I am seriously proud of this chapter, it turned out fantastic! So please, read and review, comment and criticize without flaming, and enjoy!
-Jack Knights
"What do you mean access denied?" Sheik yelled into the side panel. Link had been amazed when they'd reached the entrance to Oocconia; the whole city—divided into several sectors, all interconnected—were closed off by large dome structures, keeping the harsh wind that battered them from entering the city. The entrance itself was a large iron structure, immobile and immense unless opened on the other side. Link and Sheik were currently being kept outside by a large metal box, from which a broken, distorted voice refused to let them in.
"City... closed...visitors...residents only..." said the voice in broken, metallic words.
"Go stuff yourself, you git!" Sheik shouted, growing red in the face. "We have an appointment! You hear me, an appointment!"
"Sorry... commerce... routes closed... public safety... outbreak," it said, suddenly going quiet. Even the static disappeared. Sheik stopped his yelling, stepping back a few paces to look at the entrance. Link stood awkwardly to the side of him, trying to avoid getting hit by the winds.
"Dammit, these feather-brained bastards sure know how to build a door," he muttered, shaking his head. "I don't think I could bring that thing down even if I had all the bombs in the world."
"Well, what do we do now?" Link asked, having to shout against the wind.
"We wait it out until someone with an access card—someone who lives inside," he clarified, "comes along and persuade him to let us enter with them."
"How long do you think that could take?"
"Dunno, several hours, maybe," Sheik said with a shrug as he sat down with his back to the door. "If we're lucky."
Great, just fantastic, Link thought bitterly to himself. We finally reached Oocconia, The Fallen City, and the gates are closed. The wind howled around them and Link wondered what was more probable: someone showing up before or after they'd frozen solid?
"We should head back to Tears' Fall," Sheik said after several minutes. "At least we'd be warmer there than here."
"I thought you said we should wait it out," Link shouted as a particularly strong gust of wind whipped around them.
"Yeah, I thought it wouldn't take long," he said, rubbing his arms, "but thinking back, that loud speaker said something about an outbreak."
"So? You think people will be avoiding Oocconia like the plague?" Link chided, snorting uncharacteristically.
"Probably," Sheik said somberly. Link stared at him, surprised. "What? I don't have a witty retort for everything, you know!"
Link's comment died in his throat when he saw a shadow in the distance, moving slowly for the winds. It reached the fork in the road and went right, drawing closer to them. Link stood up, waving his arms and shouting, trying to catch the person's attention.
"What are you doing?" Sheik whispered harshly in his ear. "Try and hide those ears under a blanket or something before someone sees you."
"Yeah, right," he muttered, wrapping his blanket around his head and letting it fall over his shoulders and back. As if they could see anything in these howling winds. Sheik told him to stay behind as the person came nearer. He went over to great the person, who unlike them, was wearing a heavy travelling cloak, buttoned from their chin down to their knees. Link saw that their boots were shiny black and immaculately clean.
"Hey there," Sheik said with a wave. "Could you help us out? My friend seems to have lost his access card after one to many pints in Kakariko," he fabricated, telling the lie smoothly and perfectly. "D'you think you could let us go in with you?"
The other person stood completely still and could've been mistaken for a statue if not for his cloak fluttering madly in the winds. Link watched them out of the corner of his eye, feeling them stare back. He couldn't even tell if they were a man or a woman, so indescribable was their form. Eventually they nodded, going towards the panel. They withdrew a gloved hand from the inside of their cloak, access card in hand and swiped it across the panel. The speaker buzzed and the person nodded again, raising two fingers, indicating to Link and Sheik.
There was a loud trumpeting noise and the doors began opening inwardly. The inside of the place was bathed in light and was so bright that when Link peered in, he could see only indescribable blurs moving across the entry way. Suddenly he was grabbed by the front of his shirt and pulled in, as was Sheik. The person who let them in merely walked in, no-one to guide him. Link was pulled away from Sheik, into the light. Light but firm hands gripped his arm, pushing him down into a chair. His eyes watered against the lights and he tried to shut them against the glare. Someone grabbed him face and forced them open, observing him.
Link struggled, trying to fight off the disorientating shapes around him. Suddenly, his legs and arms were gripped tight and his head was thrown back. Someone barked something into his ear, in a strange language he did not understand. They repeated themselves, to which Link responded with a 'huh?'. He heard them sigh and something was roughly shoved into his throat. He gagged on it, trying to spit it out, but ended up swallowing it instead. Something landed in his lap, and he picked it up, staring at the device.
"Do you understand me, human?" said a rough, heavily accented voice to his left. He nodded, trying to swallow around the thing lodged in the side of his throat. "Put that in your ear, you'll be able to understand us better if you do."
He did as he was told, discreetly inserting the item in his ear. It pierced his inner ear suddenly and shouted in the sudden pain. Eyes open, he saw two strange creatures standing around him. Their head was oblong and hairless, yet their face held human features; sharp, pointed nose and round, full lips. Their eyes had no pupil, deep pink in colour. Their neck was much to long and thin to support their head, and yet it held it place, albeit with an odd teetering every now and then.
The other creature shouted in its strange language again, and Link was surprised to find he understood it know. He took in his surroundings, to stunned to speak. He was in a large chamber, divided into several rooms by hanging, drawn curtains. The walls were perfectly smooth and gray, curved upwards to create a perfect dome. All around him, other odd creatures walked back and forth, as tall as he, but oddly proportioned.
"Do you understand me still, human?" said the one closest to him. It's voice was different, no longer accented but it had taken on a strange underwater quality.
"Yes, I can understand you," he said, surprised when his own voice sounded metallic—manufactured.
"Can you tell us your name?" said the other creature, obviously in charge. "Where are you from, do you have any symptoms?"
"My name is..." he hesitated. Should I risk telling them my own name? "I am known as Collin," he answered, using the first name that popped into his head. "I am from the Ordona Province."
"Alright good," said the second, kinder of the creatures. It seemed oddly feminine."Do you have symptoms?"
"What?" he answered, confused. Wait... Sheik said something about there being an outbreak. I wonder what it is... The one in charge, most likely male, began listing off several unpleasant sounding illnesses, to which Link shook his head.
"Alright then," he concluded. "Where is your place of residence? We didn't find any identification on you..."
"Uh, well..." he rattled his brain, searching for an answer. "I came in with a friend, he—"
"Oh, hey, there you are!" Sheik's voice came from the opposite end of the room. "Don't worry, he's with me."
"Colin, is it? Well, it seems you can go," the male creature concluded, writing down on a notepad. Link noticed his forearms were covered in feathers.
"Sorry for the sudden inspection," the female responded as the male one walked, oddly swinging his hips, away. "I hope the rest of your stay is pleasant."
"Thank you, miss," Link responded, smiling as best he could. He walked briskly over to Sheik, who was chatting up one of the creatures. "Let's go," he muttered, pulling on his arm.
"Oh, um, see you around, Aran," he said, waving good-bye as Link half dragged him out of the room. "Geez, what's got you stressed?"
"I don't know, could it be that I had something shoved in my throat?" he said, hating how his voice sounded not like his own. "Or could it be the piercing pain in my ear from that damn apparatus they made me wear?"
"Oh right, the trnaslators," Sheik said, with a grimace. "I remember when I had to use them. Painful buggers. Guess I should have warned you."
"Oh, you think?" Link said testily. "What were those things back there?" he said once he'd calmed down a bit.
"Oh them? Those are the Oocca," Sheik said lightly. "I thought you'd already met them before."
"They didn't look like that," he muttered. "Say, where's that fellow that gave us passage? I wanted to thank him," he added, looking around the crowded courtyard they now stood in.
"He's probably one of the politicians or has enough money to buy an elite pass. I didn't see him get pulled in like we did," Sheik said sourly. "Wish I had that kind of money. Speaking of which, want a drink?"
"I thought you couldn't buy alcohol," Link said with a raised brow.
"I can't and meant something... less expensive," he shrugged, feeling around his pockets for change. They stopped in a bar, where Link ordered them drinks, seeing as Sheik was too young to sit anywhere other than the tables.
"Alright then, so where do we go from here?" Link asked eagerly as he neared their table, weaving in between the people coming and going.
"Well, we need to get to the Seventh Sector, and then from there, find a mechanic dealing in neural appendages. Not to mention someone who can actually put the thing together."
"Wait a minute, you don't even have a name?" Link said, growing nervous. "We're just going to wander the city and hope we bump into someone who can do these things for us?"
"Pretty much, yeah," Sheik said, drinking deep from his glass. "Try it, it tastes like cherries."
Link did and nearly gagged at the taste; it was sickly sweet, tasting like aged candy only the most adventurous children who dare try and eat. He suddenly felt like he was being watched and when he turned around to look at the other patrons, he saw no-one that overly stood out. There were a few humans, more Oocca and even some dark-skinned men sitting in a corner, playing cards. He couldn't identify the source of his sudden uneasiness.
"Well then, let's get going," Link said, pushing his glass aside. "I have a feeling it's going to take a while to find a mechanic of that sort."
"Maybe, depending on the price," Sheik said, downing the last of his drink. "You gonna finish that?"
Link shook his head and Sheik greedily downed his glass as well. They left the bar, going out onto the main street, which was crowded with late-afternoon commuters. Link as Sheik how the city's great dome structures were made and he explained that the Oocca who survived the crash put their heads together and built the first, Sector Seven, with the remains of their city. Sheik continued sharing his knowledge of the city as the walked through a market filled with strange and exotic looking goods, being sold by all manner of people.
Link couldn't help but be amazed by the architectural wonders of The Fallen City. All the buildings were shaped like the massive domes around them, decorated with ornate and flowery arches made of a shimmering white stone. Some doors were painted, depicting scenes of early Oocca life, while others were carved with swirling egg-shaped patterns. No matter where they went, the climate was always comfortably warm, a light breeze blowing every now and then, wafting smells from the bakeries and restaurants unseen.
They reached what Sheik called a track station, where they waited for their transport to take them to Sector Seven. A massive train unlike anything Link had ever seen in all his travels pulled up to them, coasting silently on tracks that glowed blue, giving off a faint buzz. The carts didn't touch the tracks, instead they hovered above them, floating lazily as they waited for people to board. These too, were made of the same heavy white stone with curved roofs and scoop chairs to sit in.
As the tram zoomed silently along its track, heading for a destination Link didn't know, he looked out the pane-less windows at the sprawling city. Sheik would occasionally point out areas to Link, such as the Governmental District and the Market Blocks. Several building towered high into the sky, reaching the top of the domes. Sheik said that they were both housing complexes and support columns for the domes, a double functionality they'd only recently applied.
The farther the carts went, the less spectacular the city grew. The farther from the center they were, the less ornate the buildings became, until eventually they reached a tunnel, which they entered. On the other side, Link had expected the same as the main dome, but was severely disappointed. The buildings were all low-lying, save the sole support column, and the whole area stank of sweat.
"Welcome to Sector Seven, once the pride of the Oocca, now cast aside by the high-brow elitists of the world."
"It's so... depressing, seeing the contrast between the two sectors. What happened?"
"Well, I don't know for sure, but the Oocca just up and abandoned this place. Some say it happened when they got new supplies and materials from the outside world, others say when the ventilation began to malfunction. I still think that they just got bored with view."
Link looked up, amazed that anyone could get tired of such a striking view. All around the left side of the dome, the mountains curved towards them, almost as if cradling the dome. The other side saw nothing but open fields of green, occasionally interrupted by a snow peak.
"This is our stop," Sheik said, grabbing Link by the arm. He was surprised to see that as he had watched the city go by, the tram had emptied until almost no-one was left, save for three humans carting mechanical gear on their backs and a Goron fast asleep in a corner. "What's you say we go find you a mechanic, eh?"