Resplendent in a pearlescent white suit of armor, Angela "Mercy" Ziegler soared above the battlefield. Mechanical wings had deployed themselves from her back, trailing glimmering contrails of gold which matched her neatly tied hair.

"I need healing!" A familiar voice called, that of the youngest Shimada. A smile flitted across Mercy's face as she bore down upon the cybernetic man, extending her caduceus staff towards him and bathing him in a stream of light.

This was where she was meant to be; helping her friends and keeping them from harm. This was her calling; her passion. The dings on her patient's armor worked themselves out, and he dashed back towards the fray with nary a thanks.

Such was the life of a healer, and Mercy wiped her brow with a gentle chuckle. Hard work was its own reward.

"Ryu ga waga teki wo kurau!" Screamed a man to her left, and the doctor turned to find an arrow mid-flight towards her chest.

Stupid. She was careless, and was about to suffer the consequences of her actions. Though she knew it was her fault, the healer could not help but allow her azure eyes to widen in the onset of panic.

Then, another voice called out to her. "Shield is on you, comrade!"

The world slowed, and Mercy watched as the glowing arrow drew ever-closer, so close she could make out the fletching of its feathered shaft.

Before it could touch her, a blue bubble wrapped around her form, encapsulating her and snaring the arrow. Coruscating energy gripped its wooden haft, and the deadly projectile was left held just an arm's length away from the doctor.

Mercy let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and turned towards her protector. "Thank you, Zarya." She called to the Russian woman, receiving a curt smile and wave in return.

Then twin dragons erupted from the arrow, roaring as they flowed from its metal tip. Mercy had been hit with this before, the signature attack of her patient's brother, Hanzo Shimada. She knew its effects fully well, and screamed as the ethereal dragons tore through her, as though they were stripping her of her very essence.

They passed through the woman as though she was nothing but air, only to be met with Zarya's energy barrier. What was supposed to be a safe haven for the healer had become a prison for the dragons, and they rebounded from the back wall of the barrier to pass through Mercy once more.

Magical fury met with Mother Russia's finest in engineering, and Mercy was trapped in the crossfire. Time and time again, the dragons passed through her, flooding her with pain that would not end.

The reconstructive nanobots of her suit could hardly keep up with the damage, and were losing their desperate fight to keep Mercy intact.

Then, the unthinkable happened. The dragons somehow learned that attacking the barrier would do them no good; and instead flowed into Mercy's body.

This time, instead of pain only a numb warmth flooded the doctor. Her eyes widened and she gasped as one dragon filled her belly and the other her throat; bringing with them an almost minty sensation and a heated rush.

Mercy looked around herself with wide eyes to find that the dragons had gone; as had both her teammate and foe. The bubble around her broke, and she let out a relieved sigh that the danger had passed.

Of course, she wouldn't be so lucky. Her suit began to chime as the nanobots discovered there was something quite amiss about the good doctor: her genetic form was shifting in a way that they couldn't quite comprehend.

Still, the machines had been programmed to keep her looking in her prime, and their understanding of what was happening to Mercy clearly stated that this current form of hers was not in its prime.

The blond stiffened as a tingling settled across her skin, one that she knew well as the rejuvenation process she typically would use to stay young. However, now it was taking a different purpose entirely.

"H-here? Now?" Mercy breathed, her hands fluttering to her chest as her armor began to tighten around herself. She realized that something was amiss about her suit's self-healing now, but at this point it was far too late.

The hungry nanobots had discerned that Mercy's essence was not her own, but that of the dragons that had assailed her. And, as ever, they were ready to fix their creator and owner.

Her armor clacked and creaked as a nanite-laden healing cream washed along her body, beginning to cement what a program viewed to be healing. It was a strange juxtaposition of sensations, the familiarity of rejuvenant cream mixed with an odd warmth.

Mercy furrowed her brow as she tried to discern the cause, unaware that her chest was beginning to lose its smoothness, human skin now being replaced with hard pearlescent hide. The shimmering scales slipped across her form, rushing past her shoulders and down her hips; over her arms and around her legs. As they reached her hands and feet, they began to affect her face as well; and Mercy could finally see what was becoming of her in her peripheral vision.

"Wh-what?" She breathed, crossing her eyes to watch as her nose began to shimmer. Then it began to stretch, eliciting a loud yelp from the medic.

She could only watch as her nose and mouth began to swell and stretch, a gentle tugging on her jaw confirming that what her eyes were witnessing was correct. Somehow, impossibly, Mercy was growing a reptilian snout.

It wasn't the only thing that was growing about her, either. Her armor began to tighten as well, first in the chest and hips; then along the plates that bound her arms and legs. The woman wriggled and groaned within her armor's confines as she began to swell, the onset of slick muscle forcing her suit apart.

Plates cracked and cloth tore, and Mercy looked down to her right hand in shock to find talons bursting from her golden-scaled fingers; hard and knobbled scales covering her knuckles like the plates of a gauntlet. Her hands looked to be covered in polished white scales as well, which further clouded her thoughts with confusion.

"What's happening to me?" She breathed loudly, her scientific mind racing for answers to an impossible question. This was something out a pulp fiction novel or a video game; and yet it was happening to her in real life.

The blond's musings were scattered by a renewed cramping in her chest, and she dug her forming claws deep into her chestplate, groaning as she tugged at the material. She still had no idea what was happening to her, but the damnable tightness of her armor certainly wasn't helping matters.

A loud crack filled the air as Mercy pulled her armor off with a loud cry, gasping for breath as her chest, free to grow, continued to expand. Her lungs filled with more and more air as she took deeper and deeper breaths, looking down to find her breasts bared, the synthetic undersuit she wore having been easily torn apart by her expanding form.

Another crack mixed with several pops marked the demise of the protection around her hips, and Mercy instinctively fell to all fours, shaking her form to cast off the last remnants of her battle armor.

She looked back to her posterior and blushed at how the world could see her pert cheeks even though they were now clad snugly in scale. Then another tingle came from her backside, and she realized that her changes were far from over.

A loud moan escaped her mouth as a tail stretched its way out from her spine, new joints clicking and popping as they flexed for the first time. It was white, just like most of her body; though its top sported a set of golden frills.

Mercy looked at the rest of her body in surprise to find that there was indeed a golden filigree about much of the rest of her as well, as though her new scaly form was made mirrored after her old armor.

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than a pair of wings erupted from her back, flaring out in stunning contrast to the slowness of her tail's growth. These she beat at the air in surprise, gawping at the thick, golden hide that could possibly allow her to fly, were such a feat possible for one of her size.

Possible. She snorted derisively at the thought, shaking her head as a semblance of calm began to return to her. Who was she to think that there could possibly be anything impossible about this insane world?

She'd seen a fellow researcher survive decades via cryogenic imprisonment; had made a man into an apparition; was turning into a damned dragon! Who was she to question the possible?

Mercy craned her neck as it began to exten further from her shoulders, and she shifted her wings in distaste. Her feet splayed as they extended into a set of harsh dragon's talons, and she grumbled irritatedly at the strange feeling of having a long, scaly neck.

On the bright side, it gave her a way to look at herself. She smiled gently as she looked back to her form, her tongue bifurcating within her mouth and her ears drawing to points. Oddly enough, her hair remained human; as though a call to the time when she'd been able to identify as human.

Indeed; now she could only be a dragoness. Her wings were long and scaled and her form was muscled-though not in a manner that could be called thick. There was an elegance to this scaled form, one which insisted upon further study; demanded testing.

After she departed the field of battle, of course. The sharp report of automatic pistols graced her ears, and Mercy found herself on alert. She knew that sound, it was the telltale report of a time traveling combatant who seemed hellbent on interrupting the doctor's work.

There was a faint, distinctive rush of air to her left, and Mercy turned her snout to watch as Tracer rounded the corner. "Cheers, love; this'll only... Whoa."  The brunette's smile faded as she saw what stood before her.

The Brit seemed at a loss for words for the first time since Mercy had seen her, and the dragonized medic grinned savagely. The time-traveling Englishwoman had long harassed her on the battlefield, and it looked like the tables had finally turned.

"On a scale of one to ten... Tell me how much this will hurt." Mercy growled throatily, swiping a hand forward and grabbing the brunette in her hands as though the woman were little more than a doll.

"Um, no time for that!" Tracer chirped nervously, activating the recall device built into her chrono-displacement armor.

Mercy growled as her large clawed hand was left empty, her aggressor gone with a flash of red. Though it seemed she'd left the dragoness a gift...

A rapid beeping sounded from Mercy's hand, and she yelped in surprise at the sight a pulse bomb attached to her skin. She knew from experience that no amount of desperate prying would remove the explosive, and for the second time in the same hour, Mercy accepted her fate.

The bomb exploded, and the Overwatch medic braced to feel the rush of the abyss; that warping sensation as she was remade at a 'spawn point'. Much to her surprise, she only felt a slight tickle from her palm.

Mercy blinked in surprise, looking down to her hand to find that it was barely scathed, a small wisp of smoke marking the detonation of an explosive that could penetrate a tank-pattern Omnic's armor.

"Fascinating..." Mercy breathed, and with her breath came a small gout of golden flame. It washed over her hand, and her eyes widened further at the sight of the scaled skin losing even the slight scuff of the bomb's detonation.

Far from the flame that dragons breathed in the stories she'd read as a child, it looked like she could breathe life itself, a rejuvenating force not unlike that of her discarded staff.

"Well, I always did think I could stand to be sturdier..." She breathed, snapping up her head as her pointed ears caught wind of that age-old cry.

"I need healing!"

Mercy flexed her wings and smiled savagely, revealing row upon row of sharp teeth. She'd have time to focus on her new form later. For now, she had a job to do.

The dragoness flapped her wings hard, moving them with a natural grace that belied her inexperience with the form. With that, she was in the skies once more, albeit now she was less of a battle angel and more of a saintly dragon.