While the Rescue had been away, Engine 25 had responded to a single run of its own- a medical call, which turned out to be a homeless pony sleeping on a bench. He shooed them away with a rolled up newspaper, and they returned to quarters, where Lieutenant Coppertop ordered them to conduct a drill.
Unit drills were very common, a way of both passing time when nothing else was happening and of honing and refining the training every firepony received at the Academy. Some skills they had learned might never be put to the test in a real emergency throughout their entire careers, but it could be the downfall of an entire operation if, just one time, they were called upon to perform some esoteric function and found they had forgotten all about it.
The drill- or evolution, in firepony speak- that Coppertop selected was a simple one, the most basic function, in fact, of the Engine Company. It was merely the stretching of lines of hose in the rear courtyard of the firehouse. That was what an engine was for, after all. They stretched hoses, they extinguished the fire. It was a prudent decision to check on how the new probie would fit in with such operations. The fire he had operated at, the carrier, had not seen Engine 25 stretch a line themselves. Instead they had taken over control of one which had already been laid by another company. Ember Dawn had not stretched a line in anger, and that was how he now found himself doing just that, over and over again, while the other members of the company performed their part in the drill, getting the nozzle ready and supporting the deployment of the hose until they were ordered to start again.
It was tedious, but it was vital. After all, they were practising their very reason for existing as a company. On scene, an engine might well be called upon to perform any number of other tasks, but ultimately, this was what the very first engines had been formed for several hundred years ago, when the hose was made from simple leather instead of layered rubber and plastics as it was now. Dawn was happy to carry out the task. He knew that it was obviously a form of hazing to have the new pony lugging the hose every time, considering that he was not the only pony who would ever ride as the backup. But it was a reasonable form of hazing; his fellows wanted to know they could count on him, and so did Coppertop. Yes, he had performed well at his first fire, but, though the scale of the fire had been vast, his role in stopping it had been very minor. In a smaller fire, a first alarm where Engine 25 was first-due to the scene, the first hose line to be stretched could well stop the fire, save the building, save lives, all by itself, provided it were correctly placed, manned, and operated. That was what the drill was all about. Making sure that Dawn, and by extension, Engine 25 when he was riding with them, could perform that task effectively. And so they ran it again, and again, and again.
The members of Rescue 1 clambered aboard their vehicle. They had been out of service for over three hours because of the last call; when they arrived at the hospital, the colt, Sulfur Springs, was rushed to the trauma room. Doctors checked him over. His liver had been punctured by the metal spike, and while several blood vessels had been ruptured, no major artery had been damaged. A quick x-ray series had been examined by the on-call trauma surgeon, who determined that most of the liver could be saved with prompt removal of the fence post. He would need help, though, and so Rescue 1 had been drafted in. The operating room had been set up while Grey Spike discussed tactics with the surgeon and his team. It was decided in short order that the end of the spike protruding from Sulfur's back should be cut as close to the body as possible. The spike could then be delicately extracted from the front, minimising the amount of metal that would have to be pulled through the colt's body and thus the possibility for affecting his bowels, bladder, spleen or any one of half a dozen other organs.
The circular saw was out of the question; the operating theatre was a sterile room, and using a gasoline-powered tool that pumped out fumes and sparks when surrounded by highly flammable concentrated oxygen and other substances was not exactly a sensible course of action. Grey Spike had ordered Flagstaff to help the surgeons with a magic shield if needed, much as she had done at the scene, and High Line would use the sparkless reciprocal saw, a small hoof-held device that was very similar to the kind of device the surgeon himself might use to cut through bone, but with even stronger blades that could slice through metal as well. The rest of the crew would standby with portable extinguishers outside the operating room in case anything went wrong- though sparkless in theory, the saw had been known on rare occasions to produce them when cutting certain types of metal. Iron was not, so far as anypony knew, among those, but Grey Spike deemed it prudent to be safe rather than sorry.
High Line and Flagstaff had scrubbed up just like the medical team, after stripping off their gear, and they had gone into the theatre. Everything had gone well; the metal had been cut, nothing had caught fire or exploded, and with great care, the surgeon had removed the metal from Sulfur Springs, repaired what internal damage he could, and sewn him back up again. Now he lay in the intensive care unit, with his mother by his side. He had, the surgeon told the Company, an excellent chance of survival and a very healthy- pardon the pun, he had added- chance of a full recovery.
It gave every member of the crew pride. They had helped in no small way toward that, and while everypony did their job because they knew ponies needed their help, it was nice to get some kind of reward at the end of an operation, even if it was just a feeble thank you from somepony for saving their pet cat, or a quick call from the hospital to say that yes, that burn victim pulled through after all.
'Rescue 1 to Manehattan, we are taking up from Meadowbrook Memorial Hospital. We are 10-8, K,' Grey Spike informed the dispatcher. They were 10-8; back in service and available for calls if needed. In their absence, calls in the borough of Manehattan that required a Rescue Company would have had to be covered by one of the other Rescues, which could, depending on their location, take up to three or four times longer to arrive at the scene. It was a frustration for the dispatchers, who tried their best to maintain coverage, when they lost any company for such a length of time, but the specialised Rescues were even more valuable because of the range of services they could provide which others could not.
The journey back down to the firehouse passed with some casual conversation between the members. Flagstaff asked Blaze all about his family. She didn't remember his father personally, but she had certainly heard some stories about him during her three years on the Rescue. Blaze was happy to talk about Blaze Beater, and hoped that his dad was happy to talk about his son, both of his sons, whenever he met up with his former brothers-in-arms at one of the many firepony reunions he attended.
Back at the firehouse, Blaze found his brother packing away hose at the end of a long drill session. He grinned at him and called out as he dismounted. 'Hey, probie! Make sure that hose is rolled up nice and tight!'
Dawn made a rude gesture in reply, which made Blaze and Striker, who was watching from the housewatch desk, burst out laughing. Blaze shot Striker a grin and headed to the kitchen.
'Hey, where the hell were you guys?' Striker asked him. 'You've been gone for, like, the whole shift. You missed your brother doing about a hundred hose lays.'
'Oh yeah?' Blaze chuckled. 'We were at the hospital. Kid decided he'd rather impale himself on a metal fence than go have his teeth pulled. Had to give the surgeons an assist.'
Striker whistled. 'Oh yeah, I hate the dentist too, but c'mon, kid. Really? Damn...is he gonna make it?'
'Surgeon seemed hopeful, yeah,' Blaze replied. 'We cut the metal down as much as we could and he was able to get it out. Poor kid. HIs mother was hysterical. Kept saying she'd killed her son because she tried to insist he went to the dentist. She's with him now, anyway. He's on the road to recovery, hopefully.'
'That's great. Well, relatively, all things considered,' Striker mused. 'Only in Manehattan, huh?'
'Only in Manehattan,' Blaze chuckled. Having lived in the city all his life, just like Striker, he knew exactly what was meant by that innocuous little phrase. It didn't mean that strange and outlandish incidents couldn't happen in other cities; they did. It just meant that if you took a sample of the top twenty oddest fire calls, police calls, medical runs, or simply bizarre occurrences that had been witnessed on the streets of each other city in Equestria, then there was a good chance that every single one of them had happened in Manehattan at some point, or would in the future. It was the nature of living in such a teeming metropolis, which had creatures of all kinds as residents and tourists, land use ranging from scrubland to chemical industry to mega-high rises, and services from spas, nightclubs and brothels to museums, convention centres and movie studios. If something could happen somewhere in the world, chances are it would happen in Manehattan.
Beep-Boop.
'Engine. Battalion.'
This time, the evening meal had already been consumed and cleared away, much to everypony's delight, before the alarm sounded. 'Box 7046, West 51st between 10th and 11th Avenues, structural fire!' Striker shouted. 'Engine goes first due!'
Dawn, who had been playing cards in the lounge with Dark Flash, Fairway and Blaze, leaped up along with the rest of the engine crew, and hurried out to their rig. It was getting dark outside. The nights were starting to creep in, and the chill of autumn was already noticeable in the night. Worse would follow in the coming weeks as the nights grew longer and longer, but for now, there was a pleasant enough warmth to the air as they climbed up into the rig and set off into the twilight.
'Manehattan calling Battalion 9?'
'Battalion 9, K.'
'Looks like they're reporting fire on the second floor at this time, ponies trapped on the third floor. Battalion 9, received?'
'Battalion 9, 10-4.' Chief Firebrand replied from his car, following behind the engine and driven by his aide, a firepony mare by the name of Pumpkin Punch.
'Manehattan calling Ladder 4, received?' The dispatcher checked in with Ladder 4, the first-due truck company, and received a similar reply.
'Engine 25, received?'
'Engine 25, 10-4,' Coppertop replied into the radio. 'We might have work, everypony get ready.' Dawn tightened his straps and checked his helmet and air tank. He wanted to be ready to leap straight into action if needed, but there was always the possibility that what was reported over the phone as a life-or-death deadly disaster unfolding before the caller's very eyes was either a prank or a drunken illusion, or somewhere in between, perhaps a misunderstanding or a language barrier. 'Yak burning! Building burning! Yak not stand it any longer!' could turn out to simply be a disgruntled member of that species calling the emergency number to try and report that the thermostat in its tenement building was turned up higher than it would like.
As the engine rounded the corner onto the block, however, it became clear that was not the case here. Coppertop grabbed the radio. 'Engine 25 to Manehattan, urgent.'
'Unit with the urgent, go ahead, K.'
'Engine 25 to Manehattan, 10-75 the box, K,' Coppertop called. Signal 10-75; a working fire.
Flames were pouring freely from the second floor window of a six-storey brick structure, a multiple dwelling with numerous apartments, and thus numerous creatures living within it. Deep Blue pulled the rig straight past the fire building before coming to a halt with a hiss of air brakes. The crew bailed out, jumping down to the street. To an onlooker, it may have seemed odd; why had she driven right past the burning building? It was right there!
The reality was that Deep Blue had done exactly what was needed. The street was narrow, and like all cross-streets in the borough of Manehattan, it was one way traffic only. While later-arriving units could certainly be directed by radio to enter the block against traffic if needed, the first-due companies would arrive from the same direction, and it was not the engine that needed to be in front of the fire building- it was the truck. The trucks were responsible for searching the building for victims, and often, that meant raising the aerial ladders, either to rescue victims who were waving from the windows or to allow fireponies to quickly access an upper floor. To do that effectively, the ladder had to be in front of the fire building. There was another reason for the Engine to pull beyond the building as well, and that was that the Engine held only a limited amount of water. It had an on-board booster tank, but it held only 500 gallons, enough for a couple of minutes' water from a hose line. Anything more than a simple car or trash fire would need additional resources, and so the Engine had to pull up near a fire hydrant so that it could connect to it and pump water directly from the city's mains supply.
Firebrand's SUV pulled into the block and over to the side, finding a spot among parked vehicles, leaving room for Ladder 4, which roared into the block a moment later, coming to a halt in the correct spot right in front of the burning building. The crew piled out as Coppertop issued orders. 'Alright, let's hustle! Blue, get hooked up to that hydrant. Striker, Dawn, stretch a line to the front door. Flash, standby for entry.'
Everypony leaped to it. Dawn felt his heart pumping just as it had at the carrier, only this was a subtly different feeling. Then, it had been one of shock, of being overwhelmed by the scale of a huge ship burning seemingly from stem to stern, and hundreds of ponies being led to safety. Now, it was one of duty and responsibility. This was a working fire in his company's first-due area. Striker was the nozzlepony of the first arriving engine, and he was the backup. Their job was to put out that fire; as simple as that.
Together with Striker, Dawn pulled the hose. He checked it for kinks or damage, finding none. They were good to go. He put his mask on as the truck raised its aerial ladder to the second floor. A second engine pulled into the block, but they could go to hell; this was Engine 25's fire to fight. This was his fire.