A&A&A Boarding School
Author's Note: We have been away for we-don't-know-how-long, and we really don't have anything to say about this.
This story will henceforth be updated at a rate of painstaking leisure, because Lydia has Other Commitments and Rukuelle has been discouraged from using the computer until further notice, because of Dismal Performance.
We suppose we should say more, and thank all the nice people who kept reviewing anyway, but we think we can't, because Fanfiction has banned callouts, and anyway we're much too tired.
22. Shootouts and the Sewage System
"Thursday's a very physical day," Holly told Éowyn as she referred to her loyal timetable. "Look. Firearms. Then recess. Then P.E., then Defence Skills."
"Lovely," said Éowyn brightly.
"Dreadful," muttered Artemis, slinging his bag morosely over his shoulder and stalking out.
The two girls stared after him.
"He's been acting odd lately."
"I noticed."
"Why?"
"Would I know? Ask me not how a Mud Boy's mind works."
"Oh yes, touchy subject."
They weren't the only ones commenting on recent odd behaviour.
Behind them, Boromir collected his stuff and walked out of the classroom, feeling rather dazed. The reason for this was because just after they had been dismissed, Faramir had turned to him and said enthusiastically: "Boromir, do you agree with the concept of act-utilitarianism, or do you think rule-utilitarianism addresses moral issues better?"
He couldn't remember what he'd said. In all probability it had been, "Glug?"
Faramir had given him a querulous look and remarked somewhat disappointedly, "You aren't very into philosophy, are you?" After which he had bounced off to join Éomer's blonde sister – what was her name again? It had an accent in it.
He heard them earnestly discussing various communities of inquiry as they went down to the firing range for Firearms.
Root had gotten bored with targets. His idea of good fun was to throw his recruits – sorry, students – into the field, or failing that, some form of field simulation, and watch them fight for survival. Preferably on a TV screen, accompanied by a good cigar and crisps.
He was quite fond of the ruined city. Foaly had built it under the firing range as one of the field sims. It was not yet entirely completed, but the completed bits were really quite realistic. It was, in effect, a maze of deserted houses, alleys, boulevards, etc. It even had a sewage system, though he'd never been in it, thank Frond.
He decided today that it was time they got some real physical training in guerilla warfare.
"So," he said, strolling up and down the ranks, "you're all in the groups Vinyáya gave you for P.E., are you?"
Red, Green, Orange, Blue and Gold nodded back at him. Gold, already quite pathetic, was looking even more so with the loss of two of their finest (proportionally speaking) who were still under lock, key and bandage in the hospital wing.
"Everybody has one stun gun, three stun grenades each?"
The stun weapons were another of Foaly's holiday projects. They stunned a person, not fatally, but paralysed them for a total of ten minutes. During that time, they were perfectly capable of mental processes, but had as much movement ability as a dead salami.
"Each group is equipped with a bazooka?"
The bazookas were large. They stunned things too, but at the same time they blew the stunned victims into nearby walls. Root rather looked forward to seeing that bit.
"Very good. Now, each group toddle off to their respective entrances. There are five flags in there, one per group. First group to find their flag and get all their members out intact, wins the prize. Yes, you guessed it, it's more chocolate bars. Beat it, kids."
The teams moved off despondently. A few minutes later, they were edging warily into Ruined City Field Simulation. Root settled back to watch the screen, hand snaking out towards the bag of crisps.
"Let's split up," suggested Éowyn. "Holly, Éomer and I in one team. Eponine…"
"…will go with Marius," interjected Eponine.
"Right. Anna, take care of Trub and Grub."
"Oi," began Trouble, but the rest were already splitting up. By mutual consent Eponine and Marius took the bazooka with them.
Holly went first. This was because, in the event of an ambush, the enemy would be most likely aiming at head height, which was not where Holly's head would be.
She paused behind a crumbling brick wall, putting her finger to her lips, and drew her stun gun. Éowyn and Éomer hunkered down beside her and listened.
They heard footsteps further up the alleyway, and voices.
"I don't like this, Harry. It's violence."
"Shhh, Hermione! Someone might hear us!"
"I don't know how to use this thing anyway. Whaddya do, pull the little lever thingy?"
"It's a trigger, Ron. Oh, you wouldn't get, it's a Muggle thing."
"And don't point it that way, that's where the shot comes out from. Like this. This."
Holly raised her hand. One, two, three…
They leapt into the alleyway.
"Like this?…" Ron was saying, and caught sight of them. "Oh, bloody…"
Holly shot him. Hermione screamed and turned towards him. Holly's next shot got her in the side, and she crumpled beside him. Harry yelled and fired repeatedly at Éomer, who threw himself flat and shot his opponent in the knee.
The paralysis spread swiftly. Harry felt his knee go numb, then his whole leg, and then he toppled over sideways. It felt like Petrificus Totalus.
The Red trio worked quickly. Holly divested their victims of their stun grenades. Éowyn and Éomer both argued vehemently that it would be dishonourable to take their guns too, but gave in when Holly suggested throwing them over the wall instead. Finished, they moved out of sight and turned the corner.
Harry swore in his head for a long time, and was quite impressed with himself when he managed to keep it up for the entire ten minutes.
Van Helsing was with Carl and Malfoy. This arrangement annoyed him. It was his opinion that Carl had no guts to shoot a gun, and although Malfoy did, he wouldn't know where to point it.
If it hadn't been for him, the other two would have been stunned by Chix Verbil, who had been hovering above as an aerial sniper. And even then, he had been the one to prevent them from walking into Haldir on the other side of the wall, who had been waiting for Chix to report back.
He sighed, and pushed his hat back as they entered a wide plaza, surrounded by empty shophouses.
Shutters creaked. Tattered drapes wisped in the non-existent breeze. This really was a ghost town, wasn't it?
He'd like to see what was going on.
"Stay here," he told the other two. "Shoot anyone who approaches if they're not from Green. I'm climbing up to take a look."
Putting the gun between his teeth, he scrambled up the pipe running up the wall of the nearest shophouse, and climbed onto the tiled roof. Crouched low in case of more snipers, he surveyed the scenery.
No flags in sight. If he rose up on his knees he could see Aragorn, Arwen and Hector snooping about the warehouses, and further in the distance the large body of six French Revolutionaires. They didn't seem to be headed for either Green team though, so Van Helsing ignored them, and prepared, after making a mental map of the roadworks, to climb down.
That was when he heard the barrage of shots.
Carl shrieked. Malfoy managed to get out a couple of expletives before the paralysis got his jaw muscles.
Van Helsing turned in one smooth move, gun arm swinging out. The first shot got Grub straight in the front, knocking him off his precarious perch on a shophouse windowsill. The next one just missed Trouble's ear and zoomed off into the alleyway. He leapt up on the tiles, cloak swinging behind him, pointing his gun as Trouble rolled out from behind the dustbin he had been using as a shield and dashing off down the alley.
In the dusty attic of the shophouse behind him, Anna Valerious propped the glass window open, raised her gun, and took careful aim.
The Gold team had picked up their two stunned teammates, who were even now undergoing a dressing-down by Jack on improper guerilla tactics.
"You could have been less obvious about flying on top of him! Haven't you ever heard of camouflage? Oh yeah, of course not, you're bright bloody green. And you! You were supposed to be on your guard, not doing your hair? What is the blazes with you elves about doing your bloody hair?"
"I was not," sniffed Haldir reproachfully.
"Aye? Then explain the position we found you stunned in."
Haldir said nothing, and sniffed again.
"I think we'd better stick together this time round," Jack went on. "Oh hell, I knew I shouldn't have been leaving the bazooka alone with Cosette and Lili. The bimbo's likely been using the gunpowder for nail polish."
And with this moderately inaccurate statement, which proved his lack of acquaintance with the workings of stun bazookas and feminine cosmetics, Captain Jack Sparrow rounded the corner and stopped short at the sight before him.
The alley opened up into a little courtyard with a dead fountain. Cosette was lying in a heap against the wall. Lili was floating in the stagnant fountain. And right before the chipped marble basin stood the Gold Team's bazooka, with Arwen aiming it like a stunning angel of death.
"Holy Mary Mother of God," said Jack very fast, and turned to run.
Arwen smiled, and fired.
The blast took Jack through the wall of a warehouse, which promptly crumbled over him.
Chix took to the air, but Aragorn leapt off a nearby low balcony and tackled him to the ground, where their fall was conveniently cushioned by Haldir.
The two Green spun around when they heard footsteps running, but relaxed when they saw it was Paris and Helen who rounded the corner. Paris took in the scene in a couple of seconds, swore and turned to run.
Hector appeared directly behind him, stun gun aimed casually.
Paris stared at him. "You can't do this, Hector. You're always on my side, brother!"
"I was," said Hector non-commitedly. "Until, of course, you chose to leave my side."
Helen screamed as Paris fell over backwards from the shot, and backed into the courtyard, fumbling for her gun. It slipped out of her trembling hands and skittered across the paving stones. She dived for it, and her hands closed around it at the same time that another's did.
The two most beautiful girls in the entire first year froze, and stared at each other.
Sunlight glinted off Helen's rich gold locks, and shimmered darkly in Arwen's. One pair of eyes was filled with the limpid, fragile, delicate beauty that could have launched a thousand ships. The other pair was grey and magnificent as the sea, grey as the dusk of mortal men.
Calmly, Arwen tugged the gun from out of Helen's unresisting hands, lifted it and thwacked the barrel against Helen's temple.
"There," she remarked casually, rising and indifferently tossing the gun next to Helen's fair face with its lovely, shut eyelids, "goes a girl with no spirit. Never could abide those."
The Blue team, like all strategically-minded teams advised by strategically-minded people (i.e. Artemis) had split up into threes.
Boromir wasn't sure he liked this arrangement. He was with Artemis, whom he still bore a grudge against for the monkey-bar business, and Faramir, who was getting weirder and more intellectual by the second.
They were lying in the middle of a wide open-air square, in the minute shelter of the knee-high wall of what appeared to be a well of extensive circumference.
It was a rather poor shelter, but they had been forced to take it, as the three people on the other side were rather handy with guns, especially that Holly Short.
"Er, who votes we rush them?" suggested Boromir.
"Not me," said Faramir hastily.
"I think," said Artemis, eyes shut, "that we should stay here."
On the other side of the assumed well……
"It's very dangerous, Holly."
"Yeah. You could get shot."
"At least you'll find out where they are, then."
"Couldn't we just fire madly and wait for them to reply?"
"The point, Éowyn, is to disable them. I'm sure I can get at least one of them."
"There you go again, thinking that being short means you can do everything."
"I don't think that! Shielding, though, means I can do quite a lot."
"Can't we rush them together?"
"We might all end up stunned. Send a trooper in first, that's the idea."
"You're talking like a military again."
"Well, see you round the other side, then."
Holly, gun at the ready, began to wriggle like a snake around the circumference of the well.
The thing about round things was that they were – well, round. It was a bit hard to pinpoint where you stood on that sort of diagram.
If she was lucky, they wouldn't spot her till she was right under them.
She was lucky. They didn't, until she unshielded and shot Boromir in the ankle.
Faramir sprang up with a yell. A barrage of fire made him throw himself flat again. Holly ducked the fire too, and was fumbling to bring the barrel up again when she felt cold metal behind her ear.
She glanced as far back as she dared, and met icy blue eyes.
"Well?" said Artemis coolly.
"Look down," replied Holly with equal calm.
Artemis shot a quick glance downwards. Holly's barrel was resting next to his ribs.
"Up you get," ordered Holly.
"I'm supposed to be saying that."
"Shut up. On three. And no tricks."
They yanked each other upright.
In the control room, Root watched the screen, impressed. They'd learnt a. hostaging and b. stalemates.
Three other heads popped up from behind various parts of the well. They were too fascinated with the stalemate tableau to shoot each other.
"I have faster reflexes," warned Holly.
"But your gun is in my ribs. It would take approximately a quarter of a second for the paralysis to reach my hand, and by that time I think I would have responded in shooting you. And please," this time to Éowyn, "please don't try shooting me. Judging from the trajectory of your shot, I should probably fall forward into this, well, well, and take Holly with me. So…"
He froze. His torso jerked.
"You talk too much," said Holly. "It's distrac – "
She jerked.
"Quarter of a second, I said," muttered Artemis, and they both toppled forward into the opening.
Éowyn jumped up with a gasp. Faramir took a pot shot at her. For the next few moments, Root's screen was distorted with laser crossfire. When it ceased, all that was left was Éomer, peering into the well and looking greatly apprehensive.
"Er. Éowyn? Éowyn, are you down there? Can you hear me?" After a long pause, "Er, Faramir? Éowyn? Faramir?"
Then after the echoes died away: "Damn trajectory."
Jack came round. He appeared to be lying under a large pile of rubble. What followed was a very vibrant speech, with language that would have made a biker blush.
He stopped. Something, dislodged from the debris around his head, fluttered down to land on his face.
He freed an arm and lifted it off. It was attached to a thin pole.
It was the green flag.
A-ha.
Vengeance is a dish best served cold.
Someone else in this maze of a false city was holding another flag.
"Gold?" said Mulch. "That's Jack's team."
"Just sticking up out of one of those barrels, too," observed Pippin. "I say, it's awfully lucky we got it first. Anyone could have found it."
The other two ignored him. "Hide it," suggested Merry. "We should keep it on us, so they can't find it."
They bickered for a bit on a suitable hiding place. Eventually, Mulch stuffed it into the bazooka.
"What if we want to fire it?" complained Pippin.
"Then we take it out first," explained Mulch patiently.
"But what if…"
"Ah," said a deep voice behind them. "What do we have here?"
Slowly, all three turned around.
"Boo," said Achilles.
"Give me a hand here, Briseis," called Andromache some time later. "My arm's too large for the hole."
Briseis came over from where she had been stripping Merry of his grenades. Her arm was a nice fit, and she drew out the flag triumphantly.
"We'd better keep it," said Andromache practically. "Best not to let Gold find out…"
Achilles was fingering his gun. His soldier's sense told him that something was wrong.
"So where shall we…Achilles?" Both girls turned to him. "Achilles?"
"Someone's watching us," said Achilles.
He spun around, but he was too late. Gavroche, who against all probability was sitting on the wall behind them, giggled, bit the stun grenade and hurled it at them.
When the smoke cleared, he waved Grantaire and Enjolras over the wall.
"Feather in your cap, eh, kid?" mused Enjolras, twirling the flag so that the gold cloth caught the engineered sunlight. "We'll make a soldier of you yet." He turned to Grantaire. "Now, if you've got a spare bottle or something, we can stuff it…"
"Stuff what?"
The three turned around slowly. Enjolras found himself looking down a large bazooka's mouth, positioned at the end of the alleyway.
"Freeze, please," said Aragorn. "Enjolras, if you'll allow Hector to shoot you – thank you very much, it saves so much trouble on retrieving the flag. Now, Gavroche, Grantaire, if you'll just look over here……Arwen, fire, please."
When the dust explosion at the other end of the alley cleared, Aragorn emerged with the gold flag in his hand.
"Interesting," he said.
Hector prodded Achilles with his foot. "They'll be out for some time," he diagnosed. "I think we'd better wait around. Let's stuff the short people in the barrels, so they don't make trouble when they wake up."
The well wasn't, well, a well. It was worse.
Holly and Artemis tumbled over each other down the shaft, which eventually edged out into a fairly steep slope. At the end of it, they landed with a splash in water. It was dim, but they didn't need their eyes to tell them where they were, just sensitive noses.
Sewer? thought Holly.
Good heavens, oh no, thought Artemis.
The current bore them downstream, and into one of many tunnels, branching out into the dark of the underground. The water – sewage – was turgid in flow and quite viscous, so they floated.
Artemis came unparalysed first. Holly followed an eighth of a second later.
They clutched various bits of floating objects to keep upright, such as cardboard boxes, and made polite conversation.
"You realise that I'm not shooting you because I lost my gun at the entrance, don't you?"
"Capital of you, I'm sure."
"You realise that I realise that you're not shooting me, because you lost yours too?"
"I do applaud your ability at making connections, Holly."
"You realise that I could knock you out again, but that I haven't, because I just don't want to bother?"
"Believe me, I'd never have thought of that myself. Thank you so much for putting that notion into my head."
"Artemis, you can be so bloody sarcastic."
"I assure you that I never try to be sarcastic. The whole concept of sarcasm is alien to me. If I ever sound sarcastic to you, it's probably a verbal accident."
"Shut up."
They floated on for a while more in uncompanionable silence.
Holly hated silence. Silence was particularly unnerving, especially when the other person contributing to the silence was Artemis Fowl. When Artemis wasn't talking, he stared. When he wasn't staring, he glared. And Artemis Fowl glaring was an issue of national security.
"We can't keep on floating like this," said Holly eventually.
"What do you suggest we do, then?"
Holly looked up. It was nearly pitch dark in there, except for the occasional thin ring of light from a manhole cover.
"Try a manhole," she advised.
They trod water and eyed the cover overhead.
"We could throw things at it," suggested Artemis. "Maybe knock it open. Even if it does not, someone might notice and open the cover."
"Throw what?"
Artemis felt around in the sewer, wincing as his hand dipped into the foul waters, and finally selected what felt like a glass bottle from the objects floating past.
"What's that?" inquired his fair companion.
"A beer bottle."
Holly's eyes widened in the dark. "Are you cr – " she began, but Artemis had already hurled it at the cover.
She just managed to grab his arm and duck both of them underwater before the glass shards showered down.
They both surfaced spluttering. "What," gasped Artemis, "was that for? It stank!"
"Look, I just saved your life, Mud Boy." Holly sighed, and picked a plastic container out of the water. "Stick to wood and plastic from now on, all right?"
Éowyn floated. And floated.
She remembered only images, and those only as far as her cricked neck had allowed her gaze to collect. She recalled the crossfire, and the slope. And after that, sewage and tunnel.
Somewhere quite far down the latter line, she regained animation.
Normally, when you regain animation, the first thing you do is sit up. However, this is a bit of difficult to do, when you're floating in a sewer. What resulted from her efforts to sit up was a head-over-heels ducking in filth she didn't want to know the components of. She surfaced, gasping for breath, although the heady airs of the sewer weren't a fairer contrast.
"Éowyn?"
She spun round, waving the gun (which she had been fortunate enough to be tightly clutching when she was frozen) She knew that voice.
"Faramir?"
"Er, yeah." She couldn't see him, but she heard the sloshing noises that meant he must be wading towards her.
"Stop!" she shrieked. "I have a gun!"
"Well," came Faramir's disembodied voice, "so do I."
They stared through the darkness at where they assumed the other was standing, trying to gain purchase on the situation's slippery surface. Then, as one, they lowered their guns.
"Oh, forget it."
"This is stupid, anyway."
Éowyn turned and began sloshing back the way (she assumed) they had come. After some hesitation, Faramir followed her.
After some time, the tunnel narrowed, and the ceiling became lower, so they could only walk one at a time, stooped. Éowyn's brow wrinkled. She didn't remember floating this way. But then, points of view are always so different when they're horizontal.
She shook her head, and went on sloshing determinedly.
"Don't you shoot me in the back," she called back to Faramir.
"Wasn't thinking of it," said Faramir guiltily. "We're on truce, aren't we?"
"Until we get out of these tunnels." Éowyn reached a crossroad – or a cross-tunnel, and stared at the fork. Eventually she selected the tunnel which appeared better lit.
It was the right tunnel. It led back to the great sewer clearing in which the slope had deposited them in the first place.
"Ah!" she breathed, relieved. "Here we are at last. Much brighter, too." She turned around to consult Faramir, and stopped at the odd look on his face. "What?"
He was gazing off in another direction at the wall. In the dim light, she could make out the distinct shape of a bracket, but instead of a torch, it held something blue.
"What's that?" she asked, suspicion creeping into her tone, and began to wade towards it.
Behind her, Faramir raised his gun. "It's my team's flag," he said, and shot her in the back.
He watched her collapse into the sewage, then lowered his gun and trudged after her floating body, lifting her up by the shoulders and towing her over to the dry land of the slope. He dragged her well out of reach of the lapping murk and laid her gun in her hands. Her eyes were full of angry hatred. No guesses for what sort of message they contained.
"I'm very sorry," began Faramir haltingly. "But, you see, this is, well, act-utilitarianism. You know. Benefiting the majority. And I know you're really keen on rule-utilitarianism and all, but the way I was thinking…well…er, well. So. I'm sorry."
She watched him disappear out of sight. Later, she saw his boots walk past her, trailing sludge, his hand clutching the stem of the blue flag. The boots walked up the slope and disappeared.
Éowyn settled back mentally to think thoughts of vengeance.
They'd been throwing things at the ceiling for nearly ten whole minutes.
Artemis ducked a rebounding ex-tin of sardines, and paused to remark: "What happens if the person who finds us are on your team?"
"Well, then you're kaput."
"And if they're on my team?"
"Then I'm kaput."
"And if they're on neither of our teams?"
"Then we're both kaput. You could have worked that out yourself, Mr. Intellectual."
Artemis made a small, non-committal noise. "Just checking that you are aware of all eventualities."
Holly held up a hand. "Did I hear something?"
They listened. They clearly heard a familiar voice say, "But Trubs, I heard it, I really did!"
Holly yelled as loudly as her lungs could expand, and began hurling all manner of objects at the cover. Artemis watched her, faintly bemused.
Then light flooded the dank tunnel, nearly blinding both of them. In the middle of it all, Anna Valerious, like some black-tressed guardian angel, stuck her head in. She was wearing a black leather hat and grinning.
"Why, it's Holly!" she exclaimed delightedly. "And…that would be……"
"Great," muttered Artemis, "now I'm kaput."
Faramir found Enjolras's trio just waking up from their short nap. He waved the flag in front of them.
Enjolras's eyes focused, unfocused, focused, and zoomed in sharply on the flag. They flared with the flame of realisation, and with a loud whoop he snatched it out of Faramir's hand and marched ecstastically up and down the alley shouting, "Patria! Patria!"
"We've got to find the others," said Faramir. "Boromir wandered off, I think, while I was in the sewer. Do you know where Joly and the others are?"
He was interrupted by the loud thump of boots vaulting over the wall. Three more revolutionaires bounced over the wall and joined their leader in singing, "Patria! Patria!" Grantaire and Gavroche took up the chant too.
Faramir stared. "Well," he said eventually. "That settles it, then. Can we next find Artemis and my brother and then get the hell out of here?"
"Nice hat," commented Holly. "Where'd you get it from?"
"Van Helsing," said Anna. Smirking would have been an understatement for her current expression.
"Ah," said Holly.
They reached the entrance of the well. Holly looked around. "Éowyn?"
Éowyn was nowhere in sight. Éomer was, though. He was just waking up.
"I was hanging around in case you or Éowyn came back up," he explained, somewhat groggily. "And then Boromir woke up and shot me."
Holly absorbed this information. "So she fell in."
Éomer nodded. "With Faramir," he added, "though he came out later alone. Saw him walk off that way."
He pointed.
It was a tempting implication. But Éowyn was still down there. The idea of going back into the sewer disgusted her to her very entrails, but she did owe it to her friend.
Holly climbed in gingerly and slid out of sight.
Later on, they heard her yelling for someone else to come down.
Later on, with the combined aid of Anna and Éomer, they managed to drag Éowyn's body out of the sewer.
"Well," said Anna, as she looked down at the frozen Éowyn, with her angry, angry eyes. "What do we do now?"
The French Revolution was marching down the street. Faramir had got them to hide the blue flag in Grantaire's sock, but they refused to stop singing. If they didn't find the other two soon, someone was going to catch them.
It must have been pure luck then, that a manhole cover popped open right before his feet, and his brother stuck his head out.
"Artemis is down there," panted Boromir. He was clinging to the edge of the manhole. "Someone shot him. Lucky I'm tall, isn't it?"
He dropped. Soon after, Artemis's body was lifted through the hole. Joly and Courfeyrac dragged it out. Boromir followed, clambering swiftly.
"Good," said Faramir, "good, nine members all present, flag present, good, okay, RUN!"
Everyone agreed that it was a bit of a dark horse, that the Blue Team should have won. It reduced the other conspiracies to nought, the others' efforts. Several people called it getting shot for nothing.
It took a long time to clear the maze. It wasn't until well into recess that they located Mulch, Merry and Pippin, still trapped in the securely shut barrels and wailing piteously (in Pippin's case especially) for swift succour.
While the Blue Team relished their chocolate bars, Faramir spotted a golden head moving about the Dining Hall, and sprinted after it. He caught up with Éowyn at the hall door.
"Look, Éowyn, I'm really sorry about the – "
The slap was a roundhouse one. It snapped his head in a tight turn. It was designed to torture skin cells and leave a mark brighter than fire peppers.
Éowyn sniffed, tossed her pale gold hair and stormed out through the double doors.
It occurred to Faramir, as he clutched his aching cheek, that philosophy wasn't exactly the best thing for relationships.
End of ChapterNext chapter coming…Netball and Nastiness