Yeah. I know, slow update, and I felt realy bad, because I got more reviews last chapter than ever before. But I had a lot of makeup work to do, and tests, and a program to write for a teacher's library, so Nottie my Faultie. Besides, my Birthday is coming up, with a few more things, so be nice and leave me a birthday present, as I most likely wont be able to update until my birthday.
Paperclip Chick: heeeyyy! Nah, it was not a nerd her worthy plan. It involved no trip to Mexico lolz. Just don't tell Jingles and I don't have to write my gravestone heading. See you at school, Mrs. Stewart is almost set up, so I will be seeing you at recess! *cheers and does little dance* BYW, I don't want to come to school on my B-Day with a plunger in my locker. That would be hard to explain away.
ArtfullyInsane: Nice username btw. *grins. Couldn't resist.
Yarra: Me too. I need to try it out sometime, well…more than I already do
ArtyHally Foeva: Me too! Thanks for reviweing. Reviews make my heart smile. Thanks for telling me which bits you liked, so I can put more of those bits in.
TehTrollArmy: …well then. You have friends in high places.
Rule Nineteen
Wherever you take Holly Short, whether it be babysitting or saving the world, take hand grenades. It's better safe than sorry. ( A spin-off of the rule suggested by IJustCant Choose. Btw, the rule suggested by YouKnowme will be next. then I have a crazy idea for rule twenty one.)
Butler had strange advice to give to his young charge. Most friends would tell their best friend exactly how to ask a girl out without being chopped into tiny pieces then zapped by the cord of an errant microwave. Advice that while, was often wrong, satisfied them and they went and tried it out, realized how fool hardy it was, then tried again. The advice Butler had for Artemis was often advice that stuck with him, and was useful in knowing if you were a Mossad Operative on the run from bosses who tried to frame you. Or, in his case, a boy who ran around the world with fairies with nuclear technology and jumped into atom-wrenching time tunnels on a good day. On piece of advice was something that was even taught, unofficially at the middle school level, not that Butler would ever tell Artemis that.
Close only counts in Horseshoes and hand grenades.
Artemis had put that in his original set of rules, but when Captain Holly Short entered his life, he altered the rule a little. After all, he had no intention of ever thinking that a simple meeting with the elf would have tea and cookies as the most exciting part of the meeting. Unless the cookies shrunk you, and the Tea gave you the power to fly. Even then, it wouldn't be every exciting compared to what would happen next. (I.E. Governments being overthrown, aliens being called to earth, Cookie Monster becoming lactose intolerant, etc.)
Long Story short, nobody wanted a midget, flying Artemis Fowl with magical powers and a complete disrespect for Seseme Street ever taking its roots in civilization.
Actually, this rule was going against itself. This time, He was not dragging Holly anywhere. This time, Holly dragged two kids to HIM.
He still reading the Grenades though, ready to pop at a moment's notice.
Tara had been shut down after Foaly realized his aluminum hat was missing, he thought it had been dissolved by Human Rays, because Humans were invading. he had hit the panic button, shutting down all shuttle ports and shutting down Haven City.
After a quick-check of the evidence (and a quick check of the outdoor toilet, in which he found bits of Tinfoil in his..passing's…) he concluded that the hat had not dissolved. It had slipped into his jelly donut and had been consumed. he was currently getting chewed out by the Council for that.
It didn't change the facts though. There were fairy kids stuck above ground, whose parents were backed up in immigration, and with the lockdown in place, there was no place for them to go, all the extra bunks in Tara had been reserved far in advance. Holly groaned, this is why she would never want to be transferred from Recon, even if it meant seeing the moon more.
Stupid Kids.
It was a pity they couldn't just be kicked and shut up, like cats.*
Artemis looked at the five kids that Holly held in her arms.
"No."
Holly breifly reached for her handgun, but then had to shove the fairy equivalent of a binky in a toddlers mouth and started to scowl at Artemis.
Two minutes later she was in.
*That's a new record*
Butler walked in on Artemis, wondering where he was and what he wanted for dinner, and he found him holding a baby elf, holding it like he used to hold Myles when Myles sniffed something in his lab and passed out. Head against the shoulder, and supporting it's back.
He started to ask.
"-Artemi-"
"Holly."
There was a silence.
"Since when does Holly have a kid, Artemis?"
Actually, there was a more inappropriate version of that question going on in his head, but let's keep it G people.
"She doesn't, Butler. It's all Foaly's fault for trapping these babies aboveground."
His tone was a snappier tone than the one he normally used.
Butler backed out slowly.
In fairness, this kid was actually the hardest kid to take care of. The other kids, bar one already knew the rhyme that taught fairy-kids to sit still if ever near a human. It was almost like a creepy movie scene, where the scary dolls just ..LOOK..at you, with the crazed I-kill-people-while-eating-my-frosted-Flakes-look. That's kind of how these kids looked.
They sat down, frozen, their eyes wide open and following Artemis around the room like a creepy painting. Holly was carrying the other a baby too weak to sit up on its own, and was regretting not choosing the other baby. Artemis had chosen the baby that didn't have a wide grin on it's face. Holly had thought a more playful one would be more fun. Apparently not.
Apparently the reason the sprite was so happy was it was about to go on a "burping" spree.
and it's parent shad fed it PEA baby food.
PEA.
Luckily, her LEP suit automatically ran a positive and negative shock through her suit, and it slid onto Artemis's carpet. Well, she thought all that burp had gotten onto his carpet, until she realized a previously blond baby was now a lime-green haired baby, who was to scared to scream.
He burst out crying instead, and the kid must have had 4 million decibel lungs, because twenty years later, on the exact moment the kid started screaming, the now 35 year old Artemis would still rub his ears.
This set off all the other kids crying, and Artemis et the kid down on the chair, then on second though moved him to the piano bench. Then on third thought, moved him to Beckett's bed. He opened the door to the laundry room and started dragging the kids in, moving slower that the tortoises from Hoodwinked. If he had a choice to switch places with the guy from the Hangover, and be in a car with a tiger that was waking up with a tranquilizer (come to think about it, he'd been in that situation before…but never in a car) and being where he was right now, he would take a teed-off pussy cat any day.
Twenty minutes later, all the kids had been dragged into the laundry room. Holly had looked scandalized at first, then after three minutes, she was dragging them in faster than him. He stumbled over to a chair, realized that was where he had put the baby momentarily, but hey, he wasn't taking chances, stumbled over to another chair and halfway collapsed.
Butler was watching from the stairs.
Reminded him of Myles and Beckett.
He made a mental note to NEVER allow Artemis to have kids. Ever. even if it meant not continuing the Fowl line. The safety of the world was more important than creating miniature heirs.
Suddenly everything was dead silent. Artemis looked up and saw Holly about ready to kick the door open in panic. Black started eating at the corners of his eyesight. he was going to bed early.
He heard a high, evil laugh.
He went other the other side of the door, and glanced into Holly's eyes, the same colors as his. This threw him off for a moment, even though he had seen them a number of times before. She nodded, and roundhouse kicked the door down.
The door was rather pathetic, and just fell without ant assassins on the other side. The kids were all gathered around a large container…oh no.
"D'arvit" breathed Artemis.
Holly just looked him. "What?"
Artemis's eyes looked like sunny side up eggs that a lid had poked the yokes so everything came pouring out. In this case, panic.
"During the Fowl Manor..eh..siege.."
Holly looked at him. "Yeah?"
Artemis winced. "The ventilation sucked some of the Bio-bombs..aftermath and stored it once it realized it was harmful.." He them pointed to the can, which looked fine, but one of the kids had started messing with it.
Holly leaped over a pipe to stop him, but it was too late. The top came off.
Artemis had minutes to make a decision.
1. Die
2. Scream and Die
3. Die silently and nobly
4. Run like Heck
5. Use one of the nearby pipes to bash the kid who opened the can over the head
6. Activate Rule Nineteen.
He went with option six. He yelled "Rule Nineteen!" So Holly could hear him, and reached inside his hidden box inside the laundry room, hidden in a secret compartment inside Juliet's old Bob the Builder lunchbox, and drew out two little grenades.
He threw one at the kids, and Holly gasped.
Well, it wasn't technically a grenade, it was a sleeping gas capsule.
He was NOT listening to that screaming again.
Death before eardrums apparently.
THEN he threw the second one, (a REAL grenade) onto the roof to collapse around the bio-bomb fumes to stop them escaping temporarily.
He grabbed the nearest kid and threw him out the door, then Holly followed siut, throwing kids lie they had never thrown before. If the President of the United States had mixed up the beseball-with-the-baby-thing* and thrown the baby instaed of the ball, they would not have skidded farther away, or snored louder.
So much for preserving eardrums.
At the last few seconds left, he grabbed Holy and they threw themselves out of the room and put their hands over the necks and dived, while the thankfully detached Laundry room caved in, and Beckett's stupid pink shirt he insisted on wearing was covered in exploding lint, Tide, fluffy towels that went boom in the line of duty, and a washing machine that shot upwards for a brief moment before getting slammed back into the ground by physics, leaving some pants inside that would never get dewrinkled.
Artemis and Holly laid in a tangle of limbs, surrounded by sleeping babies. Butler had seen what had been going on, he scooted the babies out of danger, and then realized Artemis and Holly weren't out of the blast radius and had tossed them down the hall, and was running up to check vitals.
Artemis blinked, letting the sunlight get to him. He coughed out "Rule nineteen" before passing out.
Holly was working to disentangle herself from him, realizing how awkward the position was.
It was at that moment Commander Kelp threw open the doors with a squad behind him to reclaim the babies. He had already had enough conversations with angry mothers, he did not need more stress.
"Yes Maam, we know, where you kid is…"
"Yes, he is at Fowl Manor"
"…..Yes, am almost certain he hasn't been brutally murdered"
"No."
"Yes, I'll see personally he's all right."
"No, that is a bad idea"
"Yes, I'm single..what kind of a question is that?"
He opened the door, and Holly had enough energy to give him a thumbs up , although she was covered partially by Fowl, before she passed out.
Trouble looked up, drinking in the scene, then looked up at Butler.
"Don't look at me. I wasn't the one who made up the rules."
Trouble pressed a palm into his hand.
" This is a lawsuit waiting to happen."
YAY!Longest chapter yet! Yeah, I wont be able to update toll my birthday is over, but I will keep writing, I promise. The poll is still on, so just check on the earlier chapters to see what is available.
*In no way do I condon animal abuse, but the back cats in our nieghbor hood killed off everything else, so the kids squirt them with water guns.