A/n: April Fools!
Didn't expect an update, eh? Well, joke's on you because I'm back! With an actual update. Yes. I'm not lying. (You can go check if you don't believe me.)
I can't even begin to explain why it took so long, just that life has a way of knocking you off your feet sometimes. I had to battle some real stuff, but I assure you Flames was never abandoned. I could never do that, since I owe you guys so hardcore for sticking with me as long as some of you have. So this, all of this, is dedicated to you.
Some things to note: I've rewritten a lot of Flames in the midst of completing this chapter. Part of the problem was that while the writing wasn't terrible, I found some revisions were definitely needed. I spent four months on and off working on tweaking it and while a reread isn't necessary, I do recommend it so you can experience some parts of the story that weren't there before.
The Flames
Chapter Five:
The Night
Zelda and her mishmash team of fighters set up camp a short hike west of their meeting grounds, in a smaller clearing in higher altitude where, upon discovering it, they all dispersed quickly to set base like a pack of wolves eager to mark territory. As the sole female member of this mission, she made sure to situate herself the farthest from everyone else (sans Link, who chose to pitch his tent in a nearby tree) and made additional calculations so a large DK-sized rock blocked any sight of Ike's lodgings.
And Ike altogether if I'm lucky, she thought loathingly as she removed obtrusive twigs and pebbles from her claimed spot and then, with a touch of magic, sweeping and flattening the uneven dirt. Maybe if Farore was on her side, she could spend the entirety of the mission without seeing the inglorious bastard too?
Zelda shook her head. Highly unlikely.
Fate was ever so fickle with her.
She allowed herself a little moody sigh as she lifted her gloved palms once again to ease the various components of her tent together before setting it down, the walls expanding and settling like a girl's skirt in the wind. It was modestly sized (as Zelda was nothing but practical) and smartly camouflaged (as Zelda was tactful to a fault) but the little rustic trim along the hem was decidedly a very posh touch (as Zelda could not deny her appreciation for frilly things).
Peach would be so proud.
Dropping her provisions inside, Zelda made a quick decision to change into her Sheikan armor. Her lavishly jeweled and gold plated gown was clearly inappropriate for espionage—and, on a more serious matter, a trip through woods where things were sure to snag and blemish the expensive silk chiffon of her dress. A brawl-induced rip was one thing (it was the height of modern couture, Peach insisted), but willfully exposing a dress to the elements like mud and (heavens forbid) grass stains were wholly unacceptable and lecture worthy.
"The peasant look is simply medieval and so two seasons ago, Zellie," Peach would say with a sweet-as-pie smile and gentle touch, all laced with a dash of pity and exasperation and (minutely) feelings of acute betrayal. "No close companion of mine should ever commit a fashion faux pas, you do understand, of course."
She wouldn't fully understand, naturally, but Zelda was always inclined to offer a nod of agreement in such situations.
For the very simple reason that Peach is unnervingly scary when it comes to her select passions.
"There are far more important things in the universe than the materialistic," a voice echoed sagely in her mind then, ringing with something more than a simple coincidence. Usually there was a tell when foreign mind connected with hers—a gentle nudge or knock before the link was even made—but there was none this time, and Lucario's deep voice slipped through her barriers like water slipped through cracks. It almost sounded like he knew what she had been thinking about but he couldn't have had the gall to actually intrude on her private musings, right?
Then again, this is Lucario. Then again, he probably could.
He wasn't exactly known to be one of conventional morals.
"Peach would argue there is little more important than social trends," she rebutted mock solemnly, adjusting her fighting gloves and deciding to benevolently ignore the blatant disregard for her personal space. (Queens were, after all, forgiving to those who perhaps may not know better.) "Some would say she's a scholar in the field, a teacher of many."
Once, on a trip to the spa, the both of them had the misfortune of spotting Snake in a multi-animal print version of his cameo. The subsequent look of dawning horror that had erupted on her roommate's face as a result was comical in itself, but witness the blonde princess chase down the FOXHOUND soldier as one would chase the Smash Ball (to teach him that no sane, educated being wore several out-of-season patterns all in the same outfit) was a true testament for her love for the subject.
In Peach's defense, the outfit had been both crass and an eyesore.
"To what do I owe this unannounced telepathic visit, Lucario?"
"We have been assigned scouting duty," came the calmed response, as smooth and cool as the flat side of a sword. He seemed disappointingly unaffected by her subtle jab at his rude mental intrusion, and Zelda tallied this to his lack of social understanding. "Specifically, I will need the assistance of your psychic abilities."
"I see," Zelda responded neutrally at the risk of sounding unprofessional, though internally she cursed and began to undo the little touches of her Sheikan transformation that had already occurred. The need for magic meant she'd have to keep her dress on; as an ancient royal heirloom, her sleeker getup had been designed so its original wearer (a long gone ancestor of her's) could hide from energy seeking forces. It boosted her physical prowess with speed and smoke and disarming judo but at the cost of next to all her other-worldly powers.
"You do not seem so thrilled."
Zelda smiled crookedly to herself as she tightened her boots. While the freedom of her alternate persona would have certainly been fun, it wasn't the end of the world and the thought that she was about to practice her magic with someone so acclaimed still made her pretty happy.
She'd just have to be extra careful not to get dirty, for Peach's sake.
"That's not quite it," she answered truthfully.
Beneath the initial layers of disappointment was a budding spring of surprise. Nervousness.
Assist Lucario? Her?
I can barely teleport without killing myself.
"My psychic abilities are rather sub-par in comparison to yours," she shared while stepping out of her tent and into the communal campground. A fire danced in the center, combating the waning light of the sun and throwing shadowy claws along the dirt at her feet. Stoking the flame with a stick was Lucario himself, and behind him she spotted Pit take to the skies like a rocket, undoubtedly assigned to similar duties from the air, from far above the tall amazonian trees. "I'm not entirely sure what use I'd be to you."
At this, the jackal-like Pokemon turned to stare at her, flat and unwavering as Mr. Game & Watch's entire countenance. He said nothing for a long time, before simply turning around and trotting towards the wall of wild foliage that surrounded their base. Prickly bushes engulfed him whole, and as he disappeared into the leaves and the darkness beyond the reach of their man-made light source, she could feel his puzzlement through their mental connection, could hear the subtle thought that then floated to her like a bottled note at sea:
"You sell yourself far too short."
Zelda smiled and then too marched forward.
Something feels slightly off.
Though she couldn't pinpoint exactly what was causing this gut instinct, Zelda could taste it in the air like the sharp afterbite of Kirby's curry; it caused the hairs in the back of her neck to stand and her heart to pound loudly and every time she would try to reach the source of discomfort with her mind, she would find herself just falling short of the answer, like whatever she was reaching for was a mere millimeter away—close enough that she could feel its essence wrap around her fingers like silky tendrils of hair but far enough that it remained a foggy indistinguishable thought.
Not wrong, but not right either, she decided, choosing not to voice her small bubbling paranoia to her more powerfully aware partner. If Lucario noticed anything, he chose not to mention it and simply continued his trek, which gave Zelda the impression that she was either making things up or whatever she was sensing was not worth the worry. They had spent the last hour circling their base, probing with their collective mental powers to see if anything in their immediate radius was potentially dangerous, but based on the tracks and minute spikes of residual energy Lucario had picked up, nothing bigger than a fox had been in the area recently.
Perhaps it was the forest just making her nervous? Perhaps she was just feeling the tininess one feels when surrounded by so much densely-packed life?
Perhaps training with Ike had simply put her on edge?
At the thought of her scowl-worthy mentor, Zelda's mood took an instant nosedive and a fire of fury coursed through her blood, causing her to push aside branches that blocked her stride with a bit more ferocity than was strictly necessary. She was usually such a level-headed person, but for some unusual reason, Ike always brought out the worst in her.
"Has he stolen your virtue?"
A stray root caught the tip of her foot and the queen-to-be almost face-planted on the forest floor.
"My...my what?" Zelda stuttered, re-aligning herself.
Lucario stopped walking to turn and, in an atypical mimic of human expression, waved his hand in the air as casually one would do while talking about the weather or taxes or the ever fluctuating politics of Dreamland. "You know," he deadpanned. When Zelda could do nothing but continue to gape in her ever-compounding confusion, he added bluntly: "Your virginity."
Several thoughts crossed the complex neurological wiring of her brain then, and to keep from completely freaking out and shrieking like a redead, Zelda inhaled deeply, straightened, and counted backwards from ten in an attempt to decipher exactly why her womanly dignity was the topic of conversation and also (not to mention) who the perpetrator in question was…
Unless...
Zelda's eyes narrowed into the thinnest of daggers. When she shifted her sight to accusingly glare at her fellow Smasher, Lucario blinked back innocently.
"Who…"
"I am speaking of Ike," he clarified in a manner that Zelda was quickly realizing was Typical Lucario Fashion (on queue, frankly, and without the least regard to decorum). "Your emotions are apparent and given the context of your thoughts, one can only assume the swordsman courted you in your private chambers and—"
"First," she exclaimed loudly, raising a sharp finger to effectively cut the Pokemon from voicing the exact horror of what he was implying. "Ike and I are not presently or have been or will ever be in a physical relationship outside of us exchanging blows in battle. Ever." The simple idea of a skinship of any sort with the gloomy, unmannered fool made heat to rise to Zelda's face, and anyone else with an insuperior hold on their emotions would have outright blushed. But not Zelda. No, she swallowed that blush with the fuel of her unbridled hatred, even though in the darkness not even an owl could have seen it on her cheeks.
But it's the principle of the thing, you see.
She would never...could never…
"You do not have to convince me," Lucario answered monotonously. "I do not judge based on human conventions of sexual norms."
"Good," Zelda quipped, stomping onward, nose angled just a degree higher, "because there is nothing to judge. Because you shouldn't have have been butting your nose where it didn't belong, Lucario, to warrant the judging in the first place."
The blue animal made a noncommittal grunt in the back of his throat, tilting his head to the side. On anyone else, this would have been coupled with an expression of confusion, and given any other situation, Zelda would have noted this but the brunette was on a rampage—a freight train fully powered and oiled and geared to speak her mind.
"I understand you come from a community of different modus operandi," she began, pacing. "but I believe it is universally accepted as rude and unlawful to read another person's mind without the explicit consent of that person. The first time, I forgave you, but the second time—"
"I was not prying," Lucario interjected and, to his credit, looked offended at the idea, or as offended as a normally stoic jackal could look while cutting off a noble's self-justified rant. He began to walk again (they did have a job to do, after all) but within a few short seconds shot over his shoulder, "You were projecting. On both occasions."
Zelda's eyebrows crinkled in confusion. "I...what?"
A migraine began its steady crawl from the back of her skull to practically everywhere and Zelda pinched the bridge of her nose, unsure of where to even begin. What Lucario was suggesting was as possible as Samus willing to wear a dress—or, equally, Peach willing to wear anything but.
Impossible.
"That's ludicrous. I don't even know how to."
"It comes in bursts," Lucario promptly added. "You are not of Mewtwo's level yet, so most of the times I cannot decipher much."
Zelda's back slouched with shock and a tingling wave of self-consciousness. "H-how long have I been…"
Lucario shrugged, his hands going aglow, guiding them now with the gentle blue light of his aura. He sniffed experimentally, perhaps catching scent of something to the left, before continuing, "Just recently."
Zelda frowned, trying to understand this new development, and turned to the sky to implore the Goddesses for answers (for nothing else seemed appropriate). Lucario's statement, if true, was logically impossible since she was never trained nor had the impudence or false pretense to assume she was ever capable of such feats. There were, of course, written declarations of Hylian queens of the past who had beyond extraordinary psychic powers, but Zelda was assured by her teacher at a young age that she would not be one of them (as these things skipped generations and she had shown no signs).
If not under the tutelage of her magic teacher, then why now? Why was she suddenly somehow in league with Mewtwo?
I am a messenger of the Goddesses, Zelda told herself quietly, confidently; she did, after all, carry within her soul a piece of the holiest relic in all of Hyrule.
Was it so wrong to assume, then, she was capable of more?
The stars winked back at her mischievously in response and seeing them, Zelda realized that a mission in a foreign land was not an appropriate place to be pondering on such things. It was dark now, much more so than when they had first started their scouting job, and the woods were coated in an inky shadow so thick that she had to ignite her own little fire just to see where to place her feet. She tried focusing at the task at hand, but her confusion soon gave way to a familiar, growing nervousness. Every subsequent crunch of dead leaves or snap of broken branches caused her to flinch; every hiss or howl from some (she hoped) distant animal made her swivel around and scan her immediate surroundings.
Calm down, she uttered in self-reprimand, easing her breathing. Concentrate.
She was expanding her thoughts and opening her mind's eye when a familiar coolness ran down her neck. It was bone-chillingly cold and left goosebumps on her flesh as it traveled, slithered, down her body. The weird sinking feeling was back with tenfold clarity, but she could not figure out from what or where or even simply why.
Her incompetence came back to slap her in the face.
And Lucario somehow expects me to be able to project now. The facts weren't adding up.
"We are almost done scouting. You do not have to be so stressed."
Zelda smiled weakly, wiping the little buildup of sweat on her forehead. "Still listening to my thoughts?"
"No. We only share the channel with which we are currently communicating." Lucario paused to send her a look, and she could sense the slight amusement through their connection. "I can see the anxiety on your face."
Ah, the good ol' fashioned way of reading people.
Zelda laughed softly, a little bit of the tension in her shoulders relaxing. Ways off, gently piercing through the wall of blackness ahead of them, she could just faintly see the soft illumination of their base's fire, could hear (if she strained her ears enough) Marth's loud rambunctious voice screeching about something or another. It felt strangely like coming home—a home, admittedly, filled with six guys and one in particular that she had no fondness for—but she was eager to see Link again, hoping his natural lightness could sooth her worries.
The minute before they burst into the clearing and onto camp, Zelda knew her worries were about to multiply.
Marth was saying something between large intakes of air (panting like he had been running after several women for several hours) but at her distance she could not make out fully what he was so expressively explaining to Ike, Link, and Yoshi. A stack of firewood sat in his one arm and a few very tattered, curiously pink feathers lay in the other. "...I saw him fall. Something knocked him right out of the air like he was this one pheasant I shot back this one time at my summer home—"
"Did you see what it was?" Ike interrupted angrily, right to the point as usual.
Marth shook his head despondently. "No...and by the time I got where I thought he had landed, I...I only found these." He lifted the feathers and in the dancing, orange fire-light, Zelda finally realized with a gasp why she recognized them.
They were from Pit's wings.
And they were stained with blood.
"Zelda!" Link exclaimed, finally taking notice of her and Lucario's emerging figures, before running over and enveloping her whole in a hug that almost knocked her right over and embarrassingly into her blue scouting partner. The Hylian hero looked a little worse for wear, and as he pulled back to inspect her, she could see from his face—from the touch of melancholy in his expression—that her speculation had been correct: they were missing a teammate who was very hurt from presumably non-accidental events.
"Are you okay?" His very blue eyes scanned her ardently like some homing device.
"I'm unhurt," Zelda assured him, squeezing his hand and offering a soothing smile. Past Link's shoulder, she briefly locked eyes with Ike, whose scowling face lacked its usual hardness and instead wore a fiery stare so intense, it could burn holes straight through Link's shield. It caused all sorts of (wholly unpleasant) flips in her stomach but also some degree of bubbling curiosity. He looked like he wanted to say something (to her and only her) and she half-expected some snarky remark to spew out of his mouth like acid, but when he just clenched his jaw shut and grumpily looked away, she frowned.
What's gotten into him?
"Thank the Goddesses," Link murmured, bringing her attention back to her tunic-clad boyfriend. "When we heard about Pit, I could only assume something had happened to you both too."
Lucario and Zelda shared a look, before the princess asked, "What exactly happened to Pit?"
"The poor chap." Marth suddenly sniffled from their left and, when all eyes were on him, pressed a fist earnestly to his heart to begin what Zelda soon realized was an elaborate reenactment of his experiences. "There I was collecting wood—which, I feel I should point out, are not becoming of my gentlemanly hands—when...there!" the blue-head cried, a finger pointed majestically in the sky as if he were doing a rendition of some play and not the retelling of their friend's potential demise. "In the sky! Is that a bird? Is that Ike's pretentious cape finally free from its horrid master? No! It's Pit! Falling, like the downward spiraling symbol of—omph!"
Marth's interruption had been a swift, powerful elbow to the ribs delivered by the horrid cape-master himself. "Point is," Ike then growled as way of bringing the topic back at hand, "Pit is missing and you two have yet to tell us of your findings, so get to it."
Ah, he was back to normal. How wonderful.
Good goddesses, this man.
"Our findings were inconclusive," Zelda offered, trying to keep her tone civil. She kept the bit about her peculiar observations out because, in all honesty, she now wondered if it all had been just in her head. Nerves, she deduced. "We found nothing that could have knocked out Pit."
"Then you clearly didn't you do your job well enough."
Zelda's eyebrow twitched in her only display of unbridled hatred, and civility went swiftly out the window. "Excuse me? We—"
Lucario suddenly stepped in front of her.
"—are two accomplished and adept psychics who found only three rabbits, a fox, and several subspecies of finch in the immediate vicinity," he cut in. Lucario gave the Tellius native a look that dared him to argue otherwise, but the mercenary stayed mercifully silent and Zelda felt the urge to hug her Pokemon partner uncontrollably in awe and gratitude (and perhaps take notes on how to effectively shut the the taller man up).
"That makes next to no sense," Marth murmured, rubbing his side. "My sight may be better tuned to those of the female variety, but I know what I saw."
"And those are definitely from Pit's wings," Link added compoundingly.
Silence followed, as no one could offer any explanation to what had transpired with their flying comrade and his invisible, allusive attacker. The fire crackled loudly in place of their absent conversation, the sounds of splintering wood and burning charcoal and Yoshi's steady churning of dinner (a fruity stew) all echoed in her ears. Zelda felt as if their collective resolve had diminished significantly, and the jungle and its tangle of wildlife around them suddenly felt that much more dangerous.
After all, how did one combat an enemy one couldn't even see? How did one engage a foe that left no trace of its existence, that had knocked an accomplished Smasher to the ground from the air and left, in his place, only a few bloody remains?
You don't, Zelda answered numbly.
Somewhere in the foggy haze of sleep, Zelda had the profound and intensifying urge to wake up. It was like a firm kick in the gut, deep and boiling hot with pain, before spreading to all the limbs of her body and making her acutely aware of the fact that she was currently not breathing. Her chest felt compressed, as if a huge King Dee Dee Dee-sized weight was suddenly atop her, constricting her lungs and preventing her from inhaling and crushing her rib bones into dust every second that painfully, airlessly ticked by.
She was drowning, dying the slowest, most excruciating kind of death.
I've got to get up, was the only solid idea—notion—that formed in the fog of her subconscious, but that was easier said than done, and no manner of willing her eyes to open dispelled the internal blackness of a resting, inactive mind.
Fear overtook her.
I'm going to die. I can't breathe and I'm going to die.
Panic weighed her down.
Link…oh Goddesses, Link, save me.
Sadness washed her.
Link...I don't want to go.
Regret finally took root.
I'll never prove Ike wrong. I'll never get to kick his ass.
And then suddenly anger—furious and electrifying, hot and aware and energizing.
Ike.
She woke up instantly, her body curled on her side perspiring and shaking and heaving loud empty heaves. The coughs were thick and sticky at the back of her tongue; they wracked her whole abdomen and made her gag on the air and caused her eyes to blur with salty tears. Zelda's reflexes threw up a brief, weak Nayru's Love a millisecond later, and in the spell's purifying crystal shield—unfocused though it was—the brunette was allowed a proper, full intake of oxygen for the first time in what felt like hours.
Adrenaline pumping, pounding in her veins like one of DK's drums, her brain sharply focused to analyze the situation.
It was still dark. I'm at camp, she realized slowly. There is something in the air.
First order of business, thus, was to get her lungs working, and so Zelda settled on wrapping and holding her Sheikan shawl firmly around the lower half of her face. Her vision still spun from whatever toxin or poison was present in the atmosphere (she had to blink furiously to concentrate) and there was a deafening ringing in her ears but at least she was breathing.
At least she was alive.
Second order of business, she concluded resolutely. Her teammates.
Several questions sprung to surface; where were they? Were they okay? Was Link okay? Knowing there was only one way to truly find out, she inhaled deeply and then pushed through the exit of her tent. A titanium wall of noxious gas and drowsiness smacked her senses, and so profound was the vertigo that Zelda almost lost consciousness, unable to keep her make-shift filter against her mouth.
There's a knock-out agent in this smoke, Zelda analyzed, throwing up another short-lived Nayru's Love which gave her enough clarity to regain her footing. Situated at the edge of base (for which she now profusely regretted), the princess could not make out much through the fog-like haze or her limited hearing, only that the ground shook steadily under her feet not unlike the battle-bound march of several soldiers.
Or several foes.
Zelda's muscles all froze at this chilling thought.
"L-Link!" she screamed, or tried to, but her voice sounded small and muted, trapped eternally inside her head. Glancing around frantically and fueled by the rising, bubbling spring of panic, she nearly lost her balance in her wobbly walk to her boyfriend's tree. She tasted bitter disappointment to find her tunic-clad hero not there before recalling—with a sharp, pungent pang—that he had been the last one on watch duty.
Alone.
At the center of camp.
Of course! I'm such an idiot. How could I have forgotten?!
Zelda cursed her forgetfulness and simultaneously prayed to the Goddesses as she made a mad, blind dash back around—
—and ran right into half a dozen primids.
"Ambush," came Lucario's mental message at that precise instant, garbled and clipped and staticky like some interfered overhead announcement. "Mission compromised. Run."
A/n: My word, I never thought I'd finish this damn chapter! It took several revisions and many cups of coffee over several days, but after a while I finally gave up. There was originally a whole other scene I wanted to get into this chapter plot-wise but I already knew if I just kept trying to perfect the chapter, I'd never post the damn thing.
Hopefully it was worth the wait in the end, this and all the other edits I've made to the story (which I also hope overall have improved the story). I know there isn't a lot of Ike, but be patient, he'll pop up sooner or later. He always does. :)
As always, please review! I need to know if I still have readers out there!
Next Chapter: Chapter Six — The Hunt
There was mud in her hair and scratches on her face and a steady stream of blood in down her left arm. The coldness of the night had seeped through her boots and had bitten her toes, and every time she paused fighting to run, she felt her chances of finding anyone from her team diminishing, shrinking like her current pool of stamina.
She was alone. And she was being hunted.
She'd pray to see anyone at this point, any of her comrades, even Ike.