Yes, more FanFiction from me. I'm hoping to get one out every other day hopefully. This series is very edgy - mostly because it's based around Reaper, and a supernatural twist to his abilities.
I work hard on my writings, so I hope you guys can get some enjoyment out of this and my last story, Armor & Music. Still dusting the rust off, and using a darker character is something I feel I'm better at. So this was fun to write. Not really long, but it's only Issue #1.
Without further ado, feel free to enjoy this intro to Reaper.
This is the story of a man named Gabriel Reyes. Lost and distraught, he seeks revenge as his own form of justice.
It was sad that it had to come to this.
The building was in flames. The fight the two men raged on through the power plant section of the headquarters was having dire consequences. Both men were aged well, yet still athletic enough to continue the fight.
This was the end. It had to end here.
Power generators lined each wall of the long spacious generator room. Steel walkways lined above each wall. It was one one of these walkways where Gabriel sprinted, tossing away his two shotguns and pulling the spare couple from his holsters. His outfit was the one he had always donned in the midst of operations. It was winter-styled gear with a gray and black color scheme. The heat of the fire was pressuring down on him, but he didn't care. This would end here.
The man below held his assault rifle firm. His hair had become a mix of white and blonde, aged from his days suffering from the stress of being a hero. Firing his rifle, bullets lodged themselves into the walkway as Gabriel ran along. Gabriel fired back, all of the bullets from the man below missing. The shells of Gabriel's shotguns missed the man below completely, despite the man being easy to recognize in his long blue coat. "Stop this, Gabriel! We ain't solving anything this way!"
"Times change." Gabriel uttered in a deep voice. He stopped his sprint and stared down, both men glaring at each other in anger - anger fueled from different reasons. Their voices and bullets echoed through the empty spacious room. Then, came the sudden buzzing of a voice from the man below's earpiece. "Jack, the whole building is coming down! You have to get out of there!"
"I read you, doc." Jack answered, reloading his rifle. "Last magazine… I'll make it count if I have to, Reyes. We can stop this while you still have the chance." Jack's voice was always stern and deep. Now was no different.
"Likewise." Reyes checked his ammo. He grunted once he saw the result. Two shells left. He was the one who had to make it count. Shouting out a battle cry of rage, Reyes jumped from the walkway, sailing towards his former friend with both shotguns aimed directly at him.
Jack was quicker.
Aiming up, Jack unloaded his rifle into the falling Reyes, with the former Overwatch member falling onto the ground with several bullet holes across his chest - blood pouring out of him. Gabriel was in shock, his shotguns falling out of his hands. A cough came, where he regurgitated some of his own blood. "I…" Reyes groaned, his head falling back, lifeless.
"Goodbye, old friend." Jack stared at the lifeless body of his friend before walking off. He pressed the button on his earpiece and spoke out. "Don't worry about me. Just get everyone else out safe." Jack began walking slowly out of the generator room.
An era had come to a close.
Two Days Later
Reyes blinked a few times. His eyes opened slowly. Right away, he could hear the iconic beeping of a machine checking his heart's pulse. Was he dead? No. The machine confirmed it. While Reyes was surprised at his own life still being intact despite what he assumed happened to the former Overwatch headquarters, Reyes could only look about the room for the time being. It was a normal hospital room, the walls a plain cream pattern with a TV mounted on the wall directly across from the bed. To the left was a dresser with a mirror. Reyes didn't bother looking at the mirror long, only glancing at it from the corner of his eye. His eyes drifted downwards, observing his hands. Both were charred, blackened from the burning down of that Overwatch headquarters. A look to the right presented two figures - a woman dressed in mostly white, wings protruding from her back. The other was a shorter man, dressed in red with a mechanical replacement for one arm. Was he seeing things? No, these were people from Overwatch - at least he assumed so. His vision remained heavily blurry, and he couldn't exactly make out the two. His hearing remained completely intact, thankfully.
"Thanks for meeting here. I won't stay long. I just want to discuss things before I travel off to move on with my life." The woman said.
The shorter man groaned with a saddened sigh. "What happened?"
"Blackwatch lit the headquarters on fire. The fire caught fast. Jack and Reyes were fighting in the lower levels."
"Jack is…?"
"Presumably. We found no body when we searched." The woman answered.
The man sighed out, remaining silent. "What about the traitor?"
"Alive… barely. The rezurrection malfunctioned somehow. Security is going to guard the room. Once he's alive and well, he'll probably be transferred to a detention facility - although it may be long before he recovers."
"And the others?"
"Gone. Dispersed across the globe. They're living their own lives right now." With a sigh, the woman began making for the door. At her movement, Reyes quickly shut his eyes to conceal his awaking. It was a mistake, however - Reyes had underestimated how tired he indeed was, and instead passed out into slumber once again.
When he came to once again, the room was a darkened stupor of what it once was. The dying embers of the night had wrought their ominous spirits into the room, creating a foggy, sinister, atmosphere. The curtains seemed to have faded into a pitch black, matching the darkness of the night outside the windows. The walls had turned to the same shade, with reddened accents enlightening their intimidating nature. Reyes was in a nightmare, it seemed - but it all felt natural. As if he could reach out and touch anything he noticed. Then came the figure.
It was uncanny to see such a man as this. He seemed to be middle-aged, his stark black suit illuminated by the red shade of lights above. The man kept his hair in a pompadour style, with the edges trimmed in a pointed fashion, a shivering style that rocked Reyes to his visible patches of bone. Yet, the man was an unnatural skin color. One of purely pale white. "Hello, Gabriel." While others may have found the voice of the man calm, it instead chilled Reyes.
"What do you want?" Reyes attempted not to show fear, but he could feel that his facial expression showed otherwise. His own voice instilled fear in him. It was hoarse, rough and jagged. Had his vocal cords deteriorated? For someone who didn't smoke that often, Reyes sounded as if he was an avid smoker - his voice almost comparable to sandpaper.
"You have been wronged, Reyes. My goal is to help you. I just need a favor of you." The man smiled. Even with a smile in an attempt to reassure him, Reyes felt heavily pressured into the darkness surrounding him - for darkness itself emanated from the man visiting his hospital bed. "I know you want revenge. I know you want to finish what you started. We can make that happen. We just need your support." With another sly grin, the man fished a notepad out of his pocket, along with a pen - which he held out to Reyes. On the notepad, there were no words. Just a simple signature line that was drawn in a bloody red color.
Reyes eyed the signature, taking note of the color. "Why should I trust you?" He uttered, in the same grating voice he now had to live with.
"Is there anyone else left for you to trust, Gabriel? Your former friends are now either dead, or your enemy. Look at yourself. You are in no condition to enact your revenge, are you? In your current state, you are destined for a Swiss detention cell, where you will rot for eternity until you die - again. Take another chance at exacting your vengeance. Allow justice to be served, and embrace immortality." Again came the sinister grin.
Reyes couldn't argue much with the proposition. His scenario was dire, and he would've preferred to live on in whatever agreement this was. "What happens when I sign?" Reyes picked up the pen and notepad in his shaky, charred hands, holding his pen over the signature line in anxiousness.
"Once you sign, your new coworkers will arrive to pick you up. Just make your way to the roof and they will be waiting." The man replied, casually resting his hands within his pants pockets. "Do you we have a deal, Reyes?"
Hesitation. Reyes glared at the bloody signature line for a few painstaking moments, both of his hands shaking, with barely any strength left. "Okay." Reyes signed his name with the black-ink pen, writing out "Gabriel Reyes" in cursive right atop the bloodied line of sinister view. Reyes held the notepad and pen up to the man. "Done. I'm ready."
"It is such a pleasure to do business, I must say." The man laughed heartedly, putting the notepad and pen back in his interior suit pocket. The laugh only continued, turning maniacal and atrociously vexing - a tintinnabulation that filled the brain of Gabriel Reyes. With the deafening laugh clouding his head, Reyes could see the man slowly fading into nothingness - a black mist emanating from the man's form and filling Reyes completely. The mist was painful, but filled Reyes nonetheless with its power. The feeling of his own chest being torn out could be felt, with the mist directing itself for the center of his chest. Once the mist ceased, Reyes coughed and passed out once again.
Arising around an hour later, Gabriel eyed the room around him. Everything had turned back to normal… besides himself. Reyes looked down at his hands. Both hands were covered with black gloves. The IV from the machine nearby had been removed, with Reyes vaulting himself up to his feet. It was miraculous - he could finally walk again! In fact, all of his strength was back. He clenched his hands together, feeling out his newly acquired sense of being. Then came the look in the mirror. His face was covered by a skull mask now, and his outfit consisted of a black trench coat, one with folds that flowed in intimidating fashion when he walked. On his belt, rounds of familiar shotgun shells were hooked on. "This… This is who I am now." He spoke aloud. The voice was different - it was not his original voice, and not his charred voice. This was different. He recanted the man who had made him this way and noted the similarity. There was a deep and darkened tone to his own vocal cords now, one that would surely instill fear into his enemies.
Still in shock, Reyes held his open palms forward, looking down at them. It was amazing to see his charred hands reversed into much stronger gloved hands. After glaring at his open hands for a few moments, Reyes blinked in surprise, finding that two sawed-off shotguns had materialized into his hands. He gripped the guns, aiming them at the mirror. They were the same… but different than his original shotguns. They maintained the same comfortable feel he loved, despite the scheme of the shotguns matching his own outfit. Here, it was where it dawned on him. The man had equipped him for escape. Security had been stationed in front of his room, and he need to fight his way to the roof. Reyes glanced at the window. Nightfall. If his new coworkers were any good, they'd know that the shadows of night would be best for an escape.
Confidence arisen, Reyes kicked the door to his hospital room open. Instinctively, he aimed at the two security guards standing at either side of the door, blasting both with his shotguns. The security on the left fell dead from a headshot. The other fell on the ground and bled out from a stomach shot. The guard reached for his radio quickly. "Patient has escaped. Repeat, confinement patient from 7D has escaped! Requesting backup."
"Quiet." Reyes pressed one of his shotguns down into the guard's face before he pulled the trigger, the Swiss security guard falling dead in another pool of blood. It was unlike the Overwatch Reyes to kill innocents so relentlessly, but this - these kills felt natural. There wasn't an ounce of remorse on the soul of Gabriel Reyes. With an angry grunt, he stomped on the radio, crushing it with his foot before storming off. The gunshots has frightened the entire hospital. Nurses and patients made dashes for rooms to take cover. Reyes didn't care. He made straight for the staircase, storming through the hallways and to the emergency stairwell.
As Reyes began walking up the stairs, the hospital intercom can be heard - a man speaking a heavy Swiss accent. "Active shooter in the building on emergency stairwell B. All available security, respond immediately." It didn't phrase Reyes whatsoever. He continued walking mercilessly up the stairwell, hanging both shotguns low to the ground while heading up. On the eighth floor, three security guards entered the stairwell and began firing their pistols at Reyes. Unnaturally, Gabriel's eyes glowed brightly, as he hovered lightly in a ghostly form to avoid the bullets. He hovered up and landed back in his physical form behind the guards, making sure to blast each one carefully in the head with a shotgun blast before heading up the stairs again.
"Ridiculous." Reyes chuckled, in disbelief of his own abilities. His shotgunning skills were always exceptional, but the ability to avoid bullets by turning into a ghostly figure? It was almost too good to be true. He was unstoppable, and he took the fact to heart. They wouldn't be able to stop him from extracting revenge. The discovery of the ghostly form he achieved was unnatural, however. Reyes didn't mean to do that. It was almost instinctive. Perhaps with time, he'd grow to control it more, he believed.
Resistance on the way to the roof was far and few between. One guard attempted to ambush Reyes by slamming the ninth floor's door in his face, to which Reyes merely dodged the futile attempt before executing the guard. At the roof, a black helicopter was waiting, the blades spinning in wait. The pilot, dressed in all black with his helmet on, shouted to Reyes. "Ah, there you are, Mr. Reyes! My name is Assan! I am your pilot today!" The pilot was enthusiastic with his Arabic accent. "Get inside, Mr. Reyes! We have to get going! The Swiss police are onto us!"
Reyes shook his head, growling at the pilot. "Amateurs. If we are doing an escape, it has to be done right." Despite the angst, Gabriel hopped into the helicopter before shutting the sliding doors on the side, concealing himself inside. Once there, he sat down on the available bench and grunted, rolling his neck to stretch it out. "Get us out of here." He growled at the pilot, to which the enthusiastic pilot quickly set the helicopter in motion.
Deep into the darkness, Reyes sat there - wondering and fearing over his own path. Everything he was doing felt natural, so he didn't feel the need to question his actions. Only the sinister maniacal laughing could be heard in his head - the laughter of the man he signed a dastardly deal with.