Holly was relieved to get off her shift that night. Stupid Mud Men couldn't take care of themselves. The people didn't design weapons to kill, only to incapacitate. The Mud Men weapons were designed to destroy as much as possible. She slipped into her steaming slime pool and began to relax. Starting Monday she'd be on Recon again. Unfortunately her relaxation was interrupted by the phone, luckily she'd remembered to put the speaker on before she came in and set it up to answer right away.
"Hello, Holly."
"What do you want, Foaly?"
"I wanted to see if you were still interested in that idea of mine. To have you switch places with Trouble."
"Yeah. You got him and Vinyaya to agree?" She was skeptical.
"Yeah. Piece of carrot cake."
"Alright. Then I'm still interested. What's the plan?"
"Vinyaya appears in the Ops room at the start of your shift on Monday. She leaves the Ops room with your face, your voice, your nametag, and a nice green jumpsuit. You come into the Ops room about 10 minutes into the shift, Trouble's not great with being on time anyway so it'll be fine. When you leave you'll have his face, his voice, his nametag, and a spiffy black Retrieval Squad outfit."
"Don't they wear jumpsuits like ours?"
"Yeah. But Recon uses green. I don't see you point."
"Foaly, I don't know if anyone ever explained things to YOU, but I happen to know that in a form-fitting jumpsuit the female physique doesn't look quite the same as the male one."
"Then wear a sweater, if it's loose enough nobody's going to notice. Say, you're getting a cold and you need to wear it."
"What about Trouble?"
"He'll show up and when he leaves he'll have Vinyaya's face and voice. And he'll be wearing a very pretty dress."
Holly could just imagine Foaly's smirk. "Our favorite mud boy nearly got himself blown up today."
"What was he up to?"
"As far as I could tell, nothing. But this was an old score to settle. Hey, hack into Interpol for me. I coulda swore you said that Luc guy was locked up somewhere still. He's the one who set the bombs."
"I'm checking. Says he got out. I don't know if he was released or escaped though. Definitely wasn't bribery. All his money was counterfeit."
"Yeah. Listen, Foaly, I was kinda in the middle of something when you called. I've got to go. Sounds like the plan is good."
"Alright. What're you in the middle of? Didn't you only just get home a little while before I called you?"
"Yes, and I'm in the middle of my bath!" Her phone had voice command installed in it and she snapped, "Disconnect!" and the line went dead.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Early Monday morning Foaly got a call he wasn't expecting.
A hoarse voice said, "Foaly? I can't come in this morning. You've got to call the switch off."
"Trouble? Is that you?"
"Yes."
"It doesn't sound like you."
"Of course it doesn't! I'm sick. I can't come to work today so you've got to call the switch off."
"I can't do that this late in the game, Troubs. Let me put Holly on the line with us." He dialed. "Holly?"
"Yes. What is it? My alarm isn't going to go off for another half an hour!"
"Trouble is sick."
"So? Just have Vinyaya call that she's sick and won't be in this morning," replied a groggy and somewhat cranky Holly. She was not a morning person.
"But I wanted to make Trouble wear a dress!"
Holly could just imagine Foaly's pout. "Life's tough, horse, get a helmet. Call Vinyaya, I know you can hack into the files and get her home number. Everything else goes as planned."
"But-" protested Foaly.
"No let's reschedule," Trouble said weakly.
"NO rescheduling. Call Vinyaya, everything else goes as planned." Holly slammed down the receiver and went back to sleep.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When Holly reached the Police Plaza, she was careful not to be seen; after all, as far as everyone else was concerned she'd arrived ten minutes ago. She reached the Ops Room without sighting a soul.
"Let me in, Foaly." The door opened immediately and she slipped inside. "Everything going according to plan?"
"Yeah. I really wanted to put Trouble in a dress!" He pouted.
"Life's tough, get a helmet. Did you bring me a sweatshirt?"
"Yeah. I got one from Trouble's college fraternity."
"Good, I'll just say I was feeling nostalgic." She noticed a small booth set up in a corner. "Isn't that one of the portable blackout shelters? For fairies that could be caught up on the surface during the light in an emergency?"
"Yes. But today it's your dressing room." Foaly tossed her a black Retrieval uniform with Trouble's nametag (or a copy of it that Foaly had made) and a dark sweatshirt with the name of what had to have been Trouble's college fraternity on it. "Go on."
Holly entered the little room and turned on a glow cube for some light; with the door shut none of the light from the Ops booth got into the shelter. She got dressed. When she came out she secured her mask (which was waiting on the table) and with Foaly's instructions attached and activated the voice modifier. Colored contacts turned her eyes a dark brown. She looked at herself in the mirror. Then frowned. "Foaly, what color hair does Trouble have?" her voice was identical to Lieutenant Colonel Kelp's.
"Brown. Why?"
"Because today he has auburn!"
"Oh."
"What are we going to do? What did you do with Vinyaya to make it look like she had an auburn crew cut instead of that long dark hair?"
"Skull cap and a wig. I s'pose I can find some stuff to put in your hair to darken it."
"Only temporarily!" she warned.
"Yeah, yeah." He went searching until he found whatever he was looking for and applied it in Holly's hair. When she looked in the mirror she was sure that Trouble's own brother wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Which was a good thing because Grub Kelp was probably on duty today too.
"It's great."
"You and Vinyaya are only working 'til the noon shift, right?"
"Yeah."
"So come back here when you get off work."
"I will."
"And don't forget, today you're answering to the name Trouble, Lieutenant Colonel Kelp, or Kelp. Not Holly Short."
"I know, I know. I'm late enough already."
"Best of luck."
Holly didn't respond, instead she walked out of the Ops booth and through the rest of the Police Plaza to the room where the on-duty officers were. She entered and saw the men give her friendly greetings,
"Trouble!"
"Hey, lookee here, the Colonel is late, again."
"Yeah, yeah," grunted Holly. So far, so good.
"Where've you been?"
"Talking to the wise-crack horse. Wanted to use me as a test-dummy," said Holly.
"Well you've got the brain of one," said Chix Verbil.
A large gnome, sitting in the corner asked, "What'd he want you to test this time?"
"Something that temporarily drains a fairy's powers. Told him I wasn't crazy enough for that and that maybe they should get a sprite for the job." All the guys laughed. This was fun, she could make fun of Chix; and for once she could be in the same room as him without his hitting on her.
Chix scowled, "All you elfs are just jealous cuz you can't fly."
"Neither can you, Private," said Holly, enjoying the opportunity to point out how much of a higher rank she was. Technically of course this was Trouble's rank, but for the moment she was Trouble. Besides, even as a Captain she outranked this sprite.
"I've got wings!" he said defensively. Most fairies didn't have wings; sprites were one of the few species that did. Any other fairy had to use mechanical wings.
"Yeah, but I know the story about how you got shot. It was because Short had to kick you out of that cham pod 'cause you were hitting on her with some stupid pick-up lines."
"How'd you know? Since when d'you care anyhow?"
Uh-oh, this was getting into dangerous territory. " 'Cause, Private, I know everything. Holly and me don't keep secrets. She can't stand you. At least I got to date her, which is more than you can say." It felt SO good to be telling off this conceited sprite.
Unfortunately it was just at that moment that Vinyaya, who of course looked just like Holly, happened to walk in with a cup of tea.
"Short, you don't drink tea," said one of the officers, looking at her cup.
"I drink this every morning," she said.
"No," said the real Holly, "every morning you drink coffee with two sugars and one cream. You never drink tea."
"How would you know what I drink or don't drink?" she retorted.
Holly sighed internally, a sharp retort like that was exactly something she would say. Did Vinyaya not know that she was talking to the real Holly?
Chix Verbil seemed to sense something was wrong and took a chance, "Hey, Holly, what d'you thinka me?"
"I think you're irresponsible but a good person, I guess." Vinyaya knew that Chix had lost the use of his wings getting shot while on stake- out duty but she didn't know the particulars of it.
Holly wanted to bang her head against the wall. That was the WRONG ANSWER. If only she could get Vinyaya away for a moment and talk to her. . . "Short, Root wanted me to take you to his office. Said it was important."
"I can go by myself, I know where his office is," answered Vinyaya coolly.
"But he wanted to see me too, come on." Holly grabbed Vinyaya's arm and all but dragged her to the door.
Vinyaya pounded on Holly's arm. "Let go! You can't treat me like this."
When they were outside the room of officers Holly whispered, "I know who you are, Councilwoman."
Her eyes widened. "How? That centaur wasn't supposed to tell. . ."
"Of course I know. I'm Holly, the real Holly. And you were seriously messing things up for me in there!" she growled.
"How do you mean?"
"I absolutely never drink tea. Coffee with two sugars and a cream. And I do not think Chix Verbil is a good person. He's filth, and he doesn't stop hitting on me." She glared at the woman who looked like her.
"But he wouldn't do that unless he thought you were encouraging him."
"Wanna bet? Look, why don't you try NOT encouraging him and see how he takes it."
"Alright, I will. I'm sure he'll back off."
"Not likely. But don't let him sucker you into a date because when we get off this shift at lunch I'm becoming myself again."
"All right."
"And if you get called out on a mission, don't do anything to make me lose my job." Holly turned to go back to the room where the other officers that were on-duty were getting their morning coffee and in general delaying getting to their tasks.
"Where are you going? I thought you said Julius wanted to see us?"
"That was a lie to get us out of there so I could talk to you."
"Oh."
"And don't call him Julius or you'll get me in trouble."
"I was already in trouble for being late today. It was only by 2 minutes! It was because Foaly couldn't find the hazel lenses for me. Of course I couldn't tell Julius that, so I had to say my alarm didn't go off. Why did he bother me about 2 minutes? Nobody said a word to you and your were late by 15!"
"Try going through that sort of thing on a day by day basis. It's because Captain Holly Short, today that happens to be you instead of me, is the test case for Recon. It's first female officer. Lot's of hopes and dreams of future female reconnaissance officers riding on whether I can match and beat the standards of all the guys. I'm doing a pretty good job so far except when special circumstances come into play. Like those Fowl cases."
Vinyaya stood, dumb.
Holly snorted, maybe something good would come from today. Just maybe she could get Vinyaya to understand just everything that went on in the daily life of Holly Short. "Don't forget to make up a good cover story about Root." Rather than going back to the coffee room she went to the room where the Retrieval squad was supposed to be on alert, awaiting to be called on at a moment's need. Only another officer or two was there. Holly picked up a magazine and began to read.