FireWork
Night finally falls after a long, exciting day at the summer carnival. You’ve had games, you’ve had food, you’ve had fun, but there is one more thing you came for;
The fireworks that will mark the end of the carnival.
It would be a shame to miss them, so you begin to look for a good place to view them from a little while before it begins. Unfortunately, nobody could give you any info on where exactly they would be launched from, so your first order of business is to find that out.
It’s a bit of an arduous little journey to make your way through the park, evading the more hazardous attractions. You’ve seen all sorts of embarassing things happen to people going through them and have so far been lucky enough to not fall victim to them, and you are not going to start now!
Eventually, you squeeze past a crowd all gathered around some sort of strongman game, that produces a curious ‘splat’ instead of the normal ‘clonk’ whenever someone strikes it with a mallet, but that doesn’t concern you.
When you realize just where you wound up, you can’t help but smile with glee.
You’ve found it, the fireworks array! You can see the entire pyrotechnics setup, from the fireworks rockets to fountains to all sorts of other exciting explosives that are just waiting to go off! And right there, in the center of the setup, is the star of the show; a humongous fireworks rocket, at least three times as tall and wide as you are. You are not sure how legal it is to have a fireworks rocket that massive, but you don’t quite care.
That one is sure to be impressive!
With this knowledge, you’ll be able to find the best spot to view them from!
Your musings are cut short by the alarm you’ve set earlier, the one indicating that the show was about to start. A cold panic washes over you, caught off-guard by this. Not only are you not at a good spot to view them from, you’ve also been meandering around right in the middle of hundreds of explosives and you realize that you should probably not be there when they go off. The second alarm goes off, telling you that you are moments away from getting blasted to smithereens. You stumble and scramble across fireworks batteries, boxes and cables, trying to get out of this powder keg just waiting to go boom, though in your panicked attempt to escape you manage to get your feet wrapped up in wires and fall over.
There is a silent ‘shlomp’ as you flop butt-first onto one of the fountains, slipping into and getting stuck in the large pipe at the top.
Then, the third alarm goes off, the one you set for right when the show would begin.
You can see several little warning lights go off all around you, indicating that the electronics are now active and from one end of the setup to the other, you can see the fireworks go off.
Giant geysers of fire and sparks shoot up all around you, rockets are sent flying into the air, whistling as they ascend only to explode into a dazzling display of colorful sparks.
It’s absolutely beautiful. You can’t help but gasp at the breathtaking display all around you, and you realize that this might have been the perfect spot after all!
However, another matter suddenly demands your attention.
The show finally reaches your end of the setup, and you can hear the silent click of a switch right underneath you.
You know what that means, but you don’t have time to brace before the fountain springs to live. Your eyes go wide as you feel a jet of flame shoot up into the pipe, and right against your rear. The heat is unbearable, and you let out a shriek as your behind is scorched by the fireworks below. You can’t do much to escape the burning sensation, stuck as you are, and you can’t focus on anything other than your poor behind being torched anyway, otherwise you would notice the pipe bulging outwards as the pressure inside builds up. Your behind is blocking the only outlet for all the heat and smoke that is building up inside, turning what is usually just a shower of sparks into a bomb just waiting to go off. The metal creaks and whines as it is strained more and more, until, finally, it can take no more. An ear-shattering ‘BOOOOOM’ echoes throughout the entire carnival as the thing finally explodes right underneath you.
You howl as you are launched skyward, finally able to wrap your hands around your burned, glowing hot behind in an attempt to soothe it, though the relief is relatively short-lived. You reach the apex of your ascend, and what goes up must eventually come back down, and you are no exception. You brace for impact, wondering if it’ll take long for someone to come and peel you off after the impact, but it doesn’t come to that.
Before you can hit the ground, another fountain lights up like a fire-geyser right underneath you, and you are carried back into the sky by the scorching hot exhaust, sparks and fire. That one eventually burns out, too, but the ride isn’t over yet. You find yourself bouncing along a row of fountains, each one carrying you back into the sky after you’ve come almost all the way down, carrying you along.
Just when you think that it’ll never end, you suddenly smack into a solid surface. Relieved, you simply hold onto the smooth, chilly plastic surface, hugging around the red cone you’ve landed on.
For a moment, you are just happy that your butt has some time to cool down, but eventually, curiosity gets the better of you and you begin to look around to see just where you are.
You’re above the ground, that much is clear. Beneath you, you can see the same wires and boxes you’ve been stumbling across not too long ago. You’d say that whatever you are one is about twice, or three times as high as you are tall, and it is wide enough for you to wrap around two, or three times.
That reminds you of the giant fireworks rocket that marks the end of the show.
You freeze, realizing what exactly you’ve landed on. Then, out of the corner of your eye you see a little lamp flash on, then another, and another. The flashing lights come closer and closer to the base of the rocket, like a count-down.
You swallow hard, watching the last little lamp to come on, and then, the ground underneath you is suddenly swallowed up by a cloud of smoke as the rocket fires up. It’s too late to get off now, so all you can do is hold on and hope that it’s a dud.
When the smoke clears, and you see the park underneath you grow smaller and smaller, you realize that it is not.
You fly higher and higher into the sky, until the rocket finally reaches its apex. Then, it explodes. Every color of the rainbow flashes across your eyes as it blows up, enveloping you in a vortex of sparks and light.
You’ve never been so close to something like this before, and for what it is worth, it’s stunningly beautiful. You don’t get too much time to admire it, however, since the explosion below you catches you almost instantly. The ball of fire soon enveloping you is much, much hotter than the fountains before, and you can feel your poor behind being roasted and scorched once again. That, coupled with the sheer force such a giant amount of explosives causes sends you flying ever higher and higher, as if you were a rocket yourself. Your poor behind shines brightly, scorched red by all the fire and explosions and from the ground, you look like a shooting star, twinkling in the sky.
At least you have some time to think as you are soaring through the night sky, and the cold wind helps soothe your poor behind. You can only hope that someone will find you and peel you off the ground after you come back down, but you’re sure that nobody would miss the giant pancake you’ll most likely turn into on impact. At least the fireworks were pretty.