A Root and Growl
Summary: Artemis and his diminutive friends have returned from Hybras, to find they've lost three years. Three years that everybody else seems to have been living at an exaggerated rate. And of course, just when life starts to right itself after the sudden reappearance of everybody's favourite double act, Artemis gets an idea. But don't worry, he's only going to hide it from his closest Elfin friend.
Author's Note: You just can't get rid of me, can you:)
LEPrecon Headquarters, moonrise
"What?"
Trouble was still avoiding her gaze; pretending to shuffle paperwork and look as professional and commandeering as possible.
"Don't make this difficult, Corporal Short." He reverted back to official language in an attempt to offset the angry outburst he was certain was about to come from the female.
However, what did come, after a few moments' silence, was something much more difficult to handle.
"I can't go there." The statement was simple, and said in such a quiet voice that had Trouble not possessed the incredible hearing he did, it could have easily been missed.
"Holly...I wouldn't normally ask you, you know I wouldn't, but I have no-one else. They're all topside making sure the Brotherhood of Bog don't pass out unshielded."
"But -,"
The Commander stood up, walking round his desk to lay a muscular arm across her shoulders. It was an unforgivable display of affection in Police Plaza, but Trouble realised that it wasn't the time to follow protocol.
"You don't have to go very far in. Just a quick sweep from the blast doors. All we're looking for is the cause of an unexpected power spike. It's probably a swear toad that got too close to the docking circuitry."
Holly lowered her eyes. There was a war going on in her mind. Her bold side, the side that made her such a good Recon officer, was steeling her to go there, to face down her demons and prove that Opal Koboi had lost. But the other side, the sentimental one, kept replaying the image of Root's death. The gentle smile - possibly the only one she had ever seen - that had been eaten up a second later by a miniature orange sun.
Which way, Holly? Past or future?
Opal's twisted smile filled her head. Am I beating you again, Captain - no, Corporal now, isn't it?
She raised her eyes. "One sweep. Looking for crispy fried swear toad."
Trouble nodded encouragingly. "There'll be a full Retrieval Squad waiting in the wings, just in case. But it's probably nothing."
The elf left the Commander's room, her shoulders squared. Nothing is nothing, she thought, quoting Artemis. Especially not in that chute.
Fowl Manor, Ireland, 8 p.m
"Artemis?"
The boy flinched. Three years really had changed things. The stairs never used to creak in such a traitorous manner. He had been hoping to leave the house unnoticed.
His father stepped out of the study. He took in the bulging black duffel bag slung over his son's shoulder and the thick, waterproof jacket that swamped the teenager's slim frame, and drew the correct conclusion.
"You're leaving us again."
It wasn't a question, and that somehow made it worse.
"Yes."
Artemis Senior moved to grip his son's shoulders, forcing the younger boy to look him in the eye.
"Why?"
There was no trying to stop him: his Father knew that. He had twice the requisite amount of Fowl stubbornness. All he could do was understand what was so important to his son that kept him from connecting to those that mattered most.
"I have to help a friend."
The grip loosened. Artemis almost questioned it, but found himself in a tight embrace. Twice in as many days. It was over quickly: not long enough for the two to feel embarrassed, but it counted. His father made his way back to the study. Before he stepped in, he turned to face his son once more.
"Just promise me...when this friend is helped, you'll spend at least a week with us, being our son."
The door closed. A strange lump rose in his throat. He was neglecting family again.
After taking a moment to compose himself, Artemis Junior stepped out of the front door, closing it with minimal sound - no need for another goodbye with his mother - and walked away from his ancestral home, wondering how long it would be this time before he saw it again.
Fowl Lear Jet, somewhere over France, three hours later
"We'll be landing soon, Artemis."
Butler's voice brought the boy out of his trance-like state in the passenger area of the jet. He rose from his customary lotus-position of meditation and joined his bodyguard in the co-pilot's seat. From out of the window, the night lights of France could be seen, thousands of miles below. He settled into the seat, fingers twitching in his lap, near the controls.
"Would you like to land?"
Artemis was looking out of the window, a strangely absent expression on his face. He didn't hear the question.
"Are you all right?"
The boy sighed, problems beyond his age pressing on his shoulders. "Yes." He paused. "Maybe."
Butler knew better than to question his principal. The explanation would come when Artemis wanted it to. He didn't have to wait long.
"I've been thinking -,"
Butler allowed a small smile to tug at the corner of his mouth for a moment. Now there was a new one.
"-what if this all goes wrong? What if I'm gone for another three years?"
The on-board radio began spouting descending co-ordinates and other information in fast and fluent French. Both occupants of the Jet listened intently to the broadcast, not least to have something else occupy their thoughts.
"Quite a steep landing." The boy commented once Air Traffic Control had finished their instructions. "It must be windy in Paris tonight."
The Eurasian nodded, manipulating the plane's controls accordingly.
"You don't have to go through with it, you know."
The comment was unexpected: Butler, the soldier, was telling him it was alright to retreat. Hang his head in shame and keep out of Foaly's - or, more accurately, his hooves - way for the rest of his life.
"I can't do that. Not when I'm so close."
Butler tilted the controls to begin the descent. Silence rushed in to claim the cabin. Neither of the two spoke again until the plane had touched down on the Parisian runway, and when Butler broke the silence, it was with a heavy, thoughtful voice.
"You've got to do what you've got to do."
Artemis smiled in spite of himself. However hard he would try to return as close as possible to the present day, he knew his family and the Butlers would be waiting for him whether it took him another ten years to get home.
Half an hour later, Butler had driven his charge to the base of the bridge. They had flashed their way through customs with an airtight - if false - alias. As far as the French officials knew, the giant bodyguard was escorting the son of a Parisian ambassador home. It didn't hurt that Artemis could speak better French than the checkpoint guards themselves.
The boy in question was currently sat in the back of the black escort car, apparently relaxed. Only a trace of a worry-line gave away the fear of what the situation could become.
Butler switched off the engine and turned to face the backseat. "Time to go."
Artemis nodded, and Butler moved quickly to check the surrounding area before holding the door open for his principal. One black-loafered foot came out, then the other. Butler could not help but marvel at the discordance of the situation. A Fowl in Paris's underbelly. A diamond in the rough. He shook his head slightly to dispel the thought, and stood on guard for the boy. He had grudgingly accepted that Artemis did not want or need him on this mission, after several protests, and it was not until Artemis pointed out the possibility of leaving Juliet alone and ignorant of her brother's whereabouts for years that allowed the bodyguard to let him enter the fairy underworld unprotected.
But not before saying goodbye.
Butler laid a massive hand on his bony shoulder, careful not to apply too much pressure. The Irish boy looked the man in the eyes, eyes that had watched him grow up for years, taken care of him as a father would - albeit one that took orders.
It was a quiet moment. Both recognised the other, and there was a lot more acceptance in this goodbye than with his father.
Then a familiar voice crackled over the speakers. "Touching." It whinnied, its voice more distorted than it should be due to the fact that the speaker's mouth was full of carrots. But the humans weren't to know that.
The centaur swallowed the food in one massive gulp, and spoke again. "Would you like to hurry up? No pressure. It's just that hiding a stinkworm in E37 for longer than a minute is difficult, let alone an illegal shuttle, a very public Mud Boy, and a conspiracy to change Haven as we know it."
Artemis rolled his eyes and turned to the entrance. Butler watched him go. Just before he disappeared, seemingly into the bridge support, he shouted:
"Have fun!"
En route to E37
Corporal Holly Short was in an exceptionally bad mood. After being goaded into returning to the place of her nightmares - by a phantom image in her head, no less - Foaly was nowhere to be found, so she had been forced to sign the equipment out with Lieutenant Grub Kelp. Sool had promoted him a short while after she had left, apparently agreeing with the younger of the Kelp's attitude that anything could be accomplished if you complained loudly enough. Holly always wondered why Sool and the centaur didn't get on that well.
She was now hovering a few metres off the ground on a pair of new wings that she wasn't technically supposed to have used, skimming over the top of the pedestrianised city centre with a knot of worry in her stomach that was threatening to drag her down into the masses of civilians below. Her head told her it was time she got over the Commander's death. They had never really been friends.
Her heart begged to differ. The Commander had been the closest she had had to a father figure, and she knew that beneath the layers of professional hostility, he had cared about what happened to her.
Well then, he wouldn't want you to fail at your job then, would he?
She groaned as she kicked the throttle on her wings up a notch. All this psychoanalysis was giving her a headache. No wonder Artemis had no friends.
E37, Paris side Shuttle Port
Artemis himself stepped into the shuttle port and narrowly missed hitting his head on a protruding U-bend pipe. A plasma screen switched on a little in front of him, with Foaly's face on it.
"Sorry about that." He said, not sounding sorry at all. "After the Commander died, the shuttle port got even less clearance for use than it usually did. I guess it's falling into disrepair."
"I'll live."
He picked his way through the tiny port, avoiding the piles of debris that littered his path. After a moment's negotiation over a particularly chaotic section, Artemis spoke.
"So how am I going to get down to the Haven shuttle port? Holly isn't here to fly me this time."
He was sure he heard a snort from the other end of the speakers. Over the system, it was amplified and sounded like a small explosion.
"You'll find out, Fowl. Just make for the docking area."
The boy reached the ominous-sounding docking area a few minutes later. A large, silver shuttle made from thick titanium panels seemed to take up the entire platform. Artemis stared at it for a second, noting the suspicious lack of a fairy through the quartz windscreen.
"Alright, Foaly. I am at the shuttle. Now what?"
A voice boomed out over the yawning chute, the giant hole acting like a megaphone, but Artemis didn't jump, much to Foaly's dismay. He had seen the PA system when he stepped through the airlock.
"Get into the shuttle, close the door, insert the starter chip on the pilot's seat into the dashboard. Am I going too fast for you?"
"Surely you don't expect me to fly this...thing?"
The centaur allowed him a moment to sweat it out, before letting out a decidedly horse-like bray of laughter.
"No, I don't. Insert the starter chip and strap yourself in. I can do the rest from down here."
Artemis breathed out, obvious relief in his face. He had watched Holly pilot a shuttle several times, and the controls were complicated - not beyond him, as so very few things were - but not something he would like to master in a life-or-death situation, either. He crossed the threshold of the shuttle warily. It was true he trusted the centaur to get him to Haven in one piece, but he didn't say how shaken up that one piece had to be.
E37, Haven side Shuttle Port
The warlocks were getting restless. They had been given very little time to prepare following Foaly's proposition, and sleep deprivation, combined with enough power surging through their bodies at any one time to make a killer whale little more than a blowhole and a couple of teeth, did not make for very patient demons.
"How long do we have?" Qwan snapped.
They were sat in the controls' booth of E37. Foaly had already managed to set up seven different monitors and a host of other obscure electronic devices on the abandoned worktops. He had assured the warlocks, as they helped him carry it to the chute, that it was all necessary.
The centaur in question looked up irritably from his computer monitor, which was displaying a split-screen image of Artemis's descent in the shuttle, and the power readout from the terminal. If there was so much as one tiny spike, they would be surrounded by the LEP's best and brightest before he could say 'Whoops.'
"Not much longer." He said, forcing the words through gritted teeth. "He's nearly at the docking area, and then we can get started."
"If we can get started. I would still like to know how this Fowl boy thinks we can form a circle with less than seven magical beings."
"You'll have to take that up with him." Foaly muttered, punching a complicated code into the computer. The docking nodes revolved together on the shuttle, and it landed with a pneumatic hiss. The human was safe.
"One small step for man." Foaly said grandly, making an expansive gesture at the teenager as he clambered off the shuttle, looking even paler than normal. "One giant bore for the People. Can we get started now?"
Artemis nodded, still not trusting himself to speak. He pointed to the inner part of the chute, and began to make his way there. The warlocks followed. Foaly, meanwhile, clopped back to his place behind the array of monitors. The first thing he saw when he got there made him blanch. The second was much worse.
E37 Shuttle Port, Access Tunnel
Holly drifted in through the giant blast doors, safe in her shielded state. It wouldn't hold for much longer: She had been neglecting the Ritual again. But it would do for a quick sweep of a supposedly deserted chute.
Even so, she fired up the plasmablaster, which hummed beneath her fingers as the radioactive missiles heated up. It didn't hurt to be cautious.
There was nothing unusual in the chute - at least not from a first glance. Flicking down the visor of her helmet, she chose the thermal sensor. Anything living would now show up red against the cold grey background. It also had the added bonus of showing anything electrical as red, too, so she would also be able to identify the cause of the power spike without too much investigation.
She swept her eyes across the terrain. Then hit her helmet. It had to be malfunctioning. Or possibly too sensitive, and reading residual electricity. Every one of the terminal wires showed up as a bright, pulsing red. She performed the customary sweep back, to see if she had forgotten anything the first time around.
What she saw made her gasp.
Four figures, one much taller than the rest, were walking through the dusty floor of the chute. She was certain they weren't there before. The taller one stumbled a little, and one of the smaller ones helped him. Holly felt her soldier's sense niggle at the base of her skull. There was something most definitely wrong in E37, and she had been through enough in there to know not to attempt anything without full backup. Preferably several backups.
The Corporal made to turn back the way she had come; through the blast doors. Only now they were rolling shut. Another thing that kept happening to her. Swearing, she fired up her wings, vowing never to return to the chute, if she managed to make it out alive this time.
It was a race against gravity. Holly pulled the throttle flat out, attempting to reach the gap between steel and soil before it closed, but she was a fraction too late, and it was only by a graceful turn upwards that she avoided crashing into the doors. She slapped them, and instantly regretted it as her hand began to throb with pain.
The pain was forgotten as an all-too familiar roar began at the other end of the chute. Holly moaned in exasperation as she scanned the ceiling for something she already knew would not be there. Coolant tanks.
"D'Arvit!"
Oh, I do torture that poor little Elf so!
What do you think?