Eleven: After Image

Foaly had laughed when, before leaving for her vacation, she'd asked him for a favour. "Off to visit your partner in crime?" he'd said with a snicker.

"I leave the crime to Artemis."

"Cops and robbers then?"

"Look can you do it or not?"

He'd snorted. "Of course I can do it. What do you want me to burn?"

Her answer had put a grin on his face.

Curled up among the throw pillows on the couch, Holly revelled in the normalness of it all. For once she and Artemis were going to do something regular couples did on an evening off: they were going to watch a movie.

"I still don't see why you can't tell me what it is," Artemis said as he loaded the disc into the DVD player (Foaly had muttered a few things about primitive human video technology when he'd prepared it).

"It'll be more fun if it's a surprise."

"I'm not fond of surprises."

"Control freak," she muttered in Gnommish. He shot her a look over his shoulder and she winked. "You'll find out in a minute anyway."

"I trust it doesn't involve juvenile wizards or adolescent vampires?"

"Oh no," Holly said, a sly smile curling her lips, "this is much, much better."

Remote control in hand, he joined her on the couch, though she had to snuggle up close to him before he took the hint and put his arm around her shoulders. He pressed the button and, after a second of whirring, the player read Foaly's homemade disk and the movie began.

It opened with a flashy action sequence, just the sort of thing you could expect from this type of film: an explosion, followed by raging flames and smoke billowing from a sleek-looking building. While sirens blared, the shot moved in closer so the viewers could read the lettering on the upper story of the building, "Koboi Laboratories." The "K" had been knocked askew by the explosion.

Her eyes darted to Artemis to catch the small smile on his lips. He'd figured it out of course. Dramatic music drowned out the sirens and the movie title sprang up onto the screen in big golden letters: "The Arctic Incident."

His arm squeezed her shoulders. "You're right, this will much more interesting."

The Gnommish letters melted away and a newsreel began to play.

"Tonight the B'Wa Kell have staked their claim to the East Bank by torching a warehouse used by Koboi Laboratories. Apparently the pixie with the golden touch refused to pay their protection fee." Static and then a second news reel. "Controversy today outside Police Plaza as the public protest the LEP's failure to deal with the goblin problem. Many ancient houses have been put out of business by the B'Wa Kell's racketeering. Most heavily targeted have been Koboi Laboratories, who have suffered six counts of sabotage in the past month alone."

The view moved in on the newsreel, focussing on the angry crowd outside Police Plaza and then sliding into it to settle over the heads of the protesters. "Are you getting all of this?" Holly asked. He was fluent in Gnommish of course, but mostly through reading. He'd had very limited practice with spoken Gnommish.

Artemis nodded. "Yes. It's nothing too highbrow so far," he added, his lips quirked.

"I can translate for you when the goblins show up. They tend to speak in goblin cant."

"That would be most helpful."

The camera was now turning to follow a tall form shouldering its way through the crowd. It was dressed in the green uniform of an LEP officer, with a captain's acorns displayed prominently on its collar. Its helmet had the visor set to reflect so one could not see its face.

Finally the figure managed to make it through the angry crowd and climb the steps up to Police Plaza. The camera followed it into the lobby where it emitted a groan and finally pulled off its helmet to reveal a female face. The elf shook out her long, red tresses, which bobbed dramatically around her as if the film had switched to slow motion. Her features were delicate, her eyelashes long and luscious, her ears, slender and pointed. For a moment she pursed lips that were full and red.

Artemis chuckled. "That's supposed to be you?"

"Mm-hmm." Holly reached over to press the pause button on the remote. "Her name is Skylar Peat, three-time AMP winner." Holly shook her head as the frozen image of the fictional Holly Short loomed large on the screen. "I don't know how she gets all that hair to fit into her helmet. Or those ears."

"They're quite remarkable," Artemis noted.

"Those aren't real."

"Not real?"

Holly nodded. "The tips have been surgically altered to be longer and more slender. It was all over the gossip rags five or ten years ago."

"Really," Artemis said, his voice oozing fascination. She should have known. "Is that a trait male elves look for?"

"Some." He considered this for a few moments while she peered again at the screen, her brow furrowed."I'm told I should be flattered. She's very popular."

"Ears are not a factor that typically comes into play in human aesthetics."

Holly snorted. "The ears aren't the only things that've been altered."

When she tore her eyes from the screen, she realized Artemis was looking at her quite intently. "I'm hardly a suitable judge of elfin standards of beauty," he began. "However, I've noted over the past several years that elfin and human proportions are nearly identical. I'd venture that among the fairy races, elves are biologically the most closely related to humans. Goblins are not even mammalian; demons originate from the moon; sprites and dwarves are so far removed I'm not certain where they would fit on a cladogram; and gnomes and pixies are significantly different in proportion."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Trust Artemis Fowl to turn an action movie into a biology lesson."

"I'm simply trying to point out–"

She put a finger over his lips. "That you think I'm pretty. Thank you, Arty," she said, smiling, and kissed him before turning the movie back on. "Just wait till you see Foaly. All tanned, rippling muscle, and shiny pelt. As if any normal centaur would bother to sim-tan."

ooo

Artemis had a few words when he finally got to see the digitally-created version of himself. The film version of Artemis Fowl was a shade darker than an albino, with features that seemed to be frozen in a permanent leer. When interrogated by the fairies, he was smug, but when faced with the goblins in the arctic, his knees were knocking together for the duration of the scene. It was Holly and Root who were clearly the heroes of the hour, Artemis and Butler playing only minor roles in the entire incident.

They had somehow made it to the final scene of the movie where all the loose ends were being wrapped up and digital Artemis was stammering his thank-yous to Captain Short for the rescue of his father.

Holly could not suppress a smirk at the distaste obvious on her lover's features. He groaned and she shushed him. "This is the best part."

"You did a good thing here, Artemis Fowl," announced the captain, her long hair being tousled artistically by a conveniently-timed breeze. "I guess I won't have to shoot you. For now." The camera swung around in time for the viewer to see Artemis's digital Adam's apple bob as he swallowed hard, his face paler than ever.

Holly felt the whoosh of air as the real Artemis huffed, his body rigid with derision. She laughed and squeezed his knee as the credits began to roll.

"Perhaps next time," Artemis said, "we should watch the recent adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and you can see what humans believe elves are. They're very elegant. No shooting blasters or piloting shuttles or punching people in the face."

She turned and patted him on the cheek. "You'd get bored with someone like that."

He snagged her hand and held it up for inspection, his thumb running along the base of her trigger finger, circling the faint scar where the finger had been severed during their venture into the arctic. The movie had not done the scene justice.

"Am I right in assuming that you could heal this scar if you wished to?" She nodded. "And yet you don't choose to."

"No. I prefer to be able to see it."

"Why?"

"For the same reason this blue eye of yours is still blue and not surgically tinted. It's a part of me. A part of us."

He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the scar before moving on to each of her knuckles. His other hand had snuck beneath the hem of her shirt and was sliding up her spine, sending a delightful thrill through her. He pulled her closer, leaning down to bring his lips to her throat, her jaw. Her hand meanwhile slithered into the collar of his shirt to extract the leather thong he still wore and the gold coin that hung on it.

She fingered the coin, smiling, until he drew back, one eyebrow raised in a silent question. "You really did blow on that spark of decency," she said, looking into his eyes.

His lips curled into a sly smile. "I'm afraid, however, that all my thoughts at the moment are positively indecent."

"Well," she murmured, distracted by the way his fingers tickled along the bare skin of her back, "I suppose you can't be expected to behave all the time."