Chapter 3: Cross-Town Express
"Did you ever have one of those days?"
"Seriously. Grenades. This is fantastic" I high stepped along the avenue alongside Fizadora tonic. The crossing behind us still smoked from the blast that tore up a pair of Scorch's raiders. They had been waiting in the street for me to exit but weren't expecting a very large, very loud explosion to precede me. Getting to know Fizadora was already starting to pay dividends in the survival department.
One question still weighed on my mind.
"Did you miss the part where I was trying to not die for you? Because I could have use a grenade back there."
Fizzy shook her head. "You could have, but I couldn't."
I looked away and bit on my tongue. I had to rethink my verbal strategy. Fizzy was direct, I had to be as well. "Okay, okay. I get your literal word games. Let me guess, you didn't want to destroy the terminal, so you felt it was okay to let me get myself fried so you could find a who knows how old delivery notice?"
Fizzy stopped. She had hesitation in her downcast eyes. "Yes and no," she answered deliberately, slotting words neatly into place. "Fragmentation grenades would do little to a terminal such as the one in the office. At the same time, I was more worried with what my grenade would do to you instead of for you. At the same same time, I was afraid to use my arcane static explosives because, as you said, afraid for the terminal. I couldn't lose another shot at this. Please understand."
The point, like Fizzy herself, was a logical one.
I took the explanation for what it was and accepted it with a generous, "Thanks for clearing the path back there."
"I needed them dead as much as you did," Fizzy pointed out, looking to the cloudy sky as she pondered, "I do wonder why they were just camped out there. It seems awful weird. I didn't leave any trail"
"Well now that you mention it," I laughed. It was a nervous one. "You know when you found me? I had just been chased by a gang of raiders that want me dead." I coughed and gave my best Luna-may-care grin, trying to shrug off the fact I was a wanted stallion. "They burned down my home. I barely escaped getting char grilled."
Fizzy stared at me again and I was once more a parasprite under glass.
"So yeah, I ain't going home cause I don't got a home to go to."
Fizzy heaved a sigh and looked skyward. "I have nothing to give, but you can salvage anything I don't need until you find your own place to stay. Besides," she directed her attention back to me, "I have not met many ponies as quick to help as you are."
"And those grenades of yours won't do you much good if something gets up close." I tactfully pointed out the strategic limitations.
"There is that." Fizzy blushed and cleared her throat, "I usually just try to make it a point to not let them get that close. A few primed proximity charges usually do the trick rather well."
I nodded to Fizzy's point and slid into silence, my mind busy with the thought of just what kind of ordinance the unicorn was packing in those saddlebags of hers and what had I gotten myself into among the ruins of East Manehattan.
The rattle of the gunfire mimicked the bursting pulse of my heart as Fizzy and I ducked down below the overhang of a remnant floor in a bombed out shell of a building. Rounds burst overhead, cutting through the concrete and stucco, sending shards and clouds of particulate dust raining down upon us.
Fizzy fumbled through her saddlebags in a desperate search for a grenade, a stick of dynamite, anything to hurl at the raiders pinning us down.
I snorted, braced against the overturned pile of rubble and office supply that served as our front side shelter. Unarmed save for Sharp Retort and my own four hooves, I could do little against the spraying gunfire.
A graveyard of a city and the ponies here all labored to add their others to the pile of dead.
"I got one! I need sight, I need sight!" Fizz shouted, her voice thin above the sharp crackle of gunfire. She signaled to me: hoof pointed at her eye and then to the barricade.
I looked around our cover and took a bullet to the head.
Thank Celestia for my helmet. Just a ping and my head jerked around like I took a cart to the face. I spiraled, spun, and sprawled to the pavement. My ears rang. My head pulsed with screaming pain. The world spun and twirled in a graceful drunken dance. Everything in me burned.
I looked up at the gray cloud sky above. It spun so much it made me sick. I turned away from sky and saw my savior: my dusty, dull yellow hard hat. I silently promised it a new coat of paint and polish if we made it out of this alive. It deserved that much.
I lay there and listen to the sounds: staccato cracks of automatic gunfire, a shriek from who knows what, the loud pop of a grenade. Combat all around me and I couldn't move, couldn't will myself to motion as my body fell into a stiffening numbness. I could see a wall of the building behind us, riddled with holes from firefights past. In my fevered state I wondered how many more it would take before it fell and crushed me.
Pavement spat up by gunfire peppered the side of my face. I was too numb for it to hurt, but the strafe was close enough to snap my focus back to reality. I was still alive after all. I cursed some more and twisted to my hooves.
I lunged to get my helmet. I wasn't going to leave it behind, not after what it just did for me.
Fizzy hunkered against the barricade, another grenade hovered by her side. She let the explosive fly. Another pop as it went off. The fire from the other side ceased. We both paused, she looked back at me, and for a moment, a smile came to her muzzle. It lasted the briefest of moments; more fire from our assailants took reign of our attention.
"Stay here!" I shouted as a new stripe of holes was created in the wall behind us. "Send another bomb at them, I'm going in!"
I lowered my head and charged as the grenade sailed overhead.
A pair of raiders vaulted over a wrecked pile of old carts to meet me in the street.
Two shots pinged off my reinforced barding. I focused on the gunslinger; a small unicorn with a pistol floating in his grey-green aura. I put my shoulder into my charge. Another shot buzzed past my ear as I closed the gap. I put my weight square under the unicorn's neck and tossed him aside.
The raider hit the car with an audible thunk. His magic cut out and the gun clattered on the ground.
A mare came at me with a wrist razor swinging. A complete amateur; she was all wild swings and slashes.
I ducked, weaved, under and around her desperate slashings. My head was ringing, my body aching, but I was running high on adrenaline and more experienced in a fight. I spun around, got my front down and brought my rear hooves just under her muzzle.
Her jaw crunched. She rolled head over flank and lay in a crumpled heap on the pavement.
Another pony lay on the other side of the heap of carts, torn up by Fizzy's grenade. She was the machine gunner; the one I suppose shot me.
I gave the dead mare a kick for good measure.
"You're an idiot, do you know that?"
I looked up and blinked away the tunnel vision threatening to black out my vision.
Two Fizzys walked toward me from across the street. "I could have killed you, they could have killed you," she said, her voice warbled in and out of my ears.
"I'm not dead, am I?" I asked, not entirely certain of the answer. The rush of excitement bled out of me and I didn't get three steps before I found myself on the ground. The last thing I saw was Fizzy looking down at me when everything went black.
I came to in the remains of an old world diner. The old relics of a long past, happier time surrounded me with a mocking cheeriness hidden underneath the rust and decay. The too-big eyes of the pink ministry mare were watching, as they always were, from a poster that still clung to the aging wall. There was a clock, branded Sparkle-Cola and stopped sometime in the early afternoon, that I fixated on. I don't know why, it didn't help as I knew the clock was more dead than I felt. It was something to watch that wasn't the staring eyes of some long dead mare.
I tried to get to my hooves,quashing the rebellion in my legs. Pain lanced through my skull. The world blurred, went pale, too dark and then too light all in the same moment. I reeled and found support in the shape of an old table.
I stood there for what felt like hours, even though it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. I tried to call for Fizzy but all I succeeded in was a garbled moan. She was no where to be seen
"She ditched your ass."
I looked around for the source of the voice. It popped and hissed, sounded vaguely tinny. Fearful of leaving my support table, I craned my neck to find my radio sitting on the decrepit countertop. The little light still working behind the dial flashed as though it were winking at me.
"You heard me, Red. That filly you been following around went off and left you here."
"She just went out to get some help." I had to reassure myself that I wasn't left alone, "She'll be back."
I got a laugh in return. "Really now, Red? Who's to say she ain't going to bite it out there? Manticore's all up and down this strip. Raiders too. And that's only if the girl even comes back for your sorry flank."
I stared back at Radio. I hated him. At the same time, I could not exactly say he was wrong. I mustered what defense I could, given my state. "Because I'd come back for her."
It sounded weak. Radio smelled that weakness and poured on the acid tones. "How noble a scavenger you are, Red. Too bad I know you better than that."
"I'm a salvager," I snapped back, lashing towards Radio. Too much, too soon, and the world spun around me. I managed to stay on my hooves thanks to pure obstinacy. I had to get on the offensive. I gritted my teeth and tried to stare down Radio. "The things I find get put to use."
"As if that mattered, Red. You and I both know what happens to the things you find. The kid's better off ditching you."
I lowered my head. "You're wrong, and you're not helping."
"Sometimes help hurts, Red. I'm just being honest here, your radio wave reality check." Radio laughed. "I always know what you're up to and I'll always be around to tell you what you need to hear. So don't worry about it, cause I sure as shit won't. See, I don't care if you like me, because it doesn't make what I say wrong. Catch you later, Red."
I hammered the radio with my hoof. If the old world hadn't seemed to make everything to withstand balefire and megaspells, I think it would have broken. I wish it had, it would've looked better than my impotently thumping a radio to the floor before following it myself. For the second time today I took another impromptu, but eagerly needed, nap.
I woke amid an endless pile of satin and silk. My soft prison clung to me, dark and suffocating. I thrashed, spinning and kicking in a wretched panic at the clutching cloth. Piece by piece, the wrappings fell away from me and I tumbled out onto a cold wood floor.
Once again I found myself in the red-and-gold stateroom. I felt a gnawing unease ripple up my back as I walked across the floor. Nothing had changed; the bed, the desk with its worn photographs, the flickering lamps were all still in place.
Only now there wasn't a hallway to walk into. In front of me was just a door. It loomed in front of me with all the purpose and sobriety of a gravestone.
Water trickled from underneath.
I hesitated, out of fear and knowledge of what could lay on the other side, but I opened the door. I had no choice. My body moved on autopilot.
The wooden dock creaked out in protest of my weight. I stood on a long wooden path that bobbed up and down on the thick, stagnant waters of a swamp. The air hung heavy and bore its oppressive heat and humidity against my back. Unseen things chittered and called in the dark thicket. The whole place stunk of stale water.
I looked behind myself. The door was gone.
I walked down the wooden path and listened to the water slap off the sides of the barrels that kept it all afloat. Small lamps shone in the shadows and kept me from falling into the fetid swamp water. Closer and closer those lamps drew me along through the dark to a cluster of shining lights that fought for luminescence in the deep black distance.
The weak lights grew stronger, shapes formed in the mire and I saw a small town on stilts rising from the shadows.
My heart stopped and I felt a cold rush of blood in my ears. "No," I said. "No," I repeated.
I turned to run. I didn't want to go into that town. I didn't want to continue.
I came face to face with a sign that read:
Marshlight
Pop. 74
It was just a wooden plank with a few words burned into it. A welcome sign for a small community.
A sign that terrified me.
I turned again only to be met with the same sign and the same town standing in front of me. Back and forth I went and each time the town transposed itself in front of me.
I twisted and turned in place and saw my escape. I dove for the water.
And slammed snout first onto the dock. The boards bobbed up and down violently. I got to my hooves and there again stood the sign. Only now, the population was crossed out and in place of the seventy-four ponies that made up Marshlight was a single number.
Three.
My breaths came in quick, hungry gasps. I backed from the sign and that's when I heard a distant sound. A sound like frying meat. I sound like cracking and popping and the screaming of demons.
Another scratch, like a claw across the board, dug through the three.
Two.
I sat down and closed my eyes and begged for it to end. I didn't want to be here. Not again.
"Call," a voice gagged out my name.
"Sorry," I whispered to the voice.
"Here, this won't help you in the long run, but it'll get you on your hooves."
This new voice I heard was cloudy and distant, a faint echo from a long hallway. It was the sweetest thing I could have hoped for.
A needle pricked my neck. My body swam in the warm, encompassing glow of Med-X
The source of the voice helped me to my hooves. "Just some scrap bandages and leftover drugs. I can't help you any more than that; there wasn't much I could find in a pinch. Hopefully this can keep you going long enough for us to find some decent healing potions or a doctor."
I blinked away the blur in my eyes. Slowly, the counter came into view. Then the radio, still off, and my helmet. Finally, I noticed Fizzy. I laughed, it felt and sounded like sandpaper.
"You were wrong, Radio."
"What?" Fizzy gave me a look that told me it was best to backpedal lest I look insane.
"Nothing, just, was just worried you left me to rot. Can't think of many ponies who would've come back for a pony like me."
She looked insulted. "If I was just going to ditch you, I would have done so before I dragged you all the way here."
"I know that now. Getting shot in the head doesn't keep most ponies thinking straight. Thankfully I got a hard head."
"If you can crack jokes, you're going to be fine."
We both found respite in a short laugh.
"And I reinforced your helmet while you were out of it. I didn't think some old metal hard hat would stand up so well. Chalk it up to earth pony construction."
Fizzy's silver aura clung to my helmet. It floated across the diner and sat gently on my head.
"Same goes for your skull."
I put on my best brave and confident face, thanked the princesses for the wonderful drug and the magic in the wraps around my head and made for the door. "Show must go on," I said, stopping only to look back at Fizadora. "I owe you, again. Can't get your soda staying here."
"Can't get you a doctor, either."
Thank Celestia for Fizadora Tonic.
"Hold up, I want to check this out," I called to Fizzy.
We had come across a fallen air cargo carriage. It was a rusted out shell of a vehicle but it was big enough to house a lot of materials and after a cursory look around, seemed to have been left relatively alone over the years.
Trash and potential treasure spread all over the ceiling turned floor. Empty liquor bottles made for most of the refuse. A few rusted metal boxes in the back held little more than dust.. I managed to find a few stray cases of Mint-als and a few bottles of Apple Brand Apple Cider in the back corner. I stuffed them into my saddle bags while Fizzy kept lookout. I could keep a bottle of the booze for myself and pawn the Mint-als off on some addict to cover the cost of my medicine.
The roof nearly buckled, denting in and groaning. Fizzy and I looked to one another, silent, barely even breathing as we heard the ghastly screeching of claws on metal. Thud after heavy thud echoed above us. The protest of the worn metal filled our ears. We both watched the door. My heart was in my throat. Fizzy's magic pulled a grenade from her saddlebags.
We were still as the grave.
A large, bulky shadow hit the pavement and blocked the entrance. Pinpricks of lightfrom the gray outside streamed in through holes in the fatigued metal, but not nearly enough to give us sight. In the darkness we could hear the thing breathing, snuffling about just outside the container.
"Fizz, Fizzy," I hissed through my teeth to the mare. Neither of us moved as we tried to simultaneously look to each other and watch the thing at the same time. "Go for it."
Fizzy nodded, apparently agreeing with me. The little metal apple sailed through the air. It bounced with a light clack, rolled, and sat underneath the brute. The glacial seconds hung in the air, then, bang.
The explosion tore at the beast. It fell back knocked to the ground, roaring in surprise and pain. It lay on the ground, still, bleeding from a myriad holes torn by the flying metal.
It was a manticore. We just blew up a manticore.
Fizzy and I shared a silent cheer when the manticore hit the dirt. Together we bolted for the exit.
The manticore hauled itself to its paws and turned its attention on us. Baleful fury and pain in its eyes and in its bellow, it charged the overturned carriage. A deafening crunch echoed in the carriage as the manticore struck. The carriage bucked, Fizzy and I slammed against side and wall as bottle after bottle of spent cider rained about us.
"I need to develop a higher yield formula." Fizzy made notes while upside and folded like a concertina.
Fizzy could be scarier than the manticore.
The manticore's massive paw stretched deep into the carriage. It pounded about the inside of the carriage, swiping blindly for us. Junk tossed about by the paw bruised and battered off my barding but the creature couldn't push in any farther.
Trapped as we were, at least it could not get to us. In all, we had broken even on the situation.
"I can't detonate anything this close to us. I don't have any shaped charges." Fizzy was back on her hooves and hunkered with me in the back to figure this situation out. "If I blow anything here it'll be messy."
"I think that's a given just about anytime someone blows something."
Fizzy rolled her eyes. "We'll be in the blast radius."
"We're facing something that wants to eat us, I think a little levity is warranted." I looked around at the junk tossed about and what things I had picked up from the plant.
"Fizz? How are you with making things?"
"Pretty good," Fizzy eyed me with curiosity, "You have something in mind?"
"Ayup." I dug through my saddlebags.
"I got some spare electrical junk, a plunger, a spark battery, some duct tape and a big kitchen knife. Now If I remember, you can put a charge into any metal thing if you can hook a battery up to it. I'm just not sure how to do it. Think you can?"
Fizzy took to the scrap with that same parasprite-under-glass look she gave me. Her magic lifted the various parts up and around. "I think I can do something with this. Yes. Just try to let me work here."
A sharp stinger, dripping with venom, plunged through the top of the cargo container and lashed about. Fizzy and I cursed as the stinger punched through the roof over and over again. It only stopped when the manticore tried to shove its face inside to roar and spit at us.
"Hurry up, Fizzy. We don't have much time here!" I called out as the container began to bend more with each strike of the manticore.
"Distract him," Fizzy called back, speaking around a length of wire while parts orbited her head, "Busy here."
Distraction. I felt a bubbling of deja vu at the thought of my appointed task. I looked around at all the bottles and saw my answer.
I hurled the bottles at the manticore. They bounced uselessly off its gaping maw. The ones that broke didn't cut much but most just bounced harmlessly.
I didn't hurt the manticore, but I did piss it off
The manticore snarled and bellowed. Spittle flew from its fangs. Clanging filled the carriage each time it hefted its considerable bulk against the rusted frame. I continued to taunt the monster until Fizz trotted past me floating some strange looking spear. It was short, made from body of the plunger. The knife was at one end, the spark battery at the other. Two wired ran the length of the stick, kept down by the tape.
"Are you sure about this?" I shouted my concern over the manticore's din.
"We'll see as soon as I stab it!"
Her answer did not fill me with a great load of confidence.
The manticore bellowed. Fizzy floated the spear up just as the great beast's jaws closed.
There was a light show. The spark battery discharged when the spear wedged itself inside the manticore's maw. Arcane flashes in a multitude of colors splashed and sparked in a dazzling way. Pure scintillation.
It bucked, slamming its head against the ceiling. The manticore thrashed out of the container and began to dance and twitch. It pawed at its mouth, uselessly trying to dislodge the sparking spear. Its bellows and roars choked and sputtered as it slowed, fell, and twitched its last on the pavement.
The tangy smell of cooked flesh coiled up in the smoke from the animal's jaw.
We stared for a long, quiet time, Fizadora and I. We stood waiting, watching the death throes, listening to the crackle hiss of charred flesh, the gargled whimpers of the dying beast. The carriage, the road, the section of the city seemed quieter than death after it ended.
"Figs," Fizzy broke the silence..
I just nodded in reply.
"So, uh, let's just keep going then?"
"Let's"
"Not all that much farther," Fizzy said, floating her map in front of her face.
She spun the map and continued, "I think we ended up turned around for a while, but I'm working off of hearsay and guesswork."
Not satisfied with my lack of response, she jabbed my side. "Hey, are you listening?"
"What? Yeah, yeah," I sputtered, looking back down from the gray clouds above. I shook my head, my eyes needed to adjust. "Getting lost happens some times. And we're out of my area so I don't know this place that well."
"If we could get your PipBuck working, then this whole trip would become a lot simpler" Fizzy prodded the dead device on my foreleg. "I could probably fix it if we can get some time and parts. I have seen a few before. Back home, that is."
"Considering it's nothing more than a useless hunk at the moment, I'd appreciate that."
Fizzy nodded, rolling up her map to tuck away in her saddlebags. "Even with the parts, I need something to boot up the spell matrix. That means we are going to need some arcane technology to help with the job. Got any of those on you?"
Before Fizzy and I stretched a bridge over the stagnant, still, sickly looking river down below. Across the water lay the final leg of our hike through Manehattan. Just one more neighborhood to go and we were clear of raid gang territory.
I watched the skies and thought of everything I was leaving behind. Everything I called home. Not that there was much of it left. Not that it was much anyways. My radio collection, a mattress, a stack of books I had read over and over again. I already begun to replace the radios.
As hard as it was to admit, I was not doing anything important with my life. If that stable pony could do give up whatever they had to help others, I could give up my little hideaway.
Can't hide from what I'm running from, anyways, I thought to myself.
"Hold on, I got a bad feeling about this," I said, holding a hoof to stop Fizzy.
Bullets drilled themselves into the bodies of the rusted out and dead carts that littered the old bridge.
Fizzy and I ran for our lives.
There was about six of them, raiders, all armed. Not that I cared much about most of them, not when I saw the one standing behind the charging line.
Big, blue, a flamer tank on his back. Scorch found us.
I composed a mental a symphony in the key of "fuck". I lead Fizzy and we began to put space between us and the raider by weaving around and over the detritus that littered the bridge.
Fizzy stopped. She dug into her pack and floated out a pair of disks and flung them to the path behind us.
I should have known she carried mines on her.
"What are you waiting for, run, run!" Fizzy tore past me. The high-pitched whine of bullets striking followed.
I turned tail to keep up with Fizzy. More pinging gunfire struck around me as I ducked behind an overturned hunk of metal far beyond its original shape an intended use. It still made for a decent wall. I stopped there for a moment to catch my breath.
The expected booming from the land mines never came. I stuck my eye up to a hole in the metal wall. "Sweet Celestia!" I spat at what I saw.
Scorch directed the raiders to the other side of the bridge. He was going around the mines. He looked right at my cover. There was no way he could see me, which is why it was very disconcerting when he pointed a hoof in my direction. His raiders turned at their command and opened fire on my position.
The fusillade tore at the wall. My safety compromised, I bolted. I couldn't see Fizzy and With nothing else to go on, I ran for the far end of the bridge. I shouting her name, ducking and dodging the onslaught.
A blue ridge of a mane peeked out above a barricade. I whooped and ran for that beacon of safety.
"Fizz, let's move. Now. As in running time. They're avoiding your traps." I spat out the warning, jumping over Fizzy and the mine she had just laid in my path just as the little armed light blinked on.
"I know. Just want to slow them. Didn't want you getting caught up," Fizzy spoke in clipped, though not urgent, sentences. She quickly outpaced me amid the growing number of increasingly suspicious barricades on the bridge.
The shots started again. Short bursts; they were conserving their ammunition. Worse than the thought of them playing smart was that gnawing realization that they were playing us, herding us along through their bursts of gunfire. They shot to force us one way or another as they chose.
I hated these raiders.
I saw a grenade soar up and over Fizzy's head. I heard it explode behind me. I looked back to see the dispersed raiders regather under the lead of a peach unicorn. I couldn't see Scorch among the group. I knew that Scorch's disappearance meant nothing, but I held out hope for his death.
The peach colored unicorn's head popped. A spray of red fanned out behind what was left of him. One dying eye blinked in surprise as what was left of his brain tried to process its sudden disappearance.
"Shit!" I shouted, turning and running. Raiders behind and now a sniper ahead. This day just got worse.
Fizzy and I banked left when we got to the end of the bridge. We had no choice in the matter; there was a sizable wall just beyond the intersection. The wall wasn't some random falling of debris. Some pony had piled up whatever they could gather to build themselves a solid fortification. It was impressive and impressively inconvenient for us.
I looked out over to the bridge. From my new perspective, I could see Scorch's position. He was watching me; crouched down behind one of the overturned barricades.
Another raider spasmed when a bullet ripped a path through her body. The sound of the shot echoed afterward.
This loss apparently kick started the raiders' brains again. They hunkered down under fire. The raiders kept focus on Fizzy and I's unseen savior.
Scorch watched me.
Night was fast approaching. My meds had worn down, the dull aching realization that I was injured was coming back. The adrenaline rush that bought me so much more time was on its ebb. I hurt, and though the chase hadn't added any more injuries to me, it made me acutely aware of the ones I already had.
The situation was made worse by the fact Fizzy and I had little success in finding a suitable place to camp for the night. Neither of us wanted to be out when the bloodwings took flight, nor be exposed in case Scorch and his crew got past the sniper.
"Aha, found it!" Fizzy's voice brimmed with excitement.
"Found what?"
"The way in."
Fizzy stood at a bent flap of metal in the wall we had followed since the bridge.
"Careful," she continued as she nudged her way past the flap and reinforced bits of well placed metal, stone and wood fashioned into crooked barricades. "We've got mines, live ones. This will take a bit."
She crouched low, the silver aura of her magic trailed along the ground to a mine just barely out of view. Her magic coated the explosive and her eyes narrowed in concentration
It beeped once, twice, and then chirruped when deactivated. Fizzy may have been calm, but I still released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. We past the device and Fizzy rearmed it in our wake.
"At least we know they like visitors." My sarcasm fell on deaf ears but I stayed close to my little explosives expert for my own safety.
"Can't help but think," my voice kept low, as though it could set off the bombs at any moment, "it's good that this pony doesn't want us dead."
"I got the joke, bit busy here," Fizzy said while hiding a mine behind us.
"No," I corrected, "I mean look there. That building."
I directed Fizzy's attention to a large, short structure, intact considering the state of its neighbors. The building's squat height spared it the wrath of the bombs. Most importantly to me was the fact it had one key feature, balconies, namely one large balcony that ringed most of the structure.
"I bet from there they could pick off anypony or anything they wanted to. We were trying to clear a path through the mines, we completely let ourselves out in the open."
Fizzy didn't reply, processing the angles to the balcony. Upon realization, we shared a nod, and she returned to her minesweeping.
One by one, spot by spot, we moved. Fizzy collected and replaced every mine we past, leaving them in case Scorch or his minions followed.
Closer and closer we got, bit by bit nearer to the front door. The stairs leading to the doorway was clear of mines. After the ages it took us to deal with the minefield, it had grown nearly pitch dark, and Fizzy and I both broke for the door, stopping just shy of throwing the doors open and running in.
"The Hotel Haflinger," I read the burnished brass plate beside the door, "Established before you were born." Fizzy and I shared a glance. "So," I said, "You're thinking the door is trapped?"
She nodded, looking from the door to me. "Ayuh. Evidence suggests it."
I tapped my hooves in time to an internal song. She adjusted her glasses. Time ticked impatiently.
I broke first. "I'll be the gentlestallion and get the door for the mare of the hour."
With a flourish and a bow, I put my weight into the most florid door opening I could muster.
Only to find that there was no door anymore.
I fell into the foyer flat on my face. While being intimate with the flooring, I pondered why Fizzy didn't at least laugh at my failings. A voice echoing from somewhere above gave me my answer.
"So, my friends, would prefer booze, or bullets?"
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