Pants on Fire

The other night Katia, Crespin, Grüngar, and I smelled fire as we patrolled the south docks. One of the tenement buildings had caught fire. Looked like it had been burning a while. There were people inside. The crowd was hard to convince to put together a brigade. Surely fires are common. It was strange that no one in the immediate area seemed eager to help. Do they just let the buildings burn?

Klumpenklug was with us and at the sight of the fire said, “We don’t do fires,” and walked off. Arse. We don’t do fires… No way was I walking away from this. There were people in there!

Crespin and Katia managed to get the people together and began dousing the flames. I entered the building with Grüngar. Flames licked at our boots and singed our clothing. Why had these people not run out? Some of them on the bottom floor were more than capable. Does everyone need to be told what to do?

We went in again, this time to the second floor. The stairs were quickly gobbled up by the flames as we got to the landing. An old woman, a baby, and his parents were left. Katia spread her tarp to catch us as we jumped out the window. First the adults, then Grüngar with the baby (with surprising flare), and I carried the old woman.

Everyone survived. One of the men, Narb, thanked us profusely and said pledged his aid to us in the future. About this time, Sgt. Klumpenklug showed up and, pouring the last of the water from a bucket onto the already smoldering embers, said, “Well, we made short work of that didn’t we, eh? I’ll be telling Captain Pfeffer how well you followed my orders to put out the fire.”

I blinked at him several times. He may have said something else, but I didn’t hear. His…orders…? I’m dripping with sweat, hair singed, skin blistering, and he’s the good guy? Unbelievable.

Liar!