Ok, guys. I was a little hyper when I wrote that first chapter, but with help from my lovely reviewers, I did that reality-check thing. I slightly changed ch.1 to make it lessOOC for all of them. asfor the HolyButler pairing. Sure its weird, and their size differance is freakish, but how many relationships are really normal? I wanted to do something original and id never seen them together before. And yes, I had to throw in a little cliché crazyness, but its all good-natured.
And thank you. I usualydouble-crunch pin-down writers-block every time it comes near me. Not that it cant sneak up from behind, but I've got good hearing...
Chapter Two: Megs out-of date coat and Juliets late date.
Meg walked to a teleportation booth at the corner of the park. She had ditched her 'friends' without even saying goodbye. Whatever. There were hundreds of fourteen-year-olds here. Most had been innocently killed by famine or plague and none of them were convicts like her. Sighing, she replaced Tracy and Freda with Lowrie McCall in her thoughts. It was weird, but she kind of missed him. He was the only friend she had ever enjoyed being with. They could talk and have fun but still argue over their differences. It made her guilty to wish Lowrie was in Heaven with her, because he would have to die first. Still, it would have made her eternal imprisonment in happy-land more pleasant.
Meg stepped into the booth, thinking mum. Instantly she was in the meadow where her mother often dwelled.
"Back so soon, my dear? It's only been a week." Her mother was painting by the calm, flawless lake. She didn't even look up as her daughter appeared beside her.
"Oh mum, you know your biggest fan can't stay away! No, I'm just so bored."
"Have you tried reading a book? It can be very entertaining."
"No, mum I've never tried that before." In fact, Meg had read quite a lot in the last year. She had compromised her poor education by reading the textbooks of someone with a Ph.D. in psychology. Lately though, she craved action. A weird need for speed had come over her. She had sought out and ridden motorcycles, among other fast machines. Without adrenaline in her system however, the trill was gone. Meg desperately wanted to be alive again, to feel the wind through her hair as she descended the steepest hill on the roller coaster at the fair.
"Hey, mum. Do you remember my ninth birthday, when you brought me into Dublin to go to the fair?"
"Yes. And then after when we went on that spiny ride and I threw up?"
Meg laughed, remembering going home on the train with puke all over their clothes.
Suddenly, a cherub appeared beside her.
"Meg Finn? Are you Meg Finn?" The wings on his feet fluttered in an unsure manner.
"None other than. What do you want?" Meg glared at the little man. His loincloth looked weird beside her blue jeans and tee shirt.
"I have orders from the top, miss. They tell me to take you to the gates." This is it, Meg though, they're going to send me down with Belch for being ungrateful. Maybe Peter miscalculated; maybe I really do belong in Hell. Great, if Heaven is so god-awful, imagine how terrible Hell will be! And Meg did imagine. She pictured great rooms full of flowers, but they smelled like death. Then as she looked closer, the flowers were everyone in her life. She saw Lucifer feeding her propaganda, telling her that she had killed them all. Everyone she had ever known was dead because of her.
She was snapped out of her ridiculous reverie when the messenger tapped her on the shoulder.
"We should go now, miss. St. Peter doesn't like to be kept waiting." Grabbing onto her arm, the angel teleported them just inside the gates of Heaven. Or rather, the giant hole in the sky.
"Ok Peter, she's here, open up!" The cherub screamed into a walkie-talkie.
The sky parted to let them through.
Sitting on a marble throne that looked as though it made his bottom very sore, the apostle Peter scowled.
"It took you long enough Cherry."
"I'm sorry sir. Right as I got to the park, the girl teleported away, to her mother. I had to locate her again after that." The little Cherub was pleading on the floor, tears streaming down his chubby, pink face. Peter and Meg shared the same expression. One eyebrow tilted up, trying to figure out what to make of the spectacle.
"Umm…It's true, sir. O'coors, I didn't know he was at the park. Your not going to hurt him are you?" She gestured towards the shaking angel, he was now kissing and grabbing at Peters kaftan.
"If he keeps this up, I will. What in Heavens name are you doing, Cherry?"
"Well, I hears you was in a bad mood for the last millennia, wants to takes a breaks from the pearly..ly gates, wants to..to enjoy paradises a littles. Cherry's sorrys sir, its whats Iz hears froms the ones that used to bes tunnel mites. Theys tells me sir, don't gets mads."
The saint rolled his eyes. "They seem to loose their ability to speak correctly when under stress." He informed an awestruck Meg. "Get lost, Cherry. You're messing up my cloud." The cherub skittered through the gates faster than lightning. Well, slow lighting. And they weren't really gates, just that hole, but he went through the hole, fast.
"Now, Finn. You must be wondering why I sent for you." He said, vaporizing Cherry's' drool and fluffing up his cloud.
"Err…. I jist figured ye'd made a mistake. I figured ye was sending me down ti hell." Not unlike the cherub, Megs' old Irish accent had returned. After all her work, they were going to send her down to be with Belch. A sick feeling developed where her stomach used to be.
"Why the heaven would we do that? We worked hard to get you here, we cant let Lucifer have you now." He laughed. "Anyway, what makes you think they still want you down there? It has been a year. Beelzebub wants his boss to forget about you. I won't hurt his little plan."
"You mean I can stay in everlasting bliss instead of damnation? Oh goody!" She said sarcastically.
"You're not enjoying heaven, are you? Would you just tell me what its like? I haven't been inside since I helped create it, millions of years ago." He looked wistful for a moment.
"Well, it's everything you could ever dream of, but dull, boring and perfect. It always stays the same because there is nothing to fix and it has everything. You can't try anything new because nothing is new. I pretty much hate it." Meg bitterly explained.
"Oh." The Angel looked crestfallen. "I guess perfection wasn't the best way to go. Oh well. It's too late to fix it now. At least I'm out here though. I'm glad I can encounter imperfection." The angel fibbed a little.
"Ya…OK. Sure Mr. Peter. So why am I here, anyway?" She quizzically stared at a red button that was flashing madly.
"Right. I need a computer programmer. I need one that will come to heaven. I need one that can hack into other systems. I found somebody, but I need you to save his soul."
Meg raised an eyebrow. "Who and where." She demanded. "And when. When can I get out of this hell-hole? Or…err…heaven-hole. No pun intended." She couldn't help staring at the flashing button. It had started to buzz.
"Oh will you shut up!" He shouted at the button. "I know you're there, I'll be with you in a second." He jolted the button with his scepter. It let out a last indignant squeak, then fell silent.
"Sorry, my line is backing up. I'll make it quick. You can leave now. Don't come back until you want too. My treat. Grab some spirit residue on your way out, mind you, and just tell the mites I told you to have it. Oh and take this jacket. When you wear it you'll be visible to all humans. This is a book with all the information you'll need on the programmer. Read it before you go into the tunnel. Ok, I'd better let these guys up. All the good people waiting to get into heaven are going to kill me if I take any longer. Of course, I'm already dead but…"He trailed off, finally pushing the fuming button, a Portuguese woman appeared in front of them.
"Read the book now, Meg. Then I'll send you into the tunnel." He directed his attention on the old woman that was talking like mad about her innocent life.
"I'm on it Pietro." She used the name the old lady was calling the saint.
By reading the book, Meg found out that the computer programmer was fourteen years old. He lived in a mansion with his mother and had recovered his family's fortune by deceiving the fairies two years ago. The fairies?
"Pete, you've got to be kidding me! Fairies? Yea right! A twelve year old steals gold from little pixies! Un-hun, sure. Now tell me the truth before I die again, laughing!" She was indeed laughing, to the confusion of the German man waiting to go through the pearly gates.
"No, its true. There are fairies. However, they live underground. The boy kidnapped one of their captains, then held her for random. Tricky beings, the DeDannan. They managed to get half of the gold back by granting the kid a wish."
"Oh god, no more wishes!" Meg moaned. The McCall Wish list had been hard enough to complete.
"No, this wish is finished. All you have to do is make the boy's aura blue. I chose you, one, because of your experience, but also because I think you could relate to him."
"Crime, deception, theft. What makes you so sure I'll be able to save him? He sounds like a classic case for Beelzebub to me." Doubt dripped from her words.
"Beelzebub already has a bunch of programmers. This one, this perfect, genius one, is mine. Now go, Meg, before I change my mind and send some seraphim in your place!" Meg went through the hole in the sky. Not the hole leading into heaven, the one leading into the tunnel.
Before she let the current sweep her away, she grabbed ten soul residue stones from the basket of a tunnel mite.
"Sorry, Peter's orders!" She called to the offended mite, stuffing the rocks in the pocket of the huge jacket she wore.
She was swept down the tunnel, past hundreds of souls, auras both red and blue, who were going in the opposite direction. Finally slowing down, Meg put her hands onto the wall, thinking hole. Meg was a veteran at being a spirit among the living. She knew what to do.
Stepping completely out of the tunnel, she emerged into a green countryside.
Sighing, Meg whispered "Hello, my beautiful Ireland, I'm home again." She flew around the green pastures for awhile, basking in the imperfection of the hills. Suddenly she encountered a huge stone manor.
"Well, I guess I've found my destination." She flew down, over towers and turrets, finally propping herself on the roof to finish reading the info on Fowl.
"There's a girl on the roof, sir." Butler casually mentioned.
"What? How did she get up there?" Artemis was little more perturbed than his manservant was.
Butler re-wound the tapes, then gasped. Artemis looked up. It must be something really extraordinary to make Butler gasp. "How, Butler?" The boy demanded.
"Errr…" He seemed embarrassed. "She..umm.. Flew, Artemis."
"What? A fairy?" He looked at the screen quickly.
"No…errrr. It appears to be just…a girl." They both looked disappointed.
"So what the devil is going on? Butler, could you please get Juliet onto the roof? I want to talk to this flying girl." The fourteen-year-old went back to his computer, trying to put the pretty girl out of his mind.
"Sure, Arty."
"Butler…" Artemis glared at his bodyguard. The pet name was seriously starting to bother him.
"Ok, ok, I'm going." Chuckling, Butler went to find his sister.
Juliet was in her bathroom, curling her blond hair into loose ringlets.
"What is it Butler? I'm getting ready for a date!" She put down the curling iron, her hair half-done.
"There's a girl on the roof, can you get her down?" He knew she could, but orders did not bear well with his sister.
"A girl on the roof? Explain, please." She went back to her styling as Butler explained the situation.
"Arrghh!" She put a surprising amount of emotion into the syllable. "Stupid duties. If a cute brunet boy comes to the door looking for me, please let him in. Don't let him meet Artemis, though" She said with a great amount of care in her voice. Juliet loved the Fowl boy. In a protective sense, it was nothing romantic. She had been raised to guard his life. Still, Artemis would probably scare off her latest boyfriend. Best to play it safe.
"All right. Just go, who knows how long she'll stay up there, reading."
"She's reading on the roof? What a little freak! Ok, I'm being harsh. But how awful can her home life be that she'll crawl onto our roof, just to read?" Taking a deep breath, she changed out of her skirt and pulled on a pair of baggy, camo-pants. She kept hre black tank top on, it would be fine in the dark. Walking out of the bathroom, she turned around.
"Oh, and Butler?"
"Yes, Juliet?"
"Don't show Drake your double-crunch pin-down trick, OK?"
"But Juliet, that was exactly what I was going to do." He tried to be sarcastic, but he actually had been planing on showing the boy a trick or two.
Juliet skipped up the stairs, climbed up at ladder, then crawled through a trap door. Thank God I changed my clothes. She thought. Trying her best to protect her hair, she crawled across the roof to the girl who was sitting there. Ok, she's got a weird fashion sense too. The girl was wearing an old-fashioned suit-coat. It was black, and made her look slightly bourgeois. Actually, with those jeans, it's kind of funky. The girls' red-brown hair was tied up in a messy-bun and she seemed to almost glow. It was faint, but after working with the fairies, Juliet had gotten used to picking up small details like shimmering air.
Silently padding up behind her, Juliet braced herself and pinned the girls' arms behind her back.
"Hey!" Instantly there was struggle. Kicking and screaming, the strange girl was brought down, into the house.
"Chill out, Monkey-Girl, It was you who appeared without invitation onto our property, remember?" Juliet made the mistake of letting go of the girls' arms. Immediately, the stranger removed her jacket.
"What the..?" Juliet exclaimed as her arm went right through the girls' waist. Wait, monkey-girl was gone, jacket and all! Now what was she supposed to do? If she hung around to look for ghost-girl, she would be late for her date. Best to let Artemis handle it. After all, the paranormal was his area of expertise. Or, at least, one area of many.
"Butler, she got away." She made her voice as nerve-grinding as was possible through a walkie-talkie.
"Juliet, you have never allowed anyone to get away, ever. Only that one time, but it was Holly. How could you let a stupid girl get away?" He sounded annoyed.
"This is not just some stupid girl were talking about. She has a coat that she wears to make her visible. When she takes it off, she's transparent and gone. I mean, she was there, I had a firm grip around her waist. Then, quick as lightning, she whipped the coat off and she was gone! It doesn't make sense!" She was getting really upset now. Finally reaching her room, she listened to Butlers' final comment.
"Fine. I'll check the tape using the new camera, the one Artemis constructed out of old LEP gear. Come down when you're finished getting ready, I'll show you what I have."
"Ok. Over and out." She switched off her walkie-talkie. Noticing some rubble on her tank-top, she changed into a slinky, black dress and re-curled her hair. Finishing with her make-up and nails, she checked in with Butler.
"Is he here yet?" She almost tripped putting on one of her shoes.
"No. Look what I found. Nothing much, but I did a x-ray scan on the jacket she was wearing, and there was a book in the pocket along with ten blue stones. Now the rocks are weird, but the book is more interesting. Look." Indicating the screen showing a freeze-frame of Juliet and a squirming monkey-girl, he clicked on the x-rayed image of the book. Enlarging the image, he instructed the computer to open it up. It showed only the first and last three pages, for that was all that the scan could pick up, but it was enough to know what the book was about. It was about one of the only things Juliet and Butler shared in common; Artemis Fowl.
Just point and click. Smile wide and review. I love it! flame me even! i dont care! i want feed-back, people! Mwah