The young master Fowl walked swiftly through the long halls of Buckingham Palace followed closely by his faithful servant and friend Butler. "Quickly Butler," uttered Artemis without a turn of his head, "we seem to be running a tad behind schedule."
Butler let out a small grunt at this, he knew his young master couldn't have cared less about this "little get together" as he called it. In fact he doubtless would not have even troubled himself with attending had his parents not threatened him with "distasteful consequences" for refusing to come. Regardless it wouldn't have hurt the boy genius to try to show a little respect for the situation, most people never got this opportunity in there life times. Then again Artemis Fowl was certainly not most people.
As they continued walking Artemis began to list the numerous reasons he found this meeting to be "unnecessary" and "frankly a waste of time." As he went on Butler realized the real reason Artemis didn't want to be here. Any normal man wouldn't have been able to hold back a little chuckle, but not Butler, he kept silent.
Finally they arrived at a large and beautifully carved wooden door which Artemis, abandoning all formality, simply swung open. Butler was surprised by this, he had never known him to act so carelessly before, come to think of it he had done a lot of strange things lately. Butler made a mental note to confront him about this later.
As the door opened a beautiful sunlit room was revealed and in its center sat a table with four chairs around it. Two of these chairs were occupied, one by a large green man who dwarfed even Butler, the other by a petite elderly woman who some called Elizabeth.
"Good afternoon," said the green man, then glancing at a clock which hung on the wall, "I hope you didn't have any trouble?"
"No, no," muttered Artemis, "just lost track of time, that's all, you know how it is."
The Queen smiled at him understandably, "Oh that's fine dear. Please, won't you have a seat."
"It's quite rude to be late you know," said the green man disapprovingly as Artemis and Butler sat down, "you really should try to be on time to such an occasion."
"Now now Mr. Hulk," said the Queen, "I can completely understand why they might get distracted, London is so beautiful this time of year."
"No, not really," murmured Artemis. Hulk let out a little growl at this.
"Um, well," said the queen trying to change the subject, "I'm sure you've heard of Mr. Hulk here, I hear he's world famous."
"Sounds slightly familiar, I may have heard the name on the news or something once," said an uninterested Artemis.
Hulk growled again.
"Oh look, here comes our tea," said the queen as servants with pots surrounded them.
Artemis grimaced as a cup of hot tea was set before him. He picked it up and looked at it for a moment, then set it back down with a shutter.
"Aren't you going to drink your tea?" asked the Hulk Menacingly as he himself added milk and sugar.
Artemis smiled and gave a little chuckle then picked the cup back up again. he stared at it for a long moment and then took a sip. He immediately spit it back out. He sighed, "I'm sorry, it's just that over the last few months I've developed an extreme dislike for tea, I don't know why, I just can't seem to keep it down,"
It took Artemis a second to realize that no one else was moving, he then turned to look at the Hulk. Every muscle in the Hulk's enormous body was now bulging as hot tea slowly dripped down his face. Artemis tried to apologize again, "look I truly am very sorry Mr. Hul..." He was interrupted by two words.
"HULK SMASH!"
Hulk and Butler lunged at the same time, But Hulk's force was far greater than Butler's and the two went flying out the third story window of Buckingham palace.
"Oh my," said the Queen as she and Artemis ran to the spot that had previously been a window to watch the battle. At the moment Butler by some miracle was not dead and in fact had Hulk in head lock. This didn't last long however, as the two spectators watched in horror Hulk picked up Butler and tossed him into a nearby pond. He then turned and picked up a rather large carriage that thankfully was not attached to a horse at the moment and threw that into the pond as well. He then proceeded to jump into the pond himself.
Butler clambered out of the pond like a wet cat and pulled out a rather large gun and proceeded to fire it repeatedly at the Hulk who was still splashing around in the pond looking for him. The Hulk began to laugh uncontrollably as the bullets tickled him. When he finally found his way to shore he pounced on Butler and wrestled him to the ground.
Artemis and the queen ran through the halls to get to the court yard expecting to find the worst. But to their surprise they arrived to find hulk passed out on the ground and Butler standing erect beside him holding a tiny injection device.
"What on Earth did you do?" asked the Queen.
"Old family recipe, he'll be fine in an hour," he said. "Come on Artemis, we best get home before we wreck any more of the Queen's nice house."
"Yes, please do," said the Queen grateful to get this disturbing day over with. Then she looked at the Hulk who lay sprawled out before them, "I'll call a helicopter or something to pick him up.
Later that night as the two were about to arrive back at fowl manor Butler turned to Artemis. "You know, you really should try to be little more polite at these kind of things, you'd save me a lot of trouble."
"I'm sorry for your trouble Butler, but the mission was a success, we learned all that we needed to."
