Welcome to the Talon City Fire Station!

Rescue and Hazard Teams

"What's up with them?" Yakamura asked, leaning on the back of Nhamante's chair.

"We're not cool enough for them, they have to go out and perform with their 'band'." He grunted, "Like those geezers are cool."

Yakamura snickered, and went to make herself a microwave burrito. It always seemed that the down time for the Rescue and Hazard team was far more boring than that of the other guys in the Station. That they were outnumbered almost two to one, was obviously a factor: the fire section got the good computer connection, and the EMT's got a way better set of chairs. The couch and coffee table that the Hazard section had brought in from 'somewhere' fit nicely into their main room, though, and they had the best collection of music.

That was mostly due to Davies and Ward, of course. But they at least allowed people to listen to their cd's and had to admit that even if the pair of guys were kind of odd, they had good taste in music. Most of the time.

From upstairs, in the dorms, came the loud guitar strains that their group the GraveDigger Five would be performing on stage later that night. Someone else shouted at them to turn it the hell down, which resulted in a slammed door, and a 'crank it up to 8' from the guys.

Nhamante stood and folded the newspaper he was reading onto the table, and turned on the intercom to their room upstairs. "Geezers, we know you need practice, because that stank ass. I thought you guys were supposed to be on your way to the gig by now anyway. Get out of here." He turned off the microphone, and waited.

The stomping feet above them made both Yuri and Sylvester laugh. Down the stairs, two pair of black-leather boots came heavily treading. Ward with his bass case and Davies with his guitar strapped over his back, both of them in all black, and both with those stupid sunglasses.

"You're like, the radio-Matrix," Yakamura said. "How do you even see out of those glasses at night, Thom?"

"Better than you in the daylight," he sneered, his full lips displaying that emotion perfectly. They went out to their car, and sped away.

"Bite me, whiteboy," Yakamura laughed, and went to play some extremely violent video games with the Fire crew downstairs.

***

It was a good thing that the gig didn't run terribly late that night, because the next morning there was a monumental crash on the major boulevard running nearest the station. As the medic crews got word of it, the call for any mechanical assistance available also rang through the station's many speakers.

"That's us," Nhamante said, "get the gear, we can walk from here - but look at the street," he pointed out at the crowded road, "we won't even be able to back the regular truck out at this rate."

"Let's get some traffic control out here first," Davies said, jamming the station's inter-office phone into an on-position and calling for the cops to start getting cars backed out of the intersection and blocked from coming in. Though they were ready to walk, the street did clear quickly enough, and their equipment remained in its compartments where it belonged.

The crash was pretty major, and left several dead. But the structural damage to the building was what bothered this crew the most.

"If it's not repaired, and soon," Davies insisted, "that wall will come down. Probably collapse toward the frame itself, but that will leave it open to slide out through the rubble and onto the street again. We've got to get some fencing in here before nightfall."

"Warning tape," Ward agreed, "and two sets of lights." He called up the company that usually did city work, and made sure that the coffee house owners were okay with their store being sealed up a bit differently than they were used to.

The man who owned the place was frantic. "They'll sue us, they'll sue us and we'll go to jail," he said rapidly, his accent betrayed his middle-eastern origin, but no one on the team cared where he was from.

"They won't sue you," Yakamura muttered.

"Everyone believes we're terrorists," the man continued, "we will be ruined anyway."

"The city will be paying at least part of this," Ward said, moving next to the man, and coming right up into his space. And for some reason, that seemed to calm him a bit. "We'll make sure that the building is up to code again, but you should concentrate on getting your inventory packed up. It'll be a couple days before it'll be safe to work around the place."

Bemoaning the perils of live in the USA, the man thanked Thom and the crew, then went on to try and salvage his life savings and shop.

The hazard crew was the last back to the station, and they were kind of glad for that. The lieutenant in charge of yelling at the station's workers was doing a grand job of it, and the foursome snuck in mostly under his radar. Grey was not loved around the station - especially when Ward heard the words "election year" he knew that it was vital to get the team out of there and upstairs where they could hide properly.

***

Then, the dragons came. Instantly, Yakamura and Nhamante knew that they could revolutionize the way they did things. Dragons were large, after all, and apparently quite smart. Davies went to a private meeting with the other high-ups and came back to relate that they were all going to be sent out on a rather interesting new mission together with the other teams at the Station.

They were to find dragons to pair up with. Each of them.

Ward and Davies thought it was far fetched, but pretty cool. Others in the station were either thrilled or fearful by turns.

"You know that they'll be able to like, pick up cars and move them without damaging them," Yakamura smiled. "Can you imagine how cool that is?"

"Or, get into ruined buildings without getting squished," Nhamante agreed. "We will look good on them too, like those guys on TV. Maybe they'll put in a real-world camera and we can all be famous."

"We're already going to be famous," Davies said, "because of this all. Alabaster's CEO is a bigtime entertainment mogul, he owns half the stations on the west coast you know."

"He does not own half the stations in California," Ward disagreed with a staccato tone. "Only three of them."

"You guys seem to know a lot about this CEO," Yakamura winked as she said, "that's pretty weird, for two adult men."

"Jimenez said he's hot," Nhamante chuckled from behind the fridge door, as he searched for some nondairy creamer. "But I wouldn't know about that shit."

"He's also the owner of two major recording labels," Ward said, with a grin.

"So you think you can get your sorry-ass band in there because he's funding our dragon crew?" Yakamura said, "you're crazy, man."

***

Not so crazy as it turned out, but that was another story...

They had a crash course on dragon anatomy and feeding, health care and the like, but they were then informed that their lives would in fact change dramatically. All that would come sooner than they expected.

"We've got a gig on Friday!" Davies whined as they left Talon and went to another dimension...