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: Yep! Back again. I'm surprising even myself at the rate I'm doing this. Although I'll probably only get one more out before I go on holiday, so you'll have to really savour the experience :)
I'm at most unease with this chapter, since it gets really heavy with the time travel. If you spot any mistakes, feel free to holler!
Oh, and one more thing (This is a long Author's Note, isn't it? Well, the chapter's a little shorter, so I guess they equal out). Foalys-Carrots asked about pairings - well, one pairing in particular. I just thought I'd give you all an answer. I'm not really any shipper (Aside from a brief stint with Holly/Root which was extinguished very quickly when Colfer started with all the 'Father figure' stuff). So romance is going to be in the background, mostly, and will be kept to canonical pairings. Sorry :)
Chute E37, Access Tunnel
Corporal Short slid down the blast doors. Two solid metres of steel separated her from the outside world, and a magma flare was charging its way through the chute, boiling the air in its path, and baking any organic life that was unfortunate enough to get in its way.
She knew before she scanned the tunnel that there was no way of escape: Why would there be? Chutes had to be closed off during a magma flare - unless you were in a pod - otherwise the entire city would overheat.
A pod...
Holly looked up at the ring of charred rock. That mysterious group of people had to have come from somewhere. Sure enough, a small shuttle, probably privately owned, was clamped in at the entrance. It wasn't exactly the titanium-enforced pod designed to withstand the magma, but there was never much overspill from the chute. If she could reach the shuttle and move it nearer to the blast doors before the flare erupted, she would be safe.
It was a ridiculous plan, one that most people would abandon as soon as it came into their head, preferring instead to sit and reminisce about happy memories in their final few minutes of life. But, Holly realised with a painful kind of jolt, she had precious few memories that would count as happy.
She got a grim determination from this realisation, switched on her wings, and in less than eight seconds had soared over the strange beings - nearly kicking the dark-haired tallest in the face - and into the still-open door of the shuttle. She landed quite gracefully, racing over to slam the door. In case she didn't get to the other side of the tunnel in time, she had to hope that the silver lining in between the inner and outer walls of the shuttle would be enough to withstand what would hopefully be a small flare.
Luckily for her, one of the creatures had left the starter chip in the lock, so she didn't even have to waste seconds waiting for the engine to warm up. Curious. Still, she could see the steam in the chute, a short warning to the column of magma that was about to erupt out of it, and pressed the ignition button.
Nothing happened.
Holly fumed silently, wondering what she had missed out. In her visual search of the shuttle, her eyes fell through the quartz windscreen into the access tunnel, where the four people were now gathered in a circle, seemingly oblivious to their imminent deaths. The tallest creature was looking to one of the smaller ones, as though for instruction. Odd, thought Holly, usually the tallest are in command. Both Root and Trouble had had a good few inches on the fairy average: It made for better intimidation.
This fact, added to the pile of facts that already didn't make sense, set off a whirlwind of connections in Holly's mind.
No...
She stood up, pressing the door open against all her better instincts. She needed a closer view.
Chute E37, access tunnel, a few minutes earlier
Artemis felt a strange breeze over the top of his head; almost like someone had run their hand through his hair. He stopped for a moment, turning around as though there was actually someone behind him. Of course, no-one was. Or at least, no-one in the visible spectrum, and Artemis guessed Foaly's Section Eight suits would have become more economical in the past three years, so that even the slight shimmer in the air caused by shielding would be difficult to detect. Almost impossible.
He shook the thoughts from his head. Even if someone was watching them, the chances were they would be so preoccupied with trying to escape the magma flare that they wouldn't care what the boy and his friends did - they would assume that the quartet would be dead in minutes. Which they wouldn't be. In theory.
Artemis directed the warlocks to their positions using hand gestures - the roar of the upcoming flare drowned out even the loudest shout. He noticed Qwan and Qweffor exchange a doubtful look, but they did as he asked without question.
Now it was Artemis's turn for instruction. The three warlocks built the magical rings that would make up the shield, while he watched, fascinated. Within moments, they were surrounded by a crackling blue aura of sparks. It was much smoother than when he had last been present at the inception of a time-spell: they must have been practicing.
The three warlocks were stiff and still, blue magic playing about their entire bodies, their hands and eyes coated in a viscous yet insubstantial substance. The human was left to stand there, alone, surrounded by power but not part of it.
And then he was. Qwan's voice floated down from somewhere. "Fowl! It's your turn now! Concentrate on when you want to be!"
He braced himself. Last time he had almost killed them with his unprecedented lack of focus. This time, he was determined to get it right. He felt the stolen magic well up inside of him, like a mountain spring - it was easier this time, and clearer. The magic blossomed from his fingers and was absorbed by the shield, and once again, Artemis felt the unrivalled sense of belonging. The demon's consciousnesses were spread in front of him like the blueprint of a building. He could hear - or could he hear? It was more of a feeling; instinct - Qwan's thoughts, his doubts about the plan and his alternative one just in case Artemis's went wrong. Qweffor and No.1 were concentrating entirely on the magical shield, implicitly trusting the two. All through this, Artemis was focusing on the time he wanted to reach. There was no room for doubts, had he had any. They weren't moving an island with them, so that required less power. Power he hoped the warlocks could produce.
Then the flare came, shooting past the four like a bullet from a gun. Qwan sprang into action immediately, seemingly snatching the super-heated air around them and adding it to the shield. It glowed brighter. Artemis could sense the tension in the warlocks. They had to move before the energy from the flare subsided.
1... he counted, mostly for Artemis's benefit.
2... The magma had stopped now, and the cooler air fell back down to help equalise the chamber. Convection in action.
3!
The four lifted off, safe in a hemisphere of glowing blue. Artemis threw all his concentration into the past, willing them to land where they needed to. He succeeded, following the light in his head and ignoring the call from his own time, and pushed through to the same place, three and a half years ago, about an hour before Commander Root would begin his final operation. Artemis didn't congratulate himself on the success of his landing - he had been practising focusing entirely on a specific time, ignoring external stimuli, and this time there wasn't a horde of demons trying to pull him into a thousand different eras.
There was the same shock as there had been before, the same strange sense of bereavement and the painful landing. But there was something that wasn't quite the same. As Artemis stood up, brushing the tunnel dust off his suit, he noticed movement in the corner. Very familiar movement.
"Oh, no."
Holly coughed twice, sending out little clouds of red dust. After a quick once-over to ensure she was unharmed, she stood up. She still appeared to be in the access tunnel, only now there was no flare threatening to boil her insides within seconds, she was on the other side of the tunnel, and there was no mysterious shuttle.
The people were still there, though. They didn't look much better than she did, except the tall one was looking at her with a strange expression. Almost like he knew her. She shook her head. That was impossible. Ridiculous. It...it...
Fitted with her newborn theory.
Without a second thought, she activated the wings on her back, any surprise that they still worked lost in a strange surge of fury. In seconds, she was inches from the tallest creature's face, his two mismatched eyes wide.
"Hello, Holly."
She snarled and drew back her fist. Quicker than Artemis realised what was going on, she punched him full on the nose. Several somethings cracked.
The LEP Officer was massaging her knuckles when No.1 sat up. "Holly? What are you doing here? Are you alright?" His voice was weak and cracked, and errant blue sparks still played across the plates on his chest. He had never attempted a magic circle with so few before. Then again, he had only ever attempted two magic circles. Still, the power had had to come from somewhere.
Holly looked up at the little imp. "It hurts like hell, but sometimes you just have to hit someone with a straight fist.
"As to what I'm doing here, I was going to ask you the same thing."
No.1 blinked. "Artemis Fowl wanted our help with something. He said he wanted to go back in time."
She grunted. Of course, the reason they survived the flare must have been the warlocks converting the energy. But why would Artemis want to go back in time again after their last trip had proven so dangerous?
"Did he say why he wanted to do that?" The soldier in her had taken over, and she was surveying the surroundings. It didn't look much different than when they had been in the tunnel in the future. In fact, it was almost identical. The only thing that was different was...
"Oh, no."
Artemis woke up again, his head bent at an awkward angle on the ground, and a small pool of blood congealed by his nose. He didn't have long to speculate, however, as he was hauled onto his back by small, strong hands. He met a very familiar, very angry face.
"One reason, Fowl! Give me one reason why I shouldn't haul you up by your ears and drop you into the core!"
The boy moaned. How was it always Holly that managed to get dragged into his schemes?
She didn't seem to want to drop the issue. "Just what, exactly, were you planning on doing?"
He was afraid of this. It was the reason he hadn't told Holly his plan. She would refuse to let it happen, as her moral nature dictated, but it would tear her apart in the process. She wouldn't stop looking at him. Finally, it was in a small, quiet voice that he said:
"I'm trying to save Julius."
There was silence in the access tunnel. An awful, cloying silence that threatened to suffocate the ones who had created it. Holly was staring at him as though seeing him for the first time, while Artemis was carefully taking an interest in the maze of wires above their heads.
The warlocks were recovering quickly, aided by the magic swirling along their bodies. Artemis, would could still feel blood trickling unpleasantly down his throat, wished that one of them would heal him, but they were wisely keeping out of Holly's way.
The human coughed. The silence was unbearable, and he had to do something to break it.
"We should hide. The LEP will be down here in minutes."
The warlocks mumbled their agreement, picking their way through to the old Goblin's shuttle, which had been painted black and had a decorative prow strapped to its nose, courtesy of the Haven Film Studio. All shuttles had a thin lining of silver between their walls - it was a good absorber of the chute's thermals, and helped to power the shuttles if the energy was converted. It would also anchor the time-travellers to that particular moment. Artemis had thought that, as they were not too far out of their own time, they would not be as affected by the pull, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Holly followed automatically, her wings activated so that she skimmed a few inches off the ground. She appeared deep in thought, so deep that Artemis and Qweffor had to pull the elf in hastily as the blast doors opened. Apparently they had less time than the boy had planned. He gripped the fairy communicator in his pocket tightly. It all rested on that one little device. Hopefully the time-spell had managed to reassemble it correctly.
Two small figures appeared in the frame of the blast doors. They were wearing suits that seemed to blend into the surroundings. One of the figures cocked their gun, while the other advanced slowly, carefully keeping out of the way of the one with the gun. It was heading towards a large, lumpy black shape on the ground next to the tunnel wall. It pressed a button on its helmet, and Commander Root's voice rang out, echoing down the tunnel.
"You there. Stand facing the wall. Place your hands on your head."
The voice seemed to clear Holly out of her daze, where she had been staring vacantly through the windscreen of the shuttle.
And then everything went wrong.
The voice pierced through Holly's memory like lightning. It was a voice she hadn't heard, save for recordings, in over six months. Before she knew what she was doing, she had stood up and pulled back the pop out door on the Goblin shuttle.
Artemis hissed "no!" a second too late. The elf was perfectly framed in the shuttle's doorway, her own cam-foil suit turned a stealth black to match the shuttle. Her visor was down.
Captain Holly Short of LEPrecon wasn't known to panic. In fact, only one elf had ever seen her lose control, and that was more than twenty years ago. Still, when a strange black figure appeared in the opening of the goblin shuttle, she was surprised, to say the least. She manipulated her helmet controls to get a close up of the face, saw an incredible facsimile of her own face looking...no, gazing at the Commander, and panicked.
The next thing she knew, the impostor was on the floor, writhing, kept conscious by the jolts of electricity running through her suit as it malfunctioned. Commander Root was looking from her to the person on the floor of the shuttle, and his voice crackled over the speakers.
"What the hell was that, Captain?"
"Sorry, Commander. I...don't know what came over me."
Root sighed. Female elves. Temperamental, the lot of them. "Was it a low-level pulse?"
"Yessir."
"Good. There's something I don't like here, Captain. Go and secure your your hostile, and then help me with Scalene."
"Yessir."
Root resumed his poking of the Goblin general, with one that had enough force behind it to knock him sideways, revealing his face.
"Short..." Root said, stopping the past Holly in her tracks as she made her way to the shuttle.
"Commander?"
"It's Scalene. He's been mesmerised. I say we grab our convicts and leave."
"Good idea." There was definitely something bizarre going on in the tunnel.
Root made to pull the Goblin to his feet by his collar, intending to frogmarch him back to Trouble Kelp's operation centre.
"Do not touch me, elf."
The Holly on the floor, who had been too preoccupied with the pain of the continuing jolts from her suit to really listen to the events going on around her, groaned when she heard this new voice. Here we go again.
Hmm...how's Artemis going to get out of this one? And why did Holly get sucked along for the ride?
That would be telling, wouldn't it:)
