October 1, 2021
Car 5 pulled up to the VCPD's District 2 headquarters as the first-arriving unit after calls flooded the VCFD's Fire Alarm Office reporting an explosion at the building. Several police officers were standing outside, badly injured but still walking, and shouting for help. The first floor of the building was completely blown out as smoke billowed from it.
Weiss stepped out, wearing her long coat and her helmet as she ran around to the back of her car to grab her hip boots and put them on. As she did, Ambulance 201 and Car 6 also pulled up. The time was 12:05, and it had been 4 minutes since the fire department had been dispatched.
Weiss radioed, "Car 5 to Fire Alarm."
"Car 5."
"Car 5 is 10-84 with Ambulance 201 and Car 6, we got smoke coming from the building," Weiss continued as she looked on. "It appears to be heavily damaged. Strike a second alarm for the box." She then looked at some onlookers who were standing too close to the wreckage and yelled, "Get the fuck back!"
Then, a cop outside the building yelled, "It's getting pretty bad!" The smoke was getting thick and black as Engine 201 pulled up on scene.
Weiss switched frequencies to Operations Channel 1 of District 2 and radioed, "Engine 201, you got a hydrant at the corner of Market and South. Market and South. Hit it and get into the building as fast as you can." By now, the whole first floor was heavily involved with fire, indicating the explosion punctured the gas line beneath the building.
Ruby stepped off the truck with Penny, both fully geared up with their masks on as they pulled a 2 1/2-inch hand line off the side of the engine as more fire trucks pulled up. Yang controlled the pumps, having been the driver. This would be her first actual fire as a driver/pump operator/engineer. Several firefighters that had been on the rear step of the engine were busy hitting the hydrant as Ruby and Penny approached the building.
Ruby then turned around to Yang as she hooked her mask into her SCBA and yelled as she made a hand motion, "CHARGE THE LINE, SIS! CHARGE THE LINE!"
Yang yelled back, "You got it!" Engine 201's pump panel was right on the driver's side of the truck, meaning that Yang had full visual contact with the front of the building. She quickly pulled a lever that filled Ruby and Penny's line with water. Meanwhile, on the right side of the building, Ren, Captain Ling Hua Yi, and another firefighter from Engine 201 carried water cans and a set of irons as they located the fire escape as smoke billowed towards them from the building.
Ren said to the other two, "We need to mask up. This smoke is too bad."
"Agreed," replied Yi as she took her helmet off and put her set of irons down to put her mask on. After she was done, she pointed to the fire escape and said, "We're gonna go up there and meet up with a crew from Truck 201, got it?"
"Got it," both Ren and the other firefighter replied as they began to climb up the fire escape's lowered access ladder, battling the intense heat and black smoke of the fire right next to them as well as the weight of the equipment they carried.
Back out in the front, Ruby and Penny attempted to move in closer to the fire as two more fighters opened up a second hand line next to them, but the intense heat still kept them back. "It feels like somebody's frying me inside my gear," Ruby replied, indicating how hot it was. "This is insane."
Suddenly, they heard a thud next to them. Penny hurriedly shut off the hand line as Ruby dropped it. They then found that a holding cell inmate trapped on the 5th floor of the building had jumped and badly injured himself in the process. His thigh bones were sticking out of his knees and legs since he had fallen feet first and the resulting wounds were bleeding profusely.
As Penny turned him over, she took off her helmet and mask along with Ruby. They found that his nose was broken and a torrent of blood poured from it. Additionally, it appeared as if his skull may have fractured as well, given the intense bleeding from his head. To top it off, his mouth was bleeding badly, and several of his teeth were laying on the ground, smashed into pieces. Penny yelled out, "WE NEED HELP!"
Immediately, three firefighters brought a stretcher over as the smoke from the fire began to surround them. Ruby said, "We need to drag him away from the building. This smoke isn't good for any of us." Penny quickly grabbed the man by his arms, which were surprisingly uninjured and not broken, and dragged him away from the building, leaving a trail of blood leading to the back step of Engine 201. Once he was secured, Penny grabbed a small flashlight from her turnout coat pocket and shined it in the inmate's eyes. "He's either in a coma or unconscious. His breathing appears to be agonal and slow." Both her and Ruby switched out their fire gloves with nitrile medical gloves.
Then, the inmate began to gurgle blood. Ruby immediately replied with, "And he appears to be doing that, too." Penny then grabbed a tracheal tube and a laryngoscope out of a bag from the stretcher. She then quickly but carefully inserted the laryngoscope into the inmate's throat. Once that was all set, she inserted the tracheal tube into the inmate's trachea before attaching an oxygen bottle from the same medical bag to the end of the tube. Meanwhile, Ruby and a paid firefighter-paramedic began placing 12-lead electrodes on the patient's chest as a volunteer firefighter attempted to control external bleeding with bandages and pressure. Then, Penny grabbed drugs out of the medical bag to begin administering them through the intubation tube. Once she administered some, she kept the oxygen flowing into the patient's trachea.
As the EKG readings came in, the paid firefighter-paramedic said, "He has v-fib. We need to load him up and get him to the hospital as soon as we can." He then grabbed a backboard off of the stretcher and, with the help of Ruby, slowly slid it underneath the patient. Once he was set, Penny, Ruby, and two other firefighters lifted the man up and lowered him onto the stretcher before sliding the bloodied backboard out from underneath him. Then, Penny and Ruby stayed behind as the other two firefighters brought the inmate to an ambulance, taking the oxygen bottle, the intubation equipment, and the medical bag with them.
Ruby patted Penny on the back and told her, "We did everything we could."
"It still doesn't feel like it was enough," Penny replied, feeling down. "It just doesn't." They then both took off their medical gloves and tied them up before Penny took them and ran over to another ambulance to throw them away.
October 2, 2021
Sun visited Blake today in the hospital. As he sat on a chair next to Blake's bed, he said to her, "Blake, I got good news."
Blake turned her head over to her boyfriend and replied, "What is it, Sun?"
"The transfer request was approved," Sun replied, excitement in his eyes. "I'm gonna be staying in Vale with you instead of going back to Vacuo."
Blake's eyes lit up with happiness as she replied, "Sun... Oh, thank God..." She then stretched her arms out to reach for Sun as he gave her a hug on her hospital bed. "I love you... I love you so much, Sun..."
"I know," Sun replied as he gave her a kiss. After they split, Blake laid back down on her bed. "So, anything new with the injuries?"
"The doctors say it will definitely be early February when I get back on my feet," Blake replied. "So at least I got a definitive month and time period now instead of random speculation." She then became somber. "However, ever since the attacks..." Her mind then drifted off as she imagined the whole room around her transforming into a dust and debris-covered city street in downtown Vale as she saw firefighters walk away from her into the unknown. She seemed confused by the vision, but knew that it involved the attacks on August 23rd.
"Blake?" Sun tried to snap her out of it.
"Oh," Blake replied as she snapped back into reality. "It's nothing. Sorry about that."
"So," said a man in a suit in Weiss's office at the Vigilant's fire station as another man filmed them. "When were you dispatched to the USC?"
"My company was dispatched on the 4th Alarm," Weiss replied. "We sent all of our trucks at the time, and we managed to muster up 76 of our 86 members to eventually respond to the call in some form. The 10 that did not were unavailable due to vacation or military commitments." She was being interviewed by two military police officers conducting interviews of firefighters for the August 23rd Attacks Commission Report.
"How many of your personnel were killed in the attack?"
Weiss paused to collect herself. "We lost 16 firefighters. In addition, of the 8 paid firefighters assigned to our station, 4 were killed. Among the dead included all three of our captains and 6 of our 9 lieutenants at the time, including my father, my uncle, and my sister. Additionally, a cousin of mine who was a regular firefighter in my company was also killed, and we lost a paid captain and a paid lieutenant." She had a difficult time recalling their deaths due to her emotions.
"How much equipment was destroyed?"
"We lost all three of our apparatus," Weiss replied. "We also lost a majority of our hose, 18 of our airpacks, and we had to decommission 32 badly-damaged turnout coats, 60 badly-damaged hip boots, 26 badly-damaged helmets, 22 badly-damaged masks, and 82 badly-damaged gloves. We have 42 new full sets of turnout gear with masks, 24 extra masks, 8 of each size of small, medium, and large, and 30 new airpacks plus 30 spare SCBA bottles on an order that was placed on September 1st, and they should be delivered here on October 15th." She then sighed. "These fucking attacks wrecked us."
"I can tell," the military police officer replied, feeling bad for Weiss. "That sounds awful. Now, do you have any accounts at all of faunus within your fire company being mistreated after the attacks?"
"One of our members was yelled at and spit on on September 12th," Weiss replied in disgust. "He's a dog faunus with a single tail trait. He's a great guy. He was dating one of our lieutenants when he died. Yeah, I forgot to mention that they were both homosexuals."
"It's alright. Go on."
"Anyways," Weiss continued. "He was walking home from a fire alarm activation call late at night, since he lives a block away from the station, and at the front door to his apartment building, some drunk assholes shouted racial slurs at him and spit on him. He nearly punched one in the face before they ran off. I also witnessed a faunus volunteer firefighter from another company next door to us, Goodwill Hose Company 6, get attacked and beaten badly by a guy before we held him down and the cops got him on August 24th. It was awful. It happened right in front of our firehouse."
"Alright then," said the military police officer as he wrote some notes down on his notepad with a black ink pen. "Do we have permission to access to your company records?"
"Of course," Weiss replied. "We have nothing to hide, especially in this matter. I wanna see Sienna Khan either in a courtroom and/or his body hanging from a rope around his neck, and this will help make that a reality." She did not censor her anger at the White Fang or its leader, and neither did anyone at the fire company, especially its faunus members. "Same goes for those hackers who brought the planes down. Fuck them. Fuck them all, especially since that other attack yesterday right in our first-due. They fucking killed 34 cops, 6 dispatchers, 4 inmates, and 6 civilians in that attack." She then sighed again as she rubbed her forehead. "That's 50 people, gone in an instant. One of the inmates jumped from the 5th floor and died an hour later in the hospital. Two of my members had nightmares last night because they were right next to where he fucking landed and tried to save him, but I guess shit doesn't work out when you break every bone in your leg, smash your entire face in, and start gushing blood from every God damn orifice."
Both of the military police officers, disturbed by Weiss's account, looked at each other. One of them said to her, "Damn... I don't know how you guys do it, especially for free."
"Because somebody needs to," Weiss adamantly replied. "And because it's a calling in life. There's nothing I'd rather be than a huntress and a volunteer firefighter. Sure, being the CEO of a massive energy and manufacturing company is nice, too, and it definitely pays the bills a million times over, if not more, but doing all that combat stuff and saving lives stuff is the most rewarding thing in my life."