Chapter 9 – Koboi hatches a plan
Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon. Artemis Fowl belongs to Eoin Colfer.
Willow sat outside of the lab, just trying to process everything that had happened. She couldn't believe it. So much had happened in one day. But shouldn't she be used to this by now? For years Willow had been facing whatever the forces of evil had thrown at her and her friends, and those forces had thrown some very weird things at her. If you had told her old high school self about some of the things that had happened, she would have thought you were a complete weirdo and gotten away as fast as possible.
Now she stood in a creepy, busted up lab that some psycho pixie had used to do lots of gross experiments on all sorts of creatures: vahralls, trolls, fyarls, vampires, goblins, bezoars, kungais, hellhounds, kailiffs, empath demods, polgaras, and many other things. Willow didn't know what the final product looked like, and she was really thinking that she didn't want to, but somehow this Opal Koboi had found a way to make Frankenstein monsters out of all the things she'd imprison here.
"What was she thinking?" Willow wondered aloud.
"Whatever it was, it doesn't make sense to me."
Turning, Willow found Buffy a small ways back, leaning against the lab's entrance. She patted the spot next to her, inviting her friend to join her in the bright light of day. Together they just sat there, enjoying each other's company.
"Buffy," Willow began, "do you remember when I first learned about vampires?"
"Kind of," Buffy eventually said. "Feels like a lifetime ago."
"We were in high school," Willow pointed out. "Well, that feeling I had back then, that everything in the world had been turned upside down, that's how I feel now, only not as much so."
"Yeah. It's like the eye doctor found another thing wrong with my eyesight and has to adjust my prescription again, and now…" Buffy trailed off.
"And now you can see even more clearly then you did before," Willow finished.
They continued to sit there, thinking in silence, watching the sun slowly crawled closer and closer to the horizon.
The Fairy Demon
Butler stood behind Holly's seat, watching her type away at the console. He wasn't fluent in Gnomish like Artemis was, but he still had fairly good understanding of it. Holly was digging even deeper into the files on the computer, looking for anything else that could help them.
"Holly, how are you doing?" Butler wondered.
"Fine," was his only answer, as the elf continued to type away.
"I've known you for a long time, Holly. You're not fine," Butler pushed.
"Oh, this is interesting. I found her lab reports. I'd better send these to Artemis and Foaly since they'd understand this stuff much better than we would," she commented.
Butler lightly placed his large hand on her small shoulder. Holly stopped and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes in frustration.
"Why?" she finally choked out. "Why can't she just be dead? I mean, how many times are we going to fight her before she just goes away? Why can't she just go away?"
Holly's shoulders shook as she began to cry. Butler wished Artemis was here. All Butler could do to comfort her was rest his hand on her shoulder. While Holly cried, one of the folders caught Butler's attention. He couldn't be sure, but it could be…
Butler waited until Holly was done crying before pointing out the file.
"Is that what I think it is?"
Holly slowly nodded. "Yup. Our two brainiacs are going to want to see this."
The Fairy Demon
Koboi had been working away on her pet, when she just so happened to catch Holly's sad, weepy statement about wanting Opal dead. She was momentarily surprised. What was the elf going on about? Opal was dead, and no matter how hard she had tried, nothing could change that, so what…
"They think I'm Opal," she breathed.
Koboi couldn't help herself; she laughed. The mere concept—her, Opal Koboi? She was flattered, but Koboi was nothing compared to the once great mind that had been Opal. Oh how she wished she could be there when they realized their mistake.
Glancing down at the beautiful creation on her work table, a plan started to form in her mind. It was almost finished, and she was in need of some new guinea pigs…
The Fairy Demon
Foaly was in his lab going through documents when he received even more files from Holly that were marked urgent. He scoffed. Of course they were urgent. They were Opal's plans on how to take over the world. They were all urgent.
One of Foaly's monitors displayed Artemis who was also going through documents.
"Which one do you want?" Artemis inquired, referring to the new files. They had decided to split the work so they could get through it faster.
"Don't care," Foaly said with a wave of his hand. "I'll take whatever you don't want."
"Ok. I'll read through the lab reports. You take the other one."
"Yeah, sure. Whatever."
The Fairy Demon
"Hey, guys! It's getting really late," Buffy pointed out as she entered the room. "Maybe we should call it a nigh…"
The forcefield at the back of the room chose that moment to flicker and die. They all blinked owlishly.
"Did anyone here do that?" Willow wondered.
Buffy had already pulled out two of her knives, and both Butler and Holly were aiming firearms at where the forcefield had been. That being said, one was holding a SIG Sauer P226 while the other was sporting an awesome-looking laser. Casually, the slayer made her way into the other side of the room, senses on high alert. There didn't seem to be any traps.
Again Willow spoke. "Is there any possibility that its power source just died?"
"Highly unlikely," Holly answered. "My guess would be that it had a nuclear power source. The chance of it failing now is basically impossible."
Buffy now moved to the cabinet. She was just about to ask Will to do a magical scan of the thing, when it vanished. Behind it was a dark stair case leading down. But that wasn't nearly as important as the monster coming up the stairs.
