Reap What You Sow

Reaper cocked the shotgun and gently kept it on the floor. Now that he had gotten rid of that intruder he was free to do what he planned.

Reaper armed the C4s and set the timer. It was enough time for him to slip out with the early crowd completely undetected. In case something was wrong with the timer, he also had a personal trigger he could set off whenever he so pleased.

Depending on how things went, he was going to choose the option that benefited him more. 

Reaper strapped his shotgun to his back. On the side of the  firearm he had scratched in the words 'Turbo's Revenge'. Since he had lost the Deathbringer after he killed Boris he decided to just make use of his families past connections with the military and grab himself a nifty long range shotgun.

Now all he had to do was slip out of the backrooms and out of the arena, where he would set off the bombs and kill everyone inside.

"Hurting these civilians is an unfortunate necessity...it really is..." Reaper said to himself as he looked around, making sure he cleaned up his tracks. "...but it's all for Turbo...his revenge and his dream of an ideal future. No gangsters means no danger...no danger means no death...Turbo was unable to accomplish his goal of creating a Florida without gangs...but I shall carry that dream for you...." He walked past the pillar where Freezy's dead body lay, not bothering to move it into a hidden place as he was sure nobody would be able to catch him in time to put two and two together.

The serial killer smirked.

"This is for you Turbo...this is the Reaper's gift to you"

************************************

"I can't...believe we actually did it...." Casey sputtered from where he lay in the locker area, heavily bandaged as the medics on standby attended to he and his fellow soldiers.

"Yeah...too bad it only cost us a couple of years off our lifespans..." Crystal coughed into her open palm.

"That prize money...and all our dreams...are absolutely worth it...I wonder why Boris couldn't be here to celebrate" Triple groaned with an embarrassed blush on his face due to the fact that a female medic was touching him repeatedly.

The room stayed silent at this, all of them too exhausted to even bother thinking or coming up with a reason for the absence of their commander. Noah and Clòvis weren't even conscious yet and since Eliza and LR were the soldiers that took the least damage, they were collecting their cash prize from Sleeper.

"Y'know I'm kinda surprised..." Christine, who had also taken low damage commented while she wrapped her bruised knuckles in gauze.

"Hm? What happened?" Crystal questioned.

"Don't you think it's strange that that Reaper guy didn't show up at all? You'd think this would be the perfect opportunity to kill as many gangsters as he wanted at once"

"Hm.... never thought of that..."

"Now that you mention it...I do remember a strange boy who was with Amber...but I didn't see him anywhere on the battle field" Triple put his hand on his chin and sat up slowly, making sure not to worsen his injuries.

"You don't think...?" The realization dawned on Casey as he too sat up with concern rising in him.

"He must have used the fight as a distraction...! He must be inside the arena at this very moment....!" Crystal jumped up but sat back immediately due to her legs giving out from under her.

"None of us are physically capable of going out and searching for him or anything suspicious...fuck! We have to alert someone...!"

"No need..." Joan Wilder stood at the entrance to the locker area, leaning on  the door frame and grinning. "I had a bad feeling about that motherfucker so I met Eliza roughly two days ago and had her create a separate group of people who would go into action as soon as the match ended...." Joan gingerly sat on the edge of Casey's bed, wincing a bit. "...I hope they aren't too late..."

"I'll go help them out. You hoes better get ready...I don't think the action's over yet!" Christine stood up and picked up a crutch that was leaning on the wall before bolting out of the room.

************************************

Hangman turned the corner of one of the many walkways of the backrooms in a frenzy only for him to bump into someone.

"Ouch?!"

"The fuck?!"

Christine got herself up and lifted the crutch to strike who hit her when she saw that it was Hangman, who she recognized as one of the makers of Brawlhalla which made her slowly lower the weapon though she was still a bit suspicious.

"What are you doing here? Isn't this off limits?!" Hangman asked her aggressively, a sharp contrast from his usually cool and calm demeanor.

"I'm looking for someone...a blonde. He was with the FLW at the beginning of the match..."

"That's the same person that she went to find...Freezy isn't back yet...I have to find her...!" Hangman shoved past Christine and kept going, but she decided to follow him.

"H-hey! Maybe we could search for the both of them together! It'll certainly help to have some backup if we run into some trouble don'tcha think?"

Hangman didn't respond, only running harder.

A few minutes of running later and they made it to the fated hallway where Reaper was only moments ago.

Christine blocked her nose with her fingers and gagged.  "What on Earth is that smell...? It's like someone busted open a blood pinata..."

Hangman let out a gasp and rushed over to something next to a pillar.

Christine was about to make a snide remark about his gasping when she saw what drew his attention.

It was a body. A girl with blonde and pink hair with most of the left side of her head blown out. Her right hand was stretched out in front of her like she was reaching out for something while her right hand was pointing into the shadow of the pillar. Her eye was still open and the look frozen on her lifeless face was one of confusion and despair. She must have been dead before she even realized what happened.

Hangman dropped to his knees and held the corpse in his hands, turning her face towards him and trying to shake her awake in vain as tears  trickled down his cheeks.

"Freezy? Freezy? Wake up... stop playing games...you can't sleep now...not when all of our dreams...are in our grasp...we finally have enough money to permanently escape the life of poverty we always hated... I think it's enough to go on that vacation Sleeper wanted.... remember... just three of us...you promised nothing would happen to you until then... remember...Freezy...? Freezy!?" Hangman cradled the corpse in his hands, rocking back and forth and mumbling incoherently.

Christine didn't know what to do. Watching the entire thing was heartbreaking. Wordlessly she walked past them both into the dark of the pillar that Freezy's body seemed to be pointing to. She noticed a small light, it was like the light of a small torch. She bent to pick up the object and discovered it was a phone that was propped against a small stone and was barely concealed in the shade

It had been recording a video of everything that had happened as Freezy departed stepped away from the pillar, and despite the lighting it still managed to show everything that had occurred, including the death of the phone's owner. Christine wiped a tear from her eyes and continued watching. After that it recorded what was someone talking, though the audio was a bit muffled and some parts fainter than others it still managed to capture Reaper's voice and something about him talking about a bomb.  It also recorded him walking past Freezy's corpse, though the camera angle only showed his pants, shoes and lower arms.

His shoes were strange. They were sneakers but for some reason had two gold buckles. They were probably common in some other region but Christine sure as hell hadn't seen anyone wearing it in Tallahassee. This was it. The key to finding Reaper. It was perfect. She was about to celebrate when it dawned on her that there were bombs that could go off at any moment.

Christine typed in her own phone number and saved it on Freezy's phone, sending the video to herself and then sending it to the rest of the Taitanzu Heads accompanied by a message that read: "LOOK FOR A BITCH WITH THESE SHOES! BOMB! BOMB! BOMB!!!"

************************************

LR got a notification on his phone. He was in the locker room with the rest of the gang, just receiving the news of Reaper's running amok when the message from Christine got to him.

All the Taitanzu heads got the message at the same time. They looked each other in the eyes.

LR got up and cracked his knuckles.

"You 6...get yourselves and as many civilians out of here as possible...." He looked at them with the most serious face he could muster.

"I have a meeting with the Reaper"

Just as LR said this, the entire arena shook as several bombs went off at once, throwing everything into a panic.

************************************

"You! Herd the civilians and the injured soldiers out through entrance E! It's the one farthest from the explosions and the least damaged! You! Search the backrooms for anything or anyone suspicious... anything that could be a lead on who did this! You three, search for any injured or casualties!" Sleeper barked out commands to her former Warlords as she ran through the stands searching for any signs of Reaper while trying to help as many people as possible. The explosions were so great that they did an easy job of rocking her awake.  She got a message from LR that said to look for a peculiar pair of shoes and she assumed this was a key piece that would help in Reaper's capture.

"Hangman...Freezy...I hope you're both alright..." She muttered to herself as she bolted to the entrance nearest to the explosion. If she was lucky he was either still there or had just left.

"I have...to find him!" She grit her teeth as she ran past rows and rows of her Warlords and some of healthier soldiers assisting injured people and bodies that weren't moving.

This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't what she wanted. She only wanted to help her friends.

Sleeper snapped out of her thoughts as she reached entrance A and met someone who she knew all too well amidst the sea of people who were running out of the arena in a panicked frenzy.

"I see you had the same idea as me...Akila..!" LR didn't bother stopping for introductions, trying his best to shove past the crowd and go outside.

"Nobody calls me that anymore...Lance...!" Sleeper joined him as they weaved through the crowd to reach the light outside.

"...tch..!" LR and Sleeper finally made it outside, but their plan wasn't going to go as well as they thought. There were hundreds of people flooding out of the arena, and searching individually for shoes was going to take too much time.

"Fuck! It's too crowded...this is just what he wanted!" LR cried out in frustration.

"I'm sure if we just hurry up we could-"

Before she could finish talking, entrance A in front of them exploded from the inside out, the other entrances followed suit, collapsing and crushing all that were trying to escape from it.

"What the FUUUUUUCK!?"

************************************

"Damnit...! He did..this on purpose..!" Casey groaned as he, his fellow gang heads and a multitude of people tried to maneuver through the collapsing pieces of the ceiling and violent shaking of the ground. The other entrances were being blown up one by one and it was only a matter of time until this one exploded too.

"He knew...we would try to escape through this place..." Clòvis muttered, limping as fast he could to the entrance while Eliza supported him. "That's why he's blowing it up last..!" 

The light at the end of the tunnel was getting brighter. They were almost there. Just a little more. People were already breathing little sighs of relief.

Triple that was in front of the crowd and was closest to the entrance, noticed something small roll into his view on the ground in front of them. It was oval shaped, bumpy and had a flashing red light. Some sort of grenade without the pin.

"...you fucking cunt.." Triple was the only one that saw it. Everyone else was too busy focusing on escaping...they wouldn't notice it. There wasn't any time to pick it up and throw away. Without a word the gang head leapt through the air with the last of his strength and landed on top of the grenade just as it exploded, his body absorbing most of the impact and flying into the ceiling, an arm flying off due to the force of the launch.

"TRRRRRIIIIIIPLLLE!!!!!!"

Casey sprinted forward with a burst of strength and scooped up his friend's body just as the entrance E blew up in a wall of flame behind them.

"Everyone push forward!" Crystal cried out as the entrance tunnel began collapsing rapidly, the falling debris catching up to them at an alarming speed.

The crowd surged forward all at once, some falling and getting trampled and  others getting crushed in the debris. A vast majority of the crowd managed to squeeze out of the tunnel just as it collapsed on itself.

"....we managed...to get out on time...." Eliza grimaced as she tried to pull herself out from under a large slab of concrete that was right on top of her right leg.

"I wouldn't say that..." Noah who was lying on the floor said grimly, looking in the direction of the crowd that had gathered around Casey and Crystal.

"Why on Earth would you do something like that...Triple...?" Casey bit his lip so hard it bled, trying his hardest not to cry.

".....I couldn't...have all of you dying on me now could I...?" Triple's eyes twitched. His vision was already fading, the light was slowly leaving his eyes. His chest was blasted open, revealing a decent portion of his skinless ribs and a barely beating heart. "...if we all died...we would never be able to reach our dreams..." A tear slid down his face and mixed with the blood that was pooling on the ground beneath him.

"What about your dreams... surely you had your own?!" Crystal held his twisted hand, not even trying to hide the fact that she was crying.

"...yeah...I did...too bad I won't be able to pull my mom out of debt with my own hands...." Triple turned to look Crystal in the eye. "....you asked for my name....I didn't want anyone to know because I let only my mom call me by that..."

The crowd around them was getting emotional too. Eliza was silently crying while Noah just hit the ground in frustration and sadness. Clòvis was sniffling, tears of blood leaking out of his bad eye. Joan Wilder was just standing on the sidelines looking lost and sad.

"...when you and Casey go to my mom's hospital to pay her bills....tell her you were sent by me...my name's Aaron A. Adams...."

As Aaron's head hung low, grey clouds gathered on the horizon.

★★★★★★★★★★★

Hm.

Who would've imagined I would die to protect these people...

I wanted to rob them blind in the beginning....

An interesting turn of events.....

Surprisingly.....

I don't hate this ending....

They're all gonna achieve what....

They dreamed for.....

Go for it....

Push to the very end....!

Create a world in which your dreams are a reality.....!

************************************

"Curses! That submission brat got in the way of my plan!" Reaper cursed as he twirled the grenade pin in his hand. "The grenade was supposed to slow them down just in time for the explosion...I don't know how he did it...but he put a wrench in my works by shielding that blow with his body...." Reaper put the pin in his pockets as he watched on from the crowd that was trying their best to recuperate from the shock of Aaron's death.

"It's all good though. Nobody knows me or anything tying to my identity yet... everything went just as planned. I wiped out more than half of the gangster population of Florida with this...." Reaper chuckled and stepped away from the crowd, satisfied with his work.

"Turbo's vision of an ideal world...is finally at hand..." Reaper laughed into his hand as he blended into the passing crowd, but he bumped into someone small. "Get out of my way...." he scoffed and moved on.

************************************

"I can't believe how easy that was...a bunch of bedbugs, the lot of them..." Reaper turned a corner and came face to face with Sleeper, who was standing in the middle of the alley with a grim look on her face.

"I finally found you....you cagna..." she walked towards him menacingly, her expression twisted into a tight scowl.

Reaper took a step forward. He noted that despite her demeanor she was in great pain...her left hand and fingers were twisted gruesomely and heavily bleeding. Most likely an effect of the explosion or falling debris.

"Now that I look at you clearly...you really do look like Turbo...if that wasn't enough to tell me of a connection between the both of you there's also that tattoo of his name underneath your left eye" Sleeper pointed to it with a smirk.

Reaper said nothing, only slowly reaching for the shotgun he kept in a holster stitched to and hidden underneath his coat.

"You know...he figured that you'll come back here when all was said and done..."

That made Reaper stop.

"He?"

LR stepped up behind Reaper, Boris' fur coat flapping in the wind as he stared at Reaper with a cold expression, clutching the broken remains of the Deathbringer in his hand. Thunder rumbled and lightning danced in the skies above them, the light casting shadows on the Taitanzu Deputy's face making him look more menacing.

"....this is where it all began...isn't it Reaper...? This is where your brother's gun took Boris' eye...and where I took his life..." LR stiffened his jaw.

"....I was sure those bombs would kill you...." Reaper moved slowly as he stood in the middle of the two monsters. He was aware of Last Resort's capabilities, which was what the shotgun before. He hadn't accounted for the arrival of this other girl. This was annoying... everyone was getting in the way of Turbo's ideal future.

"The two of you must have escaped through the entrance nearest to the backrooms...no worries. A good killer always has a plan B!" Reaper pulled out the shotgun and pointed it at LR in one hand while he pointed a red desert eagle at Sleeper. "I had a hunch that something like this would happen... after all, miss Sleeper over here is the one that ordered Turbo's capture which led to his death. It would be only natural for you to want to see the end result of your actions..." Reaper smirked as he trained both firearms on the foreheads of the two.

"Now die! Die for an ideal world!"

Reaper fired both guns in he directions they were facing, the desert eagle hitting it's mark in Sleeper's shoulder and the shotgun shells flying into the torso of LR, who wants expecting to get hit at that distance. It dawned on him that Reaper must've gotten a long range type as he flew into a garbage can.

"Ahahahahahahaha! I've done it! I've conquered them both! The future shall be clean of gangsters! I! Lorenzo Punizione have achieved a perfect future! This is it! The one singular truth!!!" Reaper gloated as he fired another round into Sleeper's leg as he kept the shotgun pointed at LR.

"Is that so...? Is that what you really see as the truth?" LR sputtered as he slowly sat up. Reaper almost did a double take. This wasn't supposed to be happening. First it was Boris and now it was this one?! Why didn't they die when they were shot?!!

"The truth...is born out of righteous actions... everything you've done till today...I doubt any of it has been for a truly righteous reason..." LR struggled to his feet but Reaper—in a panic— fired at him again, majority of the shells flying past his him with only two hitting him in the torso, sending him back to the floor.

This didn't stop the Last Resort however.

"You say you want an ideal world for Turbo...a world without gangs...but it's just a cover up...what you really wanted is revenge...the least righteous thing of all....your actions and beliefs...those will never help you reach that truth...." LR smirked at Reaper, showing his bloody teeth and confusing the serial killer.

"None that stand before us will ever reach that truth..."

"...us...?"

"SURPRISE BITCH!" Christine swung a bat into Reaper's face, easily breaking something with the force of the blow and shocking him so badly he dropped both guns.

"...h-how?! How did they...find me..?!" Reaper stumbled back, holding his broken nose as blood gushed out of it violently.

"Keeping that detached piece of Triple's hand in your pocket when I bumped into you outside the arena was a good call. The blood trail led us right to you...." Amber chuckled as she stepped into the alley with a mob of people behind her.

"You're the bitch that got Triple killed...!" Casey growled as he cracked his knuckles, so many veins popping out of his head and neck that he looked like was about to explode.

"You took Aaron away from us... you're going to pay..!" Crystal cried out.

"Messing with a Taitanzu gang head was a huge faux paus!" Clòvis grit his teeth.

"I'll rip your arms clean off with my vice like grip"

"I can feel the Hype boiling in my soul...I'm going to kick your teeth so far down your throat you'll be able to chew out of your own ass!"

"You killed Freezy...YOU KILLED FREEZY!"

Amidst the angry cries, Reaper tried to run away but was met face to face with Joan who was helping Sleeper stand. Behind them were the group of Taitanzu and FLW soldiers and the former Warlords.

LR stood up and handed Boris' coat to Eliza, revealing a bullet proof vest that was riddled with shotgun shells, though some got through and into his stomach.

".... existence is behind you now Reaper...I hope you enjoy the silence..."

The mob of angry people rushed towards Reaper, who was already screaming in realization of what was going to happen to him.

"...N-no! Stay away...st-stay away...! Don't come any closer! No! Go away! STAY AWAY FROM MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"

Blow after blow rained upon him, fists, boots and all manner of foreign weapons repeatedly came into contact with literally every inch of his body. He could already feel himself going numb as the storm of violence fell upon him in full force. He could feel someone pulling on his hand and his flesh was already getting swollen and torn up. His eyes were swollen shut and all he could taste was bloody saliva. His barely alive mind was sure that his body was losing all sense of shape. Just when he was sure he was dead the blows stopped.

".....huh....?" He moaned, though it came out as nothing more than a grunt of excruciating pain.

His confusion didn't last long though, as he was suddenly face to face with the barrel of the shotgun. LR was holding the gun with an almost demonic look on his face.

"This is for Boris bitch"

And LR fired.

††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††

"Boris?"

Aaron blinked and saw himself in a spacious diner. It looked eerily similar to the one that Boris first formed Taitanzu in.

"I wasn't expecting you to join us. This is rather unfortunate" Boris sighed and looked at his subordinate with that same expression he always had, though this time it seemed different. It was peaceful...like he was finally at rest.

"That blonde Italian bitch got you too huh? A damn shame really.." Freezy shrugged as she sipped on what looked like a glass of ice tea.

"What is this...? Are you two...?"

"Yes Aaron... this is it. This is the final stop... there's nowhere else to go from here but up..."

************************************