Artemis Fowl: The Ivory Files
By Caspian Nyghtvision
Chapter Eight: In Which Some Things Happen, And Some Things Don't
Brief Note: I have not yet read the Eternity Code, so it has no effect on this chapter. See general madness at end of chapter for details.
RANDOM AMUSING BIRD OF THE WEEK: The Grackle. Expect at least one grackle in every scene.
"There's an emptiness inside her
and she'd do anything to fill it in
and though it's red blood bleeding from her now
it's more like cold blue ice in her heart.
When all the colors come together to grey,
And it breaks her heart."
-- "Grey Street" by Dave Matthews Band
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Sunday Morning at Fowl Manor
-----------------------------
Artemis Fowl the Second was Storming. He stormed through the halls, almost stomping in his emotion. He stormed down the wide marble stairs, his face like a thundercloud. He stormed into the kitchen, where, judging by the loud clatters and multilingual curses, Butler was doing dishes.
Artemis Stormed into the kitchen and stopped dead. Several things were very wrong with the scene he saw before him. The first very wrong thing was the sight of the big manservant sprawled out stunned on the floor, and Mulch Diggums cheerfully doing the dishes instead. The frilly pink apron around Mulch's waist was one thing wrong, and so was the lavender leopard-patterned bandanna tied around his head. Also, the music that Mulch was singing along with, loudly playing on Juliet's radio, was very wrong.
It was the uncensored version of 'Action Fairy.'
Artemis Stormed over to the sink and threw the radio in it. Mulch pulled his hands out just in time as a fascinating shower of sparks crackled across the surface of the water. "Hey! Wadja do that for?!"
"That," Artemis said, with no words on Earth capable of describing his tone, "Was very inappropriate. So is that -- that -- and that. What did you do to Butler?"
"Nothing, he did it to himself."
Artemis paused and counted to ten in all the languages he could remember. "How?" he said finally, his voice colder than Mt Washington in January.
"I don't know, all I did was come in here with my feather duster and my music, and he jerked back and hit his head upside the range."
Artemis darted a wary look at the crackling ruins of the radio and the huge, violently colored bunch of grackle feathers, and could see why Butler had flinched.
"I'm all right," Butler said suddenly, pulling himself together. "I must be getting soft or something. Is something wrong, Artemis?"
Bereft of his radio, Mulch started singing again. Butler picked him up by the nape of the neck like an errant puppy, opened the door to the laundry chute, and put him in. There was a long drawn out "Wheee!" and a distant clang.
Artemis tried to get back into the fine mood he had been in five minutes before, and failed. He just wasn't cut out for real temper tantrums. He took several angry breaths and ended in a resigned sigh. "It's about Father, Butler. I've found out what his new... plan is."
With a restraint born of years of practice, Butler refrained from leaping up and down and squealing "What? What? Tell me tell me tell me!" Instead, he took a seat on a kitchen stool and motioned his young charge to do the same.
Artemis grudgingly perched on the stool. Distracted momentarily, he picked up a strange looking black object and fingered it. It crumbled slightly under his touch, but otherwise seemed hard as a rock. What sort of mineral could it be? he wondered as he examined it more closely.
"One of Juliet's biscuits," Butler told him gently, seeing Artemis's pained look of total confusion, and his futile attempt at masking it.
"Ah." Artemis set it down gingerly and drummed his fingertips. "Father's working with the People," he burst out suddenly.
Unfortunately, the meaningful silence between manservant and mastermind was broken by the arrival of Juliet.
She burst into the kitchen, dragging Mulch behind her. Seeing the ruins of her radio in the dishwater, she screamed incoherently and started paddling the dwarf with every ounce of strength in her body. "I'll rip your lungs out through your eye sockets and use them as your own garrote, you--"
"Come and see the violence inherent in the women!" Mulch squalled.
"Oh, you think that's violence? You ain't seen nothing yet! I'll use your eyeballs as billiards! I'll make you gnaw off your own toes to use as... as... as..." Juliet hesitated as she tried to think of something torturous she could do with a dwarf toe. She couldn't really think of anything.
"Garden implements?" Mulch suggested helpfully from his upside-down position.
"Oh, very good, garden implements. And, and I'll saw off your--"
"Help, help, I'm being repressed!"
"Shut up! Bloody dwarf!"
"Ooh, look at her repressing me! You see this, don't you? Come and see the violence, inherent in the women!"
Butler quietly seperated the battling pair, escorted Mulch down the laundry chute again, rescued Juliet's radio without getting electrocuted, and sent them both on their respective ways. He rejoined Artemis at the stools and they shared a pained look.
"I can't wait until I'm eighteen." Artemis spoke with rare heartfelt feeling.
"I can't either."
There was a silence while both of them regrouped.
"Father's dealing with the People," Artemis announced dramatically. This time, they were allowed to relish a moment of great importance, plot-wise. In a marvelous display, Butler displayed all the emotions expected of him -- shock, astonishment, disbelief, consternation, pain, anxiety -- in a few masterful seconds. He looked a bit like a bogglefish with heartburn.
"What are we going to do?" Butler asked quietly after a respectful span of proper silence.
"Stop him," Artemis said firmly. "He has no idea what he's getting into."
"Does he even know what he's dealing with?"
"No. But knowing my father, he might find out. And... and..." Butler waited as Artemis fumbled. "The Lower Elements Police will not approve if they find out."
"Ah." Butler cherished the thought for a moment -- Artemis the First pisses off Holly Short. Most bodyguards didn't have to deal with these things, he thought. No, for them it was just the occasional Mafia conspiracy or terrorist uprising or assassination attempt, that sort of thing. None of this four-foot-tall fairy-flygirl-in-your-face "I have the Gift and you don't, nyah!" stuff. Oh, for the good old days, when --
"Butler, are you all right?"
"Fine," he growled. "Let's get your father out of this."
"My sentiments exactly." Artemis started laying out the battle plans. "As far as we know, all Father is doing at this point is transferring money from one of our bank accounts to this unknown person. When I ran a trace on their email address, it was linked to the Undernet -- the underground Internet," he reminded Butler. "Apparently he's just investing in some plan. It's implied that it's a gray area, morally, but you know us Fowls." Artemis seemed a bit bitter as he said this. "We never seem to mind the ethical bits."
Awkwardly, Butler patted him on the shoulder. "Yes, well, let's see what you've got."
-------------------------
Sunday Evening
Holly's Apartment
-------------------------
Holly lay on her couch and looked at the ceiling, pretending to be interested in it. It wasn't a very interesting ceiling, but she didn't want to offend it by staring at the wall, which was even worse.
She was very tired. She had gotten some sleep, but it wasn't nearly enough. All she had the energy to do was stagger home early that morning, hack her way into her apartment, and collapse. She had woken up, briefly, to feed Bob. He was very surprised to see her. In a rare display of intelligence, he only bonked into the walls three times before he discovered they existed, and then spent a long time on his back, staring at the ceiling. He rather believed that the Ceiling was a Manifestation of the Great Grackle, and he was completely astonished by this revelation.
So now Holly was staring at the ceiling too. She supposed if she was a bogglefish, she could also stare at it for five hours on end, as Bob was doing. However, since she was an elf, and a very tired one, she kept falling asleep and trying very hard not to dream.
Things were happening. Holly loved it when things happened, when her life was full of action. She was indeed an action fairy. She needed the adrenaline as much as she needed breathing. And now here was an assignment that looked like it would challenge her limits, something she wanted very badly. Yet she had this sense of foreboding...
Kitsune was probably the main problem.
"Want to know how my day was, Bob?" Holly rolled over and asked the fish. She took his frenzied bubbles of surprise as an affirmative. "I'll tell you about it."
------------------------------
Flashback -- Earlier that afternoon, in Root's office
------------------------------
"Bleh."
(Er... flash back even earlier.)
(Grackle!)
------------------------------
Flashback -- Even Earlier than the previous One
-----------------------------
Kitsune refused to come quietly to Root's office. The agitated warlocks would have nothing to do with him -- "Not after what he did to poor Doctor Bill!" -- so Root ordered a couple of stocky, stalwart, off-duty LEPRetrieval officers to bring him in.
Kitsune went to ground in the male's bathroom on the fourth level of the LEP building. The first officers to charge in promptly had their uniforms singed off. Finally, a troop of firefighters was called in -- a group of amusingly short little figures in fireproof suits and ill-advised yellow helmets. Unfortunately, they believed they had been summoned to put out a fire, and...
Quietly observing the sea of foam that seemed to be covering the first five floors of the building, Root decided to take matters into his own hands. "Foaly?"
"WhatwhatwhatwhatWHAT?!!?" The centaur poked his head in the doorway. To say that he was irritable would be a deadly understatement. His horse parts were soaked and sudsy, the fur sticking up in little spikes; foam dripped from his beard. A wet centaur has the tolerance level of a tormented warthog. Foaly took a deep breath and a few pet-tranquilzing pills. "Make it quick. Some nitwit put half the servers on the floor, and they're filling up with this ridiculous foam."
"Get me the number for that bar-thing down the street."
"The Netherworld Flamingo?" Foaly chirped, rattling off the number from memory. Root dialed it and glowered at the phone until someone picked up.
"Netherworld Flamingo, Caspian here."
"I need your bouncer." Root decided to start off by being nice. Direct, but nice. If the kid decided to argue, THEN he'd stop being so polite.
There was a short pause, filled with the distant sound of breaking glass and something that sounded suspiciously like a cow mooing. "Er, I'm sorry, but Joe isn't, er... Joe doesn't do housecalls," the person at the other end said reluctantly.
"This is Commander Root."
The voice at the other end changed abruptly. "Oh, all right. I thought you were an angry wife or something. Yeah, I'll send Joe along. Anything else?"
Deciding to ignore the 'angry wife' comment, Root thought for a minute. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Do you still do that drink?"
"Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, grenadine, lukewarm hot cocoa, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, lemonade, vanilla, whipped cream, five tablespoons of white sugar, coffee, three tablespoons of colored sugar, and some fruit sherbet?"
"Yeah... that," Root whispered hoarsely, looking around with a vaguely haunted look.
"No, we don't. These days, we do Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, grenadine, lukewarm hot cocoa, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, lemonade, vanilla, whipped cream, five tablespoons of white sugar, coffee, three tablespoons of colored sugar, and lime Jell-O powder." Caspian's voice was a little apologetic. "There was a -- er, never mind. Would you like one brought up to you with the bouncer, sir?"
"Yes, please... but quietly. Can you do quietly?" Root growled softly. He, himself, wasn't very good at 'doing quietly.'
"Yes, sir, we do quietly very well," Caspian whispered back, to prove how quiet and responsible she was. Then, from the other end of the line, there was a sudden explosion, screeching, a cow mooing, glass shattering, and a huge rush of either static or water. Someone screamed "D'ARVIT!" and the line went dead.
Root stared at the phone as if the disaster would leap through the wires and bite his ear. He quietly replaced the phone on the cradle and sat back in his chair.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been quiet enough. Foaly stuck his head back in, a headset propped over his customary tinfoil hat. "Root! Well, I never thought you were one for Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, grenadine, lukewarm hot cocoa, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, lemonade, vanilla, whipped cream, five tablespoons of white sugar, coffee, three tablespoons of colored sugar, and lime Jell-O powder... Whatever will the boys think?"
"Get out!" Root roared, his face flaring to the color of strawberry jam. He scrabbled desperately about on his desk for something to throw, but Foaly ducked out just in time, braying with laughter.
In a few minutes, Joe the Bouncer, a muscly creature of uncertain gender, stomped into the men's bathroom, dragged Kitsune out, and proceeded to haul the taller person to Root's office. Kistune struggled superbly, a display that any average three-year-old boy would be proud of. He starfished at all the doors, that classic pose with the hands and the feet splayed out so that you absolutely can't go through. He bit Joe, but Joe didn't care, or indeed seem to notice. He set many, many things on fire, but the all-encompassing foam foiled his attempts.
Holly had been sent out on a quick doughnut run, as the Administrative Assistant was refusing to do anything so demeaning. ("If ANYONE tries to send me for coffee, I'll-- I'll -- tape them into their offices!") She was returning, grudgingly lugging several boxes of doughnuts, when the foam began pouring out into the street.
Every window in the LEP main building seemed to be leaking fireproof foam, as if the rocketproof glass was crying tears of whipped cream. It was an inspiring sight. Her auburn eyebrows shot straight up. "Wow... even I've never been able to do that."
Tiptoeing in awe through the thigh-high suds, Holly came across an interesting sight. There was that annoying pyro, being frog-marched through the ocean of foam. He was just about the only one who wasn't submerged in suds. He shot her a desperate, pleading look as a muscly creature dragged him in the direction of Root's office. Interested, Holly followed with the doughnuts.
Joe the Bouncer put Kitsune into a seat and stood impassively, massive arms folded across a bulldozer chest. Commander Root grunted at him. Joe grunted back, and held out a hand. Root grunted and put some money into it. They grunted amiably, nodded, shook hands, and Joe left.
Kitsune watched the exchange with wide eyes, like they were cannibals conspiring on how to eat him. Holly sauntered into the office and gave him a savage little smile that did nothing to allay his fears. She slung herself, uninvited, into a chair and looked expectantly between him and Root.
"Wasn't Captain Kelp supposed to be here?"
"No. They're on the street again, he's got one day to find the two of 'em a new place." Root looked through some papers on his desk, searching for something. Holly raised her eyebrows at Kitsune, who glared right back at her. He mouthed something in Japanese that she decided not to notice. She shrugged, pulling a packet of candy out of her pocket.
"All right, I think this is it. Holly?"
She took the piece of paper Root handed to her and looked at it. "No, sir, it's another recipe."
"D'Arvit." Root nearly snarled in frustration. "This. All right, Kitsune, sign here."
Kitsune took the paper dubiously, narrowing his electric eyes at the seemingly endless scribbles. "What's all this about?"
"Liability," Root told him, handing him a pen. "We need your Gift."
Kitsune gave him a completely blank look. He turned to Holly, as if she would be more understandable, but she just looked back at him with sly, catlike innocence. The look suited her well, despite the blue childish smudge on her lips from the candy. "D'Arvit, I'm no good at lectures," she sighed when Kitsune continued to stare expectantly at her. "Where's that donkey when you need him?"
Through the mists of foam, Foaly trotted furiously, screaming desperation from every pore. His beloved electronics practically shrieked in agony as foam seeped into their precious circuits, rendering the Headquarters more and more helpless with every second. The group of tiny firefighters looked up at him sheepishly, attempting to hide the firehose behind their backs.
"You, you, and you," Foaly brayed, grabbing the selected ones and shoving them into a group. "Get the electronics out of danger. NOW! You others. Do you have any really, really big vacuum cleaners?" Without warning, his communicator went off, and Foaly bit it in half. Well, not really, but he conveyed the same impression, and the effect was the same.
"Yes, Juuuulius," he growl-breathed, trying to sound cool, calm, and arrogantly in control, without letting slip that he was about to explode. Instead, he sounded like a perverted phone-breather. "Yes, I'll be in your office immediately. Anything else you need? Coffee, doughnuts, sugar, tea? THE WORLD MOVED, PERHAPS?" Foaly flung the communicator into the foggy mists of foam. He gritted his tombstone teeth so hard that sparks almost flew; he tugged fistfuls of hair and beard in different directions until they stood out like an enraged grackle; he stomped and whinned and gibbered and flailed about. "What are you looking at?" he demanded breathlessly of the startled crowd, before galloping off through the suds.
--------------------------
A Few Minutes Later...
--------------------------
Foaly barged into the office, ranted and cursed for a while to work off excess steam, then explained patiently to Kitsune that they actually needed him. "You're not a fairy, are you?"
Kitsune shook his head, "I'm a kitsunehi-rei."
They decided to let that pass. "So, what you have isn't really the Gift, is it?" Foaly pressed. Without waiting for an answer, he barreled on. "From the account you gave awhile ago, you flamed the enemy, and he survived only because he was actually holding ivory. But the fact that you managed to do anything at all-- ARE YOU WITH ME HERE?!" he bellowed randomly, making everyone but Root jump. "Good. So, put two and two together, your Gift isn't as impaired as theirs--" a quick stab of his finger at Holly and Root -- "And theirs --" Another jab in the general direction of all the other citizens underground -- "And we'll probably need that in confrontations. Sign the damn piece of paper. I've done all I'm going to, the computers are soggy, I'm getting treatment and you can get knotted." With a flurry of hooves, Foaly stampeded out the door.
"Meet Foaly, our technician," Holly said brightly.
Root reached across and drummed his fingers on the piece of paper. Resigned, Kitsune scribbled his name on it in sprawling kanji. As soon as he was finished, Root hit him very hard on the shoulder. "You're now an honorary emergency specialist, completely justified in the budget. Welcome aboard. Come with me." Root nipped out of the chair with a surprising agility considering his age, weight, and smoking habit.
With a mental sigh, Kitsune followed the much shorter person out of the office. He reminded himself again that he might as well humor them, and that he didn't have anything else to do anyway. Yeah.
When she was sure they were gone, Holly sidled forward. Never underestimate an elven sense of smell, especially when it belongs to someone as curious and unrelenting as Holly. She'd noticed a weird scent lingering in the air, despite the foul cigars and general grackle-dung-grungy smell of the carpet.
On a wild hunch, she knelt down on the floor and started untacking the carpet. There was a plastic travel mug with a tightly shut lid. Holly recognized the colors and design on the cup at once; a special delivery from the Netherworld Flamingo. Feeling suddenly cheerful, she opened it up and sniffed the contents.
It fizzed, it roiled, it seemed to chuckle to itself. It was Trouble's Drink. Holly took a quick look around. "Why not," she told herself, and took a sip.
The only way to describe the drink was in her reaction. Her eyes widened, and she stared at the mug with fascination and disgust and respectful awe. She made one sound.
"Bleh."
----------------------
End of Flashback
----------------------
And that was Holly's day. She just barely had the energy to relate it all to her fish.
One grackle in her side was the fact that Kitsune got in simply because he was an endangered species with a different Gift, and it had taken her YEARS of training and politeness and climbing the proverbial ladder to get to where she was in the LEP. Another reason to dislike him.
She said as much to Bob, finishing her tale of woe with a sad sigh. The fish gave her an expressive look. It could have meant "Feed me," or it could have meant "Who on Earth are you?!" Holly decided that it meant "I sympathize with and adore you, Holly." She smiled at the fish, and put her hand in the tank to adjust his seaweed. He almost had a heart attack.
Holly decided to take that as gratitude.
---------------------
Mid Sunday Evening
Househunting in Haven
---------------------
Trouble looked painfully around at the only apartment he could find. Even the real estate agent had lost her veneer of cheerful optimism just by looking at it. She, too, looked around the apartment, and couldn't really find anything to say about it.
"Well," she ventured, after they had mutually stared for a few minutes at an astonishing yellowish-green growth of mold. "It needs a little TLC, but it sure has... possibilities."
"Oh, yes. Garbage dump? Toxic waste landfill? Scientific experiment to stimulate re-evolution of life?" Trouble answered with a sarcasm bordering on hysteria. "This -- this is IT?"
"Well, you and your brother can get back to nature," the agent tried, waving a hopeful hand at the savage-looking fungi sprouting nastily from the walls. "What with these, and the... cockroaches..."
"And the swear toads!" Trouble noted, pointing at the warty creatures perched on the damp, moldy, peeling counters. They looked back at him balefully. "Don't forget the toads!"
"And the swear toads," the realtor added doggedly, "And the mushrooms... It's just like a forest floor..."
Trouble laughed a little laugh that was both sarcastic and insane. "So it's either moving in here, or staying with my mother."
A cockroach the size of his ear scuttled across his foot. He kicked it into a corner, where it lay, wiggling and whimpering loudly, like a wounded grackle.
"The appliances are intact," the realtor offered, opening the fridge. Green smoke billowed out, and a stream of crickets poured out of the vegetable bin and into cracks in the floor.
Trouble looked around decisively. "I'll take it."
---------------------
Late Sunday Evening
Sign Of The Frothing Grackle
(Grungy Black-Market Tavern in Siberia)
---------------------
The Sign of the Frothing Grackle was aptly named. Outside the bullet-ridden, half-burnt lead-lined door, there was a sign with a frothing grackle on it. Never mind the fact that grackles are not natively Siberian birds. Contest the name of the tavern and its owner was likely to leap after you with a dirk.
Mikhael and Niklaus, late of the Russian Mafiya, were loudly and drunkenly having an argument about how to hunt grackles (machine guns or hand grenades? The age old question) when a classically mysterious stranger entered the bar. One half expected to hear the usual movie-style minor-key bad-guy chords in the background. A tough-looking guard, who rather resembled Joe of the Netherworld Flamingo, went up to the newcomer to check for weapons. The newcomer declined to be frisked, instead asking for the metal-detector treatment.
With an annoyed growl, the guard pulled out a metal detector that looked like it had been swiped from an airport. He made a few passes that came up negative and angrily motioned the classically mysterious stranger on. "Take your coat, sir?" he asked ferociously, reaching for the shoulder fabric as he spoke.
The newcomer flinched away automatically from contact, his classic black trench coat rustling with the movement. He was shorter than the guard, and so lightly built that it seemed ridiculous for him to defy that several hundred pounds of muscle. He looked up fixingly with deep black eyes, with an eagle's cruel coolness in them. "No."
"Are you sure?" the guard asked belligerently. "It gets... hot in here."
The newcomer looked at him disparagingly and walked off to the bar.
"Really, you can't completely eliminate the advantages of the throwing knife in grackle combat, though," Mikhael argued convincingly, throwing his arms around. He was quite surprised when one of his arms didn't come back. Groggily, he looked up it and noticed that his wrist was caught in someone else's hand.
Takaban held the wrist in an iron grip as he examined the watch on it. An expensive piece, the likes of which this man could never hope to honestly buy. Twisting Mikhael's wrist thoughtfully, Takaban neatly removed the watch and looked at it. One glance at the back of it confirmed this thought.
"A while ago, you took this watch from a man named Artemis Fowl," he said calmly, his Russian marked with an accent that Mikhael and Niklaus couldn't place. "I know about your ransom attempt. For a short time you kept him on a radioactive submarine. Have you shown any signs of the cancer yet?"
"C-Cancer?" The dreaded word cut through the foggy, alchoholic mists of the men's brains. Takaban looked at them steadily.
"I know how to cure the cancer. I need you to do something for me." There was a slight, barely noticeable swish as Takaban sat down on a bar stool. "I offer you health and protection against the law. You stand willing to testify that you did indeed kidnap Artemis Fowl before a client of mine."
Mikhael and Niklaus shared a long, surprised, slightly tipsy look. After a few minutes, they agreed. Takaban smiled slightly and left. Black-feathered wings rustled, hidden beneath his trench coat.
"Who was that?" one barfly asked another.
The second man shrugged. "John Malkovich?"
"Hey, hey, probably." The first man noticed something on the floor and bent unsteadily to pick it up. Squinting deliberately, he looked at the silky, coal-black feather. "'Ey, where did this come from?"
The second man looked at it pensively. "A grackle?" he offered.
```````````````` Rant, Rant, Rant ````````````````````````````
Seems like a lot of bouncers in this chapter, no? (The Netherworld Flamingo is NOT a bar or a tavern, though. And I do not condone drunkenness or drinking. I condone sugar and hyperness.)
"Come and see the violence," "Help, help, I'm being repressed" "I'm getting treatment" etc. borrowed from Monty Python. All good Monty Python fans should know where I got them from. Everyone else will just have to wonder.
It occurs to me that Kistune is very like Ford Prefect, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Did you know that the Monty Pythons were acquainted with Douglas Adams? I think it must be a plot of some sort. Let me know if you figure it out.
Other than that, not much to say, except I'm so sorry I haven't been answering reviews and it's been so long since last chapter. Too much writing. Much too much too much too much too much...
PS As I have not read the Eternity Code, and I hear it is very sad and depressing and nobody likes it anyway, this fic will continue until its end with little or no influence from that book. Is that okay with everybody? (If it isn't, you'll just have to wait until our dinky little small-town library gets the book, or somebody types it up and posts it on the Internet, since I'm too broke to even buy a new goldfish. Kokoro-Bob IV died!)
By Caspian Nyghtvision
Chapter Eight: In Which Some Things Happen, And Some Things Don't
Brief Note: I have not yet read the Eternity Code, so it has no effect on this chapter. See general madness at end of chapter for details.
RANDOM AMUSING BIRD OF THE WEEK: The Grackle. Expect at least one grackle in every scene.
"There's an emptiness inside her
and she'd do anything to fill it in
and though it's red blood bleeding from her now
it's more like cold blue ice in her heart.
When all the colors come together to grey,
And it breaks her heart."
-- "Grey Street" by Dave Matthews Band
-----------------------------
Sunday Morning at Fowl Manor
-----------------------------
Artemis Fowl the Second was Storming. He stormed through the halls, almost stomping in his emotion. He stormed down the wide marble stairs, his face like a thundercloud. He stormed into the kitchen, where, judging by the loud clatters and multilingual curses, Butler was doing dishes.
Artemis Stormed into the kitchen and stopped dead. Several things were very wrong with the scene he saw before him. The first very wrong thing was the sight of the big manservant sprawled out stunned on the floor, and Mulch Diggums cheerfully doing the dishes instead. The frilly pink apron around Mulch's waist was one thing wrong, and so was the lavender leopard-patterned bandanna tied around his head. Also, the music that Mulch was singing along with, loudly playing on Juliet's radio, was very wrong.
It was the uncensored version of 'Action Fairy.'
Artemis Stormed over to the sink and threw the radio in it. Mulch pulled his hands out just in time as a fascinating shower of sparks crackled across the surface of the water. "Hey! Wadja do that for?!"
"That," Artemis said, with no words on Earth capable of describing his tone, "Was very inappropriate. So is that -- that -- and that. What did you do to Butler?"
"Nothing, he did it to himself."
Artemis paused and counted to ten in all the languages he could remember. "How?" he said finally, his voice colder than Mt Washington in January.
"I don't know, all I did was come in here with my feather duster and my music, and he jerked back and hit his head upside the range."
Artemis darted a wary look at the crackling ruins of the radio and the huge, violently colored bunch of grackle feathers, and could see why Butler had flinched.
"I'm all right," Butler said suddenly, pulling himself together. "I must be getting soft or something. Is something wrong, Artemis?"
Bereft of his radio, Mulch started singing again. Butler picked him up by the nape of the neck like an errant puppy, opened the door to the laundry chute, and put him in. There was a long drawn out "Wheee!" and a distant clang.
Artemis tried to get back into the fine mood he had been in five minutes before, and failed. He just wasn't cut out for real temper tantrums. He took several angry breaths and ended in a resigned sigh. "It's about Father, Butler. I've found out what his new... plan is."
With a restraint born of years of practice, Butler refrained from leaping up and down and squealing "What? What? Tell me tell me tell me!" Instead, he took a seat on a kitchen stool and motioned his young charge to do the same.
Artemis grudgingly perched on the stool. Distracted momentarily, he picked up a strange looking black object and fingered it. It crumbled slightly under his touch, but otherwise seemed hard as a rock. What sort of mineral could it be? he wondered as he examined it more closely.
"One of Juliet's biscuits," Butler told him gently, seeing Artemis's pained look of total confusion, and his futile attempt at masking it.
"Ah." Artemis set it down gingerly and drummed his fingertips. "Father's working with the People," he burst out suddenly.
Unfortunately, the meaningful silence between manservant and mastermind was broken by the arrival of Juliet.
She burst into the kitchen, dragging Mulch behind her. Seeing the ruins of her radio in the dishwater, she screamed incoherently and started paddling the dwarf with every ounce of strength in her body. "I'll rip your lungs out through your eye sockets and use them as your own garrote, you--"
"Come and see the violence inherent in the women!" Mulch squalled.
"Oh, you think that's violence? You ain't seen nothing yet! I'll use your eyeballs as billiards! I'll make you gnaw off your own toes to use as... as... as..." Juliet hesitated as she tried to think of something torturous she could do with a dwarf toe. She couldn't really think of anything.
"Garden implements?" Mulch suggested helpfully from his upside-down position.
"Oh, very good, garden implements. And, and I'll saw off your--"
"Help, help, I'm being repressed!"
"Shut up! Bloody dwarf!"
"Ooh, look at her repressing me! You see this, don't you? Come and see the violence, inherent in the women!"
Butler quietly seperated the battling pair, escorted Mulch down the laundry chute again, rescued Juliet's radio without getting electrocuted, and sent them both on their respective ways. He rejoined Artemis at the stools and they shared a pained look.
"I can't wait until I'm eighteen." Artemis spoke with rare heartfelt feeling.
"I can't either."
There was a silence while both of them regrouped.
"Father's dealing with the People," Artemis announced dramatically. This time, they were allowed to relish a moment of great importance, plot-wise. In a marvelous display, Butler displayed all the emotions expected of him -- shock, astonishment, disbelief, consternation, pain, anxiety -- in a few masterful seconds. He looked a bit like a bogglefish with heartburn.
"What are we going to do?" Butler asked quietly after a respectful span of proper silence.
"Stop him," Artemis said firmly. "He has no idea what he's getting into."
"Does he even know what he's dealing with?"
"No. But knowing my father, he might find out. And... and..." Butler waited as Artemis fumbled. "The Lower Elements Police will not approve if they find out."
"Ah." Butler cherished the thought for a moment -- Artemis the First pisses off Holly Short. Most bodyguards didn't have to deal with these things, he thought. No, for them it was just the occasional Mafia conspiracy or terrorist uprising or assassination attempt, that sort of thing. None of this four-foot-tall fairy-flygirl-in-your-face "I have the Gift and you don't, nyah!" stuff. Oh, for the good old days, when --
"Butler, are you all right?"
"Fine," he growled. "Let's get your father out of this."
"My sentiments exactly." Artemis started laying out the battle plans. "As far as we know, all Father is doing at this point is transferring money from one of our bank accounts to this unknown person. When I ran a trace on their email address, it was linked to the Undernet -- the underground Internet," he reminded Butler. "Apparently he's just investing in some plan. It's implied that it's a gray area, morally, but you know us Fowls." Artemis seemed a bit bitter as he said this. "We never seem to mind the ethical bits."
Awkwardly, Butler patted him on the shoulder. "Yes, well, let's see what you've got."
-------------------------
Sunday Evening
Holly's Apartment
-------------------------
Holly lay on her couch and looked at the ceiling, pretending to be interested in it. It wasn't a very interesting ceiling, but she didn't want to offend it by staring at the wall, which was even worse.
She was very tired. She had gotten some sleep, but it wasn't nearly enough. All she had the energy to do was stagger home early that morning, hack her way into her apartment, and collapse. She had woken up, briefly, to feed Bob. He was very surprised to see her. In a rare display of intelligence, he only bonked into the walls three times before he discovered they existed, and then spent a long time on his back, staring at the ceiling. He rather believed that the Ceiling was a Manifestation of the Great Grackle, and he was completely astonished by this revelation.
So now Holly was staring at the ceiling too. She supposed if she was a bogglefish, she could also stare at it for five hours on end, as Bob was doing. However, since she was an elf, and a very tired one, she kept falling asleep and trying very hard not to dream.
Things were happening. Holly loved it when things happened, when her life was full of action. She was indeed an action fairy. She needed the adrenaline as much as she needed breathing. And now here was an assignment that looked like it would challenge her limits, something she wanted very badly. Yet she had this sense of foreboding...
Kitsune was probably the main problem.
"Want to know how my day was, Bob?" Holly rolled over and asked the fish. She took his frenzied bubbles of surprise as an affirmative. "I'll tell you about it."
------------------------------
Flashback -- Earlier that afternoon, in Root's office
------------------------------
"Bleh."
(Er... flash back even earlier.)
(Grackle!)
------------------------------
Flashback -- Even Earlier than the previous One
-----------------------------
Kitsune refused to come quietly to Root's office. The agitated warlocks would have nothing to do with him -- "Not after what he did to poor Doctor Bill!" -- so Root ordered a couple of stocky, stalwart, off-duty LEPRetrieval officers to bring him in.
Kitsune went to ground in the male's bathroom on the fourth level of the LEP building. The first officers to charge in promptly had their uniforms singed off. Finally, a troop of firefighters was called in -- a group of amusingly short little figures in fireproof suits and ill-advised yellow helmets. Unfortunately, they believed they had been summoned to put out a fire, and...
Quietly observing the sea of foam that seemed to be covering the first five floors of the building, Root decided to take matters into his own hands. "Foaly?"
"WhatwhatwhatwhatWHAT?!!?" The centaur poked his head in the doorway. To say that he was irritable would be a deadly understatement. His horse parts were soaked and sudsy, the fur sticking up in little spikes; foam dripped from his beard. A wet centaur has the tolerance level of a tormented warthog. Foaly took a deep breath and a few pet-tranquilzing pills. "Make it quick. Some nitwit put half the servers on the floor, and they're filling up with this ridiculous foam."
"Get me the number for that bar-thing down the street."
"The Netherworld Flamingo?" Foaly chirped, rattling off the number from memory. Root dialed it and glowered at the phone until someone picked up.
"Netherworld Flamingo, Caspian here."
"I need your bouncer." Root decided to start off by being nice. Direct, but nice. If the kid decided to argue, THEN he'd stop being so polite.
There was a short pause, filled with the distant sound of breaking glass and something that sounded suspiciously like a cow mooing. "Er, I'm sorry, but Joe isn't, er... Joe doesn't do housecalls," the person at the other end said reluctantly.
"This is Commander Root."
The voice at the other end changed abruptly. "Oh, all right. I thought you were an angry wife or something. Yeah, I'll send Joe along. Anything else?"
Deciding to ignore the 'angry wife' comment, Root thought for a minute. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Do you still do that drink?"
"Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, grenadine, lukewarm hot cocoa, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, lemonade, vanilla, whipped cream, five tablespoons of white sugar, coffee, three tablespoons of colored sugar, and some fruit sherbet?"
"Yeah... that," Root whispered hoarsely, looking around with a vaguely haunted look.
"No, we don't. These days, we do Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, grenadine, lukewarm hot cocoa, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, lemonade, vanilla, whipped cream, five tablespoons of white sugar, coffee, three tablespoons of colored sugar, and lime Jell-O powder." Caspian's voice was a little apologetic. "There was a -- er, never mind. Would you like one brought up to you with the bouncer, sir?"
"Yes, please... but quietly. Can you do quietly?" Root growled softly. He, himself, wasn't very good at 'doing quietly.'
"Yes, sir, we do quietly very well," Caspian whispered back, to prove how quiet and responsible she was. Then, from the other end of the line, there was a sudden explosion, screeching, a cow mooing, glass shattering, and a huge rush of either static or water. Someone screamed "D'ARVIT!" and the line went dead.
Root stared at the phone as if the disaster would leap through the wires and bite his ear. He quietly replaced the phone on the cradle and sat back in his chair.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been quiet enough. Foaly stuck his head back in, a headset propped over his customary tinfoil hat. "Root! Well, I never thought you were one for Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, grenadine, lukewarm hot cocoa, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, lemonade, vanilla, whipped cream, five tablespoons of white sugar, coffee, three tablespoons of colored sugar, and lime Jell-O powder... Whatever will the boys think?"
"Get out!" Root roared, his face flaring to the color of strawberry jam. He scrabbled desperately about on his desk for something to throw, but Foaly ducked out just in time, braying with laughter.
In a few minutes, Joe the Bouncer, a muscly creature of uncertain gender, stomped into the men's bathroom, dragged Kitsune out, and proceeded to haul the taller person to Root's office. Kistune struggled superbly, a display that any average three-year-old boy would be proud of. He starfished at all the doors, that classic pose with the hands and the feet splayed out so that you absolutely can't go through. He bit Joe, but Joe didn't care, or indeed seem to notice. He set many, many things on fire, but the all-encompassing foam foiled his attempts.
Holly had been sent out on a quick doughnut run, as the Administrative Assistant was refusing to do anything so demeaning. ("If ANYONE tries to send me for coffee, I'll-- I'll -- tape them into their offices!") She was returning, grudgingly lugging several boxes of doughnuts, when the foam began pouring out into the street.
Every window in the LEP main building seemed to be leaking fireproof foam, as if the rocketproof glass was crying tears of whipped cream. It was an inspiring sight. Her auburn eyebrows shot straight up. "Wow... even I've never been able to do that."
Tiptoeing in awe through the thigh-high suds, Holly came across an interesting sight. There was that annoying pyro, being frog-marched through the ocean of foam. He was just about the only one who wasn't submerged in suds. He shot her a desperate, pleading look as a muscly creature dragged him in the direction of Root's office. Interested, Holly followed with the doughnuts.
Joe the Bouncer put Kitsune into a seat and stood impassively, massive arms folded across a bulldozer chest. Commander Root grunted at him. Joe grunted back, and held out a hand. Root grunted and put some money into it. They grunted amiably, nodded, shook hands, and Joe left.
Kitsune watched the exchange with wide eyes, like they were cannibals conspiring on how to eat him. Holly sauntered into the office and gave him a savage little smile that did nothing to allay his fears. She slung herself, uninvited, into a chair and looked expectantly between him and Root.
"Wasn't Captain Kelp supposed to be here?"
"No. They're on the street again, he's got one day to find the two of 'em a new place." Root looked through some papers on his desk, searching for something. Holly raised her eyebrows at Kitsune, who glared right back at her. He mouthed something in Japanese that she decided not to notice. She shrugged, pulling a packet of candy out of her pocket.
"All right, I think this is it. Holly?"
She took the piece of paper Root handed to her and looked at it. "No, sir, it's another recipe."
"D'Arvit." Root nearly snarled in frustration. "This. All right, Kitsune, sign here."
Kitsune took the paper dubiously, narrowing his electric eyes at the seemingly endless scribbles. "What's all this about?"
"Liability," Root told him, handing him a pen. "We need your Gift."
Kitsune gave him a completely blank look. He turned to Holly, as if she would be more understandable, but she just looked back at him with sly, catlike innocence. The look suited her well, despite the blue childish smudge on her lips from the candy. "D'Arvit, I'm no good at lectures," she sighed when Kitsune continued to stare expectantly at her. "Where's that donkey when you need him?"
Through the mists of foam, Foaly trotted furiously, screaming desperation from every pore. His beloved electronics practically shrieked in agony as foam seeped into their precious circuits, rendering the Headquarters more and more helpless with every second. The group of tiny firefighters looked up at him sheepishly, attempting to hide the firehose behind their backs.
"You, you, and you," Foaly brayed, grabbing the selected ones and shoving them into a group. "Get the electronics out of danger. NOW! You others. Do you have any really, really big vacuum cleaners?" Without warning, his communicator went off, and Foaly bit it in half. Well, not really, but he conveyed the same impression, and the effect was the same.
"Yes, Juuuulius," he growl-breathed, trying to sound cool, calm, and arrogantly in control, without letting slip that he was about to explode. Instead, he sounded like a perverted phone-breather. "Yes, I'll be in your office immediately. Anything else you need? Coffee, doughnuts, sugar, tea? THE WORLD MOVED, PERHAPS?" Foaly flung the communicator into the foggy mists of foam. He gritted his tombstone teeth so hard that sparks almost flew; he tugged fistfuls of hair and beard in different directions until they stood out like an enraged grackle; he stomped and whinned and gibbered and flailed about. "What are you looking at?" he demanded breathlessly of the startled crowd, before galloping off through the suds.
--------------------------
A Few Minutes Later...
--------------------------
Foaly barged into the office, ranted and cursed for a while to work off excess steam, then explained patiently to Kitsune that they actually needed him. "You're not a fairy, are you?"
Kitsune shook his head, "I'm a kitsunehi-rei."
They decided to let that pass. "So, what you have isn't really the Gift, is it?" Foaly pressed. Without waiting for an answer, he barreled on. "From the account you gave awhile ago, you flamed the enemy, and he survived only because he was actually holding ivory. But the fact that you managed to do anything at all-- ARE YOU WITH ME HERE?!" he bellowed randomly, making everyone but Root jump. "Good. So, put two and two together, your Gift isn't as impaired as theirs--" a quick stab of his finger at Holly and Root -- "And theirs --" Another jab in the general direction of all the other citizens underground -- "And we'll probably need that in confrontations. Sign the damn piece of paper. I've done all I'm going to, the computers are soggy, I'm getting treatment and you can get knotted." With a flurry of hooves, Foaly stampeded out the door.
"Meet Foaly, our technician," Holly said brightly.
Root reached across and drummed his fingers on the piece of paper. Resigned, Kitsune scribbled his name on it in sprawling kanji. As soon as he was finished, Root hit him very hard on the shoulder. "You're now an honorary emergency specialist, completely justified in the budget. Welcome aboard. Come with me." Root nipped out of the chair with a surprising agility considering his age, weight, and smoking habit.
With a mental sigh, Kitsune followed the much shorter person out of the office. He reminded himself again that he might as well humor them, and that he didn't have anything else to do anyway. Yeah.
When she was sure they were gone, Holly sidled forward. Never underestimate an elven sense of smell, especially when it belongs to someone as curious and unrelenting as Holly. She'd noticed a weird scent lingering in the air, despite the foul cigars and general grackle-dung-grungy smell of the carpet.
On a wild hunch, she knelt down on the floor and started untacking the carpet. There was a plastic travel mug with a tightly shut lid. Holly recognized the colors and design on the cup at once; a special delivery from the Netherworld Flamingo. Feeling suddenly cheerful, she opened it up and sniffed the contents.
It fizzed, it roiled, it seemed to chuckle to itself. It was Trouble's Drink. Holly took a quick look around. "Why not," she told herself, and took a sip.
The only way to describe the drink was in her reaction. Her eyes widened, and she stared at the mug with fascination and disgust and respectful awe. She made one sound.
"Bleh."
----------------------
End of Flashback
----------------------
And that was Holly's day. She just barely had the energy to relate it all to her fish.
One grackle in her side was the fact that Kitsune got in simply because he was an endangered species with a different Gift, and it had taken her YEARS of training and politeness and climbing the proverbial ladder to get to where she was in the LEP. Another reason to dislike him.
She said as much to Bob, finishing her tale of woe with a sad sigh. The fish gave her an expressive look. It could have meant "Feed me," or it could have meant "Who on Earth are you?!" Holly decided that it meant "I sympathize with and adore you, Holly." She smiled at the fish, and put her hand in the tank to adjust his seaweed. He almost had a heart attack.
Holly decided to take that as gratitude.
---------------------
Mid Sunday Evening
Househunting in Haven
---------------------
Trouble looked painfully around at the only apartment he could find. Even the real estate agent had lost her veneer of cheerful optimism just by looking at it. She, too, looked around the apartment, and couldn't really find anything to say about it.
"Well," she ventured, after they had mutually stared for a few minutes at an astonishing yellowish-green growth of mold. "It needs a little TLC, but it sure has... possibilities."
"Oh, yes. Garbage dump? Toxic waste landfill? Scientific experiment to stimulate re-evolution of life?" Trouble answered with a sarcasm bordering on hysteria. "This -- this is IT?"
"Well, you and your brother can get back to nature," the agent tried, waving a hopeful hand at the savage-looking fungi sprouting nastily from the walls. "What with these, and the... cockroaches..."
"And the swear toads!" Trouble noted, pointing at the warty creatures perched on the damp, moldy, peeling counters. They looked back at him balefully. "Don't forget the toads!"
"And the swear toads," the realtor added doggedly, "And the mushrooms... It's just like a forest floor..."
Trouble laughed a little laugh that was both sarcastic and insane. "So it's either moving in here, or staying with my mother."
A cockroach the size of his ear scuttled across his foot. He kicked it into a corner, where it lay, wiggling and whimpering loudly, like a wounded grackle.
"The appliances are intact," the realtor offered, opening the fridge. Green smoke billowed out, and a stream of crickets poured out of the vegetable bin and into cracks in the floor.
Trouble looked around decisively. "I'll take it."
---------------------
Late Sunday Evening
Sign Of The Frothing Grackle
(Grungy Black-Market Tavern in Siberia)
---------------------
The Sign of the Frothing Grackle was aptly named. Outside the bullet-ridden, half-burnt lead-lined door, there was a sign with a frothing grackle on it. Never mind the fact that grackles are not natively Siberian birds. Contest the name of the tavern and its owner was likely to leap after you with a dirk.
Mikhael and Niklaus, late of the Russian Mafiya, were loudly and drunkenly having an argument about how to hunt grackles (machine guns or hand grenades? The age old question) when a classically mysterious stranger entered the bar. One half expected to hear the usual movie-style minor-key bad-guy chords in the background. A tough-looking guard, who rather resembled Joe of the Netherworld Flamingo, went up to the newcomer to check for weapons. The newcomer declined to be frisked, instead asking for the metal-detector treatment.
With an annoyed growl, the guard pulled out a metal detector that looked like it had been swiped from an airport. He made a few passes that came up negative and angrily motioned the classically mysterious stranger on. "Take your coat, sir?" he asked ferociously, reaching for the shoulder fabric as he spoke.
The newcomer flinched away automatically from contact, his classic black trench coat rustling with the movement. He was shorter than the guard, and so lightly built that it seemed ridiculous for him to defy that several hundred pounds of muscle. He looked up fixingly with deep black eyes, with an eagle's cruel coolness in them. "No."
"Are you sure?" the guard asked belligerently. "It gets... hot in here."
The newcomer looked at him disparagingly and walked off to the bar.
"Really, you can't completely eliminate the advantages of the throwing knife in grackle combat, though," Mikhael argued convincingly, throwing his arms around. He was quite surprised when one of his arms didn't come back. Groggily, he looked up it and noticed that his wrist was caught in someone else's hand.
Takaban held the wrist in an iron grip as he examined the watch on it. An expensive piece, the likes of which this man could never hope to honestly buy. Twisting Mikhael's wrist thoughtfully, Takaban neatly removed the watch and looked at it. One glance at the back of it confirmed this thought.
"A while ago, you took this watch from a man named Artemis Fowl," he said calmly, his Russian marked with an accent that Mikhael and Niklaus couldn't place. "I know about your ransom attempt. For a short time you kept him on a radioactive submarine. Have you shown any signs of the cancer yet?"
"C-Cancer?" The dreaded word cut through the foggy, alchoholic mists of the men's brains. Takaban looked at them steadily.
"I know how to cure the cancer. I need you to do something for me." There was a slight, barely noticeable swish as Takaban sat down on a bar stool. "I offer you health and protection against the law. You stand willing to testify that you did indeed kidnap Artemis Fowl before a client of mine."
Mikhael and Niklaus shared a long, surprised, slightly tipsy look. After a few minutes, they agreed. Takaban smiled slightly and left. Black-feathered wings rustled, hidden beneath his trench coat.
"Who was that?" one barfly asked another.
The second man shrugged. "John Malkovich?"
"Hey, hey, probably." The first man noticed something on the floor and bent unsteadily to pick it up. Squinting deliberately, he looked at the silky, coal-black feather. "'Ey, where did this come from?"
The second man looked at it pensively. "A grackle?" he offered.
```````````````` Rant, Rant, Rant ````````````````````````````
Seems like a lot of bouncers in this chapter, no? (The Netherworld Flamingo is NOT a bar or a tavern, though. And I do not condone drunkenness or drinking. I condone sugar and hyperness.)
"Come and see the violence," "Help, help, I'm being repressed" "I'm getting treatment" etc. borrowed from Monty Python. All good Monty Python fans should know where I got them from. Everyone else will just have to wonder.
It occurs to me that Kistune is very like Ford Prefect, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Did you know that the Monty Pythons were acquainted with Douglas Adams? I think it must be a plot of some sort. Let me know if you figure it out.
Other than that, not much to say, except I'm so sorry I haven't been answering reviews and it's been so long since last chapter. Too much writing. Much too much too much too much too much...
PS As I have not read the Eternity Code, and I hear it is very sad and depressing and nobody likes it anyway, this fic will continue until its end with little or no influence from that book. Is that okay with everybody? (If it isn't, you'll just have to wait until our dinky little small-town library gets the book, or somebody types it up and posts it on the Internet, since I'm too broke to even buy a new goldfish. Kokoro-Bob IV died!)