A/N: Thanks so much to anyone who read and reviewed this story, it means so much to me and really encourages me to go on when I get such positive feedback! Kudos to you all! Here is my gift to you: Chapter Three! (Please read the bottom note for info on certain content later.)

Artemis Fowl: The Enigma Complex

Chapter Three

Halfling

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward. ~Arthur Koestler

A Public Airport Terminal, Austria

Angeline Fowl did not take kindly to Artemis leaving Austria in the middle of a family vacation. Her intentions had been for the entire family to stay and relax and escape their everyday routine that had taken hold of them. Artemis had to discuss the circumstances at length with her and present several core things to her before she let him go. But unfortunately his luck ended there.

Artemis scowled into hands and glanced around the hangar of the airport that he was waiting in. He was still rather seething from the impudence of the security guards and the rude looks he had received. Part of him was still in shock at the idea of his mother's punishment for him, having to take public transportation. Thank god he had called a good friend of Butler's to arrange a pickup with a private jet, but he still had to deal with the herds of the general populace. Butler would've balked at the idea of his charge in such an open place unguarded.

All in all there were around twenty people total in the small airport, which was used to delayed flights and refills, but to Artemis it was more crowded than necessary. In his suit pocket his fairy communicator beep shrilly again, and he slid his hand in to silence it. Something was wrong, and now it was becoming fairly obvious.

Foaly knew about Angeline Fowl's knowledge and had promised to maintain a stature of respect toward her wishes on the behalf of the fairy folk, so for him to interrupt this trip must've meant something serious. Artemis knew his mother could be quite convincing, and Foaly had no other option than to listen. A mind wipe on Mrs. Fowl was not an option, Opal's memories were as good as burned into her mind, and attempting to remove them would result in a serious IQ dip and a return of her previous depression.

Artemis stood as they called the arrival of his private jet, and ignored the scathing looks the tourists gave him; he had more important things to worry about, like saving the world. But first, he needed to get back to Fowl Manor in one piece.

Police Plaza, Haven City

Belowground things were in a state of organized chaos. Foaly had effectively shut the city down, but now people wanted to know why. The LEP didn't know, and that was part of the problem.

Holly had commandeered the shuttle that Grub had taken up the chute and effectively managed to cram three fairies inside it, but upon her arrival the city had been put under a classified emergency shutdown.

In Police Plaza the situation was no better, though Holly gave up her hostage happily and went to give her report to Commander Kelp. All the while she tried contacting Artemis, vaguely distressed by the fact that he wasn't responding to her messages. Whoever put off that bomb could've taken him hostage, she thought, but then shut herself up with a more rational point of view, He can take care of himself.

Trouble sat behind his desk with his head between his hands, and Holly was shocked by the desperation in his look. "Please Holly, tell me Foaly's lying to me, tell me this whole thing will blow over," he said, his voice pleading.

Holly sighed, "I'm afraid I can't do that, sir. I can't lie to a superior officer."

"Not even a friend?" he asked quietly, but he knew no response would come, "Tell me what exactly is going on then please."

"Well, sir, Trouble, your brother could probably tell you more about what went on before my arrival, but when I went to investigate I found what would best be described as a crater, in the mantle, which was large enough to span all of Haven. It didn't register on any of Foaly's devices, but it's clearly a bomb. But on top of that we now have a prisoner, though we don't know how she relates to the situation at hand."

The commander sighed. A weariness had settled on him that he hoped no other fairy would have to deal with, and he could feel it increase as Holly told him all of this.

"And the prisoner? What of her?" he asked, wishing he didn't have to ask. He knew the words would affect everything before he even spoke them.

"You heard," replied Holly, an odd look running across her features, "It isn't something that I ever suspected would turn up, not in this day and age. But in case you didn't believe Foaly, he was right. It's a Halfling."

Her communicator went off, as if timed purposefully.

A Private Jet, Somewhere over the South of France

Artemis blinked at the screen, his hands clammy with his grasp of the small communicator. He'd been contacted roughly fifty times by the fairy people on various levels of importance and now Holly was back to not picking up?! Irritation flickered in his mind and then he realized the other alternative and felt himself go rigid with worry. He twisted the small communicator in his grasp and felt a surge of relief when Captain Short's familiar face crowded the screen.

As soon as she opened the screen though, she was all business; no time was spared for pleasantries, "Artemis, good. You should know it took over two hours to reach you, and we have a hostile situation belowground. Are you at Fowl Manor?"

"Hostile situation? What have you gotten yourself into? To answer you question, no, I'm not at the Manor, but I'm in a secure location. I'll be at the manor shortly. So please Holly, explain what's going on."

Holly sighed, and her harsh exterior melted away like butter exposing the friend Artemis had sorely missed, "I don't even know Arty. All I know is that Haven is under a direct threat of destruction and…"

Whatever she was going to say seemed difficult for her, and she sighed once more and looked at him through the screen, "Artemis, I never thought there would be a situation like this, but we have a hostage. It's human, or its file is. I need you to do some aboveground work for me, Haven is locked up tighter than Foaly's tinfoil hat collection."

Artemis felt a million question pounding against his self-restraint just begging to be asked, and it took him a good deal of his willpower to agree without asking any of them, but one thing slipped out before she could list off the target, "Holly, what exactly is this person's threat?"

Holly looked at him once more through the link and Artemis, knowing her better than anyone else ever could, promptly stopped asking questions. "I'll see you when you get here Artemis; it should be a nothing kind of task. I'd tell Trouble to send a private if it weren't for the chutes being shut down. It'll be hard enough getting you down here, let alone if you bring Butler.

Artemis nodded, it was a nothing task. Go in; wipe out everything concerning the fairy people that couldn't be destroyed with a virus, and then leave. He and Butler had done more difficult things in their sleep. Figuratively speaking.

One thing Artemis didn't understand though, as he leaned back in his seat on the way to Ireland, was Holly and her attitude toward their hostage. Then again, he thought, I should know better than anyone how bad it feels. But he wasn't sure if the situations boiled down to the same thing, and he ultimately wanted know the situation he was getting himself into. He was Artemis Fowl the Second, and he didn't like being on the other side of a plan and being kept in the dark.

He also wasn't comfortable letting someone else fly a plane, but he couldn't help that right now. So he settled himself as best he could and began to do what he did the very best, which was plan. But as he planned and pieced together what he understood and had gleaned, he realized something else.

Since when has Holly ever called something an 'it'?

Belowground, LEP Headquarters, Haven City

The elf in question was, at the moment, going to speak with Foaly about that very 'it' herself. Not only was Haven at stake, but possibly the fairy race was too. Holly had dealt with the idea of exposure several times throughout her career, but it had never looked quite so innocent. And unfortunately the Book was very strict on how to treat one's fairy brethren.

The creature in question now lay in a sterile room far beyond human standards, covered in what looked to be long strips of duct tape. In actuality they were long adhesive strips of magic infused fibers that were monitoring the body's healing and functioning. The clean room was also set with a full channel to Foaly so he could keep an eye on the hostage himself. The People weren't used to holding humans against their will, and Halflings even less so seeing as they were all but extinct.

For those less savvy of the fairy world, ten thousand year before all of these events, humans and fairies alike had lived aboveground with one another. Before the humans began to overrun the Earth, they'd been quite fond to the occasional elf, despite being dumber than a sack of potatoes at the time. And so sometimes, though very rarely, a human and an elf would end up in love. This often ended up in broken hearted elves, especially after the loss of the human magic, but every hundred years or so a couple would manage to bear a child. After time, they were remembered simply as Halflings, and in the modern society were considered an impossibility.

Holly Short had grown up hearing of Mud Men being the bad guys, and the only ones she'd ever grown fond of had at one point been her enemies. And here, in her arms, had laid a near sacrilege being. It was needless to say that she was having difficulties excepting what she'd chanced across.

Foaly let Holly come in and had pulled up the image of the sleeping Halfling. Holly took everything about the girl in while she had the opportunity, the soldier in her saving it in case any of that information was needed later on.

"Okay Holly, first, our hostage," Foaly said, and she winced internally at the word, "She is approximately four foot tall, and if half-sprite, half-human. Identified as one Celes Button, born to New Zealand by a Mrs. Rissa Button. One brother, older, deceased. We assume pure human, no records to prove that though. Also, no marriage for the mother, just one day changed her name, we haven't got a clue why in the files. It says in the file that her mother died last month. That's it, there's nothing else on her, no school files, no work, nothing."

Holly nodded, she'd read all this in the files she had edited and sent Artemis about the girl's whereabouts. She calmly twiddled her thumbs and waited until the centaur got to the important bits.

"We can either assume the worst, which would be that she is just as smart as our young Artemis and plans to use another of those bombs to destroy Haven and expose us to the world; or we can assume the best for her sake and ours, and assume that she happened to fall through the defenses while I did diagnostics and had nothing to do with the whole bomb thing."

Once again Holly nodded, though none of that information was particularly useful to her, seeing as the council would make that decision. She did hope that he would get to the point eventually, and not go off into one of his tangents on his equipment. She silently thanked Frond that he chose not to.

"So I'll assume that you, like I was, are wondering how she is possible?" he asked, smiling at Holly, knowing just what she had been thinking.

Holly blushed slightly, but smiled and nodded, knowing it would get him to the point all that much faster.

"Well, I pulled a bit of information off a human sympathizer site and found out about some of the old stories about the days of Frond. Apparently, despite many beliefs against it, there are ways for humans to be with elves, though they never seem to end well. But in the Frond Dynasty it wasn't nearly as frowned upon. Some even had children, the facts of which are made solid on the screen before us."

"But how? I mean, I know how, but it's against everything in the Book, the council would have a field day! I didn't think it was possible anyway, I mean humans are so… tall," Holly spluttered, still unable to firmly believe what was right before her eyes. She rarely ever skipped through thoughts like this, but it was so out of place in her mind she couldn't form coherent thoughts due to the unfeasible things it suggested.

"Relax Holly, normally you'd be right, let me tell you that before you go getting any ideas about your Mud Boy and you," Foaly said, humor tingeing his serious tone. That was until Holly hit him, with everything in her tiny body. Suddenly Foaly found his screen on the girl very interesting.

"As I was saying, normally you'd be right, human and fairy children are pretty much impossible with all but three of the eight families. Elves, Pixies, and Sprites are the only fairies that are close enough on the evolutionary scale to find substantial love with a human. It's kind of like the whale and dolphin principles, you can put the two together, but only under very rare circumstances will they produce offspring. And on top of that, it would be painful for both mother and child during the ordeal; conflicting species, blood, and magic do not make for happy living."

Holly absorbed this information and looked gingerly at the screen, suddenly feeling bad for the poor girl in the picture.

"She's in pain, and a lot of it I might add. Her fairy blood doesn't take well with HGH, and her magic must have metastasized to a certain organ to preserve itself. By the looks of that eye I would bet anything on it being her ocular nerve."

Holly looked from Foaly to the screen, and once again examined the girl, taking in the features of her face; traditional fairy markings like the pointy cheekbones graced her features, but gave an alien look to her green-hued skin. Holly almost asked Foaly what he was talking about, but then she saw it. An eyelid, closed, but sunken in. Holly gasped, "Did she…?"

Foaly nodded. Holly blinked several times and suddenly wanted to speak with Artemis again, to find out what was so bad that this Mud Girl would cut her own eye out.

Auckland, New Zealand

Artemis had arrived at Fowl Manor while this conversation had taken place, gotten together a batch of equipment, convinced Butler to come with him, and boarded a jet to New Zealand in the time Holly learned about the nature of Halflings. Give or take a few minutes.

Now, virtually on the other side of the world from where he'd been just twelve hours ago, he sat looking out and admiring the Oceania coasts and the crisp New Zealand air rush at his back. Despite missing his home country, he still found New Zealand startlingly in second place for natural beauty.

He and Butler were now crammed into the back of a rental, and he'd been watching the sun set slowly toward his home. As soon as he gave the word to Butler that it was dark enough, they'd be off down the overlooking slope they'd perched upon and into one of the poorer suburban streets, ready to complete a break in.

He waved Butler the go signal as the sky turned another deepening shade of purple, and he felt anticipation build in his stomach. It may have been an amateur's job, but it was better than sitting in Austria doing nothing.

Drawing an omnitool he'd taken several years previously, he waited as their car parked in the driveway, to avoid too much suspicion. Act like your going home, Artemis thought.

Slowly he faced the door and hitched the lock, opening it and letting it swing open with ease. The stale scent of air that hadn't been moved in some time greeted his nose and Artemis listened for several moments to assure himself no one was there. He hadn't even taken a helmet with him, he was that sure of himself. He should've taken the extra precaution; it would've done more good than he'd known. As it was, he set out on a search and destroy pattern, already having evaluated the places he'd need to go in his head.

He didn't get very far though, as soon as he stepped into a small kitchen area, a hand shot out and grabbed him by the neck, pinning him to the side wall, and he felt the deadly sharp cold of a knife.

Artemis gasped for breath like a gaping fish, unready to be ripped from his life force. He struggled against the strong hand, and quietly preyed the movement he'd just seen had been Butler. But his hope evaporated into shock as the man before him spoke.

"Where is my sister?" the man said, his voice thick with mesmer. And as Artemis slumped into unconsciousness his mind reeled with the possibilities, knowing that the one with that voice couldn't possibly be a fairy.

A/N: PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! I know this chapter is OOC and that my new people probably seem like Mary-Sue's or something, but they're just part of the plot! I have a plan. I just hope you don't hate me for it, or them. Also, another warning, the rating of this may get bumped to T, and on top of that there will be a character death. I hope not too many of you will stop reading because of these things, but I understand if you do. I love everyone who supports this! You guys rock!

~Tamdiu

P.S. I'm getting a beta reader, so hopefully that might improve things!