Disclaimer: Artemis Fowl and related characters do not belong to me. They are absolutely real and therefore nobody owns them except themselves.
Oops, sorry, I meanEoin Colfer owns them. But that's still not me.
If This Isn't Love
Chapter Five: Amusement and Ammo
The next day when she arrived at LEP headquarters, Holly felt terrible, and knew she probably looked worse. She'd been up past midnight – WAY past midnight – the night before, talking to Equette. And when she'd finally gotten to sleep, it had only been to wake up three hours later and realise that she was supposed to be at work an hour ago. Because of this, Holly hadn't had time to shower, or get properly ready for work. Nor had she had time to wash the pink glitter and gel out of her hair, clean her fingernails, or get all the make-up off her face. Although this could have been because she had forgotten about what Equette had done to her the night before. She hadn't looked in a mirror yet that morning, and didn't realise that the make-up had smudged she now looked like a three-year-olds Do-It-Yourself Barbie doll.
Accordingly with the fact that she was an hour and a half late for work, Holly was sneaking to her desk in the hope that Root wouldn't notice that she's just arrived. It was the first time she'd been late in two years. The last time had been the day when she was kidnapped, held to ransom, and escaped from a certain criminal genius. Since then she had considered being late a bad omen, and it hadn't happened since.
She was almost at her desk, having not yet made a single noise as she crept through the building, when a wastepaper basket materialised in front of her foot and she sent it spinning loudly into the desk of the sprite that worked across the aisle from her.
'Sorry Bill,' she whispered, wincing. Bill looked up and grinned, putting a finger to his lips. Holly nodded, and tried to pretend that most of LEP headquarters HADN'T heard the clatter of the bin. She continued trying to sneak across the tatty green carpet to her desk.
'CAPTAIN SHORT, TO MY OFFICE NOW!'
Holly winced at the announcement and stopped trying to sneak. Instead she neatened her crushed uniform as much as she could and turned to retrace her steps to Root's office. As she walked, she noticed several officers along the way stopping work and staring at her. Holly glared at back at them warningly. It wasn't that weird to be late. Unfortunately, it soon became increasingly difficult to glare at them all, as more and more started to stare.
One particularly impudent – or possibly just stupid – pixie even nudged his neighbour and pointed at her, snickering. Holly fingered her buzz baton threateningly. Or she would have if she hadn't forgotten it in her rush that morning. Kicking herself mentally, Holly settled for giving the offending corporal a glare that gave him blisters. When she reached Root's office she knocked, waited a few seconds, and entered.
The commander barely looked up from his backlog of 'approval' paperwork as she came in. Hoping to head him off, Holly started talking as fast as she could. 'I know I'm late commander, and I'm sorry, it won't happen again, but I have a really good reason, I was…' she began, and then trailed off as she tried to come up with the really good reason.
'I don't frankly care why you're late, Captain.' Root interrupted Holly's mental scramble. 'I have a job for you.'
Holly's heart leapt. Finally! A recon. She felt like she was going to get rusty if she didn't have some real work soon…she stood up straight and saluted. 'Awaiting orders, sir.'
Okay, it was a dramatic response, but she didn't want to lose this job for some minor lapse in protocol.
'I want you to go to Ops and talk to that infernal centaur. Find out why he isn't making any decent inventions these days. I can't keep listening to that female drone on about her muffin mixers' – Root kicked an oddly-shaped invention that was lying next to his desk – 'or whatever it is she's been making for one more day. I don't understand a blasted word she says. Let me know what's wrong with Foaly, and whether I need to kick some centaur behind.'
Holly's hopes dropped into her boots. 'But, sir – I thought –'
Root looked up for the first time in the duration of the meeting. 'What is it, captain?'
Holly dropped her gaze to the floor. 'Nothing sir,' she mumbled
'That's what I thought. You have the remainder of today to get back to me. But for now, I advise you to go do some paperwork.'
Holly turned towards the door. She knew a dismissal when she heard one.
'Oh, and one more thing, captain'
Holly turned back towards Root. A cloud of smoke from the cigar he had lit when she turned obscured his face.
'Yes sir?' said Holly hopefully.
'Who hit you?
Holly looked confused. 'Hit me, sir?'
'Who gave you the black eyes?' Wow, Root could even sound red in the face.
Holly was really confused now. 'Black eyes, sir?' she knew she sounded like an idiot, but how was she supposed to know what Root was talking about?
'What are you, a parrot? Get out of here. And I recommend you find a mirror.'
'Yes, sir.' Holly obediently turned and left the Commander's office. On the way back to her desk she made a minor detour to the women's toilets. Inside, she checked her reflection.
'Oh gods.' She groaned. The makeup. It was…all over her face… well, yes, it was supposed to be, but not like this. For example, mascara shouldn't be halfway down her cheeks, and lipstick shouldn't be on her chin. She looked like a panda! Or, as Root had so delicately put it, like someone had given her two black eyes.
Holly cleaned off the make-up as best she could with water and paper towels. There were still traces of eyeliner left, but they were thankfully around her eyes. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about the nail polish and washout streaks. Holly was drying her hands on a towel when the door opened and somebody stepped into the room. Holly didn't bother to look up. She knew it was either Equette or Lili. She didn't really want to talk to Lili, but she'd love to have a few words with Equette. Actually, words were trivial matters. What she'd most like to do was to buzz the evil centaur into oblivion.
Half-hoping it was Equette – she needed to vent some frustration – Holly turned towards the door. To her shock, the person standing there wasn't Lili or Equette. It was, in fact, Wing Commander Vinyáya.
'C – c – commander!' Holly stuttered in surprise, hurrying to salute.
'Oh, don't bother dear,' Vinyáyá assured her, waving her hand down. 'A toilet is an odd place for formalities like salutes. If you salute here, what's to stop you saluting while you sleep?'
Holly couldn't help herself. The Wing Commander just had a way of making her speak her mind
'I'll bet Root makes the men salute in the toilets,' then she clapped her hand over her mouth. 'I'm sorry, Commander, I – '
'Oh, don't be sorry. Really.' Vinyáya gave Holly a lusty wink. 'You've given me a marvellous mental image.'
Holly was sure she'd misunderstood. Or at least, she hoped she'd misunderstood. Choosing not to pursue that particular line of thought, Holly changed the subject. 'So…why are you here?' she asked cautiously, wondering how far Vinyáya's informality would stretch. You could never tell, as Holly had learned back at the Academy, when an officer meant something or were just saying it.
'Oh, Julius has a backlog of inventions to be approved. That new girl - Equette - seems to be having some trouble explaining them to him, so I'm going to stand in. See if I don't have a little more luck. Hopefully I'll free up some time for him.'
Holly nodded as she turned to leave the small room. Root had obviously meant it about not listening to Equette for one more day. The only question was why Wing Commander Vinyáyá was there, when there were fairies far more qualified to understand Equette, as well as far less busy.
Shrugging this off as one of those inexplicable quirks of life, Holly pushed the door.
'I guess I'll be seeing you around Headquarters then.'
Vinyáya nodded. 'Goodbye, dear.'
On the way back to her desk, Holly passed Lili walking in the opposite direction. The other girl screwed up her face as Holly passed.
'Ugh, Holly, you do know your nail polish is way out of fashion, right?'
Holly rolled her eyes and continued to her desk. It wasn't hard not to care about anything Lili said. Especially when most of the stuff she came out with was either shallow or stupid or totally irrelevant. Mostly shallow.
Unbeknownst to Holly, as she walked away from the smirking Lili she was being followed by none other than the kingpin love fairy himself, Cupid. Who incidentally was at that very moment preparing to shoot her with one of his legendary arrows. Taking aim carefully, the small, pink-clad fairy pulled back the string of his bow and released the ammo to a musical harpsichord note. Cupid rolled his eyes. Why did his job always have to be such a cliché?
Unfortunately for him, just as the arrow was released, Holly stumbled sideways. The arrow missed its target and instead hit an elf heading down the hallway in the other direction.
'Ouch.' Said Lili, rubbing her left shoulder blade.
Cupid cursed under his breath. All the shield stabilisers in the world couldn't help his aim if the target moved. Growling and muttering, cupid flew off to the unused office he was hiding in. this was a complication. Not a dangerous one, but it was an unnecessary factor.
Although it could be amusing. And Cupid loved to be amused.
Grub Kelp was just heading back to his desk after a forty-minute bathroom break. He'd barely been gone thirty minutes when Trouble had come to find him and drag him back to work. Trub was gone now, striding off in disgust when Grub procrastinated all the way down the hallway. For some reason, Trouble considered thirty-minute trips to the bathroom excessively long. But he just didn't understand personal grooming.
Absorbed in the midst of his sulk, Grub didn't see Lili coming until she hit him - in a rather untraditional manner. Then he could see her really well. This was because he was quite suddenly pressed against the wall of the hallway, and she was kissing him, kissing HIM! Him! Grub Kelp. D'arvit, he knew the grooming would pay off! Wait until Trouble found out about this. Lili was kissing him, kissing HIM, kissing him, kissing him, him, him…Corporal Grub Kelp was getting kissed and - HE COULDN'T BREATHE!
Grub was choking, and fighting to draw breath through his perpetually blocked nose. But there wasn't any air coming from there, and his mouth was occupied with…other matters.
'Lili!' Grub tried to interrupt. But it can be difficult to speak when you're suffocating and have someone else's tongue in your mouth.
'Lili!' Grub tried to pull his mouth away from hers, but she was holding his head in what seemed to him to be an impossibly strong grip.
Surrendering to his fate, Grub eventually stopped struggling. He supposed there were worse ways to go. Or maybe it was just oxygen deprivation making him think that. Either way, as Grub slipped out of consciousness, he could only hope that she would notice when he died and stop kissing him. Could pose some awkward questions, otherwise. And he didn't want to be remembered as the only LEP officer in history to die of…well, essentially a blocked nose and an aggressively flirtatious workmate. He could picture his death certificate now. "Death by snogging…" He could picture the sniggers during his funeral as Trouble tried to deliver a eulogy without referring to the fact that his little brother had been killed in a make out session…
Damn, he thought vaguely. So much for dying with dignity…
Luckily for Grub – or perhaps unluckily – it wasn't his day to die. Just as he was about to fade into blackness, Trouble came back to make sure that he hadn't escaped to the toilets again. The Captain actually almost passed straight by the interesting entanglement of limbs that was Lili and his dying brother, and he was several metres past them before his brain processed what he was seeing. He stopped abruptly, backtracked, and stared freely at the two. It was actually during this time, as Trouble was getting his head around the fact that this was GRUB, his grotty little brother, getting kissed by LILI FROND, the officially voted Little Miss of the LEP, that Grub passed out completely and fell to the floor. This didn't seem to put Lili off in the least, and she continued her little game of tonsil hockey without skipping a beat.
'Hey! Get off him! You're killing him!' Trouble ran forward and – not without difficulty – managed to pull Lili off his brother. When she realised that Grub was unconscious, Lili burst into dramatic, picturesque sobs.
'Don't die, Grubby-poo, don't die!'
Rolling his eyes and simultaneously gagging inwardly at the sickly-sweet pet name - it really was unfortunate for Grub that he'd picked that name – Trouble knelt down and slapped Grub's face gently. 'Grub! Grub! Can you hear me? Open your eyes!'
Grub eventually came to, groaning. 'How - who - bu – da – wha?' he stuttered, blinking confusedly. Then he caught sight of Lili, leaning hopefully over Trouble's shoulder, and immediately started trying to run away on his hands and knees.
'GRUBBY-POO! YOU'RE ALIVE!' Lili shrieked, almost directly into Trouble's ear.
Trouble winced. Lili didn't noticed. She dived at Grub.
'NOO! Stay away from me! Help me, Trub!'
Grub managed to roll sideways on the floor as Lili jumped at him, and she instead flew headfirst into the wall behind him. Unperturbed, she got straight back up, fixed her hair, and ran after Grub, who was now sprinting down the hallway.
Trouble, wondering if the world had gone totally mental, cut his losses and shot Lili with his Neutrino 3000. Grub continued running up the deserted hallway, while Lili tumbled attractively to the ground.
Standing over her, Trouble sighed. 'Sorry Corporal. Can't have you suffocating my brother, now, can I? Family ties, and all that.'
Then he picked her up and carried her up the hallway to the infirmary - conveniently situated just fifty metres away – and dumped her unceremoniously on a spare bed. Turning to a medic, he instructed the elf to make sure that Corporal Frond didn't escape the infirmary, and left quickly with a mind to avoid questions. He was still holding on to the hope that this had all been an insane dream of some sort.
He then headed straight to the Operations booth. Not wanting to seem like an irresponsible officer, he didn't exactly want the wider part of the LEP knowing that he had shot Lili. And Foaly was not only the only one with the Neutrino shot records, he was also the only one with the power to change them.
Hmmmm, okay. That chapter was weird. And really long, for some reason. But oh well. Please review!
