//------------------------------// // Chapter 22: Griffon Day Afternoon (Jeff Bellamy) // Story: On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice // by McPoodle //------------------------------// From: Jeff Bellamy Date: Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 5:57 PM Subject: My Recollections of Friday's Standoff To: Archbishop August As you requested, here’s my version of the events from two days ago at the Barnyard Bargains. About Me (feel free to skip) I was born and raised in Golden, CO, and I’ve always been certain that I would be a print reporter, like my grandfather before me. Golden’s got a lot of Markists in it for a non-majority city. I numbered several Markists as childhood friends, and had a couple of teachers as well. I graduated from the University of Denver in 2000 with a major in Journalism and a minor in World History, and got a job with The Denver Post immediately afterwards. I got into the Associated Press in 2003, and in 2007 I was assigned to the Canterlot City post. How I Feel About The Heights (no really, you don’t need to read this) Canterlot City is boring, in the best sense of the word. There are unhappy people, because there will always be unhappy people, but their problems are nowhere near as bad as the stuff I saw growing up in the suburbs of Denver. Take The Heights, for example. It’s a ghetto, there’s no question of that. But it’s the Disney version of a ghetto. People get into fights, but they’re knife fights, not gunfights, and the number of people who die in them annually number in the single digits. People get sick all the time because of poverty and depression, but drug addiction is negligible. I see that entirely as the positive effect Markists have on everyone they come in contact with. But make no mistake, The Heights are a ghetto. The reason is simple: why would any profit-minded Canterlot corporation want to hire an unbeliever with a graduate degree in what they want when, just by looking at the medallion your Markist candidate is wearing, they know for an absolute fact that they are looking at the best, most-dedicated worker for their offered job position on the entire planet? So nobody in The Heights can ever earn enough to leave. They have to work for the sub-par Outside companies in The Heights, and nowhere else. This is why I have spent the past three years posting most of my stories from The Heights instead of covering the easy human-interest stories that Canterlot City always offers the Outside press; the same stories which are eagerly read by the Outside public. That public doesn’t want to hear that their little American oddity, the Markist Church, is less than perfect. (It was bad enough finding out what was going on in the Catholic Church.) The AP doesn’t want me writing these stories, and it routinely refuses to print most of them. But I’m convinced I’m on to something, and that someday my coverage will force the city council to tackle this problem instead of kicking it down the road every five years. So that explains what I was doing outside the boarded-up Barnyard Bargains at 10 am on a Friday—I was putting together a story on how this store had been a beacon of hope for The Heights, and how it was such a betrayal for Filthy Rich to shut it down for not performing as well as his Markist locations. The Account (start here) Now I’ll freely admit that I shouldn’t have walked inside the condemned supermarket just because I saw that someone had removed the boards over the employee entrance and left the door wide open. But that door was boarded up the day before and frankly, I believed I could hold my own against anything this city could throw at me. As soon as I got in, I knew that there were other people in the main part of the store. Since I was still in the employee section, I believed that I could get away with poking around a little where I was. I was hoping to find some kind of weapon; I found a sliver of metal that would probably hurt me more than anyone I could use it against, and slipped it into my sock. (Spoiler: I never got a chance to use it.) I also found this neat remote-control under a pile of dust in the corner that looked like it could operate every door and light in the entire building. It was just missing the batteries, and the battery cover. I put that in my jacket pocket. Being as ready as I ever would be, I then entered the store proper. Once inside, I followed the glare of flashlights and the whispered voices of young people, and came across a group of four loading a shopping cart up with various boxes of cereal. I will say I was shocked to see that the store had not been emptied before it had been shuttered—if the place was truly losing so much money to Mr. Rich, you would think he would have transferred the inventory to his other stores. It’s almost like he had been forced to open the store in The Heights against his will, and had closed it as soon as he thought he could get away with it, even if it meant losing money on abandoned merchandise. The thieves were wearing black cycling suits, the head-to-toe outfits that include hoodies. They had black driving gloves on to keep from leaving fingerprints, and lycra ski masks, just in case any of the security cameras were still active. Two of the quartet saw me, jumped me, and tied my hands behind my back with an extension cord. I didn’t resist, because they were athletic kids and I’m a fat adult, and because I honestly wanted to know why they were doing this. I was walked to the front of the store and up the stairs to the manager’s office, which had a big window overlooking everything in the store, and an equally big window on the opposite wall overlooking everything in the parking lot. Sitting in the big chair was the ringmaster of the operation, dressed like the others. Now this young woman had spent at least a few minutes thinking this operation through before it was started, so she had instituted a set of codenames for everyone, to make it less likely that they would be caught. But unfortunately for her, her gang were nowhere near as smart as she was, so they were blurting out each other’s names constantly, before correcting themselves to use the codenames, as if that would be enough for me not to remember their slip-ups. So I knew the mastermind was Gilda before I even met her. I remembered Gilda from the exchange program of two years previous, and how badly that had turned out. I had also been at a couple of her soccer matches this year, so I knew the girl had a fierce temper. Luckily her rage was focused on Markists, and although she had never approached me after she got sent back to The Heights, I think she knew that I was on her side. Gilda pulled a coil of vinyl rope out of a plain leather backpack. She had her goons force me into another office chair, and then tied my arms behind me and to the chair. My legs were also tied, and a bandana was tied loosely around my neck so she could gag me anytime she wanted. The lengths of the two pieces of rope were perfect for the uses she put them to, leading me to think that she had anticipated the possibility of someone interrupting her little heist. She had her head goon, whose real name was George, search my pockets, which gave her my wallet and the remote control. She then sent the group off to resume their looting while she interviewed me. “What are you doing here, Mr. AP?” she asked me, sitting on the edge of the store manager’s desk. That was the same name she had used during our interviews a few years earlier, so I was pretty sure she knew who I was. Now I can’t tell you if she knew that her cover was blown or not, but if she did, she seemed to trust that I would do the right thing by her. And if that’s what she thought, she was right—the only reason I’m including all of the names in this story is because you know them all. I told her the truth about my motives while she examined the remote, figured out what it did, and got some fresh batteries in it from a desk drawer and secured them with some scotch tape. The remote ended up in the backpack. Then I asked her what she was doing here. “Getting a little payback on Mr. Filthy,” she said, hooking a thumb behind her at the large portrait of the store president that was mounted behind the manager’s desk. That’s when I noticed that there was a security camera in this room, but it had been disconnected from its feed. Craning my neck, I could see a television console for monitoring multiple cameras, but all nine displays showed nothing but static. Again, evidence that Gilda had spent some time thinking this whole thing out. Too bad that she hadn’t figured out the part where Rich obviously didn’t care if she stole anything. That’s when a couple of Canterlot City police squad cars loudly showed up in the front parking lot. The first one out of a car was Filthy Rich, complete with a police bullhorn. “I got you!” he crowed. “I finally got you filthy vandals!” The next part was addressed to the police: “Go get ‘em, boys!” Gilda held up a finger. “Could you hold on for a moment?” she asked me. She then walked casually over to the side of the window overlooking the parking lot, took a peek and then lowered the shades. “What do you mean, you need more men?” Filthy loudly asked over the bullhorn. “I want the entire police force here, pronto!” I really didn’t like the tone of Mr. Rich, and what he might goad the police into doing. I was therefore not happy to notice that the shadow of my chair fell across those lowered shades, where it could be seen from outside. If the police brought sharp-shooters, I was now a target. By this time the four individuals who had caught me had run up into the manager’s office, along with two others I hadn’t seen yet. All of them were high-school age. “What happened?” George asked in a panic. “We must have tripped some kind of silent alarm,” Gilda said, trying to use the level tone of her voice to calm her gang down. She started walking towards them, an arm outstretched to point out who was to receive her next order, when she unfortunately passed right in front of the window, casting her shadow across the shade. The next second she jerked like a puppet whose strings had been cut and collapsed to the ground. “Everybody drop!” George ordered, and the others obeyed. I gave George an urgent look—signaling with my head towards the telltale shadow—and after a sigh he crawled over and pulled my chair by its casters until it no longer cast that shadow. He then crawled past me so he could stand up next to the window and get his own peek below. “There’s only two cars down there,” he said. “That’s great! We can make a break for it!” exclaimed a thief named Gabe. (The thieves all had different-colored ski masks, so I could easily tell them apart.) “There’s no way we’d be able to do that while dragging the boss,” George said, pointing to Gilda’s prone body. And that was when everybody saw the dark stain seeping into the back of her mask. “Gabe, get the first aid kit at the bottom of the stairs. Don’t let yourself be seen,” ordered George. He crawled over to Gilda’s body, dragging it completely out of danger. He applied pressure to try and stop the bleeding. I looked around the room, trying to figure out what was going on. I hadn’t heard any glass shatter when Gilda had collapsed, and there was no hole in the blinds. Meanwhile a dent in the corner of the office desk suggested that she had hit her head against it during her fall. Gabe came back with the first aid kit. He appeared to nearly faint from the sight of the blood on Gilda’s head and George’s hands. He looked away, edged around the office so he was in the far corner next to the window and tried to lean nonchalantly against the wall. George used the gag around my neck to blind me to what he did next. I believe he removed Gilda’s mask—cue collective gasp of shock at the ridiculous amount of blood shed during head injuries—and then bandaged the wound. “So?” I asked the group, breaking the silence. “Are any of you going to run? This is probably your only chance to escape, and you don’t all have to stay with your boss.” A gang member audibly snarled at me—I think her name was Bonnie. “We’re not leaving her behind!” she declared. “If she’s going down, we’re all going down.” “I dunno,” George replied. “It might be a good idea. I think she’s going to be out for a while.” “I’m. Not. Going,” Bonnie defiantly declared. From the murmuring, I judged that the others were all in solidarity, including Gabe. After a pause, George said, “I guess I’m in charge now. Any objections?” “Why does it have to be you?” Gabe complained. “I was the Boss’ second,” George said simply. “But if you’ve got a brilliant idea to get all of us out of this, including the Boss, I’m all ears.” After a moment of failing to come up with a brilliant plan, Gabe sighed in resignation. “Forget it. You can call the shots,” he said, and then walked over to the desk and pretended that examining the various papers was far more important to him than being in charge. I think George wiped the blood off of his hands at that point, then edged over to peek out the window around the blinds. “There’s five police cars now,” he reported. “Bonnie, run back to the rear entrance and see if any cops are there. Avoid the windows.” “Obviously,” Bonnie said contemptuously. And then she was off like a greyhound. “What next?” prompted another gang member—Rex, I think? “I’m open to suggestions,” George replied. Peeking under the blindfold, I saw Gabe put a finger down on a piece of paper taped to the desk, the paper with the important phone numbers on it. He then picked up the phone. No, I hadn’t noticed that piece of paper before and I certainly couldn’t see it from my current position, but I knew what it was. All managers’ desks have that piece of paper taped to it, at least the desks of managers working for micromanagers like Filthy Rich. Now unfortunately for George and the gang members he was talking to, their peripheral vision and hearing were both impaired by their ski masks, so they failed to notice what Gabe was up to. “Hey, that guy is—” I tried to warn them. “Shut it!” George yelled. “I want suggestions from the actual members of the gang.” “Why don’t we tell them that we’ve got a hostage?” Rex suggested. “They’ll have to let us go.” “Are you nuts?!” George exclaimed. “Gil...the Boss told me that the police sharpshooters kill everybody in hostage situations!” At the exact same moment, Gabe held the phone receiver at arm’s length and yelled, “Hey Filthy, guess what? We’ve got a hostage!” He then punched me in the stomach so that I would cry out. And then he hung up. “Problem solved, guys!” he told the flabbergasted group. “They’ll have to let us go now!” George reached out his arms in impotent rage, barely stopping himself from running across the room to choke the life out of Gabe. He stopped himself, of course, because doing so would put him at risk of sharing Gilda’s fate. “Could you just...stop helping?” he asked in a strangled voice. Gabe hung his head at all of the angry glares sent his way and crawled over to Gilda. Call it creative liberty on my part since I couldn’t see, but I’m going to say that he sat with his back to the wall and put her head in his lap, quietly stroking the tangled hair. Bonnie ran back into the room. She must have been on the track team, considering how fast she had covered the distance and the fact that she was barely winded. “Nobody’s back there yet,” she said from the doorway, “but it’s probably a matter of time. Is the Boss awake yet?” “No,” Gabe said (with a sad shake of his head). “Go back there and keep an eye out,” George ordered her. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll wake up before the cops think to surround us.” He didn’t sound very convincing. So she left. And with that the gang were out of ideas. I had a few, but nobody was willing to listen to me. Several minutes passed, and more and more police cars showed up, until it did indeed appear that Filthy Rich had summoned the entire Canterlot police force. Filthy’s antics became a source of entertainment as everybody waited for Gilda to revive: “Finally!” was heard over the bullhorn. “I want you guys to round up every last one of those punks. I want to see them fry!” A moment of silence, during which one of the police officers explained to Mr. Rich that there was, in fact, no death penalty for simple theft or even vandalism. “Well why not?!” I really wish I knew what explanation was given in response to that question. “Well...whatever! Just so long as they set a strong example!” They took the bullhorn away from him after that. So he tried to call the office. The phone in the office rang, and then stopped. The police had ordered him to stop. George alone got to witness Filthy Rich have a cataleptic meltdown. We could almost make out the words of his rant through the window. “Don’t you know who I am?” was most-certainly uttered. A few more minutes later, George took another look at the window to see what Filthy was up to now, and swore. “The Church van just showed up.” The others all started to crowd forward. “Stay back!” George hissed. “Didn’t you learn anything from that?!” he added (pointing at Gilda’s prone body). Peeking some more, he reported, “I see both bishops, some blue guy with white hair that everybody’s kowtowing to, Principal Celestia, and a couple of families with kids our age. One of them is talking to some birds and the other is...uh oh. Don’t anybody tell Gilda...I mean, the Boss...that Rainbow Dash’s here.” (The other gang members’ faces turned white with fear. Yes, yes, I had no possible way to know that. Run with me here.) I racked my brain, and was eventually able to recall that Rainbow Dash was the first Markist to befriend Gilda when she had started attending Cloudsdale Junior High. Obviously, they had had a falling out since then. Meanwhile Gabe had decided that maybe mouth-to-mouth would be the perfect way to revive Gilda. A second later, a hand reached up and slapped him. He jerked back and scuttled back to me. “She’s awake!” he cried out. (Gilda sat up. But due to the way she was positioned, this put her into the line of fire.) “Look out!” everyone cried out in near unison. (Several of the gang pointed worriedly at the outer window.) There was a significantly-long pause before Gilda crawled rather awkwardly around the desk so she could sit safely with her back to it. Another significant pause—I could almost feel her intense staring at me, like a hawk trying to decide on the best moment to pounce upon her helpless prey. After a moment, she seemed to reach some kind of momentous conclusion, and she pronounced the following phrase: “Harmony field trip.” Do you have any idea what this means? Because I have been thinking about the moment all weekend, and I have absolutely no idea. Gilda’s later actions certainly didn’t lend any light on the mystery. Carefully, Gilda rose to her feet, being now out of range of any potential snipers. (Hopefully.) (She looked around her calmly at all of the eyes that in turn were on her.) We all expected her to say something, but she said nothing. Bonnie had entered the room while this was going on. “Boss,” she reported. “I just came back from the back of the building, and there’s a ton of police cars back there now.” More silence from Gilda. “Look, I’m sorry I told them we had a hostage,” Gabe said. “I promise I’ll await your orders from now on.” (Stares. Lots of stares.) Gabe retreated to a corner. After a few minutes he pulled out his cell phone and started playing a game. From the sounds, I recognized it as Angry Birds. “I count twenty-seven police cars now, with two cops per car,” George reported. “There’s another five cop cars in the back,” Bonnie added. “Both of the Markist bishops are down there talking to the cops,” said George. “Plus some blue bigshot with white hair and a white robe—he’s vying with Filthy Rich to see who’s in charge of the cops.” The bit about the robe caught my attention. “Blue skin, white hair and white robe?” I asked out loud. “That sounds like Archbishop August.” “Huh? “He’s like the Pope for Markists.” “Yeah...him,” said George, taking another peek. Nervously, he said, “That’s absolutely who’s down there. And now that you know, you don’t have to look for yourself, because I’ve taken on the dangerous job of looking out the window.” “Is Principal Celestia down there?” Gilda asked. Now why would she suspect that? She was out cold when the principal arrived. “Yes,” George said finally. “Did you see any snipers?” Bonnie asked. George looked, for a good ten seconds. “No.” “Alright, I think I’ve got a handle on the situation,” I heard Gilda say under her breath. “Are there even any vantage points from which a sniper could shoot at us?” she asked. George took a moment to parse the sentence, then looked again. “Well, we’re the only building in this neighborhood that’s more than one story high, and it’s not like I see or hear any copters.” “‘Copter’?” I heard Gilda mutter, like she had no idea what the word even meant. “Wait, so if there’s nowhere for a sniper to be, how did you get shot?” George asked. “I got shot,” Gilda said, as if it had happened to somebody else. “In the back of your head!” Bonnie exclaimed. There was a moment of silence, as I presume Gilda reached back to touch that spot. “There’s no arrow sticking out of my head, and there isn’t a hole. I don’t think I got shot.” “But we saw you drop.” “Ah. I must have tripped.” This was followed by an absolutely stunned silence. “Uh, not you, too!” Gilda exclaimed in exasperation. “In case you haven’t noticed, our lives are on the line right now and believe it or not, I value your lives more than I do my reputation so yes, I admit that I did something as stupid as tripping over the carpet and knocking myself out. Am I still in charge after that devastating admission?” Silence. “That’s what I thought. Although, with everything we’ve learned so far, I guess our lives aren’t in immediate danger?” she asked the group. Gabe was still playing Angry Birds. It looked like he had tuned out this entire conversation. George looked to the group. “Is everything locked up?” he asked them. They all voiced an affirmative. Except Gabe of course. “This guy left the back door open,” Bonnie said, “but I locked it.” She was probably pointing at me. I said nothing. “So, with no snipers, what are we looking at in a worst-case scenario?” Gilda asked. “The police storm the place and grab us,” George said. “We might get off with a warning,” Bonnie said. “Depending on how serious the ‘hostage’ stuff is. But you’re definitely going to go to jail for a few years.” “Because of my ‘criminal record’,” Gilda said slowly. The others sadly agreed. Except Gabe. I was beginning to get a little angry at him. “We’ve got to find a way to sneak her out of here,” Bonnie said. “How?” “I have no idea.” “I don’t suppose there’s a secret network of tunnels under this building?” Gilda asked. “If anybody would know that, it would be you,” George pointed out. “Right,” said Gilda. “And we can’t fly...” The others waited for her to come up with a useful ending to that non-sequitur, but she just left it hanging. Gabe had still not looked up from his phone. I was getting really mad at him. “Okay, I need to think,” Gilda said, settling herself down into the executive chair with some degree of surprise over how comfortable it was—at least, that’s what it sounded like to me. “I need some of you to go out there and make sure none of the constabulary is trying to sneak into the building.” In response to the puzzled looks over the vocabulary word she added, “The...uh, ‘police’.” “[Gabe], go down and cover the side entrance,” George ordered. “[Bonnie], go back to the employee entrance. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the front from here.” The names in brackets are their codenames—I think this was the first time I had caught him remembering to use them. Bonnie turned around to leave. Gabe kept playing. “Hey!” I yelled, having reached the tipping point. “Stop fiddling while Rome burns and pay attention!” Gabe finally looked up. “Huh? Rome what now?” I sighed deeply. (Don’t get me started on the lousy state of world history education in this country’s high schools. The Markists only seem to care about British history, and nothing else.) “[Gabe], go to the side entrance and whistle really loud if you see the police trying to get in,” Gilda said. She watched as both of the assigned scouts left the room. She then turned to me. “Please explain the meaning of that phrase: fiddling while Rome burns.” I felt a little ashamed at that moment at my outburst—I wasn’t part of this gang, and I could have gotten into serious trouble for butting in. “It’s just an historical reference from the hostage,” I muttered. “Get back to your thinking.” “Later,” said Gilda. She turned my chair around so I was facing her chair. “A little history might inspire me.” So, I explained the reference. “I thought the Roman Empire spread Christianity far and wide,” George commented afterwards, in reference to the part of my story where I said that Emperor Nero blamed the fire on them. He said this from the window. I opened my mouth to correct him about his false belief that the Romans were always pro-Christian, but then George said something far more important than our historical digression: “Boss, the police are all behind their cars with their guns pointed at the front window. I can’t see the archbishop or the principal. The bishops are wandering around like they have no idea what’s going on. I don’t see...well I don’t see any other civilians.” “They’re all armed,” Gilda said. “Yes.” She got up and walked over to the inner window, looking out over the store. “And those stairs are the only way they can get up here?” “Yeah, I think so,” said George. She thought for a moment. “If the police decide to storm the building, we surrender. There’s no other way to avoid getting hurt. I got you into this mess, so I’ll assume full responsibility.” Before George could object she addressed me. “So what were you going to say about the ‘Roman Empire’ and ‘Christianity’?” I looked at her like she had lost her mind. “I’m waiting,” she said, sounding like she knew exactly what she was doing. So I answered her. “Um, well the Romans persecuted the Christians until the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in AD 312, and after that they changed course and supported it. Eventually it became the state religion and all other religions were persecuted.” “Have they made a move yet?” Gilda asked George. George, finally accepting that he wasn’t going to be allowed to argue Gilda out of surrendering, looked out the window once more. “No change.” Gilda walked over to the other window. I assumed that she could see both of the other scouts. Turning back to me she said. “A human battle? I can take it. Tell me about it. Why did the Romans change their minds?” (OK, I’m not entirely sure she said a “human” battle. She sort of muttered that first couple of sentences under her breath.) “Well, the Roman Empire was split by a civil war,” I told her. “Emperor Constantine was facing off against Emperor Maxentius outside the western capital of Rome. Constantine had the weaker army of the two, and they both knew it. Before the battle, Constantine had a vision of an unknown symbol floating in the sky, beneath which were the words ‘in hoc signo vinces’, Latin for ‘in this sign, thou shalt conquer’. He had the symbol painted on his standard, telling his soldiers that an unknown god supported their cause. The next day, Constantine miraculously won the battle, and Maxentius drowned in the Tiber. Later, Constantine learned that the symbol he had seen was used by the Christians. Feeling obligated to the God of the Christians for his victory, he ordered that Christianity become the official religion of the Empire.” “So,” Gilda said with a smile, “a miracle saved the Christians from destruction.” “Filthy’s on his cell phone,” George told her. The phone in the office began ringing. A split second later, there was a loud whistle from the back of the store. (Gilda looked at George, then at the phone.) “I’m certain that’s him calling us,” George said. “Untie him,” Gilda ordered, pointing at me. She refused to pick up the phone, which continued to ring. When I was free, I stood up. Gilda pulled off my blindfold so I could see her unmasked face. After some hesitation, George and the other gang members removed their masks. “Answer that call, Mr. History Teacher,” Gilda addressed me. “But not until you see us reach the employee entrance.” She then walked out of the room, followed by the others. Gabe had really done an expert job with the bandages. The phone continued to ring. Carefully, I picked up the entire phone, without answering it. I pulled it over to the inner glass and sat it down on the floor, trying to pick a spot where I would be least likely to be hit by gunfire from whatever direction it was going to come from. I stayed at the window for a couple of minutes, the time it took for everyone in Gilda’s gang to gather in front of the cargo door. (I should note that the employee area had no ceiling, which meant that the manager could look down on them all the way from this office.) I picked up the phone. “Alright, Mr. Criminal, we’re willing to negotiate,” I heard the voice of Filthy Rich say. “Let’s *calmly and slowly* discuss your terms.” The phrase “calmly and slowly”, said in a significantly louder tone of voice, was obviously a trigger, because at that moment the cargo door sprang open, and through it I could see a swarm of SWAT officers rushing forward. Gilda made a theatrical gesture, and the door slammed shut. The others seemed to regard this as some kind of miracle, but I knew about the remote control that was in Gilda’s pocket. I could see them question her about how she was able to close the door. Whatever she told them in reply astounded them even more. Another gesture, and the door opened itself, revealing the officers all pointing their weapons at the gang. “STOP!” Gilda shouted, in a voice that frankly seemed inhumanly loud. I assume it was some trick of the acoustics of the building, perhaps deliberately engineered to make it easier for the manager to overhear employee conversations. Anyway, the SWAT team seemed just as surprised as her gang had been earlier. When she walked forward with hands in the air, they parted to let her pass. I ran over to the outer window and got a peek of my own for the first time. The cop cars were all abandoned, and the cops were all walking around the building. Quickly I made my way down the stairs, and ran for the cargo doors. There I saw Gilda and her gang talking to the Archbishop, with Principal Celestia watching and a paramedic looking Gilda over. As you later informed me, the entire gang offered to convert on the spot to Markism, and Gilda had played her game so skillfully that she acted like she needed them to convince her to convert as well. And then the families came running over with the news that Rainbow Dash and someone named Fluttershy had been kidnapped. But that’s an entirely different story. (One that I’d really like to know the ending of, because to the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been an actual kidnapping of a Markist in Canterlot City in the past forty years.) Now I’m going to be honest with you: While the solution of offering to convert is obvious in retrospect, it absolutely did not occur to me at the time, even while I was telling a story to Gilda that inspired her to reach that conclusion. So that’s all on her. P.S. I didn’t want to include this, but you did say to tell you everything I saw, even if it might seem impossible. From my angle in the manager’s office, I really couldn’t see what was going on outside that cargo door so well. So I couldn’t really be sure that it was SWAT officers out there until I went downstairs and made it to within a few feet of the door. So for that reason I’m certain I’m mistaken when I say that I thought I saw Gilda levitate into the air right before she said “stop”, and that the entire gang then floated out of the door without their feet ever touching the ground. P.P.S. It just occurred to me: Those cycling outfits don’t have pockets. And Gilda left her backpack behind. I think her hands were empty. So how did she bring the remote out with her?