Disclaimer: I don't own anyone except for Mariana and Lauren, who aren't exactly being smart this chapter. Actually, they have no sense! (Yes, I know I wrote them that way, but I still think they have their own minds.)
Author's Note: I'm back! Thanks so much for all the reviews- it was amazing to get all this! I never thought I could get so many people to read my amateur story. So, you guys are going to be treated to some action- and a romance moment- in this chapter. And just certain people being stupid, resulting in more action...but you have to read it to believe it:
Chapter 7 A Little Adventure
Mariana lounged on her bed in her sister's downtown apartment, thinking. It was summer vacation and as usual, she had absolutely nothing to do. Nearly all her friends were out of town on holiday, and the boredom was getting a stupendous level. Of course, Mariana had overheard Holly and Trouble discussing this plan of Artemis's, and naturally, wanted in on all the excitement.
Mariana knew exactly what Holly would say if she knew what her younger sister was up to right at this minute— she would be angry, extremely angry, to understate it. Yeah, sure, she only wanted the best for her little sis, but sometimes it was incredibly suffocating. Or maybe it had just been too much time under some supervision after the months of doing whatever she wanted, even if it was just the supervision of someone barely older than herself. Whatever it was, sometimes, Holly could seem so unbearably like their mother, only with a quicker temper.
The younger girl put on her sister's old LEP vest and in the pocket, found exactly what she needed: Holly's access card. It was the old one, the Captain one, before she quit, started the agency with Mulch, got lost in a time tunnel for three years, etc, etc. But maybe, Internal Affairs had forgotten all about it and had never deactivated it. Mariana even knew the code, too, though Holly would never believe her. Whatever, thought Mariana, an adventure is an adventure.
Before she dashed outside, though, Mariana pocketed one more thing of her sister's— an old Neutrino 2000.
Almost exactly as Mariana's hands closed around the gun, the city-wide alarms went off, as if Haven itself knew the unorthodox doings of an officer's mischievous younger sister. But no, this was something far more serious.
Mariana dashed outside as quickly as could, and that wasn't very fast. But she did get out of the apartment in time to see the blast doors closing at the edges of the city, and to hear the intercom system spouting, "City emergency. Haven under lockdown. All Council members and LEP officers and affiliates report to Police Plaza immediately."
Oh great, Mariana thought, there goes my great plan. Then, she thought— ha, affiliates! Well, I'm affiliated, kind of. Giggling at her own cleverness, she dashed across the street and into the Police Plaza.
Inside was a full-out frenzy of personnel, all dashing about, wondering what was going on. Mariana, in Holly's LEP vest, blended in amid the crowds and found her way down a hall, where the Council Chairman Cahertez was surrounded with questions. Everyone was rushing about, and completely overlooked a diminutive girl with an expired access card.
Foaly pushed his way through the crowd, "Chairman! Holly's just taken off and you need to restore power to the supply tunnels so she can get through."
"Chairman, what's happened?" Vinyaya asked, fighting her way through the crowd as well. Foaly filled her in, "There was a probe, Vinyaya! It didn't quite hit Haven, but it was close enough to be a serious threat. The technology extremely futuristic and near untraceable…"
"So you can't trace it?"
"Well, I said near untraceable. That means untraceable for anyone but me…"
"Foaly, keep the ego down for a minute, won't you?" Vinyaya retorted, extremely annoyed. "Well, then, Chairman, it seems we only have one course of action."
"Which is?"
"Send down anyone who's needed and launch the mission immediately. We don't need a trace to tell us that this is most likely the work of Ark Sool and we have no time to do a reconnaissance. It has to be now."
"Ah, yes, of course," Cahertez covered himself. "In the meantime, we must take every precaution underground. But who should we send aboveground to assist?"
"Send Major Vein, Chairman, he's competent. Let him take his squad and have Trouble Kelp lead the group," Vinyaya urged. Cahertez whispered something in a low voice but Vinyaya said loudly, "Chairman, you must restore power to the chutes, now!"
Cahertez rolled his eyes but immediately ordered a techie to do as Vinyaya bid. The Council members walked back to their conference rooms, in deep conversation. Foaly frowned at his handheld computer and attempted to run his trace. Mariana, meanwhile, decided to discreetly follow the Council members. In her haste, she ran into a blonde girl.
"Watch where you're going!" Lauren said, turning around. She frowned at the supposed Recon badge on Mariana's vest— as far as she knew, Holly Short was the only other female in Recon. "Who are you anyways?"
"Uh, Major Holly Short?" Mariana attempted fruitlessly. She looked a little like her sister, but the differences were only too obvious.
"Uh, yeah right," Lauren snorted. With reflexes as quick as lightning, Lauren grabbed the girl's wallet out of her jean pocket and studied Mariana's school ID. "Mariana Short, huh? Nice photo."
"Fine, you win," Mariana conceded, "I'm not really a LEP officer, just a college kid looking for a thrill, 'kay? Just don't tell my sister."
Lauren's answer was drowned out by Foaly, yelling across the hall to Cahertez, "Chairman! Artemis wants Mulch Diggums to be sent below ground now."
"The convict?" Vinyaya and Cahertez said simultaneously, poking their heads out of the conference room door.
"Yeah, and you'll need to arrange transportation."
"Why, have they left already?" Vinyaya asked.
"Are you kidding?" Foaly snorted, "Holly's driving at full speed and it's already been five minutes since you gave her the okay. She's got to be at least a few hundred miles away by now. And Trouble Kelp is almost done assembling his team and they won't wait for a convict."
"Well, the convict is not driving himself," Cahertez said. "Who knows what he'll do with the vehicle? Remember what happened to that last shuttle he 'borrowed'?"
"I'll drive him!" Lauren perked up. Truth be told, she was yearning for an adventure as well. The Chairman shrugged, giving the okay, muttering, "Why do I care who drives that foul dwarf?"
Mariana grinned, seeing her way in. She surreptitiously followed the older girl through the halls of Police Plaza, but not furtively enough, evidently. Lauren swung around and snapped, "You are not following me."
"Uh, right, and why do you get all the fun?" Mariana flipped her dark curls.
"Uh, because I'm the real LEP officer?" Lauren replied sarcastically.
Mariana rolled her eyes. "Listen, I'll cut you a deal. I'll do anything you want, as long as it doesn't involve endangering my life, if you let me come with you."
Lauren considered it. "If you go and get Mulch Diggums."
"Who's Mulch Diggums?" asked Mariana suspiciously.
"Oh you'll see," Lauren replied, unable to repress a laugh as she waved her card across the scanner, accessing the shuttle docks. "Or rather, you'll smell."
"What was that?" Artemis asked, as he settled into the copilot's chair. Holly glanced behind them, at the shuttle docks whose lights had abruptly faded into total darkness just moments ago. Now, they were reappearing, though it was with a more subdued glow than before. As if he had heard Artemis's question as well, Foaly's face appeared on the screen before them.
"Well, it's official, Holly," he reported, "Sool means business. Haven just got very nearly missed in a probe and I'm almost entirely certain that it's his work."
"What do you mean 'very nearly missed'?" Artemis asked suspiciously.
"I mean a super-sensitive detection ray of some sort was sent towards the city," the centaur explained. "It just barely grazed Haven as it passed. This is no coincidence. Sool knew it would show up on my scanners— this is a warning."
"So the city is under lockdown, I expect?" Holly asked, glancing over her monitors.
"Of course," Foaly nodded.
"And that is exactly what he wants you to do," said Artemis, "This way, we will be cut off from Haven without additional supplies, should we need it."
"Well, that won't happen," assured Foaly. "The Council's agreed to launch this mission immediately. Trouble Kelp and his retrieval team on its way, right behind you, and last I heard, Lauren's going to drive down Mulch for you."
"Now?" Artemis looked extremely alarmed.
"Yes, now," Foaly rolled his eyes. "The power is restored to this chute for now to let all of you through and then it's back to full lockdown. And then, we initiate the plan as quickly as possible. That is, you do have a plan, don't you?"
"Yes, of course," Artemis quickly recovered. But inside he squirmed. Why did everyone expect him to be ready with a fool-proof scheme at any given moment? This was just supposed to be a recon mission, and now he was supposed to be able to muster up the logistics to invade a building he had not seen, to bypass defense that he did not know of? It was perfectly insane.
But how could he say this aloud? He was Artemis Fowl— brilliant, ambitious, and infallible. Failure, or even a quiet admission of failure, was simply unacceptable.
The duo arrived at the fairy shuttleport in Tara in just under four hours— a record speed, in fact. The number of times a person can throw up in the space of two hours may have been another record broken, though, this one, by Artemis Fowl.
"Is the speed really necessary?" Artemis choked out as he stumbled out of the shuttleport, casting his eyes around for Juliet in the crisp green landscape before him.
"This is an emergency after all," Holly said, struggling to suppress a laugh. "Besides, we're rendezvousing with Lauren and Mulch in Nice in about two hours. We're on a tight schedule, Arty."
"Do you realize that the earth's radius is nearly 4000 miles?"
"So?"
"So that means that if we postulate Haven to be in the inner mantle, you still went more than 700 miles per hour!" Artemis stuttered, gulping down a bottle of water.
For a moment, despite the heat of the August day, time seemed to freeze as Holly lifted her head from rummaging in her bag. Artemis was suddenly involuntarily fixated on the way the sun lit upon the copper highlights within her auburn curls, the way the outlines of her face was bathed in dramatic shadow. Her eyes, a mystic array of golden brown, speckled with flecks of brilliant emerald green, paused upon his, as well. There was something almost magnetic, unbreakable about what had passed in that single, silent moment.
"Mmmh, pretty fast," Juliet commented, nonchalantly, suddenly appearing at their side. She shrugged a duffle bag (presumably stocked with Butler's weapons) over her shoulder, and said, "So, are we going or what?"
Mulch Diggums was not a particularly clean dwarf. Actually, the entire idea of a sanitary dwarf is a complete oxymoron, especially given that the creatures tunnel in dirt all day. Of course, Mulch was no longer a dwarf in his tunneling days, and he was certainly not a typical dwarf, actually managing to stay on the right side of the law for more than a minute, and counting. But judging by the hygiene of his office, this was not wholly evident.
Mariana Short, of course, also knew cluttered; neither her sister nor she was much for housework and their apartment frequently reached a level of disorder that made opening any door a hazard, given the piles of clothes, books, and various items that would surely collapse at even a slight disturbance. But the state of the kleptomaniac dwarf's office was a sight that managed to bring out disgust in even the most disorderly college student.
She carefully negated something that looked suspiciously like a mold infested sock, a tuna fish sandwich that looked as if it could be resurrected and star in its very own horror movie, and several stacks of papers in various states of disarray, each coated with a substance that most would rather have remain unidentified. Never had walking ten feet seem like such a trial.
"How's it going," Mulch said in greeting, knowing barely enough about manners to take his feet off the top of the desk.
"Um, fine," Mariana lied. Keen to get out of this room as soon as possible, she passed him a slip of paper, and said very quickly, "Foaly has a message for you."
"About that false alarm earlier, huh?" Mulch muttered, wondering what he should ask for this time in exchange for his dubious assistance. Whatever it was, Holly and Artemis must be in real trouble, sending this girl to get him instead of calling him themselves. The dwarf eyed Mariana suspiciously, "What did they send you for? You look too young to even be one of the donkey's slave/intern things."
"Actually, I'm Holly's sister," she admitted. "It's a long story. If you want to negotiate, I can't help you. I was just sent to fetch you so they can do this mission thing they've been planning. So, what is it— are you going to come?"
Mulch snorted. As much as he always liked to fake his hesitancy while participating in these missions, he would never actually refuse. For one thing, it gave him a reason to flaunt his bodily talents and hang his services over the LEP's head, sucking a few extra ingots and decent benefits from them. Besides, there just might be a teeny tiny part of him that enjoyed being a part of this save the world agenda that Artemis and Holly had going. And of course, there was always the chance that if he refused, Holly might just slug him until he agreed. The girl did have a mean left hook.
"Fine, let's go," he said. "Where are you parked?"
The Nice area and the south of France in general are very popular vacation spots. In fact, in Paris, around August, most locals flee the city with their mandatory five week vacations, leaving the tourists to take over the city for the more than a month. A great majority of them spend that time in Nice or Marseille, or if they are truly affluent, abroad. But at any rate, nearly all of them leave their respective cities in summertime; even their newly elected president, Nicholas Sarkozy, is currently vacationing in the United States.
Artemis & co. have hardly fled Ireland to have a relaxing Mediterranean retreat, but nevertheless, they found themselves in the wildly popular city of Nice, if for vastly different reasons.
It was only by pure luck that the fairies of ancient times did not choose the beach for the locale of their shuttleport. If they had, it would surely be enclosed with resorts by the twentieth century and completely inaccessible in current times. But even despite the fact that it was situated about twenty kilometers inland on the slopes of the Alps Maritime, its business still did not survive unnoticed for much longer. However, the old entrance to the shuttleport had survived the test of time, albeit with a collapsed layer of soil covering the disguised entrance, and in the summer, was covered nicely with brush, so its current visitors were left unnoticed by holiday-making Parisians.
But naturally, that was the least of the problems of Artemis, Holly, and Juliet as they milled around the concealed entrance, wondering what to do.
"So, what we just go in? What kind of plan is that?" Juliet asked incredulously. "You're supposed to be the genius."
"Well, we're to wait for Mister Diggums who should be arriving shortly," Artemis checked his watch, glancing through the skies. The dwarf and his chaperone were supposed to exit at the Swiss shuttleport on the opposite side of the Alps and fly the rest of the way, despite Mulch's protests.
"Yes, but what's the plan, Artemis?" Holly rolled her eyes. "Don't you think we ought to know before we rush in there blindly?"
But her words were interrupted by a rather strange couple appearing from thin air: a small, blonde elf with mechanical wings and a dwarf attached to her belt. Well, that is to say that it would have been strange to any newcomers, had anyone else been on this particular mountainside. But to the motley group assembled here, it was absolutely ordinary.
Lauren promptly freed Mulch from her Moonbelt and took off again, uttering just a few words, most of which turned out to be a lie (though no one could've known it at the time), "Gotta go, Foaly's got me on a tight schedule." And off she went, vibrating out of visibility, becoming a slightly blurry part of the cloudless sky.
"So Fowl, you always pick a nice locale, huh?" Mulch said, grinning at the ocean view in front of them, framed by blue sky and white sand. "But I got to say, the soil in the Alps is a bit rocky— try Bordeaux next time. All those wineries make for great soil."
Artemis rolled his eyes. "Look, Mulch, all we need is for you to dig a hole through this collapsed entrance until you hit some metal, laser through, pan around, and record whatever you see on this iris cam. Almost no risk at all."
"Almost?" Mulch raised one eyebrow.
"There's only a slight chance that Sool might notice a laser carving in his wall and shoot you is what he means," Holly clarified.
Mulch chortled. "So what am I getting for this then? You can't play the amnesty card anymore."
"I could play the do it or I'll kick your butt card," Holly said.
"A dozen bars of gold, Mulch," Artemis offered. "From me, not the Council."
"It's that dangerous, huh?" Mulch remarked as he surveyed the mountainside. Only something that truly merited it could force Artemis Fowl to hand over even a slim portion of his wealth.
"Well," Artemis said, "I am filthy rich, in a manner of speaking. It's hardly a noticeable fraction in all the wealth I've accumulated through stocks and physics speeches."
Holly studied him for a moment and then said, "No, it's just really dangerous. Good luck anyways."
But before she could push him into the collapsed entrance, something that a human would mistake for a cell phone ring tone went off. Naturally, all four people present checked their respective devices. Holly pulled out her fairy communicator and found Foaly's face plastered across her screen.
"Foaly," she exclaimed in surprise, "Isn't Haven still on lockdown? Why—?"
"Holly, it's urgent," he said immediately. "And personal," he added, glancing at the other three who were all surreptitiously glancing over her shoulder, "Your sister is gone."
"Gone?" asked Holly sharply.
"She didn't show up at the art studio this afternoon, and your old LEP access card and Neutrino 2000 are gone. And they've both registered use just today, after you left," Foaly said. "Guess where she might be?"
Knowing Mariana, Holly could guess, and she would be correct, too. But that knowledge definitely wasn't reassuring— in fact, it was altogether distressing.
Generally, the LEP would keep records of shuttles going in and out of their port. Generally, they'd also make sure the shuttles got back on schedule after an assigned mission. Unfortunately, under the stress of the Council meetings and the lockdown, no one had bothered to check on the shuttle currently being driven by one Lauren Maple. If they had checked, they would have realized that instead of heading back to Haven as ordered to, it was making a cut westward towards Nice. And that was bad, very bad.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Lauren grumbled as she gunned the shuttle down the dingy little supply tunnel that had surely not been used in at least a century. "This is totally insane. Just wait until your sister finds out. Or worse, the Council."
"They won't find out. They never check," Mariana scoffed, "Have a sense of humor, why don't you?"
"You do know that you're putting our lives at stake," Lauren retorted. "This isn't a game."
"Then why haven't you turned back?" Mariana laughed. "Admit it; you want your share of the action, too, instead of being Artemis Fowl's delivery girl. Besides, what's the big deal about a bit of risk? A little adventure never killed anyone."
But of course, she was wrong, dead wrong about that.
As a general rule, people about to be in grave danger should not tempt fate. This rule is once again proved by the fact that at that precise moment, their shuttle lost communications to the outside world. The radar, the detection scans, almost all their equipment was immediately shorted out. Lauren had just realized this and was about to shriek in panic, until fate (or otherwise) gave her something else to shriek about: the undeniable sounds of gunshots.
The heavy back thrusters of the shuttle were suddenly riddled with holes as several laser weapons were fired at them. Naturally, as with anything else able to fly, the shuttle went down, its nose suddenly turned down in a 180 degree dive, something not even the most fanatical core diver would attempt. For the passengers of the shuttle, the world faded to darkness upon impact on the chute floor, only inches, as it turned out, from the shuttleport they had sought to find.
However, for the others, both fairy and human, the action was only beginning.
Author's Note: If you may have wondered how I know for absolute certainty that my OCs are not Mary Sues, this particular scene is the reason why: They have no common sense! I think this supreme act of stupidity serves two purposes- one, it takes them out of the running for the most annoyingly perfect character in Artemis Fowl (Minerva wins) and two, it actually has value to the plot…
Anyways, I'm sorry to say I'm having a bit of trouble writing the next chapter and I'll be in school pretty soon so the updates might not be regular. Cut me a bit of slack, I do have APs and PSATs after all. (I so wish I could just be in college already.) And since you feel so sorry for the insane amount of work I'm going to have to do in a couple of weeks, why don't you review?
Come on, guys, make my day and review...if you do, you get...um...a painting! Well, a virtual one? (Sorry, I'm painting lately and if you want my latest, review!)
Enjoy the last little bit of your summer,
Lily
