The Dublin Post-Crash Research Center for Experimental Technology (or DPCRET, as it was otherwise known) was a large facility that had been under construction up until almost four years ago. From the outside, it did not look like much – simply another expansive concrete building taking up precious space in the outskirts of Dublin that could otherwise be used for crops. However, once inside, and taking in the long, impressively sterile hallways, and the glimpses of laboratories through the wall-mounted windows, one would very quickly change their mind.
Artemis was of the not-so-humble opinion that a great many of these laboratories, and the projects being constructed within, were indeed a sorry waste of space. Half of them could hardly be any more than a whim cooked up by one of the employees, just to see if they could impress their employers, and at least another quarter was most likely human attempts to imitate monster technology.
Still, some were impressive. The Alternative Energy department had managed to piece together a very efficient hydrogen generator that, while still primitive in design (compared to fairy technology), could easily power an entire city, if the idea were expanded upon just a fraction. The solar-and-hydrogen powered vehicle was also quite impressive, if a tad unpractical, and he could easily see them taking to the road in a few year's time, assuming development continued at a steady pace with few setbacks.
However, despite evidence to the contrary, he was not here to take a gander at technological progress. He had a goal in mind.
"And this is the Robotics department, sir," his guide said, carefully sliding open a metal door opening into a laboratory with much, much thicker windows than previous ones. "Be careful – sometimes things explode in here."
Artemis raised an eyebrow at him.
"Well, not quite explode," the man allowed, "but… well, you'll probably see soon enough."
He stepped aside, allowing Artemis to enter the room.
At first glance, it seemed almost mundane. There were no eccentric projects being constructed, piece by piece, on the tables. No generators being tested, only to instantly burn out light bulbs. The lab workers here, though busy, actually seemed to be working on practical projects, rather than the theatrical "marvels" being concocted in other departments, and barely any seemed to even notice him, so absorbed were they in their work.
His first impression – of this being a surprisingly normal lab, despite the employee he intended to meet – was quickly dashed to pieces when there was a bright flash of light from the other room, accompanied by a fizzling pressure in the air that he easily recognized thanks to past experiences with fairy warlocks. Magic.
There was also a crunch of crumpling metal and screeching glass.
"O-oh stars," a voice stuttered. "S-sorry everyone! Nobody w-was blinded permanently, r-right…?"
There was a chorus of assurances from the voice's coworkers. Artemis blinked rapidly, clearing the colored spots lingering in his vision, before turning a quizzical look to his guide.
"Magic, sir." he offered, most helpfully.
Normally he would've had some caustic retort for the man, but right now he was more intrigued by the source of the "explosion." He picked his way through the tables, making his way to a table sporting copious amounts of twisted steel and shattered glass, quite a bit of which appeared to have been fused to the table. The worker at said table was perhaps four and a half feet tall, with a hunched posture, and vaguely resembled some form of yellow dinosaur, with clawed hands, a digitigrade stance, short tail, a long snout, and a frill of bony protrusions fanning behind their skull. Even without the name tag pinned to the monster's lab coat, she would be unmistakable.
Dr. Alphys, the former Royal Scientist of the Underground.
The monster pulled up the ridiculously large pair of goggles she was wearing, revealing a pair of glasses and eyes sporting the faintest of dark circles underneath them.
"P-put a little too much kick into it," she muttered as Artemis approached. "Tone it down to only a few thousand, maybe? No, but then it wouldn't produce enough power…" She began fiddling with something small and metallic, and glowing with a faint yellow-white light. It appeared to be some form of capsule.
"Pardon me for disturbing your work, Doctor," Artemis said, "but are explosions, as my guide has referred to them, like this common?"
"Y-yeah." the scientist answered without looking up. "Even when you've got the proper setup, magic just sometimes doesn't want to cooperate… it can get really finicky sometimes..." She reached for a tool near the edge of the table, and Artemis pushed it closer. "Thanks. Sorry 'bout t-that, earlier. I've been working on this for ages, I don't know what went wrong..."
The Irishman leaned forward, studying the capsule. He could make out what appeared to be tiny circuits and protrusions inside the glass, some arranged in complex patterns similar to runes. Interesting. "What exactly are you trying to achieve? I may be of some assistance."
The monster finally looked up. "Well, I've b-been trying to create a multi-platform magi-battery, but I haven't been able t-to..."
He could see the exact moment that she registered exactly who she was talking to. Her face went blank for several moments, her voice petering out, and then her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped.
"Y-you're," she stammered, her voice rising in pitch until it was an almost comical squeak. "Y-y-you're the UN r-representat-tive!"
"That I am." With an amused huff – apparently he had a reputation, even amongst the monsters – Artemis gestured to the object in her claws. "May I have a look? I'm not precisely familiar with how monster magic works, but I may be of some assistance."
Apparently still stunned, Alphys passed him the battery, and he turned it over carefully in his hands, studying it in detail. Not only were there runic structures within the container, there also appeared to be symbols etched into the surface of the object. Some of them he recognized from Section Eight files – it appeared some runes were universal – but there were others he didn't recognize.
"Fascinating," he murmured. He tapped one line of runes, which glowed faintly beneath his fingertips. "These runes, I assume they're for channeling the magic into the interior?"
"Uh, y-yes, actually, b-but t-they're mostly meant to hold the m-magic inside."
"And the structures on the inside?"
"T-they're s-supposed to change the magic's wavelength so it can be s-self-sustaining..."
"But they are not working as expected."
"N-no. T-the energy n-never stabilizes, and it c-causes a l-literal meltdown. See there? That w-wire's supposed to be curved in an upwards spiral..."
Artemis hummed thoughtfully. "And what purpose do each of these symbols have?"
Still stuttering, Alphys carefully pointed out each individual rune, and Artemis absorbed the new information as it came. Those are to channel the magic inwards. Those are to absorb ambient magic from the battery's surroundings, in order to charge the battery. Those serve as valves, in order to allow the magical energy to connect to the device it is powering. Those are to cycle the magic through the wires, in order to maintain a constant flow. Those are to hold the magic within the confines of the container, and stop it from moving outwards -
Ah. "I believe the runes meant to contain the magic and halt it's movement outwards may be interfering with the spiraling motion of the magic within the battery." He pointed to one of the melted wires, which lay on the outside edge of the shapes. "See this? All the melted wires are the ones nearest to those constricting runes, and the magic is meant to stay in motion within the battery, yes?"
Alphys's mouth opened and shut soundlessly for several moments.
"O-Oh… oh!" She quickly took the battery back, easily dismantling it with her bare hands and a few flashes of magic. Within moments she had the offending wires replaced, fingers deftly twisting them into the appropriate patterns and pulling them inwards into a tighter spiral, before reassembling the battery case almost as quickly as she'd taken it apart. The entire process couldn't have taken more than ten seconds. Even Foaly wasn't that quick!
Holding her breath, Alphys placed her fingers on either end of the capsule, and sent bursts of light into the device. It boiled chaotically for a moment, and then settled, streams of white-yellow plasma swirling about in a steady, continuous spiral.
"I-It worked," Alphys breathed. She groaned and slapped herself in the forehead. "I-I should've thought of that! I can't believe I m-missed it..."
She cast a sheepish look at Artemis from between her fingers. "S-sorry about t-that… I'm n-not usually t-this s-slow, b-but I haven't g-gotten m-much s-sleep l-lately, and..."
He waved his hand dismissively. "Nonsense. It was hardly a bother."
"B-but I sorta d-dragged y-you into helping m-me…?"
"Technically, Doctor, I dragged you." And he had no doubt that he would have found some way of asserting himself regardless. He was a bit ashamed to admit it, now that the moment had passed, but he'd actually been quite excited to finally examine monster tech. Imagine that, Artemis Fowl the Second, excited over a battery.
Artemis cleared his throat, dispelling his embarrassment. The moment had passed, and there was nothing to be done about it now. And, if nothing else, this could provide ample opportunity for a rapport with the monster. "I must apologize for that, Doctor. I've been rather interested in monster technology for a while and I suppose my enthusiasm… got away from me."
"R-really?"
"Oh yes." He paused for just the right length of time to convey hesitation. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me more about how your magic works in conjunction with technology?"
Alphys looked positively startled by the idea. "Y-you want to know m-more? Wow. I mean, s-sorry, it's j-just – most humans t-think magic is f-freaky!"
He smirked. Success. "I think you'll find that I am not most humans, Dr. Alphys. Now, do you have any time free today?"
In the Underground, standing at the top of a set of carpeted stairs, one member of the fairy Retrieval team shook his head in bewilderment before activating his coms.
"Captain?"
"What, Corporal?"
The officer turned in a circle, giving the Captain a full 360 view of the oddity of his surroundings. "Monsters are weird. Who put the entrance to the Ruins in someone's house?"
"How in Frond's name am I supposed to know?"
Shaking his head incredulously, and thanking the universe in general for the foresight of allowing one demon warlock to remove the Rule of Dwellings years before this moment, the fairy set his wings buzzing and began exploring.
The house he'd emerged in was vaguely the same size and layout as a small human house – the room he'd started in lead into several others, including a sitting room with a large chair, a kitchen, and a hallway full of bedrooms, including one that seemed to have been furnished for a kid.
Huh. Hadn't that Ambassador's accounts included staying with the monster's Queen for a few weeks, before moving on to the rest of these wretched caverns?
Regardless of who this place actually belonged to, though, the place felt warm and inviting. He was actually kind of reluctant to leave, and it took the Captain and a few of his team yelling at him over their coms to get his ass out the door and into the Ruins themselves.
The Ruins were far less friendly. They weren't menacing or anything, not like the fire-and-brimstone landscape of Hotland (who came up with these names? "The Ruins" had to be the best name he'd heard so far!), but the purple stone, the dead leafless tree out in front of the house, the vines and other creepy-crawly plants, all gave the place an abandoned, melancholy vibe. Even the regal pillars of marble that sometimes jutted out of the paved ground only served to make the place feel more like some sorry, long-dead husk of what it once must've been.
Still, it wasn't his place to express such a poetic opinion. He'd never hear the end of it if he did. So the fairy just flew on, shielded and shooting over the heads of the occasional Froggit and dodging one or two Whinsums in observant silence.
He reached the flowers only a few minutes after leaving the house. Even compared to the rest of the claustrophobic Underground, this place was tiny. How on earth could anybody live here?
Somebody definitely had lived here once. And died here, by the looks of it, because there was no way that rectangular patch of yellow flowers – buttercups, maybe – all alone underneath a solitary beam of sunlight and covering a small, equally rectangular patch of disturbed earth could be anything but a grave.
D'Arvit, it was tiny. Large enough for a fairy, or maybe a child. Hadn't the Queen had a kid of her own once…?
He paused long enough to bow respectfully at the grave – never knew, there might be a ghost here that wasn't the sort that looked like a bedsheet – before turning on his heels to leave. Didn't look like there was anything here, anyway.
"Frisk?"
The officer whirled about in midair, hands flying to his Neutrino and leveling at the head of…
… another flower?
A flower with a face?
Making sure his helmet was sealed, so sound couldn't escape, he said, "Captain, are you seeing this, or am I going crazy?"
"Congratulations, Corporal, you're 100% sane."
"Great. Just wondering."
The flower monster – that was ALL it was, literally, just a giant yellow flower, with a face, growing out of the ground in a place where it definitely hadn't been before – squinted around in apparent confusion. It was actually kind of cute, in a freaky moving plant sort of way, with little button eyes and a little mouth.
"Frisk?" It repeated again, in a little high-pitched voice that sounded a bit like a kid's. "Are you there?"
Silence. After a few moments, the flower scowled, and grumbled something under it's breath, and then disappeared under the ground with a faint pfft of displaced soil.
The Corporal stayed perfectly still, save for the high-frequency vibrations of his shielding, for another couple of minutes, before sighing with relief, and turning to leave. That had been too close, way too close. Flower or no, they couldn't risk being seen by anything down here – not until they knew whether or not a mind-wipe could work on a monster, at least.
As he passed through a door, his wings suddenly spluttered, and, cursing, because of course the damned things couldn't wait until he got out of the Ruins to break down, he landed a bit more heavily than usual, and swiped the activation key embedded into his glove across the necessary location.
Nothing.
"D'Arvit," he cursed. "Stupid low-budget equipment, this thing's as old as – "
There was a familiar pfft, and a cheery little voice said, "Well, howdy! I thought there was someone down here with me!"
Uh oh, looks like Flowey finally decided to turn up. Well, we'll just have to hope he's not as sadistic and homicidal as before, eh? *crosses fingers*
This is the last chapter I had pre-written, by the way, so depending on how much I feel like writing this upcoming week, I MIGHT not have a new chapter for next Sunday. Don't worry, though, I'll try not to leave you guys hanging! :D
