about, and what my angle is.

Let him wonder. While I may not resent the man now calling himself Soldier 76, I won't forget that when he needed to do the right thing during the Omnic Crisis in Africa, that he let politics rule the day just like everyone else.

"Enough," I replied cryptically, readying my right arm to shield myself if need be. If he wants to be an ally, that's fine. But I'm more than ready if he wants to be an enemy.

Instead, Morrison stands down. "If you're here to help, Tracer and Winston tell me there's a mob steadily approaching an omnic temple two blocks down. You're welcome... to join me... en route."

I snort. I'll be an ally. I won't be an asset. "How about you join me? This is my home. I'll be the one in charge of protecting it."

Morrison chuckled at that, surprisingly. "Very well, kid. Lead on."

"The name's not 'kid'," I warned. "It's Nnamdi Ngumi. I am the Defender."

I let the next line hover in the air, as I don't want any doubt as to the legacy I'm carrying on. I represent a continent that is tired of being used when it is convenient, and forgotten when it isn't.

"I am Doomfist."