Ruby, Yang, Blake, and George walked out of the test area with smiles on their faces. Weiss walked over and asked, "How did you guys do?"

"We all passed," Ruby replied. "I got 100%, Yang got 91%, Blake got 92% and George got 87%."

"Amazing! Ruby, you got 100%?! I only got 90% when I took my test some 8 years ago." Weiss then dialed her father on her cellphone to tell him. "Once my dad notifies my uncle and Captain Kirkridge, you, Blake, and Yang will get cleared to do interior operations."

"That reminds me," George said. "I gotta call my captain and tell him about me." He then looked at Yang. "I can't believe it! We're interior firefighters!"

Yang said, "Me neither!" She then kissed George. "Wanna 'celebrate' later tonight?"

George replied in a seducing voice, "Of course." Yang giggled.

Ruby, Weiss, and Blake all smiled and rolled their eyes. Weiss said, "There they go again."

Ruby then got a call from Gwen. "Hello?"

"Hey Ruby. How did the test go?"

"We all passed. As of today, we are interior firefighters."

"Awesome! Be careful out there. By the way, your friend Delwyn's on TV right now, overseeing a Ruling Council meeting."

"What are they arguing about now?"

"Right now, it's just boring but important budget stuff."

"I like how you nonchalantly just described the very thing that prevents our country from going bankrupt as boring but important. It's funny." Ruby then laughed.

At 7:04, Blake and Sun were watching TV in Blake's apartment. There had been a call for an odor of gas in a building a few hours earlier at 3, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

"Training has been fun," Sun said. "The Valeanian instructors can be very tough, though."

"That they are," Blake replied. "I remember when in my final year at Beacon how we began having more military-esque classes. That was the first time I ever heard an instructor actually swear in class. It was so weird going from teachers and professors and doctors and whatnot teaching us like a regular college or university class to instructors that would drop f-bombs and order us to yell back a reply to their commands. Those classes were also very draining physically. I remember how one day, the 35-person class I was in had to haul huge logs across the campus on our shoulders for 45 minutes straight."

"Damn. I went through the same thing when I went back to Mistral. I remember how my team decided to take the 2-year-long "Special Forces" elective class from our 3rd year to our 4th year. It was brutal. To even get in the class, we had to run 2 miles, swim 750 yards, do 50 push-ups, do 75 sit-ups, and do 10 pull-ups. It was a miracle we all made it. We also had to learn how to do underwater demolition, parachuting from aircraft, speak foreign languages, shoot targets over a mile away, and a bunch of other stuff."

"Wow. I remember hearing about the Special Forces elective in Beacon, but my whole team never took it. Ruby took it and passed. She described it as one of the most rewarding but also challenging classes at Beacon. She decided not to go into the Hunting Corps's Special Hunting Service because she didn't want to leave us, though with the training she has, she can still enter it at any time if she changes her mind. The reason why she took it was because her mom, Summer, was in the SHS. She went missing on a mission and was never found."

"Oh yeah. I heard about that. With the whole expanding the city mission thing, do you think they could find her body?"

"Maybe. She was in the exclusion zone when she went missing." Blake then changed the channel. "I can't fucking stand these fake reality TV shows." The show on the next channel was called "Code 99." "Code 99? That show about firefighters in Vale? I didn't know it aired new episodes now."

"I heard the show pulled in good ratings for its first 2 episodes. This must be the third."

"It did. Surprisingly, the show is accurate despite being fictional. It takes place in a fire company in District 5. The real company that was featured in the show endorsed it. The main character is a stage actor who joins Suedia Fire Company 47 at the recommendations of a playwright who's an 27-year veteran of the company. He's 19 when he joins, and he has to maintain both his firefighting skills and his skills on the stage, as well as play and musical scheduling, the struggle to make it in entertainment, and more."

"Interesting. I wonder if there are actors, playwrights, stage crewmembers, and singers that are firefighters in real life?"

"There are. District 5 is the centre of the theatre, music, and film industries of Vale. Many famous entertainers are or were volunteer firefighters. The guy who made this show is a firefighter himself for Ivrea Rescue and Recovery, though he is less active than he used to be. He lives somewhere else in the city now, but he still responds to calls when he does duty shifts. I remember that the Volunteer Weekly interviewed him. He says he does about 60-72 hours of staffing per month and that he joined when he was 20 when he moved to the area to begin a career in entertainment."

"Wow. Volunteers really do come from all walks of life. I mean, look at Weiss and her family. Many of them are rich corporate executives, and they still do hands-on dirty work for free."

"I know. I used to have little respect for her family, but after working fires with her dad and uncle, I respect them a lot more now. They both say their views on faunus have softened because of me, and that a lot of the issues Schnee Dust Corporation had with bad labour practises was the result of Weiss's grandfather, who was really racist and known for paying workers minimum wage when they should have been paid more due to dangerous working conditions."

"Is her grandpa still alive?"

"No. He died when Weiss was 14. He was a volunteer at Vigilant too. He had cancer and died when he was 68. It sucks, because a year later, they began having all sorts of breakthroughs in treating cancer. Remember? The miracle year of 2013?"

"Oh yeah. They came out with the non-small cell lung cancer vaccine, the throat and mouth cancer vaccines, and a bunch of other stuff that year. I heard tobacco, cocaine, and marijuana companies threw billions into cancer research, and still do, because they didn't want their customers dying in droves. It's kinda sick, but still, vaccines for cancers."

"It's about as both messed up and a good thing as a porn site donating to breast cancer and testicular cancer research. Speaking of tobacco..." Blake then grabbed a tobacco cigarette and lit up. "I need to stop doing this. Do you smoke anything?"

"No," Sun replied. "Marijuana and Cocaine are illegal in Mistral. Tobacco is highly regulated, and there are now calls to ban that too. It's stupid, since fighting drugs with jail time never works."

"Try telling Atlas that," Blake replied. "They still shoot drug traffickers there. They're pretty much a military junta in all but name, and that dumbass Alexander Andersen wants to do the same here. He hates volunteers with a passion and wants the military to run all emergency services."

"Fuck him." Sun and Blake then heard her pager beep. It was 7:11.

"Is it another EMS call?" Blake then walked up as she heard the tones of 3 other companies plus the assistant district chief of District 2 go out, indicating a Box Alarm. "Gotta run!" She then quickly grabbed her pager, kissed Sun, and ran out the door.

When she got to the station about a minute and a half later, the ambulance had already left, and the truck was filling up fast. She ran to her gear, put on and pulled up her boots, grabbed her coat and helmet, and ran to the truck to grab the 10th and last seat. As the truck pulled forward, she and another firefighter stood up to put their coats and helmets on. Blake then strapped into an SCBA built into the seat.

Alfred Schnee, "By the way, Belladonna, Xiao Long, and Rose are all interior firefighters now, so take them in ASAP so they can get experience."

Ruby shouted, "Alright!"

Blake said, "Hey Ruby, hey Weiss. Where's Yang?"

"On her way from her boyfriend's house," Weiss replied. "She'll make the rescue, don't worry."

Ruby then got a call on her phone from Yang. "Hey Yang."

"Hey Ruby," Yang said as she drove on her motorcycle to the station. "I was right in the middle of riding George when the call came in. Do you think I'll make the rescue?"

"TMI, Yang. And yes, Weiss says you'll make the rescue."

"Alright! I'll see ya at the fire."

"Bye, Yang." Ruby then hung up. "She was in the middle of having sex with her boyfriend when the call came in."

Weiss laughed and said, "Of course."

At 7:17, Truck 201 arrived, as the fire was in Vigilant's first due. The building involved was a 5-storey tenement, with a fire in a 2nd floor apartment.

The crew jumped out of the truck, with Blake, Ruby, Weiss, Ren, and 2 other firefighters congregating near Alfred and suiting up. Alfred said, "Alright, who here is RIT certified?"

1 firefighter raised his hand. "Alright, I'll take you, one of the paid guys from Vigilant, and 3 others once more units show up and we'll assemble a Rapid Intervention Team*. The rest of you will grab 2 hand lines from the truck and advance inside. Weiss, Rose, you 2 will take the first line. Belladonna, Fairfax, you take the second line."

Once the lines were stretched and filled with water, Ruby and Weiss moved in, closely followed by Blake and a firefighter named John Fairfax. As they climbed up the stairs to the second floor, Ruby said, "I can feel the temperature rising greatly."

"No shit," Weiss replied. "It's a fire, what did you expect?"

Then, they crawled into the hallway of the second floor. After crawling past several apartments, Weiss said, "I can faintly make out a red glow. We're close to the fire." Weiss then sprayed the area down with water, damping the fire down but also creating more thick smoke. Weiss then yelled, "Blake, John, go up to the third floor and search the area for trapped civilians!"

"Got it," John replied. He was a 10 year veteran of Vigilant, having joined when he was 16. "Let's go, Belladonna." As they climbed to the third floor, they found one victim unconscious from the smoke in the hallway.

Blake radioed, "Vigilant Interior to Vigilant Command."

"Go ahead."

"Get me 2 more firefighters in here, we got one victim down on the third floor hallway."

"10-4. We'll send 2 more in."

As it turned out, the 2 who were sent in were Yang and George. They quickly ran inside with their SCBAs on and crawled up to the third floor to grab the victim. As they climbed the stairs, Yang said, "I can't believe we got action on the very day we passed BFCFR."

"Tell me about it," George replied. They then met up with Blake and John.

"Here you go," Blake said as she handed the victim, a 62-year-old male, to Yang and George. They quickly picked him up and ran down the stairs. As they got to the first floor, Yang ripped her mask off and gave it to the unconscious man.

Once they were outside, they rushed the man to 3 firefighters, who began performing CPR on the victim. After a few compressions, he coughed up soot and began to wake up. Yang smiled and said, "We did it."

Then, they put their helmets and masks back on and went back inside with 4 other firefighters. Incident Command ordered them in to help with search and rescue as well as overhaul once the main body of fire was knocked down. Meanwhile, Truck 201 raised its ladder to the 2nd floor in case anyone needed to escape while Truck 203 raised its Aerialscope tower to the 3rd floor to allow 3 firefighters to walk in.

As all this happened, Weiss and Ruby continued to knock down the fire. "You're doing good Ruby," Weiss said. "Keep supporting me."

"Can we switch?"

"Okay then. Come in front of me and I'll back you up." They then switched places. "You know what to do."

"Indeed." Ruby then sprayed a jet of water from the hose line. "Woah!"

"I know. It's powerful, isn't it?"

Within a few minutes, the main body of fire was knocked down. Yang and George were poking holes in the ceiling of the first floor to let out smoke with from the second with pike poles when they were ordered out of the building to switch out with 2 other firefighters. As they walked outside, they held each other's hands before separating to take their SCBAs off. Right after they took their masks off, Yang and George kissed. "That was some good work," Yang said.

"Same to you," George replied. "When we're done here, let's finish what we started back at my place."

"Of course."

The aide to the Assistant District 2 Chief said to himself, "Lovebirds..."

"Tell me about it," the chief replied.

A Rapid Intervention Team, as per the VCFD's standard operating procedures, will consist of 5 selected firefighters plus 1 officer who will stand by at a fire scene and only be called on to rescue trapped firefighters. For each alarm transmitted, another RIT team will be assembled. All paid firefighters are RIT certified, as are all volunteer officers and volunteer firefighters who choose to receive RIT training. You must have a minimum of Basic Firefighter-CFR to undergo 3-month RIT training.