Disclaimer: I don't own anything that I don't own, because if I did own what I didn't own I wouldn't have to be sitting here typing that I didn't own anything that I don't own. What I do own is everything that isn't what I don't own.

A/N: This is a random story that popped into my head. Like everything else I write. This is going to be one of my longest stories. I would appreciate reviews, flames welcome. I hope people enjoy this. And every chapter for this story will be ten pages long - nice long chapters. Anyway, I hope anyone who reads this enjoys this.

Old Friends and Enemies

Set after Opal Deception

Holly is being stalked, but not by someone she thought would want to stalk her. Then she risks her life to save an old friend who she thought was dead. What will happen when some of her old enemies regroup?

Chapter One: Bombs and Noses

Holly Short stretched and looked at her alarm clock, her alarm-less alarm clock. She didn't really have any need for it anymore, ever since she had quit the LEP. It was really beginning to frustrate her. She had quit the LEP to get away from him, but it almost seemed as though he was stalking her, he was trying to get her in trouble for almost every little thing.

Holly groaned and stumbled out of bed. It didn't really matter how long it took her to get up right now, because how ever late she was to work, you could guarantee that Mulch would be a couple of hours later. He was like that. A useful business partner, yes, he had more contacts in the criminal world than her former Police self could possibly ever dream of catching. For that reason Mulch wouldn't tell her where he got his information. But it was obvious enough.

Sometimes she wondered why she bothered going into partnership with Mulch, he cost her a lot, yet she knew deep down that she couldn't just ditch him. Despite his extremely annoying habits, and how much Commander Root had shouted at him, he really had been Julius' favourite reprobate deep down.

She went through this train of thought almost every morning. She just still couldn't believe that Commander Root was dead. Gone. It had been six months, and those few seconds still awoke her almost every night. The bomb, his chest, Koboi, the non-existent sweet spot, Julius being hurled backwards into the chute…

She forced herself to stop thinking about that now. She needed to get to work. She had some pretty big cases she was meant to be working on at the moment. People would rather go to her than Sool to have their problems solved. She wasn't complaining, she could see where they were coming from, so she took the work. Besides, she needed the money.

Groaning, she grabbed a leftover Nettle smoothie. She opened it up and was about to drink it when she had a flash-back to when she had grabbed a half finished nettle smoothie before being yelled at by Commander Root for being less than half a minute late. She sighed, put the smoothie back in the fridge and headed to work.

After ages on the thoroughfare she arrived at her office. It was outside the Central Business District, of course. Don't you know how much an office in the CBD costs?

She was always tired these days, she wasn't sure why, the fire had just gone out of her somewhere along the line. She looked behind her, sure she was being watched. She kept getting that feeling nowadays, but so far it had proved to be nothing, so she decided to ignore it. It was probably just her being overly jumpy. Nothing had been right since Commander Root's death and Sool's promotion.

She shuddered and slammed the door behind her, walking into her office. She slumped into her chair and pulled her current case file towards her. It was a straightforward enough case: a stolen painting. Mulch would be able to sort it out soon enough. She threw it across to his desk.

She was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness and decided to rest, just for a couple of minutes. She lay her head down on her desk.

Holly was awoken by someone shaking her shoulder gently.

'Just five more minutes,' she muttered, trying to role over.

She ended up on the floor, with a slightly shocked Trouble Kelp staring down at her. He quickly bent down to help her up. She ignored his offered hand and pulled herself up on the corner of her desk. She slumped into her chair, gesturing at the chair across from her, the visitor's chair.

He sat down slowly, scanning her with his eyes. She had rapidly gone downhill since she had quit the LEP, it was obvious. It was actually quite sad, she had been on the LEP fast track, one of the best officers, if not the best, and now she had quit. All because of that egotistical jerk Sool.

He decided he actually felt quite sorry for her. Not to mention himself. It was the highlight of his day every day he used to see her at work. She was his best friend, she still was, but it was harder to see her when they didn't work at the same place.

Holly was surprised at how tired Trouble looked, not that she really was surprised. Sool had a reputation for being the laziest Commander of the LEP ever. Trouble was being forced to pick up the giant workload that Sool refused to pick up. She wondered why he had dropped in, considering that he had obviously just got off of the night shift.

'Are you OK Holly?' Trouble broke the silence.

'Um, yea, just tired, that's all.'

Trouble almost snorted. Sure, she looked tired, but that obviously wasn't the only thing wrong with her. He decided not to push it, for now.

'So, how are things going at the LEP?'

'Sool is the same idiot that he always was. On the bright side he's under review by Internal Affairs, he doesn't have as much influence there as he used to, surprise, surprise. It turns out all his old buddies from IA hated him just as much as the rest of the LEP.'

'That's great. I mean that he's under review,' replied Holly, the first true smile since she had quit the LEP almost made it to her face, almost.

'So how are things going with Mulch?'

'He's eating me out of house and home, but it's worth it. Between him and the mud boy I have the best contacts that anyone could wish for. Handy in this job.'

'I'm sure it is. Are you still sure you won't come back to the LEP, the council is almost ready to give you your acorns back, I'm sure. The force just isn't the same without you.'

'I'm not coming back Trouble, at least not while Sool is Commander, and not while half the people in Haven still think I'm responsible for Julius' death, even if it was Koboi.'

Trouble decided to give up. He was never going to manage to persuade Holly to come back to the LEP, however much he wanted her to.

'OK.'

'So, why are you here?'

'I just got off night shift. Thought I'd drop in to say hi.'

'Oh, OK, well, hi.'

This was going well, thought Trouble sarcastically. I come to see her, manage to get her to roll off her chair, and now I can't think of anything to say.

'Well, I was thinking, that since tomorrow's my day off, do you want to come round to my place? Or go and do something like a movie?'

At least I managed to come up with something to say, he thought.

Holly was shocked to say the least. She hadn't really had contact with anyone from the LEP (other than the officers Sool kept sending to try and fine her and arrest her for various non-existent crimes) since she had quit. She didn't miss some of the company she used to have, especially not Chix Verbil and some of the other males that kept hitting on her, but she did miss some of her mates, and Foaly. She had talked to Foaly and Trouble a couple of times on her telephone, but that was about it.

She realised she was drifting off again, and Trouble looked like he was sitting there waiting for an answer. She decided that she really did need to get out of the office (she hadn't had a day off for ages) and that there was no way she would rather spend it than with one of her best friends.

'Yea, sure.'

'Great,' Trouble was so happy, she really needed to get out of the office, that much was obvious, 'I'll come and get you in the morning, OK?'

'Yea, go home and get some sleep now. You look like you need at least eighteen hours.'

'Oh, I'm counting on it.'

Holly wondered why he wasn't moving. Maybe he hadn't realised their conversation was over, at least until tomorrow, he looked tired enough that that could easily be possible.

'Bye Trouble.'

Trouble suddenly realised that he was just sitting there looking like an idiot. He quickly stood up and grabbed his helmet, which he had put down on the edge of Holly's desk.

'See you,' he said, before walking out the door, straight into an eavesdropping Mulch.

Holly had picked up her case file as Trouble was leaving, only to hear a muffled bump and some colourful swearing coming from the other side of the door. The swearing, she could tell was coming from Mulch. She sighed, stood up and walked out the door, to find Trouble holding a very annoyed Mulch by the beard.

'What's going on?' asked Holly wearily.

'He's holding my beard, what does it look like?' replied Mulch.

'He was eavesdropping.'

'It's nice to see you getting out of the office Holly.'

Holly sighed, typical males.

'Let go of him please Trouble. Mulch, stop eavesdropping on my private conversations, I am not going to inform the LEP of your somewhat suspicious behaviour, and I want my privacy.'

'I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that,' said Trouble as he released Mulch's beard.

Mulch ignored him, and walked towards the fridge.

'We're out of beetle juice,' was the next thing that came out of his mouth, which, funnily enough, had a large amount of food revolving around inside it.

'Buy your own this time,' retorted Holly, before turning back to Trouble.

'See you tomorrow then,' she said.

'Bye.'

With that Trouble finally left.

Holly sighed again, and walked back into her office, but not before yelling at Mulch to get back to work.

Holly plopped herself back down in her chair, and then glanced at her desk. Sitting on her desk was a piece of Holly, which she obviously hadn't put there. Oh so very original.

'Mulch,' she called, 'is this your idea of a joke, because it isn't very funny.'

She heard Mulch stop eating, and watched the door of her office open, and Mulch poke his head in.

'What joke Holly, will I find it funny?'

'So you didn't do it?'

'Do what?'

'Hmm, then I wonder who did, I was only out of office for a few seconds.'

It was then that she noticed the window in office was wide open. The Police officer in her began to take over.

'Out of the office,' she said tensely to Mulch.

'What… wait where did the holly come from? Oh I get it, holly, ha-ha funny.' Mulch began to giggle.

'Out Mulch.'

Mulch for once caught the serious tone of her voice. And for once he obeyed her without question. At a normal time she would have tried to remember the tone she used so as to have it to manipulate Mulch with in the future. But right now she was more worried about the open window and the holly on her desk. Chances were that the two were somehow connected, things like this weren't coincidences. This probably meant that the holly sitting on her desk was more than just holly. As every LEP cadet knows, "don't judge a book by its cover".

She approached the holly slowly, and grabbed her magnifying glass from the other end of her desk. In the old days she would have just used the zoom on her LEP helmet, but those were the old days. Three days after she had quit the LEP Sool had obtained a search warrant and raided her home for and LEP technology that she might have had. He had even taken her uniforms, which she had had to pay for with her own cash. The thing that made her most angry was that a few days later she had come home to find all of her photos were missing too, including the few featuring her with her father. Needless to say she was extremely angry. The odd thing was though, that when she called Foaly up to see if he could get the photo's back for her, him having a very strong influence at the LEP and all, his reply had been that the photo's had never officially come in. So Holly was left photo-less and devastated.

Snap out of it, Holly told herself. You can worry about your photographs later, right now, there is the slight issue of that holly sitting on your desk.

She looked at the red beads carefully (the holly was fake, naturally, it being the middle of July) and noticed that each had a small section that looked suspiciously like the power sources that were found on bio-bombs. Holly had a brief flash-back to when Opal Koboi had tried to kill her, having already killed Commander Root.

She needed no more time for thought; she turned and sprinted out of her office. Mulch was standing beside the door, waiting to see what was going on. Without saying a word she grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the exit from their office, which was on the sixth story of an office building. She dragged him out into the corridor and away from their office to the stairwell. There she stopped. She had left the door to their office open. She turned around just in time to see a flash a blue light from inside the office, but she was right, it had been focused to explode just inside their office, there hadn't been any fallout. Mulch had seen what she had seen, and his jaw had dropped. It is quite a sight when the jaw of a dwarf has dropped, it reaches almost to his knees (I didn't say it was pretty).

After a few seconds Mulch regained his senses and re-hinged his jaw.

'Wow, good thing you figured out what that was. How did you know?'

Holly still looked very shaken, and didn't reply, just held up the magnifying glass, which she was still clutching. Mulch decided to try something else.

'Well, should we go back in now?' he asked, beginning to walk towards the office.

'No,' Holly broke her own silence, her hand shooting out and grabbing the back of Mulch's shirt. There was no time for subtlety.

'Why, the bomb's gone off hasn't it?'

Holly didn't reply, just held him back. Mulch was just beginning to get annoyed at her, when yet another sphere of blue light blossomed from their office. That shut him up.

'How did you know about that one?'

'There were three beads on the holly, three bombs,' replied Holly. It appeared that the second bomb had helped her to get over her speechlessness.

'So we have to wait for one more bomb to go off?'

'Yes. I think that it was planned so that at least one of them would catch me, or you, but probably me, it was on my desk. That's the thing about bio-bombs. You don't notice that one has gone off unless you go looking for dead insects,' Holly didn't really want to explain everything to Mulch, but she gave him a quick run down of what she thought was happening. While the bombs could have been aimed at Mulch it was unlikely, as they had been left on her desk. This was worrying, it was a little too close to Opal Koboi's style. But Koboi was currently locked up in Howler's Peak, and she would be staying there for a long time. She was in a coma again, but a method had been devised to test to see if it was another one of her cleansing comas. It was a cleansing coma, so they just chucked her in a maximum security cell in Howler's Peak. It wouldn't hurt her; she was a megalomaniac, after all.

'Right,' said Mulch, not really understanding much, except that someone was trying to kill his business partner. That was worrying, who would buy food if Holly was dead?

They stood in silence, until yet another sphere of light blossomed from their office. This is actually getting quite monotonous, thought Holly glumly.

Finally the three bombs had gone off. Holly crept quietly back into her office. The holly was still sitting on her desk, untouched, except for the fact that the three red beads were missing. She sighed, picked up the leaves, and tossed them in the recycler.

Mulch came up behind her and gently touched her arm. He wasn't very good at this comforting lark, but he had to try, someone had just tried to kill his business partner.

'What kind of psycho tries to blow someone up?' he asked. Unfortunately Holly had been too busy brooding to notice him touch her arm, and this unexpected question made her jump, especially considering it was exactly what had been going through her head mere seconds before.

Holly nearly jumped out of her skin, she spun around quickly, and aimed a punch at whatever was touching her and asking questions. She wasn't thinking straight, she hadn't recognised the voice as Mulch. She smacked whatever it was right on the nose; she heard it crack. Good, her enemy would be disabled for a couple of minutes at least; time to find something to cuff him with. Then she noticed who she had punched, and that he was currently on his knees on the floor, holding his nose, which was spouting blood, and he had no magic to heal it. She quickly dropped to her knees, and raised Mulch's head to look at it.

'Sorry,' she apologised.

'Sno, broblem, eel, blease, sneeze,' was what emerged from Mulch's mouth. Or at least, that's what it sounded like. Holly had heard enough people with broken noses speak (it was amazing how people's noses just happened to break when she got angry at them) to be able to roughly translate what Mulch was trying to say. She took it to mean "It is no problem, heal it please". Where sneezing came into it she didn't understand, but there you go.

Just as Holly was about to heal Mulch she learnt what sneezing had to do with this equation. Mulch chose that exact moment to sneeze, submerging himself, Holly and Holly's office in a tsunami of snot and blood mixture, not the most desirable of substances at the best of times.

The blood was now flowing even more freely from Mulch's nose, so she quickly bent down, touched his nose, muttered 'heal' and let the blue sparks flow from her slim elfin fingers.

'Thanks,' said Mulch, rubbing his newly repaired nose.

'Don't mention it. Just don't ever sneeze again,' muttered Holly, trying not to look too disgusted. She began to head for the bathroom, to clean up, as you do.

The communicator connected to the one she had given Artemis chose that exact moment to begin buzzing. She was beginning to get annoyed. This day was much too eventful for her liking. Unfortunately for Artemis he caught the fallout from this particular explosion.

'It better be good mud boy this is not a good time!'

Sitting in his room in Fowl Manor in Ireland Artemis Fowl was more than a little surprised at Holly. It had been months since she had called him mud boy, and longer since she had snapped at him like that. She must really be having a bad day. Unfortunately for him his curious side got the better of him. If they hadn't been communicating over a screen Holly probably would have strangled him.

'Bad day Miss Short?'

'Don't call me that, I will not be referred to as Miss,' screamed Holly. She was still taking the fact that she was not longer Captain Short quite hard and she did not need Artemis rubbing it in at this particular point in time.

Artemis decided it was in his eardrums interest that he not provoke Holly.

'Anything I can help with Holly?' he asked, a little more tentatively.

'No, not unless you can wipe blood and snot off me from up there in Ireland.'

Artemis winced; he could just imagine the stench that would cause. He took another look at Holly, and sure enough, she was covered in red sticky stuff with the odd bit of bogey colour thrown in. Charming.

'How did that happen?' he asked, managing to make himself sound concerned.

'I broke Mulch's nose.'

'It's not a good idea to break your business partner's nose, you know.'

'I'm not an idiot, he came up behind me after someone detonated three bio-bomb's in my office.'

Artemis was more than a little shocked by this news, and even more shocked by how matter of factly Holly was taking a murder attempt.

'You or Mulch?'

'What?'

'Were they trying to murder you or Mulch?'

'Me, the bombs were on my desk. Whoever it was came in through my window and planted them on my desk in about a two minute window while I was trying to stop Trouble murdering Mulch for eavesdropping.'

Mulch decided to chose that moment to join the conversation. He was covered in exactly the same substance that Holly was covered in. Artemis looked at the office walls behind them, they were covered in the same stuff too. Before he could ask Holly what it was that the bomb released Mulch piped up.

'Yea, Arty, did you know Holly is taking her first day off work tomorrow/'

'Finally, I've been telling her for ages that she needs a break. Who managed to get her to take it?'

'Trouble, that elf sure is talented, he just comes in to talk to her and voila, she's taking a day off. Shame he tried to kill me though.'

'I need to meet this Trouble someday, he sounds extremely talented.'

'Getting off the subject of LEP Major's,' interjected Holly, 'I decided to take a day off because I wanted to. Let's get off my work habits now.'

'Right, so what exactly did this bomb release?'

'It was a bio-bomb Artemis, you know how they work.'

What she said was oh so true. Artemis had narrowly escaped death from a bio-bomb twice. He didn't want to come any nearer to one than he had the second time, courtesy of Opal Koboi.