Whoops! I forgot to put a disclaimer on the last two chapters! Well I don't own Artemis Fowl or Bleach, and I suspect ya'll already knew that. This chapter has a lot of exposition, especially in the first part. I hope it's not too confusing.

Chapter Two

Captured

Fowl Manor, Ireland

Holly unstrapped and opened the hatch before the shuttle's engines had fully stopped. Foaly wasn't far behind. Butler met them at the end of the ramp. Holly stayed higher up on it a moment to be at eye level with the nearly seven feet tall human. There were disadvantages to only being three feet tall. Even Foaly was a few centimeters taller than her.

"I wasn't sure if they would let you both come."

"All we had to do was mention that Artemis Fowl was involved. They would have let us bring No1 if he wasn't still on the moon base," Foaly pointed out.

"Where is he?" Holly asked.

Butler didn't have to ask who she meant; he knew she was talking about Artemis. "In the barn," he led the way. He had warned them but Holly still was not prepared to see her friend lying lifeless again. She checked for a pulse even though she knew Butler already had. There wasn't one.

"What happened?" Holly whispered. Without a word Butler pulled the C-cube from a pocket.

"Cube, replay security footage," he had uploaded the relevant section while waiting for the fairies to arrive. They watched as Artemis dismounted, looked at the roses and the horse ran away. Artemis turned, seemed to look at nothing for a moment, and then collapsed.

"It was the same place he died before. Is there a connection?" Butler asked.

"Cube, enhance and replay just before Artemis collapsed." Foaly commanded. The Cube did as asked. "He said something. Cube, analyze, what did Artemis say?" A moment later the Cube played the words "Koboi, but you are dead."

"Was he hallucinating?" Holly wondered.

"He had been having strange dreams lately," Butler confessed. "He didn't seem to think it was anything to worry about."

"What kind of dreams?" Foaly asked.

"He would hear someone calling, but never heard their name or saw who it was. When he heard another voice and turned around he would see himself, but the way he was when he first found out about fairies," he glanced at Holly, sorry to bring up how she had first met Artemis, but she said nothing.

"I'm going to get some equipment from the shuttle. Then I want to go out there and look around." Foaly announced.

A few minutes later Holly and Butler were watching while Foaly scanned the area of Artemis' collapse. "There's a high concentration of reishi right where he was looking."

"What does that mean?" Butler asked.

"Spirit particles."

"I know the translation. What are they?"

"It's what non-corporeal beings are made of. Since they aren't solid they basically take up the same space as the air, so they leave behind traces of reishi. This little wonder," he patted the device he was holding, "takes a sample from the air and analyzes any spirit particles it finds. I can even identify exactly what they came from. Sort of like DNA."

"Do you mean ghosts, like Artemis was before we got the clone to him?"

"Loosely yes. There are actually three major groups. Spirits that haven't moved on yet, the ones you call ghosts. Hollows, which are spirits who can't rest, they literally lose their hearts and…well they feed on spirit particles, they actually get stronger by eating other beings made of reishi, like ghosts and even other Hollows. Then there are Shinigami who help ghosts move on and exterminate Hollows. There isn't enough reishi to indicate that one is here now, but there definitely was earlier."

"Get to the point, Foaly! What happened here?" Holly demanded.

"Well judging by the type of reishi, I'd say there was a Hollow here, more precisely an Arrancar which is the most powerful kind of hollow. It—she—wouldn't have shown up on camera. Only fairies and a handful of humans, ones with unusual amounts of reiryoku, can see them."

Holly was getting frustrated with Foaly's explanations, "Reiryoku? Spirit energy? What does that mean?"

"Well it's something like magic, but it's what Shinigami and Hollows use. All living creatures have some, it's what allows us to control our bodies and in the case of the People, magic. Since we use magic we automatically have enough reiryoku to see Shinigami and Hollows, but most humans don't have that much. Some are born with more than usual, and some develop it by being exposed to reiatsu—that's spirit energy that has been released or the pressure caused by a persons reiryoku. People's reiryoku can also grow through a near-death experience; if they spend time outside their bodies, especially if they move around a lot, that pretty much guarantees that they'll be able to see beings made of reishi afterward."

"So because Artemis died before he could see her. That's why he said that it was Koboi; he just didn't realize he was seeing a ghost."

"As interesting as this is what does it mean for Artemis?" Butler asked.

"It looks like she took him to Hueco Mundo, the Hollow's world. The Shinigami live in Soul Society, more specifically in a city called the Seireitei. Either way everything there is made of reishi so the clone couldn't come."

"So we can still save him!" Holly was ready to go.

"It's not that simple. This really should be up to the Shinigami. They won't like it if the People start meddling in their affairs. I can report it to them, but that's about all we can do legally." Foaly explained.

"Will they do anything about it?" Butler questioned.

"Probably not; Hollows devour souls every day, they won't see this as any different. Not to mention the fact that he shouldn't have been alive in the first place." Foaly admitted. "If I couldn't tell this reishi was from a Hollow I would have thought that they came to get him. If they find out someone who should be dead is still in the World of the Living, they won't be happy with us, we'd be lucky if taking him to Soul Society was all they did."

"How do I get to Hueco Mundo?" Holly asked, ignoring the possibility of making death gods angry.

"You can't! Look, aside from the fact that it's a world meant for dead people the LEP can't get involved. If you go, you go on your own. Think about how bad it is for the worlds of the Mud Men and the People to mix, mixing living and dead is even worse, do that and even Commander Kelp won't be able to save your career this time."

Holly looked the centaur in the eye and asked one more question, "What would Artemis do if it were us?"

Empty Tower, Las Noches, Hueco Mundo

Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck met with Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez and Ulquiorra Schiffer in one of the many unoccupied towers of Las Noches. "I was able to talk her into coming without any trouble."

"Kurosaki did not interfere?" Ulquiorra asked, he stood with his back straight, hands loosely tucked into his pockets. His shaggy black hair was held down on the left by what appeared to be half a helmet made of bone with a broken off horn sprouting from it. From each of his emerald green eyes a line of the same color ran down his cheeks like tear marks.

"No, she wasn't even in Karakura." She hesitated before saying what she knew she had to tell them. "Something must have happened; she didn't know who I am."

"How did that happen?" Grimmjow asked glancing at Ulquiorra to see if he would react to the news, but his long-time rival's face was as impassive as ever. Grimmjow leaned on the wall in a careless posture. Where the other two kept their white uniforms fastened so that little skin showed he wore only his loose pants and a jacket which he left open to expose his chest and abdomen showing off the muscles as well as the jagged scar that ran down to the hole through his stomach. His unruly hair was the same shade of light blue as his eyes which each had a green mark on the outer corner. His mask remnant was a row of teeth on the outside of his right lower jawbone.

"I do not know what happened, or what we can do about it. Perhaps simply being here will help her memories to return," Nelliel said hopefully.

"If it was an accident, perhaps, but if this was done deliberately I doubt the solution would be so simple," Ulquiorra observed.

"She doesn't seem to have her powers at all. If she did she would have used them." Nelliel added.

"Maybe that's a good thing. Granz might get bored," Grimmjow considered.

"He is unlikely to give up so easily. The Shinigami probably confiscated the Shun Shun Rikka after what happened the last time she was here, and he knows that." Ulquiorra argued.

"At least they won't be easy for him to get to," Grimmjow muttered.

"Or for her, she may need them to recover her memories," Nelliel pointed out.

Grimmjow made a sound like a growl, "Well we can't just let him have them!"

"He will not be able to do anything with them until he has given Koboi what she wants. If she has them, perhaps she will be able to use them by then," Ulquiorra suggested.

Nelliel nodded, "Whatever happens it would be best if she has them."

Grimmjow groaned, "Does this mean we're volunteering for another mission we don't really want to succeed?"

Holding Cell, Las Noches, Hueco Mundo

The first thing Artemis was aware of when he awoke was that he had not dreamed. He lay still for a few moments letting his mind catch up with events. He had seen Koboi. It seemed certain that she was responsible for his situation. He had managed to cheat death so she probably had too.

He opened his eyes to see he was in a completely white room. A faint light entered from a barred window set high in the wall. Standing where the light met the floor was a young woman about his age wearing what appeared to be a school uniform. Her hair, the same sunset orange as the roses where he died, was braided and wound into a tight bun at the back of her head. She turned toward him and he saw her eyes were a strange silvery violet. "Who are you?" she asked in Japanese.

Glad he had mastered the language some time ago Artemis sat up realizing he had been laying on a large couch rather than a bed. He was also wearing a loose black shirt and pants instead of what he had been riding in. He stood to greet the young woman. "I am Fowl Artemis the Second," he said with a bow, making sure to put the family name first as in Japan.

She bowed in return, "Inoue Orihime."

"Do you know where we are, Inoue-san?" he asked using the Japanese suffix that was equivalent to mister, miss, or missus.

"No. I've only seen you, the woman who brought you in, and the one who brought me," she seemed to hesitate after the last as if she had something more to say, but wasn't sure she should.

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. The moon hasn't moved, and it's in the wrong phase. I think it might be a projection."

Artemis nodded thoughtfully, that made sense, if Koboi didn't want them to know where they were. "I wonder why they put us in the same room?" perhaps it meant that Koboi no longer had the resources for a large facility.

Inoue's eyes widened, "Maybe we've been abducted by aliens and they're taking us to an uninhabited planet to repopulate," her voice dropped to a whisper on the last word.

Artemis was too startled by this theory to laugh. "Why wouldn't they just colonize it themselves?"

"I guess you're right, but the ones who brought us here didn't look human."

So she didn't know Koboi. Or Koboi had delegated someone else to bring him here, but that seemed less likely as it would be difficult to get any staff when she was believed to be dead, although Inoue had made a distinction between who had brought her and who had brought him. It seemed Koboi was not working alone. "Do you know of anyone who might want to kidnap you?"

"No. I'm just a foster kid from Tokyo. There's nothing special about me."

"Maybe they want to use you to get to someone else…"

"What do you think I am? A manga character? I don't know anyone!"

"Well there must be some reason you're here."

"I don't know! What about you? Why are you here?"

"I was brought here by and old enemy, Koboi Opal. I have stopped her schemes before so she wants me out of the way as well as revenge on me."

"You do sound like a manga character!"

Artemis sighed, wondering if he should tell her about the fairies. This could get complicated.

Conference Room, Las Noches, Hueco Mundo

Koboi sat at the head of the long conference table. On her left side sat the Arrancars Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, and Ulquiorra Schiffer. On the right sat the Arrancar Szayelaporro Granz, and the Elf Rowan Long. She didn't trust most of them as far as she could throw them, but they all had their uses.

"Both the prisoners have been brought here successfully," Koboi announced, her cold dark eyes watching the others' reactions. Experience had taught her to suspect everyone as a possible traitor, and they might give her subtle clues as to who was really sympathetic to her enemies.

"Why did you put them in the same room? And you still have not captured Holly Short. You should know better than to underestimate her." Long spoke without permission, he just couldn't seem to accept her authority, she would have to watch him carefully.

"I do not need to explain myself to you. What about your mission?"

"I have secured my position in the Society of the Evening star. The archaeologist is working on the next clue, but she seems to be less motivated. I need Short." His blue eyes looked at her accusingly as if it was her fault Short had not been with Fowl, he kept his blond hair cropped short so he looked like a movie star trying to play a cop.

Koboi nodded, "She will come for Fowl, and then we will have her."

"What about Inoue? She is useless to me without her powers," Granz followed Long's bad example and spoke out of turn, flipping his pink hair back from his face.

"You do not need to worry about that until you have completed your end of the bargain." The only reason she had captured Inoue was because Granz would only agree to help her if he could study the girl. Koboi had no idea why, she was even more useless than most humans.

"Koboi-sama, perhaps we could help. The Soul Society has objects with high spiritual power in their research department. The girl's powers came from such objects." Nelliel was the only one who spoke to her with the proper respect, it would be safest to assume that was a way to cover up traitorous intentions, but Granz would not be satisfied until he knew he would get what he was here for.

"Very well, I assume those other two will be going with you."

"Of course I'm goin'! Any excuse to take out a few Shinigami," Jaegerjaquez spoke up.

"He is likely to cause more trouble than necessary if I do not accompany them," Schiffer added.

"Fine, just get it done." She turned to Long and Granz, "As for you two; focus on what you are supposed to be doing." With that Koboi left the room.

"Who does she think she is, ordering us around?" Long grumbled.

"I don't really care who she thinks she is as long as I can do my research," Granz stated, pushing his mask-remnant glasses back.

"I don't get why you're here anyway, Elf. What's this Society of yours?" Jaegerjaquez wanted to know.

"That is none of your concern; it is between me and Koboi. Now would someone open a Garganta so I can get back to it?" Nelliel raised a hand and tapped the air which seemed to part, forming a black hole with jagged edges which Long stepped through. It closed quickly behind him. Granz left as well to get back to his lab.

Schiffer rose, "I suppose we might as well get started."

"Well aren't you eager," Jaegerjaquez muttered.

"I simply see no reason to delay," Schiffer replied, pretending not to notice the sarcasm.

"Now boys, don't make me decide which of you to leave behind. We're all on the same side here," Nelliel interrupted them before they could really get going.

"That'll be the day. Ain't nobody here on anyone's side but their own," Jaegerjaquez quipped. For once no one argued with him.

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