Hello! Sorry it took me so long to update. I have been struggling over the scene where Artemis and Holly first meet and am still not sure how I feel about it. And while I have been puzzling this out, I have been neglecting Fullmetal Thunder, the two Doctor Who pieces I have been meaning to write, and the end of my own novel. But oh well. The school year is upon me. God help me. I hope you guys enjoy!
Chapter Four
Everything went wrong.
Holly sighed, running a hand through the hair she hadn't had the spare moment to cut in far too long. She hadn't had a moment for much of anything in the last four years. Everything personal had fallen by the wayside for those on the force during this time of crisis, especially for members of the Black Ops team. Vinyaya was a slave driver, but to be honest with herself Holly liked that about her. Holly Short had never met a women more dedicated to justice in her whole life, and Vinyaya was someone who she'd gladly followed to the ends of the Earth and beyond. As far as men went, the only person who could come even close was Julius Root, the man who had looked at her, the first female LEPrecon officer to ever make it past the Academy with such high marks, and had seen something in her with the potential to shine. He had taken her in, polished her with grit, sweat, tears, and bruises, before sending her on to Vinyaya with the highest recommendations he could possibly give and a boot in the ass. He hadn't been gentle or kind when he'd whipped her into shape, but he had believed in her and that, more than anything, had earned him her respect from now until the day she died.
Tonight she flew, the green of the Irish mainland darkened to shades of deepest emerald in the stillness of the night. The skies were clear, the near-fullness of the moon sending a tingling sensation running down the length of her spine. It was not a comfortable feeling, but nor did it hurt. It was the sensation of placing your hand near an open current and seeing all of the little hairs there stand up. It was energy. More than that, it was potential. From behind her visor, feeling the wind whip sharply over and down her covered skin, Holly allowed herself the luxury of a smile. It had been so long since she'd been on the surface, years upon years, and she'd missed it dreadfully. All fairies were so close to the Earth that being able to step foot on the surface, no matter how dire the circumstances, was nothing short of ecstatic. Throwing caution to the wind Holly lowered her visor against all regulations, letting the cold air briskly wind-chap her face and the smells of the outside world fill her nostrils. In the light of the near-full moon, riding the air high above the serene world below, Holly felt momentarily at peace.
But the world below was far from peaceful. She knew that fact all too well.
After the accidental discovery of the fairy race and the subsequent rejection by the humans United Nations, the fairy race was left in a roiling mass of panic. After all, Mud Men were notoriously violent. Who knew what they would do now that they were aware of their subterranean neighbors? Every single person in law enforcement was on the highest alert, working around the clock to monitor the situation above and calm the panicking populous. Weapons were frantically stockpiled, entrances hastily sealed, and the fairy race settled down for the worst to occur.
After a week, when nothing showed immediate signs of blowing into a million pieces, the fairies began cautiously extending tendrils outwards via the human's internet, hoping to gather information about what the humans were planning to do. To their shock, their initial probes were rebuffed. Rebuffed! Her friend Foaly had almost keeled over in shock when the news reached his furry ears. Human were not supposed to be advanced enough to even think about doing such a thing. So Foaly, a wrathful storm of techno-rage, attacked back with the full scale of his intellect. Within days it had turned into a violent cyber-struggle, Foaly versus the humans, in an effort to prevent the other from accessing their systems and asserting control. With the technological advances the fairy race had at their fingertips, the humans could destroy their whole species in a matter of days. There was no way they could allow that to happen.
However, in the past year things had begun to become more serious. Different human governments were sending trained teams of assailants to locations where fairy activity was rumored to be taking place. Once they found a spot the humans would then proceed to try and force their way past the fairy guards in an effort to get below. There were four main entry points the humans had knowledge of and two of them were located in the green shires of Ireland. It was here Holly had been stationed for the last year, fighting the human forces in an all-out war for control of the access ports. And she was oh so tired of it.
This year had hardened her. Before this, she had never had to kill. She wouldn't even have been able to conceive the notion, pacifism being rooted so deep in the core of her being. But not anymore. The battle for the Stonehenge shuttle port had been fierce due to it being one of the first to be discovered. Both sides had taken casualties, and the sound of gunfire often woke her from her shallow rest in a cramped cot barely a quarter mile below the surface of the earth. Everything was grimy and broken, coated with a layer of dirt and blaster-stains where the battle raged the fiercest. Trench wars were a waiting game, she knew that now, but it still did nothing to wash the itch from under her skin, the urge to do something, anything.
So when the chance at a routine troll-scoop came up, she had leapt at it with both hands outstretched. Anything was better than sitting underground, tense and hyper-alert for the next burst of weapon fire.
Vinyaya had briefed her on the situation. An escaped juvenile troll that had somehow managed to make its way to the surface and was doing its damdest to destroy everything in sight. Now more than ever it was of vital importance that the human not have anything more of the fairy world to analyze to their advantage, especially something as dangerous and deadly as a troll. So, she had been dispatched with the order to relocate if possible. If not… Well. Vinyaya had not elucidated further on the matter, but the weapon she had handed her was bulkier than any she had ever seen. It looked lethal, and felt far too heavy in her hands. The Commander had given her a small, sad smile before sending her on her way to one of the small, still unnoticed fairy bases. She had snuck her way out from there under the cover of night, spread her mechanical wings and taken to the skies.
Everything always went wrong.
Wrong. Wrong.
Wrong.
And now, she was paying the price
The fairy awoke to the sound of birdsong and the feeling of warmth on her face. Slowly, laboriously, Holly cracked opened her eyes.
The first thing that hit her was the sun. It fell warm across her cheek, shining directly into her eyes and reducing everything to a hazy nimbus of white. The brightness of it sent a lance of pain through her skull, making the insides of her head throb, so she immediately shut her eyelids against the offensive glare.
The second thing that hit her was the smell. It was musty and old, with notes of dust and warmth that suggested this was a lived-in space. But everything was…wrong. Beneath the smell of old, dead wood was a nauseous odor, a combination of sharp chemicals and something that smelled a bit like an animal. It was as if someone was drawing sandpaper over the inside of her nostrils, offending her aching head even further. Her stomach roiled, and for a shaky moment Holly was certain she was going to be sick. Trying to breathe shallowly through her mouth, she shifted slightly and felt a soft fabric slide underneath her fingers and against her cheek. It was filled with that loathsome smell, and all Holly could do was try her best to sit up in order to escape its insidious grasp.
Eyes shut, trying desperately to force her uncooperative body to rise, she heard the clink of metal and felt something tug abruptly at her wrist. It was at this moment that her brain, addled from the trauma done to her skull, finally began to click on. Hazy memories rose to the surface, piled with the evidence of her senses she could not deny.
When Holly Short finally opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the manacle clamped firmly around her left wrist, glinting so innocently in the light of the afternoon sun.
Caught. She was caught, a prisoner to the worst kind of people: Mud Men. Holly Short was the first fairy to ever be captured alive in the entirety of this horrible ordeal. Not since the days of old had a Mud Man successfully caught a member of the Fay folk. But something told her that mere riches would not be what these men would seek. They had more valuable information to mine from her. Horror swelled inside her breast, rising like a tide to lodge in her throat and stop her heart. She was trapped, trapped in this horrid place, and there was nothing to stop the Mud Men from using whatever means they deemed necessary to pry the information they wanted from her resisting lips.
To put it simply, Holly panicked. Immediately she sat up, curling her right hand around her opposite wrist and tugging in the hopes of breaking the cuff free from its anchor. A cold sweat prickled out over her forehead, something in the vicinity of her side throbbing with such horrendous pain that the edges of her vision went grey. Shaking, she collapsed back down with a groan. Her side. She'd forgotten. Everything had been so hectic...
The troll's snorted exhale had sent fog swirling around its flared nostrils in the chill of the night air. Some farmer was going to be very upset come morning, thought Holly as she observed the torn and destroyed carrots and potatoes. Fortunately, there were no humans in immediate ear shot as the field was expansive, but they must be nearby and therefore in mortal peril if this troll got free. She didn't know why she even bothered to care. There have been some lingering part of her person that still clung to HER old abhorrence to violence. She would need to do this quickly. Unholstering her weapon, it powered to life under her expectant fingertips as the troll glared balefully upwards. She saw its claws curl deep into the soft loam of the earth, the light of the moon glinting off its beady red eyes. In the next moment, the troll let out a ferocious bellow as it threw itself up into the air towards her, dreadlocks blown back to fully reveal its deadly fangs and tusks.
Holly had never gone toe to toe with a live troll before. She, like everyone else in the Academy, had done simulated fights against a mock troll. However, that was a team mission with the priority being retrieval and relocation. One fairy was not meant to go up against something this deadly, at least not without some form of back up. But resources were spread so thin nowadays that Holly had been the only person with the right level of combat training around who wasn't on duty or asleep in their bunks. It was most likely this lack of real life experience with a troll's brand of lethal speed that had caused her to be hovering a shade too low to the ground. She didn't have enough time to pull up and out of the way before the troll's massive hand swatted her out of the air and onto the soil below with an audible thud. The gun twirled away from her slackened grip and vanished into the shadowy night.
Stunned and panicking, Holly ignored the way her head was throbbing as she rolled clumsily out of the way, a move made cumbersome by her bulky mechanical wings. Just in time, too, as a closed fist slammed down where her body had been just moment before. The troll roared in anger at its miss, the retractable claws extending to their full length as it prepared to strike again. A blue spark zipped across Holly's forehead, and her mind sharpened and cleared. To Holly, massive amounts of adrenaline were pumping through her veins, causing time to seem to slow to a crystal-clear crawl. Every bead of venom oozing from the troll's tusks, every swing of its shaggy fur, every huff of breath seemed to Holly to be the most sharp, realistic thing she had ever witnessed. She should have dodged. She knew that now. But, in her haste to get control of the situation, Holly made the near-fatal mistake of trying to activate her wings. Little did she know that as she had impacted the ground, a loose bit of wiring in the old model had jiggled out of place, turning the life-saving technology on her back into nothing more than a useless metal deadweight.
The mistake very nearly cost Holly her life.
Instead of shooting up into the sky as she had intended, Holly merely stood there, the ripcord for the wing's motor in hand as the troll's deadly claws raked brutally across her front. Six inches back and she would have been fine. Two feet forward and she would have been cleaved in two. However, fortune or misfortune made it so only the very tip of the troll's middle claw made contact; shredding the advanced fabric like tissue paper and splitting open the tender flesh beneath. The wind knocked out of her, Holly was spun to the side by the force of the strike, landing a few feet back on her shoulder with her arms curled around her vulnerable stomach. The pain was overwhelming for a moment before it began to fade into a dream-like, calm blur. The troll's subduing venom was now coursing rough-shod through her veins. Blue sparks erupted over her body, and Holly could feel her magic both trying to heal her front and combat the effects of the troll's venom. Holly knew she didn't have long before she would succumb to one and meet her end at the hands of this beast. Creative thinking was in order.
One more hit like the last one and Holly would be a gonner for sure. She needed some way to be able to at least deflect those deadly claws. The hardest substance aside from her wings that she had on her person was her helmet, and with fumbling fingers she unstrapped it and quickly pulled it over her head. The troll seemed puzzled that this prey was still moving, most creatures having succumbed to the intoxicating effects of the venom in the past. This little female was still moving. Holly slung her arm through the open helmet visor, grabbing the ridge on the inside meant to store extra tech. Lifting her makeshift shield, Holly warily eyed the troll, gaze darting away in brief sweeps as she searched the ground for a trace of her gun. Intellectually, she knew her chances of holding off a strike from a full-grown troll with nothing but the strength of her body and a helmet was ludicrous. However, Holly had officially reached the territory of 'desperate'. The time for peaceful solutions was officially over.
Recovering from its brief confusion, the troll decided the female-meat needed a couple more blows to tenderize it into submission. Roaring, it charged, swinging forward on its knuckles for increased speed. Holly waited until the last possible second, heart beating a mad rhythm against the inside of her ribs, before rolling swiftly out of the way, using her size to her advantage. The troll skidded to a halt, dirt flying as it desperately tried to turn. Holly, face in the dirt, looked up to see, praise the gods above, her gun resting peacefully on the ground right in front of her nose. From behind her she hear a roar and the sounds of another charge. Scrambling, she got to her knees and reached her left hand for the weapon, praying that she had a shot.
Everything that happened in the next few seconds seemed like nothing but a blur. Hot breath was on her face, her arms jerking up reflexively, then the troll's jaw had closed around it, so close to her face that one of its teeth left a gash on her forehead. Frantically releasing the helmet like a hot potato, the jerk of her arm as the troll yanked its head back, crushing the helmet between its massive teeth and turning its gums to bloody pulp in the process. The troll's scream of pain. Her desperately raising her left arm and taking aim, knowing it wasn't her dominant hand, knowing she was the best shot in the academy, and praying whatever this gun was it was powerful to stop a troll dead in its tracks.
Pulling the trigger.
Light. Harsh noise. A sound like the cracking of rocks in a hot fire. Holly opened her eyes. Where the troll had just stood, nothing but a shallow smoking crater remained. Relief coursed through her, making her knees weak and her shoulders slump. Alive. She was alive.
The gun in her hand, once cool, felt uncomfortably hot against the flesh of her palm. With a yelp she dropped it, where it was now smoking on the ground and making a concerning high-pitched whine. Having a lifetime of experience with Foaly's failed experiments and knowing that sound didn't mean anything good, Holly launched to her feet and started sprinting away from the smoking gun. Her eyes narrowed with concentration and her arms pumping, she braced herself. Right on time, the gun exploded in a flash of fire and melted plastic. The blast was strong enough to knock her over, and she fell on her arm with a scream of pain.
Things got a bit hazier after that, the venom working its insidious way through her system. She had heard the sound of dogs off in the distance and known she had to get out of there. Somehow, she didn't know how, she'd managed to get her wings to work again. Flying blind, lost without the nav system in her helmet, she'd just flown in the direction she'd hoped lead back to base. Time had seemed to warp oddly. She wasn't sure how long she had been in the air before a lack of fuel sent her spiraling downwards, down towards a shining bright house in the middle of nowhere. As for the rest… she remembered it as if through a dark pool of water. Everything seemed unclear.
"Hey! You, fairy. What do you think you're doing? You're going to pull your stitches out doing that!"
The voice seemed to have a mixture of concern and annoyance. Holly groaned, shifting her head to the side and prying her eyes open. At first, all she could make out was a dark blur lit from behind by the light of the sun. Then, she blinked a couple times, and Holly could make out the details. It was a young woman of European-Asian descent, towering above her prone form with her hands planted squarely on her hips. She was squarely build, her shoulders broad and her hips curved. The woman looked to be in peak physical fitness, as shown by the trimness of her waist and the muscles exposed by her red tank top. Perhaps she was some sort of soldier. Her ebony hair was tightly braided into one long strand, and a jade ring affixed tightly to the end. She wore tight yoga pants and was currently barefoot, her toes making indents on the plush carpet. It was a human. A Mud Woman. Holly's eyes slid vacantly away. She refused to acknowledge her captors. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
"Hellooooo? Anyone in there?" asked the woman, bending over and waving a hand a few inches in front of Holly's nose. Holly did her utmost to pretend that she saw nothing. Seeing as she was getting no response, the woman sighed and shook her head, rising to her full height and walking out of Holly's immediate line of sight. "Well, at least you're awake. That's something. We weren't sure you were going to make it through the night." There was the sound of retreating footsteps, and the woman's voice spoke out to her. "I'm sure Artemis wants to know you're up. You should thank him for saving your life." A door creaked open from behind her, and Holly heard the woman leave the room, shutting the barricade gently behind her. Holly did nothing but close her eyes once more. She was sure that once this 'Artemis' arrived, the thin veneer of civility would be stripped away, leaving their true, crueler intent to rise to the surface. The moment would arrive. All she could do was wait.
In the silence of this acid smelling room, Holly was grateful for the company of the birdsong as she waited for the end to come.
The end came fifty minutes later.
Holly had remained prone, curled up in on herself in the cruel comfort of the bed, the manacle on her wrist the comfortable temperature of her own skin. She had been spending the past fifty minutes trying to come to some sort of inner peace, to resign herself to the fate that she knew lay before her. But Holly, for all of her flaws, had never been a quitter. Life was just too precious to simply roll over and give up without a fight. The sun lay warm and dappled along the skin of her clothed back as she pushed the blanket off herself in one laborious shove, her body squirming awkwardly as she was still hampered by her wounds. Even the smallest movement sent a flare of blazing pain coursing through her torn and battered side, but Holly, ever the hardened officer, simply grit her teeth and narrowed her eyes. When you looked at it, pain was just one more obstacle the world could throw at you, and Holly Short did not take kindly to obstacles.
Holly didn't know what she was going to do, how she was going to remove her shackle, or even what she hoped to achieve by getting up and moving. All she knew is that she could feel her chance for freedom slowly running through her fingers like golden grains of sand. Each second was precious. She was in a Mud Man's house now, and if this Artemis was the true master of this place, then his commands would bind her more effectively than chains. The rules of her magic were absolute: once given permission to enter a human's home, the master of the house only had to meet her eyes and give a command and she must obey. Holly was pretty sure the Mud Men didn't know about this yet, but if she was stuck in a prolonged conversation with one it wouldn't take long for even a moron to realize something unusual was going on.
It was at this moment, as Holly had finally managed to slide off the tall edge of the bed and was currently ghost pale with pain, that Artemis opened the door and confidently stepped into the room.
Leaning against the side of the bed closest to the door, her back pressed against the plush mattress as sweat trickled down her face and her hair hung lank over her eyes, Holly looked up for one second to take in her captor before remembering herself and training her eyes on the floor. He was tall for a Mud Man, though in all honesty they all looked tall to Holly from her three foot vantage. In all honesty, he was only just old enough to be called a man instead of a boy. Almost skeletally thin, his clothes looked well-tailored to fit his lanky frame, the crisp white of the shirt almost matching the tone of his snowy skin. He was dressed formally, his button down and charcoal slacks making him look as if he may have just stepped out of a business meeting or a funeral. Swept back from his high brow, the man's raven hair was a tad wild, almost as if he had just woken from sleep and had only the briefest of moments to comb it back into a semblance of order.
To Holly, though, these were just superficial details. What she really looked at was the way his pale pink lips were pressed together in a tight line, the look of the purple crescents hanging bruise-like beneath the brush of his lower eyelashes. Holly saw the stiff posture of his back and shoulders, holding himself with an authority that made him look seconds away from fracturing, and the hardness in his cold blue eyes. With one look, Holly knew everything. This was the man in charge. This was the filthy Mud scum who had captured her, jailed her away from her people. And he seemed as harsh and unyielding as the stone of the island deep beneath her feet.
There was a beat of silence where no one moved. The man, hand still lingering on the knob of the door, watched the fairy's defiant form, refusing to back down even though her limbs were trembling from exhaustion and her small hand were white-knuckled as she gripped the bed tight. Holly held her ground, weak and shaking but still standing, still on her feet, wishing she could squarely meet her captor's eyes and let every ounce of hatred on her face show. All she could do was glare at the patterns on the plush carpet and feel angry at the world for the bad hand it had dealt her.
"What in god's name are you doing?" asked the man in a crisp, cultured tone, every syllable quivering with leashed fury. The preciseness of it, the way every word was cut clean and measured turned the soft Irish of his cadence to something that closer resembled neatly broken glass.
Holly sucked in a breath, causing fire to race down her side, before spitting out the words, "Standing. Leaving." Holly could feel her words turn into bullshit the instant they left her lips, but this was her last chance. If she didn't look two steps from death she might have had a shot at bluffing the Mud Man into letting her go. As it was, she felt as intimidating as a wet paper lunch sack, but she was desperate. Panic raced through her veins, and Holly could feel the posh walls leaning closer, blocking her in. What a stupid looking place to die.
"Not likely," came the scathing reply, and the man moved swiftly towards her. Suddenly, he was looming over her, deep in her personal space, and Holly couldn't help but flinch at the threat of it. "You look ready to collapse. If you have ruined any of the hard work I put in to keep you alive I shall be deeply annoyed." His tone was icy and clinical, anger still dripping from every syllable. It made all of the hairs on the back of Holly's neck stand up.
"Get away from me," Holly snarled, shoulders bunching defensively, but it was hard to seem threatening when your legs refused to stop shaking. The vibrations made the links of the chain clink merrily together like a macabre sort of wind chime. It wasn't because she was scared, Holly told herself firmly. Not even a little. It was just from the blood loss. Even so, Holly wished she could let go of the bed to get her hands in between him and her. Sadly, if she did the lack of support could result in her painfully meeting the ground in an unpleasant fashion.
"Don't be ridiculous," said the man from above her. She darted a quick, defiant look at his face and saw, to her surprise, that a hint of chagrin and remorse had broken through the rigor of his features. Had he not meant to scare her? Not that she was scared, amended Holly hastily. It was all a theoretical anyways. "I'm not going to hurt you, silly creature," he said in annoyance, seeming exasperated at the very notion. "Now get back on the bed before you collapse and hurt yourself further."
"And what if I refuse?" asked Holly through gritted teeth, and she heard a faint sigh from above before strong arms were suddenly at her back and knees, scooping her up gently and cradling her body to his slight, bony chest. Startled, she could only hang there, limp and unwittingly, as she was carefully lifted and deposited onto the rumpled bed. All the while Holly felt as if her heart was a hummingbird trapped in her chest and her breath had turned solid in her throat. He was dangerous, Holly told herself fiercely. This was the equivalent of being lifted and carried by a hungry tiger. No doubt a hungry tiger had gently grasped an unwitting monkey gently in its jaw many a time. Right before his teeth crunched clean through the ignorant monkey's spine.
The man, perhaps the "Artemis" the female had mentioned earlier, let out a gasp of exertion before withdrawing his arms, standing back up straight and looking at her sternly. "That," said the man, sounding only a little out of breath, "Is what will happen." He glared at her fiercely, the once clean lines of his shirt now even more rumpled. "Don't mistake my intention, fairy," he said in a low voice, a hint of darkness entering his tone. "This is no altruistic act of kindness. You owe me your life, and I intend for you to repay that debt in full by the time you end your stay."
"You will get nothing from me," said Holly in a harsh, low whisper that grated her throat. "I don't play nice with Mud Men." Everything negative emotion that had previously been undefined coalesced into a firm ball of hatred for the rude male before her. Stripped of her freedom, her magic, and her ability to move, all Holly had left was her iron will. She hated the Mud Men for what they had made of her people. She hated this Mud Man for all he had taken from her and all he might do in the future. That hate had to be enough, thought Holly bitterly, to keep her going.
It was all she had left.
The man smiled unpleasantly at her, cruel and oily with the pleasure of a challenge curling pleasantly through his veins. "I am Artemis Fowl the Second, fairy," he said with cold pleasure, and the man leaned forward until he loomed over her prone body, menace and smug intent radiating like mist from dry ice. Holly looked into his dark eyes, like the depths of the frozen ocean, and thought she could see the end of everything she had ever known reflected there. "And I always get what I want."
And Holly, her body pushed to the brink, felt her eyes flutter shut as she slid down into the black.
Well, Holly is gonna feel a bit awkward when she wakes up. :3 Passing out, lol. Review please, I swear to god I need all the motivation to write consistently that I can get.