August 3rd

The moment Firey woke up, he knew something was wrong. But he couldn't figure out what.

At first, he thought it was because he had woken up in an unfamiliar bed. Then he remembered that he had spent the past two nights in Hotel OJ, as did the rest of his team. He was lucky that OJ had asbestos fire blankets for Bomb to sleep under, as well as a fireproof room; otherwise, he would have had to sleep outside the hotel.

The flame pushed his blanket off and winced. His bandage-wrapped hands were still sore from the overheated crystal he touched the other day. Paper had diagnosed his injury as only a first-degree burn, which was better than a second-degree or third-degree one, but it would still take several days to properly heal.

The clock by his bedside said 9:49 AM. Firey stiffened. He was going to miss the big pancake breakfast! Bursting out of his bedroom, he dashed through the hallway, leapt down the stairs in a single, impressive jump, and sprinted into the kitchen, slamming right into someone. "Ack!"

Paintbrush barely managed to avoid falling over. "Hey, watch it!" they exclaimed.

Firey rubbed his forehead. "Sorry. Are there any pancakes left?"

"Yes, there's plenty of pancakes left," a different voice chuckled. Firey glanced past Painty to see OJ flipping the famous breakfast treat at the stove. Paper and Pickle were chatting at the table, with Bottle devouring pancakes next to Paper like a madwoman. Grassy was sitting on the counter, feeding Rocky blueberries that looked like they were supposed to be in the pancakes. "Several people are sleeping in today," OJ continued, "so there's still lots to go around."

"Good. Because I'm starving!" Puffball sang as she floated through the doorway behind Firey. Paintbrush nodded agreement and grabbed a plate off the counter, piling several sugary treats on it.

Firey followed suit as he glanced around the table. "Only half of us are here? Are all the others really feeling weird?"

"Weird?" Paintbrush asked, sitting down next to Bottle. "There's nothing weird with wanting to get a few extra Z's. Why, are you feeling weird?"

"Yeah."

Pausing his conversation with Pickle, Paper chimed in. "Is it your hands? Do you need me to look at them?"

"No, I- well, my hands are still sore. But this is something else. I don't know what the feeling is, it's just..." He chewed on a pancake thoughtfully. "...different."

"Maybe you should go see Basketball," Grassy suggested from on the counter. "Basketball's the BEST helper Grassy knows!"

"Hm."

--------------------

Ten minutes later, having finished his delicious breakfast, Firey found Basketball chatting with Lightbulb outside the hotel. As he stepped closer, he could hear their conversation. "...you sure?"

"Yeah, it feels about the same-o."

"But I still don't really know what it means..."

"Me neither-o."

"Could you... stop adding '-o' to the end of your sentences?"

"No-o."

"Whatcha talkin' about?" Firey asked, catching their attention. Lightbulb waved. "Hey-o!"

Basketball opened her mouth to answer, then got a look on her face. "Hmmm... Firey, can you help us test something?"

He blinked. "Uhh, sure?"

"Great." She began to lead him and Lightbulb around to the north side of the hotel. As the trio walked, Firey's strange, off-putting feeling continued to increase. Even weirder, it was starting to become familiar to him, in a way. But he still couldn't put his finger on what it was.

Baskie stopped suddenly. They had all reached the north side of the hotel, opposite of the entrance. "Tell me, Firey," she asked, turning to the fireball. "Do you feel any different?"

"Yeah," he answered, a little surprised. "How did you know?"

"Do you recognize the feeling?"

He shook his head. Lightbulb and Basketball glanced at each other. "Did you know that it's a pretty hot day out?" Lightbulb asked out of the blue.

"Uh, no. I'm literally made of fire. I can't feel any extra- ow!" He flinched as something stung him. "What the- did I just sweat? How..."

A sudden realization dawned upon him. "It's really hot outside today," Basketball explained. "Swelteringly hot. I wouldn't have given it much thought, if Blocky hadn't mentioned to me yesterday how hot it was over in the area by Test Tube's laboratory. Then I encountered Lightbulb outside a few minutes ago, and she said that this heat feels similar to the heat emitting from the multicrystal in Testy's lab."

"That's what felt so weird to me," Firey blurted. "The heat. I've never actually felt hot before, except when I burned myself on that same crystal. But... why is that same heat all the way over here...?"

"Me and Baskie were just talkin' 'bout that right before you came over," Lightbulb said. She placed a hand on the hotel's wall to lean against it. "Nothing's makin' any sens- ouch!!" LB jerked her hand away from the wall. "What... it's scorching!"

Basketball walked up and quickly tapped it with her foot. "Jeez, that is really hot," she muttered.

Something occurred to Firey. "Lightbulb..." he slowly started, "what is the hotel mostly built with?"

"Wood, I think. Why?"

Firey and Basketball stared at her. "Oh. Wait."

Hotel OJ's back wall suddenly burst into flames.

--------------------

Inside, Puffball was the first one to notice something. She paused halfway through her last pancake and sniffed the air curiously. "Hey OJ, did you burn any pancakes?"

OJ, who had stopped making pancakes five minutes ago, glanced at the heaping platter of remaining flapjacks, each one of which was cooked to perfection without a single burnt or blackened spot on them. "No," he answered simply.

"Did you leave the stove on?"

He looked at the stove, which was off and immaculately spotless; the act of cooking pancakes for his hotel's residents at least once a week for several years resulted in him being able to not spill a drop of pancake batter anywhere. "Also no."

"Uh-huh, ok. Then why do I smell smoke?"

OJ stood up in alarm, also startling Paper and Paintbrush, who were still in the room. In Hotel OJ, smoke was never a good thing, because smoke meant fire, and - while fire was bad in 99% of other buildings as well - any open flame near Bomb could result in disaster. And at the moment, they were also housing Bomby; double the danger.

"I really hope Firey isn't the cause of this," he muttered, quickly stepping out of the room. The other three, sensing his urgency, decided to get out of their seats and follow him.

As she floated out into the corridor, Puffball sniffed the air again. "I think it's coming from... the north side? That's opposite the main entrance, right?"

"It is," Paper confirmed. "And now that you mention it, I've been feeling really hot recently. I thought it was just the August heat before, but now..."

Slowly getting increasingly worried, OJ's pace quickened. He, Paper, Paintbrush, and Puffball turned two more corners through the hallway and froze. A wall of heat roasted their faces, coming directly from the inferno which engulfed half of the hallway ahead of them.

As they stared in confusion and fear, the sound of hurried footsteps grew closer and closer until Firey, Lightbulb, and Basketball reached them. "OJ! OJ! The hotel's on-" Lightbulb stopped. "Oh. You've already figured that out."

Fists clenched, OJ turned to Firey. "Firey..."

"Hey, I didn't do this! I swear!" Firey raised his still-bandaged hands in defense.

"It's true!" Basketball defended him. "Lightbulb and I were there. The back wall just spontaneously combusted!"

OJ sighed in exasperation. "Alright. Well, I don't think we can put this out. Basketball, Firey, Puffball - follow Paintbrush and Lightbulb to the exit. Paper, come with me; we need to get everyone who's still upstairs out of here. Let's move!"

Nobody argued. The seven of them quickly turned tail and ran through the hallways as fast as they could; the fire was spreading rapidly. Paintbrush skidded to a halt when they passed the lounge with the tv. Pickle was playing something on the console with Grassy. "Pickle! Grassy!" they shouted. "The hotel's on fire! We need to get out of here!"

Both their eyes widened at this, and Pickle swiftly dropped his controller and snatched up Grassy before following Painty. The three of them fled the lounge just before the flames reached it.

OJ and Paper quickly noted who ran through the front door - Basketball, Firey, Lightbulb, Puffball, Paintbrush, Pickle, and Grassy - before sprinting upstairs. "You get the second and third floors, and I'll get the fourth and fifth," OJ told his friend. There were more floors, but everybody who currently resides in the building had a room on one of the lower ones.

Paper nodded, but before they could reach the top, a flaming wooden beam collapsed in their path. OJ had to grab Paper to stop him from running straight into it and getting set alight. "Oh no," he muttered. "Oh, no no no."

"B-Bomb!" Paper cried, but it was hard to hear over the surprisingly loud crackling of the flames. "Salt! Pepper! Tissues! Anyone!"

OJ tried looking for a spot on the beam he could touch and try to push away, but several more pieces of debris suddenly fell, one particularly hard piece landing right on the edge of his glass and stunning him. He nearly fell down the stairs, but grabbed onto the railing and managed to stay steady for a solid two seconds before finally toppling over.

The next several moments were fuzzy. He floated in and out of consciousness, getting a faint feeling of being carried down something, before finally actually waking up outside. His head hurt like hell. "Urggg..." OJ groaned. "Ow."

He looked around, seeing the others who had escaped, as well as Bottle and Rocky, who had already been outside before the fire even occurred. He turned back again to witness most of the first two floors of the hotel covered in flames. He gasped and tried to sit up. "No! Where... is everyone... we need to get them out!"

"We can't!" Paper said, entering his vision and blocking the way. One of his corners was singed, and there was a tear on his face, both a watery one and a small rip. "We couldn't get through. I tried, but there was just too much..."

All the windows on the second floor suddenly shattered as an explosion rocked the earth, gushing out a new wave of flame. Bomb, or maybe Bomby. Not even five seconds later, another explosion occurred on the third floor, blowing out all the windows there as well. The eleven surviving objects could do nothing as they watched Hotel OJ lazily crumble to the ground, shaking the earth one final time with a horrible cacophony of cracking wood and shattering glass.

OJ dropped to his knees in a daze. He stared dumbly at the flaming wreckage that used to be his hotel. Despite it not being his fault, Firey simply looked away, realizing for the first time just how destructive fire could be.

Paper pulled OJ into a sympathetic hug, but the citrusy drink barely noticed. Everyone else just stood around a little awkwardly or sat down for several minutes in shock.

Finally, Basketball coughed loudly, grabbing the others' attentions. "Okay. Um. I know we're all recovering from... that, but I think we need to figure out what to do next."

"What do you mean?" Pickle wondered. "We could just sleep out here on the grass, couldn't we? Or, I don't know, sleep in Test Tube's laboratory?"

"We can't. I don't know how, but I think there's something in Test Tube's lab that started this. Yesterday, Lightbulb, Blocky, and Grassy tried to go over there, but couldn't because something inside was emitting an intense heat. Lightbulb felt that same kind of heat outside the hotel earlier, just before it caught fire."

"Are you saying that whatever set the hotel on fire is going to just keep getting hotter?" asked Puffball.

Baskie nodded. "Which means we can't stay here for long, or we'll all melt, or catch fire, or... whatever." She turned around, meeting the eyes of Paper, Pickle, Lightbulb, and Paintbrush. "Do any of you guys know of some other place south of here we can go? Assuming there's not only grass and trees, and those weird pillar things."

Paper and Pickle shook their heads, but Paintbrush didn't. "There is one other building," they said. "Lightbulb, you remember, right?"

"Do I...? Oh!" She snapped her fingers. "Yeah! In episode 6!"

"Exactly." They turned to face the others. "Everybody, once we're all ready to move, follow Lightbulb and me south. We're going to a place called Purgatory Mansion."