Rescue 201 returned to quarters at 8:41. Truck 201 had returned from the scene at 8:23, but was diverted to respond to a medical call to assist Ambulance 201 with an obese patient.
As Yang took her gear off, Winter's son, Hans, ran up to Yang and said, "Yang-Yang! How was it?"
"The man who crashed his car is doing okay," Yang replied. The man had been badly injured, but his injuries were not life-threatening. "The truck went to another call."
'You guys are busy," Hans said.
Winter then said, "Hans, come over to the rec room."
"Yes, mommy." Hans then ran over to her mom.
Yang followed him into the rec room, walking over to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee. As she did, the pager tones went off again, this time for another EMS call. A few volunteers who had shown up when the trucks were out walked out to the apparatus bay to get on the rescue to take the call, since Ambulance 201 was still at the hospital.
She sat down back in her chair, watching the news. On the TV, there was a news report about the arrest of a businessman for fraud. Yang said, "Of course." She then got a phone call from George. "Hello, my love?"
"Why hello," George replied, having just finished cleaning dishes at the small Goodwill firehouse. "I heard those calls for Vigilant. I stayed at the station when we went to assist for that accident to clean some stuff."
"Aww man. I was looking for you there. Anyways, how is your blizzard day?"
"Well, I went to a medical call at like 7. We've had about 3 calls so far. What time do you want to meet?"
"How about 6 at my place? I'll be in my bedroom." Yang smiled and laughed. "Be ready."
"Of course. Anyways, I gotta go. See ya later. I love you, Yang."
"I love you, George. Bye." Yang then hung up. As she did, the truck returned.
Then, Alfred walked in. He said, "Sorry I'm late. I had some SDC business to take care of. Anyways, I need some people to go out and wash down the truck. It's all dirty and caked with snow."
Yang raised her hand and said, "Count me in, Lieutenant!" She then got up and walked out to the truck bay to grab a cleaning hose.
At the Fire Alarm Office, Blake was swamped with radio traffic. Another dispatcher had to join her in order to deal with the amount of activity going on.
After acknowledging a unit's response on the radio, she said to the other dispatcher, "Can you fill in for me for a sec? I gotta run to the bathroom really bad."
The other dispatcher replied, "Got it."
Blake got up and ran to the bathroom, thinking, "Thank God! I almost pissed my pants!" As she ran into a stall, pulled her pants down, and did her business, she heard her phone ring for a text. She fumbled through her pants to get her phone and looked at it.
It was from Sun. It read, "hey Blakey i cant make it to dinner on sunday" Another text read, "Sages dad died & we have to go back to Mistral for 3 days 4 the funeral. i'm leaving tomorrow"
Blake texted back, "Sorry to hear about that. Ill go with you to the airport if i can"
"of course why couldn't you?"
"security or whatevs maybe" She also wrote, "anyways i gtg do more dispatch work. luv u"
"luv u too Blake have a great day my beautiful girlfriend"
Blake smiled and held the phone to her chest, saying to herself, "Oh, Sun. I couldn't have asked for anyone better."
She then cleaned up and walked out to wash her hands. As she did, a woman rushed into the bathroom and said, "Blake! Hurry it up! There's a major incident in District 2!"
"What's up?!"
"Some sort of explosion at the Locust Theatre! We're getting 911 calls by the dozens!"
"Got it! I'll be right out!" Blake quickly finished and ran out of the bathroom, fearing the White Fang had struck again.
At Vigilant Fire Company, everyone was listening to the unfolding chaos at the theatre from the radios. By now, North Beacon, South Beacon, Beacon, Friendship, and Atlesian companies were responding to the fire. It was 4 1/2 minutes in.
Yang said, "On what alarm are we supposed to go on?"
"If they call it," Winter replied. "We'll be going on the 4th as opposed to the 2nd as we used to be before all the new companies went into service, assuming that all District 2 companies are in service, which I doubt due to the storm."
"Speaking of that," another firefighter said, "They just announced a 2nd and 3rd alarm simultaneously."
On the speakers of the apparatus bay, the paging channel buzzed with the 24 tones of 11 fire companies and 2 chiefs, followed by a dispatcher announcing the info of the call. To their surprise, Vigilant's tones also played out due to the fact that so many other companies were already out of service on other calls.
Everyone immediately rushed to grab their gear and get on the trucks, which had by now all returned. Yang put her gear on and ran to get on the truck, managing to get in the second-to-last seat. As she sat down, she stretched her legs to pull up her hip boots before grabbing the straps of her seat's SCBA and clipping them in. As the truck rolled out the door with a full crew, she put her gloves on and said, "Here we go again..."
At 9:17, Truck 201 arrived on scene with Rescue 201 and Ambulance 201. By now, smoke was rising from the theatre, and a mass of people crowded the streets ahead of them. Firefighters were working on the roof, cutting holes to let the heat vent.
Yang stood outside with Winter and watched the theatre go up in smoke as the snow continued to fall. She said, "Winter, think about all the people that may be trapped in there still. My God..."
Then, an officer said, "You 2, come over here and grab a ladder! We need you 2 to help set up an entryway to the second floor from the alleyway on the right side! We already broke a window over there to let smoke out!"
Yang and Winter walked over and grabbed a 45-foot extension ladder from an equipment staging area. They then ran it to the right-side alleyway next to the theatre. As they did, several other firefighters followed them.
As they set up the ladder, a frantic radio message went out, saying, "Incident Command to all firefighters on the roof, get off the roof now! Get off the roof now!"
Yang said, "That's not good." She then raised the ladder up to the second floor of the theatre.
Winter said, "Everyone, mask up now. There's too much smoke up there." She then took her helmet off to put her mask on.
Yang, after masking up, climbed up the ladder first, carrying an axe and a flashlight she had gotten from another firefighter. When she stepped onto the second floor, she turned her flashlight on and yelled, "Anyone up here?!"
Winter and another firefighter followed her, both of them carrying a hose line. Winter said, "If there's anyone up here, they're probably dead by this point. Now, firefighters on the first floor said that the stairwell was blocked by heavy flames. I assume that was where the fire started. Yang, follow me and this other guy to wherever the stairwell is."
Yang replied, "Got it." The 3 of them walked around the second floor, looking for the doors to the stairwell. Then, they stumbled upon it.
Winter said, "Feel it first."
Yang nodded and felt the door with the back of her hand. She said, "How is this door not on fire yet?! It's super hot!"
Then, Winter suddenly looked up at the ceiling and said, "Everyone, back away! Now!" All 3 of them ran to the other side of the room, heeding Winter's advice.
Said advice couldn't have come any sooner. A part of the ceiling caved in and crushed the door to the stairwell, causing flames to shoot out. The 3rd firefighter immediately opened up his hand line and began spraying down the wall of flames approaching the 3 of them as 4 other firefighters ran to them, having been searching the second floor when the ceiling fell.
One of them said, "One of our guys was buried by some debris! We gotta get him!"
Winter replied, "I'll radio it in. Yang, you and that other guy from Excellence will go join those 4 guys to help get the buried guy out."
Yang nodded. The 6 of them then ran to the area where the firefighter had been buried, the firefighter from Excellence spraying water at the flames near them to keep them from being burned.
When they got to him, his head was sticking out from the debris. Yang and the Excellence firefighter began removing debris as the 4 other firefighters prepared themselves for pulling their comrade out. After several minutes of throwing debris away, the 4 firefighters pulled the trapped firefighter out of the debris and dragged him back to the window where they had all entered before. As they did, the smoke began to get thicker and blacker, indicating the fire was rapidly spreading.
Yang hoisted the injured firefighter onto her back and climbed onto the ladder. As she climbed down slowly, she could see Winter begin to follow her.
Eventually, all 8 firefighters made it out. As the last one reached the ground, a flashover suddenly engulfed the second floor, causing Yang to be startled and slip and fall onto the pavement. She said, "Agh, fuck!" She looked around and checked her hands. "Well, I don't think I broke anything, at least."
Winter walked up to her and asked, "Need a hand?"
"Of course." Yang grabbed Winter's hand and stood back up. "Wanna go get new bottles for our SCBAs?"
"Sure. You did a good job today, probie." Winter patted Yang on the back.
The fire went to 5 alarms. At the time of the explosion, the theatre was hosting a movie in the 4th stage, located in the back of the building. The building, the Locust Theatre, was built in 1902 as a combination stage and screen theatre. It had a large main stage in the centre as well as 3 smaller stages plus a front office section arranged in a cross format. It was essentially the first multiplex theatre in Vale, if not all of Remnant.
The fire had consumed the 4th stage entirely and part of the first stage. According to witnesses, the explosion had come from the front of the seating section, and accounts of the explosion indicate that incendiaries of some kind were used alongside what was possibly a suicide bomb vest.
Vigilant was released alongside all companies with the exception of those that were on the first alarm assignment at 4:23 P.M. By then, the city had continued to be swamped by calls from the snowstorm, and Vigilant had missed 15 calls in their first due, including a Code 99 that had destroyed a convenience store and damaged a few apartments and 2 car accidents that led to 3 fatalities.
At the theatre, the death toll was counted at 64 and the number of injured was counted at over 400. Among the injured were 8 firefighters.
At 5:30, Ruby and Weiss came over to the firehouse, having arrived back in Vale at 4. Blake had arrived after work.
Yang was telling them about the explosion, which was now all over the news. Blake said, "It had to be the White Fang. They've made threats against the Locust Theatre before." She then shook her head. "This world has gone crazy. It's only a matter of time before the White Fang does something that kills hundreds, if not thousands."
Ruby replied, "Tell me about it. Their attacks are only making faunus hatred worse now. I see people posting racist shit all the time on social media about how they want all faunus in Vale City and the Kingdom of Vale to be deported and shit. Do they not realise over a third of this city alone is faunus? Did we learn NOTHING from Gris Manchette?"
"It seems sadly so," Weiss replied. "Surprisingly, my family is not at the head of this hatred this time. My dad reprimanded one of his executives for making some nasty remarks online recently. To be fair, he would have done the same thing even 10 years ago, but for different reasons."
"It's all a cycle," Blake said. "The White Fang promotes acts of violence to make humans hate faunus, and then the White Fang recruits faunus by pointing out said human hate. They want humans to be racist so they can feed their propaganda machine. I fear if they do do something that kills thousands, we'll see a wave of hate against my kind never seen since the days of the Authoritarianist rule in Vacuo."
Yang patted Blake on the back and said, "Don't worry. We'll make sure it never gets to that. Only fools will hate faunus when they see you and all the other faunus in the VCFD in your firefighting gear at these attacks. If there's one thing all Valeanians look up to, it's firefighters, especially volunteers."
Winter pointed at the TV and said, "Hey guys look! There was something in Azimuth today!"
A news announcer said, "State media in Azimuth are confirming reports that a suicide bomber attacked the headquarters of the State Economic Planning Committee, a 5-storey building in the capital of Azimuth, Kankrina, killing 12, including the bomber, and injuring 32. It is believed the White Fang is behind this attack, as well as the one that just happened at the Locust Theatre in Vale."