burningrescue | Zenitsu Catch All

[He nods as he heads for the refrigerator. He's doing fine, all things considered. As he moves, he glances at the cereal alphabet.]

Burning rescue? What does that mean?

Burning Rescue is the name of my firefighting unit! It's the toughest unit in all of Promepolis.

You sure are tough, Mr. Thymos.

[He pulls out a cup of pudding and grabs a spoon before walking over to Galo.]

What is it like? Your unit.

We're small, but we're scrappy! The Captain, Ignis, is an old pro. But he's a great guy, he never tries to reign me in too much. Lucia is on tech, and she loves building me things. And then the rest of the team -

[Oops, but he'll be interrupted by a memory:

Galo is at the base of a massive skyscraper, the tallest building in a city of skyscrapers. The building is the seat of power for Governor Foresight. Security is tight, but Galo is allowed in - the security recognizes him as Promepolis’ young hero, points to the medal he’s wearing pinned to his chest.

Galo sits in the lobby of the building and waits, his mood dark. A man enters, flanked by his assistant, and Galo tells him they need to talk.

The Governor’s office is at the top of the building, looking out over the city far below. Galo lays his medal down on the Governor’s desk.

“You want to return it?” he asks.

“Lio has escaped,” Galo says. “I met him in a mountain cave. He says he escaped from prison.”

The Governor assures Galo that there’s still no need to return the medal he was awarded for Lio’s capture.

“Medals are made to be awarded to and by people who deserve them,” Galo pronounces. “Neither of us are worthy.”

The Governor’s expression hardly changes, but some surprise seems to register as he asks Galo what he means.

“Gov! Is it true that you’re doing human experiments on the Burnish?” Galo is shouting, angry, but when Kray responds with only silence, he flinches, pained and heartbroken. “You’re my hero. You saved me, started the Foresight Foundation, and founded this amazing city. But you’re doing such a horrible thing?”

“Horrible?” Kray asks, still not reacting.

“The Burnish are humans,” Galo says, thinking now of Burnish he’s met, and of Lio, too. “They get hungry, they get sad if they lose a friend. Of course it’s bad if they start fires, but you can just arrest them for that! You can’t kill them for no reason!”

There’s a long silence, before the Governor moves. “I see. Follow me.”

He leads Galo down the elevator, below the building, into a massive underground facility, and there he explains everything to Galo. The magma in the earth’s core has been burning out of control. Within a matter of months, it will overheat, and the planet will be destroyed. The Governor is planning to take an expedition of 10,000 people on a ship to another habitable planet, abandoning the earth. But the only hope for this plan is warp technology, which is powered by the Burnish.

The Governor takes Galo to an underground lab, where he shows an experiment in progress. A young Burnish man, who Galo recognizes as a pizza guy in town, is placed in a machine called a Prometech pod, and spun until he screams and begins to burn. The machine allows some scientists to warp across the room. Kray is pleased - the test was finally a success. The Prometech pods will work. But Galo watches horrified, seeing the pizza guy’s fingers turn to ash. The machine is burning away his life force.

“That’s horrible,” Galo says to himself, but Kray corrects him.

“It’s a valued sacrifice for the survival of mankind. We can’t build the warp engine without the Burnish.”

“There must be some other way,” insists Galo. “If we stop the magma, we won’t need to go to another planet.”

“I’ve considered that, but we can’t stop it with our current technology. Migration’s our best bet.”

“So, you sacrifice the Burnish for that?” Galo is staring at the ground.

“Exactly. Do you understand now?”

“Yeah, I do,” he concedes, still not looking up at him. “But I can’t accept it.”

“Then what will you do,” the Governor asks, for once curious.

Galo clenches his fists, and looks up again with determination in his eyes. “I’ll extinguish earth’s magma!”

Kray smiles, suddenly. It’s the first genuine smile on his face this entire time. “I knew you’d say that,” he laughs, disdainfully, and his security guard presses his gun against Galo’s back. “We’re short of time. Can’t have an idiot making a fuss.”

The memory ends.]

[Zenitsu likes hearing what Galo has to share about himself. Even if he tends not to think about the hows, he's inspirational in that he doesn't allow anything to stop him. Now that he's about to talk about his team, Zenitsu slides into a seat across Galo to listen when the memory strikes him like a hammer.

It's not the reception that smarts. It's the memory itself that leaves Zenitsu dazed as he snaps back to reality with a gasp and a plethora of questions while the likeness of Galo leaves him.

In the end, all of them come back to just the one.]

W-why?

Ugh!

[He's only frustrated at the memory, gritting his teeth.]

I'm getting pretty sick of seeing that.

[Zenitsu fixes Galo with a look of horror. How many times has he had to relive that?]

Mr. Thymos! The earth . . . those people . . . What happened to them?

[He's relived a few similar memories. But he sighs at the question.]

I dunno. All of that happened about a week before I came here. I still have to get back there and put it right. . .

What about Lio? Was he all right when you last saw him? I mean, he's here with us, but there was . . .

[There was, well, Asch. Zenitsu shudders at the reminder.]

[He smiles a little, fond, when Zenitsu asks about Lio.]

Yeah. Lio's tough as anything. He escaped with a bunch of prisoners. They tried to capture him, but couldn't get him. Last I saw, he turned into a big dragon made of fire to try and stop the Gov.

[His smile fades to a frown.]

That plan won't work to stop him, but Lio's gonna be okay.

A dragon . . .

[His placard mentioned something about that, didn't it? Zenitsu is also starting to get an idea of the relationship Galo and Lio share.]

What are you going to do, then?

[You mean, gay?]

Break out of prison, stop Lio, then me and Lio will stop Kray together, and then stop the magma!

[Something like that.

That sounds an awful lot like his solution for dealing with the mansion's murder mystery. Zenitsu isn't sure where all of Galo's confidence comes from at this point.]

How can you be so sure? Magma is magma. How can you stop something like . . .

[ . . . that?

The sun is setting. At the top of the mountain, next to the tree you've climbed countless times to delay training, are you and your master.

After many months of toiling away with nothing to show for it, you've mastered your first and only form in the Breath of Thunder Style. Did those nights of secret practice have anything to do with your success? Even so, you sit on your legs with hunched shoulders and your sword propped against your knee.

Maybe your foster brother is right. Maybe you're just wasting your foster grandfather's time.

"That's all right, Zenitsu. That's good enough for you. If you can master one, that's cause for celebration!" Tucking his peg leg under him, your grandfather drops to one knee and puts his hand on your head. "If you can only do a single thing, hone it to perfection. Hone it to the utmost limit!"

Dejected, you stare down at the ground. It took you so long to get to this point—to achieve the basic of the basics. How can you hone that? Besides, the fact of the matter is this: "Hey, but Gramps . . . Just a little while ago, you were hopping mad. Because Thunder Breathing has six forms, and all I can manage to do is one."

Your grandfather climbs onto his peg leg. He withdraws his hand, forms a fist, and brings it down on your head.

"Do you know how to forge a sword?" he asks as he thumps you on the head again. Then again. And again while you fight back tears with a frown.

You have no idea. Will he keep hitting you? You think you'll cry.

"The thing about swords," your grandfather begins as he thumps you in tandem with his words: "You strike and strike and strike to get rid of impurities and anything you don't need, and to increase the purity of the blade, so a durable sword can be forged."

So that's why he keeps clobbering you day in, day out? Your cheeks grow hot and your fists tremble on your knees. But you're not made of steel, are you? You're living flesh.

In the end, hot tears of shame pour down your face. Here's your grandfather, scaling back his expectations to encourage you to move forward, yet you find yourself teeming with doubt. You're a good-for-nothing who knows only how to cry and run.

That's when your grandfather gets back down on his knee to place a firm hand on your shoulder.

"Zenitsu, perfect it! It's all right to cry. It's all right to run away!" He squeezes your shoulder. "Just don't ever give up!" Your eyes widen. "Just believe. You endured all that hellish training! You'll be rewarded for that without fail!

"Hone it to the utmost limit! Become the most durable blade of all! Hone that one thing to perfection!"

And the memory ends.]

Ah -

[Hey, Zenitsu, cool backstory you got there? Seriously. He's interested, but also, this was obviously an emotional memory. So he's sympathetic.]

Was that your gramps?

[When he was on the verge of giving up on himself, Gramps told him to believe. Here, Galo told him to think positively and to stop dwelling on his shortcomings. The more Zenitsu thinks about it, it makes an increasing amount of sense that Galo—so persistent that even world-ending magma couldn't deter him—would end up seeing this memory.]

Yeah . . . We're not actually related, though. Gramps is the one who paid off my debt when I was in trouble.

Edited 2020-03-13 03:49 (UTC)

[He nods. It makes sense - you don't necessarily have to be related to someone for them to mean something to you.]

He seems like a pretty cool guy. No wonder you don't want to let him down, huh?

[Gramps is the coolest. That doesn't stop Zenitsu from complaining.]

He'd make me train every day, even when I couldn't take it anymore. I seriously thought I was gonna die a few times.

Well, that's no good. . .but you're still standing, right?

[It's hard to tell how seriously Zenitsu means that, combined with this memory, but Galo's shonen personality reads this memory of an old man hitting a boy a bunch as inspiring, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ]

Seems like he believed in you, that you could handle it.

[It’s okay. Zenitsu thinks it’s inspiring, too.

Deflecting is a bit hard when Galo is so straightforward.]

I may still be standing, but I couldn’t live up to his expectations in the end.

[He managed one form out of six. That's pretty pathetic.]

Did you get any better at that thing he was trying to teach you?

From then on, all I've done is practice the same move over and over again. But I haven't been able to use it at all whenever I've come face to face with a demon.

Well, that's what he wanted, right? For you to practice so you get real good at it. Makes sense to me.

[He scratches his head a little.]

I was always really bad in school. I was pretty worried I wouldn't be able to pass my tests to get into firefighter training. But if I focused hard on just the things I know I'm good at, it was a lot easier to get through the tests. So! I get it!

Maybe it's just going to take some more practice before you're ready to really use it.

You think so?

[It helps a lot to hear Galo's anecdote. While Gramps imparts powerful advice, with Galo it doesn't feel like he's being shoved out of the nest prematurely. That's the only way he can grow, but he's not like most birds. He's more prone to falling and hitting the ground. But he can still fly a little if he practices.

More practice! After all those months of hellish training? Give him a break! He's so over it! Please. He needs a vacation.]

I guess I should start practicing what I can here, then, huh? Even though it'll be bothersome.

Zenitsu Catch All

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