Mulch Diggums knew the LEP well enough that he could do it with his eyes closed. He had broken into and out of the Lower Elements Police Department on numerous occasions. He could do this job on autopilot, letting his unhinged jaw chew its way through the loose earth under the barracks building. This was good, because it gave Mulch some time to concentrate on what was really bothering him.

Holly Short was not acting like Mulch knew her. Holly was collected, disciplined, the moral center of their strange little group. Now, it seemed as though she'd jumped into the deep end herself. What could she have wanted them to go after Opal Koboi for? What could she have to do with this? All Mulch could assume was that Holly was scared and a scared Holly wasn't any use to anybody.

Mulch made a slow curve upwards and began ascending towards the tile floor of the barracks. The sensitive beard hairs picked up vibrations above. Footsteps.

Mulch got as close as he dared to the top without taking a bite out of the floor itself and pressed his chin up against the "ceiling". It was painful for his neck, but it was worth it. With a more direct link to the source, his beard hair could pick up the vibrations up above; that included vocal cords.

"Wham! I slammed him down to the floor and said, 'The jig is up!'"

"Ha! That's hilarious!"

"So, what's this I hear about Captain Short and the Commander?"

Mulch groaned. He really didn't want to hear Holly's love life described by these two imbeciles.

"Well, not much anymore from what I heard. They went on like three dates and— "

"No, I mean what was that row earlier?"

"Oh yeah. Nobody in that room is talking, not even the warlocks, but I heard from the janitor that it had something to do with the Fowl kid."

"Artemis Fowl?" the voice sounded terrified. "He's not gonna come after us again, is he?"

"Nah, he wouldn't do that. From what I heard the mudboy reformed. From what the janitor said it was more like the kid was in trouble."

"Oh…" the voice sounded more relaxed. "Well, that outta make the boss lady happy."

Mulch gave a confused smirk. Were they talking about the commander? If they were, that was funny, but Mulch couldn't see why. Trouble Kelp looked the furthest thing from a woman as you can get.

"Yeah, well, maybe not," the other voice chimed in. "She might've wanted to kill him herself."

Mulch frowned at that. Kelp may have had no love for Artemis, but he'd never sensed that much hostility off the fairy. Murder just wasn't his style. Then again, they could just be trading hyperbole.

The two morons finally left the barracks, finally giving Mulch the safety to A) released the dwarf gas that had built up in his stomach and B) take a huge bite out of the floor of the barracks. Mulch winced as he chewed; tile wasn't a dwarf's favorite thing to eat. It could get stuck between the teeth, come off in shards and cut the tongue and it was incredibly difficult to chew.

Mulch was still chewing as he made his way over to Holly's locker, easily picked deciphered the combination and scooped all her gadgets into an empty sack. The only problematic item was the wing pack; the wings didn't contract, so it was too straight to fit in the sack. Mulch couldn't carry it on his back as it might scrape against the tunnel ceiling.

Well, Mulch thought, unhinging his jaw, let's see just how big we can get.

Mulch tossed the sack into the air and caught it in his mouth. The bag tasted like mold and mildew. Not bad.

The door of the barracks flew open and in stumbled two elf officers, furiously snogging. Mulch froze, wondering how long it would take them to notice. Not long, as it turned out.

The female office sprawled out on one of the benches, her head hanging off the end. She caught a glimpse of Mulch and her mouth fell (rose?) open. The male noticed her staring and copied her.

"Well," the dwarf tried to say, taking the wing pack and moving towards the hole, "don't let me stop you." It only came out as muffling from the sack between his teeth.

The two officers sprang up and rushed to their lockers, looking to retrieve their weapons. By the time they whipped around with their Nutrino 4000 pistols, though, Mulch had already disappeared back into the tunnel.

Well, Mulch thought as he popped out of the hole just outside his office building, there goes the PI license. The things I do for friendship.

Mulch spat the bag out onto the lobby floor, rehinged his jaw and went upstairs to the sitting room. "Mulch Investigations" was part business and part house, so the second floor had been decked out with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a sitting room complete with big screen TV. The latter item had been stolen, but there was no reason to tell that to the landlord.

Doo Da Day sat in one of the chairs by the TV, which was running a mudman news channel. He was typing furiously into a small laptop that laid across his lap. He looked up when he saw Mulch enter.

"How'd it go?"

Mulch grimaced. "Well, the good news is we've got Holly's stuff. The bad news— "

"You were seen, weren't you?" the pixie finished.

"There will be an inquiry, yes." Mulch thought it was time to change the subject. "What about you? Any luck finding Koboi?"

"I've been researching birth records of little people in Italy." Day was frowning as he took a bite from his dish of clams that sat on the coffee table. "Nobody that sounds like it could be Opal."

"What about famous ones or ones that are the head of big companies?" Mulch knew Koboi couldn't resist getting attention, but Day shook his head.

"None of them are even close to looking like Opal. Even when she made herself look human she still had a pretty distinctive face; she would be easy to spot."

Mulch was tempted to tell him to hang it up. Opal Koboi was probably dead and Holly was probably being paranoid. Still, a few of his beard hairs curled in anticipation. Always trust the hair, his granny had told him.

"Well, keep looking anyway." He started back downstairs. "I've gotta get to the surface and back before the police get here."

Day rolled his eyes. Whatever. He closed the laptop on a picture of Warwick Davis (who was actually a gnome in disguise), and turned the volume up on the TV.

"More bodies pile up as the gang wars in Rome escalate. A new unknown crime boss calling themselves 'Queen Bee' has been making huge moves against the established Sicilian families, according to the local authorities. Viewers are advised: the images accompanying this news report may be disturbing to young viewers."

Day changed the channel, bringing up the footrest on his chair. He didn't need to see dead bodies today. There were soaps to watch.

Thousands of miles above Doo Da Day, on the planet's surface, Opal Koboi kept the channel right where it was. The camera lingered over video of dead bodies and trashed storefronts. She took a sip of the blood red wine she had ordered and smiled. It was always nice to see your work on television.

When Opal Koboi first crashed into the field of an old Italian woman and used the last of her magic to persuade her that she was her daughter, the pixie thought her life was over. She had been forced to pick crops, wash dishes and fold clothes like a slave. It was so awful that she almost wished the LEP would come and find her. However, with each passing day of labor, her muscles hardened, her hands became more calloused and she breathed easier with every heft of the laundry hamper. And if she ever grew tired or thought of giving up on a task, she reminded herself of what she wanted: vengeance. Artemis Fowl had once again defeated her and the embarrassment swirled into a boiling hot cauldron of hatred. The mudboy would pay in blood and if she was going to make that happen, she would need to improve. Thus, she gritted her teeth and continued with her chores.

Opal was eventually allowed to explore the city by her adopted mother, though she supposed it was so that Opal could play with friends her "own" age. Instead, the pixy feverishly explored every detail of the region. Through her exploration, she found that she had been extraordinarily lucky. She had landed, of all places, in Sicily, birthplace of the mafia. Opal saw opportunity, but she also saw disadvantage. Her revenge required an army, but these gangsters were less than likely to give their loyalty to her. The mafia families of Sicily were quite literally families, held together by blood ties and an unbreakable oath of loyalty. What's more, the Dons, or heads, of the families were never women. If Opal was to have their allegiance, she would have to earn it in the most spectacular ways.

She started by doing the local Don's numbers; he had a huge protection racket on several islands around mainland Italy and needed to make sure his men weren't holding anything back. They weren't, but Opal made it look like they did anyway. Several loyal lieutenants were skinned alive and thrown into the sea thanks to her.

The Don put more and more trust in her as the months went on. Opal grew stronger and more deadly the more chores she did and fights she got into. And more and more LEP officers went mysteriously missing in the Italian countryside after receiving mysterious calls that Opal Koboi had been spotted in Sicily.

When the Don finally died some months later, his sons, who would've taken over the business, were not happy. Their father's will demanded that control of the empire be given to "Belinda," his most trusted advisor. His sons argued that, aside from being a woman, she wasn't even family. What right did she have to the empire? These complaints were silenced days later, as Koboi managed to kill all of them in an extended fist fight in front of all of her new lieutenants. Koboi's reputation was sealed and she began running all the other gangs out of the mainland.

However, the obtaining of territory and money was not the end for the newly christened Queen Bee. To her, it was only a means. Influence and power meant nothing to her except in so far as it helped her own vengeful aims. And, even though it was quite a powerful force, the mafia was not going to cut it. Not for the scale of carnage she was looking for. She needed something bigger. Someone with more resources…

Opal leaned back with a satisfied sigh, looking around at the upper-class restaurant she was sitting in. For the first time in her life Koboi felt she understood the value of elbow grease. She thought that university had been tough and it had; being the only female in the class, she had to be tougher than the others. However, looking back on it, the pixie couldn't help but think of those as easy days. She had used her father's money to go to university and make her own company to drive him out of business. When she had made plans to overthrow the Underground, she had left most of the work to lackeys, halfwits she thought more than capable. She had relied so much on her magic throughout her life that she had forgotten what it was like to be injured.

She looked down at her hands; they were tough with callouses, scarred from a thousand fights. Her arms were taught with muscle honed through suffering. She had earned her scars, earned her power, fought a thousand fights to sit in the Don's chair. She had been stripped bare of her magic and money and that still couldn't stop her. Her chest swelled in pride.

She checked the golden watch at her wrist. She was supposed to be meeting a new business partner here and she was practically shaking with anticipation. She looked at the two glasses of wine across from her. They had been half filled with a special compound that had taken months of experimentation. And several dissected LEP fairies. The serum had been made from glands in the fairy brain that controlled the Mesmer, a combination of fairy pheromones and human spinal fluid. Her "mother" had provided the fluid and the old Don had provided her first test subject; the will proved it had been a success. Now, it was time for the real thing, with the potency increased for good measure.

"Ms. Belinda?" Somebody had walked up to her table, a man and a woman dressed impeccably well. The woman was clad in red, the dress reaching down to the tips of her toes. The man wore a sky-blue Italian suit that matched his eyes.

"Master and Mrs. Fowl." Opal gestured towards the two wine glasses, grinning. "Please have a seat."

AN: Just a reminder to readers that this will be the last daily chapter. The chapters will be coming weekly instead, every Monday at 8pm.

Thanks again to those of you who stuck around. God bless!