//------------------------------//
// Chapter 65: Ryan 
// Story: Forbidden Places 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Ryan walked with Aerial down the hall towards the exit. "Thank you," he said, and meant it. "You can't possibly know how much this means to me."

"I know exactly how much it means to you," she said, poking him in the chest with one leg. "You radiate it like flames. That kind of love burns all it touches. It burned the queen, and it will burn you if you aren't careful. Like all flames, you must not let it master you."

She fished around in a pocket, withdrawing something with her mouth and tossing it to him. Ryan caught it in his magic, which took far more concentration than when he was pretending to be a unicorn. His reaction time was getting better, though. He'd actually managed it this time. "I'm trusting you with this. When you've learned everything inside, you need to burn it. Don't leave it on this boat when you go on your mission, or the changeling presence in Equestria may be threatened."

He flipped through a few pages, staring down intently. First was a description of a unicorn mare, in meticulous detail right along with a sketch. The same pony she'd been earlier that day. After that came other names, along with relationships. This stallion hated bright colors in clothing, a mare here was fascinated by Aerial's description of farm life.

"Damn," he said. "You wrote all this down?"

She grinned back, entirely uncharacteristic of the nervous messenger-pegasus she was playing now. But there were no non-changelings around to see her break character. "I realize that even though you know nothing about how, you'll probably need to sneak into that mansion. Look at the last page."

He flipped to it. There was a single note here, under "Appointments".

"Tour of the menagerie, including encounter with the last seaponies of their kind, living in sheltered captivity." Other details followed—where and when the meeting was scheduled to take place. "Three days?"

"Soonest I could manage without seeming too eager," she said, though her expression was proud. "Even with all that, I don't recommend you try. A few years of practice... I could make something of you. This wasn't even a moon." She lowered her voice. "If I thought you'd listen, I'd tell you to find somewhere else to feed. But I know love when I feel it. Nothing I said could stop you."

He nodded. "Nothing in this world or mine."

She flew off, then, leaving him alone in the hallway. This wasn't the time to question her. Even if they succeeded, it didn't seem like they'd be able to just walk into the embassy and say thanks.

Canterlot's portal might be "safe", but this rescue might very well transform the city into somewhere too dangerous to visit for entirely mundane reasons.

By the time he made it back into the mess hall, Blake had set his phone up on the table beside the map. In accommodating a pony body, the whole thing had stretched and distorted upon coming into Equestria. It was far closer to a tablet now.

"We can't go in guns blazing," Blake said, sitting up after a few difficult seconds. "I know how much you want to go straight there, Ryan. But that isn't the way to play this. We don't just have to get Kaelynn back. We have to be able to get her away from the ones trying to keep her captive. We know almost nothing about what ponies can do, what the limits of their magic are... this is a worst case scenario for a rescue mission."

Ryan bit back the instinct to argue with him. It was hard not to see anything that would keep him from getting back to Kaelynn as something to rip apart with his bug teeth. Apparently even Aerial had noticed. "I know we only get one chance," he said, settling down into one of the chairs. He perched more than sat, ready to spring out and charge off as soon as they finished. "We can't get caught, we can't get killed, and we can't let them move Kaelynn. But that last part will be really hard, right? She's a fish, in an aquarium."

He squinted down at the map. "There's not a lot of places in the house they could hide something like that. Presumably they don't want everyone who visits to see they've got a slave hidden in their house."

"Two slaves," Vesper said. She didn't shout, but that was just the way she acted around them lately. No matter how angry they got, she somehow kept her cool. "Remember what Aerial said. They think they're saving the species, they have a breeding program. There's at least one male seapony in there. We don't know for sure, but I'll guess there aren't any other girls. Otherwise this whole kidnapping would be a waste of time. Our mare could just keep using the ones she has."

Blake removed a fresh sheet of paper, the same size that Kaelynn used for all her blueprints. Then a nearby pencil began to levitate, moving through the air beside the phone. Ryan only had to watch for a few seconds to realize what he was doing: redrawing the blueprint, but with far less detail. The pencil didn't shake, keeping level in the air as it drew.

"I didn't know you could do that!" Vesper said, pivoting in her seat towards Blake. "Why didn't you tell me you were practicing?"

He shrugged one shoulder, looking as nonchalant as he could. But he stood a little straighter as he did it, obviously proud. "Wasn't sure if I could pull it off. All this time in a city full of unicorns, it felt like I could copy them if I tried hard enough. Looks like I did."

He looked back to his diagram, focusing intently.

You should really just ask him out already, Ryan thought. If he wasn't so upset with Blake lately, he'd probably have suggested that to Vesper by now. Whatever barriers he had to her attention were melting under pressure. "Did you do anything like this while you were in the military, Blake?"

He laughed, bitterly. "Nothing like the way we'll have to do it. When I went into a building, lots of people were never going to walk out again. Whatever else we're here to do, it isn't killing people."

"I know that." Ryan sagged in his chair. "Kaelynn would never forgive me if I did. Even if the one who kidnapped her is a colossal bitch, that house is... not just her. Those guards are just guards. And if she's anything like the other noble unicorns, she probably has a dozen servants in there to every guard."

Blake finished drawing. He'd recreated the house, or at least the ground floor and its lower levels, along with the wall. "I figure there's no chance our seapony—seaponies—are on the upper floors. Every criminal on the planet knows you want to hide something, you hide it underground. We need to get through the wall, into the house, then down. I figure our tank could be anywhere on these bottom three floors. We might need some time to search all of them."

Vesper cleared her throat, settling something on the table in front of her. The object made a heavy thud as it went down, sliding slightly towards Ryan. He turned, then froze in place as he saw it, mouth hanging open.

It was a green paper package, with yellow block letters. 

"PLASTIC EXPLOSIVE 1% DMNB" Along with plenty of warning messages, scrolling onto the back and sides of the rectangle.

"Jordan!" Blake snapped, his voice suddenly intense. He jerked away from the table. From the sudden burst of fear that radiated from him, Ryan half-expected him to duck under the table and cower. "Vesper. The hell are you doing with that? Are you insane?"

She smiled innocently at him, then smacked her hoof down on the rectangle. It dissolved into mist before their eyes, puffing away into nothing. "I didn't bring a detonator. Isn't that stuff supposed to be safe?"

Ryan hadn't moved. Despite Blake's fear, he remained in his seat. "Was that your idea? Blow up the wall?"

She shook her head once, gesturing at the diagram again. "This last level of basement, down here. The crystal caverns tour felt like it wasn't much more than ten meters down. The caves go all through the mountain, don't they? Why fight our way through guards if we can just open the place from below? Cave's pretty big, and you have a bat to guide you."

"Not to mention somewhere else to go," Blake said. "Good luck following us all the way to Poland. Getting down that far was a maze on its own. Even if we have to run, it's not like they'll follow us to another world."

"I'm hoping it doesn't go that far," Vesper said. "Since she'd probably leave people to stop us from making it back." She turned towards Ryan. "What do you think? Blast our way in through the bottom?"

He stared down at the map, searching for alternatives. "You make it sound so simple, but it won't be. We'll have to get a high-quality map of the old mine, and cross-reference with the city above. That won't be easy."

"Maybe not," Vesper countered. "But you love maps, you can figure it out!"

He looked over to the detailed city map that Aerial had left behind, skimming it closely for information. Whether by chance or careful planning, she'd chosen an incredibly useful map for him; there were elevation markings, and soil composition notes under several properties. This was surveyor-quality stuff. "I might be able to do it. Might. But if we screw up... we won't get a second shot at something like this. Ponies aren't stupid, they won't just think it's a little earthquake."

"We also can't bring the place down on top of us," Blake said. "I never did demolitions, Vesper. I don't actually know how much of that stuff will open a hole in the floor, and how much would leave the whole house a smoking crater."

Her grin just got wider. "I don't either! But that's not a problem—they work how I think they work. They're magic."

Blake trailed off, looking away awkwardly. "Right. Of course."

Ryan looked over the phone diagram again, turned the sketch over in his mind, searching for any other way in. But all the other ideas that suggested themselves the ponies had already thought of. The roof would have its own guards, the windows were fortified. "I'm a damn changeling," he said, frustrated. "I can look like anyone I want to. I can sound like them, move like them. It feels like that should be enough to get us in."

"Sure," Blake said. "If we're willing to spend more time. We'll have to case the building, watch it for days, see who goes in and out. Maybe you could impersonate one of her guests from another house? Could you turn into that pony Aerial was using earlier?"

Ryan took a moment to focus. Becoming a creature he'd never used before was always hard. Doing it without the reference right in front of him only made it much worse. But if there was anything in the world that would demand his focus, it was this. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then...

Changed. He grew taller, leaner. A ballgown appeared from nowhere, and her mane was suddenly up in an elegant, high braid. Jewelry settled around her neck. She opened her eyes, exhaling heavily. "I believe I've... managed it? Is this who you mean?" She paced in a slow circle, holding her head primly as Aerial had done.

"I have no idea who that is," Vesper said flatly. "I've never seen you in my life." As she said it, she took a few subtle steps towards Blake, one wing opening in his direction. He didn't notice, but Ryan couldn’t miss the strength of her emotions.

"She's the fake identity Aerial used," Ryan answered, reflexively. "The heiress of a house from outside Canterlot, trying to make a name for herself." The body felt like a piece of ill-fitting clothing, like a whole breed of pony that Ryan didn't quite understand. It moved in ways that weren't necessarily intuitive. Yet from the way Blake was staring, they clearly had the right effect.

"I'm overwhelmed with disappointment I never saw her," Vesper said sharply. Then she smiled. "You know, there's no reason any of this stuff has to be separate. You could go in, find out where she is, then give us a signal to bust you out again. Bet I could summon some kind of radio-beacon with enough prep. We don't, uh... we don't quite know what the limits are on those powers. But we wouldn't have to go in without testing it."

Ryan reached over to the table in her magic, levitating the little notebook Aerial had left behind. She flipped through it, and found the notes within in a dozen different sets of handwriting. At one moment elegant and sweeping, the next cramped, then messy and sideways. "Looks like Morningtide is bringing people in... two days from now. That should be more than enough time to prepare."

Ryan flipped through the book again, considering every word Aerial had scribbled here. The level of detail was meticulous—how this fake pony walked, where she was supposed to come from, the way she ate certain types of food. Like the changeling had given her a list of easily-identifiable quirks, an excuse for people to notice those and stop watching.

This is completely out of my league, she thought, going more slowly through the pages. There were names here—contacts, friends this pony had made. The ones she'd used to secure her invitation. Plenty of detail.

"We have our plan," Blake declared, obvious discomfort in his voice. "We'll need somewhere to practice with those explosives. Any ideas?"

"Sure," Vesper said. "But we're gonna have to fly out of here. Probably should anyway—if we stick around, we show that unicorn nag we're suspicious, maybe even that we're planning to get Kaelynn back. We need to fly, and you'll have to do it."

"Great," Blake said. "Without Galena. No way we'll screw that up."