One day, I will write, or rather finish, an electric core Danny fic to go with these two, so I can make reference to "disturb not the forces of fire, ice and lightning, lest these titans wreak havoc upon the world in which they clash" like a dork. That day is not today, not least because I can't find another word that starts with 'I' and ends with 'descence'.
oooooo
It was absolute chaos.
He'd spotted the plume of smoke easily on patrol over Elmerton, and had dived in without thought. The fire wasn't the ghosts he was used to dealing with, but that hardly mattered. At first, it had been easy or semi easy; he'd found it incredibly frustrating at the time. He'd decided to start at the top floor and work his way down, since the blaze had only fully engulfed the first three, and it was already being fought with high pressure hoses. Mostly, it was making sure people got to the fire escape, escorting those unable to move fast enough or who needed persuading to leave their possessions behind. A few had even refused to believe there actually was a fire at first.
Once the tenth floor was clear, smoke had started to curl in the ninth floor. People here were a lot more panicked and a lot more inclined to leave, although this backfired in the crush at the exits. Some people had been glad to see him, some hadn't, and his jaw still stung where one deceptively wiry old man had punched him hard in the face. He'd wasted a few seconds being literally gobsmacked, before going invisible and tackling him that way.
The eighth floor was completely choked with smoke, and he'd never been more glad of his glow as it gave people something to head towards. While he didn't technically need oxygen like this, breathing in the thick acrid substance was still unpleasant, and he knew his lungs would hate him when he changed back. He'd called, and people cried out back, choking, and this is where he'd started to fly them down to the ambulance crews rather than let them try to leave under their own power. Outside the building he could see the firemen had set up a ladder and were plucking people off the highest point of the fire escape they could reach, the lower section having collapsed. The flames were roaring on the fourth floor now, and he'd hurried back to the eighth to do a quick intangible sweep, terrified he'd missed someone.
On the seventh floor people had stopped responding, no matter how loudly he shouted. The task slowed to a snail's pace as he desperately checked each room individually, heart leaping into his throat every time he saw a slumped form on the floor or a bed. He didn't bother checking for a pulse or breathing; it was get them out, get them down, return, repeat.
On the sixth floor the fire had reached the fusebox down below, and the lights were out. In the dense blackness Danny became disoriented, having lost all points of reference save for the exterior of the building. He couldn't tell if he was in a wall or open space, whether he'd checked this area before, whether he was even on the same floor… he'd stumbled on a young girl, no more than six or seven, quite by chance; she'd been clutching a torch to her chest like a lifeline.
It was probably a combination of the heat, smoke and sheer frustrated inability that caused him to yell "Just STOP!" at a sheet of flame that had erupted without warning in front of him and caused him to quickly backpedal or risk his current charge being singed. To his utter surprise, the flames listened. They stopped advancing, flickering magazine ink green at the edges, acting for all the world like they were an excited but obedient puppy, and Danny had the brief if nonsensical urge to say 'sit!'
He decided on "Uh… stop burning things?"
The flames flashed pure green, dampening from roasting heat to pleasant warmth, and he felt what had been a negligible expenditure of energy expand to a more noticeable and strangely familiar drain. He realized he'd replaced the building as the fuel keeping the blaze going, and felt a grin creep up one side of his face as a part of him totally not concerned with the situation at hand whispered "Cool."
A wheeze from the form in his arms reminded him that while the fire itself was currently harmless, the smoke was still a very real and present threat. He picked a direction he hoped was horizontal, and sped out of there as fast as he could, carefully resting her on a stretcher before racing back to the building. He couldn't hold back the flames indefinitely, and he stretched his senses to their limits in his desperate search for survivors.
And then past them. Suddenly he was aware of the building itself. He could tell that the floor below him was unstable, because the flames had bitten nearly halfway through it. He could tell where the windows on the lower floors were, because green flame was pouring out of them like water that had decided gravity was for losers. And he felt when the firehoses turned on the blaze, giving a brief hiss of pain when they momentarily extinguished part of it. He suddenly realized why the situation felt familiar. Duplication. There was that same sense of connection, except that instead of a transient copy of himself part of him was now a six storey tall inferno.
He closed his eyes and looked deeper. There were… gaps? Shapes? Areas of less heat. They came into focus the harder he concentrated, became humanoid, and he realized he was sensing people's body heat, the furnace of their metabolisms lesser versions of the blaze surrounding them. He opened his eyes and began to move with more direction, increasingly aware that the longer he held it back the more incessantly the fire pestered him to be allowed to follow its nature. Each time he went back in there were less and less of the shapes, until finally the last one was rolled up into the back of an ambulance and he exhaled and unconsciously relaxed.
The building exploded.
Car alarms blared as hot shards of pain embedded themselves in his back and he screamed as the shockwave flipped him into the façade of the bank across the street, slamming them in further. The connection hiccupped and went into reverse; energy being fed back into him, and it was far too much, far too fast. It felt like someone was trying to pour a swimming pool into a water balloon. He clutched at his chest, panting and feverish. The world was slanting left and right, or was that him, but he could vaguely see the apartment building as a black skeleton in the heart of a tower of roaring incandescent greenwhite flames, several toppled emergency vehicles surrounding it.
His aura was doing crazy things, the normally thin white sheen barely noticeable in sunlight now blindingly bright and extending several inches from his body, the edges flickering and crackling. He could only watch in disbelief as with a final flare the blaze, having run out of fuel to consume, extinguished itself, leaving no evidence of the structure but twisted molten girders and concrete cooling down from a red hot heat.
He became aware of hundreds of eyes on him as he staggered to his feet. It didn't take a genius to guess the emotions behind them. Awe, fear, suspicion, horror, anger… the screech of the RV arriving snapped the tenuous ringing silence, and he turned tail and fled.