Artemis Meets The Demigods

The Plan and The Gesture

Flashback to a few hours earlier

          Artemis had a plan. Of course he did. He also had a backup plan. He actually had a backup plan to the backup plan. The plan was simple : let themselves be captured, get into Koboi's headquarters, steal Kronos' main weapon along with any other information or dangerous weapons. The backup plan was a bit more complex to execute. And as usual, worst came to worst and Artemis and Percy had not been able to secure the scythe. Artemis had not really expected the scythe on the table to be the real one, but he had to try. So, when Kronos revealed that he had the real one, they had to execute the backup plan. And to make things better, Kronos had created an iris-message to Camp. They had been able to kill two birds at once. The birds can be classified as follows:

1. Pretend to die which, while it may not fool Opal for too long, might give them time to escape.

2. Pretend to die which would encourage the Camp to fight the war with much more gusto and fury. After all, they would think their leader was killed.

                So the duo had shot each other. Or so it would seem. Before leaving Camp, Artemis and Percy had taken two sound guns (they produced only sounds and flashes), a few smoke balls, a few flash grenades from Bunker 9 and a couple of Hydrosion Shells, from Foaly's kit. (Hydrosion shells, called Fizzers, are one of Foaly's many inventions. They were built to be miniature fire extinguishers, and could compress up to half a gallon of water into a small space. When thrown at the flames, the impact would reverse the compression, and the water would be sprayed at the fire.) It was an old magician's trick. The guns would launch the Fizzers filled with their compressed blood, explode on impact, and send blood spewing everywhere, thus giving the impression that they were dead. 

                 The duo had planned to throw the flash grenades and smoke balls at Kronos and Opal, to incapacitate them long enough for them to escape. But that had not been possible. So Artemis had kicked up coals for dramatic effect and to buy them time to think of a way to escape. Percy tried to send the flash grenade to buy more time, but it hadn't worked a lot due to the fact that the Fizzer had knocked the wind out of him. That's when the idea hit Artemis. He was flame user. For something to burn, the atoms had to vibrate very fast. If he managed to vibrate his atoms fast enough, he would be able to use the fireplace to travel out of there. If he concentrated well enough, he might be able to take Percy with him. It was a plan with flaws and bordered on the impossible, but Artemis Fowl II specialized in the impossible. He grabbed Percy's hand and just before he slipped into the fireplace, he looked at the rainbow through the receding smoke and gave his friends a gesture they could hardly miss.

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                    At the same time, Holly and Foaly felt increasingly scared as they watched the scene play out. They could hardly believe it, but here Artemis was, on the floor dying. There was no mistake about it. His body was on fire, but he seemed too tired to do anything. This could not be Artemis Fowl's end. The last several times they had thought that, they had been proved wrong. In the most bizarre ways. Just as the fog began clearing, and the rainbow began dissolving, Holly and Foaly noticed Artemis looking at them. Then giving them a parting gesture. A gesture, in one second, that wiped out their worries. A gesture that gave them hope, telling them that this was not the end. A gesture that the entire camp, too busy watching their leader supposedly dying in horrified silence, had failed to notice. A gesture that Artemis Fowl would only use in an extremely rare moment of levity.

A wink.