Artemis and Holly sat in a popular burger and shake joint, Johnny Rockets. Artemis had wanted to go to a gourmet restaurant, but they had ended up in the diner. At Holly’s request.

“Puhweeeeze?” she had begged, giving him the puppy-dog eyes.

“Okay. But never again.”

They sat at a booth, Holly on one side, Artemis on the other. “So, we finally got our romantic date, eh?” said Artemis, looking around at the gaudy 50’s décor.

“Yep, and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.” replied Holly. How ever long that may be.

The waiter skated over to them. He was a pimply youth with flaming red hair and a Santa hat on. He saw Holly’s pointed ears and, it being around Christmas, just assumed that it was part of an elaborate elf costume. To exaggerate this advantage, Artemis had forced Holly to wear a Santa’s helper elf suit.

The waiter set a menu on the table, then turned to Holly. “Would you like a children’s menu, little lady?”

Holly scowled and stood up on the seat, revealing the full extent of her adult body. “Does it look like I want the children’s menu to you, Buddy?”

The youth blushed furiously. “I’m so sorry! Do you know what you want?” he asked.

“Yes.” replied Artemis. “We are going to share a large vanilla milkshake.”

“It’ll be right out.” said the youth, skating off.

As soon as he was gone, Artemis winked at Holly. “Now you know what it feels like.” She scowled again.

A few minutes and half a milkshake later, Holly and Artemis were sitting three inches apart. Something big was about to happen when suddenly Holly’s fairy communicator began to ring.

She frowned and flipped open the handheld phone. “Yes Foaly, I see you. This had better be really important. I’m in the middle of something.”

“Well, it’s important. I wouldn’t call it an emergency, because technically speaking it’s not hurting anyone or doing anything. But it’s definitely a situation.” came Foaly’s voice from the tiny speaker. “Is the Mu-… Artemis with you?”

“Yes. We are in the middle of a date. Why, do you need him?”

Foaly smiled scandalously. “A date, huh? Well, yes. Bring him, he might be able to help me.”

“Whatever.” She closed her phone and glanced guiltily at Artemis. “Well, it looks like our romantic date is postponed indefinitely.”

“Tragic.” said Artemis, staring sadly at the remains of the best milkshake he‘d ever had.

Holly smiled at him. “Cheer up Artemis. We’ll go on another as soon as this whole mess is over.” she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “I promise.”

After dipping her hand into a pool of nano sensor-saturated liquid metal, Holly burst into Section 8 HQ.

“Foaly, this had better be pretty damn good!”

The centaur looked up from his readings and instruments. “It’s good alright. Or should I say bad? Whatever. The point is that I need your help.”

“And what exactly is ‘it’?”

“Well, you know the room that Qwan and No1 stayed in before we found a home for them? Well, I was keeping some incredibly advanced time-stop experiments in there at the time. Being modest. It seems that the powerful magical fields around the warlocks messed with the internal workings of the projectors. Now there’s some kind of time/space/dimension rip in the room. It’s not getting bigger or smaller, it’s just there. I can’t seem to get a lock on it from any of my scans. They all either register to high for the machine to comprehend or don’t register at all.”

“So what do you want us to do about?” interrupted Artemis.

“Well, I would’ve gotten someone else to do it, but I can’t get in touch with anyone else. They are either in Atlantis or not answering their phone. So what I want you to do is take this,” he held up a baseball-sized metallic sphere “Into there.” he pointed at the door to the room in question.

“And why didn’t you do this yourself? It looks pretty simple to me. No heavy-lifting hurly-burly.” said Holly, rolling her eyes.

Foaly looked wounded. “I have to watch the machines! And anyway, I thought Artemis could help me make sense of the readings. They are like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“All right. What do you want us to do?”

Foaly held up the ball again. “I want you to throw this into the rip. It threw all of my other sensors off, but this is different.”

“A type of tracker, obviously.” said Artemis.

“Naturally.” replied Foaly. “It is a tracker beacon, a energy displacement sensor, a-”

“Enough chit-chat.” interrupted Holly. “Let’s just get this over with.”

She grabbed the beacon out of Foaly’s hand and headed towards the door.

“Be careful Holly. We have no idea where that thing goes.” called Foaly after her.

Holly and Artemis edged into the room. And there it was. The rip. It was suspended in midair about six feet form the door. It was a deep purple, with jagged black edges. Blue sparks roiled in its depths.

Holly inched closer, with Artemis hanging onto her arm. The hole seemed to be powered by two time-stop projectors on the floor. Why can’t we just turn those off? Holly wondered. But Foaly probably would’ve thought of that.

She had to get closer to throw the metallic sensor in. Even though it was the size of a baseball, it was easily over ten pounds. And that was a lot if you were only tipping the scale at fifty yourself.

Suddenly, the gash shuddered open another two inches. Holly started and shot at it with her Neutrino. That was a mistake. The hole absorbed the energy beam and expanded to fill the entire room. Holly and Artemis were immediately engulfed.

Some other stories by 1crazyhollyfan:

• Shifting Sands
• Still here.
• "Foaly's Visit" announcement
• The Long Awaited Part 3 of The Breakup!
• In the Face of Hardship

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