Here you go everyone! Seven pages. jeez. is it worth it? You tell me
because there is something called a REVIEW BUTTON!
Oh yeah and apparently there's going to be a fourth book YAYNESS!
*
Chapter Nine: Bloodshed
The gathering at Tara was uneventful. Holly sedated the cousins and Artemis so they wouldn't be hysteric in the chutes (smart move), and then bumped shuttle B12 off the flight list so they would have their own pod.
The Retrieval boys opted to wait for the next flare, so Holly fit the four Mud People into the craft and squeezed into the pilot seat. Alison's drugged head lolled against her.
After strapping in the quartet, Holly opened the stabilization fins early. The 450 lbs of extra weight in the form of three teenagers and a young woman was definitely going to make this ride interesting.
"The joys of Recon," she muttered, adjusting pod temperature.
*
When Alison, Artemis, Jennifer, and Tessa woke up in the Ops Booth, the first three faces they saw were Root's, Holly's, and Foaly's.
The commander jumped right into it. "Okay, you four. Start talking."
"Julius," the centaur reprimanded. "Show a little respect for the Mud Quartet."
Jennie was still a little sleepy. Waking up to bulging, red commander features wasn't helping her attitude. "Mud Quartet?" she snapped irritably. "I don't think so. We do have names."
Artemis's eyes flickered to Holly, gloom in their dark depths. "I do recall saying something along the same lines, once," he murmured, voice forcefully devoid of emotion.
She grimaced at him. "Mud Boy, don't you dare toy with me right now. I am well on my way to being dropped from Recon and to have my least favorite human playing word games with the past is just going to fuel my temper."
The mastermind arched a superior brow. "I suspect a bluff and have since you told me on the way here," he challenged. "Commander Root has no lease to revoke your badge."
"Don't I?" Root growled. "I believe you are not the one to decide that. Holly has endangered the People once again."
"Sir!" Hazel eyes flashed defiance.
Artemis regretted setting the fight in motion. He tried to make amends with a late apology. " 'I' have endangered the People once again, Commander! Holly is partially answerable, if that."
Root's fingers beat a tattoo on his laser pistol. "How would you have us punish -you-, Artemis? Cut off your contact with the fairies, I suppose. Maybe we could mind wipe you while you're still in reach. Maybe, because you are all such severe liabilities, we could kill you, or throw you in Howler's Peak and wipe your parents. But that would be - what is that quaint phrase Mud People use? - 'inhumane'. So. Our choices: metaphorically cripple those who put us in this danger."
Alison sucked in her breath at the word "cripple".
"Holly's badge will be revoked after three disastrous partnerships with you: the abduction, the Cube, and now this. The cousins wiped if we fail, possibly even in chance of success."
Artemis bristled visibly and opened his mouth to defend the girls and Short. Root held up a hand and went on.
"But you, Fowl? You forbid us to enter your home and protect the Lower Elements from your monstrous nature by erasing your memory. We cannot kill you, although our life debt has been repaid thrice over. And you keep finding ways to endanger us."
"This was an accident!" protested Artemis.
"It's always an accident with you," Root pointed out. "And look where we are."
"I don't understand," said Jennie plaintively. "We didn't hurt anybody, right?"
"Do you want the truth?" The commander's biting tone seemed to slice the air.
The girl was undaunted. "I know the truth. This Kab- Kabie- Kaboy person worked off our files, right? So she didn't even learn how from us. She hacked someone's computer."
All eyes went to Foaly. He tried a smile.
"Is she telling the truth?" Holly demanded, grasping at the straws of hope.
"Unfortunately, yes. Opal Kaboi, according to these recent photographic blueprints, has a dimensional hideout with access to a computer." Foaly waved a wafer-thin plastic sheet.
"But how could she have your files?" Root asked, voice dangerously calm.
Sighing, the centaur confessed, "As soon as I found out she could access them, I changed my data code. It was an entire day too late. Downloading photographic blueprints can take up to 24 hours."
"Excuse me," Alison interrupted, "but - 'photographic blueprints'?"
"Ally took a photography class in art," Jennie informed Artemis in an undertone. "If she doesn't recognize this, it must be all fairy tech."
"Of course it is," replied the mastermind, loudly enough that everybody turned to him. "Foaly never stoops to use human sources unless it's a crisis. Besides, these blueprints can capture all structures in the building."
Foaly took up where the boy left off. "Which includes everything from mold to fairies. They're very exact and can do imagery to a 1/400th scale."
"Big magic, then," breathed Alison.
"Now - this," the centaur bragged, handing her a paper, "is the entire Kaboi Labs hacked and printed in color codes. Basically photographic blueprints capture living molecules. Red equals large life. Pink equals plant matter and small mammals, et cetera. Just looking at it you can tell how much trouble we're in."
Every person in the room crowded behind the young woman to look. Printed, as Foaly had said, in 1/400th scale, the blueprints showed some nests of money spiders and large patches of mold in the east rooms. But crimson covered most of the paper.
Even Root, not much of a scientist, could calculate the amount of enemies in there. "That's about one hundred thousand orcs," he said, going uncharacteristically pale.
"We'll never withstand them!"
"Not just Orcs," Tessa commented, Lord of the Rings expertise kicking in as she stared at the available offside photo. "Those are Uruk Hai."
"Squads of midget elves against an army of demonic, genetically enhanced, giant monsters," Jennie agreed, coming to stand at her shoulder. "It does not look good."
*
(FLASHBACK)
Opal Kaboi examined her army with wide eyes. They did not dare to disobey her anymore, not after she had buzzed the one who was apparently their captain.
"Who was your former commander?" she questioned a tall, muscular Uruk Hai.
"Saruman," he spat through mutilated fangs.
"Who do you serve now?"
Iodine eyes narrowed in hatred. "Kaboi."
She giggled, clapping her hands together, and went onwards through the lab, leaving her dimensional hideout in plain view. A fatal mistake, as it turned out.
But at that moment, Kaboi was too busy pushing through her minions. At last, tired of their slime, she flew, skimming their marked heads. This only further impressed her army, and they crowded around to listen when she found what she was looking for - a bust of Frond that reached above their heads.
Seated on the marble head, she layered her voice with the mesmer:
"I believe that this - Saruman - will not mind a detour of his Uruk Hai. It is only more lands conquered under his name."
Stamp, stamp, stamp went the iron-spiked boots on the lab floor as they raised their weapons in approval.
Opal giggled again. World dominators were so easy to corrupt. "However, owing to my awe of your fighting skill, when I return you to your master I will promote several of you to my personal guard. See if you can win my favor."
"Kaboi!" roared the orcs, completely under the spell. "Kaboi! Kaboi!"
*
"I don't get it, though," Jennie went on, staring at the blueprints. "Where in the books could Opal get this big an army?"
"Does it matter?" Root was red in the face.
"Yes," Tessa told him. "It all depends. We could have mega-evil-white- wizard storming after his army in here. We could have an army of Elves and Men following in the Last Battle. Or, we could quite suddenly have a Balrog running after people. Or we could have Moria cave trolls killing anything in their way, friend or foe."
"We've dealt with trolls," Holly grinned. "Fanged ones."
Alison had a vision of a fanged Moria monster and blanched.
Tessa tapped the paper. "But these are Uruk Hai, Jennie. Wherever the portal is, it's going to be somewhere on the way to Helm's Deep."
Jennie grabbed her. "Tessa! We could find it and go through to the fortress. Elves and the Rohirrim! They would help us!"
The girl hesitated. "Maybe. But they have enough to worry about getting ready for battle. Unless we had a time stop. . ."
Foaly did a double take. "Woah. You want me to set up a time stop in another world? No can do, ladies. I could blow the place up."
Artemis, who had been listening, made the decision. "Our best bet is to open our own portal."
"With what?" said Holly. "I'm not exactly unconscious, and nobody else has any ties."
At the word "ties", Tessa sat up, clutching at something that lay hidden beneath her shirt. She stared at Artemis wide-eyed.
*
(FLASHBACK)
Saruman's brow creased as he stepped onto the black balcony, staring out after his Uruk Hai. Where a river of armored monsters had been only hours before, there was no sign of them. How quickly had they crossed the Edenwaith?
He focused on a patch of shimmering silver midway across the grass. It was in the shape of a window. As he watched, something only visible in the circle brushed against it, and a pikestaff stuck through before being pulled back. What on earth. . .
His attention was drawn from the plains as the trees ringing Orthanc shifted. Leafy figures emerged, glaring with boiling hatred across the wasteland.
The Ents. . .
Surely not.
He was a wizard, dammit!
Ents didn't openly attack a wizard with an army of 100,000. . .
. . . that he had just sent out to attack Helm's Deep. . .
. . . that had mysteriously disappeared. . .
Saruman paled to match his robes as he stared at the advancing tree herders, then cast a final glance at the patch of silver. The pikestaff had vanished.
With a tremulous whimper, the wizard backed away and sat down in his soon- to-be-ripped-apart tower, and began to cry.
*
Tessa, who had been silent for the last fifteen minutes, now drew her vial out of her shirt and walked over to the captain. Holly moved away from her.
"What are you doing?" she demanded loudly.
"I have an idea."
Unscrewing the lid, the girl looked at Artemis, who was the only one watching her with comprehension. "What do I do? For the structure?"
"Trace a window in the air, I believe." He handed her a palm dagger.
Foaly suddenly caught on and started from his chair, moving towards the elf
protectively. Holly's eyes narrowed as she surveyed the weapon. "What's that for?"
"This might hurt a little. . ." Tessa slid the blade out from its notch as she dipped her fingers in the hobbit blood. Before the red could drip from her fingers, she carved a gash in the captain's leg.
The elf gasped with surprise and pain, but quieted as the girl put her hand on the blue sparks that flickered to the wound. "Let me guess," the captain breathed. "Wish?"
"Exactly."
Bloody fingers traced a circle in the air. Holly offered some advice at the same moment Tessa spoke.
"What we need is more elves-"
"I wish for aid-"
The sudden rush of blue magic nearly blinded them. With a last horrified breath, the captain passed out as she was drained. Where the cousin had drawn in the air, a ring of cerulean fire rotated.
Artemis, Alison, Jennie, Foaly, and Root fell completely silent. Tessa's crimson fingers trickled, a solitary drip falling to the floor. As the scarlet spattered the plasma tiles, the window cleared.
Big blue eyes stared into the girl's, and Frodo Baggins hesitantly stepped into the room.
The blood summons had opened their own portal.
*
o.O ooooh funfunfun! Cliffhanger! ^_^
Oh yeah and apparently there's going to be a fourth book YAYNESS!
*
Chapter Nine: Bloodshed
The gathering at Tara was uneventful. Holly sedated the cousins and Artemis so they wouldn't be hysteric in the chutes (smart move), and then bumped shuttle B12 off the flight list so they would have their own pod.
The Retrieval boys opted to wait for the next flare, so Holly fit the four Mud People into the craft and squeezed into the pilot seat. Alison's drugged head lolled against her.
After strapping in the quartet, Holly opened the stabilization fins early. The 450 lbs of extra weight in the form of three teenagers and a young woman was definitely going to make this ride interesting.
"The joys of Recon," she muttered, adjusting pod temperature.
*
When Alison, Artemis, Jennifer, and Tessa woke up in the Ops Booth, the first three faces they saw were Root's, Holly's, and Foaly's.
The commander jumped right into it. "Okay, you four. Start talking."
"Julius," the centaur reprimanded. "Show a little respect for the Mud Quartet."
Jennie was still a little sleepy. Waking up to bulging, red commander features wasn't helping her attitude. "Mud Quartet?" she snapped irritably. "I don't think so. We do have names."
Artemis's eyes flickered to Holly, gloom in their dark depths. "I do recall saying something along the same lines, once," he murmured, voice forcefully devoid of emotion.
She grimaced at him. "Mud Boy, don't you dare toy with me right now. I am well on my way to being dropped from Recon and to have my least favorite human playing word games with the past is just going to fuel my temper."
The mastermind arched a superior brow. "I suspect a bluff and have since you told me on the way here," he challenged. "Commander Root has no lease to revoke your badge."
"Don't I?" Root growled. "I believe you are not the one to decide that. Holly has endangered the People once again."
"Sir!" Hazel eyes flashed defiance.
Artemis regretted setting the fight in motion. He tried to make amends with a late apology. " 'I' have endangered the People once again, Commander! Holly is partially answerable, if that."
Root's fingers beat a tattoo on his laser pistol. "How would you have us punish -you-, Artemis? Cut off your contact with the fairies, I suppose. Maybe we could mind wipe you while you're still in reach. Maybe, because you are all such severe liabilities, we could kill you, or throw you in Howler's Peak and wipe your parents. But that would be - what is that quaint phrase Mud People use? - 'inhumane'. So. Our choices: metaphorically cripple those who put us in this danger."
Alison sucked in her breath at the word "cripple".
"Holly's badge will be revoked after three disastrous partnerships with you: the abduction, the Cube, and now this. The cousins wiped if we fail, possibly even in chance of success."
Artemis bristled visibly and opened his mouth to defend the girls and Short. Root held up a hand and went on.
"But you, Fowl? You forbid us to enter your home and protect the Lower Elements from your monstrous nature by erasing your memory. We cannot kill you, although our life debt has been repaid thrice over. And you keep finding ways to endanger us."
"This was an accident!" protested Artemis.
"It's always an accident with you," Root pointed out. "And look where we are."
"I don't understand," said Jennie plaintively. "We didn't hurt anybody, right?"
"Do you want the truth?" The commander's biting tone seemed to slice the air.
The girl was undaunted. "I know the truth. This Kab- Kabie- Kaboy person worked off our files, right? So she didn't even learn how from us. She hacked someone's computer."
All eyes went to Foaly. He tried a smile.
"Is she telling the truth?" Holly demanded, grasping at the straws of hope.
"Unfortunately, yes. Opal Kaboi, according to these recent photographic blueprints, has a dimensional hideout with access to a computer." Foaly waved a wafer-thin plastic sheet.
"But how could she have your files?" Root asked, voice dangerously calm.
Sighing, the centaur confessed, "As soon as I found out she could access them, I changed my data code. It was an entire day too late. Downloading photographic blueprints can take up to 24 hours."
"Excuse me," Alison interrupted, "but - 'photographic blueprints'?"
"Ally took a photography class in art," Jennie informed Artemis in an undertone. "If she doesn't recognize this, it must be all fairy tech."
"Of course it is," replied the mastermind, loudly enough that everybody turned to him. "Foaly never stoops to use human sources unless it's a crisis. Besides, these blueprints can capture all structures in the building."
Foaly took up where the boy left off. "Which includes everything from mold to fairies. They're very exact and can do imagery to a 1/400th scale."
"Big magic, then," breathed Alison.
"Now - this," the centaur bragged, handing her a paper, "is the entire Kaboi Labs hacked and printed in color codes. Basically photographic blueprints capture living molecules. Red equals large life. Pink equals plant matter and small mammals, et cetera. Just looking at it you can tell how much trouble we're in."
Every person in the room crowded behind the young woman to look. Printed, as Foaly had said, in 1/400th scale, the blueprints showed some nests of money spiders and large patches of mold in the east rooms. But crimson covered most of the paper.
Even Root, not much of a scientist, could calculate the amount of enemies in there. "That's about one hundred thousand orcs," he said, going uncharacteristically pale.
"We'll never withstand them!"
"Not just Orcs," Tessa commented, Lord of the Rings expertise kicking in as she stared at the available offside photo. "Those are Uruk Hai."
"Squads of midget elves against an army of demonic, genetically enhanced, giant monsters," Jennie agreed, coming to stand at her shoulder. "It does not look good."
*
(FLASHBACK)
Opal Kaboi examined her army with wide eyes. They did not dare to disobey her anymore, not after she had buzzed the one who was apparently their captain.
"Who was your former commander?" she questioned a tall, muscular Uruk Hai.
"Saruman," he spat through mutilated fangs.
"Who do you serve now?"
Iodine eyes narrowed in hatred. "Kaboi."
She giggled, clapping her hands together, and went onwards through the lab, leaving her dimensional hideout in plain view. A fatal mistake, as it turned out.
But at that moment, Kaboi was too busy pushing through her minions. At last, tired of their slime, she flew, skimming their marked heads. This only further impressed her army, and they crowded around to listen when she found what she was looking for - a bust of Frond that reached above their heads.
Seated on the marble head, she layered her voice with the mesmer:
"I believe that this - Saruman - will not mind a detour of his Uruk Hai. It is only more lands conquered under his name."
Stamp, stamp, stamp went the iron-spiked boots on the lab floor as they raised their weapons in approval.
Opal giggled again. World dominators were so easy to corrupt. "However, owing to my awe of your fighting skill, when I return you to your master I will promote several of you to my personal guard. See if you can win my favor."
"Kaboi!" roared the orcs, completely under the spell. "Kaboi! Kaboi!"
*
"I don't get it, though," Jennie went on, staring at the blueprints. "Where in the books could Opal get this big an army?"
"Does it matter?" Root was red in the face.
"Yes," Tessa told him. "It all depends. We could have mega-evil-white- wizard storming after his army in here. We could have an army of Elves and Men following in the Last Battle. Or, we could quite suddenly have a Balrog running after people. Or we could have Moria cave trolls killing anything in their way, friend or foe."
"We've dealt with trolls," Holly grinned. "Fanged ones."
Alison had a vision of a fanged Moria monster and blanched.
Tessa tapped the paper. "But these are Uruk Hai, Jennie. Wherever the portal is, it's going to be somewhere on the way to Helm's Deep."
Jennie grabbed her. "Tessa! We could find it and go through to the fortress. Elves and the Rohirrim! They would help us!"
The girl hesitated. "Maybe. But they have enough to worry about getting ready for battle. Unless we had a time stop. . ."
Foaly did a double take. "Woah. You want me to set up a time stop in another world? No can do, ladies. I could blow the place up."
Artemis, who had been listening, made the decision. "Our best bet is to open our own portal."
"With what?" said Holly. "I'm not exactly unconscious, and nobody else has any ties."
At the word "ties", Tessa sat up, clutching at something that lay hidden beneath her shirt. She stared at Artemis wide-eyed.
*
(FLASHBACK)
Saruman's brow creased as he stepped onto the black balcony, staring out after his Uruk Hai. Where a river of armored monsters had been only hours before, there was no sign of them. How quickly had they crossed the Edenwaith?
He focused on a patch of shimmering silver midway across the grass. It was in the shape of a window. As he watched, something only visible in the circle brushed against it, and a pikestaff stuck through before being pulled back. What on earth. . .
His attention was drawn from the plains as the trees ringing Orthanc shifted. Leafy figures emerged, glaring with boiling hatred across the wasteland.
The Ents. . .
Surely not.
He was a wizard, dammit!
Ents didn't openly attack a wizard with an army of 100,000. . .
. . . that he had just sent out to attack Helm's Deep. . .
. . . that had mysteriously disappeared. . .
Saruman paled to match his robes as he stared at the advancing tree herders, then cast a final glance at the patch of silver. The pikestaff had vanished.
With a tremulous whimper, the wizard backed away and sat down in his soon- to-be-ripped-apart tower, and began to cry.
*
Tessa, who had been silent for the last fifteen minutes, now drew her vial out of her shirt and walked over to the captain. Holly moved away from her.
"What are you doing?" she demanded loudly.
"I have an idea."
Unscrewing the lid, the girl looked at Artemis, who was the only one watching her with comprehension. "What do I do? For the structure?"
"Trace a window in the air, I believe." He handed her a palm dagger.
Foaly suddenly caught on and started from his chair, moving towards the elf
protectively. Holly's eyes narrowed as she surveyed the weapon. "What's that for?"
"This might hurt a little. . ." Tessa slid the blade out from its notch as she dipped her fingers in the hobbit blood. Before the red could drip from her fingers, she carved a gash in the captain's leg.
The elf gasped with surprise and pain, but quieted as the girl put her hand on the blue sparks that flickered to the wound. "Let me guess," the captain breathed. "Wish?"
"Exactly."
Bloody fingers traced a circle in the air. Holly offered some advice at the same moment Tessa spoke.
"What we need is more elves-"
"I wish for aid-"
The sudden rush of blue magic nearly blinded them. With a last horrified breath, the captain passed out as she was drained. Where the cousin had drawn in the air, a ring of cerulean fire rotated.
Artemis, Alison, Jennie, Foaly, and Root fell completely silent. Tessa's crimson fingers trickled, a solitary drip falling to the floor. As the scarlet spattered the plasma tiles, the window cleared.
Big blue eyes stared into the girl's, and Frodo Baggins hesitantly stepped into the room.
The blood summons had opened their own portal.
*
o.O ooooh funfunfun! Cliffhanger! ^_^