The violet horizon shattered into fragments of light as the Edena IV orbiting platform erupted in chaos. Tamra ducked behind the control console, her pink plasma rifle humming in readiness. Around her, the once-pristine Command Deck—a masterpiece of crystalline architecture suspended over the swirling gas giant—was now a battlefield. Jagged glass shards sparkled like lethal stars in the weightless chamber. The only sounds were the steady hiss of her headset comms and the intermittent thunder of laser fire.
“You’re late,” Tamra snapped, voice tight with controlled anger. Her bunny-eared tactical visor glowed faintly, detecting heat signatures through the walls. She wore a sleek bodysuit of alternating pink and blue panels that shimmered like liquid metal, not for aesthetics but practicality: the adaptive fabric regulated her body temperature in this pressure-sensitive high-orbit zone. Her striped knee-high boots pressed firmly against the console as she steadied herself for a counterattack.
“Ran into a bit of company,” a voice replied through her earpiece, thick with both sarcasm and static interference. It was Joran, her longtime partner. “Besides, I told you not to hijack the Zenith Core op without me.”
“You were sleeping off the last mission,” Tamra shot back, scanning the scene. Below her, clouds of deep indigo vapor swirled eerily, reflecting the glows of the plasma explosions scarring the station exterior. Above her, the towering vaulted ceiling flickered with failing holo-tech projections of serene landscapes—now starkly out of place among the destruction.
Aiming her gun, she took out a combat drone with a single overcharged pulse. It exploded in a flash of neon green flame, rocking the platform. Tamra’s heart pounded in her chest as she leapt to her feet and advanced. The streaks of pink makeup across her cheeks were smudged, but her expression remained resolute yet playful—an enduring hallmark from years of being an underdog in the chaotic world of interplanetary resource wars.
“You’d better not die before I get there,” Joran quipped, his voice crackling through the comms.
She didn’t smirk, didn’t even roll her eyes; things had gone south faster than either of them had expected. What was supposed to be a single covert extraction mission—disable Edena IV’s hypercore and retrieve vital uranium schematics from the Edena Corporation—was now an all-out siege. She worked to disable the vault door’s systems as the sound of boots pounded closer, her sleek gloves aglow with translucent electric filigree, her fingers a blur across the keyboard.
Then, a deeper vibration rolled through the platform—a gravitic disruptor bomb. Tamra froze. Her childhood instincts—sharpened from life in the Heltrian Wastes—kicked in. She launched herself into a defensive roll just as a human-sized mech slammed into where she had been seconds ago, its massive claws tearing through the air itself. Suddenly, the room was awash in purple light from the disruptor’s destabilizing field.
“Oh no,” she muttered, staring at the monstrous mech as it adjusted its enormous frame to face her. Its plating shimmered with irradiating gold under Edena’s artificial lighting, and its pilot—a corporate enforcer in heavy armor—regarded her coldly through a tinted visor.
The plasma rifle’s ready light blinked. She feigned surrender instead, holding her hands up. “Look, buddy… Complicated day for both of us, huh? Let’s talk.”
If the pilot hesitated even by a millisecond, Tamra didn’t notice. She side-flipped, let her rifle charge, and fired point-blank. The sizzling pink bolt melted through its chest armor just as a new volley of enemy soldiers swarmed into the room.
***
Joran burst in through the collapsing ceiling in an angular lightship, his rugged silhouette reflected against the smoked cockpit glass. His flare gun blazed, forming an impromptu shield as he fired repeatedly at the incoming drones. “Tamra, move! The vault door’s open!” he shouted, his voice now echoing in-person across the kaleidoscope chaos.
“About time!” she barked, sliding under the cover of his newly formed barrier. Joran was as unkempt as ever—his square jaw dusted with a day’s worth of stubble, scrappy blue tactical armor frayed at the edges yet somehow still functional. His half-smile was maddeningly infuriating as he reloaded, clearly enjoying this far too much.
The two dove into the core room, fluorescent cylinders spiraling in all directions like technological stalactites. Tamra wasn’t one for awe; she was practical, strategic, and had perfected the art of surviving impossible odds, but even she paused before the sight of the hypercore, its immense energy buildup like a pulsar compressed into a glowing crystal sphere.
“We’d better make this quick,” she said, placing her visor into its hacking mode. A stream of blue holographic codes flowed before her eyes. The entire vault smelled faintly metallic, like ozone and burning circuits, the signature stench of rebel hackers against corpbodies like Edena.
“Tamra,” Joran said, pointing behind her. She didn’t turn immediately because she could hear it: the mechanical growl of reinforcements. Larger reinforcements. The corporate suits were bringing in the Chimeras, hybrid mechs designed for anti-personnel combat.
“Finish what you’re doing,” Joran demanded, stepping between her and the oncoming monstrosities. “I’ll hold them off.”
She didn’t argue. Her fingers danced furiously on the control panel. Time stretched on as sweat dripped from her forehead, the neon glow from her makeup streaks flickering subtly in rhythm with her heartbeat. She heard the shots of Joran’s fire, felt the ground quake under the beastly weight of the Chimeras and their shells peppering the walls. None of it mattered—not the soldiers, not the Chimeras, not the fact that every second felt closer to disaster. All that mattered was the data.
“Done!” she shouted. Her body felt weightless from relief as the hypercore blinked offline, its light dimming to a soft hum. Joran grabbed her arm, dragging her toward the emergency hatch as the remaining Chimeras roared in rage.
They dived into the lightship as the hatch sealed behind them. The viewport filled with the sight of purple and blue explosions as the station’s structural integrity began to fail. Tamra strapped herself into her seat, her pulse finally slowing. The data crystal she’d retrieved was safe in her hands, containing everything they needed to cripple Edena Corporation’s galaxy-wide monopoly.
Joran chuckled beside her as he set the ship on autopilot. “You look like hell.”
She smirked, adjusting her wrinkled bodysuit and the smudged makeup on her cheeks. “Save it for the next one.”
Outside, the backdrop of the galaxy was nothing short of breathtaking—the endless expanse of stars, swirling nebulas, and the shadow of their defeated foe far behind them.
Genre: Science Adventure
The Source…check out the article that inspired this amazing short story: Blue and Pink Cosplay Outfit Ideas: D.Va Overwatch Inspiration
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