The Private Wound

Summary: Artemis begins to question his intelligence when a mysterious man manages to trap him in his own home, seemingly effortlessly. Will the fairies have to save themselves this time?

Author's Note: Alright, ready for Chapter two? I think this one raises a few more questions than it answers, but then, if I answered all my questions straight off, I wouldn't get to torment you all as much. :)
Oh, and a few of you will begin to see the slight theatre references I've got going on here (Chapter titles, the showtime bits in Chapter one, etc.). If anyone can tell me how the overall title links in, I think I may have to give them some sort of chocolate-y based medal.

City Hall, Haven, 3:20 a.m.

He would give wait until she finally showed up, and then kill her.

Holly was late to the Ceremony's opening. Normally, her tardiness would have gone unnoticed by any of the high-ranking officials other than Root, who would take her in to a corner for a 'quiet word' that half the hall would hear. But tonight, of all nights, Root had needed her to be on time. It was not just a matter of personal support, which, although he would never admit it, the elf was the closest he had to a true friend. She was an official guest of honour. And as such, the party could not get underway until she showed her sorry hide.

Even worse, Foaly was standing next to the soon-to-be-ex Commander, with his arm, rather annoyingly, around a female that Root assumed must be pretty for a centaur. Root balled his fists. In his opinion, being happy should be made illegal until he said otherwise. What other point was there to being on the Council?

The Centaur nudged the Commander, apparently oblivious to his inner musing.

"Hey, Chief, I thought you said you weren't bringing anyone?"

Root sighed. "Ho ho. I assume you're referring to my gut?"

Foaly looked slightly put out that Root had pre-empted his joke, but the dejected way he answered intrigued him a lot more.

"What's the matter? You kept saying the Council didn't understand the LEP: you should be happy you're in a position to change that."

He nodded dispassionately. Foaly was about to question further, but the throng of less important city members parted like the Mud Man's legendary red sea in front of Moses to reveal what Root could only describe, were he a poetic man, as something close to Aphrodite borne on the surf.

Next to the Commander, Trouble Kelp swallowed audibly, his palms suddenly tingling. D'Arvit.

Haven City Centre, three minutes earlier.

Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no...

An Atlantean tourist gnome was taking a picture of his family in front of Spud's Spud Emporium. On any other day, Holly would gladly have waited until they had finished with their cooing at the plaque above the popular takeaway restaurant. After all, it was Trouble Kelp's name in bronze up there. Holly loved to embarrass him by telling him who she had seen admiring his plaque on her way to work.

But she was late, and although it was not an altogether uncommon occurrence, it would be especially damaging tonight The punishment would be far worse than a lecture from Root about a possible demotion to traffic. Over the past four years, as she had proven herself in numerous dangerous situations, Root's threats had lost their sting.

However, today she expected an actual demotion to traffic would be the least of her worries. If she was lucky, Root might just let her stay on the force as a coffee elf.

So, shouting her apologies to the family, she dashed through the shot. When the father of the family would get the picture developed, an odd cerulean blur would obscure his wife's figure, and he would be made to sleep on the couch for the next three weeks for commenting that it looked better that way.

She wasn't even sure what had caused her to become so late that she had attempted running through the pedestrianised city centre. She left her apartment at three a.m., as she had planned. It should have taken her less than five minutes to reach the City Hall from there, but both of the tunnels that led to the quickest way in and out of the city were cordoned off, so she had been forced to renavigate, to the point that when she finally reached the Centre, and glanced up at the clock tower, the time had read a rather shocking 3:17. Two minutes late. She knew Root well enough that even just two minutes would not be 'shrugged off' by her senior officer.

By three twenty, the City Hall was in sight, but she had a stitch waging war down the right side of her torso. Nevertheless, she broke into a shambling run once she spotted the restless crowd, dressed to impress, muttering to one another, faces showing a rather blatant dislike, and then Root's face, strangely pale and downcast, looking as though he was resisting an overwhelming urge to punch Foaly.

Well, at least some things never change...

The crowd saw her coming a few metres before she would have to begin pushing them out of her way, and parted accordingly. She flushed, deepening her already red-from-exercise face.

She approached the platform with the ceremony's guests of honour on it with her head bowed, careful not to make eye contact with either Root, whose rage concentrated into one look may actually have made her spontaneously combust, or Foaly, who would no doubt make her laugh and get her into an even worse position than she had managed herself.

As inconspicuously as possible, Holly took her place next to Caballine, surreptitiously giving the centaur a once-over. Foaly had never had the foresight to introduce the two females before, as he still couldn't believe his luck that a female centaur had looked his way, so the night was going to be full of stiff, polite conversation before Holly deemed her decent - or otherwise, although she doubted whether Foaly would take it very well if she didn't like her.

Chairman Cahartez, the man responsible for most of the city's supply of vole curry, took to the microphone stand placed centre-stage.

"Now that we are all here," he said in a wheezy, dry sort of voice, "I would like to welcome you all to the Induction of our newest Council Member. He has been an upstanding pillar of the community for many..."

Holly yawned. She noticed that to her right, Commander Root himself was having difficulty keeping his eyes focused. And this was just the pre-party speech. There were at least four more once they entered city hall before Root was accepted into the Council. Plus an additional one made by the Commander that it was widely speculated was to see whether he had the skills needed to make his speeches as boring as possible, and send his listeners in to varying degrees of comatose. Holly noticed her mentor's lips moving silently, obviously recounting the speech he - or more likely, a poor pixie intern - had prepared earlier. She let her own eyes glaze over. It wasn't as though she would be spending the evening doing much more than shaking hands with people who had been calling for her removal from duty since the moment she had entered the LEP Academy anyway.

Finally after Chairman Cahartez finished talking - at such a rate that Holly became convinced someone had set a time-stop around the Hall and forgotten to tell her - he led the platform party into the main building. Those invited to the ball began to push quite inelegantly forward, while unimportant passers-by strolled away to face the queues of the congested inner city.

Root cut across Foaly and Caballine, tracking in diagonals so he wasn't walking against the thronging crowd. When he reached Holly, he didn't stop, but wrapped one relatively large hand around her upper arm and hauled her to the side, next to City Hall's building but not inside it. Once he reached his destination, his grip didn't slacken, possibly well aware of the knowledge that if it did, Holly would try to slip away claiming the crowd had dragged her with it.

As the last, straggling party of gnomes walked through the double doors into the ball, Root turned to face Holly.

"Explain."

His voice was fairly controlled, for him. Holly swallowed. Nothing she said would make her situation any better, despite her honest attempt to arrive on time - early, in fact.

"I really tried to get here on time. The main thoroughfares were down. I had to take Dobbs Lane, but I know you don't like excuses. I'm sorry, sir."

The final part was said as a last-ditch attempt to appeal to Root's better nature. During her explanation, his face has slowly been turning red, from his chin upwards, as though someone were pouring the angry colouring into him. However, when he spoke, his voice was low and hissing, which seemed somehow more angry than if he had shouted himself hoarse. Holly suspected he was attempting to save his voice for his speech.

"Major Short, do you realise that this is one of the most important events of my career, and that tonight, of all nights, I actually needed you to be on time?"

Holly hung her head. But despite her feelings of guilt, she felt a faint glow of honour that Root had needed her. Who would have thought, when she had joined the Recon squad, her notoriously sexist-and-proud Commander would need his spitfire of a Major by his side on something other than an assignment?

"Well?" Apparently the question had not been rhetorical.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said again, sticking to the safer title as she wasn't sure whether it was still appropriate to call him 'Commander'. "I tried, I really did. Somebody should speak to traffic about picking their days for maintenance."

It wasn't a particularly good joke, but it was Holly's attempt at lightening the mood. She noticed Root's jaw tighten slightly. Uh oh.

"I didn't know traffic was trying to fix the thoroughfares."

This is good, Holly thought. Small talk. Now, steer him into the Hall and stay as far out of his way as possible for the rest of the night.

"Neither did I. We'll have to get them to send out memos in the future." She twitched her head towards the door, pretending to be listening intently. "I think I hear music. We should get inside. I don't think the rest of your Council members will be too happy about you missing your own ceremony."

Root allowed himself to be led into the hall. "Don't think I'll just forget, Holly. You may find yourself on the receiving end of a few unpleasant jobs at the LEP."

But Holly just smiled brightly. "Forget what, sir?"

Apparently the mood had not been lightened enough to allow that joke. The Commander glared at her before stalking off, presumably to growl at someone else.

Oh, yes. It's going to be a fun evening.

Fowl Manor, Ireland, 3:20 a.m.

"You should go back to bed, Artemis."

He looked up to find Butler's features arranged in what he guessed was a compassionate expression. Behind the veneer, however, Artemis could tell his manservant was just as perturbed by their unwelcome visitor and his radio companion as he was.

The radio itself was still loosely grasped in the boy's hands. It had been silent for over ten minutes, and Artemis had not even attempted to re-contact the mysterious man on the radio. If he was smart enough to hack into Fowl Manor's server undetected, he must have covered his tracks equally well.
Worse still, was his phrase 'less sociable ones...' There was no doubt in the young genius's mind that his less sociable friends were the fairies. After all, it was not like he had many other friends to bandy about.

"Have you checked the CCTV footage?" He asked, choosing to ignore the previous question.

Butler sighed. "Yes, Artemis."

"And?"

"It's just like he said. The Manor is completely silent from when I locked it at midnight, until this man appears outside your room at twelve minutes past three."

"Is it possible you forgot to activate the alarm?"

The Eurasian considered being offended. After all, he was a Butler; the Butler. If he had forgotten to turn on the alarm he wouldn't be worthy of guarding a spaniel, let alone a Fowl. Then he realised Artemis was trying to eliminate all other possibilities before proceeding with a counterattack.

"No, I remember doing so, and the footage shows me as I typed in the code."

The boy nodded. He had expected as much.

"And there's no way this man -", here, Artemis waved his arm in the vague direction of the bound and newly sedated Irishman on the carpet, "-could have been in the house already? Disabled the cameras manually?"

Butler shook his head. He had checked the cameras himself after sedating the intruder. And it wouldn't make sense for the cameras to suddenly switch themselves back on after being sabotaged. Artemis was grasping at rather illogical straws.

Which left one, rather unappetizing solution.

They had been set up.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe, 5:25 a.m. (+2 GMT)

'After the battle of Taillte, Demons wanted to continue fighting the Mud People, who were at a disadvantage because of their primitive weaponry and lack of magical ability. However, each of the remaining seven families of fay were in favour of retreating underground, as they recognised the threat of the frequency of human breeding. Numbers would eventually win over magic. As a result of this, seven of the most powerful Demon warlocks...'

He kneaded his forehead. He had read that particular passage, the translated opening to the Demon Gospel, over a hundred times, and yet his mind still had problems processing the information. When he had first hacked into the Fowl boy's home server, he had thought he'd stumbled upon the amateurish attempts at a fantasy novel. But he also had access to the boy's personal diary, and he seemed convinced that he had kidnapped a member of the first family - an elf named Holly Short, to be precise, who he had gone on a number of subsequent excursions with. Artemis had noted their slow evolution from antagonists to allies, and, after their last adventure, to friends. He had also written in great detail about how he had managed to escape from seemingly impossible situations: with fairy help. Of course, he had heard rumours about the boy. How he was able to disappear in thin air. To be in two places on completely opposite sides of the world, within an hour of each sighting. But he had dismissed it as fantasists, building on Fowl's reputation for intelligence. After all, he had been subject to a number of speculations about his abilities himself, when he was younger.

But after reading the Irish boy's diaries, he noticed how the stories seemed to make much more sense. He could disappear because of an invention by a...centaur...named Foaly (whom Artemis seemed to admire despite his sarcastic nature). Cam foil, or something like it. He could appear to be in two places at once because the fairies had shuttle ports in every country in the world, leading to the central city of Haven.

So he had begun to dig: to find any other shreds of evidence that would corroborate the boy's version of events. He found that once he knew the exact phrases to search for, a number of shady internet sites surfaced, all claiming to bear photographic evidence of the existence of the subterranean life forms. Strangely, these sites would disappear within a day or two of his discovery. Foaly's work, or so it seemed.

The man cracked his knuckles. He had dropped the rather obvious clue that he knew the Irish millionaire's big secret, gotten rid of a rather odious worker, and brushed up on his fairy knowledge. All in all, it was a good night.

Haven City Hall, 3:25 a.m.

There was another speech going on in the background, providing a constant buzzing noise underneath the chatter of the more animated party members.

Holly had managed to fight her way to Foaly, Caballine and a rather uncomfortable-looking Trouble Kelp. It wasn't too difficult to spot them, as the centaurs were the only ones of their species in the room, but getting over to them was easier said than done.

Foaly grinned at her as she came over. "I bet you miss your buzz baton."

"You have no idea." She said as ruffled her hair as a way to vent the pent-up frustration pushing through a crowd can bring.

Caballine was eyeing her interestedly. Holly noticed that she kept nudging Foaly in the ribs with the elbow she had threaded around his arm. Apparently they hadn't been dating long enough for her to know that nothing short of hitting Foaly over the head with whatever you wanted him to look at would bring him out of his egotistical stupor.

"Foaly?"

"Yes?"

"Aren't you going to introduce us?"

The centaur blinked at Holly, a blank look on his face. "You already know each other's names."

The elfin Major gritted her teeth and rolled her eyes at Caballine in a clear gesture that said males. Caballine smiled ruefully, which Holly took to mean tell me about it.

Satisfied, Holly stuck out her right hand for the female centaur to shake. "Major Holly Short. Unwitting friend of Foaly. I've tried to get rid of him, but he comes back like a rash."

"A nice rash." Came the rather petulant response from the subject, clearly annoyed that the two most important females in his life had just managed to form a bond which centred around the fact that he was an idiot.

His date let out a small breath of laughter, and Holly felt a grin spread across her face like a sunrise. Foaly had managed to find a decent match for himself. She would have to begin coaching him on normal dating techniques.

The pre-meeting tension from beforehand had begun to dissipate, and Holly had managed to procure a drink of beetlejuice in a champagne flute. She couldn't have any form of alcohol, as she was on backup call, but standing with her friends, out of the line of Root's fire, she felt she didn't need it anyway.

Until a small, transparent looking pixie knocked into her from behind, making her spill the blackish liquid all over her dress, leaving a quickly drying stain in the oddly familiar shape of an ancient fairy emblem, used to signify a battlefield. Holly looked at it, cross-eyed.

"I hope that's not an omen."

There was silence from the rest of her small gathering. She looked up, surprised that Foaly hadn't made some pithy comment about her odd stain. She found him watching the pixie who had knocked in to her with an expression close to awe on his face.

"Foaly?"

The centaur blinked a couple of times, opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to form words. Finally, after physically shaking his head, he managed to speak.

"That pixie was Doctor Rhodius Bentwood."

After a distinct lack of reaction from Holly, Foaly clucked his tongue impatiently.

"He was my professor at College! Incredibly intelligent, even for a Pixie. I heard he's gone a bit mad as he's aged, quoting passages from the Book as though they were the gospel truth, but a genius nonetheless."

Holly smiled, as one would smile to a small child after they had told you the moon was entirely hollow, made of cheese and had little mice living inside it, slowly eating it away.

"Scoff all you want, but I'm telling you he's possibly the second most intelligent fairy under the world."

There was no need to ask who the first one was.

"Intelligent or not, he owes me for the amount of cleaning cycles I'm going to have to put this dress through to get it clean." Holly grumbled, as she dabbed uselessly at the stain on her dress. Eventually, she realised she would have to attempt some sort of D-I-Y cleaning in one of City Hall's bathrooms.

She turned to the group. "I'll be back soon."

Foaly called after her as she turned to leave.

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

Haven City Hall, East Corridor, 3:45 a.m.

Root ducked out into the nearest corridor and sighed loudly. He reached, on instinct, into his front breast pocket, which was commonly known to be his cigar pocket. Instead he found an overly dressy corsage pinned to the front, and an empty pocket behind. He swore loudly. It may have been one of the most important days of his career, but it was also one of the most trying days of his life. He wasn't sure how he was going to manage spending all of his working hours with the stuffed-shirt council members. He could barely make it through five minutes of talking about budget cuts - and that was only because Foaly's exorbitant budget had been laid on the table to be slashed.

As he was muttering to himself, he watched a pretty elf disappear into the bathroom in a flurry of cerulean petticoats. Do they still wear petticoats?
Root thought it was an odd train of thought, to be wondering about a female's undergarments in any context other than the obvious, but he embraced it nonetheless. It kept his mind from thinking about the rather disastrous way his evening was turning out. His soon-to-be replacement seemed to have adopted the spine of a goldfish. His most decorated officer, the pride of the LEP and an example of his mentoring skills had shown up sweaty and late, and try as he might, he couldn't remember any of the words to his speech past 'good evening.'

He consoled himself with a thought. At least it can't get any worse.

Julius Root had never heard of Murphy's Law. If he had, he never would have thought those words, for, as he did, as though some cruel God of Fate was watching the Commander's progress and testing his resolve for fun, Root found the entire building plunged into deep, inky blackness.

Great, he thought. Just great.

So, what's the verdict? Are we liking it so far? The last chapter was a little top-heavy on the Artemis stuff, and I thought this one balanced that out nicely. But that's just me.

Reviewers get their choice of character to accompany them in a blackout:)