Author's Note: Hey everyone this is my first fan fiction. I've put a lot of effort into it and I hope you like it. But most of all I'd like to thank my editor, Gun toten Girly. She wrote the first 4 chapters but I planned the story. So all praise for the writing should go to her. You can praise or criticize me if the story's not good. And if it's not tell me how to improve it. I'm open to suggestions. So enough of this boring note. On with the story!
CHAPTER 1
HOWLERS PEAK
Howlers Peak is the best prison above—or under—the Earth. Once you were behind the laser beam bars of a cell there was no turning back. In its entire five-hundred years of existence, not one inmate has successfully escaped—aside from General Scalene, who, everyone knows, was too much of a dunce to really escape on his own. It was guarded by the toughest guards in the business and, according to rumor, thirty trolls.
The guards were criminals themselves and had suits that couldn't be taken off. They were specially designed to stick to goblin skin, suctioning to the pores and preventing the lizard-like-fairy from shedding. Foaly—the technical consultant of the LEP—could destroy the suits in less than four seconds by remote-activating a control and forcing the fabric of the jumpsuit to tighten, thus cutting any oxygen from reaching the brain and making the fairy pass-out.
The prison was located aboveground, in the shrouds of hail and snowstorms that could only be known as the Arctic Circle. Howlers Peak was specially devised for goblins. The icy climate meant a goblin couldn't conjure a fireball without it being blown off his hand in the same second. Hexes surrounded the island that caused humans travelling too close to have their consciousness wiped-out and suddenly wake up at the nearest civilization-inhabitance. There weren't many relocations, seeing as how humans were actually smart enough to stay away from the cold. The officers that delivered the transportations were perched on the outer-tower walls. The weather-proof radars installed in the towers detected any human-DNA in a hundred-mile radius of the prison, along with the heaters that warmed their bodies and warded off frostbite and hypothermia. Satellites couldn't detect anything, as the cloud-coverage and evaporation was enough to envelop the island in complete invisibility. But just as precaution—as Foaly was one of the most paranoid beings on Earth—a ring of mirror-reflecting lenses that lined around the island would shine and create a glare on any picture a satellite would take.
LEP Commander Trouble Kelp had recently tripled the security around Opal Koboi's cell. There were two trolls—supposedly, as the inner-circles say—that were tied onto two pillars in front of the cell. This accusation was proven false, considering nothing besides sleek chrome walls adorned the hallway that led to the cell.
On the last report, nine goblins were said to be guarding the cell. A new goblin, who joined recently, wore the same suit as the others—thus putting him at the same risk of oxygen-deprivation as the others. The newbie had been searched through-and-through by the finest officers in the business. If they reported he was a goblin, then, by all means, he was one. Goblins always joined the prison guard whenever they had a chance to cut a couple of decades off their sentence.
Tonight, they were as vigilant ever.
Except the new one, of course. Being smaller than the others, he was ribbed constantly by the size of his build. His arms were too short, his nostrils too tiny to perform anything short of blowing puffs of smoke. His skin was a light green, the darker patches on his face and hands almost translucent-looking. He was odd, with large eyes and a patch of black fuzz on his head. Goblins weren't known to have hair on their face or head, seeing as how it would be burnt off at any given moment.
Lieutenant Kaleen Shrub was on survey-duty. He was a chubby-gnome, with blonde-streaked hair and beer-gut belly. He wasn't in the fittest of shapes, but didn't exactly see a reason to be physically fit. These goblins always did their job whenever it was before lunch. They were suckers for the boiled locust-stew. Shrub resisted the urge to gag.
It was days like these where he wished the next shift didn't take as long to finish their lunch break. There were always shifts in front of Koboi's cell. In total, the maniacal pixie had eight shifts with five-to-nine goblins per round. They each got a chance to eat their meals, sleep, and then restart their day.
The only problem, however, was the length of time it took for the goblins to assemble in front of the cell. There was a two minute window in which nobody except the cameras were watching the four-foot-thick steel cell. Shrub knew the system was new and unused, so there were bound to be kinks in the routine. He didn't like it, though he couldn't exactly trust the inmates to make the journey to the cafeteria unguarded.
The bell shrilled, indicating that shift-four was over. Shrub stood from his plastic-chair, waving his hand towards the double-doors that led to the hallway of other cells. The goblins compliantly formed a line, subjecting to the once-over that Lieutenant Shrub gave them.
"Hey, Shrub!" A voice behind him called. The Lieutenant, ever the professional, didn't turn around towards the fairy.
"Aye." He responded, passing one goblin through the doors.
"There's a boat that won't turn around!" The fairy called. "Commander's ordering all officers and guards on the pier to help relocate the ship!"
Shrub didn't finish the check-ups, instead ushering the goblins through the door. In his haste, he forgot about one. To his credit, the goblin had hid—shielding with magic he shouldn't have had in the first place. But the sloppy blur in the shadows should have been noticeable, had not the panic of human-detection lingered on their minds.
Once the room was empty, a tiny, focused beam of blue shot out from the blur. It struck the nearest camera, doing a domino-effect to the others in the room. The lightening shorted-out anything technological, including the suit in which the goblin adorned.
The goblin rolled his eyes, cracking his neck and flexing his arms. He blinked, the iris darkening into a rich-brown. Dark hair flooded out from the scalp, luxuriously reaching his knees. The skin lightened, the dark patches fading to becoming one creamy, smooth color. The features twisted and hissed, looking as if it caused pain, when, in actuality, the goblin felt nothing.
Or, as the new form took shape, Opal Koboi.
"Ungh." She groaned. Taking a step towards the four-foot-thick cell, she observed the metal door. By the time it took for the officers to realize that the ship was on auto-pilot with no crew, she had to have her past-self out of the cell and en route to the location zone. She took a deep breath, and poured a fraction of her energy through her fingertips.
The door instantly blew off.
"Hey—!" The cell-occupier screamed. Opal Koboi of the past quickly knocked the woman out with her mesmer. Having her ask questions—as she knew she would—would only stall on time and create chaos where there could've been fluidity.
And right now, time was of the essence.
"You will sleep until I tell you to wake." In a split second, Present-Opal Koboi dropped onto the tiled floor, her frizzed hair encasing her head like a huge cotton ball. Past-Opal wrinkled her nose. Was this how she was to end up? She looked over in a corner, where a line of chipped-off figurines stood. What were they? They looked almost like… unicorns?
She turned around to look at the cell door she had blown open. A few cracks spread away from the hole the door handle made when it hit the wall. Using her excessive strength, she fixed the door back in its place against its hinges. She filled the cracks with magic, but the amount she would have to use would seriously deplete her enchantment-spells. She mended the ones that were more visible, but stopped at the tiny chinks. Now would be the worst time to be minimal on magic.
She snorted when she saw the figurines again, yanked her Future-self up by the shoulders, and hauled her out the barred window. It would've been barred, had she not swung by earlier to jostle the metal rods from their nook in the cement. It was basically cardboard stuck on rice-paper.
It wasn't to say it didn't hurt when they collided through the wall.
o~:~o
They landed on the icy ground outside of the low window. Opal tried not to slip, but was foolish not to grab a pair of ice-boots. She chastised herself greatly for such idiocy. Grunting in disgust, Opal shook the slushy ice from her shoes while simultaneously checking their surroundings.
Deserted.
Goblins. They wouldn't notice a false alarm until you said it to their face, thought Opal, twisting her head to look at her future-self. Present-Opal was snoozing on her shoulder, oblivious to the danger that surrounded them. Clutching herself tighter, she vibrated the two of them out of visible spectrum. Normally, fairies can only shield themselves and not other objects or beings. But Opal Koboi from eight years ago was not a normal fairy. And an abnormal fairy meant abnormal magic.
Opal unfolded her DoubleDex and chugged the two of them up into the sky. They might have had magic to secure their visibility, but the radiation from the surrounding air quickly diminished their shielding capabilities. Not to mention Opal had yet again neglected to snag a MoonBelt. Foaly might have been an idiotic, intolerable waste of oxygen, but his inventions were useful.
They were out of Howlers Peek skyline in less than a minute, and climbing steadily still. Two miles of carrying her future-self made her arms ache and her shoulder throb. A few minutes of slow-flying resulted in the appearance of a steady hum from the wings. Noticing the noise, Opal unshielded. Instantly the radiation ate at her face, and she grimaced as the shuttle door flew open to reveal Mervall Brill. She landed inside.
"Take her to the cot." The cloaked shuttle rose into the Stratosphere, easily breaking the sound barrier at three-hundred and forty meters per second. A soft boom would have fooled you into thinking an airplane was present. But a smart fairy would have known that a flying, human craft wouldn't be able to survive over the North Pole, let alone get close enough to Howlers Peak without interception.
The engine slipped from a hushed buzz to entirely noiseless. Thank you Foaly for your stupidity of having a gnome guard an advanced shuttle, Opal thought, easing her bruised-self into a cushioned chair. All those weeks of hiding out in Howlers Peak pretending to be an inmate had taken a toll on her magic. She'd have to complete the ritual as soon as possible.
Merv took the Present-Opal to a rusty, wooden bed. He remembered breaking her out of Argon's Clinic, and shuddered at the way she had easily disposed of him and his brother. A murderous rage overcame him for a second, before he controlled himself. Killing the human-fairy would definitely result in a homicidal rampage from the pixie in the adjacent room.
Descant came tiptoeing into the room, neither of the brothers having been informed about the mesmerized spell Past-Opal had placed upon the woman. "Can you help me hack into Foaly's—I mean, that stupid centaur's—system? It's giving me a real headache." Merv was the expert with computers. Nowhere near as advanced as Ms. Koboi, but enough to elude the firewall and safety-precautions that Foaly had set up. Lately, though, for some reason, the centaur had been adding some extra precautions, adding labyrinths upon labyrinths of difficult puzzles to solve. It was extremely tiresome to have to solve original riddles and avoid firewalls. Merv had taken his turn for over an hour and was still finding it tremendously complex to solve.
"Yup. Let me make sure her majesty's area arrangement is in working order. Don't want her clogging the chutes with our bodies again." The brothers shuddered and left the room, after Merv had made Opal as comfortable as possible.
Opal watched the Brill brothers attempt to hack Howlers Peek security system. It was quite amusing in itself. She was certain the Brill brothers were acting upon nonchalance, though she couldn't be sure. Had they become less stupid in the future? She didn't know these older, wiser, and suspiciously more frantic pixies anymore. Opal had ordered them to create a loop that would throw Foaly—or any guard that overlooked the tape—off.
The loop would show Opal eating inmate-rations from a tray that was pushed out of the food-slot. It also showed her going to the toilet and taking a frigid-cold shower. It must've been quite embarrassing to know that whenever her future-self undressed to use the lavatory or bathe someone would be watching through a camera. The loop was boring and long. Five minutes to be exact. Opal was horribly disgusted by how she had let herself go. Had she really been reduced to such a level? To be thrown into a prison specifically designed to hold goblins? Revolting.
Past-Opal's nerves got the best of her when Merv started to scratch his head. "Oh, let me do it! You two couldn't hack the system if you're life depended on it! Knowing our luck, you'd leave a trail for that trollto follow." She said, sitting down and hacking into Howlers Peak Surveillance under ten seconds. Dejected, the two twins sat back down and piloted the shuttle.
Past-Opal snuck past the firewalls, answering each riddle and question that was thrown her way correct. She used the trail bits she had found when someone else had tried to hack into Foaly's system, and hijacked off of their name. The signal came from Northern Europe—most likely that disgusting Mud Child, Artemis Fowl. Past-Opal felt her lips curl at the name. That human would be the first to go. Especially when she reviewed that video in the Eleven Wonders exhibit. The stories Mervall and Descant had told her were enough to get her blood boiling over that reckless Mudboy.
Mervall risked a glance over his mistress's shoulder. "Why didn't you create a loop when you busted us out, Miss Koboi?" He rung his hands together, trying to remind himself that Opal Koboi from eight years ago was kinder, and enjoyed answering questions instead of finding them irritating. The second the Opal from his time awoke, all hell would break-loose. He was dreading the moment drastically.
"I didn't have to create a loop because it would seem normal for your doting mother to come bail you out." Past-Opal sighed. She shuddered at the memory of having to disguise herself as an older, pixie mother. It was something short of a miracle that the Brill brothers were even up for bail. Imagine their surprise when Opal revealed herself to them. It was comical the way their eyes bulged and their jaws slacked.
She had to admit, though, the twins came in handy. Such as when they had to surreptitiously enter a port and rent this shuttle from a gullible gnome. They couldn't believe their luck when the gnome agreed to have them pay later without as much as a hoot or suspicion.
"You could have mesmerized someone to tell us that you were coming. It was a bit of a shock being pushed into the nearest shuttle by my mom." Descant sulked.
"I haven't any time to talk with you imbeciles." Opal said in an irritated voice. She sent the loop to the surveillance system, a satisfied smirk lazily spreading across her face. She had also sent a virus into Foaly's main system along with the loop. The donkey would be too worried about the virus to notice the loop.
Omitting a sigh, she rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm—gently, not wanting to smear her makeup—and gracefully got up from the chair.
A long day, no doubt, but a good one,she thought, elegantly striding towards the junction where her future-self was sleeping.