A/N: Without Krazor X to defend the ship, the warp drive is in use for far less time than in canon, so the real damage from the Promare hasn't happened. Smaller earthquakes and already-unstable volcanoes are still erupting, but the actual aliens take time to travel from the earth's center to the crust.

Lucia felt like screaming when the alert popped up on her console. Because noooo, it couldn't be something related to the raging Burnish fires, or the fuckoff-massive ship hovering above the city, or even a flat tire on the Rescuemobile. Somebody decided that they were going to target this computer of all places for a random high-density data download. She didn't even know this address existed, how was it cramming so much shit into her computer and sending her firewall alerts blaring?

Lucia hefted her leg up and slammed her scorched sneaker onto the 'fire' button, so that the freeze canons could continue to fire their payloads while she took care of this obstruction. Multitudes of charts and data scrolled across her screen as whatever invader that forced the download also shoved it up into her face.

Wait, though. Some of this was really familiar. Machinery that would result in the earth's core going nuts and rushing to the surface. Spontaneous volcanic activity apparently caused by extradimensional activity.

Lucia hastily brought up her drone camera's window. The massive ark was the most eye-catching thing on the horizon, but in the distance she could see Mt. Fennel still erupting, with mirroring surges of Burnish-colored fire arcing up from the ground all around Promepolis.

Lucia lunged back to her keyboard and tore through the download package, apparently sent on behalf of a Dr. Deus Prometh from his lab in who-knows-where.

Engines, warp drives, Kray's theft and murder, the Promare, fucking aliens, all of it made a horrible amount of sense when aligned to the chaos happening just outside, as outlandish as it seemed.

Galo must have landed by now, but still Lucia kept the Rescuemobile screeching down the streets as she frantically pinged Aina on her private comm line.

"Come on Aina, come in!"

"I'm here, what is it?" Aina's voice crackled over the comm.

"Let's call it divine intervention or something, but I know why all this is happening! I'm patching it to you and all the other Burning Rescue squads- send it to your sister as fast as you can!"

"This is insane! Did Heris know about this?" Aina asked, and Lucia could already see Aina's signal on the radar flying towards the ship.

"I don't know, but she needs to get out of there! The ship's gonna go down somehow!" Lucia hollered while whirling through all the responses from other BR divisions. Distantly, she overheard Aina's refusal to board the Parnassus, and her pleas for Heris to leave the sinking ship. If they could stop the engine on that thing, then they could stop the out-of-control eruptions at their source-

The sky above Parnassus flickered with star-spotted void, and the world bucked beneath Lucia's feet.

—

The many-as-one rose up from where it-they-he had been thrown back by the new-spark burning for the first time.

:Fire-in-flesh, same fuel same fire, one of ∇S:

Lio-Promare turned away from the single spark who was still burning-fresh, knowing through his-their-its connection in the aggregate that this Galo-spark was no threat. One of the many Conflagrations had ignited inside this particular fleshling, dragging his flame in to join the blaze.

Hundreds of Conflagrations, divided and connected and the same as Lio-spark, turned their fury to the uncaring cold that kept the many-as-one from its-their-his other-fires-other-selves. From the eyes of the fires-in-flesh trapped below, it-they-he could see-sense the cold iron heating and shifting, pushing he-they-it to pour more of themselves into the flames.

:Protect, sheltering-embers-from-rain, B∇RN the spark-stealers!:

The world darkened above him-them-it, and something snapped inside the many-as-one like oxygen sucked from the air. His-their-its surface-form spiked and wavered, breaking into sparks before rejoining the wildfire.

:What?: Echoed Galo-spark, new and fragile but still bound to the many-as-one, as all fires-in-flesh were.

The darkness spread, and Galo-spark's experimental attempts to skim along the aggregate was drowned by sudden void-freezing-starless agony.

:No fuel no air no heat! P∆in P∆IN P∆IN-:

He-they-it screamed, echoed by the fires-in-flesh below and the Conflagrations still writhing beneath the earthen crust. Lio-Promare dragged every low-burning ember to the center and forced it below, red-hot metal finally dipping and falling beneath it-them-him.

Like a small sun, Lio-Promare fell into the gaping engine room, utterly spent from channelling the pain of thousands through one fire-in-flesh body. Distantly, the many-as-one sensed Galo-spark descending behind them

—

Galo was doing a lot of falling today.

He was still struggling to keep his fire from spiraling up into something sharp and fanged, and holy shit Lio was not kidding in those caves when he said the fire was alive.

Then when the warp gate began to form above them, Galo was shocked back into reality by a sharp stinging pain pulsing out from his heart. But Lio? Lio had screamed in such an expression of torture that Galo was certain it would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.

The environment around him was plenty nightmarish, too. The massive pyramid in the center of the hold was mostly hollowed out by the explosion of Burnish fire that struck it from the top. From the sizzling edges of the platform Galo was surrounded by the guttering cries of drained Burnish, momentarily overwhelmed by the scale of it

Smoke-soft and faint, something foreign tugged at his blood. :Free them, free us:

From behind him, a stronger sensation, multiplied by a magnitude of hundreds of flares. :Join in harmony of heat-fuel-air, weld-melt-stoke-the-flame, FREE O∇R DYING PEOPLE-:

If Galo had one fire nestled in his heart, then Lio must've had a thousand, from how he lit up in Galo's new senses. Galo tensed when he felt the churning fire in Lio rise to the surface, but relaxed minutely when his own flame flashed in his mind, spreading the instinctual knowledge of the explosion's prospective size and intensity behind his eyes. There were no people vulnerable to fire still in the chamber, nor their remains- Heris and the crew must have already evacuated. This final surge from Lio would pass harmlessly over the Burnish and destroy their restraints, and then Galo could work on getting them to safety and getting Lio to chill out.

Something metallic whirred and screeched across the ceiling, and Galo looked up to see Aina's air carrier nearly clip a wing on the dripping edges of the engine room's roof.

"Galo, come on, we're getting you out of here!" Lucia's voice fizzled through the intercom.

Galo's heart fell when he felt the spark in Lio set off an explosion.

'Not them!' was the only thing he had time to think before the world was washed in multicolored fire.

It took Galo a minute to realize he was lying on his side, and even longer for the ringing in his ears to ease. He still felt Lio somewhere in the engine room, much quieter but still humming with a healthy amount of heat, so he was still alive, unconscious but okay. Drunkenly he scrambled to his feet and rushed to where the burnt-out remains of the air carrier rested, uncaring of the still-viscous molten iron that clung to his boots.

He stopped before the carrier as it groaned, brittle and about to collapse upon itself. Lucia and Aina-

Galo nearly jumped a foot in the air when the blackened side-door was launched from the air carrier by a white tennis shoe. Attached to that tennis shoe was a visibly-freaking-out Aina, who frantically patted herself down and jumped from foot to foot to avoid oven-hot metal that wasn't actually doing anything. Lucia soon followed, a small cut on her forehead dyeing her blonde hair red.

Galo sniffed back his growing tears and launched himself at his friends. The soft blue enveloping them only burned brighter as he lifted them both into the air with the force of his affection.

"Galo! Air! Need air!" Aina wheezed, but Galo could feel her holding onto him just as tightly.

Gently, he let them down on a more solid slab of iron floor, and Lucia continued to watch the interplay of faint blue fire dance between her fingers. "Okay but seriously dude, what the fuck."

"I… I think? That when I thought I didn't want you to burn, the flames reacted." Galo explained, somewhat sheepish.

Aina's eyes widened. "Wait, you went Burnish during all this?"

"Uh, yeah. Pretty sure it saved my life. Lio and the fire were not happy when I interrupted them. Oh, man, speaking of that, people were not joking at all when they said the fire was alive, I swear it was actually talking to me…"

"Oh man, Galo, you have no idea how right you are." Lucia said, poking her finger into the bright purple fire blazing from the air carrier engine. "Some whackjob uploaded a bunch of shit to my computer, but it turned out to be a bunch of buried research. Apparently Burnish get their powers from connecting to living fire aliens that got stuck in our dimension."

"The hell? I got aliens inside me?" Galo exclaimed, patting his hands over his torso as if he expected a chest-burster to make an appearance.

"Congratulations Galo, it's a Promare." Lucia said dryly. "Point is, when Kray exploited Burnish as fuel, their pain was felt by the Promare, so they freaked out and reacted by trying to escape from the core."

"C'mon you two, we'll talk about this later." Aina called out from where she had wandered. "There's a lot of people here, and we should at least help them gather in one location."

"Oh, right!" Galo exclaimed. "You two should still be protected from the heat, but be careful!"

"Oh, Thymos is telling us to be careful? The world must really be ending." Lucia said as she elbowed Aina, startling a laugh out of the other woman.

Galo whined dramatically at their japes, but couldn't hide the relieved grin from his face. Though that same grin faded when he saw the state of the room more closely, he still kept it up for the sake of the people still recovering from the warp drive. Lio was still somewhere around here, but since his inner fire was still blazing high, the faint cinders of the captured Burnish took priority. He knew, somehow, that Lio wouldn't tolerate any attention until all the captives were freed anyway.

Galo fell into a rhythm of helping pull Burnish out and following directions to the gathering located at the least-melted corner of the warp drive room. After a red-haired woman thanked him and picked her way over iron slag, Galo turned around to face someone very familiar.

"It's you!" They both cried in unison. Gueira didn't exactly look in the best shape; Galo could see his scarlet fire burning lower than it usually did, the tips of his fingers showing a dry and unhealthy grey color.

"The hell're you doing here?"

"Helping people out of the melted pods?" Galo responded.

Gueira looked distinctly unimpressed. "You know that's not what I mean- wait a second." He paused, approaching Galo and squinting at him. "The fuck? When did you become Burnish?"

"Uhh…" Galo did some mental math. "About ten minutes ago?"

"Sweet Mother Mary, you're a newbie. Look, where's the boss? I can feel 'im but not very clearly."

Wait, he couldn't? "He's where the control room is; just worn out from blowing this place up, I think. He's nearby, I'll take you to him." Galo offered, and hastily they made their way to the center.

When they arrived there, apparently Aina had taken the time to haul the half-conscious Burnish into a recovery position.

"I almost tripped over him." She explained, visibly concerned.

Galo could feel Lio's fire steadily burning, but from the outside? Yeah, he looked rough. His internal furnace might be chugging away as normal and his form no longer made of amorphous black flame, but he looked thinner, more hollowed-out. And when Galo pressed his fingers to the inside of Lio's wrist, the heart arrhythmia made it apparent that while Galo was fed in prison, wherever Lio was, he wasn't.

Gueira sat on his knees, running a hand through Lio's tangled hair. "Shit, boss… What the hell is up with his inner fire?" He asked, directing the question towards Galo.

Well that didn't bode well. "You mean it's not always like that?"

"No, this is way too much, too many different types- Hey! Meis!" Gueira called, spotting the other Mad Burnish general across the room.

As Meis pelted across the engine room, Lio convulsed and hunched over, coughing up cyan sparks. Gueira hurried to support him, letting the Mad Burnish boss lean on him bonelessly before getting his bearings. Meis skidded to a stop in front of them just as Lio reoriented himself.

"Hey, boss, talk to me, you still burnin'?"

"Gh." Lio wheezed. "Ugh. Yeah. It's just- we're… they're stuck. The Promare, there's too many and now they're trapped."

"Wait." Galo interjected. "They're still in you?"

Something behind Lio's eyes brightened, and the still-new spark in Galo's chest twitched towards Lio. "We ∆re still here."

:M∆ny (one) fires, m∆ny (one) bodies, m∆ny (one) souls:

As one, Galo, Gueira, and Meis winced at the simultaneous words from Lio's mouth and the thoughts from all their fire.

"Dude, that is still so freaky." Galo grumbled.

"No shit." Gueira echoed from beside him, forgetting their awkward meeting in the face of something so otherworldly and strange.

"Hold on a second." Aina said from where she had been looking distinctly ponderous. "How do you know about the Promare?"

Still woozy, Lio simply pointed at Galo. "Lifted it from him."

Galo shivered, gooseflesh rising on skin that could no longer feel the faint chill. "Hey wait a second, did you basically look through my brain's google search history?!"

"It's not like I asked for it." Lio griped back. Then he shivered, as black curled into claws at his fingertips and condensed dark fire crawled across his body.

All four of them clambered over Lio, asking what was going on, what could they do to help-

"Fuck." Lio shuddered. "The Promare came up from the core when I called, but now they're here, and we don't have a m∆gma vein to escape through."

"Lio! Do they have a place they can go?" Galo asked, gripping thin shoulders that seemed to dissolve and reform beneath his hands.

Galo felt his own flame- his own Promare- frantically pulling towards the whirling firestorm inside Lio, and had an idea.

Uncharacteristically serious, he turned to Aina. "The Promare that connected to me and made me flare up? It came from the ones merged with Lio."

"Galo, what are you saying." Aina said reproachfully, glowing blue highlighting the concern on her face.

"If I'm not out in ten minutes, get Lucia to zap me or something." And before Aina could protest, Galo took Lio's head in his hands and pressed their foreheads together, diving into the metaphorical ocean of flares riding inside Lio.

Galo wasn't quite sure what he could do- maybe bleed off some of the pressure hosting so many Promare was putting on Lio, or look for a place to shove all the excess Promare into safely, but soon he was engulfed in fire.

It was… honestly fairly disturbing, the same way a half-remembered nightmare was. Spinning flares and pulsing static, all traced in colors he had no name for and frequencies he shouldn't be able to hear. It was like grasping at ashes, smoke slipping between his fingers, but Galo came upon Lio's place in the conflagration, push-pulling control and memories among the Promare. When he got close enough, the fire gratefully offloaded a portion of their mental bulk onto Galo using his own Promare as a bridge.

Among it, Galo caught snippets of Lio: his failures, his triumphs, his burning protectiveness and righteous rage, all mingling with Galo's own experiences and siphoning them back to Lio.

It was… a lot. Almost too much, when Galo felt like a wire pulled in a dozen directions, feeling the individual sparks of every Burnish in the engine room. Without the wildfire-roar overpowering everything beyond the most basic of emotions, both he and Lio could really see-feel-know what the Promare were.

The Promare needed to burn, yes, but there was nothing in their temporary home inside Earth's molten core that could satisfy that need. They burned too fast, too hot, there wasn't enough fuel in the world to sustain them.

But they weren't limited to just the world, Galo was reminded as Lio's presence tugged his perception skyward. Endless nuclear fusion, like the Promare's homeworld. The sun?

Of course, the sun! But the only warp-capable tool they had was the ruined core of Parnassus, heatproofed but still shattered by Burnish justice. But still it could be salvageable, and both of them could understand that yes, it would be painful, like ripping off a scab, but it could work. If they balanced it between themselves and the Promare, tugged the Conflagrations still stranded in the core to blaze higher, hotter, fingers of fire reaching out and grasping at the stars-

Galo came back to himself with an undignified squeak, and opened his eyes to Lucia holding a cell phone she bastardized into a giving him a light shock.

Galo took a moment to remember to breath, that he had lungs and a beating heart, and then braced his hands on the deck and vomited like a blackout-drunk partygoer.

"Urgh." He groaned. "Oh, man, that was a bad trip."

"Galo, I hope you accomplished something with whatever that was, because the tectonic activity is getting worse and none of us have any ideas." Lucia said, uncharacteristically fearful.

" 'S like a teakettle." Lio said from where he sat prone, looking just as ill as Galo felt. "There's too much pressure, and not enough real combustion for them. The closest place with enough juice is the sun, and we sure as shit aren't getting there by conventional means."

"Lucia." Galo said, grabbing her attention. "The base energy pipeline for the warp drive should still be around, it was fireproofed as hell. Can you make it usable?"

Lucia's hands tightened into fists. "I can do it, it should be easy, from the cables still sticking around. But Galo, you saw what this thing did to people."

Galo exhaled noisily, both to calm himself and to help get rid of the vomit-smell. "Yeah, it's gonna hurt like hell. But we just need to keep a little bit of it open for long enough."

The rumbling beneath their feet increased, and Lucia caved. "Fine. Don't do anything more stupid, dummy."

While Lucia started ripping out wires and getting to work, Gueira and Meis cornered Lio.

"Boss, are you sure-" Meis started.

"Yes, I'm sure. I'll be fine- it's not just one person, and we have a lot more firepower between us."

Galo let their quiet argument wash over him as he focused on staying in the present, in this body, because sweet fuck, if this was only a portion of what Lio was dealing with in the Conflagration it's a miracle he was still conscious.

Aina poked his cheek. "Hey, Lucia is done." She said softly, pointing towards where Lucia was holding a bundle of wires spliced into a frankencable.

"Shove your power through this, and it should activate the warp. I have no idea how to get the Promare through it, so that's up to you."

Galo looked out over a sea of Burnish quietly watching from a distance, every one containing their own unique spark. Lio nodded at him, and grabbed his hand.

"Yeah, let's do this." He said, clutching the cable just underneath Lio's own grip.

Slowly, like pressing the gas on a finicky bike, Galo and Lio siphoned off the roaring excess power into the engine.

:More:

Galo's hand burned, with heat and cold both.

:Needs more! Close!:

Galo saw sparks behind his eyes and clenched his jaw to keep from screaming, feeling barbed wire drag across his skin and fire searing away his fingertips.

Then, like a sealed vacuum being unlatched, something snapped into being above them, an impossible surface of endless combustion.

:There! Bright-beacon, light-that-guides!:

Galo hung onto the warp gate tight, forcing it to remain open while Lio yanked the remaining Promare in Earth's core and sent them flying up, further and further until their tails disappeared into the stars.

:∆lways-connected, lightning arcing to the ground no matter the distance. Still here, still one fire-life-soul: Galo's Promare murmured, echoed by every Burnish-synced flare that blazed towards the sun.

As soon as the last one slipped inside, Galo gasped and ripped his hand away from the warp engine cable, dragging Lio along by their still-clenched hands.

The blurred white faded from his vision, and Galo blinked his eyes open to see Aina patting his cheeks.

Aina heaved a deep, exhausted sigh. "Oh thank God, you're still okay."

Groggily, Galo looked over to Lio. The Mad Burnish boss, lying down, lifted his hand to his face and cradled a small pink-blue ember between his fingers. Softly, like embracing a loved one, he clutched his fire tight and rested it over his heart. Mirroring him, Gueira and Meis lit fires in their palms, marveling at both the persisting powers and weakened connection.

Galo tried to move his aching limbs, but when his joints rebelled he decided he was just fine, splayed out here.

"Hey." Aina said from beside him. "All the divisions of Burning Rescue will be here soon, and if what Lucia heard is right, then the federal government is flying in to detain all the people involved in this."

Meis snorted. "Oh yeah, that's a new one. Feds are actually doing something, for once. Not every day that happens in a sundown town."

"Trying to blow up the world beneath their feet would piss off anybody, it seems." Lucia retorted from her position perched on a scrap of iron hull, tapping away at her half-melted PDA.

"Hmmn. Hey, Lio, do you wanna get pizza after this?"

"Priorities, Galo. After everyone is taken care of."

"Cool, we'll just get them pizza too."

"Galo."

"It's not like I can move anyways."

"He's right, you know. Still, take a rest. We've got your back." Aina interjected, punctuating her declaration by ruffling Galo's singed hair.

Gueira piped up. "Yeah, boss, we'll take it from here. Make sure they don't pull any shit."

"Yeah, okay, just for a little bit." Lio agreed, though Galo caught him trying, and failing, to sit up and get to work.

That could be for later, though. For the moment, Galo drifted off to the knowledge that old friends and newfound allies were making amends, and dreamed of riotous fires tingeing the sun pink.

-

A/N:

The last part of this fic fulfills my desire for Lio Fotia to take a damn nap. Also, I dunno why but I get the vibes that Gueira was raised catholic.

for the record Thyma survived in the background. Because Thyma survives in all my aus.

So while the promare don't go home, they do end up at an acceptable substitute in the sun. Since they're still in the same dimension, the Promare remain synced to the burnish, though the connection is weakened due to distance.
Anyways i have way too many thoughts about the connection between promare and burnish PLEASE talk to me about it