Summary: To save his friends time and strife, Artemis writes all their official post-crisis incident reports. This arrangement works well for everybody, until suddenly it doesn't.
-x-
Holly lost the game of rock-paper-scissors.
Twice.
After swearing several times, the elf resigned herself to her fate. She lifted the pitcher of water from the table and crossed the conference room, kneeling down in front of Artemis. The human sat with his back to the wall, completely disengaged from the conversations around him - at the moment, he seemed especially engrossed in the pattern on the rug. She cringed, realized he was probably counting the individual carpet fibers, and hoped she wasn't interrupting his count on a multiple of four. Speaking slowly and balancing the pitcher on one knee, she told him, "Arty? I have to tell you something, and you're definitely not going to like it, but I don't want you to panic. All right?"
Artemis blinked at her for a minute before responding very carefully, "I never panic."
"Good." She shifted awkwardly, glancing back over her shoulder at the group assembled around the table. No1 nodded at her encouragingly. "All right," she continued, "We've been going through everyone's individual reports of the latest crisis trying to come up with a timeline of events for the official report. And you know that everyone goes through a standard medical exam after a crisis, yes?"
Artemis's eyes were trailing across the ceiling. Registering the question in her tone of voice, he focused back on her face. "Yes?"
"I've just had a look at yours." She thrust the sheet of paper forward.
Artemis took the page, turned it upside down, flipped it over twice, and looked up at her for help. "I… appear to be having trouble making my eyes… focus."
"That's not surprising," said Holly, "Considering you have a significant amount of toxins in your system."
"Toxins," said Artemis musingly. "Toxic. ...Well, that's rude. I'm trying to be a better person."
"No. I mean, yes, you are. And you are doing a very good job," said Holly, looking behind her for help. The others were much too focused on the paperwork in front of them to actually meet her eyes. "I'm trying to say - and don't panic, remember - but it looks like you were… poisoned. Significantly. Which explains what's been wrong with you this whole time."
"Significantly," repeated Artemis in that tone of voice that implied the full impact of her words still had yet to register.
"The good news is that we're pretty sure this means you aren't actually suffering from any sort of mental illness, so once we flush the drugs from your system you should make a full recovery. You don't have an Atlantis Complex, thank the gods. The bad news is, uh, well. Butler's still not sure how anybody got close enough to do it, but over the last few months someone has been slipping you a whole lot of poison. We've already picked up eighteen different types on the initial screening, but there's probably more kinds that haven't been identified yet. And -" She swallowed. "It turns out that, so far, we've identified at least seven sorts of hallucinogens among them."
"There's going to be a lot more by the time we're done sorting through it all," called Foaly from across the room, unhelpfully. "We've got a betting pool going. Smart money's on over forty!"
Artemis was still trying to connect the dots. "Poisons. Toxins? Someone's been poisoning me?" His brow creased, and Holly thrust the pitcher of water towards him. Artemis obligingly took a drink. He swallowed, thought for a moment, and asked, "Who?"
Holly hesitated. Foaly piped up again: "Considering everything we've just been dealing with? One of the Opals, obviously."
Everyone else around the table shushed the centaur, too late. Artemis started choking on his water. Holly glared at Foaly. "Would you rather do this debriefing? If we can even call this a debriefing."
Foaly wisely shut up.
"We've been dealing with Opal, remember?" Holly said, turning back to Artemis. "Both of them. Because of the time travel, two versions of her ended up here and they decided to cooperate? It would have been easier on everybody if they'd turned on each other, but apparently we're not that lucky."
"Maybe next time?" suggested Mulch hopefully. "That'd be cool."
Holly sighed, still studying Artemis. "She tried to kill us and take over the world. Again. You were with us for the entire incident, but you haven't been well. Do you remember any of this?"
"Uh," said Artemis.
"I doubt it," said Butler. "He's been hallucinating constantly. I'd be amazed if he were lucid enough to accurately remember anything to happen in this past week. Have you read his version of events yet? This Turnball character shows up out of the blue and ends up being responsible for everything. Have we ever even met a Turnball?"
"I'd be surprised if you had," said Mulch, kicking his feet up onto the conference table. "Not surprised Fowl blamed someone else for the mess, though. I bet Mud Boy's really deep in denial about the Opal thing. Not that I blame him. How many times has she nearly killed us all? If I were in his shoes, I might have blocked this one out, too."
Foaly snickered. "Or if you were really deep into the hallucinogens."
"Drugs would explain the giant squid he mentions," said No1.
"Except there really was a squid," said Holly.
Juliet laughed. "It swam right by the submarine window, and then out of our lives forever. But Artemis saw it and started shouting about being a nut."
Silence greeted this statement before Mulch cracked up: "I'm the nut, I'm the nut!" Holly and Butler fixed him with identical glares.
"In hindsight," said Juliet, more thoughtfully, "That should have been a clue to the hallucinogens."
"We couldn't have known," said Foaly. "Whatever Koboi gave him, he was dosed slowly enough for it to mimic the progression of an illness. Built up in his system over a period of months. Between his history with magic and his family's medical history, an Atlantis Complex was the best assumption."
Artemis was doing his best to follow the conversation. "Giant squid?" he said, eyes widening.
"Please don't start on that again," Holly told him. "You promised me you wouldn't panic, remember?"
"Oh. Yeah. I did, didn't I?"
"Yes. You did." She nodded at the water jug. "Keep drinking. Detox is gonna be hell, but at least that's another thing you won't remember later. As soon as we get these substances out of your system, you're going to be fine."
"Koboi said she wanted to make you look like a babbling idiot before she killed you," No1 said cheerfully, also failing to be helpful. "Which means she wasn't gonna risk actually giving you anything that'd kill you too soon. Which was kind of nice of her, all things considered, because we won and now you're going to be absolutely okay!"
Holly ignored the demon, watched briefly to make sure Artemis was following directions before returning to her seat at the table. She stared at the papers spread out between everyone, and sighed. "We're never going to come up with one cohesive story from all of this."
"Artemis is the only one who ever can," said Butler.
"That's not true," said Holly. "It can't be. We can't have always used his reports for these incidents. The Chicago one - he was mind-wiped after that one, he can't have compiled the records."
Foaly shuffled a hoof, ashamed. "He actually did, before the wipe. Said he was doing me a favour."
"What about the one with the demons? We were gone for three years!"
"I may have filed a blank report. And left it that way until you got back."
Holly took a deep breath. "Then we only have two choices. Either we wait for Artemis to detox and compose the report for us, or we choose one of these versions to submit. And seeing as Artemis needs to be admitted to a proper medical facility for supervision but none of us are going to be allowed out of the room until we have some version of events put together… I think it's time for a vote."
"That's easy then," said Mulch. "I vote for mine."
"Holly's is close to what I put," said Butler. "I'd be fine with that version."
"Except we weren't even in Mexico," retorted Juliet. "We weren't anywhere near Mexico. Unless you count the Mexican restaurant we ate at for lunch in the Canadian rockies."
Holly frowned. "You said it was Mexico."
"Artemis said it was Mexico."
"Ah."
"I think my version of events best details the technical nature of the orphan's quest to diffuse the plasma cannon," said Foaly. "They're the real heroes of this story."
Everyone stared at him for a moment, unsure what to say.
"What?" was all No1 could come up with.
"Did we check to see if the centaur's on drugs, too?" asked Mulch.
Butler rubbed his forehead. "How did orphans even get a plasma cannon? And how come this is the first I'm hearing about this?"
Foaly opened his mouth, shut it again, and then said quietly, "Nevermind. I vote for Mulch's version of events."
Holly pulled Mulch's report over and read it out loud. "'I dug a tunnel. I ate a rabbit. I made friends with some orphans. I popped out of the tunnel. I saved everybody. Again.' That's it. That's all it says."
"Works for me," said Mulch cheerfully. "100% true."
"But there's no squid," said Artemis, as though he was worried that the rest of the room had entirely forgotten he existed. "...I don't feel too great."
The others had, indeed, briefly forgotten that he was there. "Oh yes," said Juliet, failing to keep a straight face. "Can't forget the squid."
"Here's another question," said Foaly, "Is there any version of events that doesn't make it explicitly clear how easily Koboi outsmarted us while Artemis was out of commission? Other than Mulch's report, I mean. That entire incident was an absolute fiasco. There were two of her! She - they - ran circles around us from start to finish! We're all lucky to be alive! I hate to bring this up, but I really, really don't want Mud Boy coming back to his senses and having a lifetime's worth of bragging material."
There was a long pause.
"...How about his version of events? Have we seriously considered that one yet?" said Holly slowly, hating herself for even suggesting it. "I - I think Artemis put together a coherent timeline, at least. With two versions of Koboi running around, nobody else managed to do that."
Another silence greeted her words as everyone turned the idea over in their minds.
"That's because he doesn't even mention Opal in it at all," said Butler.
"Squid," said Artemis. Either he was trying to be helpful, or he'd begun to hallucinate again. He took another sip of water. "A giant one."
"It does mention the wrestling," said Juliet. "Even if the details were wrong."
"But the plasma cannon," added Foaly. "He doesn't mention the plasma cannon, or the brave, brave orphans to whom we owe our lives." He paused, clearly weighing the pros and cons of this omission. "It pains me to do this, but I think I can file some paperwork saying the cannon was a donation to the orphanage and nobody will look twice. They never do." He munched on a carrot thoughtfully. "You'd think they'd keep better track of those things."
"If you could get away with a blank report for three years, it must mean that nobody ever does read them," Holly assured him. "We still need to cover all our bases, just in case."
"It's a good thing this isn't ever going to be seen by anybody," Mulch said, jabbing a finger into Artemis's report. "Anybody else actually sat down with this thing and given it a good read? It's a trip from start to finish. There's actually zombies. Butler and Juliet are actually attacked by zombies. And then dwarf mercenaries. Have you two ever considered that maybe his subconscious hates you a bit?"
Juliet waved him off. "His subconscious hates everybody a bit. It's how he shows he cares. Didn't he say Foaly nearly got crushed by a UFO or something?"
They looked down at the report. Foaly pulled out a pen, scratched out the words 'unidentified flying object' and wrote in the margin, 'Foaly's Martian probe project.' "I guess I'll have to pull that out of the sky, give it a coat of paint, and then relaunch it under a different project number," he neighed sadly. "The things I sacrifice for our friendship."
"Apparently his subconscious doesn't hate Holly!" No1 said brightly. "A lot of the things that Orion guy said about her were really sweet."
Holly flushed. "I'm having a talk with him about that later, don't worry."
"And then there's the whole sequence with the squid," said Butler, searching for a change of topic. "It literally picks him up, carries him in its tentacles for a while, and then drops him right beside the object we conveniently happened to need at the time."
"Yes," said Foaly. "A gel-covered blob that was trying to kill us, I think it was? And at the end of the story, the bad guys fly off into a fireball while holding hands. It's a very touching scene, really. I can see why his romance novels do so well."
Butler sighed. "I feel I ought to point out the moral ambiguity of submitting a version of events that will convince Artemis that he suffered from a mental illness over the last few months, and had an absolute breakdown in the middle of a crisis."
Holly shook her head. "I don't like it either, but we are talking about Artemis. He'll wake up with the worst of the delusions gone, be shaky for a bit, fully recover in a matter of weeks, maybe put up with a session or two with a therapist for the sake of having done it, and believe he's the first person ever to cure themselves of a dissociative identity disorder through willpower alone."
"It'll probably be really good for his self-confidence," Foaly mused. "And definitely less traumatic than whatever paranoia he'd be left with after months of being poisoned by his arch-enemy. Thinking about it, an incident like this could actually be enough to trigger a realAtlantis Complex to manifest. Forget about us: lying to Mud Boy is for his own good. Everybody wins."
"Does Artemis really need a confidence-boost, though?" asked Mulch.
"Better than a lifetime of absolutely justified paranoia and obsessions."
Everybody shuddered at that particular thought.
"At least this way we can make jokes about a giant squid if he gets too full of himself," said Mulch, conceding the point.
Again, everyone considered the connotations.
"Fine," said Butler, realizing that the others around the table were eyeing him carefully. "We do need to get him under proper medical supervision as quickly as possible. If this is something we can all agree upon without arguing about it for the next week, so be it."
Relieved, everyone else threw in their support.
"Done."
"That's settled."
"I vote yes."
"It's decided, then."
"But the squid -"
Holly sighed, crossing the room to crouch beside her friend once more. "Yes, Arty. There was a squid. A real, live, giant squid, and I would be thrilled if we'd all agree to never mention it ever again. Now shut up and drink your water."
-x-
Author's Note:
In which we propose that a more logical set of events for Atlantis Complex involve Mulch saving everybody from two Opals by leading an army of plucky orphans armed with one of Foaly's plasma cannons. Or something like that. And maybe there was an actual squid. - Winged
This happened because Winged made a tumblr post pointing out the sheer crackiness of the entirety of Atlantis Complex. In under 24 hours, it'd gotten more notes than every single other post on her blog combined. And honestly, it would make more sense if that entire book was one big, drug-induced hallucination. Right?
….right?
(And for bonus points, it explains why Artemis magically got better before The Last Guardian, too! Not to mention why Foaly apparently donated a plasma cannon to the orphanage.) - Freud