Chapter 24 …And Entering
Trouble and Juliet followed Mulch through the dwarf's tunnel, being very careful to breathe through their mouths and watch where they set their hands. Not soon enough for Juliet (who didn't have a helmet with filtered air to breathe), they came up to the end and popped out into a closet.
A closet full of reams of paper, old, outdated keyboards, various wires and plugs, and of course, enough CD-Rs to back up the Library of Congress.
Juliet swung out of the tunnel and straightened. "My legs are so cramped." Trouble began to follow the girl out of the hole when he stopped.
"D'Arvit." he whispered, a look of helpless horror crossing his face. He hunkered back into the tunnel. Mulch frowned at his apparent reluctance to enter, then nodded knowingly.
"Ahh! You need an invite, don't you?" Trouble nodded back dully. "A shame, really. Even with your magic, you won't be much help if you're not in the building." The elf fired Mulch a dirty look.
"But, wouldn't the foundation be part of a human dwelling?" Juliet asked. "It is, technically."
"Well, maybe, but…" Trouble didn't seem too eager to step into the closet. Juliet sighed.
"We'll just try it, okay?" she asked. "If you haven't had any problems yet, I really think you've probably already been invited in." After a moment, Trouble nodded firmly and crawled out. Juliet and Mulch waited anxiously for any sign of discomfort. They both sighed with relief when Trouble looked up with a feral smile on his face.
"Shall we go?"
Mulch laughed quietly and a little nervously. "Yes. Let's go and rescue your dear brother, so we can get out of here." The dwarf stepped forward and pulled on the door handle.
It was locked.
"Argh!" Mulch tugged harder, but it still wouldn't open. Juliet frowned.
"What sort of paranoid idiot would lock a supplies closet?" she muttered. "Don't pull so hard, you'll lose your-"
Mulch gave a quiet yelp as he yanked too hard and fell backwards. He stabilized himself before landing on the CD-R pile by grabbing onto a homemade overhead shelf.
"-grip." Juliet finished. She shook her head sadly. "That was close, dwarf. Another stunt like that and we're liable to get caught."
"Hey, I saved myself with this shelf, didn't I?" Mulch was indignant. "I made no noise whatsoever!" In the dwarf's fury, he pressed a little too hard on the shelf.
Now, Kegel was many things, but a carpenter wasn't one of them.
The rickety shelf collapsed, sending computer parts raining upon Mulch. He yelped again as he was buried under the equipment. One keyboard clipped the unsteady CD-R stack and sent 116 disks scattering all over the floor.
"Urg." Mulch whimpered from underneath his electronic encasement. Trouble gave the pile a disgusted glare.
"How did you give Commander Root so much trouble when you're this clumsy?" he snapped.
"Out of practice." was the snide reply.
Trouble started to continue berating Mulch, but stopped as he heard footsteps. "D'Arvit. Kegel's coming!" he hissed, immediately shielding. "Juliet, remember, you're alone."
"Yeah. I'm not here." Mulch said, struggling out from his mess and diving behind another pile of disks. Leaving Juliet with no place to hide.
"Thanks, boys." she snarled, standing up in the narrow confines of the closet. As the doorknob started to turn, she threw all of her weight against the door. The door swung open, and the person behind it gave a muffled oof as the door crashed into his chest. Juliet pivoted out of the closet and into the open space of the lab.
A boring little man with a wrinkled lab coat stared at Juliet, the only one he could see. His eyes, already overlarge behind his glasses, bugged out even more.
"How did you get in my closet?" he asked dumbly.
"Magic." Juliet replied, and kicked him in the teeth.
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Defea's door opened onto a large spacious entry hall. A deserted hall with the empty feeling of disuse. The team moved cautiously into a colorful dining room. All of the colors seemed overly bright and clashed with each other, creating a riot of style and hue that left the viewer with a headache after thirty seconds.
"I told her she needed to redecorate." Foaly muttered. The other three ignored him.
Hanging down from the ceiling were colorful shards of glass, twinkling cheerfully and very distractingly. Root buzzed through the hangings, growling as he swerved to avoid them.
"What are these for?" Holly asked, touching one as she flew past, going a little slower than the commander. Root shrugged, and the movement caused him to clip one of the shards. Suddenly the wing sparked and started to smoke. That side then shut off completely, sending Root into a spiral.
"Gack!" A little fancy footwork saved him from landing on his face, but the elf hit the ground hard. He wrenched his wings off, cursing loudly.
Holly immediately touched down beside him, pulling her wings off with a sigh of disgust. "Sir, with those hangings, we can't fly. They seem to be made specifically to disrupt the delicate technology in the systems."
"I noticed." Root snapped as he held up the fried part.
Foaly clapped both hands to his face, mouth dropping in horror. "Ahh!! My wings!"
The centaur went to frantically rip the equipment out of Root's hand when a voice stopped him. "Oh, it's about time you got here. I didn't think you were going to show."
Commander Root's head swiveled as he tried to pinpoint the location of the voice. "Defea, give it up and release the girl. You've got nowhere to go." he spoke loudly. And dramatically. Artemis sighed.
"Actually Commander, I don't want to go anywhere. Not when you're guests in my house. That would be rude. I have to make you feel welcome." With that, the voice fell silent.
"You know, that sounded ominous to me, sir." Holly said, keeping her head moving, watching for danger.
"Yes. It did. Foaly?" Root asked, turning to the centaur. Whatever the centaur would have said was lost as three small black balls came rolling around from the next room.
"D'Arvit!" Holly snarled, reaching for her helmet release. Root saw her.
"What are you doing?!"
Then the balls exploded. They each released different blasts of light: infrared, UV, and visible. And they all screamed with static and white noise.
Root couldn't rip his helmet off fast enough, but was still blinded by the bright flash of visible light. As well as deafened by the noise.
As the balls burned out, the team slowly came back to normal. Holly rubbed her ears, blue sparks flickering, and Foaly immediately started to inspect the shattered technological remains. Artemis peered over his shoulder, and Root started bellowing.
"WHAT WERE THOSE?!?!"
Holly dropped her fried helmet on the floor, next to Root's fried wings. "They are specifically designed to disrupt-"
"Destroy." Foaly whimpered.
"-LEP equipment. That's how Defea got past me at Fowl Manor." Holly finished.
"Okay." Root said, calming a little. "Then what do we do when the next ones come?"
"Well, we're rapidly running out of LEP technology, so it shouldn't be much of a problem." Artemis muttered, gingerly examining Holly's smoking helmet.
"Foaly?" Root prompted. "You've been in this house before; where do we need to go?"
"Defea's lab is in the back portion of the house. The house is fitted into that horizontal crevice in the rocks, so it's built like an old fashioned human dugout. The back is the most secure spot." Foaly studied the path in front of him, then pointed. "It's that way."
The team moved into the hall, keeping an eye out for balls and other booby traps. Two rooms on opposite sides of the hall sported large computer locks.
"Now, would Defea keep Simone with her, or would she be in one of these rooms?" Holly asked, wandering over to look at one of the locks.
"Depends." Foaly said. "If Simone is as annoying as Artemis claims, she might really be tied up alone in one of these rooms so Defea wouldn't have to listen to her."
"Can we just blast the door open?" Holly asked.
Artemis moved to where Holly was and also studied the lock. "These locks cannot be physically broken, or they'll seal the doors shut. This requires something subtle."
"Fine." Root said. "You get that door. Foaly, you do this one. Captain, cover the Mud Boy."
Holly nodded and Artemis connected his laptop to the lock. He began typing furiously, and Holly couldn't help but watch as blinking numbers filled the screen. As she watched, some of the numbers stopped blinking.
"The lock has a password of 10 random numbers." Artemis explained softly, fingers flying. "The computer is trying out all the possible combinations of 10 numbers, trying to ascertain which number goes where."
"And how long is that going to take?" Holly asked, carefully watching the end of the hall.
With an electronic chime, the lock clicked open.
"Not long." Artemis said, snapping his laptop shut. On the other side of the hall, Foaly had managed to get that door open as well. Root nodded to Holly, and she moved to cover him as he kicked open the right-hand door.
It revealed a small sitting area, with couches especially designed for centaur proportions. It was quite empty.
And then a small bull troll appeared out of nowhere, screaming in rage.
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AN: Still no title yet. Sorry.
ASN: Thanks for all the reviews though. And this chapter is on time, and slightly longer.
AN: Be glad. Preview!!!
"Simone!" Holly said, stepping onto the dark floor. Sparks flew, and Holly jumped back into the hall.
"It's electrified. The floor is electrified." she snarled. "What kind of paranoid idiot electrifies the floor in their office?!"
The other three were silent, and Holly realized what she had just said. "No offense."