I would like to thank Yay899 and VMLM for their prereading for this chapter.

Some people had incredible pain tolerance, Roadhog mused, as he cast his hook into the last security guard. To his credit, rather than keeling over on the spot, the man made a valiant effort to pull the hook out.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. I'm told it's not the sticking in that hurts… it's the pulling out." To emphasize the point, he tugged on the chain, the nails in the hook digging in deeper. That seemed to do the job, the guard finally passing out. Or dying. Roadhog didn't really care.

Such was the life of the pair of criminals. Break in, kill anything that moves, get the loot, get out. It wasn't the smart way of doing things, but between Junkrat and himself, the two had enough firepower to get away with it. Roadhog wasn't sure if they had enough brains between the two of them to do things the smart way, anyway.

"What do you think's in the vault, huh?"

Speak of the devil. Junkrat was already sticking charges onto the vault door.

"Didn't you look up what's in here?"

"That's your job, Roadie. I just blow things up."

"This was your idea, you idiot."

Junkrat bristled at the rebuke. "Well, it doesn't matter now. Whatever it is, it's ours!"

Roadhog groaned.

Hitching the chain onto old man Irwin's pick-up, Mako Rutledge walked back to his family tow truck. It was showing its age, but it still got the job done. He ducked into the driver's seat, squeezing in. Being tall wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Throwing the switch, the familiar clink and grind of chain hummed behind Mako. Perhaps he should have gotten out to check the pick-up was properly suspended.

Mako always did like living dangerously.

Foot on the gas, Make pulled the old rig out of the mud. Irwin had gotten it stuck years ago, but had put off pulling it out. Apparently, he was moving, and finally had a use for the thing. He rolled down the window as Irwin walked up to him.

"How much I owe ya?" Mako waved him off.

"Don't worry about it. Didn't know you were moving."

Irwin gave him a look. "Didn't you know? They're kicking us all out."

That got his attention. "What?"

The old man snorted. "Yup. Government's decided to just hand the outback over to the damn tin cans, like we don't matter. Damn cunts."

"They can't be serious. We live here." Make shook his head, as if that would clear everything up. "We fought a damn war to keep it, and now they're just giving it to them?"

For a moment, the two paused, contemplative silence between them. Mako's eyes grew distant. "Mum… Pa…" Idly, he registered Irwin's hand on his shoulder.

A sigh. "They've given us two weeks to clear out, and that's it." The old man looked at Mako, but Mako wasn't looking at him anymore.

"No. They've given us two weeks to get ready."

In hindsight, letting Junkrat plan their "big escape" was probably a bad idea. But he was the boss, so now Roadhog had to watch Junkrat "charter" a plane to their next heist, with him playing the part of "muscle."

The things one does to get half of an untold fortune.

"Now, maybe you didn't hear me right the first time. I said you fly us to Numbani, or my friend here is going to teach you how it feels to be a fish on a line." Impressive. He didn't think Junkrat was capable of using metaphors. Or similes. Roadhog never could keep the two straight.

"I-i-i can't do that! Even if I wanted to, I'd have to get enough fuel, explain where I was going…."

Roadhog took a step forward.

"…I'll see what I can do. Just… please!"

Simple solutions.

Taking one's first life is never easy. Lucky for Mako, his first kill was on an Omnic. Mako hadn't fought in the omnic crisis, but he was raised in the warrior tradition. Or at least, the shotgun tradition. Mum's favorite.

He'd spotted it, twenty paces out, from the bushes. The first convoys were soldiers and peacekeepers – clearly meant to "encourage" any few remaining stragglers. Mako focused on one in front. He had a rifle. Some standard issue, most likely.

Ten paces now. It was just like hunting feral goats. Mako relaxed.

Five paces. Three. Two.

Bang.

Chaos erupted as Mako and his fellow fighters sprung their trap. Scrap and shrapnel flew through the air, tearing down the first lines as the rest scattered for cover. Mako did his best to tune out the screams, the screeches. Some mechanical, some biological.

The fighting turned to brawling. Lines were broken, cover was destroyed, and any semblance of order vanished. Mako found himself in a shootout with a particularly stern looking armed guard.

"Why are you fighting? What does this accomplish but bloodshed and pain?"

Mako snarled. "What's wrong with accomplishing a little bit of bloodshed and pain in the name of my home?"

A bullet whizzed over his head, and Mako returned the favor with a ball of scrap. Reloading, he reached in his pockets to find them empty. Damn. Casting about, he settled on the head and arm of a broken bot and shoved it in.

"This won't change anything. You'll just throw your life away for nothing."

He found it deeply satisfying to blow an omnic in two with another's head. "No. I'll die for something worth fighting for."

Roadhog considered leaving a small tip for the pilot. After all, the plane they ended up with didn't exactly have wide seats. He had to tear the armrest between two in order to sit comfortably.

"So nice to fly in a real plane for once. Those small ones get a little cramped between you and me, you know what I'm saying? Well, mostly you." Junkrat shifted in his seat, leaning over to Roadhog. "Mind getting me a snack? I'm kind of hungry."

Roadhog muttered to himself, but got up anyway. He might as well get something for himself.

Waddling his way up the aisle to the back, he rummaged through the pickings. Some chips, some peanuts, some soda. The usual airline fare.

Ooh. Pretzel nuggets filled with peanut butter. Swiping two for Junkrat and three for himself, he grabbed a couple cans of fizzy drinks before heading back to his seat.

The life of a criminal.

"We're not making any progress. They just keep coming."

Mako did his best to sit at attention, but his mind was elsewhere. No matter how many convoys they ambushed, the omnics kept setting up shop.

"Reports say that another wave of Omnic immigrants will be passing through here."

He'd picked up snippets of how the news was portraying them. As terrorists, stubborn bigots who couldn't accept change. It made him sick.

"We can't just keep killing omnic troops; they'll just make more. We need to start hitting civilian populations." Mako only barely grasped the moral implications of such an idea. He understood the tactical need to break the Omnics, drive them back to never return. Couldn't wrongly take the life of something that wasn't alive, anyway.

"What's even in Numbani, anyway?" The two took the back paths around the airport. No need to attract needless attention to the fact that two international criminals had just landed. Despite their generous offer, the pilot was probably going to call the authorities anyway. Better to move fast before they started closing roads.

"I hear there's this gauntlet being kept in the museum. Used to be used by an Overwatch agent. Must be worth a fortune."

"Are you talking about the one in the news?" Junkrat gave him a blank look. "The gauntlet that someone just tried to steal – and failed?"

"Oh, did that happen?"

Roadhog groaned.

They had decided to strike at the heart of the problem. No more omnium, no more Omnics. Simple solutions. The only trouble was that the omnium was the most heavily guarded structure they could have planned to attack. This was no roadside ambush. This was a coordinated assault on a scale the ALF had yet to attempt. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and outcreated.

Mako always did like living dangerously.

They burst through the doors (and windows, and walls, and several Omnic guards) on the backs of pickups, rusty vans, and old motorcycles. Mako himself rode in on the family tow truck. No better way to send the thing off than for the cause his parents died for, he figured.

And die it probably would, if the explosion that wracked the damn thing was any indication. Mako struggled to keep the truck on-course, plowing through Omnics while vaguely trying to dodge fire from guards and turret and his fellow fighters. His companion in the other front seat was spraying wildly with his own hodge-podge assault-rifle-toaster thing.

The explosions, the screams, the sound of metal against metal. Mako drank it all in. Even now, as his fellow fighters were throwing around charges and explosives, the factory was shaking. Crumbling. He could feel it. This was their hour.

It had all been so sudden.

Roadhog's instincts told him to move, and instants later a sniper shot whizzed past his ear. He grabbed Junkrat and pulled him into a side alley. Junkrat was saying, screaming something, but Roadhog barely registered it. Tucked away (as much as you could tuck away a man of his size), trying to find where the sniper was without exposing himself.

That's when he heard the shotgun crack.

That's when he heard Jamison scream.

He wasn't sure how it had gone so wrong.

He wasn't sure how long it had been since the explosion.

He wasn't sure how long he had left to live.