(pants) Can't…go…on…much…longer!
This chapter's incredibly long, longer then any other chapter I've ever written (The Ride Back doesn't count because it's a 7617 word one-shot, and took me two days to write… yeah, that was my first fanfic ever) so I apologize for the wait. Four weeks… woah. And more then four thousand words. Erk. I can't believe it's that long… it doesn't seem like it.
Summary: Right after Holly gets a job in the LEP, she cuts her hair. Each auburn lock falling through the floor makes her think about choices, and especially their consequences. What will happen after?
Disclaimer: I don't own Artemis Fowl. Eoin Colfer does. I do own Crunchball, though. Not the idea of Crunchball, but the rules and stuff. Which as long as I get some credit, everyone else is free to use.
Haircut
Chapter Twenty (and I have hit a landmark!)
"He's not there. Let's come back tomorrow." Trouble looked at the door to the Ops Booth warily.
"No." said Holly immediately. "You're just trying to put this off. Again."
"For a pretty good reason, too."
It was about a week after the conversation at Bowlier's. Holly had tried to get to Foaly right away, but things kept coming up. Re-filling the paperwork now that she was in Traffic, lots of extra hours on the streets to fix the horrendous mess that was now Haven-without-the-LEP-for-two-months. Not to mention it was very, very crowded in Haven, since many elves, sprites, and pixies alike (and many other species) were moving in. The city was now the place to be.
And every time she got some off time and planned to go see Foaly, there happened to be a party at Trouble's house. Interesting.
But Holly wasn't stupid. She instantly knew that he was trying to put her off, and quickly set up a meeting with Foaly and dragged Trouble to the Ops Booth first moment she found.
"Holly, Foaly's probably busy. Didn't you say he was constantly working on that—er—what was it? Iris Cam Mark II? Not to mention with the lack of commanders he's probably dealing with Root more often, and you know how annoyed he gets with the centaur. Probably overworks him—"
"Quiet, Trouble. He's coming!"
Foaly answered the door, whinnying in delight when he saw Holly. This was rather hard, since he seemed to have something in his mouth. He pointed inside, gesturing for them to come in.
The Booth seemed a lot smaller then when Holly had last seen it. Where there had been the slightest bit of empty space last time, papers, figures, and notes were tacked up everywhere. She noticed a giant calendar covering one computer. Each square was filled up with comments and annotations. At the bottom of the current date, under "Wipe Memory of Memory Wiper", was "Meeting. Holly. Don't know when."
"So," said Foaly cheerily, "what did you want to see me about?"
"Well," started Holly, but before she could continue Trouble broke in.
"'Wipe Memory of Memory Wiper'?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Foaly sighed. "Ah yes, I have to do that soon. This might have to be quick, Holly," here she aimed a glare at the grinning Trouble, "you know when you wipe people's memories they tend to clog up in the system."
"The memories?" both Holly and Trouble said, temporarily startled.
"Yeah. Poor things get a little overwhelmed with all the images—you know how some of the really rich people pay to forget things. You have to wipe its memory eventually."
"Oh, uh, okay." Holly was speechless for a moment before remembering her purpose. "Trouble and I have figured out the bank robbery."
"I have to go fix Garnet's computer, too—wait, what!" Foaly turned around, a little incredulous. "Nonsense." Obviously he was under the impression that if he couldn't figure it out, no one could.
Now Trouble felt a little insulted. "We did," he argued. "It's the entire Brown family!"
"Brown? Isn't that the Crunchball player's last name?" Foaly looked at Holly, unconvinced. "I thought I talked about this with you!"
"No, we looked in the bank book of clients! His grandmother is in there!"
"Posh. The book could be old. It could be his other grandmother, or by marriage or something."
"The book updates itself!" Trouble, forgetting about his want to not go through with Holly's plan, continued to explain. Holly, now saved from having to elucidate the complicated information herself, gloated silently.
Trouble was done, and he leaned back in his chair, satisfied. Foaly sat there, a little perturbed. "And you plan to invoke the fine print and do this yourselves."
"No!" said Trouble, at the same time Holly exclaimed "Yes!"
Foaly raised an eyebrow.
"He's a little reluctant. Scared, maybe," said Holly, waving him off and ignoring Trouble's disbelieving grunt. "But he won't be after he sees all the tremendous equipment you have for us."
The centaur grinned. Almost two months of not showing off any of his grand stuff made a guy very restless.
"This way," he said, leading them into the back of the (rather small) Ops Booth.
"You must realize this is rather short-notice," continued Foaly, "but luckily I have some of the best things for you all."
He opened a cabinet. "Iris-cams. Classic." Intrigued, Holly searched for her eye color—a nice hazel, while Trouble looked around for green. "Trouble, you know this already, but you need your exact iris shade for maximum performance. And try not to rub your eyes too much when you have them on."
Putting them in, for a moment everything seemed to be an ugly shade of green. But Holly blinked and the feeling disappeared. Foaly watched, still grinning. "There are a couple improvements to be made, but they work overall."
Trouble already was experimenting with them, squinting about the room to different objects, trying to zoom out and in.
Foaly moved on, pulling some wristband-like things from a drawer. "Locators." Trouble looked up. He hadn't seen those before. Noticing his gaze, Foaly continued. "We never really had a need for these before in Recon, since they're rather new. Normally we just used the helmets, which you'll see soon," he said, handing one to each of them. Holly pulled a joystick experimentally.
"Those are for moving that screen there about, to see where your partner is." Foaly elaborated. "Some normal sensitivity controls, zoom in, out, etc, and some uploading ports if you need to download information from computers or something. Oh, and there's the speaker." He pointed at various things on the locators to show them.
The wristband looked extremely heavy, but as Holly clipped it on, it adjusted itself to her skinny wrist and suddenly, she could barely notice it was there. Inwardly, she marveled at Foaly's genius.
It was almost as if the centaur could read their thoughts, as he stood there looking at them proudly. But soon he was reminded of his press for time and took two large ball-shaped objects down from hooks on the wall.
"Helmets. A must-have for any wannabe Recon officers," he said, winking at Holly. She scowled and took the helmet, putting it on.
The helmet whirred to life around her, various lights bleeping on and off, and it felt oddly comfortable in the tight device.
"Loudspeakers, because people can't really hear you inside that," he pointed to two speakers on both sides, "The tinted-black visor, so you can see people but people can't see you, a live-feed camera so I can see you—"
Trouble cut him off. "You're going to be watching us?"
Foaly looked irritated to be disturbed from his explaining. "Of course—you can't just go wandering off without knowing what to do! Anyway," he continued, " here's the voice-activated microphone so you can communicate to Trouble, myself, or both of us simultaneously, a pressure seal, a 400-watt lamp, and control buttons that can only be pressed by the user's fingerprints." He looked pleased with this last one.
At Holly's questioning look, he said "That's a new feature. Once you put your helmet on, it recognizes you for the user. Oh yes," he pulled out a pair of funny-looking masks, "these are your detachable oxygen and pollution masks.
"Normally you would need a whole bunch more stuff, but you're not going up to the surface, just to the backcountry, so you don't need much."
"Backcountry?" asked Holly, messing around with the buttons on her helmet.
"The Browns recently bought a giant mansion out there, away from Haven. They used the money that Jon's been earning. Big security, but all technology—lax in guards who might accidentally find out what they're planning. It's the perfect place for their headquarters, and their excuse was that they hadn't been rich before and got a little extravagant with the spending," said Trouble, struggling with his own helmet.
"And just in case," Foaly broke in, "you'll need weapons. One moment, I'll go in the back and get a good type." He trotted through a door in the back Holly and Trouble hadn't noticed before with the numerous amount of tin-foil hats tacked up on it.
Holly thought of something suddenly. "What's their motive?"
"Sorry?"
"What do they want?" she asked Trouble. "Why are they attacking the LEP?"
He stared at her. "Haven't you figured it out?"
Irritated, she glared at him. "Well, you never told me."
"I assumed you knew!"
"I don't! So tell me now!"
"Think about it, Holly," said Trouble, frustrated, "Imagine it. The LEP fails, or at least, almost fails. The Council grows desperate—they're the best police force in Haven, and we can't afford for it to just close. So, they think, obviously the Commanders aren't doing this right. They've allowed the LEP to fail. Therefore, they need a new leader. One who won't let it fail… one who's saved the business before. Who'd they pick?"
She didn't have to think about it long before it hit her. "Jon Brown."
"Yes. He'd managed to pull the money of the LEP up when we were at our worst point. So hey, the Council thinks, he'd work."
"So that's what they want," Holly thought aloud, "just control of the LEP?"
"Just control of the LEP?" he gaped. "Holly, the LEP has a prominent position in Haven, you know that! The Browns could be very influential to all sorts of people, including the Council, from that position."
"Yeah, it just seems like there'd be something else."
Trouble chuckled. "Rubbish, Holly. What else could there possibly be?"
Holly was saved from responding by Foaly, who burst back in the room holding two bright silver guns. Neutrinos, to be exact.
He was grinning. "The Neutrino Millenium. I forgot I had these—we weren't supposed to release these to the officers yet, but since this is a special case I thought you were the exceptions."
"Won't Root get mad?" Holly asked as she eyed the covetable guns. Still jovial, Foaly handed one to her.
"Of course he will! Now, are you done? Got everything you need?"
At first, Trouble nodded, but then he seemed to remember. "Are we just going to drive up to the Brown's door? Don't we need a better mode of transportation?"
There was silence for a moment, but when Holly finally looked up into Foaly's smirking centaur face, she knew that he planned for one of them to ask about that, just to add to the drama. Foaly was like that.
Which meant he had something spectacular to show them.
"What is it, Foaly?" asked Holly, a little warily. You never know what kind of things Foaly could come up with. One unforgettable example was his tinfoil hat, which he believed kept away his enemy's (namely Opal Koboi) probes into his minds… but that's another story at another day.
Meanwhile, Foaly opened the door to the back room wide, and at first Trouble and Holly saw nothing, just a room filled with various weapons and gadgets.
But then they turned to look at the door.
And hung up on the back of that door were half a dozen pairs of wings.
Not just any wings, though. New wings. Glossy, fine, beautiful, new, high-tech pairs of wings.
Trouble and Holly stared for what seemed like eternity.
But Foaly couldn't wait that long, of course, and excitedly started talking about his creation. "They're new. Extremely new. Nobody else knows about them—aren't they wonderful? They're a prototype, sure, but I'm perfectly positive that nothing's wrong with them—see, look, there they can hook up to their helmet, and they come with a tool kit and some counter-beat wing stabilizers, two exhaust pipes, and the fuel area is lined with the materiel that Moonbelts are made out of, so you can compact a lot of fuel in a small area and still have it extremely light, look, the wings are made out of a new extremely sturdy kind of metal that's just come out in the market, it's very light and extremely hard to break, aren't they wonderful?"
And Foaly probably would've gone on for a long time after that had Trouble not spoken. Er, if you could call it that.
"Woah," he croaked, looking at the Dragonfly™ model (for that was its name, it had it printed on both wings along with a "© Foaly" sign.). "Woah." He said this partly to stop Foaly from speaking, and partly to try and express his thoughts.
Holly couldn't agree with him more. If there was one thing that all elves loved, it was flying. Sure, it wouldn't be as nice as flying above ground, but flying in Haven was still something.
Foaly took two of the wing pairs down and gave them to Trouble and Holly, who handled them like newborn children. Foaly chuckled. "You don't have to be so careful—they don't break easy."
They ignored him.
"And now you're about ready."
After a while of trying to get the wings on, closing them up so nobody noticed them, and plain marveling at the fact that they had these amazing things on, that was when they were prepared to leave.
Foaly rather thought they looked like children about to perform their first Ritual, eager and ready to go fly.
"You don't fly yet," chuckled Foaly. "You have to get out of sight---you can't just start flying. People will get suspicious."
Of what? Holly wanted to ask, but looking at her wings, restrained herself.
Reluctantly, they got in Trouble's car, halfheartedly planning out things for the next few hours that it would take to get out of Haven (just because the Traffic workers were back doesn't mean everything was back to normal immediately) and where to leave the car. Somewhere inconspicuous, somewhere it'd be seen as normal and at home, where nobody would suspect anything.
In other words, they had almost nowhere to choose out of. But that was a problem for later.
Quickly, remembering about his appointment, Foaly spoke to them. "I have to wipe the memory of that memory wiper, and then I'll go to my booth and watch you all. I'd suggest taking Route 42 and skipping 66 around. It's rush hour there this time of day."
Holly nodded, already excited even though they hadn't even begun to leave. "Bye, Foaly."
Trouble nodded his goodbye, and pressed on the gas pedal.
They would've made a funny pair, dressed in their LEP uniforms (though they had long since taken off their helmets so the Commanders wouldn't notice), clunky bracelets on their wrists, and large packs on their backs. But luckily when Trouble was younger and in his teen years, he had gotten his windows tinted a navy blue since at that time, it was all the rage.
He probably wouldn't have done it if he knew it would've helped him out later in life, mused Trouble thoughtfully.
Meanwhile, Holly was caught up in her own past. Going through her own childhood memories, she flipped through the atlas to the page Trouble had marked. There was a giant red dot where the mansion was, and she followed the path from where they currently to where the dot was.
Follow up on this road from the LEP, merge onto Route 42 for a long time, pass up 66 and keep on 42 for a long long time, going around, pass Mesquite, Acorn, and Grassland Roads…
Acorn?
Oh.
"Trouble?" She looked down at the atlas, disbelieving. She had forgotten…
"Yes?" He seemed to sense the conflict of emotions in her voice, because he looked over at her curiously.
"I know where we can park the car."
Now he looked with even more curiosity. "Where?"
"My mother's house."
"Your mother?"
"Yeah." Holly looked back at the map. "54 Acorn Road. That's her address."
"Oh, well then." Trouble said. "We'll just drop by, say hi, leave the car with her and go on."
Holly made no response.
"Holly?" he asked. "Is there a reason why you don't want to go there?"
She sighed. "I haven't seen my mother for about a year, since I got the acceptance into the Academy. It doesn't seem like long, it isn't really, but she was rather mad at me when I decided to take it and move closer to the LEP. I wanted to take the job because that's what my father did.
"My dad died, but not on the job, it was from an illness. I can't guess why my mom hated the career so. She never liked it much, and she never said much about it. But she was absolutely furious when I left, and she never called me or sent a letter or anything."
"Sounds like she's where you got your streak of stubbornness."
This made Holly smile. "Yeah, I guess. I just won't know what to say to her."
Trouble made a show of checking his watch. "Well, you have only," he looked at it, "four hours to think about it, so you better get started." He grinned at her, and she matched it with one of her own.
This seemed to break the ice between them, and they talked more freely in the next two hours. Trouble told her about his brother ("He was always jealous of my name, and after I changed it to Trouble he called me Trub, just to try to lessen its value.") and that he's starting the Academy in a few years. ("One of the youngest ever," he said with just a touch of pride in his voice.")
In return, Holly told about her early life ("It was rather boring, as I was an only child,") and her mother.
"She's got this funny English accent, it's a little strange, but interesting to listen to—she had this job to go get some plants and things that grow from over England," as of course plants don't grow naturally underground, "and she loved the way they talked so adopted it herself. Plus it made her job easier; people there don't tend to trust you if you sound different, or so she tells me."
Trouble laughed. "I picked up my edge of an accent up from my dad."
"Australian, right?" Holly remembered when she first noticed his tendency to speak that way.
"Yup. My dad worked in the LEP once, he got as far as Major before he retired, and he always pushed for the jobs in Australia and New Zealand. He always liked to tell stories of giant mice that hopped six feet in the air."
Chuckling, Holly checked the time. "How long do we have left? Two hours?"
He shrugged, looking about. "Yeah, I guess."
She groaned. If there was one thing Holly lacked at the time, it was patience.
They spent the rest of the time chatting and planning, moving about, and overall growing to be closer. Holly would look back at that time later and life and claim that was when she really got to know Trouble, that that was really when they became friends for life.
But in their current time, they weren't getting far. Holly was all for going up on their new wings and hovering about the windows, but Trouble was insistent upon knowing which window to hover about, when to hover, how exactly to work the wings, et cetera et cetera. And that was what they had Foaly for.
He was finished wiping the memory wiper's memory, and when they called him up using Holly's helmet (Trouble was driving and so unable to use his own) was eagerly already planning their entire trip.
"Holly! Right, I've got this for you. You park the car here, it's a abandoned supermarket that failed when everyone in the town moved to Haven—"
"We already have a place, Foaly," Holly said, tracing circles on the helmet's shiny metal. It was placed on her lap, positioned so one speaker was toward both her and Trouble so they could both hear the centaur.
"You do? Where?"
"My mother's house," said Holly.
Trouble added, "It's much closer then that supermarket, and it'll fit in perfectly—at a resident's house."
"Oh." Foaly sounded doubtful for a moment, then scratched out something on his paper and started again. "Well then, I've found a window in the mansion that's not protected by ten zillion traps."
"Where is it?" Trouble asked, probably already making up his own mental plan.
"It's at the top of the building, in the back. It belongs to Jon's younger sister, who insisted on the traps being let off because they clog up the window, and she likes to look out the window and watch the birdies."
"How do you know these things?" said Trouble, amazed.
"She has an online journal." Foaly replied.
Holly couldn't help smirk at that. "You really do use every resource possible."
"Which is why I'm so much more successful then everyone." Holly and Trouble could both hear the unsaid addition: Including Opal Koboi. Foaly's obsession with continually beating her knew no limits.
"Right," he continued, "well, I won't be able to tell you much more about the house until we get there and I scan it with your iris-cams."
Holly touched her eyelid warily. She had forgotten that it was there.
"And then we'll be able to find out where the computers are, which is where all incriminating evidence will be. Then you can use the upload/download port on your locators to take it, and voila! You're done. Probably the most-talked about officers in a while, too, after this is over."
Yes, Holly thought happily, that would be nice. Maybe they'd even let her into Recon…
She drifted off for a while, dreaming of going through that cycle, Corporal, Captain, Major… and she was almost a Commander, until a couple hours later Trouble shook her awake.
"Holly, I need you to tell me where your mom's house is."
"54 Acorn Road," mumbled Holly sleepily, "I told you that."
"Yes, well, there seem to be a lot of Acorn Road houses. The numbers are too far away for me to see."
She sat up, rubbing sand from her eyes. "Use your iris-cam, stupid."
Trouble seemed a little embarrassed to have forgotten that. "Oh, yes, right." They started to drive down the street, each house seeming to bring Holly a flood of memories.
That one, right there, 33 Acorn Road. Lili's house. They had played there when they were young, but then Holly left to join the LEP, and Lili stayed behind. Holly didn't even know she had followed until she saw her at the Traffic building.
A block more, and then Holly saw it.
It was a plain house; beige colored to look natural but you could tell that it had reinforced metal underneath. A granite driveway with plastic flowers surrounding it, it looked almost identical to the houses around it.
But Holly recognized it immediately: it was her house.
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY
Drawer is a funny word. I keep on wanting to spell it droor, because that's how I pronounce it.
Okay, fine. I got a little carried away with this chapter, so there's going to be more. Meh. Maybe a lot more.
Anyone who explains the significance of 42 and 66 gets a clap on the back.
P.S.: refloc, you were right. There was no possible way I could finish it in one chapter. I must've been delusional. I bow to your writing experience.
