I'll be honest, I have never quite understood why on a website for fanfiction, there has been a perpetual necessity from a younger version of myself and many other authors to establish that we do not own the works we are writing about, but just in case: I don't own this property, I'm expressing a creative scenario from it that will transform it and also earn me exactly $0 profit. Especially since I don't dare associate this with any of my other online published works.
Preface: This is a rewrite of an old fic from when I first started writing and wanted to publish a work for people to see. I've wiped literally everything from this account to start fresh because absolutely nothing I wrote was worth saving. Also, I'm dumping literally this entire fic at once just because I didn't wanna lapse and then have a half-finished story just vibing on this account.
Also, I know that The Last Guardian re-frames the Artemis Fowl books as retellings by Holly Short, however, I will be taking liberties with this to tell a story. It should fit well enough in-timeline either way, although the Fowl Twins series is mostly ignored since I haven't read them.
Spoilers abound from a series I haven't read in 8 years.
Chapter 1 – The Veil
Lower Elements, Haven City, LEP "Julius Root Memorial Laboratory"
Inside of an advanced lab, deep below the crust of the Earth, a diminutive fairy woman and a centaur sit at a computer terminal. Next to the terminal was a tubular machine, resembling an MRI, with a young man inside. Wires splayed out, connecting the machine and the computer terminal while both whirred in effort from a vast quantity of data being processed between them. On a set of many screens from the machine, a variety of videos play out. Each are from a first-person perspective, displaying the actions of somebody through various points in their lives: their bodyguard being shot right below the heart, the kidnapping of a fairy, the reuniting with their father, seemingly being trapped within their own mind, and kissing the aforementioned fairy's head. Many of the videos are faded, with static and other defects appearing where faces and identifying features would normally be. A progress meter is displayed on another monitor, denoting that only five percent of the task being undertaken was completed.
"I don't recall when this happened," the centaur asked, pointing at the video of the bodyguard being shot. "Do you?"
"Off the top of my head Foaly," the fairy woman replied to the centaur. "Not really, it seems to me that was one of Butler's million near death experiences."
Foaly shook his head, scratching his neck, "You know Holly, we really picked the hardest way to go about this whole thing."
They both looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders, using an interface on another screen to drag the video onto a general point of a timeline they were constructing. These videos were all memories belonging to Artemis Fowl II, a brilliant young man who managed to entangle himself massively in the hidden fairy world. The young man's first encounter involved him outwitting the entire fairy government to restore his mother's sanity and get a vast sum of fairy gold in the process, but after the initial rocky start he had become an integral part of their world, saving it when the pixie Opal Koboi tried to destroy all. It was her gambit which resulted in his death, his life destroyed in-part thanks to a fairy eyeball gotten from Holly Short on one of his adventures. He was successfully cloned, however, and his soul occupied the new vessel. Despite his personality returning, Artemis' memories did not, and although Holly had explained a part of his initial fairy encounter to him, her own memories began to falter herself, just before the part where she explained who Artemis had kidnapped.
Everyone's memories regarding Artemis Fowl faded suddenly.
Foaly, the dwarf Mulch, his bodyguard Butler, even Artemis' own brothers failed to remember the details of his life. Everything was there, except the lingering feeling that there was much more to the story than him having kidnapped a fairy. The roadblock was initially that his clone had a new pair of eyeballs, impossible to scan for memories from. Foaly was inspired, however, and sought to see if more than just a soul could be captured out of the air. Using another sample of Artemis' saliva saved from the cloning experiment, Foaly discovered that he could access memories stored deep in the genetic code. Thus, by using the memories that they gathered from the genetic code in Artemis' saliva, converting it into video format to view and put in order, and then stimulating Artemis' new brain and essentially writing those memories onto it, they could effectively restore his memory. Foaly invented an entirely new machine for the purpose, referred to as the "Memory-Line Machine" which could in theory restore or alter anyone's memories in sequential order based on a timeline. The LEP allowed Foaly to requisition an unused lab for the purpose, and the trio set up shop within. Butler had decided to stay on the surface, his normal bodyguard instincts surprisingly comforted knowing that the LEP Captain Holly Short would be by his principal's side. Myles and Beckett would need protection anyways while Artemis was receiving memory treatment, since Juliet was returning to Madame Ko for a time in order to receive extra training.
When it came to resolving the lapses that the people around Artemis had collectively received, Holly and Foaly chalked up their memory loss to something relating to Opal's time-traveling gambit, possibly through Artemis' death and the fact he had been through time-travel before could have affected memories of him after he returned; his going through too many dimensional planes causing reality to glitch in a way. Weirder things have happened, like switching an eyeball and finger locations.
"I've been bouncing around who Artemis actually kidnapped in my head," Foaly said at the terminal. "It was either Chix or you."
"I feel like I'd remember if I was the one kidnapped," Holly replied, somewhat angrily. Her, get kidnapped by a human, never. "Then again, all I know is I apparently knew him very well and I can't remember a thing."
"I think Mulch mentioned that Chix was a part of Cudgeon's crew," Foaly mumbled. "It had to be you."
Holly furrowed her brow. It was interesting, the more she learned about this young man the more mixed her feelings became about him. She knew she had some level of attachment towards him, a camaraderie grown through years of being side-by-side; and she saw through some of the memories he was a caring man: his assisting of his mother, father, Butler, and others testified to that. Her problem was, from what she'd seen, he was also involved in some shady dealings at one point or another. Now evidence shows that he had kidnapped her at some point, she wasn't sure how to feel.
"Place the kidnapping memory towards the beginning I guess." Holly quietly said, glancing at the tube and considering the type of man she was assisting. "In front of obtaining the Book of the People and decoding it."
A curious effect happened upon the memory being placed sequentially in front of the two. They knew the memories Holly mentioned were right, they were the only parts of Artemis' tale she was able to mention before everyone's memory faded. When the new memory was placed and written onto Artemis' brain in that moment, though, both Foaly and Holly could feel it, it was like a fog was lifted from their minds as they recalled the incident slightly more. It was a breakthrough.
"Feels like we did something right." Holly grinned for a moment, happy to see some new progress outside of their sifting through a million out-of-context memories.
"Of course," Foaly proclaimed, "It's only natural an invention of mine could fix everything."
Holly rolled her eyes and looked back at the screen with confidence. While there wasn't any doubt they'd be able to do something, she was happy that it seemed restoring this young man's memories also restored theirs as well.
"So from here," Holly began explaining to Foaly, "all we really need to do is figure out the memories and work them in sequential order starting with the beginning of his journey."
"I could've told you that!" Foaly replied.
Holly rolled her eyes again and together, the duo got to work making educated guesses on what went next in the timeline. Artemis' first encounter with fairies included holding Holly for ransom, a siege by the Lower Elements Police, and the ensuing disaster when Mulch Diggums, their mutual dwarf friend broke into the manor on LEP orders, Holly escaped captivity, and a troll was released into the manor. Despite the danger and near-death of Butler, Holly saved Butler and cured Artemis' mother's insanity in the process. The final effort was a "blue rinse" by LEP, firing a bio-bomb at the manor that Artemis outwitted with sleeping pills.
The story told by these memories was a difficult pill to swallow, this young man whose memories they were restoring was a cold and calculating one, someone who was willing to gambit his own life and others to get what he wanted. It was disheartening at first to Foaly and Holly, like they were helping a villain. Despite this they knew they both had some level of attachment to the young man, probably owed to something in the many other years that they knew him. The duo's confidence was raised in the next adventure they were able to put together involving him; there was a mutual exchange with the fairies, Fowl helped against the efforts of Briar Cudgeon and Opal Koboi in exchange for them assisting with rescuing Fowl's father. The young man grew somewhat in this, no longer totally indifferent to everyone else.
It grew late, and the duo's tired eyes were finally ready to quit after they lined up that adventure. Foaly shut off the machine for the time being, opening up the tube containing the young Fowl boy. He groggily exited, now fully conscious with the memories he carried of the past several years. He rubbed his temples and stared at the duo.
"If the sequence of memories you assembled was right," Artemis started, "I feel like I should be ashamed."
"Rightfully so." Holly replied, with a tinge of mild anger. She didn't quite know why, he seemed to be somewhat regretful of what he knew, yet from what they so far discovered he was at best an antihero in the stories the memories told, and at worst a megalomaniac that pulled her society along in his stupid gambits. The memories she recovered of herself also revealed a hot-headed streak, something she wasn't much like anymore. Her reckless streak still existed, yet it was tempered by adventures she was frustrated that she couldn't remember.
"Thank you," Fowl mumbled, "despite what I did to you Holly, you still helped me on far too many occasions."
Foaly scoffed, "Aren't you forgetting someone? I was involved in your kidnapping plot as well."
"I think that was repaid when we saved you from Cudgeon's plot." Fowl smartly replied.
Holly nodded, "I'm going to go with the Mud Boy on this one, you were on the sidelines when I got kidnapped."
"Well still." Foaly pouted for a moment, ego somewhat bruised. "Either way, it's time for us to end our first session. Fowl, you remember where your room out here is?"
"Yes," Artemis replied as he stood up, "thank you both again."
As he exited and made his way to where he was staying, Holly glanced at Foaly and raised an eyebrow.
"He's a lot different than depicted in the memories," Holly questioningly started, "did you do something to him?"
Foaly scoffed for a moment, feigning shock, "Why I would never! What makes you think I would ever use my machine to electrically humble his sneering, smartest person in the room attitude just a tad bit."
Holly's eyes widened for a moment, before furrowing her eyebrows ever so slightly. It was a somewhat intimidating look to the centaur.
"Okay, okay!" Foaly sighed. "I'll fix it during our next session."
With Foaly's proclamation, Holly relaxed. It surprised her, she wasn't sure why she was so defensive towards Fowl's personality after what she'd seen. To be fair, she had a lot of leanings towards the child genius that she was unsure of how they came to be. She supposed that the more they uncovered, perhaps he would become more likeable.
The duo shut off the remaining equipment in their lab and left for the day.