More Cora. And Holly and Artemis falling for each other. As per.

Warning: Bad language

Cora 0.5

Artemis Fowl's chair was propped back on two legs. He had seen other boys sit this way when he had attended a boarding school. They would rock precariously, grinning, smacking a grey wad of polyisobutylene between their back molars. Artemis sighed internally.

Then the pock-faced man gripping the tail end of his tie – the only thing stopping the teenager from tumbling backwards out of the plane's exit door and into the Atlantic night sky – yanked hard on the silk, effectively bringing Artemis not-quite-so-back to Earth. The boy squinted up at him, his hair and the hem of his jacket whipping in the gale. The plane was cruising at approximately 13,000 feet and Artemis's pale hands, which were both bound tightly behind the chair's plastic back, had turned scarlet with the wind.

'I can't hear you!' shouted the seventeen-year-old above the roar of the abyss. 'I'm afraid you will have to speak up!'

The man tightened his grip on the tie, strangling it, his knuckles white.

'Tell me where the plans are!' he bellowed, spittle flying. 'Tell me where the plans are or I swear I will let you drop!'

Artemis's brow contracted. 'You would like to shop?'

'Drop! I'll let you drop!'

Further inside the plane Butler's muscles had begun to tremble. He was on his knees on the cold, steel floor of the hold, his tendons screaming from keeping his back straight, his fingers clasped tightly behind his head. Another man, Keith, his blond hair receding from a tanned and battle-scarred brow, was steadying a pistol against his temple. The bodyguard's eyes were narrowed, their pupils flickering between his charge's precarious balancing act at the plane's exit and the boots of the man holding a gun to his head.

'This is your last chance!' bellowed the man near-hanging Artemis.

And despite the plane shuddering beneath his rear and his bodyguard's incapacity, the teenager still replied in typical, patronising tones: 'I have told you. I have no idea where they are! I didn't know when I was inside of the plane and my knowledge hasn't much improved now that I am outside of it.'

'Listen to me, you English prick! I will kill you! This is no bluff!'

'God,' spat Artemis, twisting his face to the side. 'You should really invest in some breath freshener.'

'WHERE ARE THE PLANS?'

'Are you deaf or merely a simpleton? I do not know!'

'Artemis!' shouted Butler, an instinctive warning. He was rewarded with a swift blow to the face with the butt of the pistol.

'This is your last chance, kid.'

Artemis snorted.

Then an inch of striped silk slipped through the red-faced man's hand and Artemis's body lurched back. The teen's smile vanished.

The man wound the tie back around his fist. 'Got your attention now, have I, boy?' He pulled Artemis's face close to his, his breath hot and rank. 'You'd best start worrying about me, and where you're gonna be headed in the next three seconds if you don't tell me what I need.'

Artemis's eyes darted to his bodyguard.

'Three…'

Butler's heart was hammering at his ribcage.

'Two...'

'No!' screamed Butler.

'One.'

And nothing happened.

The blonde standing over Butler swore impatiently. 'Bring him back inside, Carl!' shouted Keith. 'We can't let him drop! We know it! He knows it! We'll have to get the information out of him another way.'

Carl's eye twitched. He looked down at the boy in his hands. His raven hair was a rat's nest, there was blood drying beneath both his nostrils and his arse was two chair legs and a tie away from a terrifying and speedy death — but the teenager was actually glancing back over his shoulder like a schoolchild searching for something diverting outside a classroom window. Carl followed his gaze and thought, for a split second, that he had seen a slight heat haze whip past the open door…

'You know, Carl,' shouted the teenager above the raging winds. 'I actually quite like it out here. It's good to get some fresh air occasionally.'

'What—?'

'Butler!'

His bodyguard's barrel chest heaving.

'Don't worry! We will be alright!'

'What?' bellowed Carl again.

'Didn't anyone warn you?' asked Artemis, whose grin had grown back. 'I have friends in very high places.'

And he jerked his head back. His tie yanked at Carl's grip and the muscle man stumbled forwards. Air and cloud rushed up to meet him and he screamed, his small eyes opening wide. Then his brain decided to catch up with his body and he let go, dropping the combined deadweight of teenager and chair into the night sky. He caught one last glimpse of Artemis Fowl's triumphant, masterful expression before gravity threw the boy earthwards and Carl was left panting on the floor of the plane.

'He jumped,' gibbered Carl. 'He fucking jumped.'

'No!' corrected the blonde, his face turning purple, his gun jabbing at the air. 'You fucking dropped him!'

Artemis calculated that in those first moments of exiting the plane he was falling at a rate of 40 metres per second. In approximately three seconds he would reach a terminal velocity of about 56 metres per second. Then it would be a mere one minute ten before he became Atlantic jam — with a generous side order of mutilated plastic and metal.

While Artemis thought about this in the calm confines of his mind he could keep himself distracted from the very real violence involved in uncontrolled freefall. His body was a pull toy in the jaws of a playful and very enthusiastic mastiff. His boxed ears ached with white noise as the sky flashed – white, navy, grey, white, pink, white – between his struggling, watering eyelids. He could feel the skin rippling at his cheeks, his lips blown upwards to expose sore, pink gum. He wrapped his legs around the chair's thin metal ones and gritted his teeth.

The cloudbank shot up to meet him, his eyebrows rose and he hit white. The view was so similar to the one he had seen two years ago, barely holding himself together on the edge of the Martello tower, that panic, cold and breath-stealing, flooded his chest.

And then it all vanished, instantly, almost magically. The sky had unveiled itself and for an extended, beautiful moment Artemis was sitting on the night, suspended above the dark, moon-chipped waters of the Atlantic. He blinked slowly and released a breath that seemed to last an eternity...

Before something less-than-peaceful slammed into his side. Something winged, red-haired and swearing.

'Ah!' shouted Artemis, suddenly finding himself shielded from the majority of the wind, his feelings of panic evaporating to be replaced with something warmer, something far more secure. 'So, you did get my text.'

The Present

The rain tapped lazily against the sheet metal above their heads. Beneath them, the wood of the bench was warm from half an hour's dedicated perching. Their arms were folded tight across practically flat chests and the zips of their matching school coats were pulled up beneath their chins.

Tilly's coat rustled. 'When do you reckon it's going to stop?'

Cora shrugged. 'Probably never. We live in Ireland.'

'But it's got to stop sometime… The bonfire'll be called off otherwise.'

Both girls peered out unenthusiastically at the heavens.

Cora grimaced. 'Not much we can do about it really.'

Their eyes fell from the skies back to watching the small group of sodden Sixth Formers playing kickabouts in the yard. Rain water flicked from their fringes and soaked their thin jackets as they tussled together for the ball.

Tilly's blonde head fell against Cora's shoulder. 'He's so fit.'

Cora cocked an eyebrow. 'Jacko?'

Dylan Jacoby, thin-shinned and quick, was just making a go at goal. With his dark eyes, cocky smile and arse toned from 15 years of football training, he was considered to be the best looking male in the school.

'No,' said Tilly, slapping Cora's sleeve. 'Yer man over there. The one who makes a living staring at you all day. '

Cora didn't have to look. Her bodyguard of six months would be where he always was. Dressed in a uniform specially tailored to accommodate both his girth and the amount of definitely-not-allowed-on-school-premises weaponry he liked to carry, he kept a respectable-yet-still-passable-in-less-than-three-seconds-in-case-of-emergency proximity to Cora at all times. He sat at the back of her every class. He took lunch at the table behind hers. He had even found a way to play opposite her in the school orchestra, having inexplicably taken up the cello a few days after she had been conscripted into attending lunchtime practice.

'He is stunning,' said Tilly staring openly at the nearly seven foot teenager leaning in the shadows against the side of the science block. 'He is a god among weeds. And it still blows my mind that he's only two years older than us.'

Cora's scowl deepened.

The bell rang for the end of lunch and both girls got up to go inside. In the shadows, the bodyguard moved too.

Once Mrs Thomas's science class was in full swing – Bunsen burners blazing, gases erupting, goggles melting in mysterious acidic compounds – Cora walked across the no man's land of her side of the classroom to his.

He always sat alone. Who, in their school of budding career socialites, would wish to associate with the giant man-boy so mentally behind he was taking Fifth Year classes?

'I need you to leave me alone tonight,' said Cora, skipping any niceties.

'Miss?' His accent still retained that Mexican lilt of his childhood.

'You heard me. I can't have you around me. It'll be embarrassing.'

'Miss, it is my duty to protect you.'

Cora plucked his brushed steel Parker pen delicately off the bench and twirled it between her long fingers. 'I couldn't give a toss about your duties. I'm going to a party. And you are not on the guest list.'

'Miss, I will be sure to keep a respectable distance.'

'Of five miles. You'll be taking the night off. I've arranged it with my father.'

'Miss?'

'He told me to relay the message.'

'Miss, I have had no message.'

Cora's eyes narrowed. 'Are you questioning me? I thought the whole point of your existence was to obey me?'

He held her gaze. 'Miss.'

Cora smiled tightly and placed the now slightly glowing pen flat on the desk again. The table's plastic top burned black beneath the smouldering metal, acrid smoke twisting from between her fingers.

She returned to her side of the room.

'Were you asking him to the party?' asked Tilly, pushing her goggles atop her head.

Cora sat back on her stool. 'Christ, no.'

She glanced back surreptitiously.

His expression was blank, as per usual, even as his thick, battle-scarred fingers picked up the still blazing pen. It frustrated her, his face. She could never get a rise from it, could never tell what he thought from the glance of his eyes, the line of his mouth. Nor any other line of him for that matter.

He should be cursing her by now. She'd made it clear from day one what she thought of him.

'This is my grandmother's salon,' she declared, sweeping between the low couches strewn with cushions.

Onto the next room.

'Her music room. Practically my music room.'

He followed her past the antique baby grand.

'My grandfather's study. Nothing much to see here. Not since the 1990s anyway…'

She stopped inside the next room, the most beautiful so far.

Papered in scarlet damask, with an antique four-poster squatted at its centre and a towering 19th-century dressing table decorated with mahogany finials in the shape of swan heads, he knew this must be Cora's own room. His eyes swept the breadth of the open fireplace and the mullioned glass doors that lead to her balcony.

Where would a sniper be best positioned? Where would an abductor hide in wait?

Cora folded her thin arms. 'I'm guessing Dom has told you about me?'

The Blue Diamond's hazel eyes returned to his new principle. 'My uncle briefed me on your routine and your family background, miss.'

Cora cocked a red eyebrow. 'So you know my mum is a fairy, yes?'

'Miss, I know Mrs Fowl is not currently residing at the manor.'

'Because she's a fucking elf. Did he tell you that?'

He didn't bat an eye. 'He briefed me fully on your family's history.'

Cora had stepped out of her Lanvin ballet flats. She stripped her jumper over her head and pulled off her jeans. If the young bodyguard hadn't been told she was a dancer, he would have known then. Her legs were toned muscle, her stomach flat, her back birch straight.

She gave a twisted grin – 'Did he tell you about this?' – and vanished.

His hand fell on the sunglasses in his pocket and whipped them onto his face. The anti-shield filter built into the arms whirred into action. And she was back in sight, barely a metre from his chest, shimmering strangely.

'Or this?'

She moved with near lightning speed. His left hand snapped shut on her wrist as she snatched the stiletto from his cuff – but it was too late. She dropped the blade and blood shone dark and angry in the slash in her palm before blue sparks stoppered the flow.

'But I guess you've already seen that trick,' she said softly.

In his eyes her shape solidified, lost its otherworldly glow. She hooked her index finger onto the bridge of his glasses and yanked them off as he stared steadily down at her face.

'I don't need your protection,' she said, her voice layered with just enough Mesmer to make his pupils dilate. 'I need my freedom. I've got enough people watching my every move without my father hiring an extra to follow me in the gaps when he isn't there.'

She broke eye contact and pulled a long dressing gown from a wooden stand near the hearth, swinging it around her pale shoulders.

'Just stay back,' she ordered him, in her own voice, her back still to him. 'However much you might think you know about me, about my so-called mother, you truly don't know what you're dealing with.'

She turned, and her icy blues met with calm, steady caramel.

Back in the science lab, Cora lowered her eyes. 'He's not coming,' she grumbled at her pencil case. 'How am I supposed to have a good time with him lugging along in my wake?'

Tilly fluttered her eyelids. 'Why don't I just take him off your hands for you, and you won't have to worry?'

Cora pushed her off her stool.

'Hello,' said Artemis, smiling as he rolled his oxblood leather chair back from his desk. It was night, and the manor's lamps were lit, setting the whole family home aglow. 'It's been a while since you've deigned to visit me in my lowly work place, Ms Fowl.'

Cora smiled back. 'School and extracurricular things have been a little crazy lately.'

The ex-child prodigy got up and moved to the couch. 'Come. Sit with me. Tell me how you are.'

Cora sat back in the cradle of her father's arm. It was a familiar position for them. He had read books to her this way when she was small, explained her first theorem, watched her first Hitchcock. He was right, it had been too long. 'Not much to tell really–' But that wasn't going to stop her having a dig– 'nothing you won't already know because Juliet Junior will have briefed you.'

Artemis pulled off his spectacles and sighed as only a Fowl could. 'Cora, it's been half a year. You're a Fowl, you have a Butler. Please, move on.'

Cora stuck out her bottom lip. 'But I know his name already. Isn't there a thing about us not knowing their names?'

'As you've already argued a hundred… and seventeen times. It is the 21st century. I knew Domovoi's name when he was still my guard – as I have countered your argument a hundred and seventeen times.'

Cora gave him a look most decidedly Fowl. 'I dislike him.'

Artemis, as a Fowl, stared coolly back – immune. 'How's Tilly?'

'You hate Tilly.'

'She's… endearing… Endearingly vacuous, but still endearing.'

'How's Dom?'

Artemis grimaced.

Cora sat up, instantly to attention. 'What have you done?'

Domovoi Butler's gravelly bass tones drifted from the corridor outside. 'He identified me inappropriately in a public setting.'

Cora grinned. 'Dommy. Come in here.'

Domovoi Butler was getting on. But gracefully. Thankfully, he was connected to one of the most stylish families in the Western world. And the Western world was, in turn, very grateful.

He leaned his still enormous girth against the wood of the door jamb, folding arms encased in thick luxury wool. 'It was at the Parents Gathering.'

Artemis muttered something vicious under his breath, leaning back to look at the ceiling. Cora loved it when her father and practically-her- second-father fought. Artemis Fowl the Second would regress into the stroppy 14-year-old of legend and, for once, she wasn't the one being told off.

Butler's features tightened. 'Artemis, your daughter is present.'

The Fowl heir was unabashed. He sniffed, the lamplight shining in his silver-streaked hair. 'And she knows full well to do as I say, not as I do. Or I will personally torch all her belongings.'

Cora wound her arm around her father's. 'And she is 16, and she already knows all the people at the Parents Gathering are vapid cocks.'

Butler looked unamused.

'Please continue,' said Cora, with a charming smile almost certainly inherited from her paternal grandmother.

Butler stepped further into the room, filling the space. 'As I was saying… It was time to introduce everyone– '

Cora cut across him. 'And everyone assumed Daddy was your toy boy lover, as per.'

'As per usual, yes. And your father here…'

'Didn't bother denying it?'

'Claimed he was my gigolo.'

Cora stared at her father. 'Oh my god.'

Artemis dropped his eyes from the fresco to his ex-bodyguard's weathered face. 'It was a joke, Butler. I was bored.'

'You have never been very good at jokes, Artemis.'

He sighed deprecatingly. 'I don't care what they think of us, old friend. We're a little past that now, surely? Come, daughter mine. Defend my honour.'

The teenager stared earnestly at her gigantic co-parent. 'He did make an excellent joke. About four years ago. I remember. It was great.' Cora turned back to her dad. 'But gigolo?'

'Inappropriate,' repeated Butler.

Then Cora caught sight of the broad shoulder of the figure standing in Domovoi's wake. The elder bodyguard continued to look unamused. Artemis sighed.

And his daughter realised she had the perfect plan.

The Past

'The boss is going to kill us.'

'Shut up. SHUT UP! SHUT UP!'

Butler felt close to a heart attack. This couldn't be happening. Not again. This would be the third time.

'SHUT UP!' screamed Carl.

The man guarding Butler scratched his temple with the muzzle of his pistol. 'Well, I'm not phoning Britva.'

Then, quite unexpectedly, the chair Artemis had been strapped to not three minutes previously soared unaccompanied through the open exit door, slamming into Carl and knocking him into the back of the hold.

The one muscle man left standing gawped at the spread-eagled slump of his partner's body. 'What the–?'

Butler took his chance. And smashed 2,800lbs of force into Keith's thigh with a feral violence he hadn't had the chance to release in quite a while. Keith screamed, and Butler slapped his temple with an open palm as the muscle man's head collapsed past his hand. Needless to saw, Keith wasn't getting back up for a while.

Then the bodyguard looked up, just in time to see his charge step neatly through the exit door, jogging nimbly to keep to his feet as some invisible momentum propelled him inside. He straightened his tie with one hand and kept moving.

Carl struggled on the floor, one of his legs bent at an unnatural angle. 'No way,' he blurted. 'No way in hell.'

Artemis's tone was brisk and business-like. 'Never underestimate a Fowl, Mr Banner. And certainly never call me English.' He raised the borrowed neutrino in his left hand and shot a blue pulse into Carl's chest. The man jerked, and was unconscious. 'You can come out, Holly,' he called. 'It's just us.'

And, of course, Major Holly Short of the LEPrecon fizzled into view. 'You lose something, big man?' she asked, grinning, as Butler lurched towards his charge.

'I've half a mind to tell him to stay lost,' growled the man mountain, seizing Artemis by the arm.

'I'm fine,' grumbled the teenager, as his body was pressed and pulled in Butler's field medical. 'Really, Butler. You can stop.'

The Eurasian cupped Artemis's jaw in one massive hand. 'Your nose is bleeding again.'

Artemis frowned and whipped a monogrammed handkerchief from an inside pocket, dabbing at his nostrils.

'Look at him,' said Holly, her head on one side. 'Skydiving, shooting people, bleeding. Our Arty's turning into a soldier, Butler.'

The bodyguard was unimpressed. 'It's days like this I wish he'd remain the hermit-like scholar.'

'There was no risk,' said Artemis, in a tone that made Holly raise a scarlet eyebrow. 'I knew you would be there to catch me.' He lowered his handkerchief, a smudge of blood marring the bright cotton. 'I forever seem to be falling around you of late.'

Holly held his gaze, that strange heat growing in the pit of her stomach again. He was beginning to master the trick of igniting it, looking at her in that way that shut everyone, everything, else out.

'Butler,' she said, still not looking away. 'We'll let you deal with the pilot. See you at the bottom, yeah?'

Both bodyguard and principle frowned. 'What?' they chimed.

But too late. Her tiny fingers had wrapped around the teenager's bicep and snatched from his protector's side, pitching him – 'Holly, no!' – once more into the evening skies. Butler's jaw just about had time to drop before Holly's mechanical wings sprung from the rig on her back and she threw herself after him.

He lurched towards the exit to see Artemis sinking into a mammoth bank of cumulonimbus, his back to the Earth, one pale hand outstretched and a nut-brown, strong palm reaching back.

Skydiving. If you ever have the chance, do it. One of the most extraordinary feelings.

Feedback, as always, would be stupendously lovely.