Also starring the Water Hero Squad! (ft. Hitman)
It was a blisteringly hot summer’s day in June and the sun was scorching, which made Brie extremely thankful that she’d dressed simply in denim shorts and a loose-fitting AC/DC t-shirt. As per usual she'd woken up extremely late and had resorted to tossing on whatever was semi-clean...or at least whatever smelt that way. Luckily,
someone had persuaded her to pack the day before (or more specifically done all of the packing for her), so she was only a couple of hours later than intended. Having finally reached the fifth floor of the East Flank apartment block, Brie was taking a few moments to catch her breath, idly playing with one of her french braids as she did so. Trying to lug a suitcase, a backpack and an oversized dog up here had really taken it out of her. Speaking of which…
"Dog. Sit! I said Sit! Pleeeease!" The young hero pestered the large MWE/rottweiler mix who was currently dashing up & down the corridor, barking loudly at nothing and wagging his tail excitedly against every door that he passed.
"Come on! I'll er...give you pancakes!" She crouched down as she spoke, tapping her hands on her legs in an attempt to get his attention. Unfortunately, trying to bribe this dog obviously didn't work and he instead just took to chewing on the edge of her suitcase, leaving copious amounts of slobber behind.
"You're such a doofus..." Brie couldn’t help but let out a laugh as she shook her head at her companion, before proceeding to knock on the door she was currently standing in front of.
She had more important things to think about anyway. It was moving-in day after all!
The door opened soon after Brie knocked. The resident of the apartment, Jamie Stewart, popped her head out and grinned at her friend. A couple of weeks ago she had agreed to let Brie move in with her, and she had been super excited for it ever since! Brie was great, and she
definitely needed some extra money for rent, so rooming with her would be awesome. And the extra bedroom- mainly used for storage but very recently cleaned out- would finally come in handy for once. In Jamie’s eyes, this was a win-win. Brie got to move out of H.E.R.O One, and
she got all the perks of a roommate. She swung open the door and stepped aside, letting Brie walk in.
“Hey, B! Hey, Dog!” Jamie waved cheerily.
“So glad you got here alright. You made it just on time…” She snuck a glance at the clock on the oven in the kitchen, and she blinked.
“Or not! It’s fine, though, parking here is bad. And you’re here, so that’s good! Um, if you want some I bought some Ritz crackers and some cream cheese, and I have some knives out on the coffee table, so help yourself! Your room is over there.” She pointed to the door on the far end of the living room.
Jamie’s apartment was fairly small- a two-bedroom, one-bathroom affair. The living room, which they were currently standing in, was beige-carpeted. The walls had been left bare besides for a few inspirational posters and an old calendar from 2032 that Jamie had forgotten to take down. There was a blue three-seater sofa and a gray armchair in front of a wooden coffee table and a nice-looking TV. Laid on the coffee table, there were two sleeves of Ritz crackers and a small container of cream cheese. Jamie had set the TV to
Keeping up With the Carpathians- a show she knew that Brie liked. Directly off the living room, there was a cramped kitchen with an oven, a fridge, and an open pantry. Jamie had cleaned up before Brie had come, so the sink was not stacked with plates, as it usually was. Directly off the living room and down a short hallway, there were three doors. Two were bare, but the other had one of those souvenir road signs stuck on it- “JAMIE AVE, ALASKA”, it said, with a backdrop of a snowy mountain. There were two windows in sight. One to the right of the couch, overlooking an alleyway, and another in the kitchen over the sink, overlooking the street below. The afternoon sun filtered in through the window in the kitchen.
Jamie plopped herself onto the blue couch, patting the place next to her and gesturing for Brie to sit. She swept her long, blonde hair out of her eyes and scooted over to the side of the couch. It was a hot summer day, so she was wearing a tight-fitting green tank top with tiny white flowers sewn into it and dark-blue denim shorts. Other than that, she was barefoot.
“I dunno if you’ve been in here before, so this is my apartment! Or our apartment I guess. The bathroom’s over there, the kitchen’s there, my room’s the one on the left… you can put all your stuff in your room if you want. And for Dog- ooh, he’s so cute. Can I pet him? I’m gonna pet him.” She reached down to pet Dog, patting him on the head contentedly.
Dog let out a low growl as Jamie reached down to pat him. Although he was calmer than during the Halloween
incident, he was still wary of anyone not from Brookside. Luckily Brie was used to such behaviour and she quickly lunged across the room, grabbing him by his red collar (it had taken her several hours and many bruises to be able to get the thing around his neck). Yanking him away from Jamie, his teeth clamped shut only inches away from her hand. She’d not wanted to put a collar on him but he had a habit of wandering off, and she really didn’t want to lose him.
”Whoops, sorry bout that. He’ll get used to you! He’s just a bit grouchy cause it’s so hot... Ooh, can you make pancakes? He’ll love you if you can.” Brie smiled gingerly as she plopped herself down on the couch, pulling her well-worn white sneakers off her feet and dropping them on the floor next to her. Reaching over to grab a couple of the crackers, she happily munched on them as she became momentarily distracted by an argument between Zoe and Zadie Carpathian.
“Zadie’s totally right! Wearing a wedding dress to your own daughters wedding is sooo weird!” Brie giggled as Zoe threw a Pucci purse at Zadie, before turning back to her friend.
”Anyway, this place is super nice! I can’t believe you had it all to yourself.” She commented as she glanced around the apartment again, eagerly taking in her surroundings. It was surprisingly tidy, although Brie had already begun to mess it up when she’d dumped her bags unceremoniously in the middle of the living room floor.
Did you have another roommate before or something?“
“Yeah, I can totally make pancakes!” Jamie said, trying her hardest not to go in to pet Dog again. He was just… so
cute! Even if he was super bitey and had given her tetanus that one time. Remembering the incident, Jamie turned over her right hand. Yup! The scar was still there. There was a nasty-looking bite mark all along her palm and the back of her hand. Ooh, that had been such a fun party. Jamie hopped up from the couch and went over to the kitchen, opening up the pantry. She had to have pancake mix in here
somewhere... oh, there! She pulled out an old, dusty-looking box of Bisquick, and then the other ingredients for pancakes and a cast-iron pan. Then, she fired up the stove, watching
Keeping up With the Carpathians out of the side of her eye. She giggled at Zoe throwing the purse.
“Yeah, totally!” she responded as she mixed the pancakes rather unevenly.
“I did, like two years ago? She moved out after like a month, though. I think I might’ve accidentally cracked her aquarium and killed all her fish, and she was really skittish, so she left. You’re not like that though, so you’ll probably be fine!”
”Well, her loss! She sounds boring anyway. Like, who’d choose to have fish as pets? They can’t do tricks or anything!” Brie shook her head, her gaze following Dog, who’s tail had begun beating against the floor rapidly when he’d heard the sounds of cooking. He proceeded to leap up from his place at Bries feet, running over to stand at Jamie’s side, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he impatiently waited for food.
”Oh, I got you a gift to say thanks!” Brie chirped as she began rifling through her rucksack, eventually pulling out what looked to be a somewhat squished cactus. The thing had googly eyes stuck on it, which made it look pretty damn adorable.
“Apparently cactuses are super difficult to kill. I tried to keep a plant once but I kept forgetting to water it...oh, and then Dog ended up eating it.” She placed it on the coffee table, sucking on the tip of her index finger as she accidentally pricked it.
”Ouch...”
Jamie’s eyes popped out of her head when she saw the cactus and she rushed over, abandoning the pancakes as abruptly as she had started them.
“So cute! she squeed, taking the cactus in her hands. But, unfortunately, she made the same mistake as Brie in grabbing the actual cactus itself. She yelped as she pricked her fingers, dropping the cactus abruptly onto the table.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck-” she hissed, holding her right hand. There were little spikes embedded all over it now.
“Thanks,” she said, looking pained.
“I’ll go put it on my dresser as soon as I… wait, what was I doing? Oh, right, pancakes! For Dog!” She turned to go back to the oven.
Brie grinned at Jamie, happy that the hero seemed to like her present. She wasn’t really the best at buying gifts and usually people seemed pretty unimpressed with her attempts. Apparently Bloopers gift cards weren’t something you could just give people for any occasion. Maybe they’d be alright for Valentine’s Day though…
”Oh, be careful - it’s super spiky!” She exclaimed rather too late as Jamie picked up the cactus with her bare hands.
“Are you okay-er...what’s that smell?” Her head spun around as her nose picked up the distinctive smell of something burning. She looked over at the kitchen just in time to see Dog jump up at the counter, paws scrambling madly in an attempt to get at the bowl.
”Wait-stop it! You’re gonna-...” Brie trailed off mid-sentence, her mouth falling open as she watched Dog knock both the bowl and the pan off the counter. Whilst the batter splattered all over the floor, the pan (which had at some point set spectacularly on fire), tumbled to the ground.
”Shit shit shit! Jesus, Dog your tail’s on fire!!!” Brie yelped as Dog wafted his tail in the path of the fire, seemingly oblivious to the danger as he continued trying to lap up the batter. Running over to him, she began to waft uselessly at his tail with her hands in an attempt to put it out. It of course didn’t work, and she instead decided to run over to the sink, beginning to fill a glass with water.
Jamie’s mouth dropped open as she watched all this occur.
“FIRE!” She screamed, as if Brie wasn’t already aware there was a fire. Panicking for a brief moment, she looked around the kitchen- something to put it out, something to put it out… Her eyes fell on the vegetable oil that she had used to make the pancake batter.. Perfect! It was a liquid, so it had to work, right? As Brie started to fill a cup with water, Jamie grabbed the tub of vegetable oil and upended it over the burning pan, making sure to get it everywhere.
This’ll for sure put it out!
It did not. Rather, the fire became exponentially larger in seconds, with a loud burst of flame. The orange and red fire grew, creeping up the cabinets. Jamie screamed, jumping out of the way and out of the kitchenette.
“How did that not work?!” she yelled, shocked that the oil hadn’t put the fire out.
Brie let out a scream as the fire suddenly started spreading, her eyes landing on the tub of vegetable oil that Jamie was clutching in her hands.
"Isn’t oil like er...what’s the word...doesn’t it make fire worse?!” Brie blurted out, before turning back to her beloved pet. She’d at least managed to fill her cup with water and she threw this on Dogs tail, thankfully managing to put
that particular fire out. His poor tail looked very singed but Dog still seemed not to have noticed, having instead taken to barking loudly at the flaming kitchenette.
“What do we do?! Oh, we should call someone right? Will maybe? No wait, 911! Yeah, them!” Brie nodded, pleased that she’d managed to remember who to call. She would’ve contacted Will first but she reeeeally didn’t want him to know that she’d been in the apartment for barely ten minutes, before a disaster had ensued. Running over to her bag, she began to root through it. As she tossed all of her belongings onto the floor, she eventually found her phone at the bottom of the bag.
“Got it!” She began typing in ‘911’ but failed to realise that, in her panic, she had begun to generate a significant amount of static electricity around her hands, and before she could finish, her phone had gone completely dead.
“Oh, I short-circuited it...” She paused before turning back to Jamie, her green eyes wide in panic.
“You er, have a phone right?”
“I DIDN’T KNOW THAT!” Jamie cried, distressed. She was hyperventilating, watching the fire grow larger and hotter. Fuck! She liked her kitchen… And her apartment! And Brie had just moved in. If her house burned down, would she have to move into HERO One? The fire had now eaten her calendar from 2032 and was spreading into the living room.
Jamie dove for the coffee table at Brie’s words, grabbing her phone and unlocking it frantically. She fucked up a few times on the passcode, but got in, successfully dialing 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Um, there’s a fire! I, um- I left the oven alone for a minute, and the stove lit on fire, and I tried to put it out but it was oil and oil doesn’t put out fires apparently-”
“What’s your address?”
Jamie listed off her address breathlessly.
“We’ll have the fire department over there immediately.”
She gave Brie a thumbs-up, mouthing
the fire truck is coming. Meanwhile, the fire was still raging in the kitchenette.
”Okay, good. That’s good!” Brie said uncertainly as she watched Jamie dial 911. Hopefully they would get here before the entire apartment burnt down. The fire was spreading pretty quickly though, and she frantically dragged her suitcase closer to the door. She didn’t have many belongings so she really didn’t want the few things she did have to set alight.
”Oh god! Where are they?! Does it usually take them this long?” She frowned as she paced uselessly about the living room, her eyes darting every now and then to the door. If she had thought about it carefully, Brie might have remembered seeing a fire extinguisher in the hallway but unfortunately she was in too much of a panic to remember such vital information.
Instead of something more traditional like a fire truck, a silver sedan pulled up in front of the apartment building instead. Stepping out of the uber were three young teens, not older than 18 for sure, wearing some sort of high-tech firefighter garb. “Let’s go, guys!” one of them shouted, making his way towards the apartment, but one of his co-workers, a teen with bushy brown hair that spilled out of his firefighter helmet, grabbed his shoulder. “Dude, you didn’t tip the Uber!” he hissed at the lead water boy. “You’re so dumb sometimes, Keith!”
“I’m not dumb! You’re dumb, Jonah!” Keith hissed back as he handed the Uber driver a ten dollar bill.
“You’re
never going to get to go out with Patricia!” Jonah taunted back.
“I’m much closer than
you are!”
“Are not!”
“Are so!”
“Shut
up,” the third, dark-skinned teen muttered as he made his way towards the apartment building. “We have work to do.”
The other two both groaned simultaneously. “Ernest, such a killjoy…” they muttered before making their way swiftly to the apartment. They quite literally barged through the door, holding long hoses from their backpacks that they wielded like guns. “Fear not, civilians, the Water Hero Squad is here!” Keith announced triumphantly, rushing over to the kitchenette and aiming his hose at the fire. The hose was a HERO gadget that allowed the water heroes to compress their water into a single stream, for as C-tier heroes their water control level was quite dismal. The three then fired directly at the stove, blasting it with water. Instead of extinguishing the flames, the water sent the fire scattering
everywhere, the entire kitchen engulfed in raging fire. “Shit shit shit shit shit…” they muttered, practically in unison, as they backed away from the kitchen.
“We messed up again, Powers is gonna fire us, noooo….” Keith muttered.
“Or we use a fire extinguisher,” Ernest suggested, having run out and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the hallway. “We have the emergency one in the backpack, remember?”
The Water Hero Squad, remembering this crucial info now, equipped their fire extinguishers and ran back into the kitchen. A few minutes later, they emerged. “Fire out!” Jonah declared triumphantly. The entire kitchen had been reduced very nearly to ash, the wallpaper burnt to shreds, but the rest of the apartment was mostly safe. “We, uhh, we accept tips,” Keith butted in hopefully, a dumb grin on his dumb teenage face.
Jamie watched from the front door as the Water Hero Squad charged into her apartment. She was briefly confused- these weren’t firefighters, they were heroes!- but then remembered who they were and stopped being confused. She wasn’t doing the thing in the Sims where they scream at the fire, but she was, in fact panicking quite a bit. Tears stained her face, and she had flattened herself against the wall. One of her bare feet was out the door, but she kept the other in the room, watching the three teenagers put out the fire. She had met the three of them before, briefly, but had never seen them in action…
This was cool! Their powers were totally useful. Ignoring the fact that they had just used a fire extinguisher, not their powers to put out the fire, she clapped once the fire had been put out. Even though her kitchen was charred, which made her stomach drop to her feet. Oh
no... Well, her landlady would fix it. Probably. Hopefully. The smell of charred wood and burnt pancakes wafted through the apartment.
That would be permanent.
“Oh, yeah, totally!” Wiping tears from her eyes, Jamie bounded over to her purse, digging through it.
“I, um, have this half-full thing of fruity gum… some free pens… ooh, and three quarters!” Jamie held the tips out to Keith, grinning.
“B, do you wanna tip them?”
Bries head peeped round the door when the coast was declared clear, her eyes blinking slowly as she took in the chaos.
"What? No way do I want to tip them! They made the fire worse!" She rolled her eyes at the three dimwits who were standing in front of them. Although she had to give them props for actually remembering to use the fire extinguisher, at one point she had seriously thought they were all going to die. How ironic it would have been to be killed by a fire when she was dating a water hero…
"And Dogs all covered in foam now..." She moaned, pointing to the unrecognisable form that had once been Dog, the poor thing now being covered in a thick layer of white foam. With a flurried twist of his body, Dog managed to shake some of the foam off himself, it splattering (much to Bries amusement) on the water heroes. As she giggled at this, she seemed to change her mind, turning to raise an eyebrow at the teenagers.
"Actually, if I tip you, will you go away?" Brie paused, before reaching to pick a partially singed bag of Cool Ranch Doritos from the floor. She'd brought it to snack on but she wasn't feeling particularly hungry anymore.
"Here. Have this! Thanks for the er...help." Smiling, she held the bag out to the one whose name she thought was Keith. They all looked kinda similar to her though, so she wasn't entirely sure.
Keith gave a wide smile, taking the tips eagerly, before retreating out the door with his Water Squad teammates. “Another victory for the Water Squad!” Keith called out triumphantly as he made his way outside. “We are
so good at our jobs. One day, we’re gonna be as strong as Tempest. Or Sea Serpent!”
“Dude,” Jonah said eagerly. “That was Tempest’s girlfriend!”
“Yoooo,” Keith said with an even wider grin. “She might put in a good word for us! He’s totally gonna become, like, our sensei. And then I’ll get really strong! And Patricia will finally go with me to the HERO Ball!”
Earnest sighed. Why couldn’t he have had lightning powers?
Jamie shrugged as the Water Hero Squad left, turning to Brie and putting on her best optimistic face.
“Well… I guess we’re doing takeout for a bit! Not like either of us could cook anyway, right? I’ll call the landlady to get the kitchen fixed sometime, but for now, you can go put your stuff in your room. We can get something to eat later!” Jamie seemed to be rolling with the fire damage, not very affected by it.
“Oh and, um, Dog’s okay, right?” She pointed to Dog, not daring to pet him.
"I can cook pot noodles...does that count? But takeaway sounds way better anyway!" Brie grinned enthusiastically. Although the fire had been pretty scary, it was over now and Jamie said the landlady would be able to fix it, so everything looked like it was going to be okay. She wasn't going to let it ruin her moving-in day anyway.
At the mention of Dog, Brie waved a hand nonchalantly, seeming unconcerned that he was currently licking at the remnants of foam that were left on his fur.
"Oh, he'll be fine. He's survived worse!" Grabbing hold of her suitcase, she dragged it into what she surmised was her room, dropping it roughly onto the carpet. She would unpack later. Unpacking was even worse than packing. She had to organise her stuff
and fold things up. So boring. She scrunched up her nose at the thought of this before glancing around the room. There wasn't much in there, aside from a metal bed frame and a mattress which looked like it had seen better days. Brie seemed unperturbed by this though as she called out to Jamie happily.
"Wow, this place is great! Oh, though I left my duvet at HERO One...guess I'll have to go shopping tomorrow.”
Jamie came in after her and stood in the doorway, surveying the room. She hadn’t really been in here much since her last roommate had moved out, and it still looked pretty bare. Knowing Brie, though, it would soon look different. Messier, maybe?
“Thanks!” she responded.
“We could probably get it when we go to work tomorrow, though… Powers’ll let you in for sure. I’ll leave you to it. Yell if you need anything.” With that, Jamie turned around and closed the door, leaving Brie to her unpacking. Living with Brie should be really fun, she thought. She was a fun fun friend- she must be a fun roommate, too.