Action!
Back in the Lower Elements
It was around 3.00a.m in the wee hours of the morning as Holly and Foaly's shuttle touched down at the Airport and they made it back to the LEP Headquarters, as soon as they arrived at the darkened, locked up building, Holly picked the lock open with one of her free 'Holiday in Paris' pencils from a previous above ground jaunts and then Foaly, from his laptop, disabled the building's security system so that they could make their way to his testing lab without setting off alarms.
You wonder why they didn't just come back during office hours? Well, you're in good company here, that's just what Holly asked, but as Foaly said, "Why would we want a great big yelling-at from Julius Root if we can get off the hook scott-free just by feeding him some story on tirelessly researching day and night so that we never came out of the lab? Trust me, I've tried it before."
Then the ever-sharp LEP elf replied, "Ah, I see, then what about that awful note you left at your desk when we ran off?"
"Mmm," The centaur thought for a bit, tapping his chin with a finger. "that's a hard one, I suppose I'll tell him it's a joke and offer to resign then."
"Been there done that, you tried it Frond knows how many billion times already!"
"And it worked, so why not just get cracking now in case Root wants to yell at you?"
"Don't remind me. Okay, lets get this finished before I am."
"That's the spirit, now hand me the test kit over there, we'll test it's age to begin with."
An hour after, they managed to get the results, the buried parchment was over five hundred years old.
"So, any link, or just trash?" Holly leaned in for a good look at the paper.
"All right, gargantuan hurricane rises out of nowhere, school building flattened like a pancake, certain mud boy we know gets blown away and can't be found dead or alive, I'd say yes link."
"Is there any more we can find out from the parchment here?"
"I should think so, look at the writing."
"Ha, so you expect me to believe that Artemis Fowl here got blown back in time?"
"No, but there's this old fairy saying that nothing happens out of coincidence so…"
"We go back there, you're saying?"
"Yes, and besides this, at the time just before the hurricane, Opal Koboi and Mulch Diggums escaped from Howler's Peak." Foaly said.
"I know, there's this alert for all members of the police force if you don't know."
"Yeah, you know. Mulch I'm not so worried about, but Opal, she's the one, I mean, Artemis helped foil her plan and put her there. So now that she's out, she'll definitely want revenge."
"So what do we do?"
"Nothing, until she acts."
200 Feet Below (day of the hurricane)
Alright, we left off with Mulch's side of the story a pretty long while ago, and now we're going back. First things first is that he is not where you all saw him the last time any more because if so, he'd be dead, and I would have informed readers earlier (pretty simple, no? So lets get on with the story now.).
Mulch had tunneled a considerable distance away from Howlers Peak (leaving joy and bounty to the various farms he had tunneled under and one big building collapse in downtown London), in fact, he was right under Saint Bartleby's (a certain twitchy whisker led him there), and was preparing to climb up the back wall of the dormitory blocks to reach Artemis's room and then hide there to wait for him. But just as he was about to make his way up, he suddenly hear a strange, oddly metallic sound like the giant platinum blades he and his cousin had once made for Koboi Laboratories chopping up the air.
It… it couldn't be…not that, but the hair, the hair, the hair was twitching… something very, very, very bad was happening… those blades, they could only be Koboi's, the mould used to make them was destroyed right after the blades were finished…this can't be true
But it was, the renegade pixie was riding again.
He could hear it like anything, huge silver blades, chop-chop-chop, hacking through the winds, slice, slice, slice, a sword slicing up the air. Then, it came, like the swift uprooting of a great tree, the moaning of the ripping stone, the screaming of shattering glass, the howling of the churning gales, the unmistakable mechanical swishing and squeaking of metal knives turning upon their pivots.
Then, gone. It was over. Everything was over. He surfaced and saw nothing but pulverized stone, cut up pieces of grass still floating about like confetti after a party, the school children, staff and others all surfaced too as the winds had died, but there was no Artemis.
The whisper went through the crowd like a hushed wave of wind through silent pines, no Artemis, no Artemis, no Artemis, no Artemis, no Artemis, the voices sang.
No Artemis, no Artemis.
Big-trouble, better-go-tell.
Big-trouble, better-go-tell.
Big-trouble, better-go-tell.
Tell someone, tell Holly, tell Foaly.
Go and get help. Tell now.
Mulch went, quickly he did, so quickly.
Holly's Apartment
It had been a bad day, a terrible one to say the least. Foaly's prophecy came to life as the day unfolded, she had gotten yelled at for 'tirelessly researching day and night' as it "WASN"T HER JOB TO BE POKING HER NOSE INTO NON-RECON DUTIES". The centaur himself had just gotten off the hook scott-free, blast him.
It had been a terrible day, and it couldn't get any worse. Or so she thought.
Then, without any of the warning action movies usually dispensed, the walls gave way.
"Ahhh!!!!! Oh God, I haven't even finished paying for the bloody house, and now I'm going to be buried in it, in debt." Holly screamed.
"Hey, I knew elves were skittish, but never to the point of screaming at the sight of little old me." Mulch, an odious creature in grey-washed prison regulation dungarees, climbed out of the hole in the wall and stepped into the wreck of a living-room.
"Mulch! If I weren't so glad to see you, you wouldn't be this cocky. Oh, and by the way, the next time, use the door."
"Can't, not in these, anyway, dwarves like me like to arrive in style. It's always terribly funny seeing people swear when their walls start collapsing."
"Don't tell me you've done it before this time. Also, you ought to be in jail now. Not in my house. You're a wanted criminal, now with another charge of jailbreak and housebreaking under your belt. So spill." Holly said, regaining her bearings a bit.
"Long story. It all started……."
It took the whole night before the story was finished, but by then, Holly was far too awake to feel tired and was drawing up plans (catch Opal Koboi before she made any more trouble was number one on the list, find Mud Boy was second in line) and convincing Foaly's ultra-protective, super-paranoid mum to let her talk to him, Mulch was busy flipping channels and looking through the TV guide for evil reality TV.
Finally, she got him on the phone and filled him in on Mulch's news.
"Oh, I guess that means going above ground again right?"
"Right."
"When's it going to be? It can't be tomorrow because my mother wants me to go look at old folk's holiday camps with her."
"What?!" Holly yelled incredulously, "Rome burnt and your gran was playing the fiddle, I know, but now it's about to be hijacked by your arch enemy and you want to go look at oldie's holiday camps."
"Not me, my mum." Was all he said.
"Lose the holiday camp thing or lose your rep, if you're not coming, I'll tell everyone in the office that you live with your mummy."
"Alright, alright, fine! I'll go."
"Tomorrow. Get the stuff we took the last time ready and remember, Mulch is coming too, so that makes three. Bye!"