Author's Note; The final version of chapter three. Original version posted 2014. Final version posted 2016. And guys, I'm really sorry for losing the Author's Notes of the original chapters, as some came with review-replies and personal thanks, but that won't be for every chapter and I will have them copy/pasted from the older story.
Thanks! And as always, I love you guys, and I don't own Artemis Fowl! Enjoy! Longer chapters ahead!
"Holly."
"Go away."
"Captain Short!"
"Leave me alone!"
Foaly took a deep breath and knocked again.
"Centaur, I'm warning you now..."
Foaly made a fist and banged.
"Ugh!"
There was a faint buzz indicating the door had been unlocked, and it slid open sideways to let in the triumphant centaur.
His grin faded as he saw his elfin friend.
"What?" demanded Holly, falling back into her chair. The desk near it was bundled with stacks of paper and unwanted documents with cobwebs in them. Sure, Holly's personal space usually looked like a hurricane had struck it merciless, strewing and slapping everything around in places that no one would ever intentionally put them, but not cobwebs. Never cobwebs.
"Didn't you sleep last night?"
"Yes. I mean, no. Not at all." She glared at him through red-rimmed eyes.
Foaly remembered just what last night had been. "You mean you spent it awake with Artemis..."
"D'Arvit!" snapped Holly. She extended a threatening finger out toward the centaur. "Look, I went to bed at eleven. Eleven, Foaly! And I thought that was a good thing, because usually it's the next day when I fall asleep. Oh, but Mud Boy saw fit to wake me up at three in the Fronddamn morning to hop onto a shuttle for here, and now you come along disrupting my sacred sleep. Can't I ever have a break?"
Foaly coughed pointedly in a gesture that he wasn't taking her seriously, but not pointedly enough to convey that he didn't care at all. Holly was dangerous half-dead.
"Eh, anyway, we got a new voluntary recruit. The Commander isn't available so I think you should check him out."
Holly dropped her face into her hands. "Why me?"
Foaly helped her up by one elbow. "Because I can't conduct an interview unless it's for one of my recruits. Who don't work in the field."
The elf stood, groggily. "Fine. But that's all for today."
"Why don't you let go of your pride and request leave?" asked Foaly, albeit with prior knowledge his suggestion was going to be ignored.
The elf waved an arm at him, ignoring his words. "Where's the new recruit, Foaly?"
"You know it's for your own sake."
"Where?"
The centaur rolled his eyes. "Second floor. Interview room. Wherever else?"
Yasuke was an elf born and bred in Atlantis. He did not have the best upbringing and it was the very reason behind his exile five years ago. He had since lived among humans in the city of Tokyo and had initially adopted the name Naruto, but noting how it earned him several suspecting frowns from all over the country, that alias hadn't lasted long. When asked why he never got taller, he had always replied it was the result of being artificially conceived with no real means to do so. He had managed to consult a human to forge many of the essential documents by government law. Yasuke took pride in this particular, not inexpensive, venture. His consulting forger had been the very Mud Man the People themselves had consulted over the years in different circumstances.
Yasuke had had Artemis in his contact for years. And over those years he'd come to know what exactly Fowl meant to the People.
No more than a few months after the events of the Great Techno Crash, fairies were discovered and war started.
He saw it as the devastating tragedy that it was, make no mistake, but something he also saw in it was an opportunity to get back in his people's good books. The world was choosing sides and, however much he'd enjoyed his brief residence in Tokyo, he did not have it in him to betray his blood. Couple the reasons together and there was one course of action that made a lot of sense.
"Good evening, Captain Short," he smiled at elf who entered the room and, somewhat exasperatedly he thought, took a seat opposite him. "A pleasure to finally meet the People's hero."
Holly smiled uncomfortably. Partially because her head still lolled into the lure of sleep, partially because it did not help to know that this fairy had been in exile for five years. "Likewise. Yasuke, is it?"
Yasuke nodded happily. He was normally a cheerful person, and nobody had told him it wasn't wise to be cheerful during an interview for the army. "Yes. Yes, of course. You know, I admire you LEP guys and the stuff you do."
The Captain raised an eyebrow. "But weren't you in exile?"
"That was the council. The LEP defended me then, because their witnesses said I was innocent."
Holly leaned forward, trying to appear intrigued, but in reality it was to stretch the tired muscles of her back. "Were you?"
"Kinda. I did set a deal with those dwarfs but I wasn't the one who did the killing. I tried to stop it. Then walk out on it. I made a mess of the situation."
"And you have human contacts?" Holly looked up from the files Foaly had handed her. Most of the stuff on this guy didn't look very noble; on the contrary, they didn't appear particularly shady either.
"None of whom I really like. They're mostly the guys at bars, and the cashiers at grocery stores, but I had some lovely neighbours. The people at the Arcade, too, I guess I liked them–"
"The LEP doesn't tolerate their time being wasted and I don't tolerate babbling."
"Right. I didn't have many contacts as such. Well, maybe Mr Fowl. Who has, by the way, told me so much about you."
Holly nearly choked. And she'd thought she could just decline the application without having to ask too many questions. "You know him?"
"Oh yeah," Yasuke smiled. It made Holly stare, witnessing such a ridiculously sincere smile in an LEP Aboveground interview room. New recruits usually left this place shivering, or crying, or both. Maybe she wasn't being as tough as she should. "Helped me out a few times. I had to...uh, prove some things to the authorities in Japan. They didn't entirely believe my pointed ears were the product of an unregistered plastic surgery clinic. I understand you're really close to him?"
"And instead of disguising yourself, you kept giving people excuses?"
"Reasons," insisted Yasuke.
"It was too great a risk to take. You could have given away the existence of the People!"
"But I didn't, did I? It happened some other way."
Holly narrowed her eyes at him.
"I wore a woolen hat most of the time, anyway," amended the elf sheepishly. "Of course I knew it was a risk!"
"Voluntary recruit, huh?" Holly still hadn't adopted an altogether friendly look. "Tell me this one thing, Yasuke. Do you have any idea what you're getting yourself into? And how serious you need to be about your post in order to stay alive on the field? Our Captains and Majors have strategy brainstorming sessions every day. And every morning the rookies, the cadets, soldiers of all levels are briefed on them and they never stay the same. The Batallion is unpredictable as it is brutal. Any successful counter-initiatives that we take are either completely on accident or carefully calculated, because no one on our side has managed to hack one of their data bases or schedules. It's very likely that they don't have those in the first place and carry out every attack at just the whims of their leaders, and somehow they're winning this war without so much as a battleplan. It makes their next move hard to anticipate and it makes timely counterattacks neigh impossible. Right now we are running blind. We need everyone on alert at all times. Slacking will lose you your post, and if on the field, worse. Do you understand the gravity of the job you're asking for?"
Yasuke didn't take nearly as long to process this information as she had thought, but following her speech a long thirty seconds stretched on in silence.
"Yes, Captain Short."
Holly sighed.
"Alright. It's not normally in my place to take interviews, so you're going to have to wait until the Commander is available for any real task."
She stood up and extended a hand. "This isn't over."
He didn't hesitate to shake it. "Awesome! So I'm in?"
"What did I just say?"
The LEP cafeteria in the Above ground Headquaters wasn't much to look at. Dull yellow walls and the whole 'lunch room' look. Except that, instead of a buffet you had to stand in a long line until the painfully slow pixie at the counter served everyone before you. Usually, this would have annoyed Holly but today she was glad. At least it kept her away from that blasted centaur whose mind, she knew, was exploding with a dozen annoying questions.
She was about to offer her place in line to a junior officer standing behind her when she spotted Yasuke waving from the much shorter second line, holding up two trays in his hands. What was he even doing here? She hadn't hoped he would get an appointment with the Commander nearly so soon.
Holly groaned and forced herself to follow him to where Foaly had left her a seat. Doubtless he'd been the one to hand the new elf his first assignment; antagonize Captain Short.
"Nice try, by the way," chuckled the centaur as she slipped in opposite. "Standing in that line and buying yourself time. We still have that bet to settle, remember?"
"I already told you that you won, Foaly. And your stories have probably already gone on your website."
"Ah, now, I wouldn't do that!"
The elf raised an eyebrow. "No?"
"Not without enough information."
"You won't get any," Holly met his gaze calmly. "Yes, it was the Sky Lounge. Yes, it was private, but that was probably for security concerns rather than anything else. And I will swear that the view was really good. But it was work-related and we discussed the bio-nukes, the anonymous 'help', the Battalion's new threats and several other things relating to the Cross Species Battle. It was not a date."
Foaly pursed his lips in thought. "What were you wearing?"
"Oh for Frond's sake," snapped Holly.
The centaur grinned a victorious little grin. "Come on, let's hear it. You don't want me bothering you with the question for the rest of the day, so you might as well tell me now."
Holly sent an almost electrocuting death glare his way. "Or maybe I could hit you just now, and you won't feel like asking me for the rest of the day."
"You're only digging your own grave deeper, Captain," tutted Foaly. "Why on Earth are you so reluctant to tell me? Surely it isn't going to help prove I'm right?"
"Grey," relented the elf, albeit gritting her teeth. "Cocktail dress. A very basic one and about the only thing I owned appropriate for that kind of venue."
"Funny, because you usually pick comfort and sheer stubbornness over dress code," Foaly was struggling not to show too many molars in his grin. It would doubtless draw him a few concerned stares from onlookers.
"It was not a date," said Holly, sounding as though hers was a statement of fact.
"Sure it wasn't," replied Foaly unconcernedly, picking up a can of drink. He decided he would not push the matter further. The remarkably unconvinced nature of his words would be more than enough to put his friend off. He was an expert on antagonizing the Elfin Captain in various many ways.
He never got to fully relish in the joy this pasttime brought him, though, because the next instant was when a disaster siren started wailing loud and instinctively everyone, centaur and elf included, was on their feet, heading urgently for one of the three emergency exits.
