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41. Legend – Not Quite a Hero

Legend stumbled after Naifu. He couldn't believe this was happening. This was all kinds of surreal. He felt like he should be waking up with a killer hangover soon, except this kind of nightmare was too bad for any bender he had ever been on. Plus, this would be the first nightmare he had ever endured in surround sound, touch-tastic smell-o-vision.

"Naifu!" he yelled as she darted like an acrobat over the rubble and back into the building he had just frigging rescued her from. "Fuckin' hell!"

His head throbbed and his stomach lurched as he got to his feet. He remembered the way her eyes had gleamed; irises huge, pupils just pinpricks. She was pushing her body past pain, past injury, past human endurance into total self-destruction. If he had known the Phoenix Down would react so badly with the combination of drugs Alejandro had injected into her, he never would have used it. Yet without the Phoenix Down, she may already be dead. At the very least she would never have made it back to Shinra.

At this rate, neither of us will, he thought as he crested the rubble – just in time to see Rod, straddled by that sadistic freak Alejandro, reach up and snap the freak's neck like a toothpick. Well I'll be a … he actually did it?

Legend's admiration perished when Rod fell back. He didn't try to get up again. The spreading pool of blood was a big hint he wouldn't be trying anytime soon. So was Naifu's scream.

"ROD!"

And then suddenly there she was, vaulting over the heads of those in back, kicking and pirouetting her way to the front of the crowd. A couple of bodies fell as she passed; whether dead or unconscious, Legend couldn't tell. A half-dead girl in an ill-fitting suit jacket shouldn't have been threatening, but when she stood over Rod and Alejandro her growl almost turned Legend's bones to water. Blood dripped down her trembling legs, off her fingers and chin. Alejandro had cut off chunks of her hair, leaving ugly patches that just made her look even more demonic. When she bared her teeth they were red with her own bloody spittle.

"Back off," she snarled.

The remaining Rage Riders hesitated for only a moment. Then their wailing started up again. Half of them wanted to check on their leader – although anyone with half a brain could see he was dead. The other half wanted to avenge him, which meant getting at Rod. Since he wasn't looking too hearty either, that left Naifu firmly in their firing line. You couldn't reason with a mob.

"Idiot," Legend muttered. He reached for more of the tiny explosives he preferred when wanting to cover an exit without blowing everything and everyone to Kingdom Come.

Naifu crouched lower. "I said back off." She risked a glance behind her. She had a better view of Rod's upturned face than Legend did. When she turned back grief was written large across her own. "Don't you get it? It's over!"

"It ain't over," yelled a kid in front.

"They're both dead!" she shot back.

The crowd's muttering increased. They shifted uneasily from side to side, as if hearing the words made what their eyes saw real.

"What's gonna happen to us now?" demanded another.

"We're dead," shrieked a thin boy with concave cheeks. "We're deader than dead!"

"He killed him!" yelled a boy with a bright green Mohawk. "He killed Alejandro! He's gotta pay!"

"He already paid!" Naifu growled. "Are you blind as well as stupid?"

The muttering rose in pitch and the crowd's shifting took it forward a half-inch.

"It's your fault Rodriguez turned against us!" Mohawk shouted.

"Yeah, it's your fault!" yelled someone at the back.

"You got him to turn on us!"

"He never woulda left if not for you!"

"Yeah! Now we're gonna wake up with a bad case of being dead, and it's all your fault!"

"If the Red Rippers don't kill us, the Turks sure will."

"We ran outta Ripper HQ to come here tonight."

"I ain't going back there, man!"

"No way!"

"We did it for the boss."

"Alejandro's dead. How can he be dead? How is that even possible, man?"

"What's gonna happen to us now?"

"I ain't going back there, man!"

Legend wanted to spit. These were the idiots who had orchestrated this whole mess? They hadn't even seen fit to plan ahead for what they would do after kidnapping a Turk, watching her be tortured and plotting to murder at least one other Shinra agent? Rod was dead and Naifu was … well, messed up, to put it lightly. What had they thought would happen next? Had Alejandro really been so charismatic that they couldn't think for themselves without him? Or had the allure of revenge for troubles they perceived as someone else's fault been so powerful it had made them irrational?

Legend knew that sometimes life was just a shit-pile and there was nobody to blame or fish you out of it. He had pulled himself out of plenty. The Rage Riders, however, had loaded every single scrap of blame onto Rod. He was their scapegoat. Alejandro had sacrificed himself for their safety when they were absorbed into the Red Rippers, so of course he was above reproach, and of course they weren't at all responsible for their own lives or fates. They had thrown in their lot to let someone else make their decisions for them, therefore when things went wrong it had to be someone else's fault. There was no other explanation they were willing to swallow.

Now the one who had directed them, told them what to think and how to feel, plus the target for their frustration, were both gone, leaving them adrift in a purposeless sea with only the threat of punishment hanging over their heads. Legend wasn't brilliant at psychology, but even he could see that made for an incendiary situation. The Rage Riders were at an impasse: they had burned their bridges behind them, and he would bet his beach house that walking back into the flames wasn't an option they would even consider. To them, this had turned from vengeance into a last stand. Blazes of glory were messy things. They hurt and were rarely, actually, glorious.

Naifu's eyes and teeth glittered. She took up a ready stance, weight balanced on the balls of her feet, arms loose by her sides. His sleeves hung slightly over her hands, giving her a little-girl-lost look that was completely inappropriate – and undeserved.

"I don't care about a single one of you," she gritted. She looked from face to face with such intensity that her words actually made them look away. "None of you cared. You all stood by and watched what your great fucktard of a leader did to me. Where was all this shouting and screaming when I needed someone to save me, huh? You act like every bad thing happened against you; like the world owes you because you got bad breaks in life; like everybody else has to pay a debt you're owed because you were unfortunate enough to get born in a bad place and not get out of it. Well let me tell you bunch of sickos something: everybody gets bad breaks! That doesn't give you the right to blame someone else and hurt them until you feel better! All that does is make you as bad as the rest of the freaks and sickos who put you down all your lives! Why should anyone care about you?"

It took a moment, but a thin voice piped up, "Alejandro cared about us!"

"And he's dead," she snapped. "So is Rod. Now you have to decide for yourselves: are you going to be cowards and followers forever, are you going to turn completely into bullies, or are you going to take control of your own lives for once and come up with your own ideas for what comes next?"

The atmosphere seemed to be sucked right out of the room for a moment. Legend had a feeling like stepping off a steep top step onto an unseen staircase. Where the hell were those explosives? He was going to have to break out the nasty stuff if this turned ugly. Scratch that; uglier.

"We got no place else to go," said a skinny boy whose clothes seemed two sizes too big for him.

"We got no place to run," said a beefcake who was more man than boy.

"There ain't no way out of Midgar for people like us." Mohawk ran a hand through his hair, causing it to spike back up in an aggressive way that should have been impossible for a mere hairstyle. "Especially when Shinra finds out about this."

"Shinra already knows, dude," said Beefcake. "They are Shinra." He gestured at Naifu, then behind him, which made a couple of heads turn to look directly at Legend.

"Fuck," he swore. If he threw any explosives Naifu would be separated from him entirely. He needed to get her out now.

"Shinra's gonna kill us anyway," Beefcake declared. "So why wait for them to send even more nasties in to take us out? I say we go our own way."

"Yeah!" Mohawk hunkered into a ready stance of his own. "Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all."

"Fuck Shinra!" yelled Beefcake, stirring up those around him. "Fuck Shinra!"

"Fuck Shinra!" they chanted. "Rage Riders forever!"

"For Alejandro!" Mohawk ran forward, brandishing a baseball bat at Naifu.

She just grinned. "Bring it on."