Chapter 4: Rising

Alejandra had heard the distinctive and terrible sounds of gunfire many times due to Los Muertos' chaotic presence. It was such a common sound in fact that even the thunderous rhythms of the firefight that introduced her to the hero vigilante Soldier 76 had hardly phased her as she had tried to sneak past the battle. But she had never been this close to the shout of a gun in all her years alive in a city infested by crime. The ear-splitting report invaded her ears and left a painful, disorientating ringing within them, yet she did not even notice. An absolute and inescapable horror had enslaved her soul as she witnessed the angel-eyed boy who had come to her rescue fall to his death in a flash of Inigo's pistol.

As she stared into his still and lifeless eyes as crimson blood gushed from his fatal wound, the weight of mortality was staked within Alejandra as it never had before. She forced herself to avert her gaze from his face of death for the sake of her sanity. Shutting her eyes tight, the echo of the shot remained inside her head as the pain of the wretched sound finally caught up with her. The agonizing ringing was soon accompanied by a brief attempt by Inigo to laugh in triumph at his kill cut short by his own agony. Daring not to move from her position, Alejandra could only quake with her back to the wall as the bandit let out a slew of muffled half-swears.

In time, the wordless void necrophobia had made of her mind gave way and her thoughts returned, though they offered her little comfort.
"Oh my god...I'm going to die…"
She had no choice but to think such a thought as her entire body tremored.

"There was nothing I could do before, but now I can't even hope…", she resigned.

Her eyes slowly cracked open to reveal the still fresh incision in her leg. Pain coursed through her entire body with even the slightest movement of her right leg, making any attempt at escape impossible, the same position she had been in since the Boy in the Blue Hoodie had first made his attack.

Hearing stifled grunts of agony once again, she looked up to witness Inigo still writhing where he stood. He had not been prepared for the recoil of his weapon, an old-fashioned lead slinger rather than a modern pulse design, and the force had traveled all the way to the laceration through his cheek. His agony soon turned to anger and he made the ill-planned decision to add insult to injury by delivering a kick to the fallen would-be hero's genitals. Having learned nothing from his previous experience, the action sent torment coursing through his face once again while the lifeless body felt nothing. The desperado soon collapsed to his knees in the vain hope that it would somehow ease his suffering.

Even with Inigo kneeling motionless and near crippled by his suffering, Alejandra still felt like a fly in the web.
"His back's turned and he's on the ground but I can't even walk...Even if I could, there's no way I could dodge a bullet….It's just not fair, giving me a chance when I'm like this..."

As she wallowed in despair, her panicked eyes affixed to the ground until a glint of light hits the corner of her eye. Quickly moving her gaze, she discovers its source: a faint reflection off the wrench belonging to the rider in blue, just out of her arm's reach. While her soul was still despondent, the gears in her mind quickly began to turn with this new discovery.

Before she had formed even the first step of a plan, she immediately reached out to claim this invaluable tool. With Inigo's back to her and his groans of anguish all the more louder to himself, the boy's improvised weapon entered Alejandra's grasp with ease.
"Okay, I have a weapon, but it's not like I can defend myself like this. I'm still stuck at square one.", she thought, still defeated by her own pain. "Even with his back turned, I can't get the drop on him with my leg like this. And I can't even throw it at him t-"
In a flash, a new road to safety had been found.
"Wait, what am I thinking? The weight would be on my left leg if I tried to throw it at him, so I could do it!... But if I miss, that's it. I'm more dead than I would be if I just sat here. Heck, the only reason I have this thing is because Angel Eyes missed and who knows how long he's been doing this kind of thing. If he couldn't do it, what chance do I have?"

Still in overwhelming agony, Inigo was absolutely still as he kept pressure on his gruesome wound, fighting the instinct to try pulling the knife from his cheek. In the deadly speed of the Rider's battle that Alejandra had been so absorbed in, her sense of time had been lost and as such, she could not gauge how long Inigo had been suffering. Although he was still near crippled, without a solid estimation of his current state she could not know how effective an attack would be even if she did hit the mark. Inigo first joined Los Muertos at fifteen, as most young men his age had in the desperate times of the gang's first few years of rule in Dorado, and quickly gained a reputation for an iron jaw in his three years of experience. However, a strong body is near worthless without a mind to match it and as such he had yet to rise in the ranks beyond a simple enforcer. Alejandra was well aware of these facts given how close they lived to each other and considering both of them had her constantly wavering between both options.

Mentally lost, she was unable to keep her eyes from wandering back to the Rider's. A look of shock was frozen within his eyes, one more of genuine surprise than of horror, to Alejandra's confusion.
"It must have happened so fast he didn't even feel it. At least...I hope he didn't feel it…", she empathized.
With this, her mind began to wander,
"Just who are you Angel Eyes? What gave you the confidence to save me or, hell, even to ride this far in the first place? I wish I had even a fraction of your confidence...Attacking or not should even be a choice for me, but I can't help but second guess myself."

Examining him as thoroughly as she could from her place on the wall, she searched for even the most meager insight into the source of the boy's unbreakable self-assurance. Ignoring his frozen expression, his facial features were surprisingly soft, even for a boy of his age, though it was clear his journey had slowly but surely maturing him. His hair was medium in length and unstyled, though given the length of his sideburns, he likely had it cut several weeks ago. His clothing was dirty and worn despite appearing to have been purchased fairly recently. Regardless of their condition, they were very common articles of clothing, neither the cutting edge of fashion or the mark of poverty, his blue sweatshirt the only standout choice in style. By Alejandra's reckoning, he was merely an average person, with no real social, economic, or even language barriers separating the two of them.

"Nothing...There's no secret to him...He's just some guy…".
Alejandra thought, defeated before she soon realized the same truth he had discovered. A hero is not made by any natural gift or circumstance of birth, but a sense of right that conquers all fears in the face of evil. As she slowly rose up with wrench in hand, she came to know that feeling well.
"Even if I live through this by just sitting back, it's not exactly a life worth living if I just spend it being afraid. I have to be better than that."
Her fist clenched as she remembered all the years of terror Los Muertos had reigned over her city as anger joined this heroic resolve. The fear that once crippled her may have remained, but this overwhelming force dwarfed that petty emotion in short order.
"I can win...I will win...I'm tired of cowering and I'm tired of just waiting to be a hero, my time is now!"

The gash in her leg was nothing to Alejandra now as she stood upright, unlike her aggressor who remained absorbed in his own. Planting her left foot down aggressively, doing her best to imitate her latest hero, she prepares to attack. While physical training had been the focus of her limited spare time after her last encounter with an American, the weight of the wrench was still noticeable to her. Even with this discrepancy, her resolve was not swayed as she took aim.

"One hit to the back of the head is sure to take him down. It could even kill him, but after what he did to Angel Eyes, he has it coming. The court would probably execute him for doing it anyway.", she thought with uncharacteristic darkness as her muscles tightened.

With conviction, she made the throw that would decide the rest of her life. Her eyes burned with spirit as the Rider's weapon leaves her hand and a slight tinge of pain runs through her right leg as she fails to keep all of the pressure in her left while struggling to maintain balance. With this mistake, the wrench curves off-center, veering hard to the right. To a person of inferior luck, this error would have been a fatal one, but in the fractions of seconds of the wrench's flight, Inigo turned to face the baker's daughter. To his astronomical misfortune, Inigo's right elbow entered the direct path of the wrench and the shock of the blow forced him to drop the still loaded gun.

As his anguish was renewed by a reflexive scream, Alejandra scrambled for the pistol that slid across the ground in the confusion. In her haste to grab the weapon out of pure survival instinct, anguish shot through her left leg and forced her to the ground. The two locked eyes as their heads rose from the pavement, however this pause lasted only milliseconds before their arms rocketed for the gun. The black polymer grip entered the girl's hand and she reeled her arms back to keep it from the murderer's reach. Training the barrel on the killer, the both of them were frozen in shock at her success.

Her hands damp with sweat and shaking uncontrollably, Alejandra scrambled backward while struggling to keep the sights trained. Although the weapon was lightweight and easy to handle, even for Alejandra, the weight of the situation kept it from being still. Adrenaline coursed through her as never before, her heart beat faster than a drum in hexi kicks, and she left not even a half second between her breaths under this immense pressure. Slowly she began to rise upstanding, ignoring the soreness once again as she issued the bandit a command with a trembling voice.

"D-don't move!"

While his outrage was written clearly upon his face, Inigo did as he was told. The adrenaline made time seem almost frozen to Alejandra as she continuously failed to regain body control. Again, her mind was boggled in regards to what her next move should be.
"What do I do now? I can't just shoot him can I? It would count as self-defense if I did, but I've never even looked a gun this close before, one shot's probably the most I'd get out. But even then, I can't just kill him! Even if he is a murderer, I can't kill someone just like that, but I don't think I can hold out here forever...and...wait, Angel Eyes might actually have a chance at making it if I can call an ambulance! But I can only do that by taking Inigo down...Oh god, what should I do?"

Alejandra's doubts and neurosis were painfully obvious at sight, something made known to her by Inigo's own noticeable reaction. A lack of confidence soon leads to a lack of blood in a fight and Alejandra would not have even entered this one were if not for the Rider's own courage. Inigo, on the other hand, was a seasoned combatant in his three years of experience in Los Muertos. His robust confidence and mediocre intelligence allowed him to be smart enough to be dumb enough to charge down Alejandra while the sights were still trained on him. The baker's daughter was quite aware of this and the arrogant smirk the bandit had failed to hide told her she had only moments to make the choice.

Time was still non-existent to the two of them as the plotted and strategized against each other. Sweat trickled down the grip as Alejandra's shaking hands gradually began to still. She was no longer fighting for her life alone, and that fact alone strengthened her resolve. The angel-eyed boy would have a chance at survival if she pulled the trigger.

"One life to save another...Fair enough for me.", she concluded.

Her moral dilemma was settled in her mind, but not in her body or soul, as her uncontrollable movements and gnawing unease yet remained. In a sudden lunge, Inigo sought to prey on this weakness, and Alejandra was forced to make her decision in the beat of a fly's wing.

In that immeasurably short moment of time, all the terror she had worked so hard to push away came rushing back. Her eyes clamped themselves shut beyond her control and she turned her head away as her finger began to twitch. Her heart no longer beating due to the stress, she pulls her index backward. The violent report rendered her deaf to all other sounds, to her benefit, as it kept her from hearing the blood-curdling scream. However, her mishandling of the pistol and the recoil sent her arms flying backward and the hardened plastic collided with her temple.

Staggered, but not taken off her feet by the blow, the dual pains inside within her skull left her disoriented. It was several moments before she could even bring herself to open her eyes once again to witness what fate awaited her. Lying face down in a pool of his own blood, Inigo no longer posed a threat to her or anyone else. The horrific sight shriveled Alejandra's very soul and made her both physically and spiritually ill. But before her morality could force her to break out in tears or regurgitate in self-disgust for her act of killing, she noticed a subtle movement from the brigand's torso.

"He's...still breathing...Good…He just fainted from all the pain..."

Though the sight of flowing crimson repulsed her, she traced its flow from Inigo's body to the location of the damage she had inflicted. Missing his most guarded of organs by mere inches, the shot had penetrated his bladder and the lack of an exit wound told her the lead still remained there. But Inigo's injuries were not her primary concern. Swiftly she shoved the skull-emblazoned gangster over, doing her best to ignore the spasm of pain in her leg as she did so.

"Even if he's a criminal and a murderer at that, it's not right to just let him die.", Alejandra's humanity told her as she rushed over to the angel-eyed rider to do deliver the same mercy.

Kneeling down, she only just manages to stop her first instinct of turning his head skyward. Running her hand through his thick hair, she examines the back of his head closely and is relieved to find no exit wound on him either. With no danger of worsening his condition, she turns his head to face her. Face stained red and eyes still frozen in a deathly stare, she swiped her hand down to close his eyes shut to keep her from the morbid gaze. The loss of blood slowed, but not stopped, she folded the boy's hood over the fatal wound and kept it pressed down as she reached for her phone. In terrified haste, she dials 9-1-1 and in the agonizing delay, as the call connects, she whispered words of encouragements to her breathless hero.

"Live, Angel Eyes. Punch out St. Peter if you have to, just please come back."