An Act to Follow

An Act to Follow — Part 1: "Never shut a trapdoor unless you mean it"

Clock Town was having a festival.

If the Carnival of Time celebrated the peak of summertime, then it was safe to say that the Spring Festival celebrated, well, the spring. The cobblestone streets literally burst at the seams with various vendors, shouting their wares to passers by. Members of every race and background, gathered together by the festive atmosphere, greeted and pushed and jostled each other along every alleyway and avenue. Busy tourists and festival-goers alike mingled, all moving in generally different directions.

Amid the crowd, some children were trying to find each other.

A brown-haired girl with matching brown eyes would have been otherwise lost in the crowd, had she not known the way. She was dragging a purple-haired boy through the crowd by the wrist, and garnering many a protest. Finally, the girl paused for a moment, and looked back the way she had come.

"We might be going the wrong way!" she shouted at the boy. It was very noisy with everyone around, and hard to hear anything.

"What?!" The purple-haired boy shouted back at her.

"I said, we might be going the wrong way!!"

"I still can’t hear you very well, but I think we’re going the wrong way, Kat!" The boy squeaked a finger in his ear, grinning like a fox. Kat just rolled her eyes at him.

"Come on, Kafei, quit playing around. Maybe they went to the stage…"

--

The stage in question was set up in South Clock Town, right in front of the huge ticking clock that gave the settlement its name. The pair approach was slow, as it was hard to get anywhere with the crowd bustling.

"Kafei," Kat panted, still holding the boy by the wrist, "Next year you have to tell your Dad to set traffic patterns!"

Kafei shrugged. "He probably did, it just didn’t do any good. You know how people get when they get-" here he paused wickedly for a moment, "-festive."

Kat pointedly ignored that, same as she ignored the nearby stand selling expensive jars of Chateau Romani. It was with a good amount of bustling later and several wrong turns that found them finally at the stage.

They paused a moment, resting their backs against the stage. Pushing through crowds was a sweaty business, but the fact that Clock Town was having an unusually warm day didn’t help any either. "Ick," said Kat for the both of them, hoisting herself up into a sitting position with her legs hanging over the edge. Kafei climbed up after her, and stood on the stage, glad to be out of the stuffy crowd.

“At least we made it out of there alive,” Kafei offered, sitting next to her.
"Yeah, but I’m warm, and we still haven’t found anyone." Bored, Kat clicked her booted heels together, clomping the side of the stage in the process.

A return knock near her palm made Kat jump. Scowling curiously, Kat rapped her knuckles in the same place, using the old ‘shave and a haircut’ rhythm.

Without warning, a grinning red-haired head popped over their shoulders. "Hai!"

"Gah!" Kafei was startled so much that he fell forward, landing on hands and knees at the base of the structure. Kat, fortunately not as startled, just made a questionable face instead and turned to face the newcomer. "Hello, Nick."

The redheaded boy’s grin spread wickedly across his dark-skinned face. "Be’ look’n fer us then, have yeh?" he asked innocently.

"Us?" Kafei croaked dubiously from his spot down on the ground. "You’ve all been hiding somewhere then?"

With a creak, a trapdoor in the center of the stage opened. Propping the door open with one arm was a girl with brown hair. In her free hand she held a mug, from which she slowly took a sip. "We found a big hiding spot under the stage," the girl explained solemnly.

Kafei blinked, two red eyes peering over the edge of the stage at the girl. "Sond, it’s what, nearly 90 degrees outside…and you’re drinking coffee?!" Hoisting himself back up onto the stage, he huffed and dusted himself off. There were now some telltale dirty smudges on his knees.

"Well, it’s ice coffee, silly!" Sond smirked as she retreated back under the stage. “And it isn’t so hot out of the sun.”

Nick looked at both of them eagerly. "Wanna com’ dow’ an’ see? I t’ink dere’s room f’ all’ve us…"

"Who else is down there?" Kat chewed her lip.

The redhead ticked them off on his fingers as he thought of them. "Lessie, me, Sond, Ty, Link, ‘n Chiron. B’sides, its cooler outta th’ sun fer you, right? It dun bother me any, but…eh, ‘d rather be wi’ m’friends."

Under the stage, Kat blinked several times, trying to clear the starbursts. After the glare of the sun, the room under the trapdoor seemed pitch black to her. Her vision slowly started to clear. "So, how’d you find this place anyway?"

"Well," a voice on her left started with an air, "I found it-"

"No you didn’t! I found it!" A voice on her right interrupted.

"No, I did!!"

"I did! You just tripped on the door!!"

Kat made a neutral sound. It would help if she could see who was speaking.

Sond muttered something, and suddenly the entire space was illuminated. She held a light arrow in one hand, and everybody flinched from the glare. There wasn’t too much to see, as the ground was bare dirt and the ceiling wood as it was the stage itself.

"Yikes! Warn us first before you do that!" A blond Hylian boy in a pointy green hat said, shielding his eyes.

A second boy with black hair — save the white streak down the middle — feverishly agreed. "What Link said. You could blind somebody with that!"

Kafei just smirked as he settled. "Anyone else find it funny that the holy light arrows can be used as a flashlight?"

Nick snorted from his place in the corner, now holding a bowl of what appeared to be chili. Chewing his spoon thoughtfully, he voiced his thoughts. "’Ey Ty," he said finally, leveling his gaze at the boy with the white streak. "Where’s Tim?"

The black-haired boy blinked, his monkeylike tail curling around his ankles as he suddenly become thoughtful. "Y’know what, Nick…I don’t know. Thought he was in the back, with Chiron."

"Yeah," a fifth boy with spiky dark brown hair remarked, idly stretching. "Saw him in back, but we must’ve lost him out there." He seemed rather unconcerned about this. “Maybe ‘ee tripped and fell.”

All five boys looked at each other. Then they started laughing nervously. Kat and Sond looked at each other and sighed. Boys!

"Y’know," Sond started, "You sure act so immature sometimes…"

"Shouldn’t we at least let him know where we are?" Kat added gently. “Or try to find him? He might have gotten hurt…”

Link tried not to smirk. "Nah, I’m sure ‘Timbe’ will be juuust fine…if he isn’t trampled first, that is…"

Sond and Kat glared collectively. "Guys…"

Ty and Nick looked at each other. Both boys were Volcanian, a race that had prominently dark-colored skin. "Yeah, maybe you’re right," Ty said, his tailtip twitching. "Fine, we gotta go find Timbre, even though that means going you back out in the sun-"

"And gettin’ all sweaty," Nick added with a grin.

Kat raised an eyebrow. "Sheesh, it’s not that bad-"

A loud thump from above ceased all conversation for a full twenty seconds.
"Um." Chiron said finally. "What was that?"

Sond shrugged, taking another sip from her mug. "Probably jus’ someone on the stage." A second thump, far louder than the first, caused her to add to her statement. "A rather loud someone."

Ty made a face, shaking his head as dust fell on it. "They must be setting up for a show or something."

Link grunted. "Well then, I’ve had enough fun down here. Let’s leave." Crawling over to the trapdoor, he pushed up with both hands. The door gave a creak, but refused to move. Link’s blue eyes got a fraction wider. "Guys…it’s stuck!"

Sond and Kat groaned aloud.

--

Timbre sat down on the big clock’s ledge with an exasperated sigh. Behind him, the colorfully painted mural that was the clock’s face slowly rotated with each second’s passage of time. The boy rubbed his forehead with the back of a gloved hand. It's hot, he thought, stifling a yawn.

Too hot, especially to be wearing a trenchcoat. The boy shrugged out of the coat and rotated his shoulders, but the sun beat down on his back just as mercilessly as before. He'd been walking through the crowds with his friends, but he'd been seperated from them, and at a loss, had climbed up onto a high vantage point in the hopes of spotting them again. So far, no good. Staring at the crowd below him with impassive green eyes, he watched instead as a large muscular man with hair that resembled a blue flame walked onto the stage directly below him.

The man was carrying a crate, which from its size must have been incredibly heavy. Despite this, the man was hefting it with an incredibly natural ease.

Pausing in the very middle of the stage, he turned his head. "’Ey Ana, this stage seems a bit…unsteady." To make his point, he stomped his foot heavily on the stage’s surface. The stage shook with a resounding boom.

A female voice, out of sight, answered the man’s complaint. "It’s only a temporary stage, you know. And don’t stomp all over like that. Remember what happened last time you did that. You do remember, Kei?"

The muscular man, apparently named Kei, looked slightly sheepish. "I don’t think the landlord was too happy. Even though I did fix the hole." He set down the crate, causing the stage to shake with a resounding boom. "There’s th’ equipment."

Timbre blinked, interested. Equipment? Were they an acting group? It wasn’t too often an acting group came to Clock Town, after all. Shifting position so he was lying belly down, he peered over the very edge of the ledge, chin in hands. He zoned out the murmur of the crowd, almost forgetting that there was even a crowd there in the first place.

"By the way," Kei paused from his task of opening the crate. "Have you seen Tee anywhere around?" The man looked off to the side, supposedly at the lady he was talking to.

"Explorin’. Y’know how she is." A slight woman with long hair that matched Kei’s perfectly stepped onto the stage with a smaller crate. "This’n the costumes. Don’t bother with that big one, we won’t need t’open it just yet."

Timbre slumped, threatening to yawn again. Normally he did get drowsy around this time of day, true, but the heat was really starting to get to him. He let his eyelids droop, the rhythmic clunking of the clock behind him threatening to put him to sleep.

--

Underneath the stage, all seven of the kids were now braced up against the trapdoor, trying to get it to open.

"How does a door that opens upwards get stuck, anyways?" Link grunted.

Ty gritted his teeth. "There must be something on top of it!"

"…An’ if we push har’ enough, we mi’ be able t’ move it off!" Nick added.

"Either that or we’re stuck down here…" Chiron squeezed his eyes shut.

"We’d run out of air sooner or later…push!!" Kat groaned.

Sond had been forced to extinguish her light arrow to use both hands on the door, which meant the entire area was very dark. "You know what we could do…"

"What?!" All the boys grunted at once.

"If we all pushed at once, it might work better. I dunno."

Everyone exchanged glances, though that didn’t help much in complete darkness.
"Count of three, then?" Kafei said finally.

"Alright then," Sond said finally. “I’ll count, we all push on three...”

"One…" Everyone took a deep breath and braced their legs.

"Two…"

--

Timbre was just starting to fully doze off when an alarmingly loud noise made his head snap up.

Well, it was more like several noises. Apparently many loud things had happened at once.

"THREE!!!"

Kei suddenly found the trapdoor he was unknowingly standing on suddenly fly open violently, sending him flat on his back. The stage shuddered ominously, but didn’t collapse.

One moment later, more than half a dozen heads popped out of the open trapdoor, blinking heavily in the midday sunlight.

Timbre made a funny noise. Well no wonder he hadn’t seen his friends in a while! Leaning over the edge of the ledge, he listened for the reaction.

"Well," said Kat finally, "I think that worked."

Kei smirked, though he was probably a bit embarrassed and annoyed as well as he picked himself up. "Uh, next time you’re stuck down there, maybe you should just pound on the door first before forcing it open."

Introductions were being made all around as Timbre racked his brains for something witty to say as an entrance. Unfortunately he wasn’t one for comebacks or smart-aleck phrases, at least not when he intended it. He finally gave up and waved weakly. "Hey!"

Two adults and seven children turned their heads up in his direction.

"Uh," he grinned nervously. He really didn’t like being stared at. "Long time no see…" he finished lamely.

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