Requested by @Oragami
Art by AbaloneShuttle
You are Sparky!
You are a brown and grey pegasus, and you have the most important job in the world! You work for the fire department! They’re a bunch of very nice misters and ladies that put out big scary fires! You’ve trained since you were just a little tiny foal to help them, and now that you’re a big colt you get to do it for real!
“Ready Sparky?” Mister Tim said, setting you down outside the house.
“Weady!” You chirped, looking up at the big house. It looked very different from the one you trained on, much larger and with boards over the windows.
“Alright folks, we’ll be doing a controlled burn today!” Mister Tim addressed the crowd of firefighters behind you. “Sparky is going to start the fire, we’re going to start a timer after he goes in and once that goes off we’ll go in and put it out.”
“…And rescue Sparky, right?” One of them asked.
“Sparky knows what he’s doing, he’s trained pretty hard for this.” Mister Tim answered. “If you happen across him while clearing the building, it’s good practice but remember that human lives come first. Sparky is gonna get this party started real well, aren’t you buddy?”
“Yus, Mistah Tim!” You gave a confident smile to the worried mister. You weren’t scared at all! You’d done this so many times, it was easy!
“Alright, someone start the timer.” Mister Tim handed you the plastic tube as he opened the front door. “Get on in there!”
You smiled around the tube in your mouth as you scampered into the building.
The smell hit you first, musty with hints of mold and rot. Unlike the sawdust and smoke of the training buildings. The floors were dirty with layers of garbage and papers, and you could see little hoofprints in them no larger than your own. There could be other fluffies in here! Your heart leapt at the thought of having another fluffy friend, you hadn’t seen another fluffy since you left your meanie family at the shelter.
You shook your head, clearing the distractions from it. You had a job to do! A very important one! You couldn’t be getting distracted!
Scampering around the house, you looked for a good place to hide the tube as you were trained to. The better you hid it, the more treats you got! Some places were okay hiding spots, like the room with the bed or couch, but the best spots had the big white nummy box!
You skidded to a halt on the smooth tile floor of the kitchen, smiling up at the open door of the nummy box. This would do! Ignoring the stench of not coming from the abandoned food inside it, you jammed the tube into a crack between the cabinets.
You smiled to yourself, thinking of all the treats you would get after your first real job. Your human friends would be so happy! You bit down on the end of the tube, twisting it off like you always did. This was your favorite part, pulling out the tissue paper! It was always such pretty shades of red and orange, and made such delightful crinkling noises as you did!
FWOOOOOP!
Pain. You were in incredible pain, scrambling away from the tube. Your face hurt worse than anything you had ever felt before, worse than even your mother’s hooves hitting you. Worse than her calling you ugly.
What did you do wrong?!
You turned back to the tube to see fire shooting out of the end, much like the tissue paper that was supposed to be there. Did you do this?! It never did this before, in any of your training! Something must be wrong!
You gritted your teeth as the flames began to lick up the sides of the cabinets. You were part of the people that stopped the fires! You needed to stop this! To save your friends! You scurried around the side of the tube, clamping your teeth down into the hot plastic and pulling it from the cabinet. If you could get this outside to them, they could use their big water hoses to put it out! Then you’d be a hero!!
You turned and ran, flare hanging from your teeth, only to bang into a wall. With one of your eyes hurt from the burn and the other blocked by the bright flare you were completely blind.
Hm. Your tiny brain processed this for a moment. You couldn’t carry it out of the building without being able to see. You decided to bring the firefighters to it rather than it to them, and tried to spit it out.
Keyword, tried.
The hot plastic was sticky and soft, now molded to your teeth. You scraped at your mouth with your hooves and screamed around the flare as you felt the flames catch on your fluff. You were on fire! Hot pain ripped through you as your very flammable fluff burnt. You tried to remember your training, what did Mister Tim tell you?
“Now Sparky, if you ever find yourself on fire remember to run as fast as you can! Try rubbing it off of you on walls or curtains!”
Yes! Running! You ran as hard as your little hooves would carry you, choking on the fumes of the flare in your teeth. When you would run into something you’d drag yourself against it, burnt flesh in agony as you scraped it off on the surfaces.
Your lungs burned, and soon all you could feel was pain. You didn’t even know if your hooves were on the ground anymore, but you kept them moving as best you could just in case you were still upright. Soon someone would come rescue you. They’d know that something went wrong, and come put out the fire. That was what they did!
And when Mister Tim came to rescue you, you’d have to tell him that his advice wasn’t very good.
