A/N: My first Artemis Fowl story ^^ Because I love the books. Eoin Colfer is a genius. Do note, in this story, Commander Julius Root is alive and well :D
She's really gone and done it this time, LEPrecon Captain Holly Short thought to herself as she skimmed lightly over mainland Ireland. Everyone knew Opal Koboi was crazy but we didn't know it would come to this.
Even a thousand feet above the ground, Holly Short could see the spiraling black smoke, billowing towards the general direction of the sea. The port, which was easily within her line of sight, was filled with burning, sinking boats and ferries. She could spot Artemis' family yacht, docked within the burning harbor, its sails tinged with a slight ember. The forest line just behind the ferry terminal was pristine and untouched. A few trees had their trunks broken, snapped in half, lying pathetically on the grass, but that was all. Not much harm to nature. The buildings, lined up so neatly beside the forested area, were not so fortunate – most of the steel and glass skyscrapers were retching black fog out of their broken windows. Some fires still burned, and Holly winced as she heard a building behind her crash to the ground. Most likely due to a structural failure – it must have been on fire, and then the fire had burned away most of its supporting foundation, causing it to collapse.
Cars were parked haphazardly around the roads, and Holly caught sight of a jammed highway. The cars were no longer moving, of course, most of their drivers dead already. Some still had their engines running, some had their headlights on –for Frond knew what reason, for it was broad daylight – but Holly was sure of one thing – nobody on that highway was alive. She ran an infra-red scan on her LEP helmet, just in case, checking for signs of life. Nobody. It was just like one of those scenes on The Walking Dead – some ridiculous human show Foaly had convinced her to watch.
It didn't seem so ridiculous anymore.
In this case, there were no silly human zombies – there were just a lot of dead people. Holly felt a twinge near her heart. Perhaps she should have felt contempt, that the fairies' worst enemies were dead – but all she felt was a twinge of sadness. No human could have survived after what Opal Koboi had pulled, she knew. Koboi had finally lost her last marble – she had unleashed Armageddon upon the world. It had been successful in wiping out every single last human that lived on the surface of the Earth – but not the fairies. Majority, in fact all, of the fairy population had been hiding in the safety of either Atlantis or Haven. The newly resurrected Koboi hadn't been powerful enough in killing her own kind. If there was anything good that came out of this disaster – it was that Koboi herself had been destroyed in the process.
The world now belonged to the fairies.
Holly had been sent up here by Commander Julius Root – who had taken over after Ark Sool had been given the boot – to look for any remaining signs of life. He had been presumed dead by most of the LEPrecon staff, including Foaly and Holly, but the Council had managed to recover his body – his dying body, not quite dead yet, and, with the help of the best warlocks Haven had to offer, Julius Root had recovered. It had taken weeks, months, even years, to get Root's body back to its working state. When Holly had finally seen her commander after three long years, she had so much emotion pouring out of her that there were literally no words to be said. There was just a very long hug, and a sad smile.
"See anything?" Ah, Trouble Kelp. She had forgotten that he was looking at everything through her helmet camera.
"No signs of life so far, Trubs."
"I'm not having any of that now, Holly. It's Trouble while we're on the job." Trouble had been promoted to Root's Second-In-Command when Sool had been sacked. "You're lucky Beetroot's not in here right now."
Holly ignored him, glancing downward at the combusting buildings once more. Ireland used to seem so full of life, even at night, with the twinkling lights and the brilliant harbor. Right now – it seemed like a shell. No humans were alive. No humans on the planet of the Earth could have survived it. Some animals had been smart enough to get away from the spontaneous geothermal blasts that Opal had unleashed, and the trees and plants had been lucky enough to withstand Armageddon.
There was no need to shield from sight. There was no one to see her – it saddened her immensely. Holly thought, quite honestly, that she would rather have someone gawking at her unshielded figure, hovering high in the sky, wondering if it was an Unidentified Flying Object of some sort, as compared to not needing to shield due to the lack of people she needed to protect and conceal herself from.
It was then Holly realized – out of all the humans, Artemis Fowl and his gang would be the ones that she would miss the most. The only ones she would miss, in fact. Artemis was a brilliant young boy; a child prodigy, if you will. He came up with all the hare-brained schemes…well, Holly couldn't call it hare-brained, for Artemis' plans were usually intricate and detailed, right down to the very last bit. Butler, Artemis' bodyguard – the manservant had aged a little since his 'death' by Arno Blunt's hand, but he was still okay for a bodyguard. Juliet, Butler's sister – she was somewhat of a wild card, but Holly found her tolerable.
Really, Artemis, Holly seethed beneath her helmet. All of your stupid seat-of-the-pants adventures, all of the times you've pitted your wits against Opal Koboi, all the times you've won. Shouldn't that count for something? Her hands balled up into fists, and Holly could feel the stinging tears coming now. I'll miss you, Artemis.
"Holly?" A second window opened up in her visor.
"Foaly." Holly pressed her fingers to her eyes, rubbing them before giving a yawn. Foaly could not see that she had been crying.
Foaly didn't notice it at all. "Holly, there's something you should know – I've detected two life signals."
"What?" Holly nearly swerved off-course. "It can't be possible. Nobody could have survived that."
"State-of-the-art tech, Holly," Foaly rapped his computer terminal with a hoof sharply. "The life-signatures are weak. You need to get there as soon as possible, get them to Haven. Commander's orders. Council's orders."
"Why?" Holly found herself questioning Foaly's course of action. "I thought the Council's always hated Mud Men."
"Right now, the humans are an endangered species, Holly," Foaly countered. "Anyway, most of them were reluctant about saving the humans until I informed them of the location that the life-signatures were emitting from."
"And where could that be, Foaly?"
"Fowl Manor."
A/N: Please R&R :)