Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay! My life has been pretty busy these days with the baby, being back to work, and all that. It doesn't help I have been sick on and off for the past few weeks. Anyways, I was able to finally finish this, so I hope you like it! Thank you all for your patience with me. I truly appreciate it!
*************************************************************

A few hours had passed, and Alex was sitting up in bed, stretching her arms. It was quiet, and she was growing bored. She looked over to see Diana still sleeping soundly, curled up in a ball and arms wrapped around a pillow. To be honest, Alex was shocked to see Diana sleeping as well as she was after the incident. She never would've been able to sleep after that, but she supposed at this point, she supposed stress alone probably drove her friend to slumber.
Not to mention, this wasn't the first time Diana had been kidnapped.

Unable to take the silence anymore, Alex jumped off her bed and made her way to Diana's bed. She shook her friend's shoulder a little harder than she probably should have. "Diana, wake up."

Her friend's brown eyes slowly opened, and then she sat up quickly, seemingly freaked out that she was still there as she began looking frantically around the room. Alex grabbed her friend by the shoulders, trying to calm her down.

"Shh, Diana," she shushed. "I'm here, I'm here."

Diana took a couple deep breaths, before pulling away from Alex's grasp, brushing her friend's hands off of her. She took one hand and smoothed her long hair out of her face. After one more deep breath, Diana finally looked up at Alex. "What happened?"

Alex shrugged. "Nothing happened. You must have been dreaming."

"Yeah... I must've been," Diana decided. She sighed. "I think I might be catching Artemis' paranoia."

"Pretty sure being kidnapped multiple times will do that to you," Alex said, trying her best to not sound sarcastic. "But I don't blame you. You never know when that pervert will be back."

Diana shuddered at the thought. The girl had never felt so violated in all her life. Then again, nothing like that had ever happened to her before, so it certainly made sense. Diana stretched briefly, and then stood for a moment before sitting back down. "I need to shower," she announced. "I feel positively repulsive."

"I don't blame you," Alex muttered. "When we get back home, you can have first dibs on the shower. I promise."

"If we get back home, that is."

Alex was going to reply when the room's door burst open. Ortherion, along with some of his seemingly never-ending supply of cronies, entered the room. With a quick snap, the girls found themselves in cuffs once again. An evil smirk was plastered to his face, and somehow they knew this was not going to be a pleasant experience.

"Guess what, my lovelies?" he mused. "It's that time."

"What time?" Alex snarled, trying to fight off the goblins holding her back.

"By not giving me what I want, you decided your friends' fates," Ortherion explained. "And you will get to be the first to witness the beginning of the end."

He left the room, having the goblins drag Alex and Diana out of their bedroom as they followed him down the hall to another room. They entered the expansive area and saw the others bound to chairs in the corner of the room, facing a large object covered by a large white sheet. The goblins tied the girls to two spare chairs on the other side of the room, allowing them to see their friends and the horrified looks upon their faces. Ortherion stood not too far away, in between the group of prisoners.

"This is where it all ends," he began. "You will be able to witness the almighty power of the gem from the crown of Frond. The world will be frozen solid, and you will be its first victims." He paused. "Who wants to go first?"

No one spoke, for obvious reasons. Ortherion paced the floor between the crew and eventually stopped at Diana and Alex, giving them a pensive look. "You see the boys over there?"

The two girls looked sorrowfully at Artemis and Sebastian, the two of them seated between Holly and Mulch. "Yes," Diana answered quietly for the both of them. The trembling in her voice was more than enough to show how much she didn't like where he was going with this.

"You, my precious," Ortherion began, caressing Diana's cheek once again, causing her to flinch, "will get to watch your dear boyfriend's death."

As both Diana and Alex's eyes widened in fear, the cronies moved Artemis and Sebastian towards the center of the room. Both of the boys were squirming in their chairs, trying to get free. And Artemis was still steaming mad from earlier. Diana didn't know what had caused Artemis to be so angry- whether he was aware of what happened or not- but it was certainly strange to see him so fired up.

"Get your hands off of her!" he called out, turning his head to look at Ortherion.

The sprite approached him, smirking. "You're not in any position to stop me from doing anything, Fowl."
Sebastian, too, was getting sick of him. "Dude, you're not going to get your way, so you can stop trying to be a badass."

Ortherion stopped in front of Sebastian, bringing his face only inches from the human's. "And you just sped up the process by saying that smart ass remark," he announced.

Sebastian tried to ignore the sprite's ungodly breath and thrust his head forward, pulling an Alex move and head butting him square in the nose. Alex couldn't resist a laugh, finding that Sebastian's sudden burst of violence actually appealed to her more than it should have.

The sprite stumbled away, clutching his nose. "What is with you humans and head butting?" he shouted in anger.

"It's effective!" Artemis answered.

The sprite approached Artemis, seemingly remembering he was still there. "And as for you, Artemis Fowl," he hissed, "this is for breaking my nose earlier."  He flung a fist at Artemis' face, hitting him directly in the eye. Artemis flinched from the sting, but said nothing more to it. That was going to leave a mark, certainly.

Ortherion walked away, and approached a large object covered by a white sheet that was centered in the room. He smirked as he looked out at the group. "You all get to be the first witnesses to my doomsday machine," he announced, yanking the sheet off, revealing a large laser.

"That's soooo expected!" Holly laughed. "Every bad guy in existence started out with a laser!" Even though the situation was grim, she was still finding humor in it. Someone had to.

Artemis took notice to the large green gem in the center of the machine. It was providing power, power he didn't want to experience firsthand. The stolen gem seemed to stare out at him, glaring at him like this was his entire fault. If he had never stolen it in the first place, they would not be staring death in the eyes right now.

He took a deep breath as Ortherion began one of the typical evil villain speeches. He tapped into those famed brains of his. He was Artemis Fowl. There was no way he couldn't get them all out of this alive. He could dominate any plan. He just needed to get it together. He was determined to get them all out of this alive, one way or another.

First thing first, he needed to free his hands. He twisted his hands, trying to see if he could squeeze them through the bracelet of the cuffs. Luckily for him, the cuffs were loose, as it seemed his henchmen were more incompetent than they looked. After a few long moments, Artemis was able to free his hands, keeping him behind his back. He glanced to Sebastian, being careful to not draw suspicious looks from Ortherion as his eyes darted back to his freed hands. Sebastian caught on, and was soon working away at his hands too. As Sebastian freed himself, Artemis took notice to Holly and Mulch slipping out of their cuffs as well, although they seemed to be having an easier time of it.

Ortherion stopped in the middle of his evil villain monologue when Holly jumped from her seat, hands balled into fists as she took a defensive stance. "You're under arrest!"

Ortherion chuckled at the elf girl. "You're foolish to think you can capture me that easily. You don't even have any weapons."

Holly puffed some of her hair out of her eyes. "Oh no, it is that easy."

Ortherion finally realized that everyone but the girls had their arms free and were coming towards him. He chuckled as he shook his head before he threw something on the ground. A large puff of smoke quickly engulfed him and his death ray. The group of friends began to cough as they inhaled all the fumes from the smoke. When it finally cleared, Ortherion, his minions, and, more importantly, the gem, were gone.

"They escaped," Sebastian muttered.

"Really?" Artemis asked, obviously annoyed. "As if we couldn't see that." He rolled his eyes and made his way over to the girls. Artemis carefully unlocked Diana's cuffs, and once she was released, the girl leaped into his arms, hugging him close to her.

Holly quickly released Alex from her restraints. The human girl stood up and glared at Artemis for a moment before reaching around Diana and punching him appropriately. Artemis didn't make a sound but held his freshly punched jaw in his hand.

"That's for getting us into this mess!" she added.

"I admit I deserve that," Artemis begrudgingly agreed, rotating his jaw to make sure she hadn't broken it. It stung, but that seemed to be the extent of his injuries.

"Okay now that we're all on the same page, can we get out of here so we can focus on finding him again?" Holly suggested. "It's only a matter of time before he tries to initiate that dumb plan of his."

Before anyone could make a response, Butler ran into the room, gun out and ready to fire. "Where is he?!" he asked.

"Welcome to the party. If you're referring to Ortherion, he's escaped," Holly informed, calmly. "Along with the gem. I'll call and get the laser back to HQ."

"Oh," Butler mumbled, lowering his gun. "Well... I suppose we head back to the shuttle. We have business to attend to."

Wordlessly, they made their way back to the shuttle, wondering where Ortherion could have possibly escaped to and when he would make his next devastating appearance. This venture to retrieve the gem was becoming more and more frustrating by the minute, and all of them were beyond ready to be done with it. Hopefully they'd hunt him down quickly and he'd be locked up before he could cause any catastrophic event.