"It took damn near all of us to get to that point," Reno replied, and now he was going to raise his voice, because suddenly her yelling made him want to yell and nothing made sense anymore. "They were all dead, Rikku! Dead, and there were so many more of them and I'm not strong enough! I can't call out SOLDIER, that's up to that President who wanted us all dead in the first place, and I can't fuckin' fight them, I can't do it! And for all the plans you just threw at me, you think I could'a come up with any one of 'em? You think I could'a got my shit together enough to say, 'you know what, I got a better idea?' Let 'em go, all the better for us? Okay, great, but what if they ran away and we couldn't find 'em again, and the next thing you know, we got Zirconiade out and about again, tryin' to destroy everything again and we can't handle that, and there were traps in the fuckin' reactors! And every attempt to go after them with guns meant someone else died, and nobody in the freakin' slums would've been any help and I can't think of these things!"

He had a hand to his forehead, now, and his eyes were shut tightly, and he couldn't breathe.

"I don't think. I don't think. I'm just. I don't know. I can't think."