4. The Enchantress
A Little History
Now, Maria wasn't your average Irish, fun loving, hyperactive girl. For one, she went to St. John's school for young men and boys, which set her apart from the student body. To put it simply, it wasn't exactly a good or bad thing at all. Maria had been to almost every other private school in the country, so of course, her record was stained with several unusual happenings at each of the schools.
Maria was actually once found in the bathroom eating toilet paper, but telling the viewers that she was eating sautéed chicken. "Quite delicious," were her actual words. Many private schools were just not ready to accept such a... strange or impudent student such as Maria, so she was repeatedly kicked out of such schools.
The 13-year-old girl wasn't interested in much and had a very short attention span, causing her to poke fun at teachers. Like many other students, Maria's parents' interests lay in economics and business, as do most rich people.
Fowl Manor
Artemis was almost anxious to turn on his laptop, which was very uncharacteristic of the young fowl. As usual, the blue screen flickered and a window popped up, asking him for his user name and password, once he filled the information out, it was on to his desktop.
Soon enough, another small gray window surfaced, bearing the ever popular and awaited message, "You have mail!" with a small ring. Artemis clicked "OK" and an e-mail from Red Iris was ready and waiting.
Artemis (Not Arty :-)),
OK. Is next Friday alright? I have business to take care of anyways. See you.
-Red Iris.
Next Friday. Artemis still didn't know what she wanted. This was yet another unusual happening, since he always had backgrounds of the people whom he was dealing with. He was always excessivly careful. Always.
"Butler, have you found out anything about this Ms. Red Iris?"
"Yes. You will find the imformation on this disk," Butler handed Artemis the blue floppy disk and watched as young Master Fowl inserted the disk into the computer's A drive.
Open. Artemis clicked the little button, which appeared on his computer screen. There lay a short profile of Red Iris.
It seemed that Red Iris's real name was Sakuya Tomaguro. She was a mix of both Chinese and Japanese and just happened to be running Intrapace Industries on her own at the moment. Ms. Sakuya also had major funds, which surpassed the Fowls' own.
Sakuya was 13 years old and based on the profile, you really couldn't call her normal. It said that she had completed a Martial Arts school located in Xian China, which rivaled Madam Ko's. She had no need for a bodyguard, but hired 1 by name Spiral, who was known to be one of the elite professionals of the business.
Knowing this imformation put Artemis to ease instead of causing him to panic, as would a normal person. But the young Fowl was the least bit normal wasn't he?
"Thank you, Butler," Artemis said, as he began to rapidly type on his laptop. "This information may prove to be useful...Oh yes. Have you actually heard of that Marital Arts school that our Ms. Sakuya attended?"
"Yes actually. It is one of the greatest, however, the Xian School of Martial Arts teaches mostly defensive stances,"
"Oh,"
Recently, Artemis had taken a liking to instant messaging. It often proved to be amusing, but seldom rather useful. Still, it was refreshing to know that certain people could be reached by just a click and a few simple messages.
He signed on to his account: artfowl36, and checked to see of anyone of interest had also logged on. No one. This was suspected anyways, so it wasn't exactly dissapointing.
Suddenly, a new instant messanger window popped up, asking if Artemis would like to accept a message from "miSSy trOubLe". Curiousity had never killed a young boy on the computer, so he accepted the message.
Hey Artemis!!
Hello... May I ask who you are?
guess. :- )
........
fine then. I'll just have to tell you. it's maria.
Oh.
I'm bored.
Oh.
don't you have anything more interesting to say than that? just "Oh. Oh. Oh."
Nothing in particular. Why did you im me?
no reason. i told you already... i was just bored.
Oh.
GTG.
Bye.
Not exactly the person Artemis wanted to talk to at the moment, but it was still entertainment. Perhaps Red Iris/ Ms. Sakuya had instant messanger. No doubt she did. After all, a computer genius seldom didn't explore every nook and cranny of the vast hyperspace called the internet. Or at least try to.
Underground, LEP Headquarters Foaly's Office
Yet another alert. Foaly scrambled onto his chair and started swiveling around, furiously typing and pressing buttons on his high tech machines.
"FOALY!" a voice screamed over the intercom. Root 's fumming face appeared on the screen to the left of Foaly's. "I want to know what happened and how! Now! Don't just sit there! Get to it!"The face dissapeared, leaving Foaly to piece together what had just happened during his lunch break.
The centuared sighed. This is what you get when you take an extra 10 minutes on your lunch break, dissaster. In a few seconds Foaly had located the roots of the problem and pieced together Root's latest outburst. It appeared that a young Enchantress had escaped the Tithe Prison.
This Tithe Prison was more like a fortress, with guards near every cell and in every hallway. "No precautions are uneeded". That was the prison's motto. Only the most high class or most dangerous criminals amongst the People were sentenced to do time in Tithe. There was supposidly no escaping except dying. Some prisoners couldn't even die. They were immortal... It was the first escape in exactly 2356 years 45 days 7 hours and 46 seconds. (The People kept very accurate records on this prison)
The escape was of a young enchantress. Outlawed and wanted in over 100 countries, all throughout the world, she was considered to be true and pure evil. Now this enchantress was said to be the most beautiful living thing alive, and men who fell under her spell were doomed to die. They would follow the enchantress for life. Searching and searching, but never able to find her, dying a pitiful unfulfilled life.
It is also said that the enchantress only wore red. In all shades, but while casting her spell, it was always blood red. The wonderous color was often the last color that many men would see right before dying. That was how she made money. Taking different forms, all as beautiful as the last and making rich men fall in love with her. The enchantress would enchant men and then mysteriously vanish, and once the men were dead, she would claim their posessions as hers.
Foaly did some more research or digging with no avail. There wasn't even a picture. Nothing. No one had ever managed to take a picture or paint a painting of her. They had all perished. He also found out that this particular enchantress could take the form of any living being, therefore finding her true form was virtually impossible. No one even knew her age, and since she usually took young women's forms, they considered her as young.
"Root. Foaly here. No need to blow a fuse... It's Tithe Prison. A 'young' enchantress has broken out. No one really knows why because she was held in a top security chamber with guards everywhere. Besides, that place is virtually an indestructable fortress,"
"D'arvit," the beet colored commander swore. "Do you have any idea how long it took us to track that one down? Took over a year, that one did. OK. I want you to send a group of our best Recon officers. Fully trained and running hot. NOW!"
"But they're mostly men. They would be vulnerable to the enchantress' spell and I havn't yet developed anything to counteract the spell. It's old magic, almost as old as the book itself; enchantresses have been around for quite a while."
"Erm..." It was clear, that the commander hadn't the slightest idea what to do.
"I suggest hiring more women to become Recon officers,"
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT'LL TAKE TO TRAIN THEM? By that time, the enchantress'll be long gone! On some other planet no doubt!"
"I doubt she'd move to another planet...Just send the few women we have on the force, while I construct a device that will deflect the enchantress' spell. Meanwhile, we need to pinpoint her location and find her a rich mudman for bait. Simple and quite injenious isn't it"
"Get on it!"
A Little History
Now, Maria wasn't your average Irish, fun loving, hyperactive girl. For one, she went to St. John's school for young men and boys, which set her apart from the student body. To put it simply, it wasn't exactly a good or bad thing at all. Maria had been to almost every other private school in the country, so of course, her record was stained with several unusual happenings at each of the schools.
Maria was actually once found in the bathroom eating toilet paper, but telling the viewers that she was eating sautéed chicken. "Quite delicious," were her actual words. Many private schools were just not ready to accept such a... strange or impudent student such as Maria, so she was repeatedly kicked out of such schools.
The 13-year-old girl wasn't interested in much and had a very short attention span, causing her to poke fun at teachers. Like many other students, Maria's parents' interests lay in economics and business, as do most rich people.
Fowl Manor
Artemis was almost anxious to turn on his laptop, which was very uncharacteristic of the young fowl. As usual, the blue screen flickered and a window popped up, asking him for his user name and password, once he filled the information out, it was on to his desktop.
Soon enough, another small gray window surfaced, bearing the ever popular and awaited message, "You have mail!" with a small ring. Artemis clicked "OK" and an e-mail from Red Iris was ready and waiting.
Artemis (Not Arty :-)),
OK. Is next Friday alright? I have business to take care of anyways. See you.
-Red Iris.
Next Friday. Artemis still didn't know what she wanted. This was yet another unusual happening, since he always had backgrounds of the people whom he was dealing with. He was always excessivly careful. Always.
"Butler, have you found out anything about this Ms. Red Iris?"
"Yes. You will find the imformation on this disk," Butler handed Artemis the blue floppy disk and watched as young Master Fowl inserted the disk into the computer's A drive.
Open. Artemis clicked the little button, which appeared on his computer screen. There lay a short profile of Red Iris.
It seemed that Red Iris's real name was Sakuya Tomaguro. She was a mix of both Chinese and Japanese and just happened to be running Intrapace Industries on her own at the moment. Ms. Sakuya also had major funds, which surpassed the Fowls' own.
Sakuya was 13 years old and based on the profile, you really couldn't call her normal. It said that she had completed a Martial Arts school located in Xian China, which rivaled Madam Ko's. She had no need for a bodyguard, but hired 1 by name Spiral, who was known to be one of the elite professionals of the business.
Knowing this imformation put Artemis to ease instead of causing him to panic, as would a normal person. But the young Fowl was the least bit normal wasn't he?
"Thank you, Butler," Artemis said, as he began to rapidly type on his laptop. "This information may prove to be useful...Oh yes. Have you actually heard of that Marital Arts school that our Ms. Sakuya attended?"
"Yes actually. It is one of the greatest, however, the Xian School of Martial Arts teaches mostly defensive stances,"
"Oh,"
Recently, Artemis had taken a liking to instant messaging. It often proved to be amusing, but seldom rather useful. Still, it was refreshing to know that certain people could be reached by just a click and a few simple messages.
He signed on to his account: artfowl36, and checked to see of anyone of interest had also logged on. No one. This was suspected anyways, so it wasn't exactly dissapointing.
Suddenly, a new instant messanger window popped up, asking if Artemis would like to accept a message from "miSSy trOubLe". Curiousity had never killed a young boy on the computer, so he accepted the message.
Hey Artemis!!
Hello... May I ask who you are?
guess. :- )
........
fine then. I'll just have to tell you. it's maria.
Oh.
I'm bored.
Oh.
don't you have anything more interesting to say than that? just "Oh. Oh. Oh."
Nothing in particular. Why did you im me?
no reason. i told you already... i was just bored.
Oh.
GTG.
Bye.
Not exactly the person Artemis wanted to talk to at the moment, but it was still entertainment. Perhaps Red Iris/ Ms. Sakuya had instant messanger. No doubt she did. After all, a computer genius seldom didn't explore every nook and cranny of the vast hyperspace called the internet. Or at least try to.
Underground, LEP Headquarters Foaly's Office
Yet another alert. Foaly scrambled onto his chair and started swiveling around, furiously typing and pressing buttons on his high tech machines.
"FOALY!" a voice screamed over the intercom. Root 's fumming face appeared on the screen to the left of Foaly's. "I want to know what happened and how! Now! Don't just sit there! Get to it!"The face dissapeared, leaving Foaly to piece together what had just happened during his lunch break.
The centuared sighed. This is what you get when you take an extra 10 minutes on your lunch break, dissaster. In a few seconds Foaly had located the roots of the problem and pieced together Root's latest outburst. It appeared that a young Enchantress had escaped the Tithe Prison.
This Tithe Prison was more like a fortress, with guards near every cell and in every hallway. "No precautions are uneeded". That was the prison's motto. Only the most high class or most dangerous criminals amongst the People were sentenced to do time in Tithe. There was supposidly no escaping except dying. Some prisoners couldn't even die. They were immortal... It was the first escape in exactly 2356 years 45 days 7 hours and 46 seconds. (The People kept very accurate records on this prison)
The escape was of a young enchantress. Outlawed and wanted in over 100 countries, all throughout the world, she was considered to be true and pure evil. Now this enchantress was said to be the most beautiful living thing alive, and men who fell under her spell were doomed to die. They would follow the enchantress for life. Searching and searching, but never able to find her, dying a pitiful unfulfilled life.
It is also said that the enchantress only wore red. In all shades, but while casting her spell, it was always blood red. The wonderous color was often the last color that many men would see right before dying. That was how she made money. Taking different forms, all as beautiful as the last and making rich men fall in love with her. The enchantress would enchant men and then mysteriously vanish, and once the men were dead, she would claim their posessions as hers.
Foaly did some more research or digging with no avail. There wasn't even a picture. Nothing. No one had ever managed to take a picture or paint a painting of her. They had all perished. He also found out that this particular enchantress could take the form of any living being, therefore finding her true form was virtually impossible. No one even knew her age, and since she usually took young women's forms, they considered her as young.
"Root. Foaly here. No need to blow a fuse... It's Tithe Prison. A 'young' enchantress has broken out. No one really knows why because she was held in a top security chamber with guards everywhere. Besides, that place is virtually an indestructable fortress,"
"D'arvit," the beet colored commander swore. "Do you have any idea how long it took us to track that one down? Took over a year, that one did. OK. I want you to send a group of our best Recon officers. Fully trained and running hot. NOW!"
"But they're mostly men. They would be vulnerable to the enchantress' spell and I havn't yet developed anything to counteract the spell. It's old magic, almost as old as the book itself; enchantresses have been around for quite a while."
"Erm..." It was clear, that the commander hadn't the slightest idea what to do.
"I suggest hiring more women to become Recon officers,"
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT'LL TAKE TO TRAIN THEM? By that time, the enchantress'll be long gone! On some other planet no doubt!"
"I doubt she'd move to another planet...Just send the few women we have on the force, while I construct a device that will deflect the enchantress' spell. Meanwhile, we need to pinpoint her location and find her a rich mudman for bait. Simple and quite injenious isn't it"
"Get on it!"