Even with all the weirdness you've seen in your life, all the times you'd gotten sat on, stepped on and (nearly) eaten; spending most of your adult life living around giant monster women didn't quite prepare you for the sight that granted you down the hall.
Helga and Lydia were standing with their faces inches from each other, both wearing furious death glares that would have melted the armor off a battleship as they kept up their shouting match...and ignoring a thick clouds of smoke that were pouring in around them, from both their respective rooms. Lydia's wand actually drooped in her hand as she gesticulated with it wildly--that thing was made of metal; just how hot WAS this fire?!--and her cape was on fire, though she ignored this. She was too busy ranting.
"I TOLD you to keep your TOYS away from my potions!" Lydia snapped, her pink ears twitching. "Tinkerers like you may not understand how magic works, but even all those disgusting...machines--" She spat, like she'd eaten something disgusting, "--need a little care to cobble together! I figured you'd at least respect my workshop, you clockwork-worshiping, steampunk-addicted--"
Roxy clears her throat; with you in her cleavage and the building smoke it knocked the wind out of you. "Erm, ladies?"
Roxy went unanswered as Helga cut her off, pushing back against Lydia and pressing their faces even closer together. If not for the troll's glasses, the two women's eyeballs would have ground against each other. "I kept my machines under perfect control, you little Luddite rodent! YOU were the one who went around slinging those...insults to logic you call 'spells' around without warning ME! What, you didn't think that whatever overblown party trick you were doing would affect metal?! Maybe you should have read those molded spell books of yours a little better; or better yet, stop it with this occult bullshit and take some damn science classes!!"
Azure growls, her lip curling. "Hey! Listen, you two.."
It was getting hotter; the smoke was getting worse. Already you could hear alarms going off. Crap, and you'd just woken up....
Lydia looked ready to bludgeon Helga with her (partially-melted) wand. "My spells can outdo ANYTHING your stupid contraptions can do, and that's a fact--no, wait; it's a law of nature! Machines are only for lazy bi--"
"QUIET, GODDAMMIT!! BOTH OF YOU!!!"
Azure's roar stops the argument dead in its tracks. Mostly because its targets were clutching their ears in pain and wearing faces like they'd been punched in the stomach. At their first sign of recovery, you werecoyote boss bellows again, though not as thunderous as before. "You two can have this pissing contest later--and no, I won't hear one freaking word about who started it!! Unless you two want to pay for the reconstruction yourselves, you'll kindly stop bickering and help us put out this fire before it burns this lodge to the ground!!"
Still holding their ears, both Lydia and Helga cease their shouting and look around...and immediately start coughing horrifically. Roxy tosses them some face-masks she'd nabbed from a first-aid kit, gesturing for everyone to squat down and get under the smoke. Elisa, given her girth, has to squat especially low. "I won't ask exactly how this happened; just tell us, can we put this out and save the lodge?" the Bahamat asks, glaring at the pair over her snout.
"Yes, it can be put out." Lydia's answer was immediate. "The potions that got mixed when...the incident happened.." she glared at Helga but made no further commentary; "...were volatile stuff, but the fire itself is mundane. One of those extinguisher-contraptions would do, but I managed to snatch some anti-catalyst potion." She reached into her cape and produced a sizable flash of a fizzy, blue liquid. "This will cancel out the reactions instantly, and kill the fire."
Admirably, Helga kept herself from any commentary of her own, though she winced when her rival had pulled the potion from seemingly nowhere (thus slapping the laws of material space square in the jaw),and even with her wearing the surgical mask you could see her smirk when Lydia described said potion using words like "catalyst" and "reaction". The troll girl looked at her workshop and reported, "The fire in MY room is small, but it's burning like crazy and there's some nasty fumes building up. Some of my machines are still undamaged by all the heat, and they could help us put these fires out...that water-cannon I made last week can douse a whole room!"
"There's your answer, then!" Vernon coughs, from atop Azure's head. "We can use Lydia's potion AND Helga's contraptions--maybe even together!--to put out this fire! If they're as good as you say they are, we'll have this under control in no time!" Despite the smoke and blaring alarms, he's grinning like a loon. Elisa, Roxy, and you all give feverish nods, hoping against hope the two girls will be sensible and put aside their rivalry for once...
===What Happens Next?===
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