A/N: Sorry about the wait. I got distracted – plus writer's block gave me crap. I'm better now. This is the earliest action in any story I've ever written, but I also think it's some of the best action I've ever written. Anyway, enjoy!

Other note: This story's been changed to 'T' rating because I have decided I'm going to use sparing swearwords. It's a very light 'T', so don't worry. I just feel better for it.

Chapter II

On the Tracks

When my mom said 'in the morning', she meant it.

"Mom, it's not even light out!" I grumbled sleepily as she shook me awake.

"I want to get there before it gets dark," she replied cheerfully. "Come on! Get dressed!"

How the hell is she this wide awake this early? I wondered as she left. Groaning, I got up and mentally went over what she'd just said.

I paused, my tunic half on. Get where?

Then I remembered. We were going to Castletown. After that I started changing with a good deal more enthusiasm, and was downstairs in less than two minutes.

Talos was there already, and he looked wrecked, but still excited. "Dad had me up at four!" he told me. "Checking on the train! I mean, what were the odds something'd be wrong? Literally less than two percent – and if we're late we don't lose anything anyway! You're lucky."

"Why, what time is it?" I asked him.

"Half past five," he told me. "We leave before six-thirty."

My jaw dropped. "Half past five?" I asked Mom incredulously.

She rolled her eyes at me. "Now you know how I feel – getting up at six to make you breakfast every day."

"If I can sleep for another hour," I begged, "I'll make you breakfast for three days. Deal?"

"Jerk," Talos muttered. "Look at me, getting up at four, of all the Goddess-forsaken times, and all you can think about is getting yourself a bit more sleep."

"My empathy systems only open their eyes about six hours after I wake up," I told him, grinning. "And that's with a good night's sleep…"

"You're the worst friend ever," he muttered.

"See if I let you use my bow again," I replied easily.

Mom called our attention back to her with a sharp (and really loud) whistle. "Link, you don't seem that tired to me–" she began.

"I'm not," I said before she could continue. "But I've got a reputation to keep up, don't I? I'm not called the laziest Whittletonian of all time for nothing, y'know."

She gave me her signature evil eye – and let me tell you, it's scary as hell. "Don't interrupt," she said, and then frowned slightly. "Are you really?" she asked curiously.

"No," Talos grunted. "He made it up."

I glared at him. "Dang it, man!" I muttered. "Why don't I just go to your house and tell your dad what happened with that box of chocolates last week?"

"Shut up," my mom said simply, "Or I'll get mad."

We did; no one wanted my mom to get mad – she got scary. It supposedly ran in the family; a survival instinct. All of our family went berserk when we got really pissed, and I don't mean just crazy. She probably wasn't serious, but I wasn't about to take chances with the current bearer of the Triforce of Courage, even if she was my mom.

She served us breakfast and we ate, still silent. About halfway through the meal, she sighed. "All right, I give," she said glumly. "Start talking. It's uncanny to have the two of you being quiet."

Talos and I high-fived. This was a regular exercise – my mom got annoyed and told us to be quiet – so we did. It never failed.

"I knew you'd see the light," I told her with an impish grin. She glowered, but didn't reply.

After we finished eating – it was about six now – Talos led us out to his train. My mom and I got into the passenger car while he got into the engine. "Alright – off we go!" he shouted then. "We'll stop for lunch at about eleven, and we should be at Castletown around dinnertime. Off we go!"

And off we went.

Throughout the train ride, I was going back and forth between Talos, chatting with him, and Mom, playing cards – usually her personal favorite game, Great War. Basically, the five suits (Hylian decks have five suits) symbolized the five main armies in the Second Hyrulian War – Hylian, Goron, Zora, Gerudo, and Sheikah. I always lost, but I got better each time. She'd been playing all her life, and had once been the national champion of New Hyrule when she was younger.

A little after eleven, just as Talos had said, he stopped the train at a small divergence of the tracks for just that purpose, and we all got off. My mom had packed lunch and it was as good as her cooking always was (which was good). It was just ham sandwiches, but with her added flair, we all enjoyed ourselves immensely, and our stomachs even more so.

"So, let me get the schedule straight," Talos asked her as we ate. "We're staying in Castletown for the next six days, at the end of which is the Princess' Proclamation. The next day, we're leaving back to Whittleton. True?"

"Yep," said my mom. "Unless something changes our plan for us, which may well happen. You know our family – can't stick to a plan to save our lives."

Both Talos and I nodded, laughing. It was true – we were probably the most chaotic family in all the four provinces.

We finished all too soon and got back to the train. "This is why I don't like long trips," Talos grumbled as I hopped on to the engine with him. "I have to focus all day long."

"Stop whining," I told him jokingly, trying to lighten his mood in the way the two of us were accustomed to. "Just think – in a week, you'll see your pretty princess again, and we'll make sure you have a good view. And I sure as heck intend to have a good time for the rest of the week, too."

He hit me playfully on the shoulder. "Unlike you," he said, grinning, "I'm not one to go slobbering around after a girl, thanks."

I glared at him, but before I could reply, there was a clatter. A couple pieces of coal dropped down from the storage cart behind us onto the floor by my feet. I grabbed them on reflex – coal was expensive – and tossed them back onto the cart. Talos frowned up at the heap of black stone for a moment, before shrugging and saying, "Weird. Something must've hit them – a pebble the train kicked up or something."

I nodded as he turned back to face the front. Suddenly, on the horizon, a cloud of dust rose up. I frowned at it. "Talos, what's that?" I asked curiously, pointing it out.

He looked, and his eyes widened. "Aw, crap," he muttered. "Bulblins. Bulblins. They haven't been seen on the tracks for almost a decade!"

"Well, you have a cannon, right?" I asked him, looking back at the massive artillery gun behind the storage car.

"Well, yes," he said, his voice rising. "But I've never actually had to use it! Like I said, the tracks have been safe for years, and what with one thing and another, I never went to the Gorons' Shooting Range!"

I rolled my eyes. "Stop panicking," I told him, "And give me the gun controls. Tell me how they work. I'll take care of the rest."

He understood in an instant, of course. My family had an innate skill with weapons of all kinds – not surprising, really, considering our heritage. "Here," he said, pointing me to a console with a couple of levers and a big red button in the middle. "Levers spin it, button fires. That's it."

"Got it," I said. "Leave it to me."

It was a hard weapon to use – like anything which you could only see from a third-person perspective, but my eyes, hard-wired as they were for combat, were able to track the probable arc of the cannonball. It took me more tries than I'd have expected, but I knocked down the two Bulblins after a while.

Not before they'd fired a flaming arrow at us, which had missed me by inches and broke the whistle system, of course. That would have been too lucky.

"Dangit!" Talos swore as it hit. "That's gonna cost me a pretty rupee to fix!"

"Hey, at least I got rid of 'em," I said sympathetically, once I'd actually done that. "Could have been a whole lot worse."

"True," muttered my friend, still glaring at the dangling rope as though it was to blame for breaking. Then he sighed. "Whatever. There used to be a slight refund for Bulblin damage. Let's hope it's still up and running."

"How can they tell?" I asked curiously. "What if someone made it look like an arrowshot?"

"Bulblins coat their arrows with a really weird kind of fuel to get them to light," Talos told me, rolling his eyes like it was obvious. "Honestly, you should know that, what with your bloodline."

"Hey, none of my ancestors was ever a scholar," I said defensively. "That was your dear princess' department. With us, it was more just 'dodge the arrows and kill the Bulblin'. We never really cared that much about the intricacies of either."

"That would explain a lot," Talos muttered, smirking.

I glared at him. "Shut up," I said flatly. Suddenly, we both looked to the right side of the train in unison. I'd done it because I'd heard a strange clattering sound, and I could only assume Talos did too.

The cause became plain soon enough. As we looked behind us at the side of the storage car, we suddenly saw a sight I recognized, though I'd never expected to see one with my own eyes, which now widened in shock and horror.

There were two glowing red orbs of light that served as eyes in the otherwise empty sockets. The skull was laced with flecks of torn and tattered skin, older that I could guess at. So was the rest of the skeletal body, which was also wearing ancient, rusty armor.

It was a Stalfos.

As soon as it realized it had been spotted, it clattered its teeth at us and scuttled in our direction. We both leapt back, Talos screaming while my eyes narrowed. This turned out to be the wrong thing to do.

It leapt so that it was standing in front of us, and between us and the doorway to the passenger car. It clattered again. Talos was looking absolutely terrified, but I was suddenly calm, now that the initial shock had faded. This was, after all, exactly what I was here for, wasn't it?

I looked around for something – anything – to use as a weapon. Finally my eyes came upon a length of spare pipe for the trains machinery on Talos' other side.

I spun, coming to a halt in front of him and grabbed the pipe with my hand – my left, of course. The Stalfos was looking straight at me, its teeth bared – not that there was much alternative.

I gripped the pipe like a sword and struck an attack stance. My focus shifted into combat mode. "All right, you old bag of bones," I growled, feeling more alive – more at home – than I ever had before. "Come and get it."

It drew its sword with a grating hiss as the tarnished metal of the sword slid along the rotting cowhide of the scabbard. The blade was a no-nonsense affair – no runes, no glow, no ornate hilt, just a sharp, long bit of metal meant to separate various bits of various things.

I didn't wait for it to lunge. With a yell that (I thought) would have impressed the Hero of Twilight for a first-timer, I leapt forward, swinging my makeshift club around in a crushing arc, aiming straight for the monster's right temple. It ducked and stabbed at my gut. I spun to my right and roundhouse kicked towards its ribs. It hit my leg with its elbow, stopping the movement and causing me to grunt in pain as its jutting bones met my shin.

I pulled back into my attack stance, and so did it. We watched each other for a little while, it giving the occasional clatter while I stayed silent.

Its guard was superb – almost as good as Impani's. My best chance with a weapon like mine was to try to crush either its ribcage or its skull, but it knew that too and was guarding those places especially fervently.

I gritted my teeth. Nothing for it. I charged with a shout, raising the pipe and bringing it sweeping downward. The thing jumped to its right – my left – and prepared to bring its blade down in a strike that would almost certainly have severed my sword-arm, if it had landed.

Time seemed to slow around me, and a lot of things happened at once in that slowed down. I heard Mom's voice shouting something – I didn't catch what – and another woman's voice – a younger one- seemed to scream something else at the same time. An arrow shattered one of the Stalfos' ribs. It screamed.

But all of that didn't stop the blow. What did was what I did in that instant. I slipped my legs out from under me and literally fell on my stomach, catching the Stalfos' legs as I fell. I pulled.

Chattering, it overbalanced and fell… right out of the engine platform and on to the ground below us. Hitting the solid ground while moving sideways at sixty miles per hour was too much for its fragile bones, and it shattered, quickly falling away into the distance behind us.

I lay there for a time panting, stunned by what I had just accomplished, and then I sat up. Looking around I saw that both my mom and Talos were kneeling beside me and my mom was holding a bow in her hands.

"Are you all right?" Talos asked quickly.

I was about to reply when I saw what neither of them had. There was someone in the coal on the storage truck. Their – or rather her – face and hair were blackened by the coal, and she was staring at me, her usual impassive mask gone, replaced by a blended look of worry and amazement.

My face warmed slightly, but the combat rush was still in me and I didn't care. Nor did I pay attention to the hot feeling in my stomach.

"What the hell?" I bawled instead. "Impani?"

A/N: Okay, honestly, who guessed that was coming before it happened? Anyway, next chapter, we meet one of my personal favorites among my OCs – Impani. Now, A little hint to the story's future – there will be MAJOR references to the Hyrule: Total War mod for Medival II: Total War – both in plot and characters. Check it out!

And I leave you with freaking babies doing… wait, that's Tobuscus' line. Sorry Toby! I leave you instead with a request to review! Lithos out!