Storm that Building

Spoiler:

There was a young man in a dragon like cloak that was walking down the street, enjoying the bit of freedom he got between harsh training sessions that he was doing to get stronger as a ninja. As he was walking through the streets, he was casually strolling through the city center, as there were plenty of shops that had garnered his interest the other day. he had taken a mission that had him travel through a part of the village that was as large and as prosperous as a city, and he had seen a couple of shops here that he wanted to visit, as they seemed to have strange and interesting curious. One shop in particular, had a series of small contraptions that worked on a series of pullies, hydraulics, and gears, that seemed like a small inventor's shop, and it seemed that this shop was run by an inventor that was an incredible genius, as this was something that he had never seen before, and was definitely something that people ignored because they could not understand it. Kouma was outside of this shop currently, as he was the young man, and he really wanted to go inside to buy things and study their mechanisms. They were invaluable for aspiring puppeteers such as himself, as this would give them a great amount of inspiration, and if they could gain some sort of weapon or mechanism out of these special things, it could potentially be the difference between life and death. As his excitement to enter the shop intensified, Kouma started to hear something behind him, and it was several screams from random people, and he suddenly smelled the scent of burning wood. He immediately turned around, looking throughout the town center, and it was quickly and immediately evident that there was some how a random fire in one of the shops across the way, two or maybe three streets down from where Kouma currently was. He immediately started to rush through the streets, nimbly avoiding the people in the surrounding area that seemed to be a combination of panicking and curiously getting closer and closer to the fire to see what was actually going on. This was the same every where you went, as people would love to go to the place where drama or action was happening to be a spectator. These people that were crowding around usually made it a lot harder for the first responders, such as Kouma, to do their jobs. As he made his way through the crowds of people, there seemed to be a couple of chuunin that were on the scene as well, and they seemed to have set up some sort of perimeter around the area where they were not allowing any more civilians into the spot that the fire had broken out of.

One of the fellow ninjas immediately recognized Kouma as a ninja of the village, and called him over, saying that they needed more people to actually go in to the area where the fire was raging to get people out. Although Kouma did not have any jutsu he could use to put out the fire or protect himself from a fire, but that did not mean there were no ways he had to actually help people and prevent the fire from spreading to the near by buildings in a strange blaze. He ran through the perimeter that they were not letting the normal civilians through, and then found the spot that was burning,. As he came up upon the burning building, he saw quite a few queens men there with buckets of water making a relay race type of hand off situation that was putting the surrounding fire out fairly well, but they were still far from having the fire die down completely, so when they saw him walking up to the building and looking around, they were a bit more relieved. Kouma looked at the building, which was some sort of shop that sold lanterns and candles, so there was an obvious culprit when one thought about how something like this could suddenly catch fire in the middle of a busy city such as this. Kouma looked around, and noticed that the reason that the queens men could not counter the fire in the building was that most of the fire inside of the building was made from lantern oil burning, and it seemed that they knew that, but there was no where they could go currently that would allow them to grab a large amount of sand to turn the situation around, and so they were simply forced to throw water on the other buildings that the fire was spreading to, and Kouma agreed that this was probably the best strategy. Kouma quickly ran forward and asked if there were any survivors, or if there were still people stuck inside the burning building, to which they replied that they did not know the specifics, as the fire was raging by the time they had all gotten there and started to put their extinguish plan into action. Kouma ran towards the building on the east side, as the west side was the one that was currently raging with the most amount of flames. Kouma looked around the building and saw that there was a window that had yet to shatter from the heat, which meant that it was safer on this side than the other side, and so he looked in there. Half of the building was up in flames, and this side was a bit better. As he looked through the window trying to find any sort of survivor or person, he noticed that there was some rubble and pieces of the ceiling had fallen down, and he could vaguely make out the shape of a limb under it, so he immediately grabbed his head band before wrapping it around his fist and smashing the window with the metal part of his ninja head band.


With the window shattered, he ripped a part of his sleeve on his left arm and wrapped it around his arm with the head band so that he could clear a lot of the shards that were stuck in the window frame so that he would not get cut to pieces when he jumped through. When that was done in a few moments, he jumped through the window, and immediately started to head over to the person on the ground. They had done fire safety lessons before when he was in school, before he had joined the ninja academy, so he knew that one should try to stay low in the case of a fire, as inhaling all of that smoke was even more dangerous that being near the heat of the raging, fire, as the smoke inhalation could make you fall unconscious very quickly if not guarded against properly. As Kouma made his way towards the person, it did not seem that the house was going to collapse any time soon, as the pieces that fell on the man were mostly large chunks of dry wall and thinner pieces, and none of the support beams of the house were in jeopardy, at least not know. He looked around the shop, and it seemed that this particular room was away from the store house, which was closer to the front of the store for easy access should they make a sale, and that was good news for Koouma, as this meant that none of the lantern oil that would be very problematic to deal with would be in this area, and he could save the person trapped under the rubble fairly easily. He had finally made his way towards the person on the ground, and he could only really see their arm and one of their legs from this location, and he first tested the area to see if any of the things he was about to touch were hot, and if he needed to find something to shield his bare skin from it, but luckily none of the flames reached this area, and it was simply very warm due to the circumstances surrounding it, rather than it being caught on fire or exposed to the flames itself. This made it fairly easy to lift the rubble away from the person and topple it over to one side so that he could finally see them. It seemed to be a man in his early twenties, and he was clearly passed out, either from the impact of the rubble falling on him, or it might be smoke inhalation, and Kouma hoped that it was the former. It was much easier for the ninjas of the village to heal some scrapes and bruises due to bits and pieces of a house falling on you than it was to heal your lungs and brain from the damage that the smoke would cause. Kouma knew that he needed to get this person out, and there was no good way to do this other than grabbing him and dumping his body through the window he had already cleared, and hope that he was strong enough to position the man outside without dropping him on his head, as the other places were currently covered in flames, and they were spreading. Kouma made sure to look around the shop one last time to make sure that he did not miss anyone that may or may not be hiding, so he yelled out to anyone inside, and when he heard no reaction, he slung the man over his shoulder before walking towards the window that he had smashed open.

He was glad that he took the intense training regimen that he did earlier, as this would be a nightmare if he suddenly had to do this without any lower body training, as he still had to duck down a little so neither he nor the person on his shoulders would be in range of the smoke while he slowly made his way over to the window. He knew that time was of the essence, but the person might just die if he ran because he would not be able to get low enough to avoid the smoke, and he would be breathing in pure smoke for about ten seconds, which would probably kill him faster than just dumping him into the fire directly. So, Kouma decided to take the cautious route and slowly but steadily make his way to the window, before looking out of it and slowly positioning the man's body out of the window. Luckily some of the queens men had followed him when he went around the house, and they were ready to receive the man's body from Kouma, and then they immediately started to perform cpr, as soon as they got him away from the house. With the weight off of his shoulders, literally and figuratively, he then made his way out of the window himself, and there was now a new problem to deal with, which was the ever spreading fire made by the lantern oil, and Kouma did not have a good solution to that at the moment. They either needed to starve the fire or wait until it burned out, neither of which options seemed like a good one at the moment, as they had nothing large enough to smother it completely, and they had no way to actually stop the flames should the lantern oil spread through the streets. He quickly reconvened with the queens men that were still outside fighting the fires that the building was causing, but they did not have many good ideas either. Kouma racked his brain trying to think of a way to put out the fire, and he suddenly remembered things about when fires had started in his kitchen. While these solutions might not work on a large fire, they worked on the small fires in his kitchen and would most likely be better than doing nothing, right? So, he gave his opinions to the queens men that they needed a lot of salt. Salt was very good at smothering fires, although Kouma did not know the exact reason behind this, he just knew from experience, since they did not have sand or massive amounts of dirt to smother it, they could use the salt from the surrounding shops. One of the queens men suggested using some flour instead since there was a bakery close by, but Kouma shot down that idea, telling him that powdery substances such as flour explode when coming into contact with flame, and to never do so, what they needed was salt.

The queens men immediately set to work heading over to a stockpile area that they had near the city center, as there were plenty of bags of salt the village used during the winter to clear the roads and walkways of snow, so that was the best place to get a large amount of salt. soon, the fire was snuffed out with their help, and Keita found one of the chuunin that could give a report so that he could go and confirm this with the administration office, as they would most likely give a reward for the first responders.

EXIT
WC: 2214
Claiming 2100 ryo and 5 ap from mission and rank
Claiming 22 chakra
Claiming 2000 words towards One Handed Seals
Claiming 200 words towards Prepared Needle Shot 200/1000

Approved.