A few days late, but also a bit longer this week. It's also a bit different to what happened before, so I felt a bit insecure about it at first. I hope you like it anyway!
Rescue, Rescue, Death
On Tuesday he worked the whole day. It was dark when he left his home and it was dark again when he returned, barely managing to drag his tired body to his bed before he fell asleep. Wednesday work started early again, and the muscles in his back and arms were still aching from last night.
In the early morning, he went out to patrol. The day started slow. There was some minor scuffle on the road after two guys got into a fight over some damage to a parked car. Then a pickpocketer, and an old guy falling asleep at the wheel who almost rammed his van into a group of middle-aged ladies. Around eleven Endeavor was ready for an early lunch break, since nothing seemed to be happening anyway.
Shrinking Girl was chattering with the old lady at the kiosk where she bought her lunch. She had a bento box in one hand and a bottle of coke stuck under her arm while she tried to get enough money out of her purse to pay the kiosk lady. Avalanche sat down on a wall and Endeavor tried to get as much distance to him as possible. The snow hero always brought nattou for lunch, and while Enji didn't particularly hate it, he didn't like the smell and didn't want his sandwiches ruined by the stink of fermented soybeans.
When Shrinking Girl came back over from the kiosk, she sniffed her nose in mild disgust, but then sat between Endeavor and Avalanche as if the smell didn't concern her at all. Her blonde pigtails waved with every movement.
"Not much happening today, huh?" she said as she pulled off her white gloves with the metal plating and spikes to increase the effectiveness of her punches, opened her box and snapped her chopsticks apart to start her lunch. "Good thing! We needed a quiet day. Itadakimasu!" She grinned down at her food with a broad smile but seemed to need a while to decide which of the different kinds of sushi she wanted to try first.
"Don't say it," Avalanche muttered as he chewed his nattou. "Just don't say it! That ruins…"
As if Avalanche could see the future, Endeavor suddenly heard the noise of sirens. It was far away, just barely audible at all, but Endeavor who had his senses sharpened for these kinds of noises immediately recognized it — although he had trouble at first placing it. He jumped from his seat at the wall and looked around, unable to see anything. Then, with his half-eaten sandwich still in hand, he used his fire to propel himself up on the rooftops.
The roof he landed on was just of a medium height, so although it was a clear day, his sight was blocked by the taller buildings. Still from here at least, he could better hear the sirens. It came from the northwest, and now he could also distinguish that it had to be multiple vehicles of the police, ambulance, and the fire department. He quickly pulled his phone out, and in fact, before he could even call Inari to ask if he had information on where the catastrophe was, the phone rang.
"Where is it?" Endeavor asked in lieu of a greeting.
"143, 4," Inari said the address immediately, "in Aldera."
Endeavor jumped back down to his sidekicks to give them the address. "I'll already move forward, hurry as fast as you can." Within seconds he had his fire activated to shoot himself in the right direction.
In the meantime, Inari supplied him with new information. "I don't know much as of yet. I just have a video feed from Musutafu Channel 7. They are already there. It seems to be spreading fast."
"Spreading fast?" Endeavor repeated. "What about fire hazard protections in the building?"
"They seem to be failing or insufficient." Inari had to guess.
"Did the fire department ask for support?" Endeavor asked, landing on a rooftop, running two steps before leaping up into the air again.
"Not yet, they… Wait…" There was a short break. "Now they did. I have more information, give me a second."
Endeavor waited impatiently as he leaped to another rooftop, jumped back into the air, and used his fire to speed the whole process up. He had to be faster! Aldera was on the other side of town. Depending on how fast "spreading fast" was, he wouldn't make it in time to help anybody.
"Okay, we have a fourteen-story apartment building on fire. First call was 5 minutes ago. No villain as far as we know of. Heroes are already at the scene, firefighters are stuck in traffic, the onlookers are blocking the street."
"I'll be there in three minutes," he huffed. Five would be more accurate, but he'd make it in three. He ended the call, putting the phone away in mid-jump. Then he scrambled in his pouch for his earpiece. He hated working with that thing, as the technology always malfunctioned as soon as he used his flames in the general area of his ear, but now that he was separated from Avalanche and Shrinking Girl, he needed it.
The little thing might be sensitive to his fire, but it was the best technology out there, so it needed no time to connect him to his two sidekicks. While he supplied them with the information he now had, he could already see the smoke rising up from the buildings about two kilometers away. A thick column of dark grey and black smoke wormed its way to the sky right in front of him. He only had to change his direction a little bit from his original course to jet straight towards it. Now he could already smell the thick stink of smoke in the air. He couldn't see the fire itself yet.
That was until he passed another high rise and had finally free sight toward the apartment building. The shock almost made him halt in his movement, but then he doubled the force of his flames to reach the building even faster.
"We're still fifteen minutes out," Avalanche informed him the moment, Endeavor came to a skidding halt right in front of the area a handful of police had already closed off with barrier tape.
The sight in front of him was truly horrifying. Whatever happened, it seemed the fire had started on the third floor. It must have started and spread with sudden explosive force, with the entire third and fourth floors already burned down and charred black on the outside with burst windows, and charred and cracked concrete. So, either the fire had started and remained undetected until it had already spread over half the floor, or it must have within just a few minutes conquered two entire floors and spread into the fifth, sixth and seventh floors. Especially on the east side of the building, the façade was burned black, and flames danced orange and red out of several windows of all five floors already affected by the fire.
If evacuation had only started 10 minutes ago when the first emergency calls had come in, then to Endeavor it seemed clear that there was no way the third to the seventh floor could have been evacuated in time. There were still people running out of the building, probably coming from the lower floors, being led to a safety zone set up by the police. But they too seemed to be horrified with the scene behind them, glancing up to the upper floors every now and then, knowing there was no way, the people on the higher levels could make it down using the stairs. Another problem that seemed obvious at first glance was the lack of emergency personnel on scene. Two police cars and a single ambulance had made it before gawkers had closed off almost the entire street with cars, bikes and people. He could hear the deafening sirens of multiple fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars, but they all seemed to be stuck in traffic advancing at a snail's pace.
Only the heroes, who had mostly come on foot, made it to the scene of the catastrophe. Backdraft was here. He stood on a balcony of a neighboring building and had his hands full, spraying water on the flames in the upper floors, trying to prevent the fire from spreading further. As the only water hero on the scene and with no firefighters to support him, he was fighting a losing battle. Mt. Lady was there in her giant form, helping people from the upper stories down to the ground, but there seemed to be hundreds of people up there and only her by herself, alone in her struggle to get them all down. The flames from the lower floors were licking at her costume, but she remained steadfast and calm, despite the pain she must surely be feeling on her thighs and stomach.
"Are Backdraft and Mt. Lady the only ones?" Endeavor asked the closest police officer.
"Death Arms is up there, too, helping Mt. Lady," the woman answered, pointing up at the burning building.
Endeavor turned to the masses of onlookers. He could see movement in the back, of people clearly trying to make space for the emergency services, but the people in front didn't even seem to realize that they were in the way despite the deafening noises.
"YOU ALL NEED TO MOVE!" Endeavor yelled at them. His voice was strong and powerful, but in the loud cacophony of sirens, motors and people screaming, it hardly carried over the masses. "EVERYBODY WHO DOES NOT MOVE WILL GET BURNED!" He warned loudly. He knew the people right in front of him, heard him, as they immediately scrambled to the side, opening a small passage for Endeavor. Before the gap could start closing again, he shot his flames right through the middle. Maybe it was his fire itself, maybe it was the immediate vicinity to the burning building and the horrific scenario that unfolded right in front of their eyes, but the people immediately parted. It took a minute or two until his flames found their way to the first emergency vehicles down the street.
He clenched his teeth in anger that he had to waste so much time on something that wouldn't be necessary if the people could behave properly and not block the way just so they had the perfect sight for this horrific event. He was also mildly annoyed at the insults he received. How dare he attack the public? How dare he threaten them?
He didn't really care for their anger. When he started broadening the passage by splitting his stream of fire in two and steadily moving it apart until even a fire truck could comfortably fit in between, he didn't even care for the odd yelps of pain when one of them couldn't or didn't move fast enough and got their toes and fingers burned a little. The fire he used wasn't particularly hot and he only used thin tendrils of fire, so the onlookers would only receive minor first-degree burns anyway. Finally, when the passage was wide enough, he increased their intensity and walled both sides of the passage off with high burning walls of fire.
There were enraged shouts from the masses, screams of fear, but he hardly cared, as he could see the firetruck a mere 150 meters away from him pick up speed and make its way through the passage.
Immediately, he left it at that and leaped to Backdraft using his flames. He knew the flame-walls would only last a few minutes, but he hoped by then the fire trucks would have found their way through, or at least the mass of gawkers got the message and left the path open.
Backdraft stood at the edge of his balcony trying to douse the flames on the seventh floor and prevent the fire from spreading as Endeavor landed next to him with a heavy thud. "Can you hold this?" Endeavor yelled over the noise of the sirens.
"Hold it… just barely," Backdraft answered, panting and huffing, already exhausted. "I can't get it under control, but…"
"How long can you hold?" Endeavor asked sharply.
"Ten more minutes?" He glanced at Endeavor in what looked like despair. Then he moved his right hand a little and shot one of his streams of water into a different window where an angry orange tongue of fire leapt out into the cold December air.
"Make it fifteen," Endeavor demanded, "I'll go in and look for survivors."
"You can't!" Backdraft said immediately, then he looked at Endeavor and apparently reconsidered. "Good luck."
"What's your frequency?" Endeavor asked, pointing at his earpiece.
"1345.34," Backdraft panted.
Endeavor immediately used the headset to give the frequency to Avalanche and Shrinking Girl.
"We're almost there," said Shrinking Girl, breathing heavily from running across half the city.
"When you arrive, Avalanche, you help with taking out the Fire. Shrinking Girl, you help Mt. Lady with the evacuation."
Then he switched into Backdraft's channel.
Immediately, he could hear voices in his ear.
"I got two survivors on the sixth floor. But I can't reach them. It's too—" Death Arms was interrupted by his own coughing and a second voice.
"FD 2 arrived," it had to be a Captain from the first fire truck to arrive. Backdraft next to Endeavor immediately looked relieved.
"Death Arms, I'm coming in. Where are you?" asked Endeavor as he leaped across the gap between Backdrafts balcony and the burning building. He crossed his arms protectively over his face as he smashed through the window. Red flames glowed from the inside as he landed on the charred and burned carpet. Immediately, the orange inferno leaped for the new source of oxygen.
"Apartment 603, if you come into the main floor, you'll see me," Death Arms answered. He coughed again.
Endeavor looked around as he ran through what was once a family living room into a child's bedroom, and then through a burned and crumpled wall out onto the main floor. It seemed at least the inhabitants of this flat had left their apartment and probably fled to the higher up floors in time before they could fall victim to the flames.
As Death Arms had said, Endeavor could see him the moment he stepped out of the flat. Despite the smoke hanging thick in the air, Death Arms' hulking silhouette was easy to find perched low in front of a door. Endeavor ran up to him.
"What's going on?" he asked, trying not to inhale the smoke as he spoke.
"Good, you're here!" exclaimed Death Arms holding his arm in front of his face to protect himself from the smoke and what must be almost unbearable heat for him. He pointed into the flat. "The whole floor and living room are on fire. I can't get through."
Endeavor could already see it as he came to stand next to Death Arms. Somebody had cladded the walls and floors in decorative wooden panels, that burned bright orange and red and even blue. It was a true inferno. In the living room, the carpet and more wooden paneling had gone up in flames. The ceiling was charred black, and he could see several burst light bulbs and electrical devices.
"HELP!" he could hear a weak female voice scream from somewhere behind the living room.
"I got it, look for more survivors," Endeavor ordered and jumped into the inferno. His eyes were tearing from the smoke and he held his breath as he ran through the worst of it, before he reached the living room. He carelessly smashed through a burning couch and found his way to another door.
"Help!" the voice repeated a lot quieter now.
Endeavor knocked against the door with a heavy fist. "Step away from the door!" he demanded. Three seconds later he opened the door hurried through and smashed it shut again before the flames leaped into the room.
A family of four had found refuge in their own bathroom. Smoke curled at the ceiling, but the fires hadn't yet reached into the room. Although the door Endeavor had just opened had been charred from the outside, it hadn't burned down just yet, and it seemed this room was the only room in the house decorated almost entirely in tiles. An adult female crouched low next to a bathtub, a man sat against the toilet looking a bit delirious, and in the bathtub itself, two children sat in a minuscule puddle of water. One of the kids was a girl with a leathery brown tail and horns, another child, a young boy of maybe three or four years, had lost consciousness. On the other side of the room, opposite the door, there was a small bathroom window that was open to let some of the smoke out.
"Oh, thank God!" the woman said, turning to her children and saying something to them in a hushed tone, so Endeavor couldn't hear. The man, who Endeavor assumed was her husband that had a similar tail and horns as his daughter but also reddish colored skin, turned to Endeavor blinking at him in clear confusion.
Endeavor eyed the opposite wall unhappily. The window was too small to climb through and with the whole living floor on fire, there was no chance he could get the family through there. He had to go through the wall.
"Don't worry," he told the family, looking at the parents. "Take your children," he instructed, "and step away from the wall." He pointed at the opposite wall that led to the outside. As he raised his fist, he could see the girl staring at him with tears in her eyes. "No need to be afraid," he told her and even tried to smile reassuringly, although it felt off on his face. As he smashed his fist against the wall, the tile and wood and insulation and concrete immediately gave way. A wave of his flames shot outside with the punch. He used a modified and weaker version of his Hell Spider to shred the falling fragment of the wall into pieces. Since he couldn't reach his normal temperatures for his flashfire technique, the job was sloppier than usual, and while he managed to incinerate most of the wood and insulating material, the remaining tiles and stones survived and fell to the ground in smaller pieces. He just hoped the pieces were small enough to not hurt anybody if the police hadn't managed to evacuate the area directly below him.
He was distracted as the girl and the woman suddenly screamed next to him. The man had slumped against the toilet. Unconscious from the smoke. Both mother and daughter were already panicking. The woman who held her unconscious son in one arm, now grabbed her husband by the shoulder and tried to shake him awake, tears streaming down her face. The girl had grabbed her father's collar and shook it.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
With a single step, Endeavor crouched next to both of them. He had his hand around the girls clutching her father's shirt. "I need you to let go," he said as calmly as he could despite the impatience he felt. "Your father will be fine. But you have to let go, alright?" The girl stared at him, but before she could actually let go, her mother suddenly grabbed Endeavor's wrist, digging her long nails into his skin.
"Save my children!" She demanded. "Save them please!"
"I will. I will save you all, but you need to calm down. Hold onto your son." Her arm tightened around the unconscious boy, but she still didn't let go of Endeavor's wrist. Instead, in her panic, her nails dug even deeper into his skin.
"Please! You have to take them to safety! The smoke…" She wouldn't stop begging as if she hadn't even heard him. The smoke had already cleared, as most of it escaped through the hole in the wall. But they already had to deal with another problem. It got hotter in the room, and Endeavor could smell burnt wood. Who knew how long the door would hold? Never mind that there were surely other people trapped in the building just like this family.
As if on cue, he could hear Death Arms rough voice. "I've got two more! Endeavor?"
"I need two minutes," Endeavor hissed trying once again not to sound impatient. "Okay," he looked at the girl, "you need to help me save your father. I'll lift you two up, okay? And you have to make sure he doesn't fall off."
She looked at him with wide fearful eyes, then she nodded and finally let go of her father. Immediately Endeavor lifted the man up onto his left shoulder. The girl almost climbed on his back herself. He turned his hand a bit uncomfortably, so that he could hold onto her tail with the left hand, just in case she slipped off. Then he sneaked his right hand around the woman and her son. "Hold tight!" he warned. "And don't be afraid. I've got you." He jumped out of the hole in the wall he had just created.
As if he hadn't warned them, the girl screamed in panic, trashed in shock and let go of his back, but she still held onto her father's clothes. He immediately activated his quirk on his feet to halt his fall. Only a few seconds later, he landed in front of two policemen.
"Take care of them, I need to go back," he demanded as he let the family down in front of them. As he was about to leap into the air again, he was suddenly stopped. Only now did he realize that the woman had never let go of his wrist the entire time. "You need to let go," he told her, putting his left hand over her fingers on his right wrist. Then he ripped his wrist free with mild force. He could hear her whimper a bit as he stepped away and leaped back into the air.
"Where should I go, Death Arms?" he asked as he flew back up.
Instead of hearing a reply, he could see Death Arms appear in a window. Further up, he could see the telltale signs of Avalanche snow-quirk. His sidekicks had arrived and started helping at once.
Within the next 30 minutes, he and Death Arms evacuated a grand total of 4 families and 3 individual people from the sixth floor. They also found the dead body of a young woman. She looked almost unharmed, except for an angry red burn on one of her forearms and her clothes were charred a little, which at first glance, Endeavor had thought she was alive. Only when he came closer, he saw her pale almost bluish lips and skin, and as he turned her around her body was lifeless to the touch. She must have suffocated in the smoke, he realized. He was very sure, she was dead, but he had Death Arms carry her to safety just in case.
As soon as the sixth floor was done, he instructed Death Arms to go back up to help Mt. Lady with the upper floors. The fire department had finally arrived and gradually got the flames under control; it seemed the fire wouldn't spread further than the eighth floor. Still, even with most people on the seventh and eighth floors already having evacuated, the smoke was still dangerous. It rose up to the upper floors. For Death Arms, Endeavor knew, the fifth floor and below would be too dangerous.
The fire had destroyed just about everything down there, the heat and smoke and acidic smell were even worse than it was up here. Death Arms, clearly had enough trouble with the smoke and heat as is. It was unlikely that they could still find survivors down there anyway.
Despite his own fire-quirk, Endeavor hated working at fire scenes. People always expected that because of his quirk, he would be immune to it or maybe he could even put it out. Both were wrong assumptions that he had never cared to rebuke because as a hero, every villain already knew about your strengths, and he would not be so stupid as to publicize his weaknesses either.
Because of his perceived immunity to fire, he was always the only one who could go to all the places that seemed too hot or too dangerous for everybody else. There was some logic to that, as his body had a high tolerance for heat, although he could still get burned if he wasn't careful. Worse, however, was the smoke that was as dangerous to him as it was to anybody else.
By now, the fire department had supplied him with a simple gas mask, that was by no means suited to filter out all the poisonous smoke, but he preferred it to an air tank. Those would only last for thirty minutes, and as he had to dig through burning rubble, red hot metal beams and charred stone to find possible survivors, he couldn't afford to leave the building every few minutes to exchange his air tank. Never mind that he wasn't even sure whether standard firefighter-gear could withstand these temperatures.
In the end, though, even the smoke wasn't his biggest problem. The problem, and the reason he hated fires, was because he always went where the fire was hottest, where only he could reach, hoping he may be able to find some lucky survivors. But down here, people didn't survive.
He made his way through three apartments, welding down a broken beam of metal or bursting through crumpled stone walls. His eyes stung and teared up, and through the smoke and tears, he could hardly see further than his own hand in front of him. Above him and around him, the fire still roared, giving the fire department a tough battle, but here, while some flames still licked at the walls, they had already burned everything that might be flammable. Now, it was like the stone and metal were on fire, glowing red and orange. His feet trudged over white embers and black charcoal, crumpling to dust when he touched it. It was like an oven. They might have been furniture once, or carpets, books or toys —. Now they were all just black remains, indistinguishable from the rest of the charred mess. The first two apartments had thankfully been evacuated. In the third apartment, there was another dead person. A black grotesque figure on what might have been a bed once, still distinguishable as clearly human. And another smaller corpse of maybe a cat or a small dog. There was nothing he could do.
He hated house fires! There wasn't even a villain he could fight!
He moved on. Four more apartments, two more dead people, there was a child, barely three feet tall. He guessed that it had to be a child. Dying alone and in agony… and he might be sick now. He just tried to remember where the dead people were, so they could later place them into their apartments and give them names and faces that the fire had long burned away.
He lost track of time as he made his way from one apartment to the next, calling out every now and then, although he knew nobody would answer. It was exhausting and slow work. He could hardly see with all the smoke in the air, and regularly he had to take a break and pause leaning against a window to get some much-needed oxygen. The hallways were almost unrecognizable, making it almost impossible for him to orient himself between the many apartments, stairways and corridors. In many places, the walls and parts of the ceiling had caved in, forcing him to find a way around or destroy a wall and risk parts of the furiously hot ceiling collapsing over his head.
His costume was drenched in soot, charcoal, and his sweat after only a short time. He was thankful for all the times that he had gotten used to fighting in similar condition despite his own rising body heat. That made it a lot easier to keep his thoughts straight and his actions purposeful. At some point, he jumped through a hole in the ground through the fourth floor, where he found two lifeless bodies cowering against the wall of a ruined kitchen. He thought they must be dead, at first, but as he came closer, he realized that the black on their faces was just soot and ash, while the skin underneath still looked rosy, almost red and alive. They were unresponsive to his words and touch, so he carried them out the way he had the people before them, not knowing if they were alive or dead and whether they could be saved if they were even still alive. He left them with the paramedics, hoping they could be saved so as to not make his hard work for naught.
They were the first people he saved out of these destroyed apartments on the lower floors. Shortly after he was back in the building, with tearing eyes and an itchy nose, but at least he felt like it might be worth it.
He made his way downwards, fighting the sting in his eyes and scratch in his throat that made him almost gag. At some point, he stood in a corridor taking several deep inhales, the air sizzling through the mask's filtering system with a rattling sound. He concentrated on getting a feeling for his own body, trying to guess how much of the poisonous smoke he may have already inhaled. It was impossible. There was a slight headache, but that could be from a lack of oxygen or poisonous smoke or just the heat in general.
Then, he trudged down the staircase, towards the sounds of the sirens of the firefighters still battling the flames. Suddenly, he stopped, then ran; he took several stairs in a single powerful leap. There was a man, crumbled on the stairs halfway between the fourth and fifth floor. He wasn't burned. At least not severely — the skin was burned at his hands and arms where he must have touched hot metal or stone, but that was it. His quirk had turned his skin a light blue, edging on purple where it was burned and scalded. The unusual coloring made it difficult to gauge whether he was still alive. He was on his side, motionless on the floor.
He could not have been here for long. Maybe he had tried to escape from the flames on the upper floors, trying to flee over the stairs. He must have been disoriented, moved down into even greater danger, only to run into the cloud of smoke and heat that was so thick there, and that only slowly crept its way upward.
Endeavor didn't even check his pulse or breath. The man looked alive — unconscious, but alive. There was sweat still glistening on his blue-skinned forehead. So he grabbed him, dragged him over his shoulders and took the first possible exit he could find. Out of the window. He was on the fourth floor now, and as he dropped down, his own quirk almost betrayed him. He only managed to catch his fall so close to the ground. For a second, he thought that he would break both his legs against the pavement. Luckily he didn't, but he still landed so hard that the impact jolted his joints, his gasp was muffled against the gas mask's interior.
The first thing he did was rip the cursed thing off his face, dragging in a relieving breath of fresh air. Endeavor was not prepared for the painful rebellion of his throat, as so much air suddenly rushed past his tortured airways. He coughed painfully, hacking, gasping almost gagging, as he barely managed to put the – hopefully only – unconscious civilian down on the ground before he bent over to cough even harder. Between hastily drawn-in and gagged-out bouts of air, he tried to call for the paramedics. It didn't really work.
Then again, he needn't have bothered. They came running the moment they saw him emerge with the man draped across his shoulder. Two of them immediately took care of the blue-skinned man, while one knelt next to Endeavor himself. Speaking to him, asking questions he could hardly comprehend, never mind grace with an answer between his coughing. He just gestured toward the house, that was still burning, trying to insinuate that he had to get back in since it was still burning. But the paramedic either didn't or didn't want to understand.
"Endeavor!" Avalanche ran up to him. He looked disheveled and sweating from hard work. It had been more than three hours ago that Endeavor had arrived at the scene. The sky was already darkening for the night. "Stop it. You've inhaled too much smoke."
He hardly even found enough air to answer.
"If you go back in, you won't come out again." The paramedic seemed to agree, because he prevented every attempt of Endeavor to stand up and go back into the building with a decisive hand on his back, holding him down.
"Let me at least look at you," the paramedic demanded.
Endeavor relented reluctantly. "What's go-going on up there?" Endeavor demanded to know as soon as he had his coughing under control, looking up at Avalanche. "My comm died… thirty minutes ago." His throat hurt with every word he pressed out. The sensible technology in his earpiece had just sputtered out in the heat.
"We could stop the fire from spreading, now we're trying to put out all the fires still burning in the lower stories." Through his own teary eyes, Endeavor could see sweat glistening on Avalanche's forehead. There was grey and black soot on his light blue fur jacket and platinum blonde hair. His pale skin too was smeared with it. Endeavor knew he himself had to look even worse. "I need to get back," the 31-year-old sidekick ended his explanation, wiping sweat from his forehead, drinking from the water bottle that Endeavor only now saw in his hand and looking up at the house. "With firefighters and more heroes arriving on the scene, we're taking shifts."
Endeavor nodded. As Avalanche hurried back to his work, he glanced at the paramedic who had taken his vital signs in the meantime. He asked him to open his mouth, just as Avalanche rejoined the firefighting.
"How do you feel?"
"Fine," Endeavor answered hoarsely. The medic looked at him doubtfully. "Eyes sting and my throat feels parched. But I feel clear in the head." For the most part at least. He did have a bit of a headache, though he wasn't sure if that was from the smoke or the constant racket of sirens and people.
"Okay, I need you to get yourself checked over as soon as you can get away from here."
With that, he was free to get back into the building. However, the blue-skinned man would be the last person he saved. It seemed the people on the third floor could mostly be evacuated in time. He found one more unrecognizable corpse, but by then, he gave up and rejoined the medics. The fire was finally out now, and the job of the heroes was done — leaving the scene for the firefighters and police to investigate and the injured to be handled by the many doctors and paramedics on scene.
A doctor checked him, Avalanche, and Shrinking Girl over shortly, then requested that they all join the next ambulance to the closest hospital for a more thorough check. Endeavor didn't complain. Only when the ambulance stopped, and he helped the paramedics and their patient – an unconscious young girl – out of the vehicle to be greeted by a bunch of nurses and emergency doctors, did he realize they had brought him to the Grand Musutafu Hospital.
I hope you liked this one! It's a bit of necessary action to get Endeavor's hero work back on track. I really feel like he has to do some shit. What do you think the public reaction will be to his work?
Also this week, let's meet another sidekick! This one is the 3rd of the 4 we met so far. And it will probably remain the only four I intend to really use in this fic. There are more, but I felt like juggling four sidekicks is enough:
Shuuhei Ichika,
Heroname: Shrinking Girl
Quirk: Shrinkabody: Opposite to Mt. Lady's quirk her quirk allows Ichika to shrink her body. Ichika's powers are a bit more flexible, as she can decide to which size she wants to shrink: everything between an Ant's size and her own natural height. However, her body strength and weight also shrinks (though not quite proportionally to her body size.) She can also just shrink individual body parts.
Design: Shrinking girl has long blonde hair that during work she wears in softly curling pigtails. She has rather pale skin and brown eyes. She is only of an medium height for a japanese woman but built rather sturdily and strong. As a hero her costume is made mostly from her own hair (similar to Lemillion) so it can shrink with her. She wears a tight whole bodysuit in different shades of green and black boots and gloves that are infused with metal-wiring. It's a very thought out technology, as the metal in her suit can't shrink with her, so she uses just the tiniest, thinnest metal wiring, that when the cloth holding the wiring together, that is made of her own hair, shrinks, will pull the metal tight so that in her smaller forms it's compact enough to build solid armor around her. She wears a helmet that covers her head and most of her face, and she can with a press of a button engulf her entire face with the mask, including a breathing mask that can also filer out possible poisons and can easily be hooked to an oxygen tank. Since she specializes in rescue that way she can ensure that there is hardly any place (underwater, or engulfed by poison or difficult to reach through very small pathways) that she cannot reach.
Character: Shrinking Girl is 18 years old and she just graduated from Shiketsu High last year. She interned for Endeavor during her third year and started working for him as a sidekick right after her graduation. She's a very upbeat person, who makes a lot of friends wherever she goes. She's also a bit too chatty, so you wouldn't want to entrust her with your secrets, but if you just need somebody to talk about fun stuff, she's the person for you. There are a lot of things she doesn't particularly like or turns her nose up at, but she won't use it against you, if you like it. If you do something she deems wrong (even very unimportant stuff) she's the kind of person who will argue against you with a passion to the point, that by the next time you meet, you may worry, if you can even still be friends, after that fight... She however, may have already forgotten all about it.
Next week, (if i can manage to finish the chapter by then) you'll meet the last of the four sidekicks, Brazen.