Chapter 7. Long-Kept Secret Takes on Life of its Own!

There is something about most high schools that projects an air of Misery. Not quite on the level of middle schools, but bad enough. This is a place where young people are forced to while away the best years of their lives, studying things they don't care about and will never use. The memory of a thousand failed tests, bad breakups, and general malaise permeate the walls.

Most young people approach a high school with no small amount of trepidation, a fact which Anju had seen herself many times. She worked in the office first period, so was the receptacle of excuses and sick notes, late arrivals and bad forgeries. So when she heard the voice, echoing down the hall, it was all she could do not to run out there and find out who could be so cheerful on a Tuesday morning. Cheerful enough to do a decent imitation of the BeeGees.

"Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I'm a woman's man, no time to talk.
Music loud and women warm.
I've been kicked around since I was born.
And now it's all right, it's okay
And you may look the other way.
We can try to understand
The New York Times' effect on man
…"

Anju jumped back and yelped as a person dressed all in black skidded in front of the window and struck a disco pose.

"Whether you're a brother
Or whether you're a mother,
You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
Feel the city breakin'
And ev'rybody shakin'
And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin' aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive
."

The person collapsed on the counter, gasping for breath. "Hoo man, that's hard. I need more practice." He looked up at Anju through black bangs and grinned. "Not bad though, right?"

"Um, no, not bad. Who are-" she stopped, realizing she'd seen that face before. She'd seen it doubled even. "It's you! Link's brother! From Cold Stone!"

"Sure, why not?" he straightened up and dug into the pocket of his black hoodie. "I figured this would be the best place to bring this, since I doubt someone like me would be allowed anywhere near her house."

"Well, maybe if you wore fewer chains…and some color."

"Blasphemy! Here," he produced a small black wallet and handed it over. "I can trust you to return that, right? Anju wasn't it?"

"Oh, you remembered! And, you were Dark right?"

"Right!" He grinned at her again.

"Um," she gestured with the wallet. "Where did you find this?"

"At work. She- uh, she left it."

Anju opened it and took a look. "Oh! This is Zelda's! She's a friend of mine, I can give it to myself."

"Right on! I'll leave it in your capable hands then." He flashed her one last smile. "That's a pretty top, by the way. Really brings out your complexion."

Anju found herself blushing furiously. "Th- thank you!"

"Well now, I get low and I get high
And if I can't get either I really try.
Got the wings of heaven on my shoes
I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose
."

zzz

Zelda was, naturally, extremely grateful to get her wallet back. But when she found out where Anju had gotten it, or rather who she had gotten it from, the color drained from her face and she made a noise that could be best described as "eep."

"Zel? What's wrong?"

"I… Nothing. Something." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I knew it was only a matter of time."

"You gonna tell us?" Malon asked.

"After I tell someone else." She smiled wanly. "If I call you in tears at three in the morning, just let me ramble okay?"

"What are friends for?"

zzz

Link's phone rang mere seconds after he got home. Since there were only three people who might call him, and the other two were driving away in Kafei's van, he answered with, "Hi Sheik."

"Hey Link."

"You okay? You sound down."

"Yeah, I'm… No. Look, can you meet me at the park at about six?"

"Sure, but-"

"I'll see you there." He hung up.

Link stared at the phone, completely lost. Sheik had never done that before, never treated him like that. Something had to be wrong.

He considered calling Kafei or Ralph and asking if they had any ideas, but if Sheik wouldn't tell Link it was unlikely he would have told anyone else.

And that worried him.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to last decades. Link had been having trouble sleeping again, so his attempts at doing homework quickly degenerated into spacing out. Link wasn't much for thinking about his own feelings, but he was aware they existed. He could feel…something, pressing at the edges of his mind, barely held at bay. It was similar to when you're just getting a cold, and you're not sick yet but you know you're going to be and it's going to suck.

At five o'clock he decided to just go to the park and wait for Sheik. Of course, he had to get ready first, and as soon as he looked in a mirror he started noticing a hundred little things that needed adjustment. So in the end he had to run to make it in time.

Sheik wasn't at the head of the path that was the official "entrance" to Kakariko Park. There wasn't a wall or anything, so Link had no idea why the park needed an entrance, but it was the usual meeting place. Sheik not being there was odd, but Link decided to go and check the basketball court where they usually played, just in case.

It was getting dark early. There were only a few clouds, but they seemed to be gathering with the specific intention of blocking out he last few rays on the sun before it slipped under the horizon.

Link wondered why his thoughts had turned so poetic all of a sudden, but wrote it off as too much Shakespeare in English class.

Sheik wasn't at the basketball courts either, and it was getting darker by the second. Link turned back and sent up a mental prayer that Sheik was waiting for him. His heart was pounding all of a sudden, and the shadows of the trees looked oddly foreboding. Something was wrong, he could feel it. It was just like the dreams he'd been having lately, with the evil presence and the fire and ice and darkness consuming the earth. He'd looked up the imagery online at school when he was supposed to be working on a paper, but he found it hard to believe his subconscious could see the future. Especially when Zelda kept popping in at the end. The explanation was probably less new age and more Freudian.

Link wondered what Old Siggy would have to say about the fact that that shadow looked like a skull-shaped spider.

Something clutched at his pant leg and he shook it off absently, but a couple steps later something else did the same. Link figured it was a branch or a bush and ignored it. Then he felt something grab at his other leg, then his thigh, and finally his shoulder.

There were not that many bushes on the path.

Link looked down.

And screamed.

Half a dozen enormous orange eyes looked up at him from the fuzzy black balls that clung to his clothes. He panicked, shaking his limbs frantically and brushing at his legs. When the last of the creepy little things let go and melted back into the shadows he took off running down the path.

The initial "fight or flight" response carried him nearly two hundred yards before he remembered what he was doing in the park in the first place. He slowed for a second, worrying about Sheik and trying to find a logical explanation for those things, then a giant purple flower sprung up from the side of the path and tried to take a bite out of him.

Mmm, adrenaline.

He was close to the entrance when he heard a clatter and a shout from beyond the path. Without a thought, he shifted his destination to the owner of that voice.

There, something breaking up the shadows. And women's voices, hissing at each other.

"…doing here?"

"…don't know, but we can't…"

"…leave him for the…"

"Oh hell no!"

That last voice, Link knew that voice! "Sheik!" he shouted.

"Link!" he heard his friend shout back. Link dodged around a final tree and saw Sheik and three women standing near a jungle gym, the shadows boiling around them. All three were young, collage age, and one was wearing what looked like a sorority jacket. They had dyed red hair, and were pretty in a conformist sort of way, but from the way they were standing, and the way Sheik was crouched defensively in front of them, Link knew they were bad news.

"Get out of here you idiot!" Shiek shouted. "They're crazy!"

"Grab him!" one of the women shouted.

The shadows behind Link took on physical form, long spiky vines that whipped out and grabbed his arms and legs with clawed appendages.

"Shit!" he exclaimed. "What the hell is going on?"

"I told you we could speed it up if we found the right place!" the shortest of the women exclaimed. "You owe me a pedicure!"

"We agreed manicure!" the first one snapped back. "And I don't see what's so 'right' about this place."

"Plants, hon. Plants have tons of natural energy, we just needed to turn it to our purposes. The twins are going to be so happy!" She smirked. "I'll be they reward me."

"Reward you? Sweetheart, the best we can hope for is to not be made slaves when the king returns."

"Hey! I'm sure he'll need, like, duchesses or whatever."

The third girl rolled her eyes and summoned up more vines to grab Sheik. He was pulled back to a few yards from Link, and the both of them started struggling futilely.

Meanwhile, the bottle-redheads were still arguing. "Have you done any research on this guy at all?" the taller one said. "It's all divide and conquer, no mention of any friends or underlings. You know, that didn't get killed."

"If you don't want him back, why are you helping?"

"I never said I didn't want him back. I just don't have any illusions about what'll happen to us afterward."

"We'll be killed?"

"No, we'll be left to our own devices. The twins might get some recognition, but the rest of us are, like, unnamed soldier guys. Nobody cares about us."

"I care about us."

The third girl finally interrupted. "Hey, don't we have a job to do here?"

"Oh yeah, planting that thingie." The short girl glanced around thoughtfully. "You think there's enough energy here to support it?"

"Close enough. And it'll finish off the witnesses." She jerked her thumb at Link and Sheik.

"Hey!" Link exclaimed. "What the hell are you talking about? What do you want with us?"

"We don't want anything with you," the responsible girl said. "You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." She shrugged. "Sorry boys. It's Game Over."

"Fuck that!" Sheik said.

"You can't do this to us!" Link added.

"I'm afraid we can. Elana?"

"Right, Sam!" the short girl said.

"Lynna, you shield it until we get away."

"Right!" the tall one said.

The one named Elana almost skipped over to the jungle gym and climbed up on top of it with all the ease of someone who had never stopped playing on them. She pulled something out of the pocket of her short jacket and dropped it in the center of the bars.

Link thought he saw an object fall to the earth, hitting the sand with more force than something so small should have.

"Run!" Elana shouted, leaping off the jungle gym and landing easily on her feet.

"Sheik," Link muttered. "I'm starting to think these girls aren't your typical co-eds."

"What was your first clue?"

The girl named Sam was chanting under her breath, while Lynna was weaving strange patterns in the air with her hands.

"I think it was all the black magic," he said.

Sheik laughed weakly. "Oh man, we're gonna die."

"Not if I can help it."

Sheik tugged at one of the vines. "And how do you plan on helping it?"

"I'll think of something. Damn, I wish I smoked."

"Why? Want an excuse to ask for a last cigarette?"

"No," he shook his leg to shift a vine that was getting a little too friendly. "It's just that if I had a lighter I could burn these things off."

"Burn…Oh, oh! Oh gods, I am so stupid!"

"What-"

"After the girls leave."

"Oh, right."

Sam seemed to have finished her chanting, and was backing quickly away from the jungle gym. "Got it Lynna?"

"Got it."

"Okay then. Run!"

All three girls turned and booked it into the trees. Seconds after they vanished, the ground rumbled, and the sand under the jungle gym began shifting and bulging.

"Uh, Sheik, if you're gonna do something do it now."

"I know, I know." He moved his arms as best he could with the vines pulling at him, then drove one hand to the ground and shouted, "Din's Fire!"

A wall of flame burst from his hand and spread in a circle all around him, almost singing Link. "Yeow! Watch it!"

"Sorry." Sheik rose to his feet and dusted the charred remains of vines off his shoulders. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Can you get these things off me?" A green tendril emerged from a large bulge in the sad. "Um, now?"

"Hold still." He grabbed hold of one of the vines with both hands and muttered a sharp command. The vine sizzled in his grip, retreating before it could be burnt through. The other three took the hint, and Link found himself suddenly free.

"Great," Link sighed. "Now what do we do about that?"

It was emerging from the ground at a frightening pace, definitely plant-like in nature, but bristling with tentacles and claws and spiked petals. The colors were the type that are only found on exotic flowers and poisonous animals, and somehow Link was reminded more of the latter when he looked at it. It was so big now that it was struggling against the metal bars of the jungle gym, and it seemed to be winning.

"Well we certainly can't leave it," Sheik said. "Kids come here."

"I know. Can you do a fire thing big enough to stop it?"

"I don't know. I've never had to do it more than once in a row. It takes a lot of energy."

"Well…" Link surveyed the plant-thing quickly. "If it has a core, could you burn the core?"

"I think so. But I'd have to be close.""

A part of the jungle gym snapped and broke, and one of the plant-thing's clawed tendrils snaked free.

"I'll just have to play distraction then," Link grinned. He grabbed a stick off the ground and charged toward the swelling plant, shouting something unintelligible.

"Link!" Sheik exclaimed, then chased after him.

The lone free tendril whipped around and struck at Link. He tried to block it with his stick, but the bladed end sliced through it without even losing momentum. He took the remaining half and smacked the flat part aside, ducking and rolling to get closer.

"You run around behind it!" he shouted back at Sheik.

"If you die, I'll fucking kill you!" Sheik replied.

"Same to you!"

Another bar snapped off the jungle gym, and one of the legs popped out of the ground, bringing a hefty chunk of cement with it. Three more bladed tendrils and a spike-edged petal were now loose, and focusing on Link.

He tossed the useless stick at the plant, the dodged back and started gathering rocks. It rustled and clawed at him, but he managed to stay out of reach.

Sheik was now out of sight on the other side of the plant, but the jungle gym was straining and snapping all over the place, and Link was running out of rocks. Worse, the plant seemed to be getting smarter. Instead of just thrashing about wildly, it was following his movements, and not attacking outright until he let his guard down. Link was actually starting to fear for his life…

When he heard Sheik scream.

Afterward, Link could never properly explain what happened next. Sure, he knew what he did, but it was like he was on autopilot. Acting without thinking, knowing just what to do without knowing how he knew. It was like some bizarre racial memory took over and turned him into a stereotypical white knight, charging into battle.

Of course, the white knight didn't usually end up wrapped in tentacles. Well, okay, once, but Ralph swore that wasn't the movie he'd meant to rent.

Link squirmed around in the vines' grasp to make sure Sheik was okay, then set himself to the task of getting free. With just a little straining of his shoulder sockets, he pulled one arm free and started beating at the non-pointy parts of the vines. He almost didn't notice that the plant was pulling him closer and closer to its center. Not until the petals spread open, and something the look suspiciously like a mouth opened wide.

"No!" Sheik screamed, really screamed, and threw himself at the acid-trip-colored flytrap. "Din's Fire!"

It burst forth with a "fwoom" straight out of the action movie, instantly charring the main part of the flower, and scorching everything else. A wave of hot air hit Link, and he hit the ground hard as the vines holding him lost their support.

He ripped off just enough of the tendrils to permit movement, and stumbled over to where he'd last seen Sheik. He was slumped against a bowed and blackened part of the jungle gym, panting.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah. Let's get-"

Something clattered from behind them, and Link turned to see a giant spider with a skull on its back crawling from behind a tree. A few yards away half a dozen little imp-things with sharp sticks were converging, and there was a noise beyond that sounded distinctly like giant footsteps.

"Let's get the hell out of here."

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

AN:

Well, I promised you action and here it is. The first boss battle! Recognize all the monsters I mentioned?

The three evil sorority girls (who probably won't be back) were named after some of my readers. You know who you are. No favoritism, they were just the ones I knew how to get in touch with. They probably won't be back. Maybe as redshirts.

About the beginning, Dark was totally imitating John Travolta. I originally imagined that scene as a comic, but it would be hard to do since it's mostly walking. Still, I hope you can picture it.

Are you mad at me for putting off Zelda's coming clean? Sorry, but that's just the way it worked out. Don't worry, she's not going to chicken out. She won't have much choice... #cough#

Anyway, hope you liked this one. Even if I do think I suck at fight scenes.

Who caught the hentai reference?