Aisha's Amazing Adventure: Aisha and the Fire, Part One

Aisha didn’t mind Missy. It wsn’t like she was a jerk or anything—a little too try hard, coming off like a PRT soldier someone had stuck in the wash on the wrong setting and had shrink, but she wasn’t bad.

And man the stuff she could do was crazy. When they’d been playing tennis, for one of those dumb team exercises, she’d looped space around and chased Dennis around the court with all the balls he’d thrown.

She’d told Taylor about that—not Missy’s name, just the fun Vista had.

Taylor had been silent for a few moments, and then asked if Vista had ever tried that with iron slugs? She’d been curious. So had Aisha.

And when she mentioned it, so had Vista. They tried it and…

Huh, okay, they’d been safe, in the power testing room, and it turned out that terminal velocity (Cool word, take that Mr. Quinlan) of a streamlined piece of iron was about 320 kilometers per hour—it left a neat crater in the testing unit.

Then Vista got an idea and asked Kid Win if he could make a box with no atmosphere in it, so she could just keep looping a piece of metal in it, with no atmosphere to resist. He couldn’t do it, not get rid of all the air, but the online calculator Vista found said that they might be able to get a rock up to 2500 kilometers per hour, which could be pretty neat. Then they asked Assault about it, because he was cool and could probably convince Armsmaster to let her make it, and he turned an interesting color, and now… Now Vista was forbidden from doing any testing without supervision.

Aisha thought it was stupid. It wasn’t like Missy was gonna go hunting the Empire. It’d be like, for emergencies. Say if an Endbringer showed up.

And Assault was out of her cool hero book. On the other hand, he’d asked Vista if she’d like to work with him, Battery and Armsmaster to see if she could use that to help juice their own powers up. So, not a complete jerk.

But now they were doing a PR ride along with the BBPD. Bulwark was there, and there were people around, talking, putting money into the donation box for some new hardware, and Aisha had three of her Krewe out working the crowd, and incidentally keeping watch for pick pockets. She wasn’t allowed to do anything, but she could always let the cops know. Missy was showing off how she could make water go exactly where you wanted it to go, which could be cool and—

****

Stanson Chemical Engineering had been struggling for years. Bribes had seen the region around it used for low income housing, even though cancer rates were noticeably higher. But it employed people, and the city government was reluctant to lose an employer, and everyone knew a serious safety check would see the cmpany shut down.

Perhaps that was the reason why the safety valves on several tanks had not been replaced. No, instead, they’d been wired shut so that the loose systems wouldn’t keep triggering for no good reason.

Only this time, they had a very good reason to trigger. One tank ruptured, then another, and like a flash, the entire structure was engulfed in flame, several unlucky workers incinerated before they could scream, and with a tremendous roar, a cloud of smoke rose into the air.

More frighteningly, a cloud of lethal chemicals soared high into the air. But it would not long remain there.

****

The flash caused Aisha to blink. Then there was a rumbling roar from the area down by the trainyard. A cloud of smoke just shot up towering into the sky and then the blast just rattled everything. Aisha stared in disbelief. Was fucking Lung in a fight?

“All units, all units, proceed to the Trainyards, 430 Prosperity Way for an explosion and fire. We have multiple reports—the voice cut off. Then it came back. “PRT sensors indicate highly toxic chemicals have been released. Emergency Operations center is online. All civilians between Prosperity Way and Henry Jones Avenue are to evacuate immediately or shelter in place until they can be rescued. Long term shelter in place is not advised. Emergency Alert system is activated.”

Cell phones were going off in the crowd.

“Okay, head for the—“

“I can get us there faster,” Missy hissed. “And I can get the people out faster.”

The PRT handler frowned, but Max was a good guy, then he nodded. “Right, but no diving in. You’re just on mover duty.”

“I’m coming,” Aisha said. “My Krewe doesn’t care about fire, I can look for people.”

“Right, keep your meat body safe,” Max said.

“Let’s go!” the driver said as Vista jumped into the cabin of the front truck, even as Aisha called in the rest of her Krewe. Police moved the crowd aside, and the fire trucks were suddenly just moving as the street got shorter.

Looking at it too often gave Aisha headaches, but they were moving fast. And then they were there. Some buildings were wrecked, mostly the abandoned ones, but she saw a couple of apartment buildings on fire, and one looked collapsed.

Fuck. At least it’s a school day. Missy and Aisha had been out on a special day job to get people used to Krewe. Cop cars were lining the road, and waving people down away from the fire. A homeless lady went running past, her stuff and a barking dog in a shopping cart, the wheels rattling as she pushed it by. There were other people, old people, kids too young for school, hurrying along as police cars sounded their sirens. Some people were on the side of the road, down, EMT’s doing stuff to them.

“ATTENTION, ATTENTION, THIS AREA IS UNSAFE. MOVE TO THE EVACUATION CENTERS, AND CONTINUE MOVING UPWIND OF THE FIRE. DO NOT SHELTER IN PLACE.”

Other words were sounding from the radio and fortunately, since Aisha was used to keeping track of her Krewe, she could keep track of them.

Sort of fortunately, because it didn’t sound good.

“Establish a cordon East of Mark’s Street and…”

“Connerston Eldercare needs ambulances, and buses…”

“All Schools are on lockdown…”

“Emergency Operations Center will be set up at the parking lot of Marks and Eighth. Triage center will be established there. All hospitals are currently prepping for Mass Casualty Events—“

“Shit,” Aisha said. “Sounds bad.”

“Attention, this is Director Emily Piggot. All Protectorate and PRT personnel are to assist in disaster relief, and work at the direction of the Emergency Operations Center, I am declaring a Class A disaster and initiating limited Truce provisions—any parahumans assisting in disaster relief are not to be taken into custody, regardless of previous offenses.”

Vista turned to look at Aisha, her eyes wide. “I’ve never heard them do that, not since I’ve been a ward.”

“Yeah. We’re fucked,” Aisha said as the truck pulled up into the outskirts of the fire. It looked like hell.

Great, and we’re going into it. What happened to just being able to punch out our problems? Aisha wondered.

****

Deep within the ruined chemical plant, surrounded by blazing fires were tanks full of sulfuryl fluoride. Stanson Chemical Engineering in fact supplied half the fumigators on the East Coast for a price few companies could match.

After all, most other companies spent more money on safety systems.

But the tanks were getting hotter, and the pressure growing. Thousands of gallons of deadly toxin…

That was slowly being turned into a bomb.