Thanks very much to Shut Up Im Evil for reviewing! You're absolutely right, a weeping angel would work much better! Also, I'm glad you enjoyed the Team Awesome bit. I stole it straight from the name I dubbed the group that's made up of my oldest brother, my mom, and myself when we play games together because we're... actually, we're terrible at teamwork :-/

In other news, I started playing Mass Effect yesterday. Most addicting thing I've ever played, I didn't get anything done! 0.0
So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to continue procrastinating and saving the universe all at the same time!

Chapter 11

Hide and Seek

The furious roars of the dragon filled the night air, shaking the tracks that the wagon train was rolling on. It was too dark to see the creature, but every so often the stars in certain parts of the sky were blotted out as it circled over the city - the city, which had changed its flashing, multi-colored lights to a hot orange glow. They were still several miles away, but Hibiscus thought she could already feel the heat from the flames. "All those people... how can anyone survive this?" she wondered, unable to tear her eyes away from the flickering fires against the horizon.

"This is terrible," she whispered; her voice refused to go any louder.

Byrne didn't answer. He didn't even acknowledge that he had been able to hear her over the dragon's howling.

They were soon rolling past the farm. None of the lights were on inside, and Hibiscus vaguely wondered if their day could get any worse.

"Where's Dad?" she asked, her voice mixed with disbelief that he would just wander off like that, annoyance over him wandering off like that, and sheer exhaustion. Despite her tiredness, she was climbing out of the train before it had even come to a full stop.

"Go look for him. I'm going to let the animals out. They'll have a better chance outside the barn than in."

Hibiscus nodded and quickly ran to the house. "Dad!" she shouted as she burst into the kitchen. The house was silent. It wasn't the kind of silence that came when everyone was quietly asleep, either. There was a stale feeling to the air, the sort of feeling that came with houses that had been long abandoned.

"We weren't gone that long!" she thought to herself vehemently. "Where could he have possibly gone?"

Desperately she began to tear through the house, checking her father's favorite rooms first before systematically charging into all of them. All turned out dark and empty.

"Hello?!"

No one answered her. Heart beating heavily, she went back outside. Byrne was jogging towards the house, the barn already emptied. The cows seemed just as calm as they always did, and were already grazing around the meadow and looking quite content. The horses, however, looked almost feverish. Several were already darting away and disappearing into the darkness; the bright red filly was one of the first to scamper off. Briefly, Hibiscus worried that they would never find them again. But then another roar covered their fields, and she forced herself back to more important matters.

"Find him?" Byrne asked.

"No. I-" another flicker of light caught her eye, and peering towards it she noticed it was too small and close to be from the dragon. It was also moving at a fairly steady pace, away from the farm and towards the burning city. "Is that a lantern?"

Byrne was already running towards it, and Hibiscus quickly followed. As they drew closer the silhouettes of three figures filled their vision, and the familiar voices of Beth and Orca reached their ears. They sounded as if they were bickering over something, but Hibiscus didn't give them time to settle their disagreement.

"Beth!" Hibiscus shouted.

The trio stopped short, and both Beth and Orca turned towards her, their faces becoming brightly illuminated by the light of Orca's lantern. The third figure, while he hadn't turned around yet, was clearly Link. He was slouched over in a posture normally seen on defiant teenagers and, as he slowly turned around to face her, she noticed that he even had a carefully crafted, bored expression on his face, the kind she knew she had used a few times herself.

"There you are!" Beth said with some relief, though the hysterical shaking in her voice offset any other emotion. "Where were you two!?"

"Hibiscus," Orca began gravely, "why didn't you tell me your father had turned into a blockhead? That was rather thoughtless of you."

Slowly a grin grew on Link's face, though whether he was amused by Orca's comment or just now finally noticing that Hibiscus and Byrne were back, she wasn't sure. "Hi, Rosy," he said carefully.

"We have to keep going!" Beth snapped. "We need to find Impal and Mom!"

"Wait here!" Byrne said quickly. "I'll get the train."

"Train?" Beth repeated in surprise. "You have one?"

"Long story," Hibiscus said quickly while Byrne disappeared back into the darkness.

"What's going on out there?" Orca asked as he looked back to the city.

"It's a dragon," Hibiscus explained.

The couple stared at her with dumbfounded expressions, while Link just continued to smile at her.

"A... A what?" Beth asked.

"A dragon. You know... flying reptile thing." She stretched her arms out awkwardly, as if her poor attempt at reenacting a flying creature would help. "Breathes out fire."

Link nodded, his smile only getting bigger, but Beth just looked annoyed.

"You're telling me the Hylian and Gerudo militaries combined can't deal with a... a lizard!?"

"Beth, I'm sure it's quite big," Orca said carefully.

"No, Orca, don't you dare defend them! What are those idiots even doing in there!? Why would they let this happen!?"

Hibiscus realized the woman was probably just concerned for her son, and refrained from trying to explain just how big this particular dragon was. It had managed to take out an entire village of the rock people, for the goddesses' sakes, so it must be dangerous. Still... Beth had a point. Where was the military? Why weren't there tanks or at least something else in the air trying to hold off the monster?

Finally she heard the sound of the wagon train approaching. "Hop in," Byrne called out, the large spotlight bringing a small portion of the ground under the illusion of daylight.

"Come on, come on!" Beth said, grabbing Link by the arm and forcefully dragging him along behind her. Orca and Hibiscus quickly followed.

The train hadn't been built to hold so many people, but they all managed to crowd inside and soon they were shooting off towards the city.

"Hibiscus, while we have the time, please explain what happened with Link," Orca said quietly. He was standing just behind Hibiscus, who was squeezed between the passenger's chair and the wall; Beth had been quick to set Link down on the chair, and was currently crouched beside him at the other side of it, clutching onto her side's armrest with a white-knuckled grip.

"I really don't know," Hibiscus said, once again finding herself having to fight back tears. She was glad there wasn't enough room to turn around, because she really didn't want to have to look Orca in the face at that moment. "He just came back like that."

Orca gave a quiet sigh. "I've seen some crazy behavior in him, but nothing like this. It's spooky."

"Yeah," Hibiscus said bitterly. "Tell me about it."

"Is the city burning?" Link suddenly asked, and in those few words Hibiscus thought she heard the slightest hint of alarm.

For a brief moment, Hibiscus felt herself grow hopeful; maybe her father was finally snapping out of it.

But then Orca replied with a yes, and her father's smile remained where it was.

"Yes. Of course. How wonderful."

Beth cast a worried look at Hibiscus from over the man's head, and Hibiscus matched it with her own.

She felt a comforting hand land on her shoulder. "Don't worry," Orca said gently. "We'll get Impal and Sera, find a safe place, and then figure all this out. Together."

Hibiscus nodded, amazed at how such a simple promise, one that he could give no guarantee of ever backing up, made everything seem so much better. "I should've just told him right away. He is a friend, after all. ...Why didn't I?"

She couldn't really come up with a good reason.

Her throat felt suddenly tight, and trying to swallow around the thick lump that had lodged itself there was uncomfortably painful."I really messed this up, didn't I?" she choked out, wiping furiously at the tear that rolled down her cheek.

Behind her, she heard Orca pull in a breath of air to respond with, but Beth beat him to it. "You both did!" the woman said sharply. "You or Byrne should have come straight to us when you noticed something was wrong. We would've taken him to a doctor right away." The brunette's head twisted around to look Hibiscus in the eye. "Did you even think of taking him to a doctor?"

The lump only grew thicker in her throat as she shook her head. "No," she said, but it came out more as a pathetic whimper than an actual word.

"Well what have you been doing!?"

"Looking for magic powder," she answered weakly.

"There, you see! We would've taken him to a real doctor, with actual instruments, to figure out what's wrong!"

"Beth," Orca cut in gently. "I don't think it would've helped."

Beth glanced over at Link's face and then bit her lip.

"Did you find the magic powder?" Orca asked.

"No," both Hibiscus and Byrne answered, their defeated tones matching perfectly.

Silence followed the single word, interrupted only by the piercing roars of the dragon far above. It sounded higher up now, and pinning her eyes to the sky Hibiscus could just make out a spot of black, darker against the black sky, twisting through the air above the city.

The air around them grew increasingly hot, and finally they were directly in front of the once great metropolis. Flames burst forth from the buildings all around them. The sound of metal groaning and writhing in the heat interrupted the dragon's distant cries, and terrified screams threw themselves at her ears from somewhere beyond the walls of flames.

"Impal!" Beth screamed, already leaping out of the train. The others quickly followed - except for Link, who seemed fine with taking his time.

"The three of you should move into the tunnels!" Orca shouted, pointing them further down the tracks. Hibiscus noticed that the guards around the mouth of the tunnel were gone. "We'll meet up with you!"

"No way!" Hibiscus shouted back, grabbing her father's hand and moving closer to Orca. "We'll stick together."

Byrne gave a silent nod of agreement.

"Well come on then!" Beth screeched.

Grabbing each other's hands, the five of them moved into the burning streets.

Beth was leading the way, and even the flames seemed uncertain about the determined glare on the woman's face; as she marched towards their home, the tongues of fire flickered away from her. She had a tight grip on her husband's hand, and if he hadn't been so worried about his son himself he might have started to complain that he could no longer feel his fingers. Next in the link came Hibiscus, then Link, and finally Byrne. Link was the only one who seemed to be enjoying himself, even going so far as to give a small chuckle when the dragon's shadow fell over them for a moment.

All around them was a fog of thick, choking smoke. Every so often a person or two would come charging blindly through the black clouds, nearly crashing into them in their haste to get out of the city.

"The tunnels!" Orca shouted to whoever they passed. "Go to the tunnels!"

Hibiscus wasn't certain they had even heard him. But there was no time to follow them and make sure they had. She was beginning to lose track of how much time they had been in the city themselves, or even how far they had walked. The smoke grew thicker and burned inside her lungs. By the time they reached the market square, everyone but Link was coughing heavily. If she hadn't been feeling so miserable, she might have spent some of her energy on wondering how her father was managing to breathe normally.

"Oh my goddesses!" Beth screamed.

The market district looked to be in worse shape than any of the other areas; although with the way the flames were spreading, comparing the condition of one building to another was really just parting hairs. Several of the stores were already collapsed, transforming themselves from a shop and a home into a pile of burning debris.

"Ours is still standing!" Orca shouted, pointing out their own home.

Fire had settled on its roof and walls, but Orca was right; the building had, somehow, managed to stay upright so far. Perhaps it had been the extra funds Link had donated to it so they could afford better building materials, or perhaps it had inherited the family's stubbornness; either way, there it was, with shattered windows and groaning support beams.

Orca wiped the sweat from his brow, but it didn't remain dry for even a second before more beads of salt water rolled down it. "They might have left already, we don't know how much warning the city had. We check the shop, and then we go to the tunnels."

"I'm not leaving 'til I find them!" Beth yelled.

"Beth, Sera isn't an idiot! If they aren't still inside they're probably in the tunnels already! Come on!"

More walking. More screams surrounding them, coming from people they couldn't see. More tripping on lifeless corpses that lay in the middle of the streets. Hibiscus was beginning to feel light headed by the time they reached the shop. Orca quickly let go of both Beth and Hibiscus as he stormed through the burning door of his family's home.

The others quickly followed, splitting up as soon as they were inside to search. Smaller flames had already worked their way into the shop, and as Hibiscus rushed into the book section she saw that most of the room was already lined with orange and blue spikes. A few pages ripped free from their bindings, flying up towards the ceiling and helping to spread the flames before disintegrating into tiny, black specks of soot.

"They're not here!" Beth's shrill voice drifted over to her, and so she quickly returned to where the others were gathering near the door.

They quickly stepped outside. As if finally sensing its job was done, the roof of the building caved in. Dust and even hotter waves of heat rolled over them as both levels fell in on themselves.

"The tunnels!" Orca shouted over the sound of splintering wood and collapsing walls. "We need to go now!"

"I think..." Link began slowly, not even sweating. "I think we should go to the palace and talk to Zelda."

"Damn it, Link, no!" Orca snapped. "Now listen, Sera will know to go to the tunnels, and Zelda's probably down there, too, if she knows what's good for her. Now let's go!"

Beth didn't protest, she was too busy crying. Link merely blinked at him slowly, as if trying to figure out why Orca would disagree with him. Hibiscus and Byrne were the only ones to accept what the man said, and so they grabbed each other's hands again and rushed down the streets, back towards the city's exit.

"Byrne," Hibiscus said slowly; a tightening of the man's hand on hers was the only indication he gave that he was listening. "I can't breathe."

"Just keep running. We'll be there soon."

She did as instructed. Letting her eyes slide closed - because the air was so thick with smoke there was no point in keeping them open anyway - she focused on keeping her legs moving. There was hardly anyone screaming now, and only the sounds of the fire blazed in her ears. Without the screams, the signs that they weren't alone in this blistering heat, the city felt empty and quiet, even as the flames crackled around them and the dragon continued to growl over their heads.

Then the air suddenly became a little more bearable, in both breathability and temperature. Snapping her eyes open, Hibiscus was greeted with the sweet coolness of pitch black. They had reached the tunnels.

...A few hours earlier...

Sera had decided to close up shop early; Impal was scaring away any customers anyway with his insistence on screaming over every little thing he didn't approve of. "Well then, hopefully your lazy lumps of parents will be able to find us if we go to a fancy restaurant for dinner, eh, little 'un?" Sera said to her grandson as she balanced him against her hip with one arm, using her free hand to lock up the store.

She turned away from the shop and marched down the porch steps.

"Free Hyrule from the scourge of the Gerudo!" a man not much older than herself was shouting in the square.

"Well by the Sacred Realm, listen to that moron go... I bet he thinks he's all important," Sera muttered.

"These lands shall be cleansed through fire and brimstone if we do not remove the Gerudo ourselves!"

"Now, Impal, don't you listen to him," Sera said sweetly as she wandered down the square towards one of her favorite restaurants. "I don't know what brimstone is, but if someone tries to bring that anywhere near us or the Gerudo I'll chuck it so hard back at them they won't know what hit them!"

The toddler gave a giggle, and for a moment Sera suspected he could actually understand what she was saying. "Well... if you're smart that'll be a first, that's for sure. There hasn't been anyone smart in my family since... well ever, I suppose. ...We shouldn't let Sturgeon know about this, so keep it to yourself, alright? That man keeps going on and on about those genetics things, if he thinks he's right his head will grow so big it'll explode."

She was just about to enter the building she had been heading for, the smells of freshly cooked fish and other mouthwatering meals entering her nostrils, when she heard her name being called. Turning around she spotted the green haired woman walking towards her, seemingly taking a break from setting up her library.

"Why hello, dearie! Care to join me for an early dinner?"

"Sera! Have you heard the latest news?" the woman asked breathlessly.

"You know I don't pay attention to the news, hun. There's nothing there but my own advertisements!"

"A giant..." the woman began, still gulping down air in large mouth fulls.

"Alright, alright, take it easy, catch your breath first," Sera chided, patting the younger woman on her back.

"A giant dragon!"

"What's that now?"

"Some guards were talking, and they said they spotted something weird flying towards the city."

"Flying? What nonsense!" But Sera glanced up at the sky anyway. "Nothing there but the fluffy clouds, dearie."

"And then some of the scholars came by, and said they saw it themselves with some telescopes. It was a dragon!"

"Goddesses, what's gotten into everyone today? ...What is a dragon, anyway?"

The woman shook her head. "Some sort of flying thing that can spit out fire. It's very dangerous."

Sera gave a huff. "Well I'm not going to let some giant, flying cucco interrupt my dinner."

Just then a single Hylian guard stepped into the square. Sera put her free hand on her hip as she observed his appearance. By the roundness of his face he looked to be in his twenties; neatly trimmed brown hair, that hinted at a potential for thick curls if he let grow a bit longer, sat over a freckled brow. Wide, blue eyes gazed at the crowd of evening shoppers that surrounded him.

"Goodness, look at him," Sera said with a nod towards him. "If the military starts recruiting any younger, Impal could enlist!"

Still nestled safely in the crook of her arm, the little boy gave another giggle before stuffing a thumb into his mouth.

"If I could have everyone's attention, please!" the guard said loudly; something in his voice forced the others in the square to turn towards him. It wasn't his commanding authority that stopped them, but the slight quiver of excitement - a clear sign that something big was going to happen. We would like to ask everyone to return to their homes and remain indoors until you hear otherwise. There is nothing to be alarmed about, but we must ask everyone to return to their homes immediately. More information will be provided as soon as possible, so remain calm, please."

"I'd guess we'd better get going then," the future librarian said, wringing her hands together nervously. She started to walk away from Sera when the older woman's arm came out in front of her, stopping her in her tracks.

"Hold up there, dearie," Sera said, the seriousness in her voice negating the casual words. Her eyes were narrowed suspiciously at the guard, and after watching him for a second or two she quickly marched towards them. "Oy! You!"

"Ma'am?" he greeted her politely.

"Is it true there's a dragon on the way here?"

The man's eyes widened, giving Sera her answer.

From behind them the self-proclaimed prophet that had been shouting earlier raised his hands into the air excitedly. "I told you! Fire and brimstone arrives! The Gerudo must be-"

"Oh hush up, you jackanapes," Sera shouted back.

The man looked taken aback to be addressed so, and his lips pursed in such a way that he looked like he was sucking on something particularly sour.

She turned back to the guard. "I don't know about you, but I really don't think houses are going to help against something like a dragon, do you?"

"Well...I..."

"Is that really what the palace instructed you to say? To send everyone home?"

"I..."

"That's the stupidest order I've ever heard, and I've heard quite a few doozies in my day. The safest place for everyone is underground if the threat comes from above!"

"I..."

"Out with it, dearie! You're Hylian military, stand straight and tall and act like you actually belong there!"

The man instantly stiffened, and then frowned as he wondered why he was taking orders from an elderly civilian. But then, he had just joined the military, and with everything going on lately felt extremely out of his league. "The palace's orders were a bit confusing, ma'am. At first they said to not do anything, then they said to move everyone into the villages, but... we can't do an evacuation like that, it's just not possible, there's not enough room in the villages for everyone. So our captain decided to just send everyone home for now."

"The villages is a silly idea anyway. Come on, we're going to the tunnels!"

"But..."

Sera glared at him. "You'd better start moving people down there, mister, before everyone's deaths goes on your hands!"

"I'm not sure we'll be allowed down there..." he said weakly.

"You let me worry about that. Now get going!"

The man threw a salute, and then snapped his hand back down just as quickly when he remembered Sera wasn't a commanding officer. Still, she made a lot of sense, and even his captain had been annoyed about the lack of organization coming from the palace. "Right away, ma'am!"

"That's more like it!" She turned back to the librarian. "Come on, dearie! To the tunnels!"

With a large grin on her face, the green haired woman followed after Sera.

As they left the city, the field still seemed rather peaceful. It was hard to believe that something so terrible could be approaching, but Sera had learned long ago to never be fooled by appearances. The last time she had let that happen, it had turned out a scrawny young boy was some sort of hero. She rolled her eyes as she remembered what Link had been like when they had first met.

"Goofiest idiot I'd ever met, that one."

Then they reached the mouth of the tunnels, and Sera quickly brought herself back to the present.

"You two!" Sera called out to the two guards standing watch over the train tracks. Both were Hylian, and by the way their eyes kept drifting over to the sky distractedly, Sera guessed they had already heard about the dragon.

"Everyone's coming down there. So you better make sure you do head counts or something."

The two guards looked at each other, and then back to the sky, and then finally to Sera. "We didn't hear anything about this," one of them, a middle-aged woman, said. "We can't let anyone down without permission from the palace."

Sera's face darkened. "Now you listen to me. You see this little 'un here?" She jostled her loaded arm slightly, so that Impal bounced in the air with a shriek of laugher. "He's my grandson. Now I was put in charge of making sure he lives until his good for nothing parents get back, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. Now you can point those little rifles at me all you want, but I am going down there. And so's everyone else. So you can shoot every single citizen of Hyrule, or you can help save their lives... Remind me again, what was the military created to do?"

The two guards had shrunken into themselves the longer Sera ranted at them. These two particular guards had seen quite a lot during their careers; they were survivors of the war; they had faced threats from their own people, from the enemy, and faced Ganondorf himself at one point. They had even seen the dragon before it disappeared into the clouds. But neither of them had ever had to deal with an over-protective grandmother, and as the angry old bear hollered down at them, with the little boy in her arms smiling happily, they already knew what they were going to do. Because, quite honestly, there really was only one thing they could do when facing the dangerous and perilous threat that was an alarmed parent.

The two guards stepped aside. "Go ahead, ma'am."

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!