At this point, it would be understandable if the reader has begun to think of myself and Agent K1 as complete nitwits. I unreservedly can say that we are both very intelligent, rational individuals, but in this case we had fallen victim to a malady which often afflicts smart people, which is the unwarranted assumption that everyone else is a complete bonehead. Yes, MOCK's remaining membership was full to the brim with creepy, fetishy, basement-dwelling social rejects, but they nevertheless should have been counted on to be able to recognize two strangers skulking about a tiny motel in the same damned costumes we'd worn last time. In this case, we'd let our overconfidence be our downfall. The security goon (let's call him "David Strickland," because that was in fact his name) identified himself as a cop, a claim he would later retract, and took us to meet with Mr. Rook. We'd carried a camera with us and documented our foray into the con, which wasn't the best of ideas, in retrospect. Maybe/maybe-not cops took the camera and copied our footage. Things looked bad.

Being illegally detained by cop-impersonators was not the greatest of experiences, though after being shoved about by what might have been actual cops who seemed actually inebriated, Mr. Rook managed to lighten the mood upon his entrance by turning the proceedings comically surreal, accentuated by his personal Greek chorus of supporters, who spouted comments along the lines of, "You tell 'em, Big Dog!" and "I'll see you at Dragon Con!" (He didn't, because I don't go to Dragon Con.) It would later be claimed at our hearing that a different set of Krony flyers, based on a piece of clip art in MOCK's own newsletter and styled after the poster for the then-recent sci-fi film 12 Monkeys, had been pasted up at Rook's comic shop, which gave some context to his advisory, which he gave to his staff during our detainment, that "We know they travel in packs of twelve." He identified us at once as "those guys from the Radisson," his staffers speculated that we must be brothers because we had the same first name, and Rook kept pacing past with offers that we come clean, or else we'd "hang for everything your gang has ever done! Talk now, or hang forever!" K1 replied that we'd merely found those flyers lying in the back hall before they separated us for questioning, an act which was almost certainly illegal. More illegal, I mean, than what we'd been doing. Significantly so.

After an hour or so of this false imprisonment, Strickland and a for-real cop who might've been literally insane, given the testimony he would later provide in court, took us back to our car and said that the court would be in touch. Strickland, now merely identifying himself as MOCK's head of security, offered up the notion that Rook was "a paranoid schizophrenic" in response to our protestations that Mr. Rook was plainly overreacting. If your friends speak of you in this way, it sort of says something. We drove home and re-watched the tape we'd made that night. We appeared in the video laughing like cartoon villains as we proclaimed, "This time we will not fuck it up!" and proudly displayed the real and fake badges for comparison, adding "This is the real one, this is the FAKE one!" just to drive the point home. It didn't, in our considered opinion, make us look that great.