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Lucia sighs, disgruntled as she taps away on her keyboard, toggling things around with part of a game controller. Aina leans over, wanting to do more. Her grip on the console tightens as Lucia pulls up chemical listings from the building Mad Burnish had set aflame. A video feed from Varys and Remi shows that there are two figures posturing on top of the burning building, cackling and mocking the Rescue efforts.
The two consist of a big hulking figure with two horns and massive clawed hands, glowing bright red and a smaller, top heavy person clutching some kind of tool, shifting it as they taunt, spinning it again and again, illuminated by cyan flames. Their armor is pitch black and glassy, like something from a hellish nightmare.
Aina is distracted by them for a second, reminded of something from her friend back in the trades school. It isn't just any old staff, it is a Matoi. Used by Far East Island firefighters in the past to help guide them to safety, she could hear him preen. Only one person she ever knew in Promepolis has a fixation on something so absurd here, and Aina was under the assumption he'd disappeared off the face of the Earth. Her stomach sinks, a cold ball of anxieties that she puts a pin in to ruminate about later.
“Ah, this isn't good.” Lucia's nasally voice rung out as she glances over some of the highly combustive materials listed on the popups. “Not good at all.”
Lucia mouses over a hacked security camera, showing a young woman pounding on the door, coughing as the smoke's density increases. Adrenaline quickly shoots through Aina's veins, grabbing the headset.
“Hey, is there anything I can do?” She calls out through the headset, only for the men on scene to scold her, that she should stay there. Her brow scrunches in frustration, hearing the click of the headset after. “HEY! Don't hang up on me!”
Lucia tuts, fingers on one hand mashing away at the controls as she works to help support the others, her other hand holding the joystick a little strangely – fingers curled under the red ball top and around the stick. Aina watches her for a moment before her head snaps back up to the monitors displaying the woman who was currently suffering needlessly. Everyone else has been evacuated to a safe place, but she is trapped inside, and will surely die without intervention.
And so Aina is about to do something incredibly stupid.
“Well, let me out there! I gotta do something! Everyone else is busy!” Aina sticks her hand out to the monitor and Lucia simply stares up at her, the goggles over her eyes obscuring the 'you're a fool' look Lucia is giving her.
“Even if you did, you don't have any rescue gear!” Lucia glances around. There isn't much left they have on hand, except some scrap that hasn't quite been cleared out from repairing some of the suits. Time is running short.
And Aina finds something. “Well! I can use this!” She picks up a tub of bright blue gel that bounces a little like thicker hair gel. Lucia's brows shoot up higher as she watches Aina turn the tub upside down over her head, spilling the viscous liquid over her bright pink hair and turning all of her body teal within moments. “I can use this extinguishing gel, and I won't get burned!”
“What if it burns off?” Lucia asks, spinning on her chair to grab some things to connect them together, glancing over Aina before jamming parts together to make something quickly.
“I'll cover myself in more!” She proudly announces, going to dig for backup gel, ignorant of what Lucia was doing.
“Sounds like something only an idiot would say.” Lucia hums before holding out what she is working on, posing in her chair. A hookshot object that will propel Aina to the heights she needs.
“Let's do it.” Their leader's voice came in through their headsets.
And so that's how Aina is propelling herself up the side of the burning building and through a window, covered head to toe in gel.
Aina coughs, fighting her way through the building, taking care to avoid the bright snaking Burnish Flares.
In another life, those same steps wouldn't be taken by her, but she was here to make those steps instead. The thick gel can only do so much and Aina does her best to take control of the situation.
Her headpiece had only recently been spouting Lucia's voice, but a spark is lit in her chest, stronger than any of the Burnish flares could burn – hotter and stronger.
She uses the force of the flames to slam the door open, hearing the young woman scream. She rushes in through the smoke.
“It's okay!” Aina calls, concern sewn into her face, and the tight frame of her body. The uniform keeps some of the fire's heat away, and the gel keeps everything cool, but it is clear they both are running out of time. She can't dawdle getting them out of the fire and smoke. “Alright, come on, we don't have any time to lose!”
And there is the other dose of the cool gel, and when she gets some in her open mouth it's minty, thick and cloying on her tongue, but she quickly pushes it out of her mind to grab the pharmacist, picking her in slippery arms after wrapping her coat around the slim body.
The Burnish fire flickers hungrily around them, building in strength and Aina wastes no time hauling the woman into her arms, making her way out and down.
It feels like eternity when they're back on the ground, and Aina can finally glimpse her name on the tag attached to the smoke scented lab coat. Thyma.
“Hey, you're okay now, Thyma.” Aina murmurs to her, making sure she'd be able to come to, and at least try and sit up. She can hear Remi run over, calling out to her. Thyma comes first, and she can answer Remi once she makes sure Thyma's okay.
Her teal eyes open with a soft groan and Aina's face softens. Relief rushes through Aina's limbs, but it all goes out the window when there's a change that occurs in her body. Thyma's body is a catalyst to an apocalyptic event.
Aina does not move in time as she too goes up in flames with the victim of tragedy at her side. Fire bites into her arms and Aina pulls away with Burnish Flares biting at her limbs. She can't think gritting her teeth as she tries to fight. Remi's voice is high pitched in alarm, and there's the hiss as a spray puts out the fire on her arms, but the damage is done, and she'll likely have scars on the palms of her hands and up.
She watches as Remi puts Thyma's pyre out, her voice ragged with disbelief, crying out as she prays the flames would leave her. Aina doesn't feel anger for her, just loss.
Fire kicks up and Aina steps away and watches as a snake writhes to life – in self-defence. Thyma is alone, burning up as something society shuns. Aina knows that too well – but Aina's plight is dwarfed literally by the being of fire in front of her.
Lucia's voice snaps through, but the words do not register in Aina's ears – distant, muffled and garbled by the crack of fire. Ice extinguishes the flare, freezing it and the Burnish who unintentionally created it alive.
Horrible laughter fills her ears and Aina turns to watch as the two members of Mad Burnish laugh, smashing through windows as they break the pillar of ice with flame. They wheel closer and around Aina, Remi and Thyma.
“Gotcha!” The blue one snatches Thyma's unconscious body up, draping her over a shoulder.
“We won't let you lay a hand on our fellow Burnish!” The larger one cries out, hunched over their bike. Their voices are masculine, but that doesn't tell anything to Aina.
“You best remember this!” The smaller figure declares, poses for a second with his Matoi, spinning it around before sticking it behind his back. Aina knows this one is a man, can almost figure out who it is in that armour. And she prays she is wrong.
They can't do anything as the two spiral away, whisking Thyma off with them to burn in a trail of fire Burning Rescue has to spend extra time putting out.
And that's likely someone I will never see again, Aina dully thinks, watching the fire on the pavement flicker, her heart sinking low.