Bad Luck Foaly

By Olympus - 117

This came out of a free writing exercise to the prompt "Annoy".

Just who thought that bringing Willow Rosenberg down to Haven for a visit would be funny idea? Buffy/Artemis Fowl Crossover. Post 'The Time Paradox', Post S7 for Buffy. Oneshot – Maybe.

"Oh! How about that? Can I try that? How about that one! And oh, what is this?"

Foaly shut his eyes and wearily massaged his forehead, which, as it happened, seemed to have acquired more lines in it in the past half hour than it was ever likely to get for the rest of his life.

"Why me?" Foaly moaned quietly to himself. He quickly cracked open one eye and peeked at his Operations room in the vain hope that this was all just a bad dream and that he would soon wake. Alas, no. Sighing, the centaur readjusted the foil cap on his head, mustered up all his remaining dignity and turned to face his greatest fear to date.

The source of the centaur's misery was revealed to be none other than a certain red-haired human witch. A certain red-haired human witch who was now busily tapping away at his keyboards and methodically, hacking into his computer. Correction, she was trying to hack his computer. Foaly hid a smug grin. Only two people had ever managed to get into his precious machines, one of them being a deranged pixie and the other, a certain Irish criminal mastermind whose name rhymed with Fartimis. And both of them had been off-the-chart geniuses. There was absolutely no chance that this human girl would ever be able to –

"I did it!" Willow's squeal of delight caused Foaly to stop what he was thinking for a moment, while he processed what she had just said. Several seconds later, his brain caught up and he snapped out of the trance, rushing over to where the witch was sitting on a revolving chair, a smug look plastered onto her face. Foaly frowned at her before beginning to inspect her work. She had indeed, managed to access his database, completely demolishing his virtual security system along the way. And it had taken her less than five minutes to do so. The centaur fought the smile creeping onto his face. Damn. The smile immediately wiped off as he swiveled to Willow and gave her a suspicious look.

"How in the name of Frond's baggy underpants did you manage to do that?" Foaly demanded, "It's impossible, you're just- just ... a regular mud man! – er mud woman," he hastily corrected at Willow's raised eyebrow.

Willow huffed in annoyance, although she still had the smug grin, "For your information, I'm a very good hacker," she stated proudly.

"Yes," Foaly conceded, then shook his head, "but you can't have possibly been able to get past the ghost firewalls, not to mention, how did you manage to bypass the emergency trip shutdown? That alone should have bought the entire system crashing around your head!"

Willows eyes sparkled mischievously, "I may have used a little magic to boost the batteries -"

"Ah ha!" Foaly jabbed a finger at the witch, "You cheated! I knew it! "

Willow pouted, she had not cheated, she had just utilised her ... skills. Okay, she may have used a tiny bit more magic than she had ought to, but most of the hacking was still done by her. Er – non-magically that is.

"Hey mister, it's not my fault that you don't guard against magical hacking attacks. If anything, it's you being lazy!" Willow defended.

Foaly rubbed his forehead and resisted the very tempting urge to bang his head repeatedly on the keyboard. He could feel a migraine coming on. This spoke volumes about his situation seeing, as centaurs did not get migraines. Ever.

He closed his eyes and slowly counted to ten. Breathe, he told himself, Just breathe. When he opened them again, he was greeted with the sight of Willow gesturing the cursor over a certain pink folder. Alarm shot through his system as it registered just exactly what was in it. And judging by the entirely too dirty grin that Willow was giving him, it became apparent that she knew it too.

"Foaly's secret files, hmm ..."

Foaly's eyes bulged out of their sockets, Willow went to click on it but before she could, Foaly wrestled back control of his keyboard and swiftly shut the system down, locking it and preventing the witch from doing anymore damage to his, eh, files.

Willow winked at him naughtily, "Wonder what was in there?"

Foaly's face flushed almost as red as Willow's hair. "Nothing," he said, in an unconvincing attempt at nonchalance.

"Uh huh, sure," Willow grinned, not believing him.

"Um, yes, well," Foaly coughed, "– can we move on?"

Willow shrugged, silently laughing at the centaur's obvious fluster. He was so like Giles she realised, only not British and well, all with the having four legs. Foaly walked over to one of the many table tops in the Ops room, sorting though a pile of techno junk before unearthing a data pad.

"As I understand it, you are here as a diplomatic representative from the -" Foaly checked the pad, "Ah yes, an organisation known as the Watcher's Council?"

Willow bobbed her head, causing her red hair to flop around her face, "Yup."

"And I'm to believe that the council's job is to oversee, train and otherwise provide assistance to the current slayer. Correct?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Except slayers, not just slayer."

Foaly stopped dead, a dumfounded expression creeping across his face. He must have misheard, surely ... "I'm sorry, what?"

"Slayers," Willow clarified, "As in plural?"When Foaly didn't respond, shock infiltrating his features despite his efforts to remain stoic faced, Willow added: "You know, the whole more than one kinda deal?" Still Foaly remained still; he was now doing an extremely convincing attempt at mimicking a goldfish.

Willow was frowning, surely they must have known. They had all this technology and not to mention some form of built in earth magic, they would have felt the activation spell, done now almost a year and a half ago. Not to mention, they kept tabs in all human affairs, they would have noticed a thousand young girls suddenly gaining superpowers.

Apparently not.

Foaly groaned. He had thought that when he met Artemis Fowl, he had seen it all. But apparently, fate had other ideas.

"I need Commander Kelp in here," Foaly said into the intercom, his voice echoing across the LEP headquarters and sounding equal parts annoyed and worried, "Yesterday, actually."

The centaur turned to face Willow and took several moments for his genius mind to organise the facts and arrive at an appropriately intelligent question.

Willow only looked bemused.

"How did you - I mean, how is it that – " Foaly began before shaking his head and starting again. "How did there come to be, uh ... more than one slayer, exactly?"

"Well ..." Willow said, "We activated all the potential slayers in the world using the scythe to channel my magic and then – poof – slayers in plural!"

Foaly cleared his throat. "Um, did you say that it was your magic?" he queried.

"Yup," Willow grinned.

"Impossible. Now I know you're lying, mud people don't have magic!" he exclaimed. "... Well, for the most part anyway," he later amended, thinking of a certain Irish boy and scowling.

To his surprise, Willow merely laughed. She turned to the centaur, her eyes twinkling with mirth. "Well ..." she said slowly, drawing the world out, "You're not the only secret civilization out there, you know." Then she winked and disappeared in a flash of white light. Foaly blinked and was left even more confused, well relatively anyway. He slowly turned to the intercom once more.

"Where the hell is the Commander!" he barked out.

Foaly sighed, not looking forward to this new turn of events. More slayers meant that it would be more difficult to hide their presence from the mud people now. Someone was going to eventually notice a few thousand super powered mud girls running around. Sooner or later, the next Artemis Fowl would put two and two together and then – they'd be – to borrow an American colloquialism- so screwed. And that mud people had magic!

Foaly groaned and picked up his communicator. As much as he loathed to admit it, he needed outside help for this one. Genius help.

With no small amount of trepidation, he dialed.

On the surface and halfway across the world, a young criminal mastermind twisted his fairy ring and answered, before frowning.

"Holly?" he said, hopefully.

A very much male and not Holly voice came out of the speaker. "Sorry Romeo, but it's me."

Artemis's brows knitted together. "Foaly? What on earth are you calling for? And how did you get this number?"

Foaly smirked, although this was unseen by Artemis, before smugly answering. "You should know by now mud boy, I can hack any phone in the world – above or below."

Artemis tilted his head, "As can I my equine friend, as can I."

Foaly coughed, "Anyway, I called because I am in need of your services. We have a rather ... interesting situation."

Artemis's eyebrows rose as he listened to Foaly's dilemma. "Indeed, that is quite an interesting development," he mused. "Slayers ..."

"We need you to come in," said Foaly.

"Why of course," said Artemis, his eyes glinting mischievously. "I'll be right there."

Back in Haven, Foaly gulped. He has having seconds thoughts about calling. Why did he have a bad feeling about this in the pit of his stomach? His own voice answered him glumly in his head.

Because Artemis Fowl is involved, that's why.

So, thoughts? What do you think? Let me know!