//------------------------------//
// 3 - Arranger 
// Story: Foreigner 
// by AugieDog 
//------------------------------//

	"Thank you," Princess Twilight said, but the expression on her face made Gilda pretty sure she actually wanted to say: What in the wide, wide world of Equestria is going on here?

Gilda opened her beak to start explaining, but—

"Oh, my gosh, guys!" Pinkie Pie shrieked, hopping up and down behind the earth pony with the hat, one of several in the group whose name Gilda didn't know.  "It's Gilda!  Look!  Look!"  She flailed a front hoof.  "Right there!  Gilda!"  Pinkie stopped, hanging impossibly in the suddenly thick-as-soup air.  "Hey!  Are we still mad at her?"

The silence then seemed really loud, Gilda not sure if she was still breathing.  "I dunno, Pinkie," Dash said from somewhere off to Gilda's right.  Gilda managed to swivel her head in that direction, and Dash was looking at her, those purple eyes half-closed.  "Are we?"

As much as a part of her wanted to rear back and roar, it was a small and easily ignored part.  And for all that she'd known since sunup that this moment was rushing toward her like a storm front, Gilda still had to take a breath and dredge the words up from what felt like the very tips of her talons: "I hope it'll make a difference, Dash, Princess, Pinkie Pie, the rest of you who I don't think I really met, when I say that I'm sorry for the way I behaved when I was in Ponyville three years ago.  No excuses: I was a jerk, and I apologize."  Now for the real hard part.  "So, if you'll all please come this way, Derpy is—"

"Whoo-hoo!"  Everything in front of Gilda flashed pink, and at least three legs wrapped themselves around her neck.  "Ev'rypony's friends again!  Even the ones who aren't ponies!"  Another flash, and Gilda found herself blinking at a strawberry bramble of a tail, Pinkie Pie leaning over the signal platform's railing till she was more hanging from the stonework by her hocks than anything else.  "Whoa!  Guys!  Check out how high up we are!"

A nudge at Gilda's shoulder.  "Thanks, G," Dash said, then she was swooping past, hooking her hoofs around Pinkie Pie's knees, and hauling the pouting pony back onto all fours.  "Try to remember, Pinks: you can't fly."

"Wait."  The princess's wings fluffed out a bit, and she jumped over to the railing herself.  "Is that the Wyvern Range?  Are we—?"  She turned a wide-eyed stare at Gilda.  "Are we in griffon territory?"

Gilda found another smile she didn't quite feel and let it spread across her beak.  "Yes to both questions, Your Highness.  Now, if you'll—"

"Please, Gilda."  And the princess's smile was so real, it even curled her eyes into little crescents.  "Call me Twilight."

"Griffon territory?"  The orange earth pony had trotted over, suspicion on her face.  "How the hay did Derpy get all the way into griffon territory?"

"Oh, now, really, Applejack."  The unicorn in the group sauntered up, the dragon and the other pegasus sticking to her like a couple of shadows.  "Surely after all these years, you must know that where our dear postmare is concerned, words like 'how' and 'why' lose all meaning."

That squeezed a choking laugh out of Gilda.  "I've only known her a couple hours, and I've already seen that."

The slender pegasus behind the unicorn flinched nearly all the way to the platform's stone floor, the dragon glaring at Gilda.  A salty stink of fear washed over her nostrils then, and an image popped out of Gilda's memories: that same stink from a pegasus who'd been leading some ducks through Ponyville's town square after Gilda had roared at her...

"But if those are the Wyverns—"  The princess—or rather Twilight; whatever the pony wanted to be called was fine with Gilda—Twilight was hanging over the railing now, but with those wings, Gilda didn't feel quite so nervous at the sight.  "Then that's the ancient city of Catlatl down there!" Twilight practically shouted.

"Catlatl?"  Dash's eyes lit up.  "Like in Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet?"

A twitch pulled the side of Gilda's face at the mention of that damn book—it was like the author had kept a checklist of every griffon stereotype she could find so she'd be sure not to miss a single one—but Dash was already sliding up beside Twilight.  "Awesome!"  And as quickly as that, Dash had pushed herself over the edge, her voice echoing as she dropped out of sight: "Last one there's a meadow muffin!"

"Dash!" Gilda shouted; she rushed to the rail and spread her wings, ready to leap off and try to catch the only person, pony or griffon, who'd ever beaten her in flat-out speed flying, her mind reeling at the thought of all the international incidents that were about to burst into full and boiling fury—

But Twilight was shouting, too.  "Rainbow!"  Light wavered around her horn, and a purple bubble suddenly bloated through the air above them with Dash inside, flying straight into the wall of the thing and bouncing back like she'd hit a trampoline.

"Hey!"  Dash's voice came out slightly muffled.  She jabbed a hoof at the stretchy membrane, her wings vibrating, then turned a scowl toward the princess.  "What gives, Twilight??"

"Remember in the book?" Twilight asked, Gilda still fighting down the adrenaline surging through her system.  "Nopony had ever visited Catlatl before, right?  And the griffons were kind of concerned about keeping it that way?"  The glance Twilight gave Gilda then was more than a little shaky.  "That's pretty much the only thing the book gets right, really."

Catching her breath, Gilda sent a quick prayer of thanks to the Cat Mother and the Eagle Father: this pony princess might actually have half a brain in her head.  "Also?" Twilight was addressing her whole group.  "Now that I think about it, us even being here violates at least four provisions of our treaty with the griffons."  She gave a tight grin over her shoulder.  "So maybe we should collect our mailmare and be on our way."

And as much as Gilda wanted to nod, flap downstairs, grab Derpy, toss her at them, and wave the whole herd out of her life once and for all—  "Your mailmare and your balloon, actually," she forced through gritted teeth.

Twilight just blinked, but a groan from above drew Gilda's attention back to Dash, slumping inside her bubble.  "Don't tell me," Dash said.

Gilda gave a shrug.  "I wish I didn't have to."

"My balloon?"  Twilight was looking back and forth between Gilda and Dash; then her mouth went sideways, the glow disappeared from around her horn, and Dash's bubble popped with a tiny crystalline chime.  "What about my balloon?"

Again, Gilda opened her mouth, but this time it was Dash who interrupted her: "We were gonna surprise you with it at the party, but with the crocodahlias and that storm that blew in from the Everfree and everything..."  Dash's wings had flared when the bubble vanished, and she drifted to the stonework like so many autumn leaves.  "I kinda got distracted."

The pony with the hat cocked her head at Gilda, her bumpkin accent not matching the sharp look in her eyes at all.  "So lemme get this straight: some storm or other blew Twi's balloon with Derpy attached all the way 'cross a quarter of the world?  That what'cher telling us?"

Once more, the urge to flick her talons and ignore the real problem almost overwhelmed Gilda.  But—  "I really wish that was all I was telling you," she said.




***




"Hooray!" Derpy shouted for maybe the thirtieth time in the ten or fifteen minutes since Gilda had led the princess's party down the stairway, past a goggle-eyed Gillian and into the garrison's east wing.  Gimble, standing outside the door to Three Sapphires, had gone as pale as any griffon she'd ever seen, but he'd still saluted smartly and opened the door to show them into the sitting room, Gyre and Derpy chatting away at a desk by the big picture window that filled the far wall.  Their entrance had gotten the first "Hooray!" but the exclamation came over and over again once they'd pulled a bunch of cushions into a circle to get everyone up to speed.

Gilda had told the ponies everything about the damage to the site and the discovery of the hidden mosaic, but she'd learned quite a lot, too: that Derpy had a young daughter named Dinky, for one.  "Oh, yes," Derpy had said, nodding at Pinkie's report of Dinky staying with the family who ran Ponyville's bakery.  "My little muffin knows that, whenever Mommy disappears, she's to go straight to Sugarcube Corner till Mommy comes back."

She'd also learned the names of those who'd accompanied Princess Twilight—Fluttershy, Gilda noticed, still hadn't darted more than a glance in her direction, and Spike, his glare never quite vanishing, had managed to keep himself between the two of them the entire time.  But more than those things, Gilda had learned that this Twilight Sparkle really did have a brain.  "However you want to handle this, Gilda," Twilight was saying.  "It'd be easy enough for me to pop us all back to Ponyville and put the request for the return of my balloon through proper diplomatic channels if you think that'd be best."

The gleam in her eye, though, told Gilda something else entirely.  "But you'd like to see the mosaic, wouldn't you, Twilight?"

"I really, really would."  Her wings gave a tiny flutter, her voice fluttering more than a little.  "I mean, evidence that one of the unicorn kings actually met with Nine Jaguars?  It's the greatest archeological discovery of the past twenty or thirty years, and my balloon's sitting right on top of it!"  Twilight took a breath, touched a hoof to her chest, and moved it away while exhaling.  "But I know how delicate this issue is going to be, so maybe it'd be best if—"

"No."  And even knowing the thousand feline Hells she was about to throw herself into—  "See, every griffon in the Guardian Corps takes an oath to uphold the Consulate and all that, but us praetors of the Catlatl Garrison, we've got a second oath that talks about our duty to griffondom's ancestral city and everything it stands for."  Gilda's throat tried to close, but she forced herself to say out loud—to ponies, for the love of fur and feathers!—things that she usually only thought about while lying awake in the pre-dawn darkness before reveille.  "It's a duty to the wind and the stones and the truth of what it means to be a griffon in a world where ponies control the sun and the moon and all the forces of nature."

She realized she was looking at the floor, and when she raised her head, they were all staring at her—even Fluttershy—their eyes wide in confusion.  A ghost of a pain twitched her chest, a memory of the heartbroken shards that had gouged into her three years ago when she'd stared at the ponies laughing around her in that podunk bakery and realized once and for all that none of them had any idea what they really were, that most of them would loudly deny it if any non-pony had ever tried telling them what they really were....

But that was a wound long ago scabbed over.  "A duty to the truth," she said again.  "Because every griffon is taught from hatching that we first met you ponies three hundred years after Catlatl's founding just as the winters here were getting harsher and longer.  You were migrating on to a completely different part of the world, and your magic was no good for stopping the snow from falling since it was your magic that was drawing the windigoes down on us in the first place."

"You mean—"  Spike, his eyes wide, touched his claws to his chest.  "The first part of the Hearth's Warming story happened here?"

Gilda shrugged.  "I wondered that whenever I saw the play in Cloudsdale.  But all we've ever known was that after the ponies left, ice storms buried ancient Catlatl, and it took ten generations for the remnants of griffon civilization to claw out a new nation in the monster-infested forests and plains to the south."  The Great Abandonment griffon historians called it—when they weren't calling it The Great Betrayal—but Gilda didn't think it'd be a good idea to use either of those terms in front of a pony princess.  She cleared her throat again.  "But now it looks like ponies were here at the founding of Catlatl, not just at its fall, and I—"  A shiver made her tail snap to the side.  "My duty's to find the truth."

Twilight was nodding.  "Just tell us how we can help," she said.

Gilda stood, made herself focus on the here and now.  "First of all, I'll apologize again since we don't have rooms for you all."  She waved a foreclaw at the door.  "We don't get a lotta fancy visitors up this way, so there's pretty much this room for military brass and the one across the hall for any political bigwigs who stop by."

Applejack gave a quiet chuckle.  "Some of us ain't got wigs all that big, truth be told.  Gimme a bedroll, and I reckon I can flop down right here good enough."

"Yeah!"  Dash had that infectious grin on her snout.  "Me and Pinks in here with AJ and Derpy, then Twilight can take the bigwig room with Spike, Rare, and Shy!"  She brushed her front hoofs together.  "Next problem!"

A twinge ruffled Gilda's feathers.  "Next would be the broken signal mirror and my injured cadet."  A cadet whose condition she hadn't even been down to check on yet...

"Injured?" Fluttershy asked in a voice maybe two steps above a whisper, her ears folding.

Dash's ears folded, too.  "Oh.  Yeah.  That was me, right?"  She gave the others a sheepish grin.  "I kinda crashed into Gilda and this kid up on the roof; that's when I broke their big mirror and that necklace of yours, Twi."

Twilight's mouth went sideways, and she stood.  "Then might you show us to your infirmary, Gilda?"

With part of her wanting to hide the ponies away while another part wanted to parade them around, Gilda tried to tell them they didn't need to bother, but Dash spoke up with a grin: "C'mon, G.  We can start making up for some of the damage we're about to start causing around here."

Then Fluttershy rose, her knees shaking and her scent sour with fear.  "Please," she said, her voice very nearly audible.

So Gilda led the whole bunch of them down the back stairs to the garrison's cadet level and into the infirmary.  Plenty of morning light streamed in from the open door of the receiving balcony at the far end of the long, narrow room, and the cadet sat wincing on a pallet there as Dr. Gordon, a magnifying glass in one front talon and a pair of tweezers in the other, plucked a sliver of glass from the cadet's chest feathers and dropped it onto a tray where a few others already lay.  "Doc."  Gilda padded toward him past the empty beds.  "Report."

Not looking up, Doc puffed through his nostrils.  "Might be done by lunchtime, Praetor."

"Actually?"  Rarity stepped forward, a grayish sort of glow stirring the air around her horn.  "I'm sensing silica glass and quicksilver, and while neither of those are quite considered gems—"  The glow swept across the white-tiled room and brushed through the cadet's plumage, a tiny shower of specks and shards raining out.  "I might be able to have some slight effect on them," the unicorn finished, her glow catching the fragments and dropping them with a rustling clatter into Doc's tray.

"What the—??"  Doc had leaped back as soon as the shimmering had started, and when he snapped around, it looked to Gilda like his whole head was puffing up, his crest feathers rising in outrage.  "Praetor!  What's the meaning of this??"

Gilda stepped forward.  "Princess Twilight, this is Catlatl Garrison's medical officer, Dr. Gordon.  Doc, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle and her associates.  They're likely to be staying with us a couple days."  She nodded to the cadet, his eyes still wide and focused on his chest.  "Gonna need the fledge there up and active, Doc, if he's not hurt too bad."

"Ponies??" Doc more sputtered than said.  "Here??  Are you mad, Praetor??  It's not—!  It hasn't—!  There's never been—!"

"Doctor!" Gilda snapped, and while she didn't want to jump over, grab him by the scruff, and start shaking him, that was her next planned move if he didn't pull himself together.  She knew he was military through and through, though, and her bark was enough to make him stiffen to attention and clench his beak shut.  "This fledge," she said, keeping the edge in her voice.  "Is he fit to return to duty?"

Gordon gave a softer snort and turned to the cadet.  "Gutierrez?  Anything jab you when you breathe?"

It took a little effort for Gilda to hide her surprise—she'd been certain that Cadet Gutierrez was one of the skinnier recruits in the current junior class, but then she'd always been terrible with names...  Still, the cadet's chest rose and fell, and he shook his head.  "Feeling fine, sir," he said.

Movement at the edge of her vision, and Gilda turned to see Fluttershy moving up beside Rarity.  "I can mix you up a lovely, soothing, antiseptic shampoo to help with your cuts if you'd like."

Doc spun to glare at her, and she recoiled as if he'd slapped her.  "I mean, I could if I were home."  She lowered her head, her pink mane cascading over her face like a waterfall.  "Which I'm not, so I...I...I'm sorry..."

"Doctor," Gilda growled.

He sliced a wing through the air.  "My opinion of this cadet's health, Praetor, is that he can return to duties that don't strain his sprained foreclaws."  His eyes narrowed.  "I have many other opinions as well, Gilda, opinions which I will happily share with all and sundry if these damn ponies don't get their filthy hoofs out of my sickbay."

"Oh, yeah??" Dash shouted, and a glance back told Gilda all she needed to know: Dash hovering with her teeth bared; Rarity and Spike each glaring in their own different ways; Applejack with her front hoofs spread and planted like she was able to charge; Twilight's frown just visible enough to remind Gilda that this was one of the four most powerful beings on the planet standing here.

"Yeah, thanks, Doc," Gilda said, turning back with a completely phony smile.  "I'm sure our distinguished guests will be equally happy to share some of their own opinions with you during the formal reception after mess tonight.  Till then—"  She whistled a 'ten-hut.'  "On your paws and claws, Cadet.  We need the second big mirror out of storage and up on the roof."

"No need, Gilda," Twilight said, and the temperature in the room jumped a couple of degrees, a cloud of sparkling purple forming in the air to Gilda's left.  Or rather, what was inside the cloud sparkled: a mass of mirror shards ranging in size from toothpick to hind paw.  "We broke this one, so we'll put it back together."

"Ooo!"  The squeal made Gilda snap her head around to where Pinkie Pie lay sprawled, a model of a griffon built entirely of tongue depressors on the floor in front of her.  She sprang up and frantically waved a hoof.  "Pick me!  Pick me!  I love jigsaw puzzles!"

Magic flooded the room, Gilda once again not sure if she was still breathing, and Pinkie began pointing at various chunks of mirror: "That one goes with that one, then they both go up underneath that one, and if you turn the whole thing—  No, the other way.  Yeah!  Like that!  Then that one and that one snap onto the ends!"  Hopping over to Doc's tray, she poked through the tiny bits, asked Rarity to slide one or the other of them into place, and in less than five minutes, the completed mirror, its surface spiderwebbed with tiny cracks, hovered in Twilight's purple cloud.  Pinkie nodded, turned to stick her tongue out at the still-glowering Gordon, then trotted back to her griffon sculpture.

"Now," Twilight said, Gilda unable to look away from the miracle that had just happened in front of her.  "A little fire, please, Spike."

"You got it."  The little dragon strode into Gilda's field of vision, the mirror and its surrounding cloud drifting down till they nearly touched the floor; Spike leaned forward, took a breath, and blew out tendrils of fire, green and crackling, curling up and over the surface of the mirror like vines.  Where they stroked, the silver seemed to flow, and in half a dozen heartbeats, the most perfect signal mirror Gilda had ever seen settled to rest against the infirmary wall, the whole room suddenly brighter when the purple cloud whisked away.

"There," Twilight said somewhere behind Gilda.  "And let me apologize for the inconvenience."

Turning was about the hardest thing Gilda had done in years, one part of her brain wanting to cheer, another part wanting to shriek.  Again, though, neither response was an option, not with both Gordon and Gutierrez staring at her, so she nodded, forced her voice to remain steady: "Thank you, Princess.  Those things're expensive to replace."  She glanced over her shoulder at the two slack-beaked griffons.  "Cadet?"

Gutierrez started like she'd woken him; then he jumped to attention.  "Yes, Praetor!"

She nodded to the bandage around the base of his right front talons.  "That gonna keep you from working the mirror?"

Raising it, he flexed it with a wince, but he set it firmly enough on the tile floor.  "No, Praetor!"

Gilda narrowed her eyes, but, well, signaling involved a griffon's whole body, the mirror clenched against the chest and stomach by fore and rear legs while the signaler flapped and spun and flashed sunlight in the specific patterns that sent the message to the next station along the line.  So a sprained wrist shouldn't be too bothersome.  "All right," she said.  "Cancel previous message."

He gave the 'acknowledged' chirp.

"Message to Consulate Headquarters from Catlatl Garrison."  No matter how she phrased this, the news of a pony princess in Catlatl was going to set fire to every signal house between here and Aquileon, so—  "Equestrian Princess Twilight Sparkle and her closest associates have arrived at Catlatl Garrison on a mission to retrieve the princess's errant balloon, blown onto the site by last night's storm.  The storm has also uncovered a previously unknown mosaic; scientists are on the site examining it.  Repeat that, cadet."

With another chirp, he did, and Gilda nodded.  "Send it, and wait around the platform for a reply."

Gutierrez tapped a salute against the floor, spread his wings, hefted the mirror, and swooped for the open door, the sunlight striking the mirror sharply enough to make Gilda wince.  Still, on to step two.  She turned to the ponies and said, "Princess?  Perhaps you'd like to go down to the site and inspect your balloon."

Twilight opened her mouth and closed it, her eyes shifting sideways.  "Yes, thank you, Praetor," she said then.  "If it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"Not at all."  Gilda chirped to summon Gyre and Gimble from the hallway.  "Cadets, kindly escort our guests upstairs to the front gate.  I'll join you all shortly."

Gimble still looked extremely concerned, but Gyre gave a broad grin and gestured to the door.  "This way, please."

Gilda kept her own smile in place till the last of the ponies had filed out, Gimble pulling the door closed behind them all.  She let the smile crumble, then, and turned slowly to Doc.  "There anything you'd like to say to me, Dr. Gordon?"

"Not at all, to coin a phrase."  If his neck muscles had been clenched any tighter, Gilda figured, his head would've popped right off.  "I can't begin to tell you how overjoyed I'll be to see those candy-colored monstrosities galloping around the streets of Catlatl after their ancestors destroyed the city without so much as a single thought."

It took Gilda a couple of breaths to push aside both the part of her that wanted to shout in agreement and the part that wanted to shout in opposition.  "First thing, Doc?  I'm gonna ask you as a personal favor to keep as much of that talk tucked in your feathers as you can.  We're about to have politicians and imperators fall on us like flies on pellets, so for the sake of the garrison, just try to maintain, OK?"

Maybe she imagined it, but Gilda thought his glare lost a bit of its cutting edge.  "And the second thing, Praetor?"

She waved a claw toward the landing bay.  "The mosaic I mentioned?  Godfrey says it dates back to Nine Jaguars and the founding of the city."  She stepped closer to him and lowered her voice.  "It shows ponies, Doc, the king of Unicornia and his court.  They were here fifteen hundred years ago, and not one surviving document from the period even hints at it."  She realized her focus was narrowing like it did when she took a turn on the hunting parties, snatching up various rodents for Cookie's menu.  "Someone over a thousand years ago decided to hide this info and lie to the entirety of griffondom."  She swallowed, forced her shoulders to relax.  "I don't like being lied to, Doc.  I don't like it at all."

Doc's eyes had been getting wider and wider, his beak gaping open.  "Ponies?" he muttered.  "Here?  Back then?"

Stepping away, Gilda gave herself a quick preening, got most of her ruffled feathers to smooth.  "When you can take a break, head down to the site.  It's at the Scribes' Union Hall."

She made for the door into the garrison then, practically flew up the stairwell and down the east hall, only settling to the floor when she heard Gyre's voice echoing ahead: "—under constant renovation, of course, but the garrison prides itself on keeping the best of the old while incorporating the best of the new."

A breath to make sure she wasn't glowering like a thunderhead, and Gilda padded around the corner, saw the princess and her party gathered around the company clerk's desk, Gillian staring at them with an absolute galaxy of stars in her eyes.  "OK!" Gilda said, aiming a quick 'well done' chirp in the cadet's direction.  "By my count, we've got four in the party who'll need an escort down to the site, so lemme call a few of our burlier cadets up here, and we'll—"

Twilight's chuckle interrupted her.  "That's all right, Gilda.  I'll give Spike a lift down on my back, and Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie—"  A little purple bubble appeared at the tip of her horn.  "I should be able to float them down in one of these just fine!"

Applejack made a little clicking noise with the corner of her mouth.  "See, now, it's that word 'should' in there that gets a earth pony's blood pumping just a mite."

"Oh, you."  Twilight poked Applejack in the shoulder with a front hoof.  "I haven't lost a passenger yet, have I?"

Spike gave a snort.  "Or you could listen to your assistant and teleport us down there.  I mean, we know you can do that..."

"Spike!"  The edge in Twilight's voice surprised Gilda almost as much as the blush that darkened the princess's cheeks as she turned.  "I'd like to apologize, actually, Gilda, for being so ostentatious down in the infirmary.  I...I've read about the resentment some griffons hold toward us ponies because of our magic, and the last thing I want to do is cause any sort of incident between our peoples."

"Huh."  Gilda couldn't help grinning.  "So you thought that drifting down to griffondom's most revered site in a giant glowing bubble of magic would be the least—what was the word?—ostentatious way to do it?"

"I—"  Twilight blinked several times.  "But teleportation is a much more complicated spell!  The displacement and realignment of the air molecules alone is—!"

"Twi?"  Dash was leaning against the wall of the main hallway, Derpy and Pinkie Pie beside her playing some game involving a little spinning top and some colorful wooden markers that Gilda vaguely remembered from her days in Cloudsdale.  "As much as I really wanna stuff AJ into a big purple ball, drag her off that cliff out there, and bounce her all the way down to the valley floor—"

"Hey!" from the earth pony.

Dash flicked a hoof at her.  "If we're trying to keep things a little low-key, a flash of light and a little sparkly noise might be a better way to go."

Gilda had to blink at Dash.  "When did you get so practical-minded?"

That got one of Dash's clipped laughs, and she made a show of glancing around the entrance hall.  "'Bout the same time you did, I'm thinking."  She looked at Twilight then and did that thing ponies did sometimes with their fleshy beak parts—lips, Gilda remembered they called them—pushing them out and kind of flexing them like a fish's.  "Besides, if Twi's gonna stop me from busting down with wings flaring all over Catlatl, well, I figure I getta stop her from doing it, too."

Twilight rolled her eyes.  "Fine.  We'll teleport."

Applejack's relieved puff of breath ruffled Gilda's feathers from all the way across the hall, and Spike folded his arms, his scent tangy with self-satisfaction.

"But," Twilight went on, "I'll need to see where we're going first."

"Sure thing."  Gilda leaned toward Gillian.  "Gillian, we're likely to have visitors from higher up the chain of command before the end of the day.  Shifting me outta my quarters and having you aediles double up will give us four rooms to put 'em in."  She scratched a salute at the floor, heard Gillian's 'acknowledged' chirp, and waved her wings at the main doors.  "Princess, if you'll follow Cadet Gyre, I'll show you the spot."

Gyre chirped and fell in to lead the procession down the hallway, the other ponies and the dragon following her.  But when Derpy jumped up from along the wall, her forehead wrinkled and she called out, "Gilda?  Are we still playing the ambassador game?  Or have we changed to a different game now that Twilight and everypony's here?"

Twilight's ears perked, and she looked back over her shoulder.  "Ambassador?"

Gilda opened her mouth to explain, but as she was half-expecting at this point, she was interrupted.  "Oh, yeah!"  Derpy rose into the air, her front legs tucked against her chest and her eyes curled shut.  "Gilda said I was your ambassador and that I was supposed to learn about the griffons here and teach them about us ponies!  It was a lot of fun!"  Her eyes opened to show her lop-sided gaze, and her wings slowed.  "But now that you're here, you'd prob'bly be better at it than me.  Or Rarity would be.  Or Applejack.  Or, y'know, pretty much anypony else..."  Sighing, she settled to the floor.

"Derpy?"  The warmth of Twilight's smile made the angry part of Gilda's mind shrink almost to nothing, the princess stepping over to touch her horn to Derpy's forehead.  "I can't think of a single pony anywhere in Equestria better suited to that job than you, and I'm honored to have you as my ambassador to the griffons."

"Hooray!"  Derpy seemed to flash around the whole corridor at once, Gilda feeling herself being hugged at the same time, she was sure, as she was watching Derpy hug Twilight.  "Then let's go have some more fun, everypony!"

Laughing, the ponies all started forward again, Gilda recovering more quickly than before and hurrying to catch up with the group just as they trooped out into the morning sunlight on the main landing terrace.  Two more cadets, she was glad to see, had taken over in front of the big doors, and the way they stood at attention even while seven ponies and a dragon giggled and sashayed past them made Gilda feel steadier herself.  "OK!" she called, spreading her wings and flapping over the group to the edge of the platform.  "Those of you without wings, I'll point out that we've got no railing here and that the winds can get a little gusty sometimes."

"No problem, G."  Dash's wings puffed out, and Gilda felt pony magic combing over her, spreading into the air, soothing it like a scratch behind the ears might soothe a kitten.  "I got it covered."

Swallowing, Gilda nodded, Twilight moving up beside her and muttering, "Wow..."

And for the second time today, Gilda found herself looking at a familiar scene with new eyes, the ruins of Catlatl stretching out across the valley floor below her.  The sun had risen far enough by now over the peaks of the Wyvern Range to make the few remaining patches of white fascia stone on the palace walls glow, the crumbled buildings radiating out in a pattern of light and shadow all the way down to the river.  "Ancient Catlatl," Twilight whispered.  "I never dreamed I'd actually see it."

"Oooo..."  Pinkie was crouched to Gilda's left and peering over the edge.  "There's gotta be buried treasure down there.  I mean, look at it!"

Gilda shrugged.  "If there is, we haven't found it."

Pinkie grinned at her.  "That's not a 'no.'"

Dash had a similar grin on her snout, but Gilda forced herself to look away—she'd almost forgotten the sweet smell of wild possibility that filled the air when ponies were around, fresher than the scent of free-flowing water and more bracing than the best grain alcohol from Doc's little distillery.  "The Scribes' Union Hall," she made herself say, focusing back to the matter at claw.  "D'you see the palace wall there, Twilight, and the fourth gate along from the left?"

"I do," came the reply.

"That's the Scribes' Gate, and if you follow the street that leads straight south from there, you'll see—"

"My balloon!"  Twilight actually jumped into a hover, one front hoof pointing to a blotch of purple among the brownish-yellow.

"Exactly."  Gilda shifted her own talon.  "A block east of there, there's an open courtyard, see?  Will that be big enough a landing space or whatever you need for—"

The whole world around Gilda just sort of shifted, the panorama melting quicker than any ice and swirling into a view of the collapsed stonework around the little courtyard she'd just been pointing to.  "Oh, yes," she heard Twilight say.  "This'll be fine."

Unable to quite catch her breath, Gilda gripped the weathered cobbles with her paws and claws, a throat clearing behind her.  "Perhaps, Twilight," Rarity said, "you might breathe a word of warning next time?"

"Huh?  Oh!"  Twilight rushed into Gilda's field of vision, the movement almost making Gilda's stomach turn over.  "I'm so sorry, Gilda!  I just—  I wasn't—"  She stopped and took a breath.  "I'll make sure to let you know next time.  But—"  She spun, threatening to take Gilda's stomach with her again.  "This is Catlatl!  It's older than anything back home!  Older than the princesses even!  And we're the first ponies in modern times to set hoof here!"  She gave a couple little bounces.  "It's just so wonderful!"

Her enthusiasm made Gilda feel better somehow, and she mustered a smile.  "It is."  Forcing her paws and claws to move, she gave the chirp for 'bring up the rear,' heard Gyre respond, and started down the street.  "How 'bout we go see what the professors've dug up so far?"