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Name: Sara
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mezzanineview
E-Mail: on request
IM: n/a
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wolftrap
Other Characters: n/a
Character Name: Lena Oxton (a.k.a. "Tracer")
Series: Overwatch
Timeline: post-Recall
Canon Resource Link: General Overwatch info and what the Omnic Crisis was. Much of Overwatch's canonical information is disseminated through multiple media outlets and is thus hard to compile in one place, but these are the basics.
Character History:
>"The world could always use more heroes"
Not much is on record about the early life of Lena Oxton (callsign: "Tracer"). The rise of Overwatch - a collection of the best and brightest strategic minds and brave, capable soldiers that the world could muster - brought with it an age of heroism, courageous souls that enlisted to fight the Omnic threat. And while victory finally had fallen into the organization's grasp after following the stalwart leaderships of Strike-Commander Gabriel Reyes and his close friend Jack Morrison, themselves both products of the United States' Soldier Enhancement Program, Overwatch's success in pushing back the Omnics and restoring peace proved to be the only the beginning of its story.
For the following two decades, Overwatch's transition from war time force to peacekeeping did little to slow the pace of recruitment. With rogue omniums and skirmishes breaking out between opportunistic countries scrapping for resources after the war, Overwatch's continued interventions were needed, and with them, fresh soldiers and technology.
Enter energetic pilot Lena Oxton, handpicked as one of the youngest recruits coming into Overwatch's service. The hope was that she'd prove to be the perfect test pilot for an experimental new aircraft called the Slipstream - an advanced model fighter jet outfitted with the ability to teleport. And, like any superhero origin story, things can and do go wrong: during a test flight, the jet malfunctions, disappearing and taking Lena with it.
Some time passed. The Slipstream was declared destroyed, Lena declared missing and likely dead. Then quite suddenly, a bewildered Lena would seem to fade in and out of existence at random times and places throughout base. These instances bore no connection to one another save in their randomness and Lena's intangibility, seeming to drag on for months while Lena was helpless to either appear at will or keep herself from disappearing once more.
Eventually, a prominenthyperintelligent talking ape scientist named Winston came to the conclusion that the Slipstream's malfunction caused Lena to be unstuck from the standard flow of time. He put months of research into developing a "chronal accelerator" - a device merely meant to anchor her to one time stream. But it wasn't without its side effects. Not only could Lena stay in one place in the time stream, but she could also move forward and backward at will, bending her personal time line to move at incredible speeds relative to those around her.
Thrilled at the possibilities, Lena was approved to go back out in the field, this time as an on-foot agent. Her natural joyfulness and happy-go-lucky nature is a boon to her comrades, keeping spirits up as she zips around the battlefield and vanquishes enemies of peace and freedom. In Overwatch's golden age, Tracer would come to be one of the organization's most effective agents, and even surviving its collapse Lena continues on fighting the good fight wherever she can, just in a less official, United Nations-sanctioned manner.
Her choice to dance around the Petras Act, a law which criminalizes Overwatch activities and any potential vigilanteism, in order to keep helping people is not without its share of heartbreak. An indeterminate time after Overwatch's fall, Tracer attends the public address of an Omnic named Tekhartha Mondatta, of the Shambali.
In the time since the Omnic War, the remaining Omnics had been going through a time of enlightenment and cohesion as a people newly freed from the God Programs that started the war in the first place. Mondatta was a monk, a spiritual leader hailing from the Shambali Monastery in Nepal, now set on traveling the world to preach the wisdom of unity between Omnic and human. This naturally met with resistance and prejudice in turns, and though Tracer come to King's Row eager to hear his message just as one of the crowd of supporters, her attention was drawn away by lurkers in the shadow.
Suspicious, Lena listened to her instincts and investigated. An assassin was in their midst: Widowmaker, once the wife of Overwatch operative Gerard Lacroix, she was captured by the terrorist organization Talon and brainwashed into a cold-hearted assassin whose first victim was her own husband. Though she had almost certainly knew Amelie Lacroix before her capture, Tracer didn't let it stop her from trying to take Widowmaker out first on more than one occasion.
Failure was rare for Tracer. As clever as she was, she couldn't be everywhere at once, and in avoiding a shot that almost certainly would have killed her, Widowmaker killed her intended target: Mondatta. Tracer's despair quickly turned to rage, shaking Widowmaker, desperately asking why she'd do such a thing, destroying a symbol of peace and unity. Laughter was all the answer she got, and Tracer, shocked, unable to understand what was happening, was thrown off, allowing the sniper to escape.
But Tracer is nothing if not resilient, and when her old friends Winston sends out the signal to recall former Overwatch agents, Tracer answers.
Abilities/Special Powers: Personal time stream control - specifically, the ability to jump forward ("blink") in time and rewind it to several seconds in the past, undoing damage and other effects acquired in the interim.
Third-Person Sample:
So, either teleporter tech has gone a bit pear-shaped since Tracer had to stop working for Overwatch, or this was not where Winston meant to transport her. Them Vishkar could be a nasty sort and Winston's smart-smart, but sometimes not business smart? Or person smart. Lena always did find that a adorable out of the big lug though; for being from a moon full of hyperintelligent and very angry apes, he's still one in a million.
Back to the subject at hand: hedges. Specifically, the ones Tracer was currently smack dab in the middle of without the foggiest on how to get out. Not that that stops her from spinning around; first to get her bearings (not to successful) and second because aw, she loves a challenge! Even if it's just one she issues herself. ]
All right, it's about time I make tracks, is that it? Gotta find my way out o' this mess. [ Tracer cheerily resnaps her white-rimmed goggles in place and assumes a runner's stance, one foot placed in front of the other, facing the direction of the nearest daylight the hedges allow. ] Okay! Three, two -
[ She skips the one, disappearing around the corner in a streak of blue, laughter trailing in her wake. Sections of the maze glow in turns, bright blue flashes that swell into a large orb on every third or so, her time stream rewound whenever she railroaded directly into a dead end. It's a lot of backtracking, for sure, but as Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate the impossible whatever remains has gotta be it.
(Tracer started some of the ones Winston recommended, but she has to admit the Conan Doyle books weren't the classics she was attracted to.)
Of course not everyone's got time on their sides. Some of her joy in the journey is dimmed seeing odd knick knacks left behind in a few dead ends; up to that point she didn't think people could get so unlucky. Maybe that the maze was a death trap and she can't see the forest for the trees, so to say. Ol' Jack mentioned as much once or twice, said she needed to slow down. Most of her considerations might be done before jumping into motion, but she does that, like a lotta things, all too fast. She owed him that much, rest his soul.
At length, the rustling in places seemed a bit arrhythmic though. She slowed down, considered, shouting. ]
Anyone there?
[ Help drifts on the slight breeze, the hairs on her neck standing at tattention - there are others here! Silly, her thinking that she's really the only one stuck out, exactly the sort of thing Morrison would bang on about, assessing the situation and all. She catches herself and makes a mental note of where the voice answered, all the old adrenaline of eminent heroism pumping in her veins. ]
Stay right there, I'll be over in a tick!
third person sample #2
Generally speaking, failure didn't get Lena down. Something she picked up while getting her feet under her as a green agent, and really before that, it wasn't to be feared as a pilot because there were so many points of failure - mechanical or otherwise - that blaming yourself's moot. Also if there's a failure in flight, you're most likely dead. Lena was in the special .00001% chance of a little touch of crazy happening, and here she was, a temporally anomalous lass living in a linear world.
But failure - it's a fact of life, isn't it? When the battle's lost, the commander called retreat. Flying solo these days, it's a bit more dodgy but she reckoned she had a decent head on her shoulders and the reflexes to keep herself outta trouble while keeping innocent folk protected. She was a hero through and through. Shouldn't it be enough?
Time's funny. A question like that could draw out a split second indefinitely, torture that Lena usually didn't give the time of day. But when you fail this big, thrown off a building, staring down the scope of a sniper that you used to call an acquaintance on the best of days even though you wanted that to be more - well. She had to give it the time of day. Because she knew the second her reflexes saved her, what was a matter of life for her is death for another.
Why, Amélie?
She didn't see Mondatta fall, but what she couldn't see herself was confirmed for her in the ghastly wailing spreading through the crowd like red running through a river, tributaries of despair Lena could hardly understand. This amused not-Amélie, who pressed the barrel of the rifle against Lena's temple, delighted to have the chance to make Lena's act of self-preservation all more bitter.
Lena almost let her.
First-Person Sample:
Oh wicked, this place even comes with a comm system!
[ Look who's fresh out of the mysterious gateway portals and figuring out the method to best meet everyone all at once, eh? One very energetic Overwatch agent at your service, entirely too excited to be staring into a camera lens at the world at large. ]
Right then, hellooo Wonderland! Tracer here! [ Her first two fingers touch her temple, a jaunty little salute punctuated with a giggle. ] This is brilliant, isn't it? Out of all the pickles I've found meself in or travels I've been on, I don't think I've ever seen a place like this!
[ So many oddities! Mysterious self-populating dinner plates, closets that spit out whatever's your fancy, creepy masked fellas with odds and ends for sale. She's loving it and it is very apparent on screen, this slight woman practically vibrating to get into some trouble. ]
So what's all there to do then? Baddies to fight? Spooky caverns to spelunk? Pub runs?
As long as it's an adventure, I'm there!
Re-app 10/2new Overwatch that is - are early risers, so it's not unusual for Lena to accompany (and incessantly lap) Angela on the indoor track or go follow Lu on a warm up skate, each of them trying to crow the lyrics of whatever song he's got on louder than the other til they're a collapsed pile of giggles and heavy breaths. Having Overwatch back is strange, sure, but really? She wouldn't trade having her family back for anything.
Mid-morning is marked by breakfast. Reinhardt is on duty today, his voice booming across the mess hall with jollity scarcely matched. Lena piles her plate unconscionably high with pancakes and makes half-baked plans for saving some for Hana, who wakes up 'round ten and not a minute earlier, but she ends up downing the stack with gusto between talking chronal accelerator maintenance with Winston.
(A half stack, copious gobs of peanut butter fusing layers together, by the way. Lena offers to slice some bananas and completely earns the exasperated look the ape shoots over the top of his glasses.)
She doesn't let it show, but needing the accelerator to simply exist with everyone else wasn't always an easy fact to deal with. Oh sure, compared to being lost in the temporal ether was way worse, panicked and confused as Lena was carried from moment to moment on the tides of time, never an order she could piece together in the tumult.
She laughs and works hard and smiles to outshine the sun now, but that uncertainty was close under the skin. It had relapsed hard without Overwatch there, Lena lost once again on strange tides, left to find a place for her to keep on existing the only way she knew how. And now, not all the faces she knew are around the table but.
After a long time, Lena's grounded once again.
first person sample:
[ This - is - awesome!
What self-respecting Brit didn't grow up reading the classics and wonder right, what Hogwarts house do I belong in? When's my owl coming? WHAT KIND OF WAND DO I GET? Not Lena! She just - didn't expect it to come with a few strings attached. ]
So, question! Anyone else wake up feeling a little... sixteen?
[ Witness: a Tracer rewound about ten years with the fashion sense of someone a further ten years less, freckled like she's fresh out of summer vacation. Which they may as well be - school is in session! She happily blows the gold and red-striped tie out of her face from where it draped across her cheek, the thing cinched inexpertly 'round her forehead. ]
Not that I'm complaining! Well. 'Cept for the spots - they were horrible back then and it's like, I didn't really need help being underestimated in aeronautics courses.
...Think there's a spell to get rid of 'em?
DW username:
mezzanineviewE-Mail: on request
IM: n/a
Plurk:
Other Characters: n/a
Character Name: Lena Oxton (a.k.a. "Tracer")
Series: Overwatch
Timeline: post-Recall
Canon Resource Link: General Overwatch info and what the Omnic Crisis was. Much of Overwatch's canonical information is disseminated through multiple media outlets and is thus hard to compile in one place, but these are the basics.
Character History:
>"The world could always use more heroes"
Not much is on record about the early life of Lena Oxton (callsign: "Tracer"). The rise of Overwatch - a collection of the best and brightest strategic minds and brave, capable soldiers that the world could muster - brought with it an age of heroism, courageous souls that enlisted to fight the Omnic threat. And while victory finally had fallen into the organization's grasp after following the stalwart leaderships of Strike-Commander Gabriel Reyes and his close friend Jack Morrison, themselves both products of the United States' Soldier Enhancement Program, Overwatch's success in pushing back the Omnics and restoring peace proved to be the only the beginning of its story.
For the following two decades, Overwatch's transition from war time force to peacekeeping did little to slow the pace of recruitment. With rogue omniums and skirmishes breaking out between opportunistic countries scrapping for resources after the war, Overwatch's continued interventions were needed, and with them, fresh soldiers and technology.
Enter energetic pilot Lena Oxton, handpicked as one of the youngest recruits coming into Overwatch's service. The hope was that she'd prove to be the perfect test pilot for an experimental new aircraft called the Slipstream - an advanced model fighter jet outfitted with the ability to teleport. And, like any superhero origin story, things can and do go wrong: during a test flight, the jet malfunctions, disappearing and taking Lena with it.
Some time passed. The Slipstream was declared destroyed, Lena declared missing and likely dead. Then quite suddenly, a bewildered Lena would seem to fade in and out of existence at random times and places throughout base. These instances bore no connection to one another save in their randomness and Lena's intangibility, seeming to drag on for months while Lena was helpless to either appear at will or keep herself from disappearing once more.
Eventually, a prominent
Thrilled at the possibilities, Lena was approved to go back out in the field, this time as an on-foot agent. Her natural joyfulness and happy-go-lucky nature is a boon to her comrades, keeping spirits up as she zips around the battlefield and vanquishes enemies of peace and freedom. In Overwatch's golden age, Tracer would come to be one of the organization's most effective agents, and even surviving its collapse Lena continues on fighting the good fight wherever she can, just in a less official, United Nations-sanctioned manner.
Her choice to dance around the Petras Act, a law which criminalizes Overwatch activities and any potential vigilanteism, in order to keep helping people is not without its share of heartbreak. An indeterminate time after Overwatch's fall, Tracer attends the public address of an Omnic named Tekhartha Mondatta, of the Shambali.
In the time since the Omnic War, the remaining Omnics had been going through a time of enlightenment and cohesion as a people newly freed from the God Programs that started the war in the first place. Mondatta was a monk, a spiritual leader hailing from the Shambali Monastery in Nepal, now set on traveling the world to preach the wisdom of unity between Omnic and human. This naturally met with resistance and prejudice in turns, and though Tracer come to King's Row eager to hear his message just as one of the crowd of supporters, her attention was drawn away by lurkers in the shadow.
Suspicious, Lena listened to her instincts and investigated. An assassin was in their midst: Widowmaker, once the wife of Overwatch operative Gerard Lacroix, she was captured by the terrorist organization Talon and brainwashed into a cold-hearted assassin whose first victim was her own husband. Though she had almost certainly knew Amelie Lacroix before her capture, Tracer didn't let it stop her from trying to take Widowmaker out first on more than one occasion.
Failure was rare for Tracer. As clever as she was, she couldn't be everywhere at once, and in avoiding a shot that almost certainly would have killed her, Widowmaker killed her intended target: Mondatta. Tracer's despair quickly turned to rage, shaking Widowmaker, desperately asking why she'd do such a thing, destroying a symbol of peace and unity. Laughter was all the answer she got, and Tracer, shocked, unable to understand what was happening, was thrown off, allowing the sniper to escape.
But Tracer is nothing if not resilient, and when her old friends Winston sends out the signal to recall former Overwatch agents, Tracer answers.
Abilities/Special Powers: Personal time stream control - specifically, the ability to jump forward ("blink") in time and rewind it to several seconds in the past, undoing damage and other effects acquired in the interim.
Third-Person Sample:
So, either teleporter tech has gone a bit pear-shaped since Tracer had to stop working for Overwatch, or this was not where Winston meant to transport her. Them Vishkar could be a nasty sort and Winston's smart-smart, but sometimes not business smart? Or person smart. Lena always did find that a adorable out of the big lug though; for being from a moon full of hyperintelligent and very angry apes, he's still one in a million.
Back to the subject at hand: hedges. Specifically, the ones Tracer was currently smack dab in the middle of without the foggiest on how to get out. Not that that stops her from spinning around; first to get her bearings (not to successful) and second because aw, she loves a challenge! Even if it's just one she issues herself. ]
All right, it's about time I make tracks, is that it? Gotta find my way out o' this mess. [ Tracer cheerily resnaps her white-rimmed goggles in place and assumes a runner's stance, one foot placed in front of the other, facing the direction of the nearest daylight the hedges allow. ] Okay! Three, two -
[ She skips the one, disappearing around the corner in a streak of blue, laughter trailing in her wake. Sections of the maze glow in turns, bright blue flashes that swell into a large orb on every third or so, her time stream rewound whenever she railroaded directly into a dead end. It's a lot of backtracking, for sure, but as Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate the impossible whatever remains has gotta be it.
(Tracer started some of the ones Winston recommended, but she has to admit the Conan Doyle books weren't the classics she was attracted to.)
Of course not everyone's got time on their sides. Some of her joy in the journey is dimmed seeing odd knick knacks left behind in a few dead ends; up to that point she didn't think people could get so unlucky. Maybe that the maze was a death trap and she can't see the forest for the trees, so to say. Ol' Jack mentioned as much once or twice, said she needed to slow down. Most of her considerations might be done before jumping into motion, but she does that, like a lotta things, all too fast. She owed him that much, rest his soul.
At length, the rustling in places seemed a bit arrhythmic though. She slowed down, considered, shouting. ]
Anyone there?
[ Help drifts on the slight breeze, the hairs on her neck standing at tattention - there are others here! Silly, her thinking that she's really the only one stuck out, exactly the sort of thing Morrison would bang on about, assessing the situation and all. She catches herself and makes a mental note of where the voice answered, all the old adrenaline of eminent heroism pumping in her veins. ]
Stay right there, I'll be over in a tick!
third person sample #2
Generally speaking, failure didn't get Lena down. Something she picked up while getting her feet under her as a green agent, and really before that, it wasn't to be feared as a pilot because there were so many points of failure - mechanical or otherwise - that blaming yourself's moot. Also if there's a failure in flight, you're most likely dead. Lena was in the special .00001% chance of a little touch of crazy happening, and here she was, a temporally anomalous lass living in a linear world.
But failure - it's a fact of life, isn't it? When the battle's lost, the commander called retreat. Flying solo these days, it's a bit more dodgy but she reckoned she had a decent head on her shoulders and the reflexes to keep herself outta trouble while keeping innocent folk protected. She was a hero through and through. Shouldn't it be enough?
Time's funny. A question like that could draw out a split second indefinitely, torture that Lena usually didn't give the time of day. But when you fail this big, thrown off a building, staring down the scope of a sniper that you used to call an acquaintance on the best of days even though you wanted that to be more - well. She had to give it the time of day. Because she knew the second her reflexes saved her, what was a matter of life for her is death for another.
Why, Amélie?
She didn't see Mondatta fall, but what she couldn't see herself was confirmed for her in the ghastly wailing spreading through the crowd like red running through a river, tributaries of despair Lena could hardly understand. This amused not-Amélie, who pressed the barrel of the rifle against Lena's temple, delighted to have the chance to make Lena's act of self-preservation all more bitter.
Lena almost let her.
First-Person Sample:
Oh wicked, this place even comes with a comm system!
[ Look who's fresh out of the mysterious gateway portals and figuring out the method to best meet everyone all at once, eh? One very energetic Overwatch agent at your service, entirely too excited to be staring into a camera lens at the world at large. ]
Right then, hellooo Wonderland! Tracer here! [ Her first two fingers touch her temple, a jaunty little salute punctuated with a giggle. ] This is brilliant, isn't it? Out of all the pickles I've found meself in or travels I've been on, I don't think I've ever seen a place like this!
[ So many oddities! Mysterious self-populating dinner plates, closets that spit out whatever's your fancy, creepy masked fellas with odds and ends for sale. She's loving it and it is very apparent on screen, this slight woman practically vibrating to get into some trouble. ]
So what's all there to do then? Baddies to fight? Spooky caverns to spelunk? Pub runs?
As long as it's an adventure, I'm there!
Re-app 10/2new Overwatch that is - are early risers, so it's not unusual for Lena to accompany (and incessantly lap) Angela on the indoor track or go follow Lu on a warm up skate, each of them trying to crow the lyrics of whatever song he's got on louder than the other til they're a collapsed pile of giggles and heavy breaths. Having Overwatch back is strange, sure, but really? She wouldn't trade having her family back for anything.
Mid-morning is marked by breakfast. Reinhardt is on duty today, his voice booming across the mess hall with jollity scarcely matched. Lena piles her plate unconscionably high with pancakes and makes half-baked plans for saving some for Hana, who wakes up 'round ten and not a minute earlier, but she ends up downing the stack with gusto between talking chronal accelerator maintenance with Winston.
(A half stack, copious gobs of peanut butter fusing layers together, by the way. Lena offers to slice some bananas and completely earns the exasperated look the ape shoots over the top of his glasses.)
She doesn't let it show, but needing the accelerator to simply exist with everyone else wasn't always an easy fact to deal with. Oh sure, compared to being lost in the temporal ether was way worse, panicked and confused as Lena was carried from moment to moment on the tides of time, never an order she could piece together in the tumult.
She laughs and works hard and smiles to outshine the sun now, but that uncertainty was close under the skin. It had relapsed hard without Overwatch there, Lena lost once again on strange tides, left to find a place for her to keep on existing the only way she knew how. And now, not all the faces she knew are around the table but.
After a long time, Lena's grounded once again.
first person sample:
[ This - is - awesome!
What self-respecting Brit didn't grow up reading the classics and wonder right, what Hogwarts house do I belong in? When's my owl coming? WHAT KIND OF WAND DO I GET? Not Lena! She just - didn't expect it to come with a few strings attached. ]
So, question! Anyone else wake up feeling a little... sixteen?
[ Witness: a Tracer rewound about ten years with the fashion sense of someone a further ten years less, freckled like she's fresh out of summer vacation. Which they may as well be - school is in session! She happily blows the gold and red-striped tie out of her face from where it draped across her cheek, the thing cinched inexpertly 'round her forehead. ]
Not that I'm complaining! Well. 'Cept for the spots - they were horrible back then and it's like, I didn't really need help being underestimated in aeronautics courses.
...Think there's a spell to get rid of 'em?