Of course by the second day of moving in would Lin kbe thrown right into school first thing in the morning. For one, Link definitely wasn't used to waking up early. Much less by his grandpa flipping over his matress.

"Grandpa where's my hat!" Link calls, looking al around their little hide-out home.

"You're goin' to school! You don't need it!"

Link manages to find it anyway under his bed and runs to catch up with his grandpa. For as long as he could remember he'd never woken up so early.

Therefore it left him in an even more sour mood that morning than he usually was. Link was shown his locker number and combination that went along with his schedule. He'd been too busy throughout the whole school day to actually find his locker before the bell rung, signaling homeroom. So he wound up carrying all of his books throughout the day, not that it was too heavy for him. He used to help his grandpa and his grandpa'sfriend arrange books (that's a lot of book-carrying). Link heldhis tongue and put up with the fast-paced academic torture. Nothing less from the big city, he supposes.

By now it's the end of the school day, and Link's finally had time to find his locker. He holds piles of textbooks in his sore arms, looking up at the tall metal storage unit. It looked dented somewhere, and rusted with age under the chipped paint.

"So this is my locker," Link self-states, looking down from the tiny paper number to the banged up locker in front of him. Sure he'd get the one most likely to get broken into, but he didn't complain. Link could care less about the education materials he owned. He never had to use them before. Bookbags, multiple textbooks and notebooks, schedules, this sounded more like a job than an education.

"Hey Link!" Expectantly (though not enthusiastically) Link turns his head to see Eric cruising on up to him with that energetic grin of his. "How's the homeschool kid doing on his first full day?"

"I've been better," Link replies, slowly dropping the large pile of books on the floor. He rubs his back for a moment before looking at the note for his combination. He begins toying with the lock and the instructions. "Are school days always this busy?"

"You get used to it," Eric shrugged, leaning against the nearby lockers. Link finally opens his and begins to shove everything the school gave him inside its tiny space. There weren't even shelves. Just a tall, narrow box. "But hey, you're already fitting in."

Link suppresses the urge to laugh at that statement. "Fitting in? Eric if you were in any of my classes, you'd know so far I've had two kids come up to me and make fun of my ears. Then during lunch each time I tried to sit somewhere, even alone, these jocky guys would always steal my chair right form under me I'd fall. Three times that's happened. Then in my last class, there's some guy shooting spit balls covered in whiteout hitting the back of my head. Do you think I'm fitting in?"

Eric stares momentarily with a questioning look. "Well your ears are kinda pointy..."

Link groans from aggravation and slamms his locker shut, picking up his new school bag and throwing it over his shoulder. "At least the day's over."

"Until tomorrow starts again."

What did he just say? "Tomorrow what do you mean tomorrow?" Link asks with a look of disbelief and fatigue. "You mean I have to do this every day?"

Eric tries not to look as astonished as he'd felt from Link's words. Did this kid really not know school?" Um... yeah... You get off on weekends but from Monday to Friday, the state has all kids locked up in this prison we call school."

"You've got to be kidding me," Link groans, hitting his head with his palm. He can already see the long conversation he has stored for his grandpa later that day.

While walking along the halls to leave the building, they're passing by the open corridors of the gym. Link can't help but glance sideways out of curiosity as they walked by. And there appeared to be someone practicing basketball alone. The kid has a rack of basketballs beside him, shooting one basketball after another into the distant hoop. And by how it looked, each of his shots made it.

Eric has to stop and look back to realize Link's attention had been grabbed, He must've stopped walking beside him at one point. Eric joins Link and peers into the corridors, too. "Good, right?" Eric points out.

"Yeah," Link couldn't help but agree. He and Eric just stood there, watching these endless baskets. Like a spell. Link was impressed. "Who is that guy?"

"Girl," Eric corrects, and at that Link feels he's been mentally punched in the face. "There're so many kids at this school it's hard to narrow down names, but everyone knows her."

"She isn't in any of my classes."

"Probably because you don't recognize her. People call her Shiek Landerson," Eric introduced indirectly as they absentmindedly watched her play alone. "That girl's one of the best basketball players in the school, but she's not on the team."

Link's surprised. "Why not?"

"Doesn't want to," Eric shrugs. "Sheik's a real loner - that's why you don't see her around often, much less in classes. She barely talks to people, but it's more or less because she doesn't want to either. I don't think she's mean or bad at socializing or anything, but that's just her thing."

Link can understand that somewhat - not being a people person, though this girl's reasons were beyond him. Link refused to socialize because he was constantly moving. Making long-lasting bonds and friendships were useless to him. What was this girl's deal?

"And just between you and me," Eric points out, laying his arm around the shorter Link's shoulders. Link holds himself back from pushing him away, slightly annoyed by the cross of personal boundaries. "Shiek's actually pretty cute when her hair's down." Link only responded with a raise of an eyebrow, still overly indifferent. "It's a rare sight indeed. Lots of guys simply glance over her but, I think she's pretty cool." He says that like that makes him unique.

Link looks back to the basketball girl and continues to watch. No one can blame him though for thinking she was a boy. She wore a white bandanna, and her tiny braid behind her back was rather small - almost invisible. Not to mention she was rather... flat. He didn't see what was so special about her yet, but she was unique enough to keep a place in Link's memory for a while. "Shiek, huh?"

"Hey!" she calls, suddenly having stopped playing. When did she stop playing? "What are you doing!" she yells across the gym, causing Eric and Link to run off out of sight from the door. It was hard not to laugh from the anxiety, but Link could absolutely tell from the tone of her voice that that was definitely a girl.

By the time both boys make it out of the building, they can't keep in their laughter any longer and they just burst out. They finally stop at the front steps of the school, laughing in front of everyone at their own embarrassment. How dorky that they were caught so easily staring at a girl, they thought.

"Oh man," Eric tries to breathe, in between laughs. He holds his chest. "That was amazing."

"Yeah," Link agrees, trying to stop laughing so he can get some air into his lungs. He pounds his own chest, too. Maybe school isn't so boring after all.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The following day of school is no different from the last. Same normal schedule. Same boring endurance to stay awake most of the time. Link never liked the school lessons, yesterday or today, but there's something distasteful to him about learning in school. At least learning at home, he could go at his own pace and on his own time.

But to be honest, through his dazing-off during lectures, sometimes Link's eyes would wander around the room, looking for this Shiek girl, to see if she were in any of his classes. She actually happened to be in in two so far. This is the third, he notices, as she enters the classroom. She sits in the assigned seat adjacent to Link.

Crap.

She doesn't notice him staring or looking away, but he gets a good look at her finally.

Her unusually yellow blond hair, much like his own, is wrapped up in a messy bun that makes her look a lot less feminine than she probably did as Eric said. Her choice of wear is definitely different from the other girls' as Link had noticed. The white bandanna she wore over her head yesterday is wraped around her wrist like a wristband. A sense of girls taste sure, but it suited the tomboy that was Shiek. The short analysis was all he needed before this particular class started up, again with another lecture from the teacher. Link does his best not to turn his head to the right.

However he swears he felt her stare at him at one point during the class as well. Great, now she thinks I'm weird because she caught me watching her yesterday. Link isn't normally self conscious, but he did all he could to not look back at her probable glare of distaste. So when the bell rings, Link is scrambling to pick up all his books and his bag so he'd be the first one to leave the awkward sitting.

It may just be in his head, but Link thinks he hears someone call his name. He almost looks back, but Link's conscience tells him to keep moving to avoid the girl.

The next period after that would be the freshmen's lunch break.

"Finally, lunch," Eric praises as he walks Link through his first lunch line. Everything was so hectic yesterday during Link's first day that he couldn't figure out how to order lunch. This time Eric is kind enough to walk him through it.

Link also finally figured that Eric (as annoying as his personality could be sometimes) was actually a decent-while friend. "And that's how you get your food."

"What a waste of time," Link notes, staring at his tray of minimal food. "Next time I'm just bringing my own food. These kids actually line up and wait that long for this stuff? And its so overpriced."

"Do you ever say positive things?" Eric asks, amused but how Link manages to find wants to critisize the school. "Or compliment people?"

"Only when I mean it."

"Haha, you're funny." Link can only arch an eyebrow at Eric. Like he said, the guy's decent. Not smart, but decent.

Eric walks Link over to a table not too far away, sitting down and telling another kid to scoot over for Link. Link assums that this must've been Eric's normal table with how easily they let them join. "Guys this is Link, the new kid," Eric introduces, earning a few friendly 'hi's'. Luckily they aren't too interested in Link, which he doesn't mind. Less small talk, which Link normally doesn't give too much effort into anyway.

He zones out for most of the conversations until he hears a commotion from other tables.

"Hey isn't that Shiek?"

"Yeah what's she doing in the cafeteria?"

Carelessly Link shoots his head up from his tray, and without too much effort after turrning around he can see across the cafeteria a spec of yellow at the entrance. It was Shiek, and she was just standing there for a second, her eyes scanning over the entire lunch room. It was like she was looking for something.

"Wonder what she wants," said another boy at the table as Link and Eric exchanged the same curious expressions.

"Shiek never ususaly eats cafeteria food," Eric whispers. Does she skip lunch? Hang out somewhere with more solitude? He didn't blame her.

As if to answer their table's other mumbling questions, Shiek suddenly locked her sight on their group, straight down the cafeteria. While everyone else seemed to be going about their business, trying not to stare, all the guys at Link's table could tell something was brewing up, because Shiek began to walke right towards them and past the crowds of kids. Marching, almost. Link turns his back towards his food, feeling sick at the pit of his stomach.

"Oh man she's coming right towards us!" whispers one of the boys in a panic.

"I think she's looking at you, bud," elbows the guy on the other side of Link. Link discretely looks over his shoulder and sees her coming.

"Me? Why me?" Link suddenly panics. He wonders if this would be where he'd get beat up like most boys do in situations like this. But this was a girl, and he didn't do anything to her. But, if she was looking at him, what was she coming all the way over here for so aggresive looking?

Finally the blond girl has reached the table. She's standing on one side of the bench, with Link sitting right in it with his back to her still. All the boys' eyes at their table are either on Link or her. Eric is just as quiet and frozenas Link at the moment, apparently not as sure what to do either.

Link finally gets the courage to turn around in his seat and look up at her eyes. Surprisingly up close he doesn't see the least bit of anger, or resentment for that matter. She looked... normal. Curious even. What is this? Suddenly she looked, worried? Or concerned. He couldn't tell. There was a word he was looking for: vulnerable.

"Link?" she asks him. He could hear the trying-ness in her voice.

So she did know his name. Even worse. Probably from class or something, but that meant she did come for him. "Uh..."

"Say something, dummy," Eric grits through his teeth.

Link swings his legs over the bench clumsily to stand and face Shiek straightforwardly. He'd never felt so awkward before, much less in front of a girl, though it shouldn't have made much of a difference the gender. He notices they're also practically the same height, if him not the slightest bit taller. (That's new).

"Uh," Link repeats, forcing his most friendly smile. He holds out his hand. "Hey. I'm Link, the new guy. I uh, saw you playing basketball yesterday. You're really good," he adds, almost sounding like a question, though. He fails to see her face fall slightly. "It's very nice to meet you."

The next thing happened so fast. Only the sound of a slap was enough to silence much of the cafeteria again and advert everyone else's attention to them. Link faced the right, his cheek red from the hit by Shiek's hand.

Link'sown hand flies to his face as he turns to glare back at her, no longer putting up the nice act. "Hey what'd you do that for!-" He stopped upon seeing her glaring now too, but... she looked kind of sad, too. Only a girl could pull off looking both sad and pissed.

Before Link could finalize, she had already begun marching away, the kids making a pathway for her and backing up until she left the cafeteria.

Soon enough everyone else had returned to their own business, but the rest of the guys at Link's table looked almost close to mortified. "What just happened?" Eric asked in bewilderment.

Link rubs his cheek, blinking a few times in wonder. He almost forgets it's kind of burning. "I'm... not so sure."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Shortly after lunch all students were instructed to go to their next period class. Link instead goes to go to the bathroom, to check to see how serious his hit was. Normally a slap to the face wouldn't concern him as much, but it still stung even after their break. In fact, the girl could've just punched Link with a fist and there'd still be the same results.

"Mm, it'll bruise eventually," Link sighs, done washing his face with some cold water. Looking in the mirror he can see his cheek a slightly different color. It didn't buldge, but it's turning from red to blue. "Well, if that girl wasn't mad at me before, she is now."

The bell had rung about five or six minutes ago, so Link's already late. He figures he cn get away with it, saying he'd gotten lost, being the new student and all, so he wasn't worried. But as he exits the bathroom into the silent hall, Link can hear the familiar dribble of basketballs. From the nearby open gym.

Wandering the opposite way of his class, Link comes up to the gym corridors again. This seems familiar.

Standing beside the entrance, Link crosses his arms as he leans against the side ofthe doors, watching Shiek shooting hoops again. She doesn't have a whole rack of basketballs with her this time. Just one, but he assumes she isn't supposed to be out here either. And she lookes angry. Or, still angry anyway. Link figures she must've been ditching to vent through basketball. Normally Link would just leave situations like this on its own and just go back to class, but Link felt somewhat responsible for her being upset.

Even though he has no idea what he did to upset her.

With an inward and aggravated sigh, he uncrosses his arms and slowly begins to enter the gym in her presence. "Hey!" Link calls, finding his voice echoing in the gym. "Shiek, right?"

If she didn't notice him before, she did then and she shoots one more basket after glaring once more at him. "What do you want," she mutters, loud enough for Link to hear.

To be brutally honest, he has no answer to that. Link stops close enough to have a conversation with her, but far away enough so she wouldn't deck him again. Instead she just answers with one of his own questions. Rather bluntly, actually. "Why'd you hit me back there?"

"Leave me alone," she demands instead, catching the ball and shooting it again. She is obviously trying to ignore him.

"Well I would if I knew what I did wrong," Link says back, getting no reply. "Shiek-"

"Forget it. Just go back to class."

"Not until I get some facts straight," Link asserts while walking forward. He finds it highly unusual of him to put so much effort into something he didn't even know much about. "You came up to me in the cafeteria obviously looking for something. You looked at me, I opened my mouth, and then you slap me." Link put his hand over the basketball before she could shoot it before giving her a look. "What gives?"

The girl scoffed, obviously mirroring Link's own stubbornness. "What do you want from me?"

"Just a simple answer. Then I'll go I promise."

She rolls her eyes and swipes the basketball away, turning her back on him. "Where have I heard that before," she mutters. She started dribbling and walking off, only for Link to continue to try and pester her, following her by walking backwards in front of her. "Geez I said leave me alone!"

"No," Link smirks back, knowing how much the word annoyed her by now. "I'm not going anywhere until you give me a reasonable answer."

"Just go away," she continues, trying to dodge him by turning to the left in her dribbling. Link only followed in front. "Link!" she calls accusingly. She began to dribble faster and at different paces as she tried to get away from Link, who only followed, as if cornering her on the court. After about thirty seconds she tried one turn-dodge but Link ended up tripping over the ball and knocking her over.

They fall onto the gym floor as the basketball dribbles and rolls away.

The two groan and sit up, Link having hit the bruised side of his face. "Great," he hears Shiek mutter. Looking at her, Link's head jumps and he bit down his tongue to prevent himself from making some surprised comment.

Shiek sit in front of him, her messy hair bun now gone and replaced with long, natural, golden hair trailing down her slightly loose shirt. A hair tie laid down on the floor, broken. She grabbed it and inspected it, as if there were some way she could fix it. Then she glares again at Link and punches him for real this time on the arm. "Thanks a lot! I hope you're happy!"

"Barely," Link scoffed, looking at her again in disbelief. How could so much girls hair fit into some tiny bun?

Shiek sends a questioning. "What are you staring at?"

"You what else," Link says openly. "You're that girl I saw at her locker the first time I visited this school," he also realizes, finally looking fully at her. He leans in, causing her to back up a bit. "I don't see why you don't wear your hair down more often. You look more like a girl that way."

"Gee thanks," she frowns with the most bitter tone she can muster. Link didn't mind. He didn't like her as much either. In fact, he was glad he could spite the rude girl by breaking her hair tie.

"Ronce! Landerson!" shouted a man's voice. Both teens look across the gym and find Principal Hanson standing by another gym entrance, obviously ticked off. "In my office! Now!" he demands before marching back into his office, adjacent to the gym.

Shiek's mouth hangs open. "Great! Now we're caught ditching! I hope you know this is all your fault."

"Well I hope you know how much I really don't like you," Link replies flatly. Both exchange similar glares and pouts. Link could care less about getting in trouble - it was this girl. Why is she so, frustrating?

As they get up from the gym floor to proceed with their punishment, Link can't help but notice in the distance across the gym is a janitor. Probably. He looked like one anyway. But, he's just standing there, staring at Link and undoubtedly Shiek, not that she didn't notice.

And this school-thing gets weirder and weirder by the second.

Before long Link turned away from the strange custodian and followed the girl to the principal's office.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Goes to show that the two were punished for ditching class. It's obvious that theywouldn't be liking each other's company any time soon. Even Principal Hanson could see that. As a result, he assigned a morning detention them both. They were to show up to homeroom forty five minutes early to school, and then they'd be supervised by another teacher to just sit in silence.

Link never found the real purpose for such a punishment. It wouldn't resolve anything. If anything, it'd probably only intensify their hatred of each other.

"You have detention," Link's grandpa stated. Not out of anger or disbelief. More over from... a sense of 'what?'. "How on earth did you get a detention?"

"Some girl hit me during lunch," Link muses, sitting on a dusty wooden chair. Realizing how unclean it probably is, he wishes he hadn't. But he already sat. "I tried talking to her during one of my class periods outside of class. It took longer than I thought and I lost track of the time and, we got caught and the principal assumed we were ditching."

A late reaction in the form of a scoff came from Raul'snose and through his beard. "Wow."

"It's not funny, Grandpa," Link frowns, clearly upset by this. "Now I have to wake up an hour earlier than I already do because of some stupid girl with a mindless temper. I didn't even do anything!"

"That's life sometimes," his Gramps shrugs with a carefree smile as he pulled some books into his newly assembled bookshelf. What with how new it looked, it seemed out of place in their tiny 'cavern cave' the museum provided for them. Raul then attempts to pick up a pile of five heavy looking books from the table. Link watches curiously, wondering if the old man can carry that much. He guesses right when he winds up dropping them. His grandfather stares down at the mess and looked his grandson in the eye. "... Well?"

Link smiles and shakes his head before pushing himself up out of the dust-marking chair. Link was used to helping his grandpa pick up things anyway. However most of the time the old man would purposefully drop things on the ground just to annoy Link and get him to work for no apparent reason.

"Thank you, my boy," Raul says coarsely, alphabetically placing the books in the right slots in the shelf.

Link picks up one last book, sprawled out on the floor with some pages having fallen out. Should he clean them or leave them be? "Uh..."

"Oh just gather all the papers and put them inside the book. It's old anyway. Just a reference, for me."

Link collects the few scattered old, tattered pages. He can't help but notice the ancient text in them. It looked like a bunch of symbols to him. Has he seen this before among his grandfather's things?

Shrugging it off at first, Link opens the book to stuff the papers in somewhere, but he notices more of the weird ancient text within the book, along with some pictures. Before he can ask, Link looks to the cover of the strange book. The letters there seemed like readable roman alphabet. "Hy...rule..."

"Bingo," Raul acknwledges, taking the book out of Link's hands. "This is where I get most of my facts about Hyrulean Legend."

"You can read that chicken scratch?" Link smiles amused. "That's a dead language, Grandpa. Archeologist or not I don't think anyone will miss whatever's written in there."

"What a horrible thing to tell an archaeologist," Raul says - no less from his criticizing grandson. "It just so happens that I'll be taking this huge text with me tomorrow on my next job."

"Doing?"

"There's a dig site downtown discovered under an old construction site. Might be connected to Hyrule if the experts are right. Then again we are the experts so of course we're right. Haha!"

Link stares unamused.

His grandpa instead opens to a certain page in the book, showing it to Link. He decides to humor his Grandpa and looks. "See this?" Raul points.

Link sees an old painting of a goldensymbol. Three triangles. "What am I looking at again?" Link asks with disinterest.

"The Triforce," his grandfather says proudly. "It's an ancient and powerful relic lost to our world. There're three of them, actually that represents the three attributes of the goddesses: Courage, Wisdom, and Power." Link repressed the urge to zone out. He's ruled it highly disrespectful, but he's heard this so many times before. "And believe it or not, we just may find leads to the Triforce of Widsom at our dig site tomorrow, if we're lucky."

"Good luck," Link said dully, but he was happy to see his Grandfather so chipper about tomorrow. Along with meeting many critics along his road of growing up, Link's come to his grandfather's defense on more than on occasion concerning his research. Sure Link was a skeptic himself, but that didn't mean just anyone could discourage the old man. Link proclaimed it only his job and right to do that. "So uh, this Trifork of wisdom-"

"Triforce."

"Yeah whatever," Link smiles, knowing that got on his grandfather's nerves. "What exactly are you gonna do if you find it tomorrow again?"

"F-Find it? Oh ho no no. Not in my life time I'm sure," his gramps laughs. Link frowned. (Then what the hell is he going for?) Raul takes a deep breath before continuing to shelve more books. "An old man like me would be just content with proof. Just the slightest bit of proof that everything that I've believed in actually existed - That tiny shred of proof would be enough for an old geezer like me. I'd love to die with a heavy heart knowing all my research hadn't gone to waste."

It was that kind of passion that Link admired about his grandfather. Somewhat unrealistic sounding, but deep down, Link hoped his grandpa could find that proof one day, too. Not that he'd ever admit it. "Well, why not wish for more?"

"Wish for more," his gramps repeating. "Coming out of a slacker's mouth that sounds pretty deceitful."

"Well honestly speaking why not wish for more? Find your proof - find even more proof. Prove to everyone around you that you're not some old crackpot," Link goes on. "Having that happen in your lifetime would be a lot more worthwhile."

"Believe me, boy, you would not want to live through something as dangerous as proving these stories real," his grandfather almost laughs, like Link told a joke. "You probably don't remember this, since I used to tell it to you as a bedtime story a while back, but do you remember the two characters I always bring up right?"

"The warrior dude and the princess. Yeah?"

"Just as there are three parts to the triforce, there are three characters that accompany each story. Each legend," his grandpa smiles. "The Warrior held the Triforce of Courage. The Princess wielded the Triforce of Wisdom. The third character I never often mention is Ganondorf, and he unfortunately holds a triforce as well - the Triforce of Power."

Link resisted the urge to laugh at the name. What kind of name was Ganondorf?

"The only reason should the two heroes and the Triforce's magic arise again should be to defeat the evil trying to destroy the world. Our world, actually." His grandfather's expression hardened. "You would not want to live to see that kind of adventure."

"You sound like you sure have."

"Haha. If only. But, just knowing legends like those, the world being at risk only to be saved on the slightest chance of fate - to think that has happened time and time again long ago is frightening enough. And the only thing even more frightening is knowing that is if it is real, it will happen again one day." As Link actually began to sink in his grandfather's tale for the first time, the old man finished up putting away the last book. "Best you get some sleep, Link. Wouldn't want to be late for your morning detention."