Tiny Surprises


Wow, that was a super long wait for this chapter.
I'm really sorry, but this being summer I promise that the next couple will be coming in at a steady flow.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.


Consciousness fluttered uneasily in and out of existence for Caroline. It'd had some bad times in there and it was reluctant to see what the rest of her life had in store for it. Cautiously, Caroline rejoined the world of the conscious, but it was hard to believe from what she was hearing.

"Mulch mentioned something about the demons, but he didn't elaborate."

"I can't discuss anything until we get back to Section Eight." Caroline could hear Artemis grunt in annoyance, something that she wouldn't expect to come from the boy. Suddenly the earth shook, and the air exploded in a frenzy of obscene language. At least, what Caroline could understand was obscene, the rest a garbled mess.

Artemis' voice said something reproachful in a language she didn't understand, but the female voice from before seemed to ignore him.

Caroline, on the other hand had suddenly become aware of the speeds at which they had been traveling at. One glance around the room after being jolted out of her grogginess had her terrified and not even curious about the tiny person sitting next to Artemis. She covered her eyes and moaned from where she was huddled on the floor. She heard someone shifting to look at her and something being muttered.

"Artemis could you knock her out again?" If she wasn't so terrified, Caroline would've laughed at the idea of Artemis knocking someone out. Three seconds later, she was asleep.


When she came to again, Caroline was sure that the earlier exchange was a dream, but she was scared to open her eyes anyways.

"Artemis?" Her voice was small and meek. There was no reply. She opened her eyes slowly, trying to take in her surroundings. It wasn't hard, things didn't even look that alien. Everything was just scaled down a bit and looked futuristic. She laughed and had the notion that Mr. Diggums probably lived there. She got off the couch she had been sleeping on after wiping off most of the drool she'd left on the far end and went to inspect things further. Before she got to press any of the interestingly marked buttons beneath blank screens, someone screeched behind her.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DON'T TOUCH THAT." This was followed with unintelligible mutters. Before turning around, Caroline checked if her ears were bleeding and prepared herself to screech back. She didn't get to. As soon as she turned around, her brain shut off.

She was standing across from a fuming centaur.

Foaly was not a happy centaur.

Not at all.

This was not only because Artemis had dumped the Mud Girl in his office, but informed him that it was Foaly's duty to take care of her while he, Holly, and Mulch were off having an adventure. And Artemis had forbidden him to sedate her. The girl was making weird noises, and it just made Foaly want to trample her all the more.

"Excuse me, Mr. Centaur?" He pinned her with a reproachful glare and made an inquiring sort of noise with his throat. "Where am I?" Her voice was tinged with barely repressed panic, and Foaly recognized the look from one of the patients at the ward he visited his sister at one time. He made a note to fully evaluate the girl in the time that she'd be with him, because he didn't want to be in any sort of danger or anything.

"I'll only answer if you back away from the control panel." She did so, going back to the sofa where she'd woken up and sitting down. Foaly circled her the entire time, keeping one hand poised to do god-knows-this if she attempted god-knows-what. She was looking up at him expectantly, the fear in here eyes bleeding away to confusion. Foaly bit his cheek to keep from grinning; the girl probably thought she was dreaming.

She did, in fact, come to the conclusion that she was dreaming. It'd probably been what she'd eaten for breakfast. It was probably something of Mrs. Fowl's and it didn't come as too much of a surprise to her that the food was laced with something, seeing as the woman had seemed much too cheery for the short time in which she'd held her company. As the seconds passed, the suspicion that the centaur was stupid or something built up, as it was smiling dumbly with a glazed look in his eyes. She cleared her throat and that seemed to shake him out of his stupor.

"Mister Centaur?"

"My name is Foaly, and you're at Section Eight headquarters a couple miles beneath the earth." This caused Caroline to smile blandly at him and nod; she'd heard somewhere that it was better to go with the flow with these kinds of things rather than against.

"Uh, um, cool," was all she could manage to get out. The two spent some time in silence, and the centaur, er, Foaly, got back to what Caroline presumed to be work. Caroline was just feeling sleepy again (she'd heard that it was a bad idea to sleep during these kinds of things, too) when a question bubbled up in her mind. "Where's Artemis?"

Foaly beckoned her over without even turning around and when she was a couple of footsteps away, he pointed at one of the screens. There was silence for almost a minute before, "What the fuck is this woman eating?"

On the screen (which faded as you got farther away) Artemis and Mulch (the hairy thing from before) were climbing over what looked like a cave-in.

"Excuse me?" The centaur asked, amused.

"Mrs. Fowl puts something in her food and I ate some of her leftovers earlier today," or was it yesterday? "And whatever it was must be really strong because not only am I in a dwarf's high-tech office, but I'm watching as Artemis Fowl is climbing over fallen rocks, and is being led by something really cute." She'd just noticed the reptilian creature, as its coloring made it blend into the rocks.

On the screen, Artemis stopped climbing and stood still for a second or two.

"I can assure you that my mother doesn't do drugs." His voice was icy, but Caroline didn't really notice. Instead she let out a strangled-giraffe noise and stepped away from the screen.

"He can hear us?" She whispered it to Foaly, completely ignoring Artemis' remark. The centaur nodded gravely, but she got the sneaking suspicion that he was laughing at her.

"Holly and I can hear you, too." Mulch's voice carried through the speakers, and Caroline just nodded dumbly in response.

"They can't see us, though." Caroline stopped nodding and glared at Foaly instead.

"Okay," she said, maybe I'm not dreaming.

"Okay," she repeated, maybe I'm hallucinating again.

"O-okay," she stuttered, maybe I'm having a psychotic breakdown.

Distantly, she saw Artemis turn towards the camera, frowning. She felt as if she'd just run a marathon. She saw Artemis' lips move, but the sounds were drowned out by nothing and she felt herself submit to panic. Caroline saw the centaur turn towards her, and suddenly the world was spinning. Suddenly the world was black.


"Carrie, Carrie, wake up; the plane's gonna be here in ten minutes."

"Wyatt, seriously, stop shaking me." He let her go and she fell back onto the comfortable lounge chair. Caroline rubbed her eyes.

"Where's mom and dad?" She managed to stifle a yawn.

"They went to go get coffee." Their father hated the hazelnut blend that they served at the VIP lounge.

"Let's go get them, or else we'll be late." Grudgingly, the lazy boy gave in to his rather whiny younger sister and led the way towards the Starbucks Coffee.

Wyatt's phone vibrated in his pocket.

"Must be them," he said as he fished it out and answered it. He stopped walking and stood stock still.

"Wyatt, what is it?" He didn't say a word; instead he reached out and grabbed her hand.

He hung up the phone and looked at Caroline calmly.

"Dad got the notion that we were at LaGuardia and got him and mom lost. We have to go get them."

Caroline laughed, it was just the kind of thing that Mr. Edderstein would do.

Wyatt led her one of the doors to the parking lot. There was nobody there.

Caroline looked around in confusion. Wyatt looked grim. His phone rang again and he answered it.

"Alright; where are they, you sick son of a bitch?"

Caroline's eyes widened.

There were footsteps behind them.

"They're probably looking for you right now." Wyatt said something that Caroline didn't quite catch because two hands wrapped themselves around her. One clamped her mouth shut, and the other picked her struggling body off the ground. Caroline saw Wyatt run at the man who had spoken and see the man knock him out. She heard the two men laugh as bother her and her brother were carried out into the parking lot. The man who was holding her shifted his hand to cover her nose. She bit his hand, but that only caused him to laugh harder and shift his other hand to grab her ass. Tears welled up in her eyes as darkness ate the corners of her vision. Then all she knew was darkness.


Had she not been slowly descending back amongst the aware, Caroline might've found the fact that she spent most of her time sleeping funny. The merest speculation of the thoughts were briskly blown out of the park because the familiar sound of an EKG monitor brought the memories of, well, the last time she had been conscious and came to the conclusion that she'd overdosed or something. She opened her eyes slowly, and once she started registering the room around her, shut them very, very, quickly.

It seemed as if she'd been checked into a midget hospital.


Caroline's flashbacks are triggered by stress and/or panic. Her mind and body forcefully shut off because it's too much for her to bear and she seizes while this goes on.

I'd really like to know what you guys think, so please read and review!