There's...

nobody here, actually, the place is deserted.

... Did they not let the people back?????? She hadn't even considered that a poss-ibility! A single tear runs down her face as she starts searching for clues.

They seem to have taken some time about leaving - the lights are off and there aren't half-finished meals on the tables. The stores have been mostly emptied and there are a few objects that may have been dropped on the way out and not deemed worth going back for. The vehicles are all gone.

She... doesn't know what to do this time.

She lets herself cry for a while. It's important to do that sometimes.

There are traffic sounds from the surrounding neighborhoods, so it's not like they've evacuated the whole city.

That's not actually reassuring!

Meelia eventually pulls herself together enough to think through what she should do next. She thinks over what she knows about the red haired people and other amentans and everything. 

She considers trying to get back to the rest of the amaliens, possibly by surrendering herself. They'd help - she knows that - but she doesn't actually have an obvious thing for them to do yet and she's worried the amnetnas will stop her from telling them and and....

She really really doesn't want to give up. But does she have any other options? 

She could try to find the red haired people. She has no idea where they are and more importantly she'd definitely get caught if she searched. Her disguise is not that perfect and they'd be surprised to see a person with red hair not wherever they took the red haired people. Hm, there might be a way she could get them to put her with the red haired people by appearing red haired? But but... they'd check to see if she was her first. Can she get around that? 

She thinks back to everything else she knows about the Amentans, and the red haired people....

Oh. That plan is even worse than the last one.

A while later, a fire starts in the former red district.

The firefighters show up after someone notices the smoke. They drive in and spray it with a lot of water and leave.

Before they leave they notice a corpse. It's floating in a bathtub, as if it was trying to avoid the fire that way. The face is badly burned and hard to recognize, but it doesn't have many other injuries. What hair remains is red.

They do note that. Does the corpse have enough awareness to hear them discussing it?

Not for at least an hour after they find it.

Then it will have no idea of what their plans are or the timeline for it!

For example, it will be taken completely by surprise when, after the addition of some flame-retardant materials around the perimeter of the district and smoke-scrubbing machinery held overhead with cranes, they circle back to finish up the job of burning the place to the ground!

The Amentans keep being bad in ways that Meelia didn't even consider! Meelia makes a break for the perimeter, her face badly burnt and her body clammy. She's not running as fast as she would normally and it hurts a bunch but she does not want to be burned more then the amount she already was. 

The flame-retardant materials have some things to say about that, i.e. no.

She tries climbing. If that doesn't work she's going to try to get the attention of someone outside the perimeter.

The flame retardant is a little hard to climb - you don't want flaming vermin pelting into the street - but not impossible. Fire's actually pretty loud, though, so nobody's going to hear her right away.

Meelia isn't the best amalien climber but she's still better than any Amentan. She's scaled cliff walls before - she can climb over this.

When she gets over and plops onto the ground she gets hit with a blast of flame-retardant foam.

Yuck.

Why is Amenta like this.

Well, in this case, it's so she doesn't catch anything on fire.

She'll have a long wait if she doesn't want to get out of the foam herself.

She tries to dig her way out. She is very tired and going slow.

It's not super stiff flame-retardant foam.

"Shit, is it alive?"

"Even a red wouldn't leave their kid behind in an abandoned district, what the fuck?"

"Is that a red - could be orange - I can't see -"