Eoin Colfer is a genius. I cannot compete with him, and I do not own any of the characters. Only Ivy, Nubi and Ivy's mum. And they're the worst characters I've ever invented.
Chapter 5 – In which Artemis begins to get attached
After the display of gymnastics performed by the diminutive Kestrel, Fowl stormed away to his home gymnasium and started to do something he had refrained from doing after he had bought the thing.
Pounding the punch-bag until his fists hurt, he stopped for breath as he panted, the sweat dripping off him.
One thing was for sure. He had definitely improved his body from all this exercise for the last two months or so. It was difficult to think that only that long ago, he was being chased by a pixie turned human by surgery and about to be killed by hormone crazed trolls.
He was absorbed in all of these thoughts for a second. Then he remembered Holly and Commander Root. How was Holly taking this whole thing? He knew it must have been hard, losing a man who meant more than a superior officer to you.
"Are you going to let me come in or are you going to carry on dreaming?" Asked a sharp, yet welcoming voice. Artemis jumped about a metre into the air. He wasn't used to being caught off guard.
"Er… oh. It's you." The Fowl heir turned and faced the girl who just scared him witless. He was convincing himself that he had been concerned about the chair and his body in case the chair toppled over onto him. But another part of him knew that he was also concerned about the girl.
Wow, she may even be able to enter a beauty pageant if she weren't so small. He shook his head to clear his mind. 'Wow'? That wasn't even a word! And since when was he, Artemis Fowl the Second, heir to the Fowl Empire, interested in a girl going to a potential psychologically damaging contest?
With her power over air, Ivy was able to creep up on the boy and was planning to surprise him. But when she saw how worked up the boy was, she decided to let him cool off first.
He looks pretty fit for a person with such a bad physical record. Ivy chided herself for thinking such a thing. Since when did she fall call guys 'fit'? She couldn't prove Janey right and start to like him. Although standing there, with sweat dripping off him, he did look quite… she shook herself out of the daydream. No going to the place that Janey went to every time she saw a guy with muscles pass her in the streets.
"Are you going to let me in or are you going to carry on dreaming?" She asked, in what she hoped was a voice that didn't show any relent for what she did.
He shook his head, and Ivy had to refrain from feeling angry enough to make the curtains flap.
"If you were still angry with me after that work-out, then you have some serious anger management issues." Kestrel smirked, and turned heel to go to her room… or to explore, whichever suited her better.
"Wait! I mean… that is… I… I'm sorry I was being so sexist!" Artemis blurted, not even thinking that she may reject his apology and punch him. This occurred to him a second after he had spoken one of his first apologies.
Ivy was stunned. From what she had picked off from Argon's psychological report, he was incapable of feeling compassion and only had his mother healed because the social services were at the door.
But, then again, who could trust that moron to get something as complicated as the mind of a teenage genius correct?
"Apology accepted, but we have got to work on your punching!" The last part of the sentence didn't come out willingly. Ivy had to restrain herself from slapping her mouth.
"My punching? Seriously, girl, you may fight and kick and flip, but even I know from my theoretical research how to punch." Scoffed Artemis, although he had lied about the research part. He had only observed Butler punching. He had been kept busy with his research on cancer diseases.
"Alright, seeing as you did some research… why are you punching with your thumb on the inside of your fist? You may break it that way, if you hit hard enough. Here." She added, moving to his side, and fixing his hand position. She was uncomfortably aware of his breath and his presence.
"You want to aim for weak spots if the opponent is stronger than you. Like here," She pointed at where her ribs started, which made Artemis really stare. "What?"
"I am not going to hit a girl there. I'm not being sexist this time… this time it's a matter of decency."
"Well, soon it may be a matter of life or death." Smirked the girl, jabbing her fingers below his ribs. Artemis, without thinking and completely instinctively, swung a punch that aimed right for that bone.
"Ouch! Okay, that was acceptable, but you do have to put more momentum into your elbow. Fighting is an art, not a hobby for a buffoon." Ivy grinned, and just like that, they started to make a friendship.
Yes, it's strange to start a relationship on the grounds of fighting, but what else would you expect from a girl who came from another dimension, could control the elements and had a higher IQ than most doctors, and a boy who used to be the head of a criminal empire and had the approximate IQ of a Nobel Prize winner?
Butler was planning to catch Master Artemis at his workout time to talk about the girl, but he heard the two children inside. Typical Master Artemis, bonding with a real friend by punching each other using theoretical punching techniques.
He decided to leave the two of them to it. There would be plenty of time to chat to Sool when the time came.
Holly Short was tired. More tired than a stinkworm trying to keep up with a troll, so the saying went. She had spent most of the day trying to round up the criminals stealing the Frond necklace, she had just got her pay for the job, and now this came up.
"No way, Foaly! Not even if Sool came in person and begged me to do something on bended knee. I am not acting as invisible babysitter and keeping an eye on the two kids who know we exist!" She screeched at her horsy friend.
"Holly, listen to me! This is a matter of security! I think you out of all of us know that Fowl is being a great help to the People. Even Ivy helps you sometimes, and she was the one who drew up the design for some of my inventions, remember? And she stops most of the worst earth tremors, with her special gift! Put her and Fowl together and it could mean disaster!" Foaly finished off with a distressed whinny.
"Why would it be disastrous? I mean, both of them are friends to the People…" Holly had just joined among the confused.
"Because Fowl is still stealing things, isn't he? As a modern day Robin Hood, I know, but seeing Kestrel's powers he may try and get her to help him! Can you see what this means? If even a trace of her power is seen, then it could mean exposing our subterranean existence, end of our civilisation and you know the rest."
Holly Short did know the rest. Being the elf who had been involved in all of these 'end of our civilisation' events in the past two years or so, she was very acquainted with the dramatic speech.
"I still don't know why Trouble can't do this. Why did you have to call me? Sool doesn't even talk to me anymore!" Holly was becoming exasperated. Something that was happening more and more since the commander died. It was only a matter of time…
"Because even he knows now that you're the top elf for the job, however much he dislikes it. Julius would have wanted you to do this for the People, Holly…"
There. He'd said the magic word. Julius. The elf that haunted her dreams and hung over her like a presence waiting to move on. He was like a father to her, and Holly knew that it was going to take at least a decade to stop sobbing herself to sleep over him.
It had taken her around a decade to sob away the pain from her own father's death.
"Alright, but you had better pay me for this job, Foaly, because babysitting one kid genius is hard enough without another trying to tell me about quantum physics or whatever."
"Thank you, Holly! We're putting you on the next hotshot up to the surface." She heard a couple of keys tapping and a hesitant Foaly, "Ah…"
"What? When's the next hotshot?" Her gut already knew the answer, even though her mind was still trying to catch up.
"The next one doesn't leave till Saturday, so I'm afraid that you're going to have to ride a shuttle. Or you can wait two days… I can't give you orders, and nor can Sool now that you're a civilian."
Holly thought about it. Nothing was worth going into another public shuttle.
"I'll wait two more days. It won't hurt the world to wait a couple of days."
Artemis was impossible to talk to at the moment. Butler was trying to tell him about the girl's information and his suspicions, but it seemed that Master Fowl was now experiencing his first ever crush.
"Artemis, her school records show an extraordinary amount…"
"She has so much attitude, and her knowledge of engineering is almost compatible with mine…" Typical of a teenage genius. You have a crush and the first thing you think about is her smarts.
Juliet came in, took one look at the abnormally unfocused eyes of Artemis and rolled her eyes. She took her brother away for a second,
"Leave him until tomorrow. Nubi says that she can't get Ivy to speak one sentence coherently, and her emeralds aren't exactly as sharp as eagle's eyes usually are. Let's just hope that Mr and Mrs Fowl don't find out too soon."
Butler rolled his eyes, and patted his charge on the shoulder,
"Never let yourself get too attached to the girl, Master Artemis. She'll be the one who laughs at you more than twice and you can never do anything about it."
Juliet elbowed him playfully, and they both left their young adolescent charge thinking and chiding himself for starting to like his exchange student.
I am Artemis Fowl. I should not be attached to anyone and anything. It's only a couple of months until Jon Spiro comes out of prison, maybe less, with his influence, and he can just pay a visit to me anytime he wants to. And when that happens, I've got to be sure that I don't act like this anymore. It could mean that my family and Ivy can get hurt.
Ivy, meanwhile, was conversing with her mother over her mobile.
"Mother, I know that you want me to visit Spiro, but he's coming out in a couple of months anyway… can't it wait till then?" Jon Spiro was her father's third cousin-in-law by marriage (her father's third cousin Muriel had married Spiro's brother) and Spiro was her least favourite 'uncle'.
"Now, dear, you know that Jon loves to see you… and being in prison can't be doing all that well with his gut. And he does know about you and your powers, so could you please go visit him?"
"But, mother, in case you have forgotten, I am in Ireland and with a family. I need to stay here unless you want to pull me from the entire trip for this one stupid visit to a person I don't even like." Grumbled Ivy, whilst in her mind she was muttering, Don't make me go, please don't make me go…
"Can't your partner go with you? I'm sure that your father can make some arrangements and you can all go together. I'm sure that you'll like that!" Ivy could almost feel the radiance beaming off her mother.
"Alright, but you're going to have to ask the school, Fowl's parents, Fowl himself, the IRA and a bunch of other people… father's only in MI5, remember? Not MI6."
"Yes, but he has a lot of influence with the head of transportation and you and Artemis can travel to Chicago in style!"
"Let me guess. You want me to go with my exchange student on a short notice to Chicago to visit someone he doesn't know and most probably won't like in a helicopter? Mother, you are insane!" It wasn't often that Ivy Saraswati Kestrel insulted someone, but somehow, Fowl and her mother could make her want to call them all the bad words she knew (and that amount could be counted on one hand).
"Yes, dear, you can call me insane, but I can still make you do so." Ivy almost felt as if she hated her mother at times like these. Not everyone's mum was an expert hypnotist and could make you do anything and everything she wanted you to do.
"Fine. You just make sure you can persuade all those people to let me go. Just not this weekend, okay? I'm going over to Tara to do a bit of bird-watching, okay?"
And, as predicted, her mother immediately asked,
"Tara? Alone with a boy? Oh, my little girl, out on her first date without breaking the boy's nose!"
"Mother! I am not going out on a date with him! I came VERY close to breaking his nose and no, you cannot ask father to come over here and secretly take pictures of me and Artemis going our separate ways because I need to go to E1 and meet someone!"
Okay, so the meeting was fake, but it threw her mother off her trail, didn't it?
"Ivy, you know that I have forbidden you to meet anyone without consulting me first!"
"Mother, I assure you that it is just a short trip. No holding of hands, no kissing and certainly no pictures taken from a safe distance, alright?"
At school, things weren't exactly better. That is, for the teachers.
Ivy had proved herself a second Artemis Fowl the Second, reducing half the staff into tears when they gave the quadratics to do. They hurriedly put her on the same list as they put the 'Fowl boy' and they worked in a small corner.
Naturally, being a maths lesson and nobody actually listening to what the teacher was saying, they all tried to listen to what the two geniuses were saying. Janey, the hopeless romantic that she was, eavesdropped on their conversation.
"No, no, no! The hormonal structure of a male…"
"How can you be sure that the genetic ground of mammals vary according to sex…"
"Because they do already, if you have studied your textbooks hard enough…"
I think you can understand when most of the nosy parkers jumped right out of that particular argument almost immediately. Anyone who managed to understand all of their scientific jargon were somewhere in a laboratory, trying to find a cure for the common cold!
At lunch, Janey dragged Ivy away from a debate with Artemis about the recent political events and how they should have argued the cases.
"You like him, don't you?" Demanded Janey slyly.
"Well, of course I like him, he's got excellent knowledge on the latest technology and he has so many original ideas of his own…"
"No, no… you misunderstood me. I meant that you like him, if you catch my drift!" Chuckled Jane, drawing out a bright red face from her best friend.
"Well… I …er… I got to go and catch up with Nubi, give her an update before she implodes and starts to suspect I got killed!"
Rushing away from a smirking and self-satisfied Janey, Ivy Kestrel asked herself, am I really starting to like him? Impossible… only person I like isn't even human!
Arty's question to himself was pretty much the same. Why was he being so sentimental to a mere girl? She was pretty, certainly, and she was smart. Maybe that was why he suddenly liked her this much. She could relate to him and she could actually understand all the technical jargon he spewed out most of the time.
Yes, that was it. He just had a small crush on her because she was one of the first people his age who could understand him. This feeling would wear off in time.
A/N: Arty, you idiot! You. Like. Her. Accept that and ask her out already! Ah… but I am the writer and I shall make Artemis as blind to his affections as I like.
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