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Chapter 8 by Almax Almax

Go to the smoke, or follow the lady?

The smoke will be gone soon, the lady will exist for decades to come!

The logic is sound. A lady that young, who's dedicated to her jog while cool stuff is happening? She's definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. But, as she said, people are trying to put the fire out as you speak. It'll last for way less time!

With your decision made, you turn from her and carry on towards the pillar of smoke. Yeah, this makes sense. It still takes you a short while to get up close to it, but when you eventually do you're greeted by the sight of a brick building completely engulfed in roaring flames. Wow! You've never seen a fire this big before at all!

Firefighters are up in their firetruck, spraying water down at the building from a lifted position, while other firefighters use their water hoses from the ground. They're making slow progress, but it's still progress. The fire won't be around for much longer, which means that the huge totem of billowing smoke will go away too. Before it's lost to time, you want to remember it as it was and learn all that you can about it, even if it might make you sad, because it deserves for somebody to remember it.

You walk towards one of the ground-level firefighters, after learning all that you can from your own empirical abilities. That is, you read the sign on the building that says it's "Mitogolli's Pizzeria", and you see a bunch of people in chef's hats standing off to the side watching the building burn down. They look a bit sad, but all safe and unharmed, and not panicked enough to suggest that anybody from inside the building is any different. They're getting rid of this smoke so soon after it was born, when it didn't even hurt anyone, that's so sad....

You tap the firefighter on the shoulder.

"Excuse me?" You ask. "Can you explain it all?"

You wave your hands in a big gesture towards the building, hoping that will get your message across. The firefighter just grunts in response. You frown. That wasn't right. They must not have heard you.

You step closer to try again. Unfortunately, in doing so, you accidentally tread on the hose. With how much water's coming through it, it's only two seconds before a bunch of water's totally built up on the other side of your foot, bulging the hose comically, before it comes bursting out powerfully!

You're knocked backwards onto your bum, and the firefighter's sent stumbling a bit as well. Unfortunately, they end up slipping in a puddle of recently-launched water mid-stumble, sending them crashing down to the ground to land with much less padding than you got to. They lose their grip of the hose on impact, sending it waving through the air wildly and spraying water all over. Ah! Not good!

You jump back up to your feet quickly. Everything just went so downhill so fast!

You've got to take action!

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