Her anger towards the city guards of this city still burns strong. It is as much as, if not more than, her hatred for the cops in New Amsterdam City, her old Earth home. They're all cut from the same cloth after all.
Cowardly evil pricks, every last one of them. Fuck, I keep getting distracted by meaningless thoughts while this fire spreads. I… I don't see any way to deal with this alone. Every single method I have will take time and prove… futile, won’t it. By the time I deal with a portion of the fire, it'll have spread to the other floors. Fuck… What do I do… What should I do?
Shaula looks down at the head of her friend in her arms. She grits her teeth in panic and fear. She needs him. She needs his help more than anything else. His powers are the only way she can think of to deal with this quickly.
He's still healing, she can feel it. But, it’s too slow.
"Ajax… Ajax, you need to wake up… Please… I need your help. Ajax… Ajax… I need you to help me save everyone…"
Her left hand touches Ajax's cheek, holding onto it for a few seconds. She feels like she needs to cry. His cheek starts to feel… a bit warm.
Wait… what?
Her mind freezes. She examines his cheek further. It isn’t much. She might just be imagining it, this whole situation might be making her go insane, but–
Before she can think any further, she hears footsteps coming from the stairwell. There are people coming from downstairs, two of them, and they're moving up towards the fire. The only people who would be approaching this floor on fire are people who could actually do something about it, at least that's Shaula's hope.
They… They must have heard me. They heard me! Yes!
Within a couple minutes, Shaula sees people opening the stairwell door from the entrance to the hallway opposite her. The fire separates Shaula, Ajax and Orin's corpse from the newcomers. The two men are wearing some sort of helmet that covers their faces as well. It has black tinted goggles, but it doesn't look like a gas mask.
They're also wearing large coats and pants. It looks very similar to what firefighters back on Earth might wear, but they don't seem to have oxygen tanks on their backs. One of them is holding a staff made of some kind of pure white wood. She watches as the two people come into the hallway, worried that they'll suffer poisoning or oxygen deprivation from all the smoke.
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The fire is raging right now.
She tries to raise her voice to tell them not to get any closer to the flames, but she looks more closely at them and realizes that they're speaking softly to each other. She isolates their voices from the crackling flames.
Shaula listens to them speaking to each other.
"Why the fuck is that person in the middle of the hallway? Are they trying to get suffocated!?" One of them says, a man a full head taller than Shaula with a powerfully built body. His voice has a mix of anger and worry.
"Focus on what we can do, she might be delirious. She was at least kind enough to call for help. Can you smell any of the smoke?" The other thinner man holding the staff asks.
"No, your bubble spell is working fine."
Hm, they don't seem to notice the dead bodies or the head in my hands. Those tinted goggles might be hampering their visibility. That plus the fire and smoke. What are they about to do? Magic? Are they good enough to deal with this blaze? If they are… then I can just take Ajax and bail! I just have to confirm that they've got this handled…
Shaula looks closely as the men on the other side of the hallway walk towards the flames and the smoke. While holding Ajax's head in one arm, she grabs his body and puts it over her shoulder. She then walks backwards towards the opposite stairwell door while keeping her eyes pointed at the two men and the flames. They don’t pay any attention to her strategic retreat.
As their heads approach the flames, the smoke tries to approach their faces but it doesn't make it close enough. There seems to be a forcefield around their heads that prevents the air from entering. If they said bubble spell, then it's obviously some sort of air bubble made of magic. Shaula doesn't know how long that spell will last, but it looks extremely useful.
Shaula watches as the thinner man with the staff raises it up and starts concentrating on something. Both of the men are positioned quite close to the fire, but they aren’t getting burned, being guarded well by their outfits.
"I don't know how hot the flames are right now. They don't seem very hot to me, but if I'm wrong then my lowest mana cost wind spell will only spread around the flames without snuffing them out. It's also too hot to use water magic, I don't have enough mana for this kind of heat. If I try something right now, it'll be a one shot. If I fail, you're gonna have to carry me out of this floor and we'll just have to call someone who can actually handle this."
"Fuck, this is a real shit show then. This is the worst fire I've seen in a couple years. What can you do about it then?" The burly man asks his colleague.
"I'm going to have to suffocate the flames, but it's going to take a lot out of me. If I concentrate all the air in the hallway to the tip of my staff, I'll be able to smother out the flames while also collecting all the smoke. Then, you can check on the building's residents, including the girl in the middle of the hallway. I'm pretty sure she’s the one who started this, but let's ask to be sure."
"Alright, gotcha. Go for it then." The larger man stands back as the mage prepares his spell. He looks to see the girl on the other side of the hallway, much closer to the stairwell entrance now. He just snorts at the sight, not bringing it up to his mage friend. What matters most is getting this fire taken care of, not talking to the girl about how it started.