Seconds before the barangay captain called for the fire truck, inside the small bedroom of an already burning house was a girl sleeping soundly until the smoke filling up her room finally reached her senses, forcing her to wake up with a cough.
"Huh?" The girl looked around; confusion entered her still sleepy eyes as she covered her mouth, muffling her voice. "What is..."
Interrupting herself, the girl went for the door. As she left her room, she was met by a burning stair case. The fire eating away at the plywood as it crept up towards her. Panic coursed through her veins as she headed to the room next to hers.
"Arnel?" she called, but there was no one in the room, the fire was coming through the window as it also began burning the wooden walls next to it.
She left her older brother's room, the sound of her hurried footsteps bouncing off the walls of the small hallway as she reached the door to another room where her two younger siblings sleep. But when she opened the door, there was no one there either.
The gravity of the situation began settling in. The girl wasn't the first person in her family to wake up. She was the one who got left behind.
The girl looked as the fire from the stair case finally reached the floor and was slowly making its way toward her. The smoke filtering through the door from her elder sibling's bedroom followed suit, her breathing labored against her arm-covered mouth.
In an attempt to get away from the fire, the girl disappeared from the hallway as she went back into her own room. She sat on the corner of the room next to her bed, tears started welling up from the corners of her eyes as she watched the place through the suffocating fog of smoke.
"Mama... Papa... Arnel... Everyone..."
She buried her face in her arms as a quiet sob full of despair echoed in the room, the place she thought she would meet her end.
* * *
Outside the house, the barangay captain stood before it with a heavy breath. Torn between a decision to wait for the fire truck that might never arrive in time or to storm into the house through the fire and get the girl out by himself even if the act would cost him his own life.
With a clenched fist, he turned to a nearby citizen carrying a bucket full of water. "You. Please pour that water on me."
"Huh?"
The citizen was puzzled by the barangay captain's request. But when he searched his face, he saw nothing but a determined glint in the captain's eyes. That was when the citizen knew he had to answer.
The citizen approached the captain, intending to pour the bucket full of water like he requested. At least until someone landed between them that got both of them and the others nearby looking at the figure in surprise.
Bam!
"Ah!"
"Wha!"
The two looked down on the figure clad in an oversized hoodie shaded in white and blue. They all watched her stand, their gaze caught the long silver hair falling loosely over her shoulders and back, the pair of cat ears on her head and the tail on her back, and the white cat mask perfectly concealing her face and her identity.
In that moment, two things crossed everyone's minds.
Who is she? Where did she come from?
Before any of them could truly process those thoughts and spell them out loud, the girl went ahead and voiced her own thought.
"Please give it to me."
The girl behind the mask didn't wait for a response. She grabbed the bucket out of the man's hand before they could even react and moved closer to the house. The barangay captain saw this, and his eyes went wide immediately.
"What do you think you're doing, Kid! This is no place to mess ar—"
Leap!
The barangay captain looked up and so did the others, their jaws dropping in shock by what they just witnessed—the silver-haired girl doing an impossibly high jump toward the side of the second floor that hadn't been completely engulfed by the fire, straight through the window.
* * *
The girl, or rather Callisto, gracefully landed over the curtain she yanked down with her weight; the bucket of water remained safely by her arms. Pieces of the broken window were left scattered around her as her golden eyes looked to see if the girl was in the exact room she came in.
But the room had nothing but an empty small bunk bed, a drawer, and some toys lying on the floor.
"Not this one, huh."
Callisto enhanced her sense of hearing just enough so she could hear the girl from within the house. She couldn't do it outside before because there were a lot of people speaking over another, making it hard for Callisto to hear if the girl was speaking or calling for help.
But now that she was inside, it should be no problem for her to detect the girl's voice.
Sob... Sob...
As soon as she detected the girl's sobbing, Callisto's golden eyes pinpointed the door. It was already burning. Callisto's grip on the bucket's handle tightened as the fire had already invaded the room.
She already knew that the only way was to go forward. And so, Callisto went and stood before the wall with a clenched fist.
"Please don't be concrete," she prayed as she braced herself for what she was about to do.
Without wasting a moment, Callisto punched a hole through the wall, big enough for her to move to the next room.
Bam!
"Huh?!"
The crying girl, who was waiting for her demise in the corner of her bedroom, heard the loud bang and raised her head. The room was too foggy because of the smoke that she had to keep her mouth and nose covered with her hands. There was also a line of fire in the middle of the room, making it even more difficult to make out whatever caused the loud bang from the end of the bedroom opposite her.
But then, out of nowhere, water washed the line of fire away. A voice then cut through the smoke and echoed in the girl's ears.
"Found you!"