Perhaps a normal boy would have argued that there was a large difference between eleven and fourteen. But that would only further the time-honored tradition of using age as a marker for maturity. Something that Arty had been fighting since he started using three-syllable words at age five and trying to convince airlines that he could, in fact, buy an airplane ticket to Cairo at age ten. After that incident, he never booked a flight over the phone again.

More importantly, though, was the difference between Artemis Fowl, Age Ten, and Artemis Fowl, Age Fourteen. In the span of four years, he'd moved from causing the extinction of a species, to trying to save an entire one. Perhaps he wasn't too far from trying to save the whales...

"I suppose not," he commented with a light smile. "I haven't had the exorbitant amounts of practice you seem to have--swearing fluently. Why do you smoke, Badou?"