Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer Page B

slogans on their T-shirts, and the drooling.
    “Careful, Sam. You’re moving my mask.”
    “And such a pretty mask too.”
    Juliet’s entire outfit was pretty enough to make her a crowd favorite. A jade skintight leotard, and a small eye mask, which was actually a gel-pack covered with glitter.
    If I have to wear a mask, Juliet had reasoned, it might as well be good for my skin.
    They prepared for Samsonetta’s trademark takedown: an overhead drop, helped along by the power of her amazing arms. Usually if her opponents had so much as a spark of energy left in them after that maneuver, Sam simply fell on them, and that generally did the trick. But since Juliet was the crowd’s favorite, the move was not planned to go as usual. A wrestling audience liked to see their hero as far down as possible without being out.
    Sam advertised the move by asking the crowd if they wanted the body slam.
    “Do you vant it?” she shouted, playing up her accent.
    “ Yes!” they howled, beating the air with their fists.
    “The body slam?”
    “Slam!” they chanted. “Slam! Slam!”
    A few chanted other rougher slogans, but security soon zoned in on them.
    “You vant a slam! I vill slam!” Generally Samsonetta would have said I shall slam! But Max, the promoter/ manager of LuchaSlam, liked her to use ‘v’ instead of ‘w’ wherever possible, as for some reason it drove the crowd crazy.
    And so she bent backward and hurled the unfortunate Jade Princess toward the deck, and that would have been the end of it had not the Jade Princess somehow twirled in midair to land on her toes and fingertips, and that wasn’t even the impressive part. The impressive part was springing back up again and whipping her head around so the jade ring woven into her blond ponytail whacked Samsonetta in the jaw, landing the giantess flat on her back.
    Samsonetta whined and complained, rubbed her jaw to redden it, and rolled like a walrus on a hot rock.
    She was quite a performer, and for a moment Juliet worried that the jade ring had really hurt her, but then Sam threw her a secret wink, and she knew that they were still playacting.
    “Have you had enough, Samsonetta?” asked Juliet, springing nimbly to the top rope. “Would you like some more?”
    “No,” blubbed her supposed opponent, then decided to sneak another ‘v’ in for Max. “I vant no more.”
    Juliet turned to the audience. “Should I give her some more?”
    Oh no , said an imaginary audience. No more, that would be barbaric.
    But the real audience said things like:
    “Kill her!”
    “Take her downtown!” (Whatever that meant—they were already downtown.)
    “Show her the pain!” The pain being obviously more excruciating than just plain old pain.
    I love these people, thought Juliet, and launched herself off the top rope for the coup de grâce.
    It would have been a thing of beauty. A lovely double flip rounded off with a nice oooof- inducing elbow to the stomach, but someone came out of the shadows and snatched Juliet from the air, tossing her roughly into the corner of the ring. Several other silent, muscled attackers piled on top of Juliet until all that was visible of the girl was one green-clad leg.
    In the shadows, where he was watching behind one of the lighting rigs, Butler felt a sour ball of fear drop to the pit of his stomach, and muttered: “That’s my cue.”
    Which sounded an awful lot more flippant than he felt.
    The crowd was still applauding the unexpected arrival of the Ninja Squad luchadores in their trademark black costumes disguised by trench coats, who had doubtless shown up to avenge their master’s recent defeat at the hands and feet of the Jade Princess at QuadroSlam in Mexico City. Surprise guests often showed up unadvertised at the slams, but the entire Ninja Squad was an unexpected bonus.
    The ninjas were a writhing mass of pumping limbs, each member desperate to land a blow on the Jade Princess, and there was nothing the slight girl could do but