"An Act to Follow"

Disclaimer: Don't own Zelda. Never have. The characters of Sond, Ty, and Nick do belong to Sond herself. Kat and Timbre and a few others belong to me. All the familiar names/places/characters most likely belong to Nintendo. Woot.

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Author's Notes Don't ask me about the title. I really don't know where it came from, maybe it'll fit this story later on though (hint hint hint). Well, this story's been rattling around in me head for a while (read: a day or two) and I thought it might be neat to write. Please be patient, I know this first chapter's gonna lack stuff, just because it's the introduction. Most stories are like that. But please enjoy! On with the show!

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An Act to Follow — Part 1: "Never shut a trapdoor unless you mean it"

Clock Town was having a festival.

If the Carnival of Time celebrated the peak of summertime, then it was safe to say that the Spring Festival celebrated, well, spring. The streets literally burst at the seams with busy tourists and festival-goers, all moving in generally different directions.

Amid the crowd, several children were trying to find each other.

A brown-haired girl with matching brown eyes was dragging a purple-haired boy through the crowd by the wrist. The 10-year old paused for a moment, and looked back the way she had come.

"We might be going the wrong way!" She shouted at the boy.

"What?!" The purple-haired boy shouted back.

"I said, we might be going the wrong way!!"

"I still can't hear you very well, but I think we're going the wrong way, Kat!" The boy squeaked a finger in his ear, grinning like a fox. Kat just rolled her eyes.

"Come on, Kafei, maybe they went to the stage…"

The stage in question was set up in South Clock Town, right in front of the huge ticking clock that gave the settlement its name. As the pair made its approach there slowly, as it was hard to get anywhere with the crowd bustling.

"Kaf," Kat panted, "Next year you have to tell your Dad to set traffic patterns!"

Kafei shrugged. "Probably did just didn't do any good., You know how people get when they get-" here he paused wickedly for a moment, "-festive."

Kat pointedly ignored that, same as she ignored the nearby stand selling expensive jars of Chateau Romani. It was a good amount of bustling later that found them finally at the stage.

They paused a moment, resting their backs against the stage. Pushing through crowds was a sweaty business, but the fact that Clock Town was having an unusually warm day didn't help that any. "Ick," said Kat for the both of them, hoisting herself up into a sitting position with her legs hanging over the edge. Kafei jumped up after her, standing on the stage. "I'm warm, and we still haven't found anyone." Bored, she clicked her booted heels together, clomping the side of the stage in the process.

A sudden knocking in the stage near her palm made Kat jump. Raising an eyebrow, Kat rapped her knuckles back at the stage in the same place, using the old 'shave and a haircut' rhythm.

Without warning, a red head popped over the edge of the stage at them. "Hai!"

"Gah!" Kafei was startled, backpedalling wildly and inevitably falling backwards and landing on his butt at the base of the structure. Kat just made a questionable face. "Hello Nick."

The redhead boy smirked wickedly. "Been look'n f'rus?" He asked innocently with big green eyes.

"Us?" Kafei asked dubiously. "You've been hiding somewhere, haven't you?"

With a creak, a trapdoor in the center of the stage opened. Propping it up was another girl with brown hair. With a deft movement, she removed the coffee cup balanced on her head and took a sip. "We found a big space under the stage."

Kafei blinked, his two red eyes peering over the edge of the stage. "Sond, it's nearly 90 degrees outside…and you're drinking coffee?!" Hoisting himself back up, he dusted himself off.

"Well, it's ice coffee, silly!" Sond smirked as she retreated back into the trapdoor.

Nick just shrugged. "Wanna com' dow' an' see? I t'ink dere's room f' all've us…"

"Who else is down there?" Kat chewed her lip.

The redhead ticked them off on his gloved hands as he spoke. "Lessie, me, Sond, Kaii, Link, 'n Chiron. B'sides, its cooler outta th' sun."

Under the stage, Kat blinked several times. After the glare of the sun, the room under the trapdoor seemed pitch black to her. Her vision slowly started to clear. "So, how'd you find this place anyway?"

"Well," a voice on her left started with an air, "I found it-"

"No you didn't! I found it!" A voice on her right interrupted.

"No, I did!!"

"I did! You just tripped on the door!!"

Kat made a neutral sound.

Sond muttered something, and suddenly the understage flared into brilliance. She held a light arrow in her hand, and everybody flinched from the glare. There wasn't much to see, as the ground was bare dirt and the ceiling wood as it was the stage itself.

"Yikes! Warn us first before you do that!" A blond boy in a pointy green hat said, shielding his eyes.

A second boy with black hair — save the white streak down the middle — ferverently agreed. "What Link said. You could blind somebody with that!"

Kafei just smirked as he settled. "Who would've thought that the holy light arrows could be used as a flashlight?"

Nick snorted from his place in the corner, holding a bowl of what appeared to be chili. Chewing his spoon thoughtfully, he voiced his thoughts. "'Ey Ty," he said finally, levelling his gaze at the boy with the white streak. "Where's Tim?"

Ty blinked, his monkeylike tail curling around his ankles as he suddenly become thoughtful. "Y'know what, Raii…I don't know. Thought he was in the back."

"Yeah," Chiron remarked, idly stretching. "Saw him in back. We must've lost him out there."

All five boys looked at each other. Then they started laughing nervously. Kat and Sond looked at each other and sighed.

"Y'know," Sond started, "Just because we are a pack of ten-year olds doesn't mean we should act like a pack of ten-year olds…"

"Shouldn't we at least let him know where we are?" Kat added gently.

Link tried not to smirk. "Yeah, I'm sure 'Timbe' will be juuust fine…if he isn't trampled first, that is…"

Sond and Kat glared collectively. "Guys…"

Ty and Nick looked at each other. "Yeah, maybe you're right," Ty said, his tailtip twitching. "Fine, we gotta go find Timbre, even though that means going back out in the sun-"

"And gettin' all sweaty," Nick added.

"And getting heat stroke…" Kafei finished.

Kat raised an eyebrow. "Sheesh, it's not that bad-"

A loud thump from above ceased all conversation for a full twenty seconds.

"Um." Chiron said finally. "What was that?"

Sond shrugged, taking another sip from her mug. "Jus' someone on the stage." A second thump, far louder than the first, caused her to add to her statement. "A rather loud someone."

Ty made a face, shaking his head as dust fell on it. "They must be setting up for a show or something."

Link grunted. "I've had enough fun down here. Let's leave." Crawling over to the trapdoor, he pushed up with both hands. The door gave a creak, but refused to move. Link's blue eyes got a fraction wider. "Guys…it's stuck!"

Sond and Kat groaned aloud.

Timbre sat down on the big clock's ledge with an exasperated sigh. Behind him, the colorfully painted mural that was the clock's face slowly rotated with the passage of time. The trenchcoated boy rubbed his forehead with the back of a gloved hand. It was warm, he thought, stifling a yawn.

Too warm, especially to have black hair. The 10 year old idly wondered if an egg were to fall on his head at that moment, if it would actually start cooking. Staring at the crowd below him with impassive green eyes, he watched as a large muscular man with hair that resembled a blue flame walked onto the stage directly below him.

The man was carrying a crate, which from the size of it, must have been incredibly heavy. Despite this, the man was hefting it with an incredibly natural ease.

Pausing in the very middle of the stage, he turned his head. "'Ey Ana, this stage seems a bit…unsteady." To make his point, he stomped his foot heavily on the stage's surface.

A female voice, out of sight, answered the man's complaint. "It's only a temporary stage, you know. And don't stomp all over the stage like that. Remember what happened last time you did that. You do remember, Kei?"

The muscular man, apparently named Kei, looked slightly sheepish. "I don't think the landlord was too happy. Even though I did fix the hole." He set down the crate which caused the stage to shake with a resounding boom. "There's th' equipment."

Timbre blinked, interested. It wasn't too often a travelling acting group came to Clock Town, after all. Shifting position so he was lying belly down, he peered over the very edge of the ledge, chin in hands. He zoned out the murmur of the crowd, almost forgetting that there was even a crowd there in the first place.

"By the way," Kei paused from his task of opening the crate. "Have you seen Tee anywhere around?" The man looked off to the side, supposedly at the lady he was talking to.

"Explorin'. Y'know how she is." A slight woman with long hair that matched Kei's perfectly stepped onto the stage with a smaller crate. "This'n the costumes. Don't bother with that big one, we won't need t'open it just yet."

Timbre slumped, threatening to yawn again. Normally he did get drowsy around this time of day, true, but the heat was really starting to get to him. He let his eyelids droop, the rhythmic clunking of the clock behind him threatening to put him to sleep.

Underneath the stage, all seven of the kids were now braced up against the trapdoor, trying to get it to open.

"How does a door that opens upwards get stuck, anyways?" Link grunted.

Ty gritted his teeth. "There must be something on top of it!"

"…An' if we push har' enough, we mi' be able t' move it off!" Nick added.

"Either that or we're stuck down here…" Chiron squeezed his eyes shut.

"We'd run out of air sooner or later…push!!" Kat groaned.

Sond had been forced to extinguish her light arrow to use both hands on the door, which meant the entire area was very dark. "You know what we could do…"

"What?!" All the boys grunted at once.

"If we all pushed at once, it might work better. I dunno." Sond took another sip of coffee.

Everyone exchanged glances, though that didn't help much in complete darkness.

"Count of three, then?" Kafei said finally.

"Alright then," Sond said finally. Everybody braced themselves.

"One…" Everyone took a deep breath and braced their legs.

"Two…"

Timbre was just starting to fully doze off when a loud noise made his head snap up.

Well, it was more like several noises. Apparently a bunch of things had happened at once.

"THREE!!!"

Kei suddenly found the trapdoor he was unknowingly standing on suddenly fly open violently, sending him to the stage floor.

One moment later, more than half a dozen heads popped out of said open trapdoor, blinking heavily in the midday sunlight.

Timbre blinked. Well no wonder he hadn't seen his friends in a while. Leaning over the edge of the ledge, he listened for a reaction.

"Well," said Kat finally, "I think that worked."

Kei smirked a little, though he was probably a bit embarassed and annoyed as well. "Uh, next time you're stuck down there, maybe you should just pound on the door first before forcing it open."

Introductions were made all around as Timbre racked his brains for something witty to say as an entrance. Unfortunately he wasn't one for comebacks or smart-aleck phrases, at least not when he intended it. He finally gave up and waved weakly. "Yo!"

Two adults and seven children turned their heads up in his direction.

"Uh," he smirked, suddenly finding himself stared at. "Long time no see…" he finished lamely.

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See? At least it wasn't a cliffhanger! If you read this, could you please do me a little favor and review it? It would honestly be most helpful, and frankly makes my day! Thank you all in advance!! See you next time, same Zelda-time, same Zelda-channel!