Artemis Fowl: The Ivory Files
By Caspian Nyghtvision
Chapter Three: Into the Fire
Disclaimer: Bob owns the world. I own Bob. Work out the conclusions at your leisure. ^_^
Author's Note: Excitement! Danger! Suspense! Plot! Humor!
The ways of my mind are many and meandering. Plot begins to pull together. Long chapter this time! Includes Bob and Netherworld Flamingo, but they're at the end, after the Excitement, Danger, Suspense and Plot. Rating hovers around PG for Commander Root, a few d'Arvits, dangerous randomness, and a battle/tension scene involving... BLOOD! And some dead moles. And a lot of very nice fire. And Chix. Mwah. Nothing that you can't stomach though, since if you've gotten this far you've read the books, and if you can handle Mulch, you can handle me. *Half-mad chuckle. Sprints off and falls over something unimportant, breaking, spraining and burning several things on the way to the floor. Graceful blonde Mary Sues have no competition from me.*
Into the fire
I'm reunited
Into the fire
I am the spark
Into the fire
I yearn for comfort
--- Sarah McLachlan, "Into the Fire"
They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle is a surprise every time
And it's hard to say if they're happy,
But they don't seem much to mind...
--- Ani diFranco, "Little Plastic Castle"
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A Few Minutes After We Last Left Off
Root's Office
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"Damn the torpedoes, sir!" Trouble snarled, brandishing the pickle-shaped duct-tape dispenser like it was a dangerous weapon. Which it was, but not intentionally. "We'll blast those albatrosses out of the water!"
Holly and Root, as one, turned and stared at him. "Albatrosses...?"
"That was random." Trouble sat down heavily, and began toying savagely with the duct tape. Holly considered removing it from him before he hurt himself. Then she decided that she rather liked her trigger finger, and having almost lost it once, didn't want to again; she didn't want to get in the way of a fidgety elf and his duct tape.
Before anyone could say anything else, a janitor crept in, holding a Cast-Pewter Limited Edition Figurine of The Grinch (which also doubled as a cigar holder,) dropped it on Root's desk, muttered apologetically, and dashed off.
Root took his cigar out of his mouth and balanced it on the Grinch's hand. "All right." He suddenly put his hand over his mouth and coughed, hoarse and racking, a real lungs-gone-to-hell smoker's cough. The two officers sat and watched him worriedly, knowing that if they asked if he was all right, he'd wave them off manfully, using words that would make your average bull troll faint.
"All right." He put in one last cough for good measure and crushed the glowing ember of the cigar between his fingertips. Trouble and Holly immediately relaxed and began to breathe normally again, instead of the tight, tiny, only-enough-air-needed-for-immediate-survival breaths people always took in that office. Hyperventilating was not very good for stress; there was a rumor that young Vice Corporal Fallacy of the Traffic Control Squad wore a World War Two gas mask whenever he went to see the commander. Of course, he had never been quite right in the head, as the incident with the blowtorch, shuttle and whingleberry jam had proven.
Root quietly began fidgeting with some random object that was left on his desk -- a stapler, it looked like -- and Holly's ears winced of their own accord. Sighing, he set it down again. Where the hell was he supposed to start?
"About twenty minutes ago..."
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(It would help if you imagined the 'screen' getting all wavy here, 'cause this is one of those flashback moments...)
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It would also help if you imagined a sort of "woobly-woobly" sound to go along with it... I'd put in the special effects myself, but find myself sadly lacking the money. Eh... you'll live. Now hum along with me. Woobly woobly.)
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_______________________________________
Twenty Minutes Before
Aboveground
Tara, near entrance L37 to Haven
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The traveler was lucky. He could see in the dark.
He was searching for the entrance into Haven. The little myth about "the leprechaun's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" had its roots in truth. It was an ancient coded message to the entrance, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do with it, or if it was obsolete by now. He'd only been to Haven once -- and it had been a very long time ago. A light night breeze lifted his spiky blood red hair off his forehead, revealing a Hindu-like marking between his eyes ---
--- just as the sixth sense it represented kicked in, and he leaped several feet into the air and to the side like a mongoose avoiding a cobra's strike. "Shimmata!" he yelped in Japanese as what looked like a laser beam scorched the air right where he had been. The deadly blast roared past him and struck the side of a hill, accidentally killing a young mole as he tunneled quite innocently through the loam. (The various insects and worms that the mole would have eaten -- had he lived -- multiplied instead until they numbered in trillions, developed savage parasites, were eventually ingested by a careless sheep, and bred inside its gut, mutating into a new kind of virus that gave half the teenagers in Ireland a mild cold and a few days of school off. The moral of the story is that if you want to avoid an Advanced Algebra test for a few days, kill a mole; but things don't always work that way and the SPCA'd probably shoot you instead. Besides, you should never take anything I write entirely for granted as occasionally I am channeling the spirit of an Atlantean bogglefish and thus might be unreliable.)
Oblivious to all that, the traveler was knee-deep in untranslatable Japanese words that all meant, roughly, "D'Arvit." Fight or flight? Run like hell or fire back, probably scorching a lot of the local landscape in the process? (And inadvertently killing more moles, and the cosmic consequences of that.) Who was shooting at him anyway?
Nightvision eyes picked out the form of a small, childlike figure just visible behind a tree. No shielding tonight; apparently it trusted the cover darkness would bring it. Possibly an elf, judging by the build; wingless, relatively tall compared to some other species, unique way of holding its body. It wore a helmet and an unidentifiable uniform that didn't look LEP. But what did he know? The possible-elf was carrying what looked like a sawed-off laser gun and something in a package held close to its heart. A pair of glittering eyes twinkled behind the helmet's visor. It looked around carefully, with the measured casualness of a predator. The traveler readied himself to spring out of the way again as he saw the helmet swing in his direction; he'd been spotted again. He could destroy this frail little creature, small light bones snapping as easily as a chicken's inside that paper-thin jumpsuit. But it just didn't feel right or honorable, killing a little fairy. Even if it had started it. They were just so tiny... and... child-looking...
SHRAAAAAAWH
That was the noise of air molecules turning into fire molecules. It was the noise a grenade makes just before impact when it shatters into a thousand deadly shards of metal and explosive flame. The grenade slammed into the side of the hill, transforming the innocent mound of earth and grass into a ball of boiling, roaring flame. Killing countless moles.
The elf behind the tree ducked into standard safety position, curling into a small ball as the ground quivered with the explosion. A few seconds later the hell's furnace of the hill had turned into a spreading fire. Behind her helmet, the elf scowled. Her orders were to obliterate anyone who saw her, but hadn't included the local landscape, or any wildlife that might be living in it. Well, hopefully that odd-looking human had burned to a grease spot in that mess. She unclipped a few fizzers from her belt, loaded them into her second gun, and shot them into the heart of the flames. There was a second roar of water, then one of steam as the supercompressed capsules extinguished the blaze. A faint mist covered the stand of trees, which a few seconds ago had been scorching in the heat. Her duty done, the elf stood up, brushed her jumpsuit off, and began to move away, silent as a shadow and hidden in the night.
The sixth sense had saved him again, but he'd left his pack behind; all his things had been in there. One side of his face felt strangely hot, and when he touched it, there was a terrible burnt feeling behind the pain. How ironic; one of the planet's most fire-smart inhabitants getting burned by a nancy little elf. He decided to let the matter rest, until he was reasonably sure of what the hell was going on. Last he checked, the LEP hadn't been a lot of homicidal pyros willing to blow up a person for no reason whatsoever, but as the nagging little voice in his head kept reminding him, it had been a while.
He pulled himself to his feet, checked himself for injuries, and was relieved to see that apart from feeling sore and rather burnt in every single part of his body, he wasn't quite dead yet. Yet. A noise from the woods behind him made him turn around, resignedly.
A second fairy emerged from the woods, wearing the same uniform as the first, but with a shorter and squatter build. A dwarf? Not bad. As it saw him, raising its own weapon for a blow, he clenched his jaw, eyes gleaming, and growled in Japanese, "No, you go to hell." He let loose his own blaze of fire straight at its head.
The first elf turned around as a scream ripped through her headset, and saw the tall shape of the human she was sure she had killed. Her partner was writhing madly, trying to stop, drop and roll all at once while pulling his burning helmet off his head. Thinking clearly, she checked that her second gun still had fizzers in it, and fired one straight at her comrade. In an instant, dwarf and human were enveloped in a cloud of steam. As she ran towards them, she loaded her last fizzers into the gun, her mind remarking to itself that at this rate, the fire department should be paying her for all this.
This was definitely not the way this mission was supposed to turn out. Dangerous, yes, but she shouldn't have been the one in danger. He'd survived the laser and the grenade; she was going to use her weapon of last resort. It wasn't like it was her first choice. She pulled out her handgun -- the one that carried bullets.
Somehow the human saw her coming. His eyes widened, strangely catlike and electric, as he put up his hands defensively. The elf didn't even hesitate as she poured an entire clip of bullets into his body. Not even pausing to watch him fall, she turned to her partner. He was still rolling on the ground, screaming loud enough to wake the dead. Dwarves were such useless pyrophobes, the lot of them. She poked him with her toe.
"Get up. The fire's gone."
He only groaned incoherently.
"You didn't drop the ivory, did you?"
He groaned something that sounded like "No" and held up a small package, like the one she had. The blue plastic wrapping was charred and melted, but the hard white objects inside were completely intact.
"Good. It saved your life, even though it was raw. I wonder how he did that?" She looked over her shoulder at the human, who was on his knees, head bent and his hair falling over his face, hands clapped to his chest, blood flowing from his mouth and nose. "D'Arvit, he's taking a while to die." The elf crossed over to the kneeling figure and leveled her laser at him point-blank. She jacked the lever from "Kill" all the way up to the illegal setting, "Well-Done Char-Grilled." This would definitely finish him off.
The human somehow raised his head and she was surprised by the oddness of his looks. Even with the night-vision filter, which overrode color, she could tell that the blood streaking his face and neck was the same hot scarlet as his hair. "Don' really intend to die," he replied slowly and thickly in a strange accent. Holding her gaze, pulling one blood-soaked hand from his chest, he dropped a handful of dark objects on the ground.
Bullets. He'd caught bullets. Not all of them, she'd shot at least six. Still, surviving a laser blast, a grenade and then catching back two bullets out of six is not a usual habit for humans. (Except in horribly inaccurate human action movies starring Pierce Brosnan and scantily clad spy women. And they don't count.) A fellow fairy could have done it. She had definitely not expected this person to.
The elf took a few steps back, almost tripping over the still-prone body of her partner. "What the hell---?"
A steady, insistent beeping noise sounded within her headset. It was picking up radar from an incoming LEP patrol. "D'Arvit!" she cursed frantically. Forgetting about the human, she struggled to rouse her dwarven comrade. He clung to her heels and muttered something about a fiery death that she paid no attention to. Useless, useless pyrophobes, and he was the worst of the lot. Somehow draping his arms around her neck and dragging him along, the elf vanished into the woods with her partner.
~~~~~~~~~ A few minutes later ~~~~~~~~~~
The faintest hum from a set of remodeled Koboi Double-Dex (tm) whispered vaguely in the summer night air. The shielded sprite they were strapped to was a green-skinned male, humming cheerfully to himself. He had a big scar punched into one wing, so he had to use mechanical wings like any groundcrawling fairy. He didn't mind it, though, and he didn't mind working late; tonight, he was paired off with a nice-looking young pixie, Private Lucretia Mercredi, and his chances with her were looking extremely hopeful. He just had to finish this routine flyby over Tara, then swing back to her and start working the old Verbil charm.
His headset crackled. "Chix? Do you copy?"
"Loud and clear, Lucretia my dear."
There was a pause. Apparently she decided to ignore this last comment. "I'm picking up heatspill north-north-east of you. Do you read it?"
"Heatspill" was just another one of the vast library of LEP technical terms, like "science" and "fizzer," and it meant just what it sounded like; lingering vestiges of heat. Somewhat similar to standing in an area where a shuttle has just taken off and feeling the leftover heat of its passage -- though why anybody would want to stand in heatspill from a shuttle is unclear.
"I thought I noticed things getting hot around here," Chix shot back smoothly. Or so he thought. Safely shielded near the chute entrance, Private Mercredi raised an eyebrow. She was going to let that one slide, too. "Just go check it out, will you?"
"Sure will." Chix pulled a barrel roll in midair, even though she couldn't see him, and switched on the heat-sensor eyepiece in his helmet. After his crippling experience that time with Holly, he was a bit wary of the whole heat-sensing thing and its faults. Still, Lucretia was watching.
Cold things show up gray. Hot things, like People and fire, show up orange. Heatspill shows up a watery shade of orange, its strength depending on how warm the leftover heat is. There was a lot of it this time, a huge patch of dying orange overlaid on cold gray ground. There was another patch of dying orange in the area as well, but it was a bit stronger than the rest. Probably a fire going out; he'd chuck some fizzers at it so they wouldn't have the fire department tramping around Tara. Chix gunned towards it.
What he saw surprised him so much that he almost dropped his shield. It looked like a nuclear war had been fought there. A whole hillside had been blasted to cinders, nearby trees were blackened, the grass turned to brittle charcoal. Laser markings scored and burned the ground. A light breeze picked up clots and swirls of ash and swirled them heavily over the area. Chix slowed down his wings and set them to idle, coming to a landing just at the edge of the scorched area. Reattaching his gaping lower jaw to the rest of his face, he tapped his helmet cam. "You picking this up, Lucretia?"
"Yes. I'm sending it to Commander Root. He should receive the footage in a few minutes." Her small voice was tight over the intercom. "Looks like a disaster zone."
"Heatspill's already fading," Chix said professionally. "Must have been pretty recent."
"What's that brighter bit in the middle there?" Mercredi asked.
"Probably the core of the fire. Looks like it's dying out, but I'll take a look."
"Be careful, Verbil."
"Oh, don't worry," Chix replied, rolling his eyes. Females, always worrying. Of course, Holly had been right to worry last time... He strolled over to the spot indicated on his visor-map and stopped short. Again.
"How the hell did a Mud Boy get here?" Warily, the sprite circled the crumpled figure on the ground. "Odd-looking fellow too. Probably setting off fireworks or something."
"Verbil, look at the sensors, he's dying---!" Private Mercredi's voice was cut off by a much louder one.
"VERBIL, WHAT HAPPENED HERE?!"
Chix winced, looking around at the charred area. "Commander Root, all I can say is, I didn't do it."
"Don't move. We're sending Recon in. I repeat, don't move. I'll know if you do, I'm monitoring you with the helmet cam."
"Yes, sir," Chix replied, then added under his breath, "Permission to breathe?"
"Granted," Root said swiftly. "Recon will arrive in about five minutes. Until then, stay put, Private."
For an uncomfortable 4.57 minutes, Chix stood balanced on one foot and the ball of the other foot, in the exact pose he had been in when Root told him not to move. It was harder than he would have liked to admit, and not just because of the balancing. The figure on the ground seemed to be losing life by the minute, and it stressed the sprite out to be unable to help. Not that he had any love for humans. But the way the blood lurched slower and slower out of the young man's nose and mouth with every dying heartbeat made him sick to his stomach.
A special LEPRecon squad arrived within the timeframe Root had given, along with a warlock medic. Chix eyed the medic approvingly -- a female about seventy-five years old, rather young for the job, with clear blue-gray skin and deep purple hair in a low ponytail. As the Recon squad fanned out to secure the area, the sprite balanced in position, and the medic set up a makeshift clinic and expertly began to examine the young man on the ground. Since Chix was just standing there, still as a coat hanger, she put her flashlight into his hand, closed his stiff fingers around it, and aimed the light at her patient. He took this as a sign of interest.
"So, honey, what's your sign?"
The medic didn't even look up as she took off the human's leather jacket; he was wearing a black turtleneck underneath. Pulling scissors from her bag, she cut the shirt off, tightening her mouth at the blackened bullet holes and trails of blood. "If I told you I was a lesbian, would you let me do my work?" Her long, slender, skilled hands flew over her patient's body, but no blue sparks yet. She didn't want to accidentally heal his body over the bullets.
"What work, babe? Just patch him up so he doesn't die, give him a mind-wipe and dump him on a hospital step. What's your name?"
The young warlock growled, slim dolphin-gray fingers clearing the clotting blood from her patient's airways. "Silver. Junior Medic Janisha Silver. Now shut up."
Surprisingly, he did.
Commotion from the makeshift clinic brought a Recon officer running. The patient's catlike eyes had opened, and he looked around dizzily. "LEP?" he asked thickly.
"Y-yes..." Junior Medic Silver replied, astonished.
He focused on the medic's wavering figure -- all three of her. "Ningenno zoge..." he spat, and lay back again.
The warlock, Chix, the Recon officer, and Mercredi and Root -- still watching from Chix's helmet cam -- stood staring at him for a good four seconds.
Then Silver, on a spontaneous hunch, leaned forward and began brushing his long, jagged crimson hair away from his face. It had apparently been styled to hide his face; this became obvious as she flicked away the last oddly colored strands to reveal a definitely pointed ear.
There was another strange silence. "Well," the medic said, rocking back on her heels, "We're not using the mesmer on this one."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ End of convenient flashback. Back to Root's office. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ningenno zoge." Holly said. Root had just filled them in on what he knew. She knew the words were Japanese but couldn't recall them immediately. "What does that mean?"
"Human ivory," Trouble told her instantly.
"Ah."
"I know a little Japanese from anime," he said proudly. "I really like anime."
"Ah." Holly said again.
"These were found at the site," the commander said, tossing a plastic bag across the desk. Holly picked it up and looked at the items inside. "Bloody bullets and fizzer caps? Oh." She winced. "These are our bullets, aren't they?"
"From when we used them, about a century ago. Fizzer caps among evidence in the fire point to one of the People. Stupid of them to leave evidence, but I guess they were in a hurry."
"What happened to the hu- whatever he is?" Holly asked, tossing the bag to Trouble.
"Emergency medic ward. Might not make it through the night." Root relit his cigar and the two captains winced. Again. "You two get home, get some rest. Come in early tomorrow morning."
"Yes sir." They stood as one, Trouble dropping the plastic bag on the desk with a disgusted look.
"Goodnight, Commander," Holly said shakily.
"Good night, captains."
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Still the same Friday Night
The Netherworld Flamingo
Downtown Haven, Lower Elements
(Happy Hour: 8 pm to midnight. All drinks half-off, free refills for reviewers, original characters and repeat customers. Shameless spamming? Yes indeed. ^_^)
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Oblivious of the suspense looming tighter with every chapter around the Lower Elements, the seemingly eternal party at the Netherworld Flamingo was continuing with the usual abandon. People were hanging out, cutting loose, getting gloriously, hyperly hyper on sugar and caffeine, and generally having fun. Caspian, the proprietor, paused to rest for an instant, perched on a bar stool, her fingerless-gloved-hands and hiking boots akimbo in what was for her a graceful pose, content to just watch the People.
The place was full of noise and music and the odd darkness of most clubs, lit by black lights and the strangely glowing furniture -- deep blue and purple and dark crimson providing a cool atmosphere. Over at the end of the bar, nursing root beers, were a group of middle-aged male sprites that came in every night at eight o'clock sharp, drank six root beers apiece, and had to be escorted to their homes a few hours later.
Sprites are kind of like hummingbirds. They get very wound up and excitable when they get their hands on caffeine. Dwarves can down ten cups of coffee straight without getting the least bit waffley, and one centaur was known to eat an entire crate of sugar cubes without even starting to get incoherent, but sprites just can't hold their caffeine. Their sugar tolerance level is almost as low as that of your average human teenage girl -- even one cup of soda can tip them far, far over the line drawn in the sand to separate the sane from the People who Hear Rice Krispies. Right now the middle-aged regulars were arguing vehemently over an article they'd seen in the "Gnommish Gazette."
"He shaid," the first regular slurred, tapping his greenish fingernail on the deeply glowing dark purple bartop, "That the mosht vaaaal--- vaall- vaal-you-a-bull thing we can do for our shlumpin' hec-hic- h'economy... is... to go on more vacations. But theresh only sooo many times ya can go to Disneyworld afore it shtratsh... sthartsh..." Nearing the end of his argument, he made a supreme effort -- "STARTS ta get old." He then vanished behind his root beer, and was not heard from again.
"Disneyworld," announced another, more lucid regular, "Is not what it used to be. Ya got your Mickey Mouse impersonators, ya got your roller coasters, ya got your kidsh shkipping aroun' in packsh being dangeroush, ya got ALL these crazy teenage humansh runnin around like they own the place, it jest ain't a good family place ta take the kidsh anymore." Okay... maybe he wasn't any more lucid than the first one. Still... five points for determination, Sprite #2.
"Mickey Mouse," a third regular spat venomously. He looked as if he wanted to add something to that, but slid off his stool with a faint giggle instead, wings fluttering helplessly. The others didn't seem to notice. They continued to argue among themselves in between swigsh -- er, swigs -- of root beer.
A pair of new customers entered, a pair of dwarves with their arms linked lovingly. They looked up in trepidation at the enormous glow-in-the-dark squirrel statues proudly guarding the front entrance, the spectra-flamingos lurking warily in the eaves, the glass squid hung from the high black ceiling that was dotted randomly with phosphorescent stars, the steel rafters a comfortable place for young lunatics to watch the action. Huge aquariums lined the walls, the exotic Atlantean fish flashing bright as neon within their deep purple depths or boggling cluelessly at the customers. Music throbbed from all directions. The dwarves looked completely overwhelmed and a little nervous; they must not have ever been here before. Caspian herself got up to greet them -- miraculously not tripping over, breaking, killing or spontaneously combusting anything on her way. Her ungracefullness was an adolescence thing, she stubbornly told herself, something she would grow out of --- whoops, avoid the waitress with flaming Cokes, don't want to explain THAT to the insurance company (again.)
The brightly colored little Random Parrots shot back and forth, scrawking current menu prices and one-liner quotes from movies, as well as incoherent phrases that were quite amusing if you could concentrate on them long enough to listen. "Root beer, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, ginger ale!" one parrot screamed thrillingly, shooting past the bar in an explosion of orange and neon blue feathers. "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Meanwhile, the best and brightest of the LEP Academy were cheerfully singing a drinking song straight from the pits of madness. Caspian knew; she'd taught them, setting the words to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne."
"Oh for the days of lollipops and alcohol free champagne,
Lest new flamingos be begot, like lemurs in the rain!
Like lemurs in the rain, my friends, like lemurs in the raaaaaiiin,
Lest new flamingos be begot like lemurs in the rain!"
Caspian blinked. Was it just her, or was Vice Corporal Fallacy wearing a pink plastic toilet seat on his--? No, she decided reluctantly, she probably didn't want to know.
Strolling across the blue-black stage, Grub Kelp was adding to the general noise by soulfully singing karaoke. What a pity that the music playing was "Action Fairy" by Fairypop and the Heat Sensors ("Action yeah it's what I crave, cutting loose as the crowds rave and I'm sayin, gonna take off this shirt this shirt cause I'm an ac-tion fai-ry...") while Grub was singing "Spam Song" by that oracle of human genius, Monty Python. Another pity was that he was trying to get the wonderful well-rounded chorus effect with just his own slightly wobbly, noticeably hyper voice. "Wonderful Spam lovely Spam Spam SPAM wonderful lovely Spam Spam Spam SPAM..."
Perched on the octopus-bedecked rafters were a group of cheerfully insane teenagers, mostly elves, who were happily throwing completely random objects at him. A cast-iron bathtub with clawed feet thudded onto the hard, clear dark blue surface of the stage, miraculously not even scratching it, and lolled there helplessly, pathetically, improbably, like a whale that has found itself beached on the moon. It was joined by a 7,563-page hardbound edition of "Sociology: A Modern Introduction" and, due to an inexplicable twist of fate, a pickle-shaped duct tape dispenser. A particularly creative pixie threw a can of Spam at the singer. Oblivious, Grub strolled and sang, as mournful and poetic as if he was singing an angsty Irish love ballad. "Spam Spam Spam Spam SPAM..."
A Random Parrot shot wobbling past his face, scattering hot pink and black feathers in its disheveled, drunken wake. "Join the Dark Side and I will spare your life!" it barked convincingly, before hitting the velvet curtain and falling to the stage floor with an odd-sounding giggle, beating its wings against the floor and squawking incoherently "There they go! I must hurry after them, for I am their leader!" Caspian really had to train them better, or at least encourage the customers not to give them sugar...
Somewhere, the proprietor could hear the all-too-familiar sound of a certain egotistic technician getting a resounding SLAP across the face. Probably trying to put the moves on some girl again... and failing, again. Poor Foaly. Annoying as hell, sure, but still. His natural genetics, taking an evil turn like genetics are prone to do, had rendered him with the sad inability to get hyper on sugar, so while everyone else was cheerfully going mad, Foaly and his superior attitude were attempting to describe to the blonde female (the glossy black one had slapped him, then clopped off in disgust) exactly how to hack into a laptop computer with only a bar of soap and a socket wrench. The soap, he was telling her smugly, wasn't really necessary. In fact, if you were pressed for time, you could use any standard-sized jar of peanut butter. The blonde female was slowly backing away, holding her ginger ale protectively, as Foaly began to demonstrate on a placemat.
A Random Parrot dove by, squalling philosophically ("My karma ran over your dogma!") and the female centaur seized that moment to gallop off in another direction. Oblivious, Foaly turned to the group of washed-out sprites and began to patronizingly explain to them the mechanics of a DNA stun cannon. Pie-eyed, clutching their root beers, their wings and jaws drooping slightly, they nodded vaguely and attempted to look intelligent and reasonably sober.
Seated at a table, drunk on Gatorade, was renowned psychologist Dr. J. Argon, loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen that the Universe was just a figment of its own imagination, and if everyone were to fall into a coma at once, thus not thinking about it, existence would cease. He kept this up for about five minutes, until the Netherworld Flamingo Resident Bouncer, a large and muscly creature of uncertain species with the ominous name of Joe, quietly escorted the psychologist to the back room and phoned his wife. Dr. J. Argon's wife, not Joe's wife. Caspian was reasonably sure that Joe was male, but still had room left for doubt.
Elsewhere, the group of insane teenagers had parachuted down from the rafters, stormed the stage, usurped Grub, and were now singing very good karaoke. They'd selected "Dare," the song that had made turned the Flare Riders from Gnommish nobodies to stars overnight, and were doing all the correct dancing moves, miraculously not destroying anything in the process. The People sitting near the stage actually looked up from their Diet Cokes and Mountain Dews to watch and listen.
"Being with you is living a little. It's like being set out on a dare, it's like taking my life in my hands to ride a magma flare. It's when you feel the heat that you know you're alive and I can take on the underworld with you at my side..."
There was a loud crash as Vice Corporal Fallacy fell out of his seat with a loud crash, the pink plastic toilet seat coming loose from his head and rolling off into a dark corner to hide its shame. The half-breed (Pixie/sprite; never a healthy combination, especially with the low sugar tolerance and silly wings) lay there giggling madly and screaming for someone to shoot the damn colored lemurs that were floating around his head, they were scaring him. Helpfully, the other junior officers of the LEP clustered around him, and one had the uncommon good sense to douse him with a glass of ginger ale.
Caspian vaulted herself up on the bar top and swung her boots casually, letting it all wash over her. Yeah... she loved this place.
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Friday Night/ Saturday Morning -- at any rate, 1:00 AM
Root's Office
Downtown Haven.... you get the idea.
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Alone now in his office, alone in the building in fact - everyone else had the common sense to go home - Root quietly chain-smoked several cigars, got bored and paced around the room a few times, threw the ashtray around some more just for the hell of it, got bored, and chain-smoked a few more cigars. He thought. He knocked the ashtray off his desk, hoping it would break, or destroy something, so that he could be annoyed at it. He desperately wanted to be annoyed at anything, anything at all, to have a decent temper fit at someone or something to relieve this odd empty silence and calm. Everyone had gone home; the few who knew about the... crisis were under strict orders not to talk until they knew it was for real; there was nobody to rant and rave at. How could everything be so well-ordered and silent, when something sinister seemed to be quietly building itself up until he was ready to explode with impatience?
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Holly's Apartment
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Holly got back into her apartment by taking a hand drill and boring several holes into the doorframe, then knocking it over with her boot. Duct tape, pulled out of some tiny secret spy-fairy pocket sewn into her pants, provided the perfect cover-up. (After about a year of all this, her door was made almost completely out of duct tape, held together by a few remnants of the original frame. Give in and ask Foaly to make her a new key? No, never! Captain Short does not give up so easily!) She strode purposefully into her apartment, threw her boots around, and collapsed onto the floor.
"I just don't know what to do, Bob."
Sympathetically, Bob stared widely in a completely different direction, apparently trying to come to grips with an oddly shaped spot on the far wall.
Annoyed, Holly reached up and slapped her slim hand against the wall of his tank. The water sloshed violently, and the bogglefish's ungainly round, fat purplish body tumbled about in the sudden tsunami. Rigid with surprise, he completely forgot to move his ridiculously small fins to turn himself upright, so he floated upside down, staring hugely with his cartoonish wide eyes and flopping his lips a few times in complete astonishment. He looked oddly like Grub Kelp.
"Some therapist you are," Holly groaned, slumping back to the floor and staring at the ceiling. "And they say people with pets have calmer, happier lives. Ever since I got you, I've had nothing but chaos. First, Artemis Fowl. Then, goblins. And Artemis Fowl. Now, human ivory...."
Bob wobbled upright, blew a random bubble, boggled at it in astonishment, accidentally popped it, went into brief spasms of surprise, and began to stare raptly at a small piece of seaweed that Holly had put in his tank three months ago, to keep him company. What was this?! Where did it come from?! Why was it there?! How long had it been there before he noticed it?! Should he eat it? Ignore it? Worship it? Forget about it and --- WAIT! WHAT'S THAT THING? MY GOD! WHAT DOES IT MEAN? SHOULD I WORSHIP IT? WHY --
Holly pushed herself back up, grabbing the can of dried stink worms from its place under the heater and nearly giving the fish a heart attack as she randomly sprinkled the brittle food into his tank. There are only so many synonyms you can use for the word 'surprise,' but Bob's reaction encompassed all of them. He was, according to "Roget's Desk Thesaurus," astonished, astounded, startled, amazed, flabbergasted, taken aback, struck with wonder, left open-mouthed; his mind was boggled at the sudden appearance of food in his tank. Bob attempted to worship the food, but his stomach grew so annoyed at the fact that his brain was so useless that it valiantly seized control of his body and all major motion control centers, and he gulped down a piece.
Oblivious to the daytime drama going on in her fish tank, Holly dragged herself to her feet, only to collapse heavily on the thin lumpy mattress of her futon-like piece of furniture. She her head fall into her hands. She was so tired, but she couldn't possibly sleep. The events of the night had left her with a strange, surreal feeling of calmness, like nothing could possibly happen to faze her now. Holly also was faced with a slight headache, mild feelings of angst, a noticeable hunger, and a very strange compulsion to make fun of pirated reruns of "Gilligan's Island."
Hunger. Hunger she could deal with. She got up and began leafing half-heartedly through her fridge, not really expecting much, and not finding it either. All she wanted was something she could eat without hurting herself, or preferably not setting the building on fire (again.) Holly was no cook; she somehow always managed to scorch at least one meal a week, to a point of carbonized black molecules of ash that floated around her apartment for hours in a thick cloud of gray-black smoke. This was even more surprising since Holly's microwave was one of the first prototypes ever made, was permanently stuck on the "Wussy" setting, and barely had the power to heat a cup of cocoa from cold to lukewarm. She could probably buy a new one, but her theory with all 'unimportant' things -- namely things like temperature control, clothing, cooking, and decor -- was that, hell, if it still works, why bother?
"Something simple," Holly announced, her voice echoing into the fridge. Something comforting. Something that didn't involve anything complicated, like heat, or cutting, or unwrapping, or defrosting, or Frond forbid SKILL. It was one thirty in the morning, some unknown source had gotten hold of human ivory, and the whole Lower Elements might unknowingly be the stakes in some sick card game. If Holly actually sat down and thought about this, she knew she might explode. Unfortunately the comfort food she wanted was wedged in the back between several gallon jugs of spring water, a crate of lemons (she'd recently been on a lemon-water spree,) a jar of jalapeno-peanut-pickle relish (a gift from her great-aunt Mathilda, who liked to can) and a brown paper bag filled with greasy, congealing takeout from Spud's Spud Emporium, which she was never going to touch, but didn't want to throw out. After some lightning fast and surprisingly creative rearranging, and being blasted unmercifully with freezing cold air, Holly fell backwards out of the fridge with a "Whoof." She clutched an untouched gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream to her chest, glaring at the fridge with the scornful triumph of one who has battled bravely and won. Carefully she felt the tips of her ears; no frostbite. "You didn't win this time, Frigidaire."
The refrigerator didn't reply. It lurked, and bided its time.
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sound of genuine wooden soapbox being dragged across floor Ach, now I got a splinter! Where's my Swiss army knife... *vicious glower at everything, which dissolves into a water-buffalo-like yawn*
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L37 IS the Tara entrance chute right? Right? Well, sorry if it isn't my funniest work right now, there's this nagging little thing called a "plot line" that keeps getting in the way of all the flamingos, pink plastic toilet seats, and all-importantly, Bob. I'm trying my best to balance humor, since apparently I am best as a mildly funny humor writer, with this exotic beast. Basically what I'm going on sleepily/incoherently about here is that plotting is hard, humor is even harder, I work very very hard, and your time and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. (Flattery isn't that bad, either... *raises eyebrow, toys with the leashes of several slavering flamingos*) So what do you think? More funny? More serious? More Netherworld Flamingo? More Bob?
"Shimmata" is a Japanese swear word. A pyrophobe is someone afraid of fire. Private Lucretia is a tribute to Lucretia Noin of Gundam Wing. ^.^ If you see a term or character that you've never heard of, chances are it's mine. For the unenlightened (namely, people not from the Canada/New England region) Moose Tracks is a kind of ice cream sold here. What do you think of the new characters I'm trying to introduce?
Next chapter I'll try to be shorter and funnier and maybe we'll see what Artemis is up to.
I'm thinking quite seriously about a sequel, because I really want to write Artemis in school, with that attitude... so many possibilities... I'd say more, but there's a very small chance that Colfer might actually be reading this, and Lord knows I don't want HIM stealing MY ideas! *growls quietly and menacingly*
Yrs in the Netherworld, Caspian Nyghtvision
PS Why do Julius and Juliet have such similar first names? Does Colfer have a "Julie" fetish, or is there some private joke in there everyone gets but me? IT IS AN EVIL PLOT I SAY!
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The Netherworld Flamingo Bulletin Board
FREE DRINKS MENTIONS:
All the following people will have their tabs erased, free drinks on the house, and Joe the Bouncer will look the other way if they get hyper. Choice of diet soda, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Coke and other licensed brands with hundreds of copyrights, as well as Trouble's Drink.
crazygirly007 -- Thanks so much! *laughs* Have a bogglefish! And careful of that chair... *ducks*
becca -- Patience, my friend! Patience! *cackles* *cough* Sorry. I try.
Vana Burke -- No, that's okay, you can flatter me all you like... *huge blush, maniacal laughter to cover it up* Thank you very much.
Mage Kitty -- Thanks! I appreciate it, don't hurt yourself...
Kitty Rainbow -- Last I checked, pet stores didn't have bogglefish, but you could always buy a goggle-eyed goldfish and paint it purple...
By Caspian Nyghtvision
Chapter Three: Into the Fire
Disclaimer: Bob owns the world. I own Bob. Work out the conclusions at your leisure. ^_^
Author's Note: Excitement! Danger! Suspense! Plot! Humor!
The ways of my mind are many and meandering. Plot begins to pull together. Long chapter this time! Includes Bob and Netherworld Flamingo, but they're at the end, after the Excitement, Danger, Suspense and Plot. Rating hovers around PG for Commander Root, a few d'Arvits, dangerous randomness, and a battle/tension scene involving... BLOOD! And some dead moles. And a lot of very nice fire. And Chix. Mwah. Nothing that you can't stomach though, since if you've gotten this far you've read the books, and if you can handle Mulch, you can handle me. *Half-mad chuckle. Sprints off and falls over something unimportant, breaking, spraining and burning several things on the way to the floor. Graceful blonde Mary Sues have no competition from me.*
Into the fire
I'm reunited
Into the fire
I am the spark
Into the fire
I yearn for comfort
--- Sarah McLachlan, "Into the Fire"
They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle is a surprise every time
And it's hard to say if they're happy,
But they don't seem much to mind...
--- Ani diFranco, "Little Plastic Castle"
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A Few Minutes After We Last Left Off
Root's Office
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"Damn the torpedoes, sir!" Trouble snarled, brandishing the pickle-shaped duct-tape dispenser like it was a dangerous weapon. Which it was, but not intentionally. "We'll blast those albatrosses out of the water!"
Holly and Root, as one, turned and stared at him. "Albatrosses...?"
"That was random." Trouble sat down heavily, and began toying savagely with the duct tape. Holly considered removing it from him before he hurt himself. Then she decided that she rather liked her trigger finger, and having almost lost it once, didn't want to again; she didn't want to get in the way of a fidgety elf and his duct tape.
Before anyone could say anything else, a janitor crept in, holding a Cast-Pewter Limited Edition Figurine of The Grinch (which also doubled as a cigar holder,) dropped it on Root's desk, muttered apologetically, and dashed off.
Root took his cigar out of his mouth and balanced it on the Grinch's hand. "All right." He suddenly put his hand over his mouth and coughed, hoarse and racking, a real lungs-gone-to-hell smoker's cough. The two officers sat and watched him worriedly, knowing that if they asked if he was all right, he'd wave them off manfully, using words that would make your average bull troll faint.
"All right." He put in one last cough for good measure and crushed the glowing ember of the cigar between his fingertips. Trouble and Holly immediately relaxed and began to breathe normally again, instead of the tight, tiny, only-enough-air-needed-for-immediate-survival breaths people always took in that office. Hyperventilating was not very good for stress; there was a rumor that young Vice Corporal Fallacy of the Traffic Control Squad wore a World War Two gas mask whenever he went to see the commander. Of course, he had never been quite right in the head, as the incident with the blowtorch, shuttle and whingleberry jam had proven.
Root quietly began fidgeting with some random object that was left on his desk -- a stapler, it looked like -- and Holly's ears winced of their own accord. Sighing, he set it down again. Where the hell was he supposed to start?
"About twenty minutes ago..."
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(It would help if you imagined the 'screen' getting all wavy here, 'cause this is one of those flashback moments...)
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It would also help if you imagined a sort of "woobly-woobly" sound to go along with it... I'd put in the special effects myself, but find myself sadly lacking the money. Eh... you'll live. Now hum along with me. Woobly woobly.)
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_______________________________________
Twenty Minutes Before
Aboveground
Tara, near entrance L37 to Haven
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The traveler was lucky. He could see in the dark.
He was searching for the entrance into Haven. The little myth about "the leprechaun's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" had its roots in truth. It was an ancient coded message to the entrance, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do with it, or if it was obsolete by now. He'd only been to Haven once -- and it had been a very long time ago. A light night breeze lifted his spiky blood red hair off his forehead, revealing a Hindu-like marking between his eyes ---
--- just as the sixth sense it represented kicked in, and he leaped several feet into the air and to the side like a mongoose avoiding a cobra's strike. "Shimmata!" he yelped in Japanese as what looked like a laser beam scorched the air right where he had been. The deadly blast roared past him and struck the side of a hill, accidentally killing a young mole as he tunneled quite innocently through the loam. (The various insects and worms that the mole would have eaten -- had he lived -- multiplied instead until they numbered in trillions, developed savage parasites, were eventually ingested by a careless sheep, and bred inside its gut, mutating into a new kind of virus that gave half the teenagers in Ireland a mild cold and a few days of school off. The moral of the story is that if you want to avoid an Advanced Algebra test for a few days, kill a mole; but things don't always work that way and the SPCA'd probably shoot you instead. Besides, you should never take anything I write entirely for granted as occasionally I am channeling the spirit of an Atlantean bogglefish and thus might be unreliable.)
Oblivious to all that, the traveler was knee-deep in untranslatable Japanese words that all meant, roughly, "D'Arvit." Fight or flight? Run like hell or fire back, probably scorching a lot of the local landscape in the process? (And inadvertently killing more moles, and the cosmic consequences of that.) Who was shooting at him anyway?
Nightvision eyes picked out the form of a small, childlike figure just visible behind a tree. No shielding tonight; apparently it trusted the cover darkness would bring it. Possibly an elf, judging by the build; wingless, relatively tall compared to some other species, unique way of holding its body. It wore a helmet and an unidentifiable uniform that didn't look LEP. But what did he know? The possible-elf was carrying what looked like a sawed-off laser gun and something in a package held close to its heart. A pair of glittering eyes twinkled behind the helmet's visor. It looked around carefully, with the measured casualness of a predator. The traveler readied himself to spring out of the way again as he saw the helmet swing in his direction; he'd been spotted again. He could destroy this frail little creature, small light bones snapping as easily as a chicken's inside that paper-thin jumpsuit. But it just didn't feel right or honorable, killing a little fairy. Even if it had started it. They were just so tiny... and... child-looking...
SHRAAAAAAWH
That was the noise of air molecules turning into fire molecules. It was the noise a grenade makes just before impact when it shatters into a thousand deadly shards of metal and explosive flame. The grenade slammed into the side of the hill, transforming the innocent mound of earth and grass into a ball of boiling, roaring flame. Killing countless moles.
The elf behind the tree ducked into standard safety position, curling into a small ball as the ground quivered with the explosion. A few seconds later the hell's furnace of the hill had turned into a spreading fire. Behind her helmet, the elf scowled. Her orders were to obliterate anyone who saw her, but hadn't included the local landscape, or any wildlife that might be living in it. Well, hopefully that odd-looking human had burned to a grease spot in that mess. She unclipped a few fizzers from her belt, loaded them into her second gun, and shot them into the heart of the flames. There was a second roar of water, then one of steam as the supercompressed capsules extinguished the blaze. A faint mist covered the stand of trees, which a few seconds ago had been scorching in the heat. Her duty done, the elf stood up, brushed her jumpsuit off, and began to move away, silent as a shadow and hidden in the night.
The sixth sense had saved him again, but he'd left his pack behind; all his things had been in there. One side of his face felt strangely hot, and when he touched it, there was a terrible burnt feeling behind the pain. How ironic; one of the planet's most fire-smart inhabitants getting burned by a nancy little elf. He decided to let the matter rest, until he was reasonably sure of what the hell was going on. Last he checked, the LEP hadn't been a lot of homicidal pyros willing to blow up a person for no reason whatsoever, but as the nagging little voice in his head kept reminding him, it had been a while.
He pulled himself to his feet, checked himself for injuries, and was relieved to see that apart from feeling sore and rather burnt in every single part of his body, he wasn't quite dead yet. Yet. A noise from the woods behind him made him turn around, resignedly.
A second fairy emerged from the woods, wearing the same uniform as the first, but with a shorter and squatter build. A dwarf? Not bad. As it saw him, raising its own weapon for a blow, he clenched his jaw, eyes gleaming, and growled in Japanese, "No, you go to hell." He let loose his own blaze of fire straight at its head.
The first elf turned around as a scream ripped through her headset, and saw the tall shape of the human she was sure she had killed. Her partner was writhing madly, trying to stop, drop and roll all at once while pulling his burning helmet off his head. Thinking clearly, she checked that her second gun still had fizzers in it, and fired one straight at her comrade. In an instant, dwarf and human were enveloped in a cloud of steam. As she ran towards them, she loaded her last fizzers into the gun, her mind remarking to itself that at this rate, the fire department should be paying her for all this.
This was definitely not the way this mission was supposed to turn out. Dangerous, yes, but she shouldn't have been the one in danger. He'd survived the laser and the grenade; she was going to use her weapon of last resort. It wasn't like it was her first choice. She pulled out her handgun -- the one that carried bullets.
Somehow the human saw her coming. His eyes widened, strangely catlike and electric, as he put up his hands defensively. The elf didn't even hesitate as she poured an entire clip of bullets into his body. Not even pausing to watch him fall, she turned to her partner. He was still rolling on the ground, screaming loud enough to wake the dead. Dwarves were such useless pyrophobes, the lot of them. She poked him with her toe.
"Get up. The fire's gone."
He only groaned incoherently.
"You didn't drop the ivory, did you?"
He groaned something that sounded like "No" and held up a small package, like the one she had. The blue plastic wrapping was charred and melted, but the hard white objects inside were completely intact.
"Good. It saved your life, even though it was raw. I wonder how he did that?" She looked over her shoulder at the human, who was on his knees, head bent and his hair falling over his face, hands clapped to his chest, blood flowing from his mouth and nose. "D'Arvit, he's taking a while to die." The elf crossed over to the kneeling figure and leveled her laser at him point-blank. She jacked the lever from "Kill" all the way up to the illegal setting, "Well-Done Char-Grilled." This would definitely finish him off.
The human somehow raised his head and she was surprised by the oddness of his looks. Even with the night-vision filter, which overrode color, she could tell that the blood streaking his face and neck was the same hot scarlet as his hair. "Don' really intend to die," he replied slowly and thickly in a strange accent. Holding her gaze, pulling one blood-soaked hand from his chest, he dropped a handful of dark objects on the ground.
Bullets. He'd caught bullets. Not all of them, she'd shot at least six. Still, surviving a laser blast, a grenade and then catching back two bullets out of six is not a usual habit for humans. (Except in horribly inaccurate human action movies starring Pierce Brosnan and scantily clad spy women. And they don't count.) A fellow fairy could have done it. She had definitely not expected this person to.
The elf took a few steps back, almost tripping over the still-prone body of her partner. "What the hell---?"
A steady, insistent beeping noise sounded within her headset. It was picking up radar from an incoming LEP patrol. "D'Arvit!" she cursed frantically. Forgetting about the human, she struggled to rouse her dwarven comrade. He clung to her heels and muttered something about a fiery death that she paid no attention to. Useless, useless pyrophobes, and he was the worst of the lot. Somehow draping his arms around her neck and dragging him along, the elf vanished into the woods with her partner.
~~~~~~~~~ A few minutes later ~~~~~~~~~~
The faintest hum from a set of remodeled Koboi Double-Dex (tm) whispered vaguely in the summer night air. The shielded sprite they were strapped to was a green-skinned male, humming cheerfully to himself. He had a big scar punched into one wing, so he had to use mechanical wings like any groundcrawling fairy. He didn't mind it, though, and he didn't mind working late; tonight, he was paired off with a nice-looking young pixie, Private Lucretia Mercredi, and his chances with her were looking extremely hopeful. He just had to finish this routine flyby over Tara, then swing back to her and start working the old Verbil charm.
His headset crackled. "Chix? Do you copy?"
"Loud and clear, Lucretia my dear."
There was a pause. Apparently she decided to ignore this last comment. "I'm picking up heatspill north-north-east of you. Do you read it?"
"Heatspill" was just another one of the vast library of LEP technical terms, like "science" and "fizzer," and it meant just what it sounded like; lingering vestiges of heat. Somewhat similar to standing in an area where a shuttle has just taken off and feeling the leftover heat of its passage -- though why anybody would want to stand in heatspill from a shuttle is unclear.
"I thought I noticed things getting hot around here," Chix shot back smoothly. Or so he thought. Safely shielded near the chute entrance, Private Mercredi raised an eyebrow. She was going to let that one slide, too. "Just go check it out, will you?"
"Sure will." Chix pulled a barrel roll in midair, even though she couldn't see him, and switched on the heat-sensor eyepiece in his helmet. After his crippling experience that time with Holly, he was a bit wary of the whole heat-sensing thing and its faults. Still, Lucretia was watching.
Cold things show up gray. Hot things, like People and fire, show up orange. Heatspill shows up a watery shade of orange, its strength depending on how warm the leftover heat is. There was a lot of it this time, a huge patch of dying orange overlaid on cold gray ground. There was another patch of dying orange in the area as well, but it was a bit stronger than the rest. Probably a fire going out; he'd chuck some fizzers at it so they wouldn't have the fire department tramping around Tara. Chix gunned towards it.
What he saw surprised him so much that he almost dropped his shield. It looked like a nuclear war had been fought there. A whole hillside had been blasted to cinders, nearby trees were blackened, the grass turned to brittle charcoal. Laser markings scored and burned the ground. A light breeze picked up clots and swirls of ash and swirled them heavily over the area. Chix slowed down his wings and set them to idle, coming to a landing just at the edge of the scorched area. Reattaching his gaping lower jaw to the rest of his face, he tapped his helmet cam. "You picking this up, Lucretia?"
"Yes. I'm sending it to Commander Root. He should receive the footage in a few minutes." Her small voice was tight over the intercom. "Looks like a disaster zone."
"Heatspill's already fading," Chix said professionally. "Must have been pretty recent."
"What's that brighter bit in the middle there?" Mercredi asked.
"Probably the core of the fire. Looks like it's dying out, but I'll take a look."
"Be careful, Verbil."
"Oh, don't worry," Chix replied, rolling his eyes. Females, always worrying. Of course, Holly had been right to worry last time... He strolled over to the spot indicated on his visor-map and stopped short. Again.
"How the hell did a Mud Boy get here?" Warily, the sprite circled the crumpled figure on the ground. "Odd-looking fellow too. Probably setting off fireworks or something."
"Verbil, look at the sensors, he's dying---!" Private Mercredi's voice was cut off by a much louder one.
"VERBIL, WHAT HAPPENED HERE?!"
Chix winced, looking around at the charred area. "Commander Root, all I can say is, I didn't do it."
"Don't move. We're sending Recon in. I repeat, don't move. I'll know if you do, I'm monitoring you with the helmet cam."
"Yes, sir," Chix replied, then added under his breath, "Permission to breathe?"
"Granted," Root said swiftly. "Recon will arrive in about five minutes. Until then, stay put, Private."
For an uncomfortable 4.57 minutes, Chix stood balanced on one foot and the ball of the other foot, in the exact pose he had been in when Root told him not to move. It was harder than he would have liked to admit, and not just because of the balancing. The figure on the ground seemed to be losing life by the minute, and it stressed the sprite out to be unable to help. Not that he had any love for humans. But the way the blood lurched slower and slower out of the young man's nose and mouth with every dying heartbeat made him sick to his stomach.
A special LEPRecon squad arrived within the timeframe Root had given, along with a warlock medic. Chix eyed the medic approvingly -- a female about seventy-five years old, rather young for the job, with clear blue-gray skin and deep purple hair in a low ponytail. As the Recon squad fanned out to secure the area, the sprite balanced in position, and the medic set up a makeshift clinic and expertly began to examine the young man on the ground. Since Chix was just standing there, still as a coat hanger, she put her flashlight into his hand, closed his stiff fingers around it, and aimed the light at her patient. He took this as a sign of interest.
"So, honey, what's your sign?"
The medic didn't even look up as she took off the human's leather jacket; he was wearing a black turtleneck underneath. Pulling scissors from her bag, she cut the shirt off, tightening her mouth at the blackened bullet holes and trails of blood. "If I told you I was a lesbian, would you let me do my work?" Her long, slender, skilled hands flew over her patient's body, but no blue sparks yet. She didn't want to accidentally heal his body over the bullets.
"What work, babe? Just patch him up so he doesn't die, give him a mind-wipe and dump him on a hospital step. What's your name?"
The young warlock growled, slim dolphin-gray fingers clearing the clotting blood from her patient's airways. "Silver. Junior Medic Janisha Silver. Now shut up."
Surprisingly, he did.
Commotion from the makeshift clinic brought a Recon officer running. The patient's catlike eyes had opened, and he looked around dizzily. "LEP?" he asked thickly.
"Y-yes..." Junior Medic Silver replied, astonished.
He focused on the medic's wavering figure -- all three of her. "Ningenno zoge..." he spat, and lay back again.
The warlock, Chix, the Recon officer, and Mercredi and Root -- still watching from Chix's helmet cam -- stood staring at him for a good four seconds.
Then Silver, on a spontaneous hunch, leaned forward and began brushing his long, jagged crimson hair away from his face. It had apparently been styled to hide his face; this became obvious as she flicked away the last oddly colored strands to reveal a definitely pointed ear.
There was another strange silence. "Well," the medic said, rocking back on her heels, "We're not using the mesmer on this one."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ End of convenient flashback. Back to Root's office. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ningenno zoge." Holly said. Root had just filled them in on what he knew. She knew the words were Japanese but couldn't recall them immediately. "What does that mean?"
"Human ivory," Trouble told her instantly.
"Ah."
"I know a little Japanese from anime," he said proudly. "I really like anime."
"Ah." Holly said again.
"These were found at the site," the commander said, tossing a plastic bag across the desk. Holly picked it up and looked at the items inside. "Bloody bullets and fizzer caps? Oh." She winced. "These are our bullets, aren't they?"
"From when we used them, about a century ago. Fizzer caps among evidence in the fire point to one of the People. Stupid of them to leave evidence, but I guess they were in a hurry."
"What happened to the hu- whatever he is?" Holly asked, tossing the bag to Trouble.
"Emergency medic ward. Might not make it through the night." Root relit his cigar and the two captains winced. Again. "You two get home, get some rest. Come in early tomorrow morning."
"Yes sir." They stood as one, Trouble dropping the plastic bag on the desk with a disgusted look.
"Goodnight, Commander," Holly said shakily.
"Good night, captains."
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Still the same Friday Night
The Netherworld Flamingo
Downtown Haven, Lower Elements
(Happy Hour: 8 pm to midnight. All drinks half-off, free refills for reviewers, original characters and repeat customers. Shameless spamming? Yes indeed. ^_^)
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Oblivious of the suspense looming tighter with every chapter around the Lower Elements, the seemingly eternal party at the Netherworld Flamingo was continuing with the usual abandon. People were hanging out, cutting loose, getting gloriously, hyperly hyper on sugar and caffeine, and generally having fun. Caspian, the proprietor, paused to rest for an instant, perched on a bar stool, her fingerless-gloved-hands and hiking boots akimbo in what was for her a graceful pose, content to just watch the People.
The place was full of noise and music and the odd darkness of most clubs, lit by black lights and the strangely glowing furniture -- deep blue and purple and dark crimson providing a cool atmosphere. Over at the end of the bar, nursing root beers, were a group of middle-aged male sprites that came in every night at eight o'clock sharp, drank six root beers apiece, and had to be escorted to their homes a few hours later.
Sprites are kind of like hummingbirds. They get very wound up and excitable when they get their hands on caffeine. Dwarves can down ten cups of coffee straight without getting the least bit waffley, and one centaur was known to eat an entire crate of sugar cubes without even starting to get incoherent, but sprites just can't hold their caffeine. Their sugar tolerance level is almost as low as that of your average human teenage girl -- even one cup of soda can tip them far, far over the line drawn in the sand to separate the sane from the People who Hear Rice Krispies. Right now the middle-aged regulars were arguing vehemently over an article they'd seen in the "Gnommish Gazette."
"He shaid," the first regular slurred, tapping his greenish fingernail on the deeply glowing dark purple bartop, "That the mosht vaaaal--- vaall- vaal-you-a-bull thing we can do for our shlumpin' hec-hic- h'economy... is... to go on more vacations. But theresh only sooo many times ya can go to Disneyworld afore it shtratsh... sthartsh..." Nearing the end of his argument, he made a supreme effort -- "STARTS ta get old." He then vanished behind his root beer, and was not heard from again.
"Disneyworld," announced another, more lucid regular, "Is not what it used to be. Ya got your Mickey Mouse impersonators, ya got your roller coasters, ya got your kidsh shkipping aroun' in packsh being dangeroush, ya got ALL these crazy teenage humansh runnin around like they own the place, it jest ain't a good family place ta take the kidsh anymore." Okay... maybe he wasn't any more lucid than the first one. Still... five points for determination, Sprite #2.
"Mickey Mouse," a third regular spat venomously. He looked as if he wanted to add something to that, but slid off his stool with a faint giggle instead, wings fluttering helplessly. The others didn't seem to notice. They continued to argue among themselves in between swigsh -- er, swigs -- of root beer.
A pair of new customers entered, a pair of dwarves with their arms linked lovingly. They looked up in trepidation at the enormous glow-in-the-dark squirrel statues proudly guarding the front entrance, the spectra-flamingos lurking warily in the eaves, the glass squid hung from the high black ceiling that was dotted randomly with phosphorescent stars, the steel rafters a comfortable place for young lunatics to watch the action. Huge aquariums lined the walls, the exotic Atlantean fish flashing bright as neon within their deep purple depths or boggling cluelessly at the customers. Music throbbed from all directions. The dwarves looked completely overwhelmed and a little nervous; they must not have ever been here before. Caspian herself got up to greet them -- miraculously not tripping over, breaking, killing or spontaneously combusting anything on her way. Her ungracefullness was an adolescence thing, she stubbornly told herself, something she would grow out of --- whoops, avoid the waitress with flaming Cokes, don't want to explain THAT to the insurance company (again.)
The brightly colored little Random Parrots shot back and forth, scrawking current menu prices and one-liner quotes from movies, as well as incoherent phrases that were quite amusing if you could concentrate on them long enough to listen. "Root beer, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, ginger ale!" one parrot screamed thrillingly, shooting past the bar in an explosion of orange and neon blue feathers. "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Meanwhile, the best and brightest of the LEP Academy were cheerfully singing a drinking song straight from the pits of madness. Caspian knew; she'd taught them, setting the words to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne."
"Oh for the days of lollipops and alcohol free champagne,
Lest new flamingos be begot, like lemurs in the rain!
Like lemurs in the rain, my friends, like lemurs in the raaaaaiiin,
Lest new flamingos be begot like lemurs in the rain!"
Caspian blinked. Was it just her, or was Vice Corporal Fallacy wearing a pink plastic toilet seat on his--? No, she decided reluctantly, she probably didn't want to know.
Strolling across the blue-black stage, Grub Kelp was adding to the general noise by soulfully singing karaoke. What a pity that the music playing was "Action Fairy" by Fairypop and the Heat Sensors ("Action yeah it's what I crave, cutting loose as the crowds rave and I'm sayin, gonna take off this shirt this shirt cause I'm an ac-tion fai-ry...") while Grub was singing "Spam Song" by that oracle of human genius, Monty Python. Another pity was that he was trying to get the wonderful well-rounded chorus effect with just his own slightly wobbly, noticeably hyper voice. "Wonderful Spam lovely Spam Spam SPAM wonderful lovely Spam Spam Spam SPAM..."
Perched on the octopus-bedecked rafters were a group of cheerfully insane teenagers, mostly elves, who were happily throwing completely random objects at him. A cast-iron bathtub with clawed feet thudded onto the hard, clear dark blue surface of the stage, miraculously not even scratching it, and lolled there helplessly, pathetically, improbably, like a whale that has found itself beached on the moon. It was joined by a 7,563-page hardbound edition of "Sociology: A Modern Introduction" and, due to an inexplicable twist of fate, a pickle-shaped duct tape dispenser. A particularly creative pixie threw a can of Spam at the singer. Oblivious, Grub strolled and sang, as mournful and poetic as if he was singing an angsty Irish love ballad. "Spam Spam Spam Spam SPAM..."
A Random Parrot shot wobbling past his face, scattering hot pink and black feathers in its disheveled, drunken wake. "Join the Dark Side and I will spare your life!" it barked convincingly, before hitting the velvet curtain and falling to the stage floor with an odd-sounding giggle, beating its wings against the floor and squawking incoherently "There they go! I must hurry after them, for I am their leader!" Caspian really had to train them better, or at least encourage the customers not to give them sugar...
Somewhere, the proprietor could hear the all-too-familiar sound of a certain egotistic technician getting a resounding SLAP across the face. Probably trying to put the moves on some girl again... and failing, again. Poor Foaly. Annoying as hell, sure, but still. His natural genetics, taking an evil turn like genetics are prone to do, had rendered him with the sad inability to get hyper on sugar, so while everyone else was cheerfully going mad, Foaly and his superior attitude were attempting to describe to the blonde female (the glossy black one had slapped him, then clopped off in disgust) exactly how to hack into a laptop computer with only a bar of soap and a socket wrench. The soap, he was telling her smugly, wasn't really necessary. In fact, if you were pressed for time, you could use any standard-sized jar of peanut butter. The blonde female was slowly backing away, holding her ginger ale protectively, as Foaly began to demonstrate on a placemat.
A Random Parrot dove by, squalling philosophically ("My karma ran over your dogma!") and the female centaur seized that moment to gallop off in another direction. Oblivious, Foaly turned to the group of washed-out sprites and began to patronizingly explain to them the mechanics of a DNA stun cannon. Pie-eyed, clutching their root beers, their wings and jaws drooping slightly, they nodded vaguely and attempted to look intelligent and reasonably sober.
Seated at a table, drunk on Gatorade, was renowned psychologist Dr. J. Argon, loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen that the Universe was just a figment of its own imagination, and if everyone were to fall into a coma at once, thus not thinking about it, existence would cease. He kept this up for about five minutes, until the Netherworld Flamingo Resident Bouncer, a large and muscly creature of uncertain species with the ominous name of Joe, quietly escorted the psychologist to the back room and phoned his wife. Dr. J. Argon's wife, not Joe's wife. Caspian was reasonably sure that Joe was male, but still had room left for doubt.
Elsewhere, the group of insane teenagers had parachuted down from the rafters, stormed the stage, usurped Grub, and were now singing very good karaoke. They'd selected "Dare," the song that had made turned the Flare Riders from Gnommish nobodies to stars overnight, and were doing all the correct dancing moves, miraculously not destroying anything in the process. The People sitting near the stage actually looked up from their Diet Cokes and Mountain Dews to watch and listen.
"Being with you is living a little. It's like being set out on a dare, it's like taking my life in my hands to ride a magma flare. It's when you feel the heat that you know you're alive and I can take on the underworld with you at my side..."
There was a loud crash as Vice Corporal Fallacy fell out of his seat with a loud crash, the pink plastic toilet seat coming loose from his head and rolling off into a dark corner to hide its shame. The half-breed (Pixie/sprite; never a healthy combination, especially with the low sugar tolerance and silly wings) lay there giggling madly and screaming for someone to shoot the damn colored lemurs that were floating around his head, they were scaring him. Helpfully, the other junior officers of the LEP clustered around him, and one had the uncommon good sense to douse him with a glass of ginger ale.
Caspian vaulted herself up on the bar top and swung her boots casually, letting it all wash over her. Yeah... she loved this place.
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Friday Night/ Saturday Morning -- at any rate, 1:00 AM
Root's Office
Downtown Haven.... you get the idea.
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Alone now in his office, alone in the building in fact - everyone else had the common sense to go home - Root quietly chain-smoked several cigars, got bored and paced around the room a few times, threw the ashtray around some more just for the hell of it, got bored, and chain-smoked a few more cigars. He thought. He knocked the ashtray off his desk, hoping it would break, or destroy something, so that he could be annoyed at it. He desperately wanted to be annoyed at anything, anything at all, to have a decent temper fit at someone or something to relieve this odd empty silence and calm. Everyone had gone home; the few who knew about the... crisis were under strict orders not to talk until they knew it was for real; there was nobody to rant and rave at. How could everything be so well-ordered and silent, when something sinister seemed to be quietly building itself up until he was ready to explode with impatience?
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Holly's Apartment
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Holly got back into her apartment by taking a hand drill and boring several holes into the doorframe, then knocking it over with her boot. Duct tape, pulled out of some tiny secret spy-fairy pocket sewn into her pants, provided the perfect cover-up. (After about a year of all this, her door was made almost completely out of duct tape, held together by a few remnants of the original frame. Give in and ask Foaly to make her a new key? No, never! Captain Short does not give up so easily!) She strode purposefully into her apartment, threw her boots around, and collapsed onto the floor.
"I just don't know what to do, Bob."
Sympathetically, Bob stared widely in a completely different direction, apparently trying to come to grips with an oddly shaped spot on the far wall.
Annoyed, Holly reached up and slapped her slim hand against the wall of his tank. The water sloshed violently, and the bogglefish's ungainly round, fat purplish body tumbled about in the sudden tsunami. Rigid with surprise, he completely forgot to move his ridiculously small fins to turn himself upright, so he floated upside down, staring hugely with his cartoonish wide eyes and flopping his lips a few times in complete astonishment. He looked oddly like Grub Kelp.
"Some therapist you are," Holly groaned, slumping back to the floor and staring at the ceiling. "And they say people with pets have calmer, happier lives. Ever since I got you, I've had nothing but chaos. First, Artemis Fowl. Then, goblins. And Artemis Fowl. Now, human ivory...."
Bob wobbled upright, blew a random bubble, boggled at it in astonishment, accidentally popped it, went into brief spasms of surprise, and began to stare raptly at a small piece of seaweed that Holly had put in his tank three months ago, to keep him company. What was this?! Where did it come from?! Why was it there?! How long had it been there before he noticed it?! Should he eat it? Ignore it? Worship it? Forget about it and --- WAIT! WHAT'S THAT THING? MY GOD! WHAT DOES IT MEAN? SHOULD I WORSHIP IT? WHY --
Holly pushed herself back up, grabbing the can of dried stink worms from its place under the heater and nearly giving the fish a heart attack as she randomly sprinkled the brittle food into his tank. There are only so many synonyms you can use for the word 'surprise,' but Bob's reaction encompassed all of them. He was, according to "Roget's Desk Thesaurus," astonished, astounded, startled, amazed, flabbergasted, taken aback, struck with wonder, left open-mouthed; his mind was boggled at the sudden appearance of food in his tank. Bob attempted to worship the food, but his stomach grew so annoyed at the fact that his brain was so useless that it valiantly seized control of his body and all major motion control centers, and he gulped down a piece.
Oblivious to the daytime drama going on in her fish tank, Holly dragged herself to her feet, only to collapse heavily on the thin lumpy mattress of her futon-like piece of furniture. She her head fall into her hands. She was so tired, but she couldn't possibly sleep. The events of the night had left her with a strange, surreal feeling of calmness, like nothing could possibly happen to faze her now. Holly also was faced with a slight headache, mild feelings of angst, a noticeable hunger, and a very strange compulsion to make fun of pirated reruns of "Gilligan's Island."
Hunger. Hunger she could deal with. She got up and began leafing half-heartedly through her fridge, not really expecting much, and not finding it either. All she wanted was something she could eat without hurting herself, or preferably not setting the building on fire (again.) Holly was no cook; she somehow always managed to scorch at least one meal a week, to a point of carbonized black molecules of ash that floated around her apartment for hours in a thick cloud of gray-black smoke. This was even more surprising since Holly's microwave was one of the first prototypes ever made, was permanently stuck on the "Wussy" setting, and barely had the power to heat a cup of cocoa from cold to lukewarm. She could probably buy a new one, but her theory with all 'unimportant' things -- namely things like temperature control, clothing, cooking, and decor -- was that, hell, if it still works, why bother?
"Something simple," Holly announced, her voice echoing into the fridge. Something comforting. Something that didn't involve anything complicated, like heat, or cutting, or unwrapping, or defrosting, or Frond forbid SKILL. It was one thirty in the morning, some unknown source had gotten hold of human ivory, and the whole Lower Elements might unknowingly be the stakes in some sick card game. If Holly actually sat down and thought about this, she knew she might explode. Unfortunately the comfort food she wanted was wedged in the back between several gallon jugs of spring water, a crate of lemons (she'd recently been on a lemon-water spree,) a jar of jalapeno-peanut-pickle relish (a gift from her great-aunt Mathilda, who liked to can) and a brown paper bag filled with greasy, congealing takeout from Spud's Spud Emporium, which she was never going to touch, but didn't want to throw out. After some lightning fast and surprisingly creative rearranging, and being blasted unmercifully with freezing cold air, Holly fell backwards out of the fridge with a "Whoof." She clutched an untouched gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream to her chest, glaring at the fridge with the scornful triumph of one who has battled bravely and won. Carefully she felt the tips of her ears; no frostbite. "You didn't win this time, Frigidaire."
The refrigerator didn't reply. It lurked, and bided its time.
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sound of genuine wooden soapbox being dragged across floor Ach, now I got a splinter! Where's my Swiss army knife... *vicious glower at everything, which dissolves into a water-buffalo-like yawn*
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L37 IS the Tara entrance chute right? Right? Well, sorry if it isn't my funniest work right now, there's this nagging little thing called a "plot line" that keeps getting in the way of all the flamingos, pink plastic toilet seats, and all-importantly, Bob. I'm trying my best to balance humor, since apparently I am best as a mildly funny humor writer, with this exotic beast. Basically what I'm going on sleepily/incoherently about here is that plotting is hard, humor is even harder, I work very very hard, and your time and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. (Flattery isn't that bad, either... *raises eyebrow, toys with the leashes of several slavering flamingos*) So what do you think? More funny? More serious? More Netherworld Flamingo? More Bob?
"Shimmata" is a Japanese swear word. A pyrophobe is someone afraid of fire. Private Lucretia is a tribute to Lucretia Noin of Gundam Wing. ^.^ If you see a term or character that you've never heard of, chances are it's mine. For the unenlightened (namely, people not from the Canada/New England region) Moose Tracks is a kind of ice cream sold here. What do you think of the new characters I'm trying to introduce?
Next chapter I'll try to be shorter and funnier and maybe we'll see what Artemis is up to.
I'm thinking quite seriously about a sequel, because I really want to write Artemis in school, with that attitude... so many possibilities... I'd say more, but there's a very small chance that Colfer might actually be reading this, and Lord knows I don't want HIM stealing MY ideas! *growls quietly and menacingly*
Yrs in the Netherworld, Caspian Nyghtvision
PS Why do Julius and Juliet have such similar first names? Does Colfer have a "Julie" fetish, or is there some private joke in there everyone gets but me? IT IS AN EVIL PLOT I SAY!
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The Netherworld Flamingo Bulletin Board
FREE DRINKS MENTIONS:
All the following people will have their tabs erased, free drinks on the house, and Joe the Bouncer will look the other way if they get hyper. Choice of diet soda, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Coke and other licensed brands with hundreds of copyrights, as well as Trouble's Drink.
crazygirly007 -- Thanks so much! *laughs* Have a bogglefish! And careful of that chair... *ducks*
becca -- Patience, my friend! Patience! *cackles* *cough* Sorry. I try.
Vana Burke -- No, that's okay, you can flatter me all you like... *huge blush, maniacal laughter to cover it up* Thank you very much.
Mage Kitty -- Thanks! I appreciate it, don't hurt yourself...
Kitty Rainbow -- Last I checked, pet stores didn't have bogglefish, but you could always buy a goggle-eyed goldfish and paint it purple...