Splash of Color

On early October thirty-first, the emergency team, a group of volunteer firefighters from the area got an unusual call. Demi was sitting in her swivel chair when dispatch came through with the call.

“In the amphitheater, a woman and three men down. It’s gruesome but two of the men live and get this… whales wearing tiaras all over the damn place!” came the voice of their first response guy Paul.

Demi rolled her eyes and shook her pink-highlighted head. “You ok Paul? Sure you ain’t back on the stuff?” and hallucinating.

“O’ course not. Left that stuff back last year, and haven’t touched it since. I tell ya, get your butt down here, there’s a FIRE!”

Demi wrote the address and nodded. “Expect team nine soonish.” She hung up and ripped the paper from the notebook before racing through a number and dialing.

“Beep Beep.”

.Static then…

“This is team nine speaking,” said a grouchy voice.

Demi sighed. “Got a job for the team. there’s a fire in the amphitheater. Get Darla as well. Been an accident with whales.”

“Say what? Whales? What the hell is Darla gonna do to a whale? Stitch it up?.”

“Just go! Be careful, Ed. It’s a pretty gruesome sight. Don’t want you falling off the deep end again,” said Demi as another call went through.

Team nine consisted of three men and one woman. Eddy, Tay, Zack, and Darla. They were the fittest for the job ahead. Decked in protective gear, they whirled into action riding their fire truck. In shifts, they made sure it was fully stocked, yet even so, something was always missing. The bluenette rushed on board last with a paramedic’s bag.

“Sorry I forgot I took it to be stocked. Won’t happen again,” she muttered as they pulled out three minutes after the bell rang.

“Darla, again?” questioned a broad male who kept chewing spearmint gum.

“Yes, Eddy. Again,” she muttered blushing under the helmet.

Tay laughed. “All of us know not to touch that bag, señorita.”

Up in front the dark skin of Zackoria Smith gleamed with sweat as he steered the fire engine to the amphitheater. He was the most serious of all of them. The silent one. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t part of the team, however. As they got closer, smoke could be seen between the trees, as red licks of flames burned higher in the sky, changing colors from orange to red, to yellow, and at the center blue. It was starting to stretch into the nearby trees and the stench of burning bark could be smelled by everyone.

Darla turned to Zack. “Ok, what are our plans to put this fire out?”

Zack spoke for the first time to the group that day. Exiled for being a half titan, he formed team nine of the firefighting brigade and hadn’t looked back since. That was about a thousand years ago. His voice was deep and thunderous. “First we need to assess the damage the building has, and how many of us can be in at once. Then Eddy will tell us how many people are trapped, and how many are injured severely. Tay will remove them from harm, while I and Darla take out the fire.”

Darla nodded and the fire truck came to a stop in front of a very large stone building. The amphitheater was a huge round structure made of stone and steel. It was held by slabs of granite and limestone anchored to the ground, putting pressure on the walls, and could stand up to a 7-point earthquake. Flags of last night’s game were still flying around in the air. Cans of beer and trash littered the ground and entranceway. Of course, the only smell in the area was of the smoke rising from said structure.

They arrived and immediately went to work, inspecting the structural damage. The stone walls already showed new cracks from where the steel beams, were slowly expanding in the fire. Steel when it melted made a crackling sound.

A serious collapse situation. From the cracks, the fire could be seen moving at a wicked pace, towards a big blue something, and behind that thing were the survivors. Darla was too far to see anything else.

“Alright, Eddy, you’re up!” she said, as her broad teammate smiled, showing yellowed teeth. “Fine. Yo give me some space to work with,” he said gesturing to Tay who was still peaking through the largest crack along the northern wall. He stepped back and made an after-you gesture, before stepping to stand beside Zack and Darla. Eddy sighed and stretched alongside the ground, wiggling as a sharp rock poked from under his back. Not comfortable in the least, he shut his eyes and quickly entered a meditative trance.

The others could see something glowing and moving through the cracks, shining in the sun. A few minutes later, Eddy took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. “Three cops, seven reporters two critically injured, and one body in two pieces,” he said turning a little green. The body had been opened up as if with a can opener. Blood and spilled innards were everywhere, and the look on the woman’s face was horrifying. It wasn’t scared but resigned as if she lost a game or something. What sick person would ever play a game like that?

“So twelve and a body? Should be easy,” said Tay as he shook Eddy from his horrid thoughts.

“Yeah, should be a sinch.” He kept playing with the cross he wore irritating Tay.

“My turn then,” said Tay as his shadow stretched through the cracks and Eddy once more entered the meditative state. Tay was a shadow walker. A child of a vampire, so he didn’t need blood and could stand the sun. He didn’t tan and he was anemic. The cool thing was that like his father, he could control night and shadows.

One by one the people popped to the other side of the building asleep. Darla rushed the two critically injured, checking their vitals and healing them with her frost-fey magic. She came from the remains of the royal family of the Night court, which had been destroyed by the Sun court decades ago. Instead of slavery, she was hidden on Earth and grew as a human until recently, when her powers came to light. Not having anywhere to hide, she joined team nine. It was the best thing she could have done. The only thing.

Once done, Zack untangled the hose and attached it to the nearest hydrant, before Eddy and Tay rushed in with the hose on their shoulders. Zack was behind them with a ladder, and Darla took the back with her paramedic bag in tow. Together they entered and gaped at the chaos they found.

Whales wearing tiaras. About as big as a Beluga whale, these deities of the Universal Sea, could be summoned by any jester powerful enough in the arcane. They were harmless and the only sacrifice was a lot of krill. They took up the stage arena, the whole place!. It was nearly smashed to bits and Eddy saw he missed five people buried in a whale’s blubber. They were being squished to death.

“That can’t be comfortable,” he muttered pointing out his mistake to the others.

Tay laughed. “A whale beat you at your job, protector?”

Eddy shrugged and pointed out the fire. In front of a whale, were fire elementals. They were blazing and spitting fire at the whale. They were creatures made of humanoid auras of fire, that were all over the cushioned seating of the amphitheater. Burning plastic made Darla hold her sensitive nose.

“Eddy? Tay? You ready?” asked Zack. Several clicks and hisses gave way to the automated laser weapon KXP-ICE. It looked like one elongated rifle with four prongs in the nozzle.

Darla dropped her bag and took out her bow and arrow from it. She aimed it at the fire elementals.

Eddy smirked accidentally swallowing the gum and choking.

Tay patted his back. “Gotta lay off the spearmint while on the job, Edmund,” he muttered getting an angry glare from Eddy. He straightened his broad back and held the hose.

“Let her rip!” Eddy yelled as Darla stuck her hand to where they entered, and twisted her hand. Water poured from the hose in long steady streams. Darla shot the fire elemental with her weapon as it tried to move. The fire turned into ice. Seeing the danger the fire elementals morphed into monstrous lion silhouettes made of fire. Their claws and teeth let out steam. A group of fire elementals weaved out of the line of fire. Tay took out a smaller Model KXP- ICE and shot at them.

Many attacked the group, separating them.

Darla huffed as she fought the fire elementals by hand. She ran up a whale and jumped shooting three arrows into an elemental’s mouth, before dropping and rolling, evading another fireball. Like them, her opposite nature, fire, her main weakness, but unlike them, she didn’t die from the heat, only became weaker.

Tay concentrated and stretched his shadow in five directions immobilizing the enemy, while Eddy used the hose and washed out the fire elementals of their powers. A little ways away giant mechanic buzzings could be heard, as Zack opened and fired his laser gun, leaving nothing but ash behind. The five EMTs were shocked, their eyes as big as dinner plates Never had they seen a fight like this before. Some shook frightened, others watched enraptured as firefighters literally fought fire! The water levels were rising as was the toxicity of the smoke and flame, as the fire elementals became angrier and deadlier.

“We need to get those five out of here,” cried Darla, hissing when a fire claw nicked her frosty skin. The wound frosted over but the black singe mark remained. It was expected from a frost fey.

“We’ve got a five-ton whale hiding them. Even I can’t move that,” said Zack as he grabbed a fire elemental by the throat, not caring about burns, and slammed him to the floor with such force it cracked, the building rumbled on its bones. It was a regular move for the half titan to use. His biggest power was his strength.

One of the walls crumbled and the entire structure began to shake unsteadily on the beams.

“We have about ten minutes till structure collapse! These beams can’t expand much more,” yelled Eddy, pointing to the steel structure that was plainly visible inside the amphitheater.

“We gotta do something, guys. These fire elementals want our friends,” said Tay as he rose a black barrier around several fire elementals, and swooped them up into the nothing verse, the dimension where unholy creatures lived and thrived. Like the fire elementals for example. He’d been there about a hundred years ago when he was still imprisoned. Not a nice place. He’d barely escaped with his life. A fire left many shadows to use. He outstretched another shadow and coiled it against the fire elemental he had been fighting.

The whale, unnerved by everything, let out a baleful cry and suddenly hundreds of whales were dropping like bombs from the sky! The universal sea was as vast as Earth’s dimension! No way were all the whales fitting in here! The amphitheater crumbled around them.

Darla screamed and weaved in and out of the steel columns falling around her, while Tay collected some whales and sent them to the nothing verse. If they were deities they could escape, right? Right. Zack managed to lift one and threw it off him, while Eddy huddled beside the first whale, and calmly spoke to the deity. He was the negotiator after all. A psychic medium but still human.

“Yo, look. We are the good guys,” he said pointing to himself and his teammates. “They, the ones who are now riding your comrades to safety, are the bad ones.”

The whale stared at him blankly.

He jumped and waved his arms in front of its face. “Yo! Big Girl! Do you even read me?”

“Eddy, stop fooling with the whale and put out the fire already!” yelled Tay as he tried to wrestle a humanoid-looking silhouette from a whale’s back. Eddy sighed and pointed the hose at the little fire that remained, and put it out. It sucked to be the only human on team nine.