AN: Oh my! I haven't updated in a while, sorry guys! I have been rotting away with a case of strep and a chest cold, so forgive me please! If it makes you feel any better, my muse has returned to me, and I am forcing her to read the Artemis series so she can help. Which means this may get much more interesting. Anyway, a fact that may disconcert you, I have NO idea where I'm going with this chapter… On with it then!

Artemis Fowl: The Enigma Complex

Chapter Six

Problems between Enemies

We often give our enimies the means of our own destruction.~Aesop

Holly Short hated situations like this, where something went wrong and she had absolutely no other help besides Artemis to fix it all. Not that Artemis was a bad person to be stuck with in a crisis, but she could've hoped for a bit more. Holly zoomed over the oceans, the chemical tracker Foaly had him set up with blinked in the corner of her helmet map. For someone in a jet he hadn't moved much in quite a while. That was what worried her the most.

She sped up as fast as the Hummingbird wings would take her across the slate gray expanse of ocean, wishing she could make it faster. Silently, as if Artemis could hear her, she called out for him to stay alive. She almost wished she was desperate enough to answer herself back, but more than anything, she focused on the blue pulsing dot in her visor.

Celes Button opened her eyes blearily and felt her corneas receive stabs from the amount of light being filtered through the room. Scrunching up her face, she felt something hairy grab her arm and sit her up rather roughly, muttering in a foreign language under their breath.

Blinking away the spots that swam through her vision, she opened her wide little eyes and found a rather odd sight before her. A little man, almost as tall as her, stood before her and was observing her with crisp blue eyes. Celes looked him in the eyes and he said something with such strain she could tell it was cursing in whatever language they spoke. His blue eyes widened and suddenly he began saying something quickly in the odd tongue.

She blinked and looked around, finding another similar size creature shuffling awkwardly on four hooves. She looked between either of them, a mix of panic and shock, and suddenly felt herself get woozy. Then she saw the little horse-creature shuffle once more and pull his hand away, mumbling to the short human figure in front of her.

Dark threads pulled at her consciousness, and she was relieved to go back to sleep before the pain registered. She figured it must be another odd little dream, she hadn't made it to the fairies yet, or so she thought. As she faded into a deep sleep full of odd and even more lucid figures, she heard them speck without knowing she understood it, "Definitely have to keep her under, too much pain."

What about the pain? She thought to herself, but she had no more control of her body than a specter to a mountain. She'd grown used to the pain she was born with for years, just like she'd grown used to a single eye. It didn't matter at this point anyway.

Holly hated the cold, just like most other relatively sane fairies; she despised it and the way it clawed at her skin. But something more important was at hand and for Artemis to die now after her ignoring him for several months was not how she chose to let the day go about.

She had been flying for hours now, and now she felt tired from the exertion of keeping in the air and vibrating at high speeds. But as long as there was distance between her and that blue dot she made sure to keep herself vigil and maintain her focus on the mission at hand.

She flew in a straight line, and at this point in her journey it didn't really matter if it was against regulations or not, she didn't have time to bother with flight patterns or any other kinds of rules that she was in clear violation of.

As she approached the Polar Regions she wondered what kind of plane would fly down toward such foreboding temperatures, and then a few facts hit her all at once. The entire journey to New Zealand must have been a trap, set up by whoever had deposited the girl at the bomb site. She felt a shiver run her spine and realized the jet ride there and back could've just as easily been plotted and executed. In more ways than one.

A thin scrape of metal caught her eye and on it were two pale and wraith-like figures. Holly frowned, wondering why there were two teenaged boys rather than a mountain and its pale companion, but she shot toward them fast enough to erase leftover concern from her mind. Questions could come later, when she had them safe and warm.

Holly felt Artemis and immediately drew back her hand, he was colder than the air around them and his lips were a purple tint. His breathing was shallow and ragged, and she could see frost forming in his hair. In all her life she'd only seen one other person quite so dead, and that had been Butler in the cryogenics unit.

Reaching out again she realized that he must've been in the water, because the other boy, whom she did not recognize, was in much better condition. It that was the case, she knew he would've been unable to rescue himself, which meant…

Holly made a point to get rid of the thought process behind that and continue sizing up the damage of Artemis. Softly, she laid her hands on his chest and pushed all the magic she could into Artemis, as well as a general good hope that he'd survive.

Opal Koboi, from the present, sat in a dank and smelly cell and felt the eyes of the other prisoners on her as they shuffled past her in her solitary confinement and looked in on the insane one. She had tried going into another coma, but unfortunately she could not achieve the amount of peace and serenity needed, let alone muster the concentration.

So when she had been given the glimmer of hope necessary to her survival in her rather lowly prison life, it had been snatched away by the very person she had had complete faith in, herself.

So after that little incident, she went a little beyond insane, and her roommate had reported her for good marks. So now she sat in solitary confinement in a moldy old straight jacket, alone almost all day, every day, and free at last to think and just that.

So she sat an plotted, and she realized that now she wanted to get back at herself, and in her now backwards logic she couldn't see the fault in that very reasoning. So slowly she shimmied herself up and began to pace, ignoring the stares from the door, her voice already cracked and strained from hours spent screaming at them how it was bad for her skin.

Soon, she decided, the time would arise when Foaly and all those others she had come to hate so much would come to her in desperate need for her to help them defeat herself. And thusly, she decided, she would help them do this very thing, it not raise the profit in it for her. A chuckle, broken and bitter, rose through her throat. Oh yes, Opal Koboi planned to make everyone pay, even herself.

AN: I'm sorry, it's icky and short, and the only part I actually like is the last bit with Opal, which is why I wrote this whole chapter and such, so basically it's a little revelation to the plot twist and overall idea of the villain and Opal herself, who is also the villain. I have a general idea of where things go from here though, which is good, and also means the chapters will be picking up soon. As for my reviewers, thanks again, I fixed the spelling errors I had brought to my attention, and I hope you don't hate me for another chapter of absolutely meaningless plot. I promise it'll be ten times as good next chapter as long as my AH lovers don't burn me at the stake with my muse. I hate being sick…

*grumbles* Tamdiu, out.