Artemis Fowl
Goblin chase
DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN ARTEMIS FOWL AND I'M NOT TRYING TO MAKE ANY MONEY OFF THIS OK?!?!?!?!?(Author: Eoin Colfer)
This story takes place several weeks after the incident of the lost colony. And in this story, the Fowl twins Beckett and Myles, does not exist.
Fowl Manor, Artemis's room:
Artemis Fowl II woke up and sat up in his bed. He stood up and walked over to low plastic topped table and checked his alarm clock. 7:59 AM. He stood there and looked at the clock's crystal displays until the clock beeped in a loud, continuous whine that sounded like a fire alarm. He picked up the clock and pressed a round button on the clock's top and immediately the noise died out. He frowned for a moment and sat the clock down. He had done it again. For the third time in the past three days, Artemis Fowl had waked up before his alarm clock could do its job of waking him up. He got dressed and took himself downstairs, where Butler and his sister Juliet were preparing the morning's meal.
Fowl Manor, Dining room:
Artemis Fowl Senior and Angeline Fowl were already at the dining room, sitting across the long and expensive oak table, looking across the courtyard. As Artemis enters the room, they both turned around and faced their son.
"Good morning dear," said Angeline Fowl in a low, nervous voice. "Come here and sit with us, we have a lot to talk about. Butler has told me about strange things involving faries, trolls and deamons. And apearently, you have took part in the whole thing."
Artemis frowned and walked over to his mother's side of the table and sat down on the high-back maple chair beside her. He had guessed the exact kind of things his parents wanted to talk to him about.
"I will explain everything after the meal in the library"
"What would you like to eat this morning?" asked his father. Who was sipping his steaming hot coffee in a crystal glass and eating chunks of bread.
Artemis helped himself to a dish of fresh caviar in a reloving dish set on the center of the table.
"I think I will help myself to what I ate every morning for the past 6 years."
After Juliet and Butler had finished preparing the food and eaten their share of the meal, the residents of Fowl Manor assembled in the great library.
Fowl manor, library:
If you would happen to be in a local library, you would see rows and rows of books in a large room about the size of 3 school classrooms. People would be reading their books on low plastic tables at the center of the room in complete silence, or atleast not in loud voices. If you compare the local library to the library at Fowl Manor, it would be comparing a black and white projector to a HD, flat screen plasma TV. The entire room was the size 2 school gyms and was filled with books, and the shelves that ran from the floor to the ceiling were filled with books, cassets, CDs and mountain of papers.
The group gathered on a round table at the east corner of the room and sat in front of an enormous, £70,000 plasma wall screen.
Artemis started up his computers and selected a folder from a selection of hundred others. The entire screen turned blue and a pop-up window appeared and asked for a password.
Butler knew the password all too well. It was the Fowl family motto, Aurum potestas est. Gold is power. As Artemis entered these words, another window suddenly opened and replaced the the old one. But what was shown on the screen was not anyone in the room was expecting, not even Artemis. The screen showed a hairy head and a worried face, on the top of the head was what looked like a hat made out of tinfoil and 2 tiny horns can be seen in the mass of brown hair.
"Artemis," said Folay in a loud voice. "we have a really big problem and we need your help. Holly is on her way to your house and she should arrive in a few minutes."
"Can't you see that we are having an important meeting?" scolded Artemis. "But your appearance will make my job a lot easier."
Artemis tapped a few keys and the centure's face filled the entire screen.
"As you can see here, this is a centure and it is one of the 10 species of creatures living underground" explained Artemis. "The others includes the Fairies and Trolls. There are total of 8 families of fairies; Elves, Gnomes, Goblins, Spirites, Dwarves, Germlins, Pixies and Deamons. The faries used to live avobeground with humans, but 10000 years ago during the Frond Dynasty, the faries were forced by the humans, or Mud Man as they call us, to live underground in a technologically advanced cave."
When Artemis had finished talking, the Fowl couple was beyond amzement and they coundn't speak for a very long time.
"Artemis," said his father in a low voice when he finally recovered from his metal bond. "I am still very mystified but it seems to me that your subterranean friends need your help. Why don't we diuscuss this matter later? We'l leave you for now."
The moment his parents have left the room, someone knocked on the window. At first glance, you would have believed that it was the wind. But as you look more closely, you can see a slight heat haze in the shape of a small child on the windowsill. Artemis opened the windows and the shape began to solidify, and within half of a second, Holly steped into the room.
"So what's this big problem that Foaly is talking about?" said Artemis as he closed the windows.
Holly looked carefully around room and checked the corridor outside to make sure that they won't be overheard by anyone. Then she took out a compact projector and put it on a desk. She pressed a button and the machine projected a 3D map of somesort of underground tunnel.
"This is a map of the underground tunnels that run underground from one of our chutes all the way from New York city to somewhere in the city of Toronto in Canada." Holly traced the tunnel with her finger as she spoke. "There are several goblin smugglers in the area that uses those tunnels, unfortunatly, this smuggling involves going above ground and we can't have any of these goblins captured by human forces."
"I know that this is a big problem but, "Artemis looked at the map, then at Holly. "is a matter of blocking these tunnels and let the LEP take care of the rest right? What could I do about this?"
"You are right. In a normal situation, we would have got the LEP to send a team and flush the goblins out." Explained Holly. "But this time, the goblins are been used by someone, possibly one of the gnome smugglers. They are equiped with nightvision goggles and human weapons. We can't risk any officers in a highspeed chase on the surface so we are asking your help to track these goblins down. Once we have them, then we can give them a shot of truth syrome and they will tell us everything we want to know."
Artemis thought about it for 2 long minutes and had finally come to a decision.
"Very well, I will help you in this matter. But.."
"But what?"
"But how would you insure that we are all safe? These goblins are using human weapons and unlike fairy lasers, they are designed to kill rather than to stun."
Holly though about this for a long time but her thoughts are interrupted by a beep from her wrist computer. Holly checked the computer and there was a mail. She opened the mail and briefly read it.
"Artemis, we have a goblin team in the chutes. The LEP are unable to chase them because they had entered a human dwelling and the LEP can't go in without a invitation. I guess you and Butler would have to solve this one."
Artemis agreed and called Butler to his room and quickly breifed him on the mission. And after 30 minutes, they were driving down to the nearest shuttle port. E1, Tara.
It took them about 2 hours of driving to get to Tara. The entrence of the shuttle port is hidden in a mound of earth on a piece on land owned by the McGraney family. Tara is the biggest shuttle port in Europe and as the group entered the shuttle port, hundreds of fairies were turning their heads and staring at them in disbelief. Most of them had never seen a human in a fairy shuttle port in their life and seeing 2 humans wakling into E1 with a LEP officer was beyond belief. Little fairies hid behind their parents and their parents hid behind the security gnomes.
Holly led the group to a waiting LEP shuttle and they were on their way down to Heaven within 10 minutes.
Underground tunnels:
Mulch had joined the group as the shuttle landed in Heaven. The dwarf was keen to help them eventhough he did not like goblins very much and had asked Foaly to give him a small electrical baton. The group arrived at the entrence of the tunnel about 30 minutes after the first sighting of the goblins. Artemis immediately gets to work and pulls out a bunch of complex looking tools from his backpack. He lays them on the muddy trail and sarts to examine the faintly lefted footprints there. After a few minutes of careful examination, Artemis announced that they were going to follow the tracks that lead into the deep and dark tunnel.
They walked in a straight line with Holly taking the lead. Behind her came Butler, then Artemis, and Mulch taking up the rear, weaving his baton around as if he is trying to hit some kind of invisible ememy. And as usual, Mulch was eating something. Nobody knew what, nobody wanted to ask.
They walked for about 3 hours when they finally arrived at the entrence to the human dwelling. From the outside, it looked like a museum with lots of things on display behind wide plane glass, from medieval armours to mordern clothing.
Butler had voulenteered to go in and have look around. He came back a few minutes later saying that nothing can be found and that they should split into 2 groups and go look for the goblins.
"If we have to go in teams, than I think we need a fairy in each team." Holly announced. "team 1, I will go with Artemis and search the west side of the building. You and Mulch can search the east part."
Science center, west side:
Holly and Artemis walked down the long coridors of the building in complete silence. Holly had been given permision to enter the building earlier by Artemis. They walked down toward a large circular room and found many bits of food on the floor with 4 broken and melted vending machines. Artemis and Holly quickly follows the trail of food bits and ended up in a large room full of shelves and computers. Holly scanned the room with her scanner and found a goblin in a corner of the room with a large book over his head. The goblin appeared to be reading the book. But as Holly and Artemis crept towards him, the goblin dropped the book and ran at an amazing speed out of the room and into a long corridor. Holly and Artemis immediately ran after the goblin.
Holly took out her hand gun and aimed the gun at the goblin's leg. Leg would be the best target because of the low chance of fatal damage. She squeezed off 2 quick shots towards the running goblin. But at the same moment, the goblin disapeared. Holly was stunned. She could not understand what had just happened.
"What the….what just happened?"
As Holly and Artemis ran towards the spot where the goblin had disapeared, they found a squire hole on the ground and a unconsious goblin underneath it laying on a bed of broken glass.
"Goblins, the dumbest creatures on earth, they can't even see where they are running to." Muttered Artemis as he checked out on the goblin when they got down. "Lets tie him up and wait for Mulch and Butler at the tunnel entrence"
Science Center, east side:
Butler and Mulch strolled down the dark corridors towards the center of the building. Mulch was still waving his baton around trying to hit any goblin that might jump at him. In fact, he had hit himself in the dark more than anything else.
They walked into a room full of books and videos. Butler checked a monitor behind a security desk and found 2 goblins sitting together in front of a wall-size plasma watching a late night show. Mulch wanted to lunch himself at the 2 TV watching goblins but Butler held him back.
"We need to try a stealth approach and sneak up from behind." Said Butler as he croched low on the ground and carefully made his way towards the goblins.
Mulch, on the other hand, disliked goblins and was ready to try out his new baton on the 2 unfortunate victims. He climbed on top of a platform jumped out on his powerful legs and landed himself right on top of the goblins. Needless to say, the goblins were immediately unconsious as they were flatened under the 300 pound dwarf.
"Hehe…I knocked both of them out with one shot." Said Mulch as he picked himself up and turned to Butler. "That worked much better than your stealth approach"
Butler tied both of them up and put them in a over-sized bag and carried them on his sholder.
When he returned to the tunnel, Artemis and holly was already there waiting for them. They loaded the 3 goblins into the shuttle's storage room and got onto the shuttle.
30 minutes later, the entire group was assembled in Howler's peak and they were escorting the goblins to prison. Folay, as usual, was filming the whole thing through Holly's helmet camera. He showed the video to Commander Root a few days later and the commander was laughing at the goblin's face so hard that he almost fell from his chair. Nobody had guessed that policing can be so much fun.