Chapter Two

The Strange Visitor

Fowl Manor

Artemis Fowl descended the stairs to the foyer where he was greeted a very scruffy looking short man. His visitor's clothing was dirty and torn. His beard was filled with things Artemis only could imagine and his hair was the same. Artemis felt he could trust him on the spot. This man was also the first to speak. "Well, Mud boy, you certainly have grown since the last time I saw you."

"Have we met before?" Artemis questioned.

"Just slightly over two years ago. Don't you remember? With the fairies and such?"

"The fairies?" Artemis asked now definitely confused. "Sir, I think you are slightly mistaken myself with someone else."

The dwarf-sized man sighed and leaned over to talk to Butler as if they were best friends. "I thought of all the mud people you would have escaped the mind wipe and the mesmer, if you couldn't no way that anyone else could."

"A mind wipe? You think I was brain washed?"

"And I thought you were smarter than to believe that. Foaly would have probably would have just laughed at that statement and say something like "the mind isn't just something you can open like a book and erase"."

"You said you had something to return to me. What is it?" Artemis grew impatient with the short, dirty man.

"Oh, yeah, this." The dwarf man dug into his pockets and retrieved a necklace with a round pendant. It looked like the pendant was once a gold coin of some sort. He handed the boy the necklace and stepped back.

Artemis looked at it briefly and absent mindedly said. "Holly."

The dwarf nodded. "You remember her. I guess she made a bigger impression on you than we all thought."

Artemis took a closer look, turned around, and ran upstairs. Butler followed behind him along with the dwarf. Butler took a moment to ask him. "What's your name, again?"

"Mulch Diggums. Nice that I made such an impression on you too."

At the office door, Artemis called to Butler. "Where is Juliet?

"She's upstairs with your parents. Something about college."

"Go get her. This is important." Artemis commanded then turned to the dwarf. "Where did you get this?"

"You gave it to me and told me that once I return it to you, you would give me a reward. The fairies was going to mind wipe you, Butler, and Juliet because you knew too much about them." Mulch followed Artemis into the study and the young genius booted his laptop and opened the cd drive.

Artemis took the pendant off the chain and placed it into the computer. He opened the files from the disk and began reading them one at a time. Once Artemis looked up, he noticed the dwarf's confused expression. "It's a computer disk I asked you to take care of for me. Obviously, I knew I could not escape the mind wipe but my knowledge of the fairy world could."

Mulch said nothing, but his expression clearly read: "Oh."

"What did you need, Artemis?" Juliet asked as she opened the door so she and her brother could enter.

"Shut the door. I don't thing my parents would appreciate what I have just learned about what has happened in the past two to three years with out their knowledge."

Haven City

Holly Short fell back on her bed at home, as she was sent home because she was not feeling well. This had been a first for her, being sent home from work that is, and she did not know what normal fairies did on an afternoon. Squinting because the lights in her apartment were too bright, Holly decided a soothing bubble bath was in order. Just as she had climbed into the bath water and began soaking in it, her communicator on her helmet went off. Holly rolled her eyes and decided to ignore it. It was probably just Grub checking up on her.

As the rings continued, she began to grow irritated with him "D'Arvit! What do you want, Kelp?" Holly asked as she grabbed a towel and ran to get the helmet. The tapped the controls and opened the communications link. "What?"

The face of Commander Root appeared before her. "That's no way to greet your superior officer, Captain Short."

"Sorry, I thought you were Lieutenant Kelp."

The commander took a moment to look at her attire. "You're not at the jail are you?"

"I went home early, sir." Holly said, quickly thinking of an excuse she could have used with out going into too much detail. "I am at home in the middle of a bath."

"Well, get dressed. You are needed at headquarters. We have a situation that could use your expertise."

"My expertise, sir?" Holly asked, now confused.

"I will divulge into more detail as soon as you get here. The situation is a little sensitive and actually should not be not disclosed to you over this not so secure line."

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

"And Captain,"

"Yes, Commander."

"Don't worry about drying your hair." The commander terminated the link and Holly rolled her eyes. Holly went into her bedroom, put on a clean uniform and began to head toward LEP headquarters. As she ran the length of the street to headquarters, Holly bundled her long red hair into a loose ponytail.

Once she entered headquarters, several other members of the LEP greeted her. "Hey, Short, no time no see!"

"Hey Holly."

"Good afternoon, sir."

Holly ignored all of them as she practically ran down the hallway and through the security doors of the recon section of Headquarters. She opened the door to the briefing room and found Commander Julius Root and the Lower Elements Police technical advisor a centaur named Foaly. "I see you finally wanted to join us, Captain. Take a seat and we will begin."

Captain Short took the only seat available at the left side of Commander Root. All

eyes followed her movements as she took her seat and watched Commander Julius Root debrief his officers. Once she realized everyone in the room including the commander was eyeing her, she turned pink. "Do I have something on my uniform?"

"Are you feeling okay?" Instead of Commander Root, it was the centaur technological

junkie Foaly that interjected.

"Yea, I'm fine. Let's get on with it." Holly affirmed as he gazed went from the half horse to her commander. "What's the situation, Commander?"

"As you all know, there has been an outbreak in smuggling stolen mud people goods into Haven and selling them on the black-markets. Unfortunately, something priceless was stolen." Commander Root paused as he walked toward the computer screen behind him. The image of a bowl like cup appeared on the screen. It's silver enamel, gold, and gilt bronze shined in the light. "This is the Ardagh chalice. Its usually housed in the mud men's Museum of Ireland in Dublin unfortunately, it was stolen last night."

"Commander, I'm sorry, but I don't see why this is significant enough to involve us."

Trouble Kelp offered his opinion to the assembled group.

"Because, Kelp, they had used fairy technology in order to achieve their goal."

"Not to mention, " Foaly interrupted again, " if you remember anything from history in school the Ardagh chalice was a gift to the mud people as means of a peace offering to unify the two species. It was made by some of the finest dishware makers in all of the people: Flicker and Glint. Instead of just giving it them outright, in order to protect the people, a radical resistant to the chalice buried it in a potato field in the county of Limerick. It wasn't even found by the mud men until 1868 since this radical didn't leave a note to let them know where it was. They just found it one day laying in a field."

"Any suspects as to who stole it?" Holly almost cringed at the name the Commander had rolled off his tongue.

"At this point in time the only suspect we have is Artemis Fowl."

"May I protest, Commander, " Trouble Kelp offered. "Artemis Fowl's mind has gone through a mind-wipe. There is no way he would have known about the fairy technology nor anything about the people."

"As it may, he is the only one qualified to bypass the mind-wipe with some great scheme of his." The commander swerved to face Holly Short. "Captain, you are to stake out the Fowl home for a few days. You are after all the "Expert" on Artemis Fowl. See what you can come up with. Hack into his computers if you have to. Are you running hot?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Get your gear. All of you are dismissed." The commander stood up at this remark and burst out of the room at a determined stride.

Holly followed close behind him and Foaly stopped her down the hallway. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine, Foaly." She tried to sound convincing.

"No you're not." The centaur glanced down the busy hallway. "Come to my office. I need to get you suited up anyway. We'll talk there." Holly nodded and followed him into the entrance of the Foaly laboratory.