Jaythebigmouth said; So what if Foaly somehow finds Artemis's diary and finds a passage where he talks about his feelings when Holly kissed him in the Time Paradox?

And I thought, well, why not? Fanfiction is where I go crazy. Drabbles are where I go INSANE. So I'm going to take that suggestion, and here I thank each and every person who reviewed as well because I plan on taking many of those too.

Also, this story is going to get insane, fairly physcotic and really embarassing. Read on, dear followers! Prepare to be dazzled!

A little additional fact; My bro, at least my bro in weirdness, Caleb, is back on Fanfiction. Cheers to him!

Love ya loads,

the Princess of Weird :)

Foaly was dead.

Erm, dead tired. I would never kill Foaly in a story. He's my fictional hero. After Artemis. And Holly. So, Foaly was sitting at his chair in the messed up room at home that he'd started to call his office room, the one that had two fancy non-revolving chairs and a long desk with three monitors attached. There was nothing else on it besides an empty coaster. He'd just pleaded Caballine to make him a cup of sim-coffee and was waiting for it.

Over the past few years, actually, Foaly had taken upon himself the challenge of hacking into Artemis's online diary. He knew for sure that the diary kept was not on paper by pen, because there was still the risk of losing his memories or being midwiped for the umpteenth time and a physical diary would be quite easy for the People to find in such an event. Not to mention the risk of Beckett or Myles coming across it. So Foaly had located the personal file, tried everything in his power to get into it, but he'd succeeded just once before the firewall was strengthened further and the price to pay for that had been a Trojan horse his system hadn't detected until it shut down and burnt off. That's his way, Foaly had thought, of saying "Game on".

It had been two months since that particular incident, and Foaly still tried every night after returning from work. He'd had a rather embarassing network connection crisis that lasted two weeks, which had the disastrous effect of slowing him down but the extra time hadn't made the task any easier.

And even though he was bordering on the edge of a dream, Foaly decided tonight was the night.

See, kids, the moral you'll learn from this story is that determination no matter what will win you anything. And the other moral of this story is that it's not very nice to hack into people's personal stuff. But that lesson will come later.

He picked up where he'd left off. Bringing apart the firewall brick by brick.

It didn't take him a lot of time to reach the week's set target, and Caballine arrived with the coffee just when he'd finally managed to convince the computer that it was Artemis logging in. This was better than tearing apart the whole program; all he needed was a password and for Artemis not to be online.

"Hey, hon," he greeted his wife, gratefully accepting the drink. "Guess where I got?"

Caballine rolled her eyes. Those eyes were so green and beautiful, Foaly knew he could fall in love with them everyday. "Why don't you just hack into the code of the whole thing?"

Foaly shook his head. "I tried that once. It worked, but Mud Boy got a notification on his phone and threatened my systems with a custom-made virus."

"What if he gets a notification when you log in?"

Foaly smirked. "It'll be too late. I'll have downloaded all the pages by then." He tapped a pen drive already plugged into his laptop side. "I made that one, baby."

Caballine laughed, shaking her head. "Genii and the fun they have. But you never told me. What exactly is this personal document of his you're dying to get your hands on?"

Foaly gulped. He hated lying to his wife. "Er, I'm not exactly sure what it might contain, but there'll definetely be some interesting stuff." That wasn't a lie.

"Pertaining to?" prompted Caballine. She was not an idiot.

"The People," replied Foaly anxiously. "Er, whatever tech ideas he may have. Fowl Manor guest lists and how to avoid each guest. That kind of thing."

"So some kind of organizer?"

"Exactly," said Foaly, jumping on that boat. "Exactly like that."

Caballine shrugged. "Well, have your fun. Goodnight."

As soon as she left, Foaly turned to face the screen with a determined look on his face.

The game begins.

He pressed the first key.

—•—

Police Plaza, Haven City. Next day.

The metropolitan subterranean city of Haven was, as always, bustling with metropolitan and subterranean activity. That is to say, the streets were loud, the traffic was bad, and criminals ran rampant with determined rookie officers hot on their heels after subtle crimes like picking pockets or grabbing jewelry. And as usual, Police Plaza was in the very center of it all.

Excusing his way through the protesting gnomes and hovering sprites, Foaly made it into the building gasping but alive. Today was to be a half day because of a popular eleven holiday, which of course centaurs didn't celebrate, which meant nothing more than an extra hour on the way home stuck in holiday spirit traffic. Just thinking about it made Foaly groan.

Holly caught up with him on his way to the booth.

"Taking the half-day?" she inquired casually. "Do you have any plans?"

Foaly jumped a little, because he hadn't fully been concentrating on his surroundings, then blinked and looked at her. He bit his lip.

"Why do you look like you inhaled dwarf gas? Foaly?"

The centaur shook himself out of it. "Er, no, no plans. Why?"

Holly shook her head. "I spent Fentin with a couple of relatives last year, but they're not going to be available this time around. Are you free for an evening?"

Foaly nodded hurriedly. "Yeah, yeah I am. Just me?"

"Caballine too, and Numbed One said he'd try to come. While it's true none if you are elves..." Holly shrugged. "Might as well spend a family thing with friends if there's no family coming, right? Oh, and Artemis will be over. He booked the table for us."

Foaly's throat suddenly felt dry. Artemis is coming. D'Arvit, Artemis is coming! How am I going to act normal around those two anymore?! That diary...that page...D'Arvit!

Holly frowned. "D'Arvit, centaur, what's gotten into you?"

Foaly managed a wry smile. "This...wasn't by any chance originally supposed to not include me, right?"

"What?"

"I mean...did you...have other plans and then, I don't know, decide to call the rest of us?"

The elf raised an eyebrow. "Foaly, what in Frond's name are you talking about?"

The centaur waved it off with an erratic dismissive hand. "Nothing. Er, thanks for the invite. Gotta go. Bye!"

Holly stepped aside to let him clop off as fast as he suddenly wanted to, a half-puzzled, half-suspicious look on her face. Maybe it was work. She didn't think about it for long through. She had a half-day of work to get through.

—•—

"Freeze! There's a gun pointed at your back!"

"No there isn't."

"Shut up, Grub."

The goblin did freeze, the veins at the back of his neck clenching and his tail swaying from side to side slowly. But he didn't turn.

Luckily, this particular Howler's Peak escapee hadn't learnt the one thing all goblin gangs preached like their Sunday prayer. Bullets don't penetrate your skin, but it works well on officers so carry a bullet gun with you; electrocution guns will work on you, but it won't work on the LEP's magic suits so don't carry an electrocution gun with you. That's how they worded it anyway. So he'd snatched himself one of the officer's shock guns, it hadn't worked once, and now he had one pointed at his own back.

From the other end of the city square, Corporal Piper tossed a shock gun in Holly's direction. It flew right over the goblin with terrible reflexes's head, straight into Holly's hands and was soon actually pointed at the goblin's back.

"There is now," said Holly.

The scaly creature licked its eyeballs. "Hah," he snorted. "That won't work on me, elf! I used it on you! You're still awake! So of you use it on me, I'll still be awake!"

"It's the suit, moron," said Holly, before sending the net of crackling electricity straight into his turned back. The goblin screeched, clawed and finally thumped onto the ground, unconscious. Holly sighed. The dozen eager pedestrians watching the scene thus far were only now being ushered away by the junior officers. She wished she could've got through the episode without drawing that attention, but it was only to be expected. The goblin had climbed to the top of the city square monument and started zapping just about every passer-by whilst declaring the greatness of the goblin race. It had been reported through the intolerable public nuisances hotline.

"Good work," Holly nodded at the Junior officer before ignoring the small media groups and making her way out of the crowd. She was already half an hour late to the time she planned on leaving work. It didn't look like the evening was going to start too well.

Holly had already decided what she was going to wear. It had been essential that she should do it beforehand because the particular restaurant apparently wasn't the kind of place you were excused for wearing slippers in your hurry. So she'd picked out a rare dressy top and a rarer skirt from her wardrobe and had been relieved to find that the shoes she'd worn for Major Vein's wedding, aka the only pair she owned, still fit. She hung the clothes for ironing before heading into the shower.

Her mind did wander to Foaly's strange behavior earlier today and what could have possibly triggered it, but there were other things that consumed her time in the shower. Like what if Number One and Caballine didn't turn up. Artemis and Foaly would be in tech-stuff discussions the whole evening, and she'd have only a menu card and food to entertain herself with. No, Holly decided. Number One said maybe, but Caballine will definitely be there. Foaly would've told me if she couldn't make it.

After fully scrubbing all the day's dust and grime off her face, Holly stepped out of the shower and decided to hurry up a little. Still, she switched on her TV set before attending to the ironing board. There was going to be some footage of the goblin incident on the news.

She was, in fact, ironing her chosen top when she heard the reporter on TV. "Today, many witnessed a rather rare single-goblin incident in the city square when an armed goblin, without a gang for so much as backup, zapped passers-by for no reason at all..."

She left the iron and walked into the hall to watch.

"It created quite the scene when LEP paramedics descended on the city square, and a team of hurriedly assembled officers quickly dealt with the offender. Here is some footage we caught on camera."

The footage showed her firing at the goblin, him falling to the ground unconscious and her hasty retreat from the scene past the media groups. They all fired questions, some even as serious as, "How does the LEP plan on preventing future incidents where innocent fairies get hurt due to bad response time?" Holly hadn't even heard that one. The Corporal, however, was quick to snap, "Because you dialed the wrong number, now go celebrate Fentin and let us enjoy our half-day."

Holly nodded. Yeah, that was a good response. She wondered how long she had until...

The doorbell rang.

The elf froze. D'Arvit, D'Arvit—

"Er, who is it?" she called.

There was a pause on the other end. "Your neighbourhood demon warlock," replied Number One cheerfully. "May I come in?"

Holly sighed in relief. One, he was showing up after all. Two, had Artemis been in his place, he would've panicked her about missing the reservation and probably only for the fun of it. "Just a moment."

"'Mmkay. I'm glad I don't have to have a chaperone on this one, you know?"

"Really?" asked Holly, taking long strides into the room with the ironing board. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could distinctly smell something burning.

"Yeah, they're usually LEP guys. You're LEP. So Trouble said okay. And anyway, he stationed a team around the place. In case."

"D'ARVIT!" swore Holly, immediately pulling the plug. It didn't help. The blouse was still on fire.

Number One jumped. "Holly?"

Holly grabbed the water spray, unscrewed the top and spilt the whole thing on the mocking flames. They died out the moment it hit them, but the smoke hissed and there remained a big, brown, jagged hole right in the middle of the white blouse.

Holly groaned. "You wouldn't happen to know a spell for making new clothes, would you?"

—•—

Foaly couldn't believe he was doing this again. The diary he'd saved on the pen drive was the absolute last thing he wanted to re-read, especially those couple of pages, but he also absolutely couldn't resist. He had to get to the bottom of this. He had read it last night tired, depriving himself of sleep, but perhaps they would mean something else entirely when he was wide awake.

He found the file and the pages he'd bookmarked.

Foaly bit his lip and started reading.

I had imagined a painful death in a lot of ways before; hit men, trolls, Opal Koboi. In fact, I've been imagining painful death scenarios from day one of contact with the People.

No surprise there.

But one thing that had never before crossed my mind was death by an enraged Ugandan gorilla.

I was quite convinced I was going to die, and that Mother was going to die shortly afterwards thanks to my failure. Not pleasant thoughts on your deathbed. My ribs were cracked and every breath was an effort. But my vision was just good enough to spot, out of a corner of my eye, Holly taunting the beast towards her, away from me. It stopped and stared at her. She was talking to it.

I don't know what she would've said. Danger, run, perhaps? A big predator is coming? It worked. The beast started to back away slowly, and I imagined fear in its eyes. It turned and, panicked, made its way back into the undergrowth of the enclosure.

I wasn't going to die. Holly was here to heal me.

Despite himself, Foaly chuckled. How many times had Holly done that, really?

I let my eyes drop closed. The rational part of me, the part that was telling me not to feel so lucky, was arguing that she wasn't about to heal me. I had told her she was a carrier of Spelltrophy. I had told her that her magic was tainted.

But I felt the elfin hands on my broken ribs and I felt the magic that rushed in to fix them. Knitting bones, healing wounds, icing bruises. I was relived when my pulse returned. I could breathe without my ribs aching.

I felt Holly lightly tap the side of my face. "Come on, Artemis," she said, her voice close. "Wake up."

I opened my eyes and looked at her, and said the only words that came to mind.

"You saved me," and my voice was steady and grateful. I smiled. I can remember doing that.

Foaly leaned further into the screen, interest aroused despite everything. He still remembered this part, but had to read on. Find out if he hadn't been dreaming that first time.

Holly was laughing and crying at the same time. Frond, I could've stopped breathing then. She was beautiful. I can't believe I thought that. But I still do. She was the most beautiful thing on the face of the planet at the moment and I remember actually wishing that the moment would last.

"Of course I saved you," laughed Holly. "I couldn't do without you."

Foaly's eyes widened an impossible diameter.

My heartbeat skyrocketed in my resurrected ribcage then because, doing something I didn't expect and had never expected to see in all the years I'd known her, Holly leaned in and kissed me on the lips.

That was the moment everything else around me lost significance and my rational side decided to shut up for the first time in my life. Holly was kissing me. And I was just laying there doing nothing.

Some human instinct kicked in and closed my eyes, making me lean into the unexpected moment and I didn't even resist it. I ignored the dying rational part of my brain and returned the kiss to the best of my abilities, all the while with a skyrocketing pulse and an undeniably crimson face. What if she stopped? What if she expected me to stop? What if she came to her senses and pulled away looking shocked? There was such a lot that could go wrong and I couldn't even think of how to handle them. What if...

Holly closed her lips and drew back from me, breaking the kiss. My eyes shot open at once, afraid of the look she'd have in hers, afraid she'd looked shocked, or disgusted, but all I saw was that smile from earlier and there was no fear, no shock and no disgust in her eyes.

If that was supposed to make me feel any less nervous, it didn't.

"Er, thank you," I managed. "That was unexpected."

Foaly immediately shut the laptop. He knew he was breathing heavily and going into shock again, but he tried to calm himself down. Okay. When they'd gone back in time, there had been a certain life threatening incident and Holly had kissed Artemis afterwards. And Artemis had, by the looks of it, pretty much given in.

Right. So Artemis liked Holly. At least he had. Or did he still...? The centaur blinked. This, what he'd just read, was something that could very successfully change the way in which he saw his human friend and Holly. Every meaningless thing they said about each other was now going to sound totally different to Foaly's ears. And it wasn't like they weren't smart enough to notice pretty soon, and when they did he wouldn't have an excuse he could actually give, and that would lead to Artemis discovering, and it would also lead to Holly decapiting his head, and—

"Honey, are you ready or not?"

Foaly sighed. Maybe Holly wouldn't decapitate him for Caballine's sake. But still, he had to be careful this evening. One stray look in the wrong direction could determine whether he'd have a head or not in the near future.

"Just done getting ready, Cablline," he replied, pulling the pen drive out. "I wonder if this encounter is going to end up in bullets. They usually do when Artemis is involved."

—•—

"Ooh, I found one! And it's pretty, too!"

Holly sighed. "Number One, you said that everytime you picked up something cream."

"Oh, this is a white one," argued Number One happily. "Come look at it!"

Sighing, the elf left her present task (which happened to be digging through unwashed clothes for something nice that didn't smell too bad) and joined him at the wardrobe. Number One was holding a big cardboard box that had gathered dust over several years.

"Number One, that's a bridesmaid's dress."

Number One blinked. "You never told me you were a bridesmaid!"

"I wasn't. That belonged to one of the bridesmaids at my mother's wedding, which means it's both old and out of style," she knelt to the level he was seated in. "Can I see that, though?"

"It's got roses," said the demon warlock giddily. "And it's not even too grand, see? I wasn't able to tell it came from a wedding collection."

Instinctively, Holly sniffed at the light-cream coloured sleeve. "But it's still really old, Number One. Someone's bound to notice."

"Well...I have another idea! Let's just head over to the nearest shop–"

"Half an hour's drive from here."

"Ah. Well, you can go and I'll stay behind in case Artemis turns up..."

The bell donged again.

"And that jinxed it," said Holly casually, standing up to get the door. "He's going to be a tad irate that we'll miss our reservation."

Number One was looking at her incredulously.

"What?"

"You're still in your bathrobe, you know."

"D'Arvit," swore Holly, hand inches away from the knob. The bell rang again.

"Just give it a try!" said Number One, tossing the dress at her. "I'll tell him you're still getting ready."

Holly groaned, but she accepted the dress and nodded before walking to her bedroom and locking herself in.

"Hi," greeted the demon warlock cheerfully, as soon as he opened the door. "Good evening."

Artemis smiled. "Good evening, Number One. It's rare that I get to visit for informal reasons. Always a pleasure."

"Always a pleasure to not be saving the world in our free time," agreed Butler.

Artemis noticed the pile of clothes on the floor as soon as they were let in. "Where's Holly?"

"She's, er, getting dressed," admitted Number One. "I mean, she was ready, but she left the iron on, and..."

Artemis sighed. "And here I thought I was late."

"You can't really complain," muttered Butler, who unfortunately still had to duck low under the ceiling. "At least you get to stand up straight."

Chuckling, Artemis prepared for a sarcastic remark, but was interrupted the second Holly's door flew open and an elf in a below-knee-length off-white dress stepped through looking annoyed. He could understand why. Not only was the dress shorter than her taste, it also happened to have bright red fabric roses at its belt. She did look quite pretty if you counted out the scowl and the hazardous way in which the heels had been worn, but Artemis decided he was going to go for a characteristic comment.

"I'm assuming the bridesmade dress was your only available option after you burnt a hole in your original kit," he nodded in greeting. "Good evening, Holly."

Holly couldn't stay scowling for long. She cracked a grin. "And you look dashing in that suit you wear everyday. I get to drive, Mud Boy."

—•—

Foaly and Caballine had been waiting for the past thirty minutes at the Swizzerole. Even if the air conditioning was a little beyond limits, the place was large and lit up like it had menus enough to pay for electricity bills. Artemis had invested in a large scale waste-into-energy project via a business deal the Council had barely approved of, but it had skyrocketed in profits and a Mud Man was now on the list of Haven City's highest-earning professionals. So as long as Artemis was taking the bill, they had agreed that there was nothing to be worried of. Also, they'd reserved a fairly private section with no more than two other tables on the far end of the room, one in which a couple and their kid sat, the other in which three sprites admired each other's wing tattoos. A slow jazz played in the background coming from a more crowded part of the restaurant. Foaly took some of this time to again appreciate his wife's unbelievably good looks, and Caballine gave him a classic playful grow up smirk at this, but he spent the rest of the time mulling over the fact that once a certain pair walked in, he would be doing his level best to ignore what that diary entry had said.

This didn't slip by his wife either.

"Are you okay?"

Foaly snapped out of his thoughts and looked immediately down at his glass of table water. "Ah...just...thinking about work, honey."

Caballine raised an eyebrow. "Look at my face and say that."

Foaly gulped, and slowly brought himself to look at her face. "Er, okay, right. It's not work. It's just a side project that I really, really messed up."

Despite suspicion obviously felt, Caballine piqued in interest. "You messed up the theme park's snow generation project? I thought you called that easy."

"Of course I didn't mess that up. The Winter Wonderland is fully functional for the next fifteen years!" Foaly sighed. "Remember that thing I was working on last night?"

Caballine narrowed her eyes. "Artemis Fowl's desk organizer?"

The centaur licked his suddenly dry lips. "Ok, I swear I had no clue what I was signing up for! Like I said, I didn't know what to expect."

"Frond," said Caballine, understanding. "I'm really sorry."

Foaly nodded wearily. "I didn't think...it...would contain anything so personal." Personal? It was a D'Arvitting diary! Well, but I'm not lying. I really didn't expect something like that.

"It's okay," Cablline reached for his hand. "It's a good thing you feel guilty for it, you know. You're a good guy. I'd be worried if you didn't feel guilty for hacking into someone's personal files."

Foaly was starting to feel guiltier. She had no idea...

A waiter guided two fairies and two humans through the doorway and motioned towards the table they sat in. Neither of them had time to react before Number One teleported himself to the seat beside Foaly in his excitement and announce cheerily, "Happy Elf's Day, Foaly!"

Caballine smiled. "I didn't know Centaurs and Warlocks could celebrate it too."

The little Warlock's face fell but brightened up almost at once. "Hey, I know a spell that can make you look like an elf for a little while–"

"Um, no thanks," said Foaly hurriedly. "But it's good to see you, Number One."

Artemis and Holly walked over, obviously not capable of instant teleportation, and took the two of the seats left. Butler, who would in other circumstances try to refrain from sitting in a fairy chair, took this one because Artemis has called ahead and ordered it. It was actually a rather sturdy coffee table.

Foaly gave them a tight-lipped smile.

"Er, hey. What took you so long?"

Holly raised an eyebrow. "You think I had a choice when I wore this?"

Artemis chuckled. "He doesn't know the story behind it, Holly."

The elf rolled her eyes. "Oh, the story! Well, something disastrous happened to the clothes I was supposed to wear..."

"And I'm glad," commented Caballine teasingly. "It looks cute on you, Holly."

Artemis pretended to splutter on his glass of water. "Cute and Holly. Those are two words that make a sentence grammatically incorrect when used together."

Holly punched him in the arm and the two others laughed while Butler only hid a smile, but Foaly's only reaction was to chew fast on his lower lip to bite back some sort of excuse to leave the table.

"Can we...start ordering?" asked Foaly at last. "Caballine and I were here for the past thirty minutes."

Butler summoned the waiter, who obviously really wished he'd been assigned to another table. A skinny sprite in a loose-fitting suit walked over to them with several menu cards and a black clipboard in hand. He absently distributed them, giving Butler his first, before stepping back and waiting anxiously. He was trying not to hover.

"Something nice and steamed," murmured Caballine, going through her first page. "Something nice and..."

"Can I order desert first?" asked Number One cheerily. "They have a good desert menu. This drink has a pretty colour, though. I might settle for it or..."

"You may order desert first," said Artemis, "But it will still be served after the main meal."

Butler put his menu down and looked questioningly at Artemis. "Is Mulch's smell the reason he isn't here tonight?"

"Strict restaurant rules," explained Caballine sadly. "No bringing mud in and proper clothes. Also, dwarfs tend to get a little too high on caffeine."

"Ah. That explains it."

"Already decided here," said Foaly, passing his card back to the sprite. "Am I the only one?"

"No," Artemis looked at Holly. "How can you possibly take so long with an all-vegetarian menu?"

"They all sound the same to me," agreed Butler. "Fried corn and steamed leaks. Steamed corn and fried leaks. Table water and spring water."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Very funny, Mud Men." She handed the card to the waiting sprite. "One spinach and mushroom casserole, please. With baby corn and cheese. The large portion."

He left after collecting everyone's orders, all of which were items that did agree with Butler's point, leaving in his wake an air of comfortable silence at the table. Well, Foaly didn't find it very comfortable. He was rather freaked out for reasons currently known only to himself.

Unfortunately nothing of this nature would get by Artemis.

"Is it work, Foaly?" he asked, cracking a slight grin. "Or is there something you don't want me to find out?"

Foaly snapped out of it. "Stop studying body language, Artemis!"

"It's definetely something you don't want me to find out."

"No," insisted Foaly. "It isn't.

Artemis sighed dramatically. "Please, just tell me what you hacked into this time. I trust the virus that came with it was quite sufficient to trigger this new mood of yours?"

Foaly rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and my job is on the line because of it!" It was a good cover. He'd said it well.

Caballine laughed. "Let them try finding a replacement, honey. They'll come back crawling to you in a matter of days."

She was keeping up with his story. He couldn't help but be relived.

Artemis shrugged. "Well, it's a valid point and there are no arguments, so I'll contain my curiosity at least for tonight."

Holly punched him in the arm. Whether it was being playful or whether she was getting at him for sounding so awfully formal, it didn't matter because either ways it hurt the same. "Good, because we aren't here to satisfy your curiosity."

"Or are we?" said Artemis mischievously, earning himself a sharp glare from Holly.

Foaly gulped. I imagined that. I know I did.

"Keep it down, Mud Boy. Fentin ends with elves picking dance partners, and I'm going to pick you just so I could spin that smirk off your face."

Number One clapped his hands delightedly. "Dancing! Oh, you should've told me. I could have brought someone–not that there is anyone–but now Butler and I don't have partners."

Holly shrugged. "Sorry, Number One. Kinda remembered only now anyway."

Foaly tried to casually pick up a conversation on his own, that for his benefit would not revolve around dancing and partners. "So, uh, there was this illegal shipment of curry yesterday–"

Caballine gave him an incredulous look.

"But that's not even the craziest part. They were transporting prawn curry, and by the time the LEP got there, they'd already sold out to fairies on the streets." Foaly laughed as if it was really funny. "I knew it was curry as soon as I saw it, plus there was a prawn on the floor, but the drivers said something about forging evidence and their customers supported them wholeheartedly, so we had no choice but to let them go on bail."

Butler raised an eyebrow. "Interesting story."

"I know, right? Who'd expect that kind of thing to happen?"

Holly chuckled. "I didn't even hear about that. The Commander would probably blow his top off."

"Ah, fairy organs scattered around an office room," Artemis winced. "Most disturbing, Captain."

"Gross," Caballine eyed Foaly. "Hey, can you give us a minute?"

The human boy shrugged. "Why not?"

Caballine nodded, before dragging a protesting Foaly out of his chair and all the way across the room to an empty table for three. Making completely sure none of their friends were looking in the direction, Caballine immediately started talking.

"You're going to explain. Now."

Foaly swallowed. "I told you. It was something in Fowl's–"

"Diary," finished Caballine, crossing her arms. "I'm not stupid, Foaly. I know you didn't look through some sticky notes and a personal calendar. Also, if this thing was personal in a way that didn't somehow concern now, you wouldn't be freaking out at a simple dinner with people you know."

"I hate it when people read people," Foaly sighed. "Okay, I'll come clean. It does have something to do with now. Not directly, but you know, in a way...in an unfortunately really loud way–"

"Just tell me what the diary said."

Foaly bit his lip. "That would be giving the secret to one more person."

Caballine raised an eyebrow.

"But I'm serious!"

"Don't worry. Unlike you, I won't be able to do anything with this information. I won't even have people to spread it to. And I don't own a gossip website either."

Her husband leaned on the table, that is in the most comfortable position a centaur could lean in, and rubbed his head. He checked once more if anyone was looking their way before starting, very hesitantly, to talk.

"Right. Okay. Well, there was this particular...bit of information in Arty's diary, something I really shouldn't have seen because it was more personal than I anything I expected to see–" He stopped blabbing. That would make this conversation painfully long.

Eyes flickering once more to the elf, imp and two humans at their table, he looked back at Caballine with a look of both guilt and fear. He cleared his throat, coughed, and went on a little too fast, "Artemis likes Holly."

Caballine groaned. "Of course he likes her. Do you think they could go through all of that and still be enemies? Can you tell me the truth now?"

Foaly shook his head nervously. "No, no, not like that."

"Then?"

The genius swung his arms in frustration. "Frond! Okay, as in Artemis has a...has a crush on her!"

Caballine blinked. Then blinked again. Then blinked a third time. "He does? And he writes about it?"

Foaly rubbed his forehead. "Look, when they went back in time for the lemur, there was a bit of an error in the stream. Holly got transitioned back into a teenager because she wasn't keeping her thoughts straight during the ride, and the moment they landed on the other side they got caught. So it was the Bentley's boot first, then Mulch busting them out and Artemis going into the lemur cage. Except it turned out not to be the lemur, but an overgrown Ugandan gorilla instead, and whee, another life-or-death experience for Holly to bust him out of."

"A gorilla?" Caballine sounded disbelieving. "Are you making this up?"

"Unfortunately not. So naturally, she went through a lot of injuries and broken bones to get the creature away, and the moment it was gone she started healing him."

"Naturally."

Foaly snorted. "No, there are two things wrong with that. Firstly, she belived she was a carrier of Spelltrophy, so healing was the last thing she should've done. Secondly, even though he lied to her and hugely blackmailed her, and everything he's done before that's hurt her in some way, she gave him a cute little surprise as soon as he woke up and–and D'Arvitting kissed him, Caballine. On the mouth. Even if it was all bleeding and gross and they were two entirely different species–"

Caballine was simply standing still, letting all of it sink in. Her brain refused to accept what her ears were giving it. That was impossible and simply ridiculous on so many levels. Holly would never–alright, Holly was probably some kind of hormonal teenager at the time, but she was still Holly. It was difficult to believe that she would let go of her professionalism like that just because she got caught up in the moment. So either she was auditory-imagining what Foaly was saying or Foaly was simply making up a totally unbelievable lie for no reason at all.

She settled for the second.

"Foaly, I know how fun it is to make me angry, but now you're just seriously overdoing it."

Foaly sighed. "I'm worried about her, Caballine. I mean, that kind of thing could lose her rank if it got around somehow. It could ruin her life. And Artemis shouldn't make her believe for even a second that it could work out because–well, obviously it can't."

Caballine pinched the bridge of her nose, calming herself. "Alright. Alright, I believe you. Well, let's just go back there before anyone gets suspicious and do nothing about it."

"Do nothing about it?" exclaimed Foaly. "It's like...oh Frond, it's like he's already convinced her..."

"Right now. Do nothing about it right now. If anything comes to mind that you could tell Holly, tell her in a better time."

Foaly took a steady breath in. "Yeah. You're right."

"Now let's get back to the table and pretend we had an argument about your bow tie, okay?"

"There's something wrong with my bow tie?"

"It's purple with red dots."

"But I like this one!"

"I don't."

"It has texture."

Caballine smirked. "There, it's not even a lie now. Come along, handsome. We've got a double act tonight."

—•—

Author's Note;

More to come for sure. Also, tell me what you'd like to see in part two of this chapter. Princess of Weird, out! XD