Fanfic #101 Artemis Fowl - The Scattered Remnants by ParagonDreams(ArtemisFowlXRWBY)

This fanfic is a crossover between Artemis Fowl and RWBY following Artemis and Holly in the world of RWBY before canon. I really like this fic because it does a really good job of making the character decisions make sense, like since Artemis doesn't know how to fight he decides to learn. I also like that even though Artemis is a genius things don't always work for him all the time and he has to work for his victories. There hasn't been much of the world shown so far, but it looks like the fic is also going to have interesting world building.

Synopsis: Something strange happened in Hybras, and Holly and Artemis have found themselves in a world not their own. Stranded in a world of bloody evolution, Artemis and Holly will face unprecedented challenges and dangerous foes for their own survival and the fate of the world... but what else is new?

Rated : T

words: 42k

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13174926/1/Artemis-Fowl-The-Scattered-Remnants

Here's the first chapter:

Mockingjay was not the largest casino in Vale, not by a wide margin. That title went to the Emerald City, impractically far to the north for the average salaryman. An invisible barrier keeping anyone out who could not afford to bet enough money to represent a year's wage for said average salarymen. Mockingjay prided itself on accessibility, on allowing anyone, however haggard, to come in and gamble away their savings on delusions of grandeur. It kept carefully quiet how well it loaded its dice, stacked its decks, and paid off those who would come to investigate them. Needless to say, it was quite unusual for someone to be amassing their years wages in this particular casino. But then, Artemis Fowl the Second was certainly unusual. He arrived in the casino a scant few hours ago, dressed in a secondhand suit that had once likely been very expensive. He'd laid a few cards of Lien on the table, a little at a time, as if betting timidly. Then he had begun to win.

Wordlessly, he tapped two fingers against the table, calling the dealer's bluff. He was hardly gambling, of course. That implied an element of chance. No this was a silent, imperceptible duel of deft fingers and keen eyes. The dealer, and the house, were losing. A sizable mound of colorful plastic was collecting before him, carefully ordered between the rounds. He'd started with a few hundred. He now wielded thousands, each card a dagger, cutting away a little more wealth. Another tool in a carefully ordered arsenal. He eyed the game around him. The house had begun to pay attention. There was a man in a fine suit, wearing no name tag but bearing the Mockingjay silver bird emblem on his cufflinks. His disguise was an obvious drunken facade, as he meandered too close for coincidence. Security was quietly cutting off escape routes, standing unassuming at key choke points. A barricade of manpower, cheap liquor, and slot machines. Artemis kept his face carefully free of emotion, continuing to read the dealer.

The dealer had not been his first this afternoon. He'd gone from table to table, leaving just before he drew too much attention from security too early. Each and every one of them had tried, and failed to out-cheat him. The house had finally taken notice when he'd cracked a hundred thousand lien. The second half of Artemis' little act was about to begin. A man in an expensive looking pinstriped suit strolled up the table, dropped a thick stack of plastic, and joined the game. He spent the next few minutes glaring daggers at Artemis as the stack got shorter and shorter with each passing round.

"You've got nerve, kid" He drawled, arrogance and anger staining his voice. "But the game's up." He cracked his knuckles in a threatening manner. Artemis shifted in his chair, turning to face him.

"I was wondering when someone would notice," Artemis said, smoothly. "Was it when I started losing in a sequence of prime numbers, or did you just decide I'd won too much money?" Ironic, some would say. Mocking in the Mockingjay.

Pinstripe began."You've got some nerve-"

"Yes, we've established that. I've got a proposition for you." He fixed the man in an unnerving, mismatched glare. "Why don't we dispense with the theatrics and proceed to business, Mr. Pyrite?" The name was dropped carefully, and intentionally, like an old friend chambering a round. Somewhat disarmed, Pyrite sputtered briefly and glared at Artemis with contempt.

"Let me get one thing clear, half-pint. Nobody, and I mean nobody," he leaned forward, looming over Artemis as he spat his words. "Cheats in the Mockingjay." This had rather the opposite effect than the one he intended. Artemis was unimpressed, intimidating, and... smiling. A terrible, vampire smile. A menacing cheshire grin that promised onlookers their days were numbered.

"Indeed," Artemis said, as he drew his scroll carefully from his pocket. He opened it to a fake ID that clearly displayed an important acronym. "You may call me Paul Willowford. I'm from the Vale Gambling and Service Committee." The color drained from Pyrite's face, almost but not quite matching the bleached pale of Artemis' skin. Pyrite had, quite rightly, long feared a visit from the VGSC. He was wrong footed now and all Artemis had to do was keep him that way. It was like playing computer chess but if the computer was a dollar store calculator. "I'm disappointed, Mr. Pyrite. I'd hoped that you'd simply not been receiving our correspondence. Clearly you've been ignoring it, or this would not be a surprise to you." Artemis, of course, had sent a few dozen letters himself. Just enough worthless paperwork to convince his target that it could be ignored.

"I've been behind on paperwork," Pyrite said, not quite smoothly. "I was actually going to get to them tonight." He lied through his teeth, backpedaling obviously. The papers had long been shredded with a dozen credit card offers and a political campaign ad.

"Regardless, it's clear to me that this problem goes much deeper than we were led to believe. I came here to root out one bad dealer, but I find that every member of your staff and most of the machines, are cheating relentlessly." He fixed that icy glare on him once more. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Pyrite might have realized the question was rhetorical. He might have kept his mouth shut for his own good or tried to handle things officially. He might also have unhinged his jaw and swallowed his own head, with equal likelihood. He took a deep breath, and continued to dig himself an even deeper hole.

"I assure you Paul-"

"Mr. Willowford, will do." interrupted Artemis once more. It was not a request.

Pyrite gulped, "Mr. Willowford, I had no idea." He lied, pathetically and desperately. "Show me who, they'll never work in this city again I-"

Artemis scooped up a stack of lien. He fanned out the colorful fortune so that the dealer could count the cards. The dealer was happy to accept an implied bribe. He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, knocking several cards loose from a special band covered in clips. "I assume you all have them?"

The young man nodded vigorously. "Yessir, Mr. Willowford!" He said brightly, hardly believing his luck. "If we let the guests win too much, he takes it out of our checks." Pyrite winced as Artemis allowed the dealer to collect the money. He smiled brightly, ripped his name tag from his shirt, and flipped off his former employer and made for the exit while he was still protected by sheer audacity.

Pyrite was sweating, quite visibly in fact, but a sort of desperate smile had come to his face. Artemis continued his menacing smile. The gears he'd carefully wound were turning in just the right way. Predictably, he smoothed out his suit. His tell. The one that said "I think I'm about to win."

"You know, it seems to me you've won quite a lot of money here tonight. All fairly, of course." He didn't even glance at the mound. "That must be a million lien right there." He said confidently, despite the fact that it was quite obviously not.

"Funny," Artemis said. "Looks more like three million to me."

"Perhaps-" Pyrite said through grit teeth. "It's two million."

Artemis decided not to press his luck. "Yes," Artemis said. "That seems about right." He extended a hand out to Pyrite. The bargain was struck.

Fifteen minutes later, Artemis stepped into a thrift shop holding a heavy silver briefcase. The kind that implied it contained money, drugs, or some delightful combination of the two. He purchased a more modest brown suitcase without a word to the cashier, and ducked into the bathroom. Behind the locked door, he counted out his ill-gotten gains, carefully checking the cards for trackers and bugs. He found one in the case, and removed it carefully before casually tossing it into a toilet. He pulled up the fake ID on his scroll, little more than an image file and a few software flags to make systems think he was old enough to drink. A few taps and swipes, and it was erased. Like so many pseudonyms and false identities before him, Paul Willowford ceased to exist.

On his way out, he exchanged his suit for a cheap one in a musty shade of grey. He ran his fingers through his hair to disrupt his widow's peak, and adopted a careful slouch as he walked to the bus stop. He left the district disguised as just another salaryman. The heist, if it could be called that, was complete.

It would be six days before anyone at the Mockingjay remembered that VGSC was supposed to stand for 'Vale Games and Sports Council.'

~o~o~

Holly Short was not having a good day. This, unfortunately, seemed to be the norm. At the crack of noon, she'd rolled out of bed and stumbled out of the room into the neighboring one that was home to the camp stove, the food, and more importantly, the instant coffee. She wouldn't call it a kitchen any more than she'd call the room she slept in a bedroom, as it was an old building that had probably been an office building at some point. She sighed as she rifled through a cardboard box, a gift from a food drive. She pulled out a cup of instant noodles, and she had to hope they were the vegetarian ones. It wasn't as if she could read the package.

The last few weeks had been an unending series of jarring changes, ever since she and Artemis had escaped Hybras. It was not a day she remembered fondly.

"I remember," she said aloud. "You saved me." But he wasn't smiling. No, his face was puzzled and concerned.

"I don't remember that..." Artemis said, reeling slightly from the memory. "I must have... but how?"

There was a tearing sound, somewhere between rending fabric and an electrical storm. The world flared a magical blue, and she clung with all her strength to Artemis' hand as the blinding force scattered the circle. Just as sudden, everything went black.

Holly shook her head, trying to clear it. Dwelling on that wouldn't change anything. She stirred her soup, a cup of tepid noodles with shriveled peas, corn and shrimp so small they'd pass for sea monkeys.

"D'arvit." She sighed, eating quickly and in silence.

The food was tasteless, aside from the salt, but filling enough. She tossed the packaging into the plastic bag they'd propped open and went for the bathroom, flicking on the light as she entered. Artemis had managed to pilfer a few bags of Dust from a nearby shop. It reminded her of the magic batteries Foaly had devised, the great lumps of lithium quartz used to power a time stop. The grainy crystals were deposited into the building's utility reservoirs. Blue for water, red for heat, and yellow for power. It was strange that there wasn't a central grid, like in any human or fairy city, but damned convenient for squatters like themselves. They'd stuck to one of the upper floors and put garbage bags over the windows so they wouldn't be discovered, which was rather important since they seemed to stick out like sore thumbs.

She sighed, as she washed up at the sink. Holly was starting to get accustomed to her new reflection. Switching eyes with Artemis would have been jarring enough on its own, but she simply wasn't that lucky.

She had awoken first, pushing herself up with aching limbs off of cold earth.

["Frond, why does everything hurt?"] She hissed in Gnommish, the fairy tongue. Artemis was next to her, barely starting to stir. She laid a hand on his shoulder and shook him gently.

"Artemis... Artemis... [Please wake up.]"

His eyes fluttered open. There was something off about them, something it took her a moment to place. His right eye wasn't blue any longer, it was hazel. Like hers.

"Holly... your eye? Are you alright?"

Holly's blood chilled. She could recognize that he was speaking English. She'd heard it quite often before. She spent a lot of time in Ireland. But the words wouldn't parse. She had no idea what Artemis was saying. But she wasn't out of magic. She could feel it, beneath her skin. She tried to speak in English, but only Gnommish flowed from her lips.

["I... I can't understand you, Artemis. Something is wrong."]

Artemis sat up and looked her in the eye... Which should have been a red flag. His eyes widened, as they quickly scanned down her body.

["Holly, what's happened? Are you alright?"] he said, switching smoothly to Gnommish. Thankful as she was, it did nothing to hide his concern.

["I think so,"] Holly said, slowly standing up. ["I'm alive at least... but something feels wrong. I can't understand you in English, like the gift of tongues is gone."] This was very alarming. The gift of tongues didn't actually consume magic. It was a magical gift, but even fairies who'd lost their magic kept even that. Artemis stood up, slowly and deliberately.

["Holly, I have to ask you not to panic."] He'd said, looking up at her. ["We need to figure this out."] Her heart dropped as the details clicked into place. She looked down, her torn clothes barely protecting her modesty. She stepped back from Artemis, suddenly realizing she was at eye level, despite being on solid ground. She drew her Neutrino, beginning to hyperventilate as she looked at the sidearm that now felt so terribly small in her hand.

["I'm... I'm a mud-girl."] She said, in a horrified whisper. ["I'm human!"]

Artemis slowly reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. He didn't want to do this, but it would be better for her to process all of this at once. He laid a hand on a downy surface, touching something foreign. A limb twitched, and Artemis gently grasped and extended it. It was a wing. A real, feathered wing.["I think you're rather more than that."]

It was too much. She screamed.

That had been weeks ago. Once they'd gotten to the city, Vale, Artemis had wasted no time. He was a cunning mudman. They stayed the first night at a homeless shelter, and had picked up some donated clothing. Their excuse was that Holly had laryngitis, so nobody batted an eye when Artemis did all the talking. It was fascinating to watch him work, to see that what he did went deeper than language. He would seem to slip into a new face, his mannerisms completely changing as he talked circles around people. For some he acted meek, others inebriated, and yet others with a cold and dangerous tone. And each and every time, he got exactly what he wanted. A box of donated food, a carelessly spilled secret, or the judicious fear to keep the pickpockets at bay.

The better part of the second day had been spent in the library. Artemis had been hunched over a public terminal, marveling at the odd disparity in different levels of technology as he did his research. Holly had sat next to him, with a children's alphabet book hidden behind a novel. She had elected to hide her wings upon learning about the local flavor of racism. Faunus were looked down on, and discriminated against. They both disliked it, but agreed that a low profile was necessary. She wore a baggy secondhand hoodie from some school called "Signal", and Artemis wore a Pumpkin Pete t-shirt. Neither of them had been comfortable.

["How on earth did they manage this..."] He hissed. ["This is like a local network trying to be the entire internet."]

["See that sounds like Gnommish, but it doesn't actually mean anything."] Holly sighed. The jargon was enough to make her miss Foaly.

Artemis thought for a moment. ["It's like someone's trying to ride a flare with a kite. This is woefully insufficient for the task its meant to accomplish, and yet somehow they've made do."] Holly shuddered. Riding a magma flare was bad enough in a shuttle built for the job. There was just something inherently unnerving about being propelled by a burst of geothermal heat and molten rock. ["Thanks to the Grimm, this world barely seems to have anything resembling infrastructure,"] Artemis continued. ["And I can't find any technology that isn't at least partially reliant on Dust either. I could make a fortune selling batteries."] A small joke at their expense. He was getting better at this.

["Weren't we here so you could try to find somewhere for us to stay?"] Holly asked. A private space couldn't come quick enough in her opinion. She was already tired of ducking into bathrooms to stretch every time her wings started to cramp.

["I've sent a query about buildings available for sale without current tenants,"] Artemis said, his irritation thinly veiled. ["But without a proper search engine I had to query a realty company directly. I'm still waiting on a-"]

The console chimed, an image of an envelope appearing on the holographic screen.

["Speak of the devil,"] Artemis smiled. He opened the message, and began skimming the contents, falling silent as he cross-referenced with a map. Half an hour passed while Artemis' fingers danced across the haptic keyboard, crossing entries off a handwritten list as he went. Eventually, he smiled, circling an address on the page. ["Let's go home,"] he said, smiling warmly.

Home, as it turned out, had been the hollow remains of an engineering firm. It was located right on the edge that separated gang territory from the good part of town, a narrow band of neutral ground. Most legitimate businesses didn't want to touch it, and it wasn't the right kind of building to use as a front or to launder money. There was a homeless shelter nearby, so people only usually squatted on the ground floor when it was full. Having made their home on the 6th floor, they were all but invisible. Holly spent her days here while Artemis was out and about, pilfering and swindling to keep them going. She would alternate between learning English, exercising, and learning how to fly.

Flying with wings of her own was more difficult than strapping on a set of Koboi Double Decks. She was used to controlling her flight with her arms, rather than shifting her weight. And she still couldn't keep them flapping for more than short bursts. She'd learned rather quickly that her 'heritage' was hummingbird. Her wings were mostly brown with iridescent green at the shoulderblades, and they nearly vanished when she got them moving. They could just barely lift her off the ground for a few seconds, but she was getting better every day.

Artemis arrived late in the evening, as the sun was beginning to set. Holly raised an eyebrow at his clothes."You clothes..." she began, trying to find the words. "You changed them?"

"Your clothes," he corrected with a smile. "And yes, I did." He switched to gnommish. ["Tonight, we eat real food and we sleep on real beds."] He smiled wide as he laid the briefcase on a nearby desk and opened it. Dozens of stacks of Lien all but glittered up at her. Her jaw dropped.

"What?" The word fell out of her mouth like a dropped plate. ["Artemis, what did you do and how illegal was it?"]

["Swindled a casino, and technically it wasn't illegal at all."] Artemis grinned. ["I've heard that Vacuan place down the road has something resembling curry. I wonder if they have vole?"]

"Artemis..." Holly groaned. "Not jokes time. Be serious. Please." The broken English impressed Artemis. It was either dedication to learning a language, or determination to be able to yell at him in public. Either way, it was commendable.

["The casino was cheating. I caught them out, and implied I was with the local gambling authority. In short, I accepted a bribe."] Artemis explained patiently, switching languages again. "Even if I had committed any crimes, they can't legally touch me without implicating themselves."

Holly massaged her forehead with one hand, trying to parse the English. She was really starting to hate how easy it was for him to sway from one tongue to another, like a very smug metronome. "Alright," she said. "Dead for a shower anyway."

"Dying for a-" Artemis began, stopping as Holly shot him a look. "Right then, let's go get checked into a suite. I'll have food delivered." Holly smiled as she slipped her Neutrino into its holster and threw the baggy hoodie on over it. Artemis tossed their few belongings into a cheap drawstring bag and shouldered it. They didn't have much. The food, unused dust, Holly's English books, a change of clothes, Artemis' almost entirely useless cell phone, and the tattered remains of Holly's Section 8 jumpsuit. With the bag over his shoulder and the briefcase in hand, Artemis held the door open for Holly.

["Shame we'll probably never come back here,"] Holly said, with an almost fond smile. ["It was almost starting to feel like home."]

Artemis smiled back. "I'm glad you feel that way," he said with a hint of mischief in his voice. "Seeing as I plan to buy the building. It's no manor, that's for certain..." he said. "But for our rather unique requirements, it'll be more than adequate."

Holly stared at her companion, incredulous. "Were you planning this at the... the..." she sighed, not finding the word. "The book place? All this time?"

Artemis grinned. "Library," he said. ["And yes, I was. It's like chess, Holly. If you're not thinking ahead, you're not winning."]