I'm sorry || Brawl Stars Leon x Jessie

Chapter 42 - Hoping for a miracle

Gale was busy with paperwork in his office when his phone rang. He picked it up and heard a frantic voice on the other end.

"Mr. Gale, it's Rosa. You need to come to the entrance of the Showdown Arena right now. The situation is bad."

His heart pounded in his chest and his palms grew sweaty. He knew that some of his students were participating in the Showdown event today. His mind jumped straight to that tragic day, thinking the worst could've happen.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I'll explain when you get here. Hurry!" Rosa said and hung up.

Gale grabbed his hat and rushed out of his office. He ran across the school grounds, passing by classrooms, playgrounds and other fields.
He caught glimpses of smiling faces and heard cheerful greetings as he ran past them, but he ignored them.

He had a bad feeling about this.

20 teams.
40 brawlers.
The amount of fighters that were ready to win that showdown was insane.
Gale knew most of them, he was a very popular brawlers at the time.
Everyone was thrilled and excited for this amazing experience, and Gale would've lied if he were to say he wasn't excited as well at first.
But who could've imagined what happened next.

He reached the entrance of the Showdown Arena.
He saw Rosa waiting for him, along with three other students: Nita, Amber and Sandy. They all looked grim and worried.

"Gale, thank goodness you're here," Rosa said. "We have a problem."

She pointed to a large screen above the gate that showed the statistics of the Showdown match. Gale saw that there were only seven brawlers left in the arena: Surge, Max, Leon, Jessie, Rico, Piper and Colette.
"What's the problem?" Gale asked. "It looks like a normal match to me."
"It's not," Rosa said. "Something went wrong after Nita was eliminated" Nita nodded sadly.
"What went wrong?" Gale asked, he hoped it wasn't what he was thinking about.
"The respawn system malfunctioned," Rosa said. "The brawlers who are still in the arena can't respawn if they get killed. They'll die for real."

Gale gasped. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. The respawn system was supposed to be a safety feature that allowed brawlers to reappear in a random location after being defeated, with no harm done to them. It was part of the fun and thrill of Showdown, knowing that you could always try again if you failed.

But now, it was a matter of life and death.

Exactly like that time.

"How did this happen?" Gale asked.

Gale didn't realize what happend until it was too late.
His teammate didn't vanish into a small cloud of smoke upon dying,
in front of him there was the dead body of his poor teammate, bleeding out.
He looked around himself, his teammate wasn't the only one in those conditions.
A few minutes earlier he froze a enemy team upon a wall, but not before they shot his teammate.
Gale was the last one standing.

"We don't know," Rosa said. "The technicians are trying to fix it, but they say it could take hours to restore it."

"Can't they stop the match?" Gale asked.

"They can't," Rosa said. "The arena is locked down until there's a winner. There's not really a way to communicate with the brawlers inside or get them out, the arena is build this certain way for safety measures, however there's a metal door inside for emergencies."

Gale felt a surge of anger and frustration. This was unacceptable. How could such a thing happen in his school? Who was responsible for this?

Gale felt sick, knowing such tragedy could happen again.
It won't, not under his watch.