Disclaimer: Artemis Fowl is owned by Eoin Colifer but any new characters are mine...ALL mine MWHAHAHA. Sorry.
Authors Notes: Sorry bout the long wait but I've been traveling.. I dunno how many people I'm reaching with this but I hope you like it. As always Reviews would be great. I had a bunch on people Beta/Pre read for me and I'm REALLY thankful. These people are: Tonduil The Elf, animefanatic 0 7, and Kelaal. Thanks heaps, you may recognise bits and pieces of your suggestions in there 'cause I thought they were great. Anyone else who is desperate to get the next instalment of Old Habits before it gets posted just ask and you can pre-read...and if anyone wants to know the plot...just ask. Enjoy.
P.S. anyone know how to do italics...I dunno if it the ones on here will work but if they don't...help please?
The "beat" was boring as hell, nothing but disgruntled pedestrians. Whose sole purpose in life seemed to bother the hell out of you. Holly Short sighed as she listened to a (another?) complaint from an nauseatingly overweight gnome.
"Please fill out this complaint form and deliver it to LEP Police Plaza before moon-rise," she dutifully stated, pulling a hefty wad of paper from her belt pouch and holding it out where she 'thought' the gnomes' face was. Unfortunately, the gnome had turned around (how could she tell?) when she wasn't looking, and she ended up poking it in the back of the head.
Out came a steady string of curses and Holly sighed again, shutting out all outside influences and sinking deep into thought.
"Where did it all go wrong?" Holly wondered. "Adventures all the time, being above ground every other day, shooting at mudmen...and now THIS! Sometimes I wish that Artemis hadn't been mind wiped, just so I could keep having to hunting him down and have something to do"
"Not just for that either," whispered another part of her, almost missed in the cacophony of her thoughts, but she managed to catch it, and her eyes widened in surprise. She finally managed to wrench her mind from her reverie and turn her attention back to the street.
Thankfully, the gnome had gotten tired of trying to speak to her and waddled off somewhere. Her feet had brought her to the front of Police Plaza, a few meters in front of the new statue. It had been erected shortly after the public had found out that Artemis had been mind wiped and out of their lives forever. It was of an cowering Artemis surrounded by a team of flying LEP retrieval officers...all of them male obviously. Holly laughed the first time she saw it; as it was so unlike Artemis, it was funny. Anyone who had met Artemis knew that it was impossible for him to cower. It wasn't in his make up. Those glacier blue eyes were incapable of fear, except for when a friend was in danger... Butler, Juliet.…...herself. That was hard to admit, that a mudBOY was a friend...an equal...worthy of respect. The respect part admitted freely; Artemis was the only person to successfully part the People from their gold, so respect was almost DEMANDED...particularly so that he was never underestimated.
Holly willed her feet into motion. "It isn't like I've had NO adventures since Artemis had been 'wiped'. There was the Troll Migration for one...that was...interesting...but it wasn't the same without Artemis; she missed his snide comments in her ear when Root or Foaly tried to chew her out for one reason or another. Walking into LEP headquarters, she spied Foalys' Ops Booth. She spent many afternoons watching the "Artemis" Surveillance tapes. It was good to see that he hadn't reverted completely when he lost his memory. His little Eco Crusade was almost as interesting as watching prime time. She barely managed to stop herself from laughing when Root literally exploded after he seeing Artemis' little 'shield', scrambling a Retrieval team before realizing that it was only a partial memory. Foaly copped it really bad when it came out that a 16 yr old boy had topped his SafetyNet (c) with only a minor adjustment. . Holly did burst out laughing when she'd found out about that.
Holly was halfway towards her cubicle when she started noticing something was...off. firstly, an elf was hurtling through the building on a set of wings...backwards...screaming until he hit a wall with a audible crunch. Holly gave a little wince before moving on; after all, stranger things have happened. The next niggling was a bit more obvious. The lights in the building were...singing. She didn't really know how, (although later she had it explained to her by Foaly who used words so long that if one of the letters was a centimeter tall, they would be taller than her) but she was definite that they were. With a quick look around, she saw that others were hearing it too. The song shifted every few seconds but finally stopped on a popular song sung by the Toadstool Three. Holly took a few tentative steps towards her cubicle. By now, the lights had begun changing colour, and swivel chairs were becoming dangerous indeed. She gave up and walked towards the commanders office, meeting him coming out of it.
"Captain Short...just the person I wanted to see...come in, but watch the fan," Root said gruffly; his face quickly becoming a dark shade of crimson. In there already was Foaly, his large horse body pressed firmly to the ground, out of the reach of fan that looked like it was about to break the sound barrier.
"Artemis?" Holly asked, a familiar but unidentified warm feeling already spreading through her, leaving her knees weak.
~+~ "I really should speak to a doctor..." she thought 'This is happening more and more" ~+~
"Close. Pony, fill her in with the details...quickly though; we don't have time for a lecture[.]" Root yelled over the roar of the fan, which was now spinning so fast that Foaly secretly feared that it would implode and become a miniature black hole.
"Here's the deal," Foaly started, "We've got what you ~could~ call a computer virus," said "The reason it has infected every thing was it was the councils smart little idea to let a liiiittlle megalomaniac called Opal Koboi to run all of Haven from one mainfram-"
"Opal's behind this?" Holly interrupted. "And did you say ALL of Haven is affected?"
"Well no, for the first part, the little b-...witch is safely behind bars at a nice little jail somewhere,and as for the second part...you should just see for yourself." Foaly said, leaning over and pulling back a curtain. Outside, chaos reined. Holly saw pixies and elves being dragged along by rouge sets of wings. She could also see the lights at a intersection randomly changing every few moments, causing major traffic problems. Her view was suddenly cut off as the curtain was forcibly drawn close by an angry Commander Root.
"For Frond's sake, shouldn't you be moving on, Foaly?" he growled through clenched teeth.
Foaly picked up on the Commander's mood and quickly continued the briefing.
"Well um… yes...it seems...ahh another Mudperson is behind this recent threat...but it seems that the culprit is actually unaware that his little virus is causing havoc...because you see on the surface it is a clever little program tha-"
"How did it reach our system? And if it's a program that a mudman has written for something else, how come it's effecting us so differently?" Holly asked, watching as Foaly suddenly went awkward, and Commander Root's facial hue was a now a nice purple color, which was bad news for anyone in the same room as him.
"Well, DONKEY boy over here rigged up all of Haven to a hard-line on the surface just so he could watch some SHOW!" Root yelled,]\ his now purple face darkening to an evil shade of vermilion. Holly wondered it was possible to bleed through the skin. Foaly managed to somehow stand under Root's verbal assault and reply with a defiant expression and stammer out "Buffy is a great sho-" before Roots' glare threatened to sight him alight, already his fur was smoking.
"WHATever," Root muttered. "All that matters is that the pony over there got us into this mess and, as always, thought of a plan to save our skin...namely his."
"Ahh...yes...the reason the virus is affecting us this way is because the Haven OS (operating system) is programmed in Opal's own code, which only some mudmen system code corresponds with, and the remaining information led to what you can see outside..." Foaly explained.
"So why can't we fix it? Just reprogram the OS?" Holly asked, her mind already focused on the task ahead.
"Therein lies the problem…The virus updates itself constantly, and if we just cut the connection, the virus will update itself, using the processing capablilites of the computer it is currently in...and if it gets ahold of the HavenOS mainframe...there is no telling what will happen...and we just can't risk it. What we have to do is detonate a datacharge here, and at the source, simultaneously, to stop it...that's where you come in" Foaly continued.
"How are we going to get permission to enter the premises of the suspect?" asked Holly.
"The suspect is a one Justin Phelps, millionaire telecommunications entrepreneur, who is using the program to slowly leech funds from major banks," Root interjected. "W]\e managed to track down the location of the main computer before my computer started playing Pong against itself. It is located at his home on the east coast of England."
"So?" Holly asked, incredulously "We still need to get permission to enter his property!"
Root just stood there, smiled, and reached into his pocket for his ever-present cigar.
"This is the good part. He is hosting a youth Mensa Competion and we thought that we coul-" He was suddenly cut off by Holly.
"Artemis...," she said, breathlessly
"Correct...we bring our favorite little Mudboy back to speed, play a bit of the guilt game, maybe slap on some mesmer, and use him to get permission into this gathering of underage Nobel candidates. I'm sure he's up to it."
Holly just stood there nodding. She already knew that she was never going to use the mesmer on Artemis. All she could think of were those ice blue eyes. ~+~ "Artemis…" she thought "I'm going to see Artemis again...and not only that I get to bring him back to his 'real' life...bring him back to me"~+~ Her last thought was barely registered among the mass of plans and stratagem. At first, she thought she missed Artemis because of the adventures and fun they had, and she wanted him back so those times could continue...but now...this...little voice...she kept hearing confused her, and now she didn't know what to think. On one hand he was the biggest threat to fairy-kind for hundreds of years and a Mudboy to boot, On the other hand he had saved her life on several locations and made her laugh on many more...something she had seldom done since he left. She barely paid attention for the rest of the meeting and stumbled home, her mind in turmoil, unconsciously dodging demented appliances, and collapsed into bed. She tried to organize her thoughts but gave up and pushed them into a dark crevice in her mind to figured out later and fell into a deep sleep.