Author's Note: Not sure why this one was so difficult to write… Brody-centric fics seem to come much more easily to me on the whole. Also, still not sure I actually like this installment in the action-oriented series… Not quite action-filled enough, maybe?

(Also a bit of Brody saving LaSalle's ass… as requested by MKP.)

Smoke inhalation had nothing on this. It burned but was also heavy and thick in her throat, nose and lungs, made her hack and cough, came up as an -ew, disgusting- thick glob of mucus the color of spoiled cream.

A good old house fire would've been far more pleasant than this, Agent Meredith Brody decided, as she pulled the oxygen mask away from her face to engage in a coughing fit generally characteristic of homeless pneumoniacs, which produced another glob that looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy's hideous mutant cousin. Not caring about dignity or hygiene for once, she promptly spat it onto the ground.

"That ain't right."

She looked up to see LaSalle's repulsed expression, wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, grimace and all.

"Wow, are you reall-" A stinging cough interrupted her scolding and she was forced to raise the mask to her face once more. So she just glared at him until his mouth softened in concern and sympathy. He shifted on his feet, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. The other was holding a bandage to the side of his head.

"Yeah, 'm sorry, Brody," he murmured before he finally stopped fidgeting and made eye contact with her. "Ya really saved my ass back there."

He gave her his (likely-patented) charming smile.

"An' ya say Pride 'n' I are always playin' hero. Bein' all reckless an' whatnot. But, woman, ya sure have us beat."

She narrowed her eyes at him, despite feeling a little pleased with herself at what she'd accomplished, the lives she'd saved, including her fellow agent's.

It certainly hadn't been easy...

Christopher LaSalle was not a large man. He was fit but not a body builder. And Merri had never expected that he would be so fricken heavy. She needed to revise her observational skills. She'd always put him at about 155 pounds. But damn, dragging his ass was more like hauling a bear carcass out of the woods than a deer. Not that she'd done either. But she did originally hail from hunting territory. Maybe had she tramped out into the woods with the other gun-toting kiddies to bag a prize buck, getting her partner's ass out of harm's way would've been easy for her now, just relying on an old muscle memory.

But it wasn't. Her arms burned in protest, but if she could just get his unconscious form moving again (unfortunately having slowed to round the corner), she could get him out of danger and return to the real job at hand. She hadn't been able to lift him enough to get under him, wrap her arms around his chest and awkwardly walk him out of the place. And she was afraid that heaving on his arm would dislocate his shoulder, so she tugged at his legs instead. If he came out with a couple more bumps to the head and bruises on his back, well, it was better than leaving him there, buried in a half crushed stack of artificial cream-filled sponge pastry the 'bakery' had somehow gotten to come out a vivid Barbie pink. It was a heart attack factory in Merri's opinion. And at the moment, likely a death trap.

The serial arsonist suspect with a vendetta against naval personnel worked at the newly reopened snack cake factory, and a simple questioning had gone a little awry, when the man had taken the crowbar (normally used to open the crates of industrial-sized quantities of baking supplies) and struck LaSalle upside the head, sending the agent crashing into a stack of Pixie Cakes. Merri was briefly torn between chasing their suspect down and making sure LaSalle was still breathing. The sound of metal impacting skull had been sickeningly loud. That brief hesitation had allowed their suspect to flee. She pursued, but the chaos the altercation had created in the manufacturing line had employees scrambling to get out of the way, or into the way in an attempt to witness the source of the mayhem.

She'd shouted out her identification, ordered them to evacuate, pulled the nearest fire alarm she could find, but the arsonist had disappeared on her. It was a large building filled with stainless steel equipment and the scent of baking pastry. She had a feeling he wouldn't run. Well, more than he had already done.

Arsonists with his MO... he was still in the building, and he'd go out with a bang. A big one. And she couldn't leave LaSalle defenseless, unable to save himself if she couldn't find the crazy bastard and stop him in time. Trying to rouse the unconscious agent had failed, and so she was left with no option but to literally drag his ass out of there. The factory could go up in flames any minute, depending on the resources the suspect had on hand. There was a crowd gathered outside of the loading docks, many still in aprons and hairnets, gloved and coated in flour, sugar and the like. And she shouted at them to help her incapacitated comrade in her commanding 'federal agent tone', which seemed to do the trick for several rushed forward, picking him up as if he were light as a feather and carrying him off to lie him in the grass and fawn over him.

Damn Southern Boy. Charming even when entirely unconscious.

He'd be fine. He would. Shaking her head, Merri turned and ran back into the factory. Fire trucks and emergency personnel had to be on their way. The fire alarm was blaring in her ears, painfully loud as she passed the fixtures mounted at various intervals in the large building. At least, they seemed new, so hopefully the system was rigged to directly contact the NOFD when set off. Maybe she should just evacuate herself…

Wait.

That might be the smart thing to do...

Except, Rene Grant was not only an arsonist, but one who'd been escalating with every fire he'd set. And given the state of the surrounding neighborhood... Zoning wasn't especially strict in this part of the city, desperate to draw in anything that might bolster its economy. And the factory had been built out of several old brick houses in the middle of what previously had been a residential... still was primarily a residential area. There were houses, homes, apartments, families, people sleeping after working night shifts, home for lunch... if this place went up in a powerful blaze, the entire neighborhood would doubtless follow.

Merri couldn't risk that. If there was a chance she could stop the demented firebug before he set that match...

But where could he be? They probably used gasoline in the machinery they used to haul crates of supplies and products around. But that was behind her. She hadn't seen any sign of the man. And the last she had eyes on him, he'd been running deeper into the factory. God, this place would go up fast. It wasn't like a recently built facility. It was a couple of retrofitted old buildings. The floors were refinished wood, as were the door casings, trim, stairs. Its infrastructure wasn't steel and cement, but wood and nails, with a brick facade.

Focus. Think like an arsonist. He was at work. He didn't have his preferred kit. Well, maybe it was sitting in the trunk of his car. But he wouldn't risk going for it. What did he need?

An accelerant was required for a really good, swift blaze, right?

Janitor's closet maybe? Cleaning supplies and chemicals? But where would they keep that in this crazy cupcake-producing ma-whoa!

Her boots slipped on the wide wood planks of the floor and she barely caught herself, crouching down once she'd regained her balance to touch her fingers to the viscous sheen, raising them to her nose and turning her head hastily away at the sharp scent of alcohol-based cleaning fluid.

Okay, so he'd already raided the janitor's closet. Then there wasn't much time. Why wasn't this place already filled with over-baked 'Pixie Cakes' exploding into a mass of bubbling sugary goo, overflowing the large batter vats like a misjudged cake in her own oven (okay, so it was an unfortunately common occurrence when Merri baked)?

The packages of snack cakes would go up quick and burn hot. It really didn't need intricate preparations, did it?

Maybe he'd decided to get out of there, favoring the 'flee' side of his 'flight or inferno' response. God, she hated the kooky ones. But, Merri supposed, anyone capable of murder, any sort of murder, wasn't quite right in the head. Granted, she'd seen a few accidental-deaths-turned-manslaughter because the perpetrator had panicked. But even then, it was because they'd briefly lost their mind.

So if she were a crazy firebug who'd been murdering Navy personnel, worked in a factory making 'Pixie Cakes', and was being hunted by federal agents... what would she do?

Merri sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb, immediately tore them away, the fumes of cleaning fluid making her dizzy, and took a few breaths to steady herself and calm her frustration.

The profiling portion of her interrogation skills was failing her entirely. Logically, she should just give up and call it a day. Maybe he'd done the same. And they could try to track the bastard down later. Once LaSalle was back on his feet and they regrouped, they could find him, right? Even if he ran. Except... Except, she was standing in the middle of a giant pool of chemicals.

He'd meant to burn the place down when he soaked the floorboard in some generic form of industrial cleaner. His intentions likely hadn't changed, since the building had been evacuated and he probably was just as aware of her presence as she was his... that was, not at all.

Damn.

The whole neighborhood could burn.

Alright. Focus. She'd been through the loading dock. She'd been through the main floor with the giant mixing vats that filled the rows and rows of baking tins that went down the line to the... oven, theoretically. She hadn't checked in there yet, had she?

Merri made her way back through the big room that they'd apparently gutted an entire three story townhouse for the installation of the bakery production line. She led with her Glock, feeling more at ease for taking action, but not quite as at ease as when she had one of the boys covering her back.

She headed towards the room with the large warning signs that indicated it housed the factory's industrial ovens. And that unless you strictly adhered to every safety guideline outlined in the small print, you were liable for burning your own face off. One was also likely to burn their face off it they just waltzed into a room that had been set ablaze, so Merri placed the back of one hand against the metal door, wondering if there was thermal lining on the other side that would obviate the precaution altogether.

Startled, she hastily pulled her hand away, before she realized that her hindbrain response had been to something other than the temperature of the door, which had in fact been cool to the touch. It had been a noise, loud, sharp, like a gunshot. But not a gunshot. More like an explosion. But not the bomb kind. Well, at least she didn't think it had been a bomb. It was difficult to tell over the high-pitched klaxon damaging her ears and adding an extra buzzing in her head.

She instinctively started once more, however, as the second explosive noise somehow cut through the blare of the fire alarm. And then counter-intuitively (for the majority of the rational human population, anyway), the federal agent quickly made her way towards the source of the perplexing, disturbing noise that could be only being made by the firebug.

Another loud crack. Definitely something exploding, but more like a down pillow hitting someone in the side of the head, blowing out a seam and a plume of small white feathers. The door was more than a little ajar as she approached what she soon discovered had been the storage room for the baking supplies. And it was a large room, because, well, this was a factory that's sole product was baked goods.

She put her back to the wall next to the door, peeked around into what resembled a Northern Michigan white-out. A brief bout of homesickness flitted through her and was promptly squashed as she realized it was flour filling the air. And in the middle of the storm was her suspect, gleefully picking up the twenty pound bags of flour and smacking them against the support column in the middle of the room, looking so much like her grandmother beating out the rugs on the front porch and again striking her with a bout of homesickness.

"Rene Grant!" she called out the suspect's name, making herself her over the perpetual squeal of the alarms as she quickly entered the room, Glock pointed at what appeared to be his head. Even with years of long, blizzard-filled winters under her belt, she could only make out the barest silhouette in the fog of flour. It stung her eyes and burned the inside of her nose, her lungs. She hastily covered her mouth, even as the deranged anarchist turned to her, something flashing in the obfuscating white cloud.

"Drop the lighter," she said, instinctively sensing the danger even though her brain was momentarily puzzled by the lack of any accelerants in the room. That was, until she remembered that ridiculous fact she'd heard before.

Flour exploded. When aerosolized, it caught fire so quickly it was like a bomb going off. Something spectacular. Something a firebug would love to be his end... if he had to have an end.

She took a few steps closer, saw the crazed look in the man's eyes, saw the crooked grin.

"Care to burn with-"

She shot him three times center mass before he could finish his last maniacal words, diving after him, just to be sure, just in case, grabbing the arm holding the lighter as they both crashed to the ground, several bags of flour breaking their fall. It didn't soften the blow at all, for the baking staple was densely packed in its sacking. She had the wind knocked out of her, but she metaphorically sighed in relief even if she couldn't in reality, holding the vintage Zippo in her hand, flipping it shut, and panting, then coughing as her shocked lungs filled with flour dust.

Using a couple fingers at his carotid to confirm Grant was dead, the flour covering the floor and the man turning a rusty crimson as it absorbed the flow of blood, Merri decided it was best to get out of the room with its suffocating air. The flour seemed to be taking its time floating back down to settle on all the surfaces like ash spewed from a volcano.

And she rather not be one of those voids found in Pompeii, cowering, suffocating to death, buried and immortalized in volcanic ash -only, less dramatic, more ridiculous, flour.

Wheezing, she limped through the factory and out into the comparatively clean, fresh New Orleans city-swamp air. (She'd never get used to the underlying scent of the place, more musty, decaying and damp than the subtle background woodsy aroma you got in the Northern Midwest.) It was sweet and clear compared to that flour-dense smog she'd been breathing in.

Her lungs ached. And so did her side where she'd at the very least bruised flesh, if not ribs. But she could hear sirens in the distance, and her brained partner seemed to have come around, getting petted and fawned over with even greater enthusiasm as he grinned at the group of concerned factory workers surrounding him. Most of them women.

Figured.

She'd done the hard work. All he'd done was taken a blow to that thick skull of his.

She was glad LaSalle seemed to be okay and on his feet. He was doubtless doomed to suffer at least a CT scan, however.

He was looking quite admonished, and rather on the pathetic side, despite joking about her having to pull his fat out of the fire. There still was blood crusted about his hairline and on parts of his ear. He was holding a large medical bandage against the side of his head, where he just might have suffered a skull fracture.

But the paramedics had cleaned him up pretty well, while simultaneously putting an oxygen mask over Merri's face and placing a rather cold stethoscope to her chest to listen to her lungs. Both of them were about to be hauled off to the hospital, which might be a good thing, given the sorry state of the pair of them.

"Pride's gonna tear us a new one," he said.

"Not us," Merri said. "Me. It was my call to go after Grant without back up, and leave you behind even though you were injured. It was stupid and I failed to follow protocol. I deserve whatever lecture or black mark in my file I get."

LaSalle frowned.

"Brody, ya didn't do wrong," he said that, staring at her with blue eyes that were relievedly clear and focused. Couldn't be that bad of a head injury then, especially since the paramedics were only being moderately pushy about getting them to the hospital. Chris had told them they couldn't leave until their senior agent arrived on the scene. Not exactly true, but it did the trick of putting off their getting further poked and prodded for a few minutes.

"Yer a goddang hero, is what ya are."

He grinned at her again, making her smile, laugh a little and begin to cough. It was enough to draw the attention of the paramedic who had been tending to the minor wounds incurred by employees in the mild panic that the agents had inadvertently caused.

"That's enough," he said, wiping at the sweat on his forehead with the bare skin of the back of his wrist. "We're taking you to the ER to get checked out now."

"But-" Brody tried to protest, but they were already loading her gurney into the back of the ambulance.

"I'll stay until Pride gets here," LaSalle called out to her, looking disturbingly worried. She, too, was feeling a little bit alarmed by the EMTs sudden insistence about getting her to the hospital.

"How bad is it?" she asked, fighting with the female paramedic to pull the oxygen mask off for a moment. She gave her a half-hearted smile.

"It's not likely to be a problem," she said. "We just want to make sure there's no damage to your lungs."

Oh, great. She had to go and play hero. And now she probably had Pixie Cake lung. How embarrassing would that be? Dying of Pixie Cake Lung. Or even if she just developed asthma from it...

That was it. This was the last time she was going off-protocol. And this time, she meant it!

A/N: Sorry about the slightly vague ending as to Merri's health. But I didn't want to take this any farther than the scene of the action/crime, like with the others. Hopefully the humor implies that she'll be fine?