I added this epilogue at the suggestion of ngneer. Thanks for the idea!

Foaly looked up as the door to the operations booth whooshed open. What he saw made him go pale.

"Holly!" he said with false cheer. "Hi . . . Hey, how's Artemis?"

"Alive," said Holly through clenched teeth. Her eyes were full of murder. "He was discharged from the hospital this morning. I left after he was settled back at the Fowl Manor."

"Oh. Um, well that's great to hear."

"So tell me," growled Holly, as she slowly advanced on the centaur, "exactly when did you learn that humans can survive without appendixes?"

"I –"

"Was it before you called me and told me my favorite Mud Boy was dying?" asked Holly. "Or while I was enroute to the hospital praying I'd get a chance to say goodbye?"

"Holly, I swear, I didn't know until after you got to the hospital," Foaly said weakly. "How could I have? I mean it was his appendix! Who could know that humans have become so accustomed to poisons that they don't even need their appendixes to filter them out anymore?"

"Hmmm," said Holly. "Who?"

Foaly never even saw the buzz baton but he sure as hell felt the sting. Electricity swept through him making every single hair on his body stand on end, and turning his knees to jelly. All four of his knees.

"Ouch."

Foaly managed to pick himself up weakly in time to see Holly pause in the doorway, right before she stormed out.

"Never," hissed the angry elfin captain, "scare me like that again. Ever."

"Right," Foaly agreed quickly. "Never again." He made a mental note to read up on human anatomy and physiololgy so that he wouldn't send out anymore false alarms. Not that he thought it was likely he could make that kind of mistake again. Human bodies weren't that different from the Peoples' bodies. They still needed their brains to regulate all their systems, their hearts to pump blood, their lungs to breath, and their tonsils to keep their lungs from exploding . . . right?

The memory of Holly's murder filled eyes was enough motivation for Foaly to start his research right away. The first thing he did was pull up Artemis Fowl's medical records to make sure the Mud Boy had all other important organs in place. What he saw nearly gave him a heart attack.

"What the? Tonsils removed at age 6?!?!!" Foaly stared at the screen in horrified shock then quickly called up a computer file that contained a human medical encyclopedia. It would probably be wiser to finish his research before calling up Holly and telling her that her favorite Mud Boy died six years before she ever met him.

The End (for real this time).