Lio Fotia: Former Mad Burnish, newest member of Burning Rescue, and a beacon of hope. And yet, in spite of everything, he still can't help but feel unwelcome in a world that once saw him as someone to be feared. Never mind that a certain fire-fighting idiot and his inventor friend, along with the two flunkies who've remained the most loyal to him through thick and thin, are about to get a good laugh out of him - not to mention getting him to realize that there are people in his life who really do care about him. Perhaps his inner flame might not be dying out just yet...
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I figured I'd post a shipping fic to celebrate since I've been a little too busy with commission work to do any art for the occasion, but when I recalled what this month's public monthly Patreon reward release was going to be, the opportunity was just too good to pass up. :XD:
In preparation for my Patreon's monthly reward for August 2022, for which Lio was decided by subscriber vote to be the subject/ticklee, I took the time to rent and watch Promare, a film which I'd wanted to see for a while, and loved every single second of it. Seriously, I can't recommend this movie enough, partly because of its fantastic writing and worldbuilding and partly because of the amazing chemistry between its two lead characters, both of whom are handsome as hell to boot. When illustrating the scenario for the reward pic I ended up spinning the plot of an entire post-movie one-shot off of it, but a lot of other commitments at the time when I actually drew the reward pic prevented me from actually writing said story back then. Only now have I found the time to complete it, but I suppose letting it rest in the proverbial oven was probably for the best now that I'm in a slightly better place mentally.
While the original reward piece had Lio as the only ticklee, I simply couldn't stop myself from dragging the hunky, nigh-perpetually-shirtless Galo Thymos into the action (to say nothing of how I know a few friends who'd thank me for doing so), and after getting a look at Gueira and Meis in the film I just had to throw tickles of them in as well. That led to the fic becoming substantially longer than if I'd stuck to just Lio, but it certainly made for a heck of a finale with all four boys getting tickle-wrecked at once - not the easiest thing to pull off, but I believe I managed well enough here. In any case, I hope all of you Promare fans and tickle-lovers alike have enjoyed reading this story as much as I did writing it!
Promare (c) Studio Trigger
DeviantArt crosspost: https://www.deviantart.com/skaeadaimonion/art/A-Warm-Welcome-to-Burning-Rescue-M-M-M-927503573
**********
DISCLAIMER: The following story contains MASSIVE spoilers for Promare and its ending especially. As such, it is recommended to watch the movie in full before reading any of it.
I do not own any of the characters featured in this story, but I do take responsibility for the plot and also the first illustration shown in it (aside from the opening screencap collection), which was created by myself as the monthly reward for August 2022 on my Patreon. The second illustration was created by @SirenMu as a commission for @SergeantD, who gave me permission to use it for this piece of writing, and the third and final illustration was commissioned by me from @NEX-EXE, and is used with their permission. A big thanks to everyone listed for their blessings and to the associates of mine who offered feedback throughout the production of this story!
A Warm Welcome to Burning Rescue!
(Based on characters from Promare by Studio Trigger)
**********
“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”
— Bruce Lee
How had it come to this? Was it destiny? Chance? Or something greater than either? In this day and age, the green-haired young man sprawled upon one of the couches at the Burning Rescue headquarters thought to himself, one could hardly tell.
Thirty years ago, for reasons seemingly unknown, a strange mutation had spontaneously appeared among certain members of humanity, giving them the ability to control fire and heat. These people, known as the Burnish, were soon branded as a destructive threat to the world at large against their wishes, and the ensuing chain of events had resulted in the Great World Blaze, a disaster that had wiped out half the human population. In the decades since, humanity would adjust to the Burnish, but still refused to accept them. In particular, a militia called the Mad Burnish became a cause for concern. As a result, the elite force called Burning Rescue was established to capture the Mad Burnish for the public good. In so many ways, however, things were not as they seemed.
Lio Fotia, the (now former) leader of the Mad Burnish, had been one of the second-generation Burnish, having developed his power at a young age. He was also one of the many witnesses to the treatment of his flame-wielding kin at it’s absolute worst, and that was arguably why he’d taken it upon himself to wage his crusade against the cruel and hateful world in the first place. Said crusade would eventually lead him to meet one of the most important members of Burning Rescue, Galo Thymos. That blue-haired idiot, bumbling though he was, would turn out to be absolutely critical in things changing for the better — not just for the Burnish, but for virtually everyone.
Lio’s gaze was unfocused and turned skyward as he thought back to all of this. He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up working for the very same rescue unit that opposed him and his cohorts just a few weeks ago; it had all happened so fast that he still couldn’t make sense of it. The events that had followed his first encounter with Galo had culminated in two shocking revelations. The first was that Kray Foresight, the founder of the Foresight Foundation that had funded Burning Rescue, was secretly using the captured Burnish to power a wormhole device to transport a small percentage of humanity away from Earth, believing the planet was doomed. The second was that the Burnish themselves had in fact become hosts for a species of parasitic energy being from another dimension, attuned to Earth’s core and responsible for their powers. Kray’s master plan would therefore have aggravated the Promare, as the beings were called, until they destroyed the planet entirely.
What had followed was quite possibly the most dramatic and terrifying day and night in both Lio’s life and all of Promepolis history. But at the center of it all was one person in particular who had proven instrumental in resolving the crisis. It had been Galo who had helped Lio calm down when the latter had let his Promare overtake him and go on a destructive rampage in search of Kray. The two of them had worked together to take down the evil executive and rallied the imprisoned Burnish to grant them the strength and will to power the mecha they’d discovered which had proved absolutely essential. The two of them together had come up with the idea to let all the Promare burn themselves out by consuming all they could, allowing them to return to their home world, which stopped the meltdown of Earth’s core at the cost of the Burnish losing their powers. But above all… Galo had saved Lio’s life that night. They had just escaped the core of Kray’s spaceship where the Burnish were held prisoner, but he was dying… until Galo had locked lips with him and transferred the energy of the Promare he had somehow acquired in a successful attempt to save him.
And now… somehow… for some reason… He wanted to experience the feeling of that kiss of life once again.
But was he worthy of it? Was he worthy of even being here, after all he had done as leader of the Mad Burnish?
Lio’s miserable reverie was interrupted by the entrance of four other people. Two of them were his dear friends, the scruffy-haired redhead Gueira and the long-haired blue-nette Meis, and they were accompanied at the moment by the slightly loony inventor of Burning Rescue, Lucia Fex, with her twin blonde buns and white labcoat.
“Hey Boss,” Gueira said with a cheerful wave. “Ya holdin’ up okay?”
Lio thought about it for a second or two, before he sighed. “Honestly, I don’t feel alright. Thanks for asking, though.”
“We’re real worried about ya, mate,” replied Meis. “You’ve been in quite the funk since we got here. What’s wrong with this cushy new job helping fix what got broken that one time?”
“Yeah, you’re supposed t’ be on cleanup duty with th’ rest of us,” said Gueira. “But all you’ve been doin’ outside o’ that has been mopin’ around without doin’ much. Seriously, what gives?”
The fourth and final person who had entered the room, bringing up the rear, was Remi Ardebit, the task force’s green-haired lieutenant, and it was he who answered. “You two better drop it pretty quick. Lio still hasn’t finished his training yet. Which he hasn’t. Heck, for all the hype last month, he hasn’t even done well in it at all.”
“And yet ya considered the two of us ready after a week or two?” Meis asked in disbelief.
“I thought all three of you did a decent job, personally,” Lucia commented, her pet rat Vinny perched on her shoulder and giving Lio a look as though he was feeling sorry for him.
Lio looked at each of the four in turn, before flopping listlessly on the sofa again. “I don’t know what’s come over me, really. I’m probably just tired, that’s all. When you’ve lived for so long with a pyrokinetic alien possessing your body, there’s no telling what can go wrong when it’s gone.”
Gueira and Meis exchanged uncomfortable glances. They too had lost their own Promare to help save the planet, and until recently, they’d had no idea what to do. It was lucky that as thanks for their help, Burning Rescue had offered the three of them a job closely associated with the humanitarian efforts in the wake of Kray’s destructive actions and the burning of the world by the Promare. Lio’s subordinates had been thrilled with this and relieved that they’d gotten off without too much trouble — but Lio himself seemed to be taking everything especially hard. Was his being tired a mere excuse to avoid everyone and be left to his growing angst over his past behavior?
Remi certainly seemed to think so. “Either way, house rules are house rules,” he replied bitterly. “You need to complete the training needed to join the recovery effort, and you can’t exactly do that while slumped over the couch like a wet sock.”
Lio groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not like you guys actually want me to be out there helping everyone, though. You haven’t asked me to join you, only to train. Were you being serious when you told me I wasn’t prepared for the kind of work you do, or did you really think the former leader of the Mad Burnish was just that terrible for your branding image?”
Remi scoffed, making the others wince and discreetly back away. “Both,” he replied sourly. “I know, I know, you and Galo did a great job back then, but here’s the thing: people still aren’t used to, well, you. Captain Ignis outright stated that you shouldn’t be seen in public until all the legal crap regarding your criminal sentence is properly settled.”
Lio’s response was immediate, but Remi’s reaction time was even quicker. The lieutenant moved his head aside just in time for a black leather shoe to pass an inch from his ear, smacking into the opposite wall before clattering to the floor.
Now with one foot bare, Lio glared daggers at the person he’d just kicked his footwear at. “Are you kidding me?! I’m supposed to be out there making a difference like the rest of you! In what dimension is this fair?!”
“The dimension where you nearly burned down Promepolis,” Remi replied. “Much as Kray deserved everything that came to him, you shouldn’t act like you’re completely blameless. So much as I hate to say this, you’re staying put until you actually pass your training program. Again, house rules.”
Lio groaned and pressed both palms to his face. “Just my luck. I’ve been shat upon throughout my entire life just for being a Burnish, and now no one’s ever going to let me live that down. Don’t you have anything better to do than rubbing it in my face, too?”
“Who’s face? Rubbin’ what?” a voice asked from the doorway. A fifth person had joined them, and who would’ve guessed — it was that handsome, blue-haired buffoon Lio just couldn’t stop thinking about for some strange reason.
“It’s nothing, Galo,” Remi muttered, though he certainly didn’t sound like it. “I’ll leave you three to it — I need to take Gueira and Meis out for their latest cleanup. Something about a building collapse a few blocks east of here. Ignis, Varys, and Aina are handling a mess to the south this afternoon, and likely won’t be back until tomorrow, so it’s just Lucia in charge of you two. Try not to destroy the place before we get back, okay?”
Lio refused to even look her in the eye. “No promises there. Yet.”
“Sorry, Boss,” Gueira muttered apologetically. “Wish we could help somehow. More than we have, anyway.”
“Yeah, best we can do is provide emotional support, but that probably ain’t enough for ya, mate,” added Meis. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t try!”
“Wait, what happened?” Galo asked, blinking a few times. “I spaced out a bit and missed it—”
“I’ll explain later,” Remi replied as he turned to leave. “For now, though, be nice to Lucia while I’m gone, alright? If you aren’t, I bet I’ll have to use a mop to clean up what’ll be left of you both. Come on, you two.”
Galo gave his superior a shocked look as the green-haired man and his new trainees passed him by and left. “The hell? I just got back here and you’re gonna be rude to us like that? Remi? REMI, COME BACK!!”
“Leave him for now,” Lucia replied as she sat down on the floor in front of the sofa Lio was on. “He’s been in a tizzy since, well, everything. All that cleanup stuff’s been leaving him with like what, four hours of sleep a night? Poor guy’s gonna earn himself a hospital trip soon if he keeps this up.”
Lio said nothing, instead opting to just lie there and wallow in his newfound misery. Galo, for his part, was totally confused, and decided not to ask any more questions about the newest recruits.
“Anyway, I’ve been making a few adjustments to the Galo de Lion,” Lucia said in a chipper tone as she pulled up a tablet. “Care to see? There’s a few new additions to the cockpit in particular…”
As Galo eagerly sat next to Lucia to listen to her latest ideas, Lio decided instead to tune her out, rolling over onto his stomach and pressing his face into the cushions. He should’ve known — this wasn’t training, this was a goddamn house arrest. Was he really going to be respected for once in his life, after all he’d done and been through to make the world better for those who’d had the same condition he did?
There really was no point in being here if he was going to be all but locked up, or at the very least regarded as unwelcome, only being kept around so nobody else would have to deal with him.
He might as well have been encased in the ice produced by the Absolute Zero Bullet he’d once taken to the chest, for all he knew or cared. Only this time, there was no emotional fire to melt the icy feeling of total helplessness enveloping him from the inside. Truly, being stuck here with nothing to do, and especially no way to help those truly in need like he wanted so much, was a fate worse than death for poor Lio.
