Chapter Text
In a formerly pristine Foresight Foundation lab on a perfect, shining block of Promepolis, a lab tech coughed on smoke. Her watering eyes landed on the sample box she’d run back to save. She winced. “I’m sorry, boss.”
Her supervisor’s jaw was wound tight, expression unreadable as the air grew murkier.
Lightly, a hand whacked her skull. “Hush. Burning Rescue will find us.”
---
Outside the burning building, a janitor restrained another lab tech, who was screaming.
“Boss!”
“You can’t! You’ll just be another body to save.”
“I don’t care; she’s still in there. Boss!” The janitor took an elbow to the face, but held fast.
Crouched on a rooftop behind them, Lio Fotia’s attention flicked away from the flames. It was difficult; the fire danced, enthralling, giddy and loud like a gaggle of children at play, but the word “boss” in that desperate tone could summon Lio from the dead at this point.
So. Someone didn’t take the escape route, and Burning Rescue wasn’t here yet. What to do…?
“BOSS!” The tech howled. Their cheeks glistened in the firelight.
“…Meis. Gueira.”
Behind him, his generals exchanged a look. “Boss?”
“Burning rescue is late. What say we show them up?”
“We show them up every second we’re alive,” said Meis. Lio felt his smile widen and immediately weaponized it, letting his faceplate fall away as he turned to face his friends.
Both men went still. Lio had been assured that his ‘terrible, wonderful idea’ face could give a statue an adrenaline rush, and his friends, like him, were flesh and blood and fire.
Gueira barked a laugh, flames rippling up his body. “We’re with you, boss.”
---
The sightlines in a burning building are not excellent; the space is dark except when it’s blinding, and human eyes find shapes in the smoke that aren’t really there. Mad Burnish don’t carry government-issue thermal scanners. Under these conditions, finding a human being is a non-trivial task.
On the other hand, a burnish walks through blazing fire like a birdkeeper through a flock of friendly doves; it flutters, buffeting their faces, nudging at their hands, but doesn’t truly pose an obstacle.
Lio gently rebuffed a nudge only to find a blazing pink snake pressing its nose to his faceplate, doggedly insistent. Ah. A messenger. “Alright, sweetheart. Lead the way.”1
He converged with Meis vaulting down the stairwell after a similar snake, and together they burst into an as-yet unburned fourth floor lab. Together, they paused.
The snakes zipped away after a twirl around Gueira, who stood near the doorway. He held his hands in a placating gesture that only emphasized his armored bulk. Before him stretched long lab benches, piled high with tubes, monitors, nozzles – the trappings of science that made most Burnish a little sick.
Across the room, one white-coated figure lay slumped against the wall. Another stood above them, brandishing a fire extinguisher.
“Boss,” said Gueira, carefully. “What's the plan if they refuse to be rescued?”
“Rescued,” snorted the woman clutching the extinguisher. “Kidnapped, you mean. Held hostage.”
Lio breathed out through his nose. Promepolitans’ capacity for theatrical victimhood was astounding. “We Burnish do not do that.” You must have us confused with your government, he was tempted to add, but:
“Seriously, we don’t,” said Meis.
“Imagine keeping hostages who’d get hurt if fire so much as touched them." Gueira shuddered. "Nightmare! No thanks."
Lio’s helmet let him crack a private grin, though he smacked Gueira’s massive shoulder. “Not helping.” To the scientist: “I swear on my honor as a Burnish, we will not harm you. We will release you immediately outside.”
Her fingers shook. “Your honor. As a Burnish.”
“Yes.”
They stared each other down, toothed helmet and lab goggles gleaming under the emergency lights. Finally, the woman’s eyes flicked to her companion.
She lowered the extinguisher.
“Fine. Get us out of here, Mad Burnish.”
This is how, when a municipal tin can of a mech crashed through the wall, it found Meis and Gueira each with an armful of scientist.