//------------------------------//
// Chapter 67: Blake 
// Story: Forbidden Places 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Blake didn't crash the Bright Hawk on their flight out of Canterlot. Of course he didn't tell anyone that the real challenge would come when he tried to land anywhere. Taking off was really just a matter of giving them enough lift to go up, then not going into any of the flight-lanes reserved for ponies instead of ships. 

His own personal expertise helped a little when choosing a destination. Just because he'd never done anything with demolitions didn't mean he couldn't give some advice. "We need somewhere underground, with a wall of material to reflect sound away from anywhere inhabited," he explained to his friends, as they crowded together over the chart.

"Some old caverns here," Vesper said, touching one hoof to the map. "Only a few hours from the city. Not too far from Ponyville, either. You think we could get Janet's friend to watch our ship for us?"

He nodded, confused. "I don't think we should leave it behind while we're testing bombs. Even if the Equestrian navy is as strong as everyone thinks it is, there are still pirates who want to kill us."

Vesper reached over, nudging his chest with one wing. There was nothing harsh about the gesture. If anything, she moved deliberately, so he would feel the skin there. Softer than he would've expected, and warmer. Was that weird?

He didn't really care anymore. "Not when we're testing the explosives. This is later, when we go for Kaelynn's rescue. If we ride the train into Canterlot instead of our ship, Morningtide won't know we're there. If we're lucky, that means she doesn't connect the heist to the Bright Hawk."

"Sure," Ryan said. At least he wasn't staying that unicorn every second. The body was cute, but knowing Ryan was under all that makeup and perfume made it hard to take her seriously. Not to mention the way Vesper got whenever she was around. "Counterpoint. If we're not lucky, and we need to make a quick getaway... our ship will be in Ponyville, a train ride away."

Vesper shrugged, settling against Blake's leg. "Eh. That's just math, Ryan. And anyway—if we screw up that bad, Equestria has a navy. We're never escaping from them with just the three of us. Who are they going to believe—one of their most respected noble-ponies, or three crazy people who just blew a hole in their city?"

Ryan's wings buzzed, but he put up no further argument.

"Sounds like a good idea," Blake said. "One question though. We're only doing it if you can answer honestly." 

She puffed out her chest, grinning at him. But if she was trying to be intimidating, "extra fluffy" really didn't pull that off. "Like I'd do anything else. I always tell the truth, except when I'm lying."

"Are we doing it because you think it's a good idea, or because you want to ride a train in Equestria?"

Vesper's ears flattened. "We have our cameras back," she said. "I was gonna film it. You know the slow channel is gonna love it. Equestria is hella scenic."

Blake reached down, mussing her mane with one hoof. "Only if you can do it without anyone noticing. We're not risking the rescue for a video."

They took half a day to sail to the testing location, high in the mountains and far from any nearby pony settlements. The last thing they needed just now was a group of pony soldiers accidentally stumbling into them, and revealing their preparations to the nobility. Or worse, alerting Equestria’s actual government. 

There were few lessons Blake was willing to apply from his time in the service to this new world. But if there was any kind of universal law, government incompetence was probably it.

Touching down in the precise location they were aiming for was a little harder, involving another hour of careful coordination. In the end, Vesper just gave up and flew down with the anchor, wedging the huge chunk of metal into the rocks. That brought the Bright Hawk to a stop, eventually. Not quite as gracefully as Galena would've done it, but... effective.

"I need more time to practice," Ryan said, emerging briefly onto the deck as they finally came to a stop. "I think I'll stay up here while you work. You won't have my help when you use this stuff, so you'll be able to handle it without me, right?"

Blake nodded. "Fewer people we have around explosives, the safer we'll be." What he couldn't quite do was imagine what someone could practice while completely alone on the ship. Didn't the magic do all the difficult stuff?

Before he could ask, Vesper landed gracefully on the deck, breathing heavily. "That was... more difficult than you'd think." With the sails raised, the Bright Hawk mostly stayed in place, though they were drifting slightly in the direction of the wind. The anchor groaned under the weight, but ultimately the line held.

"Great job, Vesper," he said. "This is... mostly your show, unfortunately. Is having me around even good for anything?"

"Sure." She turned on him, grinning. "Bring our flashlights and some snacks. You think you're good for climbing down the anchor line?"

If I was human. He walked to the edge of the Bright Hawk even so, gazing past the railing. The mountains here were as steep as Canterlot, though without any sign of civilization. There was no grading here, no railroad. He'd lowered the ship down as far as he dared, about twenty feet above a little valley between the mountains, where a cave opened up. "I can get down," he said. "I think my magic can help me grip the rope. Getting up, I might need your help. Unless I can just magic myself right up into the air."

Vesper giggled. "Almost two weeks in Canterlot, and I never saw a unicorn flying. I'm pretty sure they would if they could."

He went below for the stuff she'd requested, packing it into his magically-converted backpack/saddlebags. He packed far more supplies than he thought they'd need. Considering this entire expedition had begun after getting trapped underground when the mission was supposed to be brief, he wasn't going to take chances.

He stopped at Ryan's door, knocking once with a hoof. "Hey, Ryan?"

He appeared, or she, in this case. Her face was smudged with pony makeup, expression embarrassed. "What is it?"

"If twelve hours go by and you don't hear from us, please go for help." He nodded towards the window. "Ponyville isn't too far from here, you could probably fly there. Ask for Spark Gap, and tell him you're from Janet’s crew. If any pony can help us, he'll know how."

She nodded. "Twelve hours, really?"

Blake shrugged. "Once we do a surface test or two, we'll probably go down a ways. It could be hours between each blast. Ideally we'll find walls about as thick as the floors we're testing, or maybe caverns layered above each other. Then we'll have to hike our asses far away from anywhere we're about to blow up. I expect it to take way longer than Vesper does."

Ryan glanced through the doorway at the saddlebags, then nodded. "Twelve hours, got it. Good luck." She snapped the door closed, before Blake could see more of that fictional pony than he probably wanted to.

He made his way back to the deck, tightening the straps on his saddlebags with a little magic. The weight was enough to slow him down, though it hardly compared to their painful trip across the desert. At least he wouldn't have to tug a cart full of water.

"I thought we'd just throw one off!" Vesper waited at the top of the stairs, with a little wooden box beside her on the ground. It was covered in US military markings, burned into the wood. Inside were several green paper rectangles, along with a hard plastic box of detonation hardware. "We need a control test, right? So the first one should be out on the surface!"

Blake settled one hoof gently atop hers, pushing the box closed. "Not throw, then. How about 'carefully flown down, set up, and given a generous timer?’"

She turned, grinning slyly up at him. "You could just tell me you care."

"I do." He didn't break eye contact. "You're one of my team, Vesper. I'm getting everyone back to Earth. No casualties, ever. I'm not ruining the record for our channel."

She stuck her tongue out, nudging the crate with her hoof. She flipped off the lid, exposing its dangerous contents for him. "Big assumption that we'll all want to go back. I'd rather make videos from here. Think of all the awesome places we could be filming. We'd get a whole planet wanting to tune in. I wouldn't even need to think about most of them—I could interview random ponies on the street, and they'd be worth watching just because they're so damn cute."

"That works for you too." He levitated the box up into the air, very carefully. But using magic felt safer in its way than touching it with his hooves. Those scales were downright metallic, it wouldn't take much to make a spark. Sure real plastic explosives were harder to detonate than that. But these weren't real. Could a dream bomb kill him? "You would make a cute face for the channel. But with the way you look, you could probably get views reading nursery rhymes."

She flicked him with her tail, hard enough to sting. "Can't do those cursed finger videos with hooves, Blake."

A shame a member of his team had been kidnapped, and two others were lost in another world, or else Blake might've been able to actually relax. As it was, he found himself quickly returning to the task at hand: a box full of magical bombs.

He opened it carefully, settling down the detonation equipment alongside a single block of explosive. The first sensible step was to figure out exactly how big such an explosion would be, without blowing themselves up. "You dreamed all this," he said. "So why don't you tell me how you think it works. Exactly."

Vesper sat beside him, resting against his side in a way that probably should've made him self-conscious. It didn't. "Uh... like in the movies? You put in one of these little timers, enter the fuse time, then press the menacing red button to make it start counting down. Also... probably don't unplug it after that? I'm pretty sure that they're supposed to blow up if you try to mess with them after you set them off."

Blake rolled his eyes. We're using magical bombs dreamed up by someone whose knowledge of military hardware comes from Die Hard movies. "But it won't go off by accident? Or any other way?"

Vesper nodded. "Not unless dream magic works different than I expect. There's probably some limit, right? The power for all this has to come from me, eventually. I couldn't pull in a nuclear bomb... right?"

"We aren't testing that," Blake said flatly. He put one hoof on her head, forcing her to meet his eyes. "No more stupid ideas, okay? Promise."

She giggled. "I'm at least 20% stupid ideas. By volume. But I didn't plan on any war-crimes. There's... probably something to stop that from happening anyway."

Maybe lots of things. "Air masks worked when you brought them," he said. "There's a chance this just... won't. Not sure what we'll do if that happens."

"Real bomb?" she suggested. "Equestria has cannons, that means powder. We could do it ourselves."

"Not in three days." He fiddled with the detonation hardware, very carefully. After messing with the timer thoroughly disconnected from one block, he settled on a time. "Half an hour," he explained, shoving it into the rectangle in front of them. "Is that long enough for you to fly this a ways down the mountain? We need to find a place without line of sight to Ponyville or Canterlot. We need to be so far away from the Bright Hawk that even if it blows way bigger than we're expecting, the ship won’t get damaged."

She yawned exaggeratedly. "That's so much time I'll be back here for most of it, watching the clock." She hesitated. "I'm not exactly sure how far away it can get before I lose focus on it. Everything I summon only kinda exists, so... that is something we have to think about. I can't fire it off for miles. Further it is, the more effort it seems to take. But I haven't really tested what that means yet."

"Then maybe we should start with that."

She groaned, but didn't argue. How could they possibly rely on explosives to get them into the house, and not know if the magic would even work?

Whatever Vesper's limits were, they were wider than the deck of the Bright Hawk could permit. So she ended up flying off with their first bomb after all, albeit with the timer not started. She made it some distance down the mountain before Blake noticed something strange on the table—the crate of unused bombs vanished in a puff of cool morning mist. "Vesper!" he yelled, pointing at the table. Not that he didn't feel quite a bit safer with those bombs not sitting next to him, but even so. "Vesper! They're gone!"

She was much too far to hear him, and too invested in her own task to see him jumping up and down. But she returned a few minutes later, body dripping with sweat and looking like she'd just flown across the country. "Okay, so... that was hard." She pointed back the way she came. "Bomb is maybe a mile away? Feels like that's my limit." She settled right against the railing, probably as close to the location of the bomb as she could be. "But that should be overkill, right? This isn't a bunker-buster or something, we're just trying to blow up a wall."

Blake pointed at the table. "Did you know about that? The other ones...."

She nodded, wings sagging down beside her. "Yeah, I know. Gimme a minute. Still have twenty before the bomb goes off."

He brought her cold water from the mess, and she drained the whole bottle in less than a minute. "My guess is we've got... another ten minutes until it goes." She stared down at the rocky wilderness below, eyes intent on something. 

"Can you feel it now? Are you sure it didn't vanish like the rest?"

She looked up at him, with an expression like a beleaguered student after a few days of tests. "Positive. It's a little like... holding something out at arm's length, but with my head. I have to... aggressively remember it's there. Please shut up."

He did, settling down silently on the deck beside her. The chill mountain air whipped at the sails, making their ship drift. As the seconds passed, his doubts began to grow. It probably wasn't a good idea to put their hopes in magic, particularly magic they didn't understand.

Then came the explosion. BANG! A roar went up from below them, and a short wave of hot air blasted past them. Chunks of rock began to rain down from below them, around a huge cloud of white smoke. It blew away in just a few seconds.

Vesper whistled, taking off again and hovering just over the railing. "I'm gonna take a look!"

"Take measurements," he urged. "We need to know how much rock it got through. Give us a baseline."

There was nothing particularly fun about testing things. Blake would deny to anyone who asked that he could possibly enjoy himself at any point over the next few hours. He wasn't a kid, letting off too many fireworks on the Fourth of July. This was a serious matter, and demanded nothing less than unbroken boring old person focus.

There were worse ways to spend an afternoon.