Someone in the WormFanfic subreddit asked about Overwatch crossovers, and I couldn't get this out of my head. Originally posted on September 17, 2016 on Sufficient Velocity.

Blink 1.1

"Hey, look."

"Is that her?"

"She's so… normal."

I hunched over myself further, curling around the math textbook that I held clenched to my chest. My fingers tightened their grip, the knuckles of my hands turning white.

"What's her name again?"

"Taylor? Taylor something, I think."

I tried to ignore the voices, the whispers that followed me through the halls. Clamping down on the desire to escape, run, get away, I stopped myself before I accidentally activated my rewind function, jumping me back to the beginning of the hall. That would be the worst possible thing to do right now.

My book was clutched tighter to my torso, squishing the edges of the plasteel casing under my shirt into my skin and keeping the blue circular glow that never went out hidden from view.

Just ignore them. They can't do anything to you.

Easier said than done.

I would've liked nothing more than to blink away in a flash of light. To not have to deal with any of this. But Dragon had said I needed to go to school, that it would be good for me to socialize again with people my age outside of the Rig.

Hah. Like I'd ever truly socialized with normal people my age since Emma.

She knew that, of course, but it didn't change that she was probably right. Staying in my room all the time wasn't going to do anything for me.

It had been only two weeks, but it felt like forever, an eternity.

Two weeks since the accident. Since I'd come home to find half my house eaten by a translucent bubble of displaced time, which I'd stupidly tried to run into it to try and find my dad.

I scratched at the itchy edge of my accelerator that always flared up when I thought about what'd happened and fought to keep the sadness I felt about Dad away.

They'd gotten her eventually, the bitch who'd done it, some tinker named "Bakuda" who specialized in bombs. But not before she'd killed hundreds of people, melting and twisting and dissolving and glassing and freezing them.

There was only one person they'd managed to save from her more exotic effects.

Me.

My accelerator started spinning up again as I unconsciously fed more power to it. A steady, quiet hum grew, only perceptible to someone who'd heard it as much as I had.

After taking another calming breath, I suppressed the reaction, letting go of the metaphorical live-wire of power that ran through my body and the sound died down, the accelerator dimming slightly.

It had taken six tinkers, six, to pull me back into the normal flow of time and create the device that now anchored me here. Dragon, Armsmaster, Kid Win, Chronal, Lifeline, and Integra.

Dragon had been unwilling to let it go once she'd found out about me. She'd been the one who coordinated all the tinkers, reaching out to the ones with specialties that would help, getting everybody working in one direction and keeping them on track.

It'd been their work that unintentionally gave me the abilities I now had. The power to leap forward seconds in time, or rewind myself back to how I'd been seconds before.

Abilities that made the public label me a cape.

They called me Tracer.

I didn't entirely understand the reason behind the name, but at least it wasn't something like "Chubster".

The problem was, my identity was public. The media had found out who I was early on during that waking nightmare, when I'd been little more than a ghost flickering in and out of the normal timestream. The now semi-permanent fixture strapped to my chest that glowed an unnerving blue and made me easily recognizable didn't help, either.

I'd been given a choice of either staying in Brockton or moving somewhere else. I'd decided to stay in Brockton. It was all I had left, and moving somewhere else wouldn't make me any less noticeable. After that was where I was going to school. I didn't like the thought of Immaculata, and I'd had enough of Winslow for a lifetime, no matter the fact that I'd never have to see Sophia again.

So Arcadia it was.

I wish I could have just stayed and talked more with Dragon, or even Miss Militia, instead of coming in today.

Chris walked past me on the other side of the hall and I had to forcibly keep myself from raising a hand in greeting.

I couldn't interact with any of the Wards at school, because people would be scrutinizing every little thing I did, trying to draw connections even where there were none. It was when the things they started speculating about were actually true that things became a problem, because the holes in the excuses started lining up. Which meant no publictly interacting with anybody connected to the Protectorate or Wards. Directly at least.

Victoria and Amy were supposed to be here, but I hadn't seen them yet. They were a year ahead of me anyways, so they wouldn't be in any of my classes. I think. I hadn't gotten a chance to compare electives with them. They were still trying to talk me into joining New Wave, well, Glory Girl was at least. Amy just found her sister's attempts amusing, like she was glad not to be on the receiving end of Victoria's persuasion attempts for once.

But one stupid run-in with Krieg, Othala, and Rune, and suddenly everybody is giving you a cape name and speculating on what team you're going to be on and what your costume is going to be like and who would win in a versus fight.

"Holy shit, it's Tracer."

I unsuccessfully tried to hide myself further behind my book, imagining the brown leather flight jacket I wore as a shell that would block out the rest of the world. The same jacket I'd been wearing at that fight. Why had I decided to wear this today?

Oh right, because it was the only jacket I had, and the straps for my base harness were quite clearly visible through my shirt in the back.

I hadn't even really done that much that day, I'd only been minorly involved. But apparently that didn't matter to the public. To them, if you had abilities, and got in fights with capes, then you were a cape too.

It didn't help that the PRT's PR office was chomping at the bit to work on me.

I got to my locker and emptied all the supplies I didn't need for the first few periods into it, keeping the math textbook out as a barrier. A shiny new combination lock got snapped shut through the handle, my backpack returning to its place over my shoulder, digging my harness' strap further into my skin. I'd have to talk to Dragon and see if she could make them better in that respect, because it was going to be a serious annoyance otherwise.

The early bell rang, and the hallways impossibly got louder as the shuffling of numerous bodies moving around increased, everybody shifting to try and filter towards their first period class.

I pulled the folded class schedule from my jacket pocket, checking my first classroom's number, and then heading off in what I thought was the right direction.

Time to face the music.

A/N:

My first attempt at a major canon divergence AU. Taylor doesn't trigger. Bitch, Regent, and Grue all die from Lung's attack, Tattletale left for dead but clinging to life. Armsmaster arrives with Assault, Battery, and Dauntless (larger, more destructive fight, more Protectorate deployed) and manage to capture Lung together using Armsmaster's sedative. Lisa/Sarah is stabilized and taken in by the PRT and is still under watch.

Bakuda rampages and ends up killing more people than in canon, escalating to match the strength of the Protectorate instead of the Undersiders. Danny is caught in a time-displacement bomb that goes off near the house and Taylor tries to enter it to get to him, only to end up getting half-torn out of time for her troubles. The displacement field collapses after a few hours, leaving nothing behind except Taylor in her wraith-like state.

Bakuda is given a kill-order and dealt with within the week (Oni-Lee as well) by the other villains collectively, though Skidmark, Mush, Hookwolf, and Menja all die before they succeed.

Taylor flickers around the city for a few days, some people managing to catch her on camera. She's initially nicknamed "Gray Girl" because of her unsaturated appearance and the flickering when she's visible that's reminiscent of Gray Boy. The PRT and Protectorate publicly denounce the name and Taylor's possible relation to the original Gray Boy, so the media instead jumps on using Taylor's real name instead.

Armsmaster decides to personally track down Taylor, Dragon tagging along in his helmet due to curiosity. They find Taylor, and barely manage to communicate through signals. They get her to follow them to the Protectorate Rig, and Dragon convinces Armsmaster to help try and save Taylor. They struggle with the problem as neither have a quick, direct solution, which is what they need, and Dragon ends up bringing in other tinkers to help despite Armsmaster's extreme reluctance to accept outside assistance.

During the build, Dragon talks to Taylor as much as she can, empathizing with Taylor's situation of being trapped and unable to interact normally, and becomes the primary adult influence in Taylor's life over the next few weeks. Taylor is a ward of the state, but her situation is complicated by her public identity and the recognizable device she has to wear 24/7, which makes her unable to enter the foster system normally. The option of emancipation is being investigated.