Just filler, my dears, but it's better than nothing. At least, I sincerely hope so.

Disclaimer: I love pancakes.

Interlude: Desperation Point

The base of operations was a run down, shambling sort of apartment, something that the Mud Men, with their endless manufacturing of modern buildings at the expense of the old, should really have gotten around to tearing down by now. But it was the property of the LEP, however discreetly, a base for their Paris operations as well as a safe house for LEP officers above the surface.

Root hated it. Hated the high ceilings and the boarded up windows and the sound of the cars roaring outside, the scent of the emissions thick and liable to burn the nose. And this was coming from a man whose cigar habit left his colleagues breathless... literally. Root would be more than happy to conduct his surveillance of the Opera House from below ground, but this had been marked a severe security threat by the Council, and Root himself had been ordered - like an errant school elf - to oversee the retrieval of Captain Short.

His cigar habit had gone through the roof from stress.

The computer beeped, announcing a message from below ground. Root hit 'receive' without looking at the computer, fumbling with a lighter.

"You better have good news for me, Foaly," he snipped, but it was not the voice of his tart-tongued techie that greeted him.

"Not quite, I'm sorry to say," drawled a voice that was decidedly not sorry at all. Root flicked his eyes to the screen and cursed to see the obnoxious, simpering face of Briar Cudgeon.

"What is it, Cudgeon?" he snapped, succeeding in lighting his cigar and breathing out a cloud of noxious, green-tinged relief. Cudgeon's face was obscured, momentarily.

"News from the council," he proclaimed nasally, brandishing a sheaf of papers in Root's general direction. Root peered in their direction and the computer beeped again, downloading a copy of the offending papers to a tablet nearby. His heart stopped cold.

"Bio bomb? Not this again, Cudgeon," he groaned, slapping down the tablet in disgust. "I thought I made it perfectly clear to you it was not your decision." Cudgeon's smile was an ugly, oily thing.

"You're quite right, Commander," he said, turning Root's title into an insult. "But it is the Council's decision, and they have put their foot down. You have one week before the Council actions an emergency plan - set forward by yours truly, of course - if Captain Short is not retrieved and the threat is not neutralised."

Root opened his mouth to roar back but Cudgeon was gone, leaving the commander staring at a gently blinking screen. Root groaned out loud, ignoring the sprite peering curiously at him, and smacked his head hard on the desk. D'Arvit, but Cudgeon was good. Sneaky, malicious, and insidious, but as clever as all hell. If the bio bomb plan came to fruition, he would be ideally placed as Root's successor for commander of the Lower Elements Police. Root himself would be shown up as a failure, unable to solve the abduction of one of his own people without outside intervention, and although it would be a slow process, eventually Cudgeon would prevail.

Root could not allow that to happen. But how?

Sometimes in life events occur that none of us expect. While Commander Root pondered the situation he had so abruptly found himself in, Trouble Kelp was finding himself in a rather large, bodyguard shaped situation. Only fast talking and an offer he couldn't refuse (without fear of being crushed with one swat of the Mud Man's massive hands) got him back to the base of operations alive. Root listened to his story with growing amazement.

"Let me see if I understand correctly," he said, voice very calm and controlled, and Kelp quivered. "You were foolish enough to be seen by a Mud Man and instead of extricating yourself from the situation and reporting it to your superiors, you told him everything?" Root's voice was still perfectly level, but Kelp looked like he was about to have a coronary event.

"Not exactly, sir," he quavered and then, remembering himself, managed to force himself to stand straight and the quiver out of his voice. "I brought him here."

"YOU DID WHAT?" Root bellowed in incredulity, glancing around the room at the fairy tech, the sprite techie, and finally down at himself, his epaulettes winking dully in the dim light. "Kelp, have you run mad?"

"He's outside, sir, in the garden. Sir, he's seen Short," and that made Root pay attention. Despite the discreet surveillance kept on the Opera House, only Kelp had managed to make contact with Short, and only for a few moments. The information she had given him had been nothing new, but at least now they knew she was being held totally against her will. There had not been much doubt, after all. Short - Holly would have never betrayed the LEP by staying willingly with an enemy of the People. And yet...

And yet there was too much oddness about the whole situation, about the hunted expression in Short's eyes whenever he had glimpsed her or the way the entire company of Mud People seemed tense, disturbed. Threat hung over them like a cloud of darkness, a fear that seeped up from below the Opera House into the people who inhabited it. Root didn't like that. For him and his kind, underground was a haven - literally. A place for those long-ago hunted fairies to live and be free. The dramatic role reversal here, of underground becoming a place of death, was faintly disconcerting, like a live wire of discord tracking its way up the spine.

Root realised he had been silent too long. Kelp was watching him questioningly as he turned over the situation in his mind, dissembling and analysing, and finally he nodded, and walked out the door into the back garden with nary a flinch.

Except, well - holy Frond! The Mud Man was enormous, stretching impossibly high into the darkness, and Root felt himself break into a mild sweat. "You have information for me?" he demanded, hoping none of his nervousness of this giant human showed in his voice.

The Mud Man started to speak, his voice like the rumble of the earth in distress, and against his will Root found his lips stretching into a predatory grin.

Things were looking up.