Chapter Text
Week 1
Nothing.
Week 2
Nothing.
Week 3
Well, at least there's something fun going on...
Week 4
Uh...oh...
Week 5, Part 1
Just another day at the LEP. Life in Haven could be called "varied," but it could also be called "monotonous." Run around for a few millennia and even the most abnormal start to a day could be repeated hundreds of times, making it seem rather passee.
But Corporal Grub Kelp rather liked passee, and he certainly did not like abnormal. Abnormal put him in front of massive Eurasian bodyguards with nothing but a little gun to protect himself. Sure, that gun could burn a rhino to a crisp on the right setting, but you had to shoot the rhino before it got to you.
So Grub enjoyed his normal life and he enjoyed his desk job. Perhaps not the best paying position in the LEP (that had to go to his older brother, Commander Trouble Kelp), but enough to get by. Besides, there were certain perks to his office. Established territory, recognition (even if it was negative), privacy...yes. Office work was good.
So, one day shortly after the Haven tourist season had petered out, Grub Kelp arrived at the front steps of Police Plaza exactly five minutes before his shift began, humming to himself and surveying the comings and goings of the officers. The first members of the graveyard shift were already on their way out (Grub frowned at this, but said nothing, as their early departure no longer impacted his own work) and their replacements were staggering in.
Loitering near the front doors was Lieutenant Lili Frond, flirting rather noncommittally with the visiting Chix Verbil, all while glancing around for her easy exit: her boss, Holly Short. The youngest Frond had joined Major Short in recent years, acting as the secretary to the Commander's new second-in-command. This meant waiting to ambush the hard-to-find Recon officer, who seemed to spend as much time out of Police Plaza as in it. An odd achievement for a position that should have resulted in 95% paperwork and 5% coffee breaks.
Lili responded to a comment from her green-tinged flirting partner with a soft laugh and a flip of the hair. Grub couldn't help but be captured by the flash of her blond locks in the bright lights of the front doors. She was certainly the most desirable female in the LEP, regardless of what species you pursued. Rich, famous, drop-dead-gorgeous. And, like almost every other woman in the LEP, completely oblivious to Grub's presence. He sighed sadly.
She looked down the marble staircase, eyes momentarily alighting on Grub, causing him to miss a step and drop his data tablet. He cursed, praying that nothing had been jostled too badly. Once he had confirmed that his prize was in full working order, he remained crouched and looked up to Lili, giving her a shy grin, tucking a bit of his loose hair (Mommy had been insisting he get it cut, but he'd evaded shears so far) behind his ears.
But her attention was already far past him, if it had ever actually fallen on the tangerine-haired corporal. She smiled widely, not even bothering to say goodbye to Chix as she trotted down the staircase, her own tablet held firmly to her chest. "Holly!" She cried, waving, both enthused to see her boss and thoroughly annoyed with her very existence outside of the office. Given the choice, Lili would have probably handcuffed Holly to the desk so she could keep track of the woman. "I really need to give the Atlantean ambassador your answer today. Will you be going to the Koboi hearings or no?"
Passing by Grub's right side, Holly Short ascended the stairs to meet her secretary. She looked at the tablet presented to her and frowned. "Is this really necessary? It's Koboi. We shouldn't even be having this conversation, just yet. Doesn't she have a few good centuries before her first hearing?"
Lili flipped her hair over her shoulders, but it immediately fell back onto the tablet when she nodded. "Technically, yes, but this isn't about parole. It's the hearing for her smuggling charges."
Holly rolled her eyes at this. "Smuggling. Lili, can you tell me how long she is sentenced for?"
Lili responded with no hesitation. "Five thousand years. Three thousand with good behavior."
"And how old is she?"
"Two hundred."
"And how long do pixies live?"
"At the outside, eighteen hundred years."
"Then bug me if she is about to get out alive, will you?" Holly seemed about to say more, but she stopped, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. She recovered quickly, shaking her head to get back in order.
Lili, however, was all too attuned to her charge, if a little short on tact. She tilted her head a bit, studying the smaller elf. "You look horrible."
"Thanks," Holly muttered, continuing her ascent to work. "It's great to know I fall afoul of your expectations."
Lili trilled, following Holly up the stairs, flipping through the many discussion points on her data tablet as she filled the woman's schedule with the new information. "Holly, I always expect you to fail in that respect."
Grub, who had watched this short interchange from his crouched position on the stairs, finally stood, but he didn't make it very far, as his ears soon picked up a distant and exciting sound.
From the street came an engine's roar, followed by an alarming shriek. Grub turned to see a blue and silver magna-bike running free. It came down one of the streets perpendicular to Police Plaza, brakes squealing as it drifted around the corner. With a new squeal, this one of protesting wheels, the bike took hold again and shot the last few dozen meters to a set of reserved parking spaces in the very middle of the foot of the stairs. There didn't even seem to be a second's slow-down. One second the bike was moving at ludicrous speeds, and the next it was parked perfectly and purring like a very satisfied kitten.
LEPTraffic officers eyed the driver, but quickly looked away. Rookies could deal with that one. Trying to ticket her was something of a rite of passage for the stupider cadets.
Engine turned off almost reluctantly and kickstand put in place, the rider swung her leg off the cycle, taking a moment to lean against the bulky side and straighten her black riding pleathers. Matte black. She liked that color.
Careful of any snags, she leaned her head down and slid off her helmet. Long silver hair cascaded out. For a moment, it distracted everyone outside Police Plaza with its shine. Not so much the silver of age (six hundred wasn't all that old, especially for an elf), but more in the sense of the metal.
Wing Commander Vinyáya flipped back her head, long, straight tresses arcing in the air and settling without a single tangle onto her back. Still, she ran a hand through her hair, fluffing it up to get rid of the last moisture from that morning's shower. She looked up the stairs and beamed.
Grub once again felt his heart seize. His knees felt weak.
"Major Short, Lieutenant Frond!" Vinyáya called, trotting up the stairs and past Grub to meet the other two main women in the LEP. "I presume you finally have that little Atlantean trip worked out. Not going?"
Holly shook her head, then winced. "Oh...uh...yes, Wing Commander. I thought I had better things to do with my time."
"Which is exactly right," Vinyáya said, stepping to the other side of Holly, though she addressed Lili. Holly was a responsible officer and never backed down on her commitments, but it was always best to work through her handler. "I need to speak with you about that goblin girl we picked up last year. Scree. Some B'wa Kell members were talking about her up at Howler's Peak. She might be a bit more important to us than a simple foster case. I've heard the word 'captain' and 'Scree' said together too many times for it to be a slip of the tongue."
Lili looked intrigued, writing down a few notes, but Holly couldn't be bothered, it seemed. She was holding her stomach and shaking her head, swallowing often. "I...okay. Scree. Got it. We'll see what goblin family took her in."
"Excellent. Oh, and speaking of better things to do with your time..." The silver-haired elf looked over her shoulder, gaze darting up and down Grub's body. "Are you going to stand out here gawking at the girls, or are you going to go in and push some more papers around tonight, Corporal?" She added a sneer to the word "papers," and it was obvious that, even if she hadn't been several steps up on Grub, she would still be looking down on him.
Grub gave a little start. He hadn't realized that he was staring. He tried to fight down a blush and failed. Seeking to preserve a little of his dwindling pride, Grub looked steadfastly at the ground and ran up the last of the stairs, slipping past the three high-ranking women and into Police Plaza.
Grub wasn't exactly a bad officer. As it happened, he was considered one of the force's greatest assets in one aspect of the job: desk work. Following his brother's unexpected promotion to commander, he had enjoyed a little extra attention from some of the lower-ranked officers looking to get a few perks through a connection to the head of Recon and Retrieval. However, this attention soon petered off when they realized that Grub wasn't so willing to pass on their good wishes and requests to his older brother. So, here he was, still corporal, still mostly ignored, and years past his last field work, stuck in an office.
All things considered, he was quite pleased with things the way they were. Let his brother run into battles and get his face smashed in by raging demons. Trouble was there for the action. Grub was there for the paycheck. Not that he disliked his job. He was right where he wanted to be, supporting the LEP his father had so loved, all without actually fighting.
Grub entered his private office (a small affair, but its windows had long ago been boarded over, giving him a lovely bit of privacy most officers lacked) and sank into his chair, taking a moment to just lean back and enjoy his office. Then, with a few quick clicks, his data tablet synched up to the LEP wireless systems and began loading his workload for the day. He spent the first fifteen minutes weeding through it and returning a few stacks of paperwork to the more negligent officers. He spent a considerable amount of time trying to decide if he should make the Operations Booth sweat a bit before processing their latest stack, then grimaced and put it at the top of his to-do list. It was best not to antagonize Fowl. He had a wicked sense of humor and plenty of ammo on Grub.
Thus, Grub Kelp began his work day by once again wishing great destruction down on the head of Artemis Fowl and his inability to knock.
Grub Kelp was a precise person, and exactly two hours into his shift he rose from paperwork and grabbed a thermos from under his desk, ready for his coffee break. It was in the break room that he received his second irritant of the day.
He glared down at the coffee pot, then at the fairies that stood about the room. "Who," he snarled, "was the last person to get a cup?" Grub tended more towards high-pitched whines and mumbles, but coffee was one thing his coworkers knew better than to mess with. Not so much because of Grub's posturing, but because Trouble was known to stick derelict fairies on chute-watch for a month whenever he received the megabyte's worth of formal complaints from his little brother.
Across the room, the male of the pair leaning his back on the counter and the female sitting behind him, legs to either side of her partner's waist, Artemis Fowl and Holly Short looked at their cups in great concern, obviously trying to remember if this latest travesty was their fault. Their expressions soon cleared, however, and they switched attention to Lili Frond, who responded by pulling a tea bag out of her cup. Attention again transferred, this time to Ash Vein, who muttered "Decaf, doctor's orders," and trailed off into a series of curses upon the physician's entire bloodline.
Out of the corner of Grub's eyes, he caught a green flutter. Turning, he glared at the ever-mooching Chix Verbil, who was hovering a few inches off the ground and trying to hide an oversized coffee cup behind his back.
Target thus identified, the attack on this derelict sprite was about to begin when the corporal heard a disgusted sigh from back in the direction of the other fairies.
"Drop it, Grub. I'll make a new pot." Holly pushed Artemis away, sliding off the counter. However, her good intentions were cut short when her feet touched ground. With a low moan, Holly swayed on her feet, a hand flying to her brow. "In a...in a minute." She leaned back against the counter, soon after supported by the concerned fairy Fowl.
"Holly, what is..." Artemis paused, reaching up to place a hand on Holly's forehead. "You're hot."
She grinned at him, ready to make a joke, but it soon slipped away as she groaned again. "I've not been feeling so well," she admitted, placing a hand on her stomach. "A bit sick, actually."
"Sick," Artemis murmured, frowning. "I thought fairies didn't get sick. Symptoms?"
"Oh, we get sick." Holly assured him, though perhaps "assured" is not the best word. "Especially when we're low on magic. I should have let the medics heal me after that last mission..." Artemis grew a bit more concerned at her words, but the woman's swaying seemed to have abated. Still, Artemis did not let her go, prompting her on the symptoms. "Er...dizzy, tired, achy...ugh, nauseous. Definitely nauseous."
Artemis put a finger under Holly's eye, pulling down a bit to get a better look, making sure her vision was clear. "Huh. If I didn't know better, I'd say you had the flu." He frowned at this, obviously trying to remember something. Something very troubling.
Holly leaned back, freeing her eye and rubbing at it. "I'm fine. I'll see a doctor after my shift." She stood straight and began to cross towards the coffee pot.
Fowl turned a fiery glare on the young corporal.
Grub sighed, holding out a hand to stop her. He was not going to let Fowl build up a vendetta over some coffee. Besides, it would be nice to stick Chix back up in the chutes for a while. He'd been sitting pretty up in E1 for too long. Grumbling a bit and slamming the supplies around, Grub refilled the pot and pressed "On." Despite many previous admonitions that a watched pot does not boil (or brew), Grub crossed his arms and stared at the coffee, urging it to go faster. This fiasco was not coming out of his break time, that was for sure.
He was just pouring his first cup when two highly unrelated things happened, though these highly unrelated thing were about to form a very painful connection.
Firstly, there came a light tapping from the hall seconds before Wing Commander Vinyáya appeared in the doorway. She took one step inside and froze, torso angling back as if avoiding an attack. She covered her nose and glared around the room. "All right," she hissed, voice dulled by the pressure on her nostrils, "who let Mulch in, this time? Didn't you all get the memo about him not being allowed into the Plaza?"
At the same moment that Vinyáya arrived, Major Short again slid off her place on the counter, a hand flying to cover her mouth and another clutching her stomach. She looked about the room in a panic, then at the Wing Commander in the door. Her eyebrows lowered in sudden determination and Holly charged.
Vinyáya realized what her subordinate intended a moment too late. Holly elbowed the older elf to one side and dashed out of the room, making her way quite swiftly down the hall. Artemis followed her, only just in time to see his lover crash through one of the bathroom doors. Soon after, everyone in the break room heard wet splashes and further groans as Holly dedicated the contents of her stomach to the great porcelain god.
There was more groaning from Vinyáya, who was rubbing her chest and glaring at Fowl, as if he had been the one to elbow her aside. "Explanations, Fowl. Now." She winced, holding her chest even tighter, actually whimpering.
Artemis looked to Vinyáya, eyes wide in an appeal, then back towards the women's bathroom and the forbidden territory therein. "Holly said she didn't feel well, and she's running a temperature. Could you...?" He waved at the door, then coughed. Holly may have been the only person inside the facilities, but there was a sort of psychological forcefield keeping him from entering a woman's restroom.
Rolling her eyes at the young elf, Vinyáya stopped rubbing her chest. For a moment, it seemed she was about to refuse and enter the break room. Then her nose again wrinkled at the smell and she stepped back. "Very well, Fowl." With a shake of the head and a small sneeze to dislodge whatever scent was bothering her, the silver-haired elf entered the restroom.
Moments later, her booming Commander's voice filled the halls. "FOWL! Get your car, NOW!" Seconds later, Vinyáya was barreling out of the bathroom, Holly limp in her arms.
Artemis was frozen for a moment, then he burst into action, disappearing down the corridors towards the Ops Booth. Vinyáya took a more direct route to the exit, trusting the former human to reach her on the front steps soon.
There was a stunned silence as everyone in the room tried to figure out what had happened.
Lili was the first one to understand, though her reaction was perhaps not the type one would typically expect. With a screech, she took to her feet. "Her five o'clock with Cahartez!" Then she was gone, leaving Chix and Grub to stare at each other for a bit before the sprite shrugged, took the last bagel, and left the room.
Grub stood there for some time, a bit flabbergasted by the events. Fairies did get sick on very special occasions (mostly dealing with a lack of magic, as Holly had said), but throwing up was a rare reaction, and passing out was almost unheard of, except for the most dire of diseases. After taking a few seconds to look around for any approaching break room visitors, Grub took an entire box of alcohol wipes from the supply counter, tucking it under his arm and taking his full thermos of spicy coffee back to his office. If Holly, the master of healing, was getting sick, he was not going to let any germs near him.
The incident soon passed from Grub's mind. During his next break, this time for lunch, the corporal sat on the fronts steps of Police Plaza, head bobbing along to the sound of his latest album, which blared through his earbud headphones. He almost missed Vinyáya slipping back into the building. She noticed him, however, and gave a little start when his eyes fell on her. She clutched her work jacket tighter to her chest before going inside.
Grub paused mid-chew to consider this, one ear twitching. Then he shrugged it off and continued eating, putting it down as just another instance of the women of Police Plaza acting insane for the day. They were often wont to do so. Soon after, he dusted the crumbs off his slacks and went back in to finish his shift.
This time, Grub did not have the opportunity to get back into his flow. Just as he had finished removing yet another few hundred pages of paperwork sent to him by shirking workers, there came a soft knock. Grub frowned and was about to say he was busy when the knocker opened the door of their own accord and slipped inside.
Grub felt his chest tighten at the sight of Wing Commander Vinyáya, who was looking through the diminishing crack in the door to see if anyone had noticed her entrance.
"Er...uh...Wing Commander?" He said, actually somewhat pleased at his eloquence. Usually all he could get out when she entered his office was a little squeak and a few nods.
The elder elf turned to him and began to massage her temples with the middle finger and thumb of one hand. The other was clutching tightly at something rather small, squeezing every so often, as if she wanted to crush the object.
"Are you..." Here to see me? Grub's mind rushed forward, though luckily the thoughts were a bit too fast for his lips to keep up. Of course she wasn't here to see him. Now was not the most 'convenient' time of the month for her, to put it delicately. He tried again. "Are you going to...tell me what is wrong with Major Short?" That seemed intelligent enough. He congratulated himself on this miracle of coherent conversation.
Vinyáya shook her head, but she seemed to be addressing his assumption of subject, still taking the time to answer his question. "She was a bit low on magic and seems to have picked up a bug. Nothing a quick jolt from a doctor wont fix, and she can top up on magic tomorrow night." The commander crossed the room, movement lacking all of the customary sway that always focused attention on her tight legs and hips whenever she was in this room. She was walking like someone without a ride home from a marathon.
"That's not why I'm here." She leaned over the desk, using the hand that had recently been comforting her poor head to support her weight. Her other hand, still clenched tight around its contents and now shaking slightly, moved across the desk until it rested perfectly between the elves. With a deep breath that snagged and juddered, she opened her hand and lay the object out on the desk. "What," she whispered, tone sharp and tense, "do you have to say about that?"
It didn't take Grub long to realize what it was. There is perhaps some cosmic rule that such an object should be identical across all civilizations, even if they are thousands of years apart, developmentally. It looked like a small, flat, white plastic pen. One end had a few small ridges for a grip, while the other end was (mercifully for Grub's sense of hygiene) covered in a purple cap. In the very middle, looking cheerily up at Grub Kelp, was a window displaying a blue plus sign.
Grub looked at it for about a minute. Then he looked at Vinyáya, trying to determine if she was screwing with him. Then he looked back down at the object between them. Then he looked at Vinyáya's stomach. He could feel her ire rising at this slow switch of focus and knew that something had to be said. Something suave. Something intelligent. Something reassuring.
Grub shot his fists in the air. "I finally did something before my brother!"