Chapter Three

It was well and good that, despite the fact that the darkened metropolis of Hyrule City no longer provided the proper artificial lighting from streetlamps and building lights, the streets were wide and long. Furthermore, there were little in the way of abandoned cars; the civilians had used whatever means of transportation to get out of the city when the evacuation effort started, which meant that aside from the stray burning skeleton of a destroyed military armored vehicle, Link encountered very little obstacles as he made nearly three hundred kilometers per hour down Market Avenue.

Even as the street sped by him, he wasn't entirely sure what it was that bothered him more, the flames that burned in the distance, casting orange glows reflecting across clouds and smoke in an otherwise tranquil ebony night sky; the fact that lack of Valentine resistance here only meant more resistance further out from the capital's city center, where there would be less cover; or Zelda's arms around his stomach and chest that was squeezing and trembling so tightly as she pressed herself against his back on the motorcycle, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, that he personally found it a bit difficult to breathe.

Admittedly, however, Link wasn't terribly concerned about any of those particular factors at the moment. He had always had a fascination with all manners of vehicles and machines, and he was mostly glad that the MRX402A – he silently decided he would affectionately call it "Epona", its codename, from now – handled exceptionally well, far beyond anything he had expected. If this was what the Hylian army had been spending its research and development budget on, Link certainly wasn't about to complain. Although it – or "she", as Link decided to refer to the motorcycle using a feminine pronoun – was remarkably larger than even the most powerful of civilian hyperbikes, she was extraordinarily light for an armored military reconnaissance vehicle. He could turn the vehicle as tightly as he wished without worrying about drifting unless he wanted the motorcycle to do so, and the dual-throttle system gave him an unparalleled advantage when it came to acceleration and maintaining speed through hairpin turns. Link personally wanted to test her limits, but now was not exactly a good time, not when they were in the middle of a warzone, and especially not when there was someone scared half to death sitting behind him. The computer display at the controls impressed him too; it kept track of so many vital details of the vehicle, including temperature, remaining ammunition, durability of tires, traction, integrity, GPS readouts…and, of course, came with the usual speedometer and tachometer.

If he found anything lacking in this motorcycle, it was that she didn't possess adequate armor and weapons; even for an ultra-light all-terrain reconnaissance vehicle, or a ULATRV, Epona was ridiculously minimalist when it came to armor plating. It was well and good that the armor was, in fact, C-Carbon, a synthetic and hardened allotrope that Link knew to be extraordinarily sturdy and powerful, but the armor was molded in a way where protection was prioritized for Epona's internal components, not the rider. The large size of the vehicle certainly helped in making it difficult for attackers to get a good shot at the rider, but she possessed no actual canopy; the rider was almost as unprotected as a rider of a civilian hyperbike, which the Epona resembled more than any other military reconnaissance vehicle. She was also affixed with two fore-mounted .50 caliber machine guns, which could make good work of a humvee…but not anything larger than that. She didn't carry a great deal of ammunition either. But, again, that wasn't really a shortcoming; Epona was supposed to be a reconnaissance bike, not an infantry fighting vehicle. Anymore firepower, and Link probably should've brought a tank instead.

So the Hylian Joint Intelligence agent enjoyed what he had – which was already a great deal – and sped down the capital city of the country as a shining black blur. Link gently edged Epona off Market Avenue and onto Ocarina Street, and she fluidly responded, swerving smoothly through.

There was a roadblock in the middle of the street more than five hundred meters ahead, hastily erected with sandbags, manned by a small Valentine squad. On the left side was a humvee, while the right side was a more heavily armored infantry fighting vehicle. Although Epona's exhaust was muffled and as quiet as most reconnaissance vehicles got when throttling at three hundred plus kilometers per hour, she was still pretty loud, and the roar of the engine had already caught the attention of the roadblock before she even showed up in the sights of the roadblock. Link took a breath, counted to three…then swerved Epona to the left just as a great salvo of tracers from assault rifles, machine guns, and chain guns – angry lines of yellow and orange and red – violently sliced through the air she had been in just a moment ago. A moment later, an exhaust plume was seen in the distance; Link counted to two this time, and swerved once more, avoiding more incoming enemy fire…and dodging a wire-controlled TOW missile fired from the IFV on the right. Epona was simply too fast for the roadblock to properly get a good aim on her.

Link clicked the built-in triggers of the machine guns, the switches attached smartly to the motorcycle handles; immediately, .50 caliber rounds tore up what was essentially a stationary target, a collection of sandbags. A cloud of sand burst into the air, shielding the Valentine soldiers from Link's view but, more importantly, sending the soldiers scattering and disrupting their aim of Epona. Now there was only the humvee and the IFV to worry about, and the street was free of more than half of the tracers that had been flying across, a welcome development no matter how Link looked at it. He was already only two hundred meters and closing.

At one hundred meters, Link decided that he was going to stop playing dodgeball with the roadblock, and suddenly swerved towards the sidewalk where the roadblock couldn't adequately cover. As he edged close to the sidewalk, the cameras and optic lasers mounted at the fore of Epona quickly scanned the path ahead and registered the ten centimeter discrepancy of height between the street and the sidewalk in the form of a curb. Immediately, Link felt Epona's suspension soften in synchronization with the terrain ahead, and when Epona mounted the curb, she did so gently, smoothly climbing that ten centimeter rise. The springs had been softened to just the point where the bump of the curb felt nothing more like the pleasant swell of a sailboat on gentle waves for the two riders of Epona.

Epona shot right past the roadblock in at just under three hundred kilometers per hour. The machine gun emplacement on top of the Valentine humvee and the TOW missile turret on the IFV couldn't turn fast enough to track the black blur that was suddenly behind them. The soldiers fared little better, but by the time they had gathered their wits from having been forced from their cover, knelt down, and started firing down the street again, Epona was already zooming off, two hundred meters away and turning a sharp right – her suspensions hardening to increase stability for the turn – onto Tetra Avenue, disappearing behind a city block a split-second afterwards.

Right into another roadblock. One much closer this time, giving Link only two hundred meters to spare. And the soldiers of this roadblock had been much more prepared for Link and Zelda this time. Not only were there far more soldiers – it was a platoon this time, more than two dozen soldiers – there were three IFVs and a tank waiting for them. Link had no intention of trying his luck against this kind of firepower; he concentrated on avoiding the massive one hundred and twenty millimeter shell fired from the cannon – the massive piece of metal flying right past Epona with only meters to spare sent a strong blast of wind into his face, and Link realized just how uncomfortably close the shell had been – as well as two TOW missiles from the IFVs, allowing the less powerful assault rifles rounds to ricochet off the polished C-Carbon armor.

Again, he angled Epona into a sharp turn, aiming for an alley just to the left right before they'd hit the roadblock. Epona automatically stiffened her springs as she twisted into the turn, then, just before she mounted another curb and onto the sidewalk, the suspension softened for just a split second, enough for her to make a smooth transition between street to sidewalk. As Epona landed on the sidewalk and began to slide, the springs hardened once more, allowing Epona to turn that much more smoothly, and the tires began to catch traction. Not quite enough; the wheels were still skidding across the alley and into the wall after the initial slide, but, thankfully, Hylian engineering had ensured that Epona's tires were appropriately large and curved. The rounded side of the rubber tires rode on the wall for a moment, skidding against the side of the brick building as they wedged itself between road and wall, driving practically at a diagonal slant…before finally sliding down from the brick wall and back onto the ground when its sideways momentum ended, and Epona sped down the tiny gap between two buildings, the gunfire from the roadblock a thing of the past.

Link silently reminded himself to leave a thank-you-note for army R&D, if they were still alive. There was no way he could've pulled off that kind of move on a normal motorcycle or other military reconnaissance vehicle…at least, not without slamming both himself and Zelda against a rather hard brick wall.

The alley, admittedly, was a tight fit; even without factoring in the dumpsters, which Link barely managed to scrape by, the two walls on either side blazed by horrifying close to the occupants. As if it was an impossibility, Link felt the arms around his chest and stomach tighten even more, and ventured a guess that Zelda had opened her eyes…then saw that they were traveling down an alley with only a meter to spare on any given side. Chances were Zelda had them tightly shut again.

Five seconds and four hundred meters later, Epona blasted out of the alley with both its occupant holding tightly on. They weren't alone; five Humvees were quickly on their tail even as Link turned a sharp right. Judging from their speed, they had already been driving, expecting the two to be fleeing from that alley. The Valentine response was becoming more coordinated, and it was clear there was no more time to mess around.

Five sets of machine guns from the Humvees opened fire, and Link gritted his teeth even as he shifted Epona across the lanes of Oracle Boulevard, headed for the downtown area, doing his best to avoid five separate lines of fire. He shot occasional looks back to look for the best position to make it difficult for the gunners to fire, mostly by aligning the jeeps together so that the rear gunners couldn't fire in fear of hitting their comrades in front. It wasn't entirely enough; an increasing number of bullets were hitting the large metallic rear of Epona, and her computer systems were already reporting minor damage to the rear armor plating. Link hit the throttle as hard as he could; he was quite certain that the humvees couldn't match Epona's top speed, not by a long shot. As long as they stuck on large streets, the humvees had no chance of catching up, and Link would lose them quickly.

At least, that was the plan, until what sounded vaguely like a whirlwind above them increased in acoustic volume. Although Link was too busy dodging stray abandoned cars on Oracle Boulevard to spare too much of a look up, he didn't need to. Zelda, however, quickly shot a glance up and confirmed Link's fears. "Link!" she screamed over Epona's engine, "Attack helicopters!"

Link managed a scowl even as he finally managed to catch enough open space to take a look. Two small, two-pilot attack helicopters, sleek and black, had descended to a proper height from the skies. Despite its relatively small size – only slightly longer than a civilian helicopter – they bristled with weapons, including chain guns, missiles, and rockets. Furthermore, they were far more well-armored than any reconnaissance vehicle. Epona had no good answer for that, offensive or defensive-wise. Hovering just above the humvees, they joined the pursuit even as they flew towards Link and Zelda.

Link swiftly served to the left, and just in time; chain gun fire tore up the streets where Epona had been just a split-second before, creating miniature explosions that sent fragments of asphalt flying into the air. There was no way those bullets were simply going to bounce off Epona's armor. Link couldn't afford to let her endure that kind of firepower. As Epona straightened herself again after the turn, the attack helicopters had to slow as they rounded the metropolitan intersection, not being able to make tight high-speed turns without smashing into the side of a high-rise building. The humvees, however, did not have such a problem; all five turned and skidded through the corner, following Epona perfectly, their machine guns flashing with automatic fire shortly afterwards. The straightaway allowed Epona to increase the distance between her and her pursuers…but Link knew the attack helicopters could swiftly catch up as soon as they managed the turn.

Link didn't wait for the attack helicopters to complete the turn. He immediately decelerated again and drove down another avenue, then another, making turn after turn, each street progressively becoming narrower and narrower. Taking the smaller, windier streets meant that the attack helicopters couldn't follow unless they attempted to make high-speed turns, weaving through city blocks upholding skyscrapers. To make it even more difficult for the attack choppers to track him, Link drove Epona towards the upper-level highway, kilometers of road leading out of the city supported by a network of steel and concrete pillars holding them a dozen meters into the air. A motorcycle couldn't navigate twists and turns like a four-wheeled humvee could, however; even with Epona, Link was forced to slow, and the humvees slowly but steadily caught up.

The computer in front of Link suddenly ringed and flashed red with what seemed like an alarm. His gaze quickly shot down at the display, which had two new words flashing across the LED screen: "Radar Lock".

Link probably would've been far more impressed by the fact that Epona's computer systems could actually detect when she was locked on by enemy targeting systems had he not actually turned around and saw plumes of smoke jettison itself from an attack copter that barely made a corner in time. A near-instant later, what was very clearly a missile emerged from the smoke and streaked toward him.

A missile from an attack helicopter traveled at more than one thousand five hundred kilometers per hour, five times faster than Epona's top speed. Link harbored no delusions that Epona would be able to outrun that.

The only advantage that Link had was that it took several seconds after the thrusters of a rocket activated to actually achieve good acceleration before hitting full speed. Which meant that Link actually had three seconds instead of the two seconds that would've been required had the missile achieved maximum velocity the moment it was launched. One extra second was not exactly a great deal of time, but, at this point, the Joint Intelligence agent was going to take anything he could get.

He turned tightly towards the middle of the street, sticking close to the pillars holding up the bridge above that was Highway A-7 even as he ran parallel to the highway above him. The missile traveled a velocity above the speed of sound, and Link couldn't actually hear it coming. But while the missile lock-on could go through walls, the missile most certainly couldn't; it slammed itself against one of the pillars, fifteen meters away from Link and Zelda, at more than one thousand and five hundred kilometers per hour.

The high-explosive anti-tank warhead – or HEAT warhead – loaded onto the missile was meant to take out heavily-armored military vehicles; it had absolutely no problems in tearing down a pillar of steel and concrete.

The explosion pulverized the concrete and twisted the steel that had composed the pillar supporting the highway. Although the blast was reduced on Link and Zelda's side of the pillar, by no means were they completely safe from the explosion. Epona's armor was specifically designed with the appropriate curves and grooves to divert the forces of an explosion outwards and away from Epona and its rider, so both Link and Zelda remained relatively unhurt, but the explosion was still deafening enough for Link to wince – he barely managed to hear Zelda cry out in fear at the overwhelming blasts despite her being right behind him. The shockwaves also almost threw Epona through the air, and her tires lost traction, spinning out of control even as it skidded and drifted along the street.

Link had barely managed to wrestle with her controls to bring them out of the spin when he realized there was yet another problem: This section of the highway was collapsing. The support had been destroyed, and several tons of concrete and asphalt were now detaching themselves from the highway proper, crashing down on the streets beneath. Right where Link and Zelda and Epona were.

With the precision of a surgeon and the elegance of a dancer, Link accelerated Epona out of her spin, choosing to use the motorcycle's high torque to allow her to spin and gain traction with the asphalt beneath her rather than stopping first. He couldn't stop, not unless he wanted to kill the speed the explosion had given Epona, which was probably the only thing that was going to save them from being crushed underneath a bridge. The tires skidded and produced smoke for a few seconds, but they eventually caught on, and Epona slowly and gently eased back into Link's control, who quickly utilized the speed from Epona's drifting to get them out of there. They were just in time; the highway finally crashed down right behind them with only meters to spare, and an explosion of dust followed in their wake – the crumbling highway crushing the street below – before Epona outran that too.

The good news was that the highway being brought down meant that the humvees, stuck on the other side, were no longer a cause of concern. The bad news was that the pair of attack helicopters were not confined to the road, and still presented a massive threat. They parted the cloud of smoke and dust as their rotors propelled them through the air, and the chase was on once again even as Link sought cover underneath the otherwise intact highway, weaving through abandoned automobiles, burning armored vehicles, and highway supports. At the earliest opportunity, as the helicopters attempted to flank him and ruin his cover, Link quickly turned onto another street, aiming to lose the helicopters in the metal-and-glass jungle of skyscrapers once more. The attack helicopters quickly angled into pursuit.

Revisiting his earlier tactic of attempting to shake the helicopters were met with limited success. While he was indeed successful in increasing the distance between him and his pursuers, Link was now troubled by the fact that it seemed the pilots were getting much more trigger happy. One helicopter continued to send a wave of chain gun bullets flying from its nose with an astounding lack of accuracy; sometimes the bullets would strike close to Link, but as the helicopter turned, the bullets would shatter glass and stone on various floors of the surrounding buildings as well. It certainly didn't make Link's escape any easier, though; he now had to worry about falling debris that might fall on them and shattered glass that might puncture Epona's tires. And then there was the other attack helicopter, also in pursuit and firing rockets from the pods on both of its two short wings. Unlike the missiles, the rockets had no tracking devices and couldn't home in on Epona, and they also carried smaller, less powerful warheads. But the attack helicopter had a liberal number of them, and the smaller rockets traveled considerably faster than their missile counterparts, not to mention they detached themselves from the rocket pods very rapidly, almost like a machine gun. The rockets were little more accurate than the chain gun bursts, but the explosions certainly were no joke; Link struggled to keep him, Zelda, and Epona out of the same street the helicopters were on, knowing that the miniature explosions that were tearing up the streets and the skyscrapers behind them in rapid succession could easily turn all of them into paste – smeared across the street – should they be on the receiving end of a direct hit…or maybe even an indirect hit.

Link quickly consulted Epona's GPS, tried to find something that could work to his advantage. A few seconds later, believing he had something worthy of attempting, he skipped two chances to make a right turn, allowing the two helicopters to barely catch up…then took a sharp ninety-degree right onto yet another street. The pilots in the two helicopters, tracking Epona's movements, quickly leveled their altitude, making sure they were at optimal weapons range – flying low enough – to hit the Hylian fourth-generation reconnaissance vehicle on the next turn. The two helicopters, too, flew past two streets before, on the third, banking right.

And realized that the third street wasn't a street at all.

When the Squaretech Corporation built their "branch office" in Hyrule City, they requisitioned two entire city blocks for their HQ, their building plans pronouncing the need to build right over Parker Lane right between these two blocks and turn the two into one single city block. The Senate, eager to appease Squaretech at the time, signed off on the requisition…which drew the ire of drivers cruising in downtown Hyrule City when the lack of Parker Lane caused traffic congestion in the surrounding one-way streets. Some negotiations later, Squaretech finally reached a compromise; the building plans were slightly altered so that the middle section, the part that was built over what was once Parker Lane, would be decreased in size so that a public underground tunnel could be built right under the building to allow for cars to drive right through.

The pilots were not locals to Hyrule City, and knew not of this. Before they turned, the Squaretech Hyrule City Branch Office looked only like two skyscrapers adjacent to each other with a street in between them. When the helicopters made the turn and accelerated, however, they suddenly realized that Epona has simply gone right under the building as the street ramped down into the tunnel…and now there was a giant wall of steel and glass right in front of them.

The helicopter in the rear had more room for correction as the pilot pulled back on the yoke, bringing the attack helicopter into an upwards swing and away from the glass. The first helicopter, however, was not so lucky. It attempted to turn back…but it had been traveling too fast, and the turn wasn't quite enough. The rotors struck glass and steel, cutting violently through steel and glass even as the rotors bent and twisted and sent the helicopter on a chaotic tumble, beginning to spin out of control as the pilots inside that attack helicopter struggled to maintain altitude and control of their now-smoking aircraft.

Link did not slow down or look back to see whether or not the attack helicopter would crash; he was simply quite glad that he got them off his back. He drove right on through the short tunnel, and, a second later, reemerged on the other side, shooting up the ramp as Epona's suspensions softened and allowed her to smoothly land right back on the streets without too high a jump. He swiftly guided Epona back towards the larger streets; now that they lost the attack helicopters, they needed more speed, the kind of speed that large wide streets could offer them…plus those roads led back to Highway A-7, which led south out of the city and towards the Hylian-Gerudo border. He needed to get back there to complete their escape.

"Humvees are back," Princess Zelda suddenly called out from behind him. Her voice was raised, having to shout above the noises that were screaming right past them at high speeds, but her tone suggested she was much calmer this time. Then again, it wasn't entirely unexpected; they had run into two roadblocks, been pursued by five humvees, been shot at by attack helicopters…personally, Link would've felt anyone would've preferred being chased by humvees rather than missile-carrying attack helicopters. He turned his head just enough to catch the silhouette of five humvees right behind him, and accelerated in his attempt to lose them in the dust even as tracers flew through the streets once more, dividing the road with angry lines of light.

Except, as soon as his head turned back towards the front, he immediately saw another five humvees veer right onto the street in front of him; he was now surrounded by ten humvees traveling at high speeds.

The Valentine jeeps stopped firing in fear of hitting each other with intersecting lines of machine gun bullets, but Link knew the inevitable result if he didn't do something: The longer he lingered, the more likely that the humvees were going to box him in, and that would be the end of that. The highway supports of Highway A-7 right above them did not help Link's situation at all, giving him more obstacles to avoid and less angles to maneuver. He decided to take the less conventional option: He swerved left…and right into the National Mall, a tree-laden national park two kilometers in length running alongside the downtown section of Highway A-7.

The humvees doggedly followed Link into the Mall, and, immediately, the drivers began a dangerous game of tree-dodging. Link couldn't quite achieve good speed with Epona on these kind of grounds, not when he was turning left and right in an effort to avoid crashing into trees and benches and fences, but he still fared better in terms of traversing the uneven terrain compared to the humvees that barely managed to keep themselves accelerating and moving at the same time. The Valentine pursuers were no longer very aversive towards being trigger happy, however; machine gun fire erupted from all asides, and Link pressed himself low against the body of Epona, relying on the trees for cover as he tried to ride as close to the trees as possible, to the point where he was pulling off near-misses or even scraping the trees, in an attempt to attain a sufficient form of cover. It seemed to be working; a few rounds still struck and ricocheted off Epona's C-Carbon armor, but many more rounds were striking the trees around them, and Link became that much more concerned about the splinters that were being launched into the air as bullets peppered the trees around them and sent scraps of bark flying around.

Link knew he wouldn't last like this. His tactic was a delaying tactic more than anything, but now he was stuck in the middle of far too many trees and intersecting lines of fire. He wasn't outrunning the humvees fast enough. The situation was that much deadlier on the streets, but things were still dangerous, even with the cover. He needed to get to the highway, away from the humvees, but the next ramp, Link knew, was at least two more kilometers away…and he wasn't looking forward to two more kilometers of dodging machine gun fire from ten different directions.

Drastic measures needed to be taken. Link edged Epona towards the highway once more, carefully keeping track of his environment…or, more specifically, the path in front of him. Even more specifically, the trees; there were some that were actually quite tall and sturdy redwood trees. He deliberately slowed down a bit, kept his eyes open, looked for a tree that was distant enough. The damage to the National Mall clearly showed that there had been serious fighting here, enough for explosive ordinance to be used; several of the trees were already in splinters before they had gotten here.

A bit more than two hundred meters ahead of them, Link saw one. A rather thick tree that had been damaged at the base by what was probably a tank shell, and was already tilting away from where Link and Zelda were coming from, towards the highway on the right. Link aimed Epona's nose at the tree and fired her two machine guns at the base; splinters flew from that tree as the base was slowly eaten away by the rain of bullets, and it slowly began to bend even further away from Epona and toward the highway above. Hoping that the tree was at an inclination just enough for his purposes, Link aimed Epona directly for that tree.

Link silently gritted his teeth; this was a really stupid idea.

Zelda agreed; she had kept her eyes open and saw what Link was turning towards. "No," she whispered in a voice laced completely with fear, which rapidly developed to a scream. "No, no, no…!"

Link ignored her, stood up on the motorcycle even as he increased the throttle to achieve as much speed as he possibly could…and slammed his feet down on the rear supports of the motorcycle. Epona continued to ride forward even as the Link's movement forced the weight of the motorcycle to shift back, and Epona did a little jump as her front tires left the ground and came up into the air. Zelda's scream became even more pronounced as she hung onto her dear life, clutching at Link so tightly that he became very sure that he couldn't breathe. He really couldn't blame her; the ground was now flying right past her no more than a meter behind Zelda, now that Epona's nose was angled upwards.

The bending tree was only meters away from Epona when Link finally shifted his weight back forward – slightly difficult, as Zelda, light as she was, was still grabbing quite tightly onto him – and the Epona's front wheel, having been raised to the air came right back down onto the diagonal tree trunk. Her suspensions immediately slackened, dampening the bump, and this worked in Link's favor even as Link's rear wheel, being pulled along by the power of the front tires, mounted the tree trunk too. Link now found himself riding along the side of a fifteen-meter-tall eucalyptus tree, bending increasingly towards the highway, effectively utilizing the tree as what was probably the world's thinnest motorcycle ramp.

Link didn't need to be reminded of how badly this could go wrong. The tree might snap and completely collapse, ending the attempt to go airborne; the tree trunk was thick, but Link honestly wasn't sure if it was thick enough to handle the weight of Epona, Link, and Zelda. They were riding upwards with little-to-no cover; the gunners in the humvee had a clear shot as Link gained altitude. And the most obvious problem was balance; tree trunks did not offer the best of traction, were rounded, and guardrails did not protect them from tipping over to any side. Not to mention that the impromptu ramp was only about eighty centimeters in width…only several centimeters wider than Epona's tires themselves. There was an extremely low error margin.

Miraculously, the tree trunk held; the accumulated weight of motorcycle and her drivers caused it to curve even more, and the sinking feeling sent a sudden rush of fear to Link as he assumed the worst and thought they weren't going to make it, but the tree trunk ultimately did not snap. The Valentine gunners in their humvees, in the meantime, were stunned into a momentary lapse; their reaction to this move was effectively the same as Link's own reaction to his own move, that of assumed stupidity and insanity. And balance was barely maintained; Epona was light enough for Link to maintain equilibrium, and its wheels remained stubbornly glued to the side of the bending tree.

Achieving an altitude of ten meters, Epona reached the tip of the tree, the edge of the ramp, the end of the road…and proceeded to shoot up into the air, barely achieving an altitude of fourteen meters at the top of its arc…

…And barely made it over the guardrail of Highway A-7, the tires bumping against the guardrail once before, with a thump that even Epona's suspensions could not completely negate, landed on the asphalt of the upper-level Highway A-7.

Link personally did not care about the fact that he was still unable to breathe, as tightly as Zelda was squeezing him. He did not care that Epona was, once again, spinning as it fought to gain traction after the transition from grass to tree bark to air to asphalt. He was simply relieved; the humvees, left twelve meters below and without a ramp to get onto the highway themselves, were no longer a concern.

Trying to exhale despite the tremendous pressure across his chest and stomach, Link fought down the urge to whistle, a motion that succeeded largely because he couldn't inhale and was actually rather shaken by their success; the Hylian army's research and development team really wasn't kidding when they called this an "all-terrain" vehicle. If there had been another cyclist that had been as foolhardy to have attempted what Link just accomplished, he would really like to meet the person. In the meantime, he accelerated Epona out of her spin once more, and quickly achieved two hundred kilometers per hour as he continued down the highway. At this speed, the humvees had absolutely no hope of catching up.

Not that there wasn't a new worry; as soon as Link passed a highway ramp on the right side, newcomers joined him via said ramp onto Highway A-7. His head snapped back as he quickly saw three new pursuers quickly matching his speed as they drove up from the streets below, obviously part of the coordinated pursuit efforts. Each of the three vehicles carried an armed Valentine scout…and it was clear they were quite accustomed to these types of high-speed pursuits.

Hyrule wasn't the only country building reconnaissance motorcycles.

Four motorcycles shot through the derelict highways, quickly gaining even more speed as they the edged closer to three hundred kilometers per hour. Link deliberately slowed to keep Epona close to the three pursuing Valentine scout bikes; as a fourth-generation reconnaissance vehicle, she possessed a higher top speed than the third-generation motorcycles her pursuers were riding on…but that advantage was marginal, and couldn't make anything decisive. Even worse, it would place Epona right in range of three sets of fore-mounted machine guns on the Valentine motorcycles. Keeping close to their pursuers meant that he gave the Valentine scouts no chance to use their machine guns. Furthermore, the scouts didn't draw their handheld weapons and fire at Link; traveling at this speed while swerving left and right on motorcycles made it tremendously easy for friendly fire if they decided to start going trigger-happy on intersecting paths.

This called for another approach.

Link quickly released Zelda's arms around him – a difficult task, as Zelda was extremely unwilling to relinquish her hold – and instead diverted her grip onto the metallic frame of Epona instead; she squeezed the motorcycle and refused to let go. For the first time in fifteen seconds, Link finally took a breath, and felt a wave of slight nausea hit his head as oxygen began returning to his brain. The feeling lasted only for a moment, however, as he reached into his jacket and quickly drew his gunsword even as he swiftly swerved towards one of the pursuing motorcycles. The reason he needed Zelda to let go of his stomach was because he needed mobility for his body. The use of firearms at this speed while vehicles swerved left and right across each other and stray cars on the highway was going to have diminished effect, what with the detriments against accuracy. Link needed to close the distance and solve that accuracy problem.

With the flick of a button and his wrist, Link quickly changed his gunsword into longsword mode. His target had very little time to react; Link had already closed the distance between the two vehicles as Epona slipped in right beside the motorcycle, and, with perfect timing, Link swung his sword at the rider. The blade caught, slashing through the light bulletproof armor the scout was wearing, and Link watched in silent satisfaction as the scout tumbled off his motorcycle and onto the highway, violently skidding and spinning across the asphalt before sprawling motionless on the ground; his motorcycle, riderless, soon met the same fate.

Link's satisfaction was short-lived; as he turned his attention to the other Valentine soldiers, he suddenly realized that both of them had also closed in on him…also equipped with gunswords in longsword mode in their hands that they had swiftly drawn from their holsters.

These soldiers weren't just scouts. They were Valentine special forces, the only soldiers on the continent that carried gunswords as a standard weapon.

The battle quickly became chaotic as the motorcycles slipped left and right between lanes, weaving through each other and the occasional obstacle across the highway, riding in intersecting lines as their swords slashed and clashed with every pass they made with each other. Link was reminded of medieval duels on horseback, where riders would engage in fast-paced melee combat even as their mounts galloped across the fields. He couldn't help but make that mental comparison now even as he and his opponents engaged in a high-speed swordfight on motorcycles across the highway. Both scouts were also very proficient with handling their own gunswords; Link couldn't make their swordfight decisive even as slashes and thrusts were being parried and blocked, and he was, in fact, fighting at a disadvantage. It didn't help that his maneuverability advantage was cut down by the weight of an extra passenger.

Although he was outnumbered by one, Link still possessed a single advantage that he hadn't used yet. He had noticed it earlier, but Epona seemed to possess an experimental set of controls at the seat of the motorcycle. After a few very minor experiments with it while riding across the battlefield of Hyrule City, Link became very certain that Epona actually possessed a hip-controlled steering system, meaning she could actually be steered without hands on the handlebars. Link had been hesitant to use that, however, not when he was not entirely sure just how sensitive the hip-based controls were, and not when he wasn't sure what that would do against the balance of the motorcycle. At the moment, however, he was very much inclined to take advantage of it so he could wield the gunsword with a double-handed grip for more power and more options. Their Valentine pursuers, riding standard third-generation motorcycles, could only fight with one hand, the other hand maintaining a hold on the handlebars of their vehicles in the absence of an extra set of controls.

He had little time to think about this. The two Valentine scouts were now moving in a flanking formation, one on either side. Both had their swords angled precariously forward even as they charged at Link from both sides, clearly aiming to impale him from two different directions. As if Link was going to let that happen; he quickly hit the brakes, hoping that the Valentine motorcycles would run into each other instead. It didn't happen; both motorcycles calmly but swiftly passed right by each other through where Epona had been before with only centimeters to spare. Undoubtedly, they had trained enough in this maneuver to not do something as stupid as run into each other in a pincer attack. Link had no intention of giving the two scouts a stationary target to shoot at; he quickly accelerated once more as soon as the two motorcycles had cleared each other, shooting down the highway again. The scouts spun their vehicles around in unison and began pursuit once more. Link made sure to match the speed of his pursuers to ensure he was not right in front of their machine guns.

Again, one of the riders on the right quickly moved up, preparing to slash at Link once more; the left scout had to peel off to avoid a stationary truck in front. With the threat from his left diminished, Link figured this was the best place to test just how well he could handle this new feature. Rather than allowing the scout to come towards him, Link immediately placed his gunsword in a powerful two-handed grip, then, letting go of the handles, twisted his hip clockwise. Epona responded like a charm; she shifted right just a bit further to the right than Link had expected, but still within acceptable margins. Having seen Link let go of the bars of his vehicle, the special forces scout did not expect Link suddenly barreling towards her from the side, nor did she expect Link to be holding his gunsword in both hands. She barely managed to bring her own blade up just in time for the parry, but was forced to give ground and bend outwards as Link overwhelmed her block with brute strength, leaning forward with his two-handed blow and the force of Epona pushing the scout increasingly towards the right guardrail.

The scout did what anyone would do when overpowered, and gave ground, quickly using her free hand to turn instinctively away from Link, hoping to increase the distance between them. Link did not let her, his hip twisted furthermore to the right, and Epona quickly and violently shoved the scout's motorcycle into the concrete guardrail. The scout wasn't sure whether she should try to push back or pull away even further, and the indecision cost her; sparks flew as the motorcycle's metal slammed into the concrete barrier, and the motorcycle was sent on a chaotic tumble as it lost traction with the ground at the sudden application of force. It crashed onto the ground with the rider, and she, too, was out of the equation. Link quickly turned his attention to the last remaining threat…

…Who, having been unnoticed for the past few seconds, had sufficiently angled his motorcycle into a prime attack position right behind Link, and the barrels of his machine guns blazed with automatic gunfire.

Link quickly swerved left and right, avoiding the bolts of light that were flying past Epona. He thanked the fact that it was that much harder to hit a moving target from fixed machine guns on a motorcycle, but he would've kept his fingers crossed had he been able to anyways, attempting to dodge gunfire while threading through civilian cars having been left behind during the evacuation, which only seemed to increase in number and density as the two motorbikes continued on. What was otherwise scattered cars quickly became an outright traffic jam as abandoned cars occupied all lanes, forcing both motorcycles to the shoulder emergency lane dangerously close to the guardrail. Link scowled at the development; there was no avoiding gunfire this way, and now the Valentine scout was pounding Epona's rear armor with a hail of machine gun bullets. An alarm on Epona's computer shrilled, alerting Link that her rear armor plates were beginning to be seriously compromised.

Five hundred meters ahead, Link quickly saw why traffic had been congested here. A black wall of asphalt blocked off the road ahead, and a quick recollection of the local road map reminded Link that it wasn't a wall at all, but the Reynolds Drawbridge, which crossed over the Dalton River. When the rest of Highway A-7 was being reconstructed to fit modern standards, the Reynolds Drawbridge had been exempt from the renovation process, being protected by its status as a national heritage site. An appeal to lift that status failed, despite the fact that the drawbridge was far too low for modern standards and unnecessarily congested traffic on a highway when drawn. The bridge, apparently, had been drawn upwards, yet whoever was supposed to lower it back down clearly did not…probably because he had been too busy running away. Realizing that the bridge wasn't going to be coming down anytime soon, evacuating civilians must've abandoned their chances on Highway A-7 and found other means of escape as they fled from their cars.

After this, Link supposed, there wouldn't be any opposition for lifting the Reynolds Drawbridge's national heritage site status. Admittedly, however, he wasn't terribly concerned right now. All he did was press harder on the accelerator, and Epona leapt forward faster than before.

Zelda ventured a peek forward; she undoubtedly saw what was up ahead and knew what Link was about to do, but, surprisingly, she did not scream in fear or protest. Despite this, Link was relatively certain that he heard what sounded suspiciously like a distressed moan even as her already light skin turned an even sicklier shade of pale.

Epona covered five hundred meters in about six seconds. The motorcycle ran into resistance even as its suspensions softened to take the brunt of the impact against the raised drawbridge. Still, the pressure was notably harder than anything they had felt before; the bridge was drawn up at a forty-five degree angle, and there was a limit as to how much shock the suspensions could absorb. There was also a limit as to how well a motorcycle could travel up a forty-five degree ramp…but, thankfully, Epona's speed was just enough to make it up while still maintaining a bit more than one hundred kilometers per hour when it finally made it to the end of the road and soared right off it.

Princess Zelda started screaming in terror at that point.

The last pursuing scout attempted to follow Link and Zelda up the bridge, but his motorcycle did not benefit from the same kind of advanced suspensions as Epona did. The vast majority of the motorcycle's speed was utterly diminished as soon as its front tires first hit the raised bridge, and although it still maintained enough speed to reach the top of the ramp, the scout knew full well that his motorcycle could not possibly make the jump to the other side, and instead hit the brakes, allowing his vehicle to slide back down onto level road instead and call off his pursuit.

As for Epona, she sailed through the air with nothing but water two dozen meters below…until, after achieving an airborne distance of around twelve meters, Link finally came back down onto the other side of the drawbridge, swiftly compensating as he tilted Epona just enough to match the angle of the ramp's downward slant. The motorcycle slid on asphalt only for a bit, leaving dark tracks of burnt rubber in its wake, before she managed to catch a straight line once more and neatly ran right down the ramp and back onto the now unpopulated Highway A-7.

Link felt a rush of triumph run through his head even as Epona continued to bolt southbound along the highway and towards their destination. Against what were simply impossible odds, he had still managed to run right through Valentine forces stationed in the city and pursuit parties sent after him. Now, they were completely home free.

At least, until a rather unwelcome sound filled Link's ears, and, in dismay, he looked upwards to find an all-too-familiar attack helicopter flying in from above and behind. Their former and deadliest pursuer, the one that had not crashed against the Squaretech skyscraper, was back and had finally caught up.

A swift analysis of the situation highlighted just how hopeless Link's predicament was. His .50 caliber machine guns could probably do no more than dent the attack helicopter. He was caught on a highway with no exit ramp close enough, no cover, and with wide open roads. A missile or rocket he couldn't outrun or dodge would completely destroy him and Zelda. And Epona, even at top speed, only had a marginal speed advantage over the attack helicopter, meaning there was no way Epona could lose it.

Having no other choice, Link did the only thing he could do at this point. He swiftly secured Zelda's arms around himself once more, then hit the brakes just lightly enough for Epona to begin a drift and a controlled spin, achieving a one-eighty while maintaining the same course, then, as soon as the half-spin was completed, he continued to ride on in the same direction…in reverse.

And prayed that the attack helicopter would use the larger, slower, and more powerful missile instead of a rocket.

Link didn't bother to look back even as he drove Epona backwards or address the look of confusion on Zelda's face. Rather, he kept his eyes solely fixed on the attack helicopter that was following tightly at only one hundred and twenty meters away. Epona could not properly accelerate in reverse, and its speed began to drop, but that was quiet fine; it was not speed Link was looking for. Rather, he held his breath, willing his reflexes to be at their sharpest apex, intently watching the helicopter's every move even as it descended to a slightly lower altitude to achieve a prime attack angle.

His prayer for a missile over any other weapon was simple: With all of the attack helicopter's ordinance being able to travel past the speed of sound, Link desperately needed a warning.

And, as if divine will had been behind this battle, his hopes were answered. Epona's computer display again fired off a shrill warning, the words "Radar Lock" appearing in blaring red on the LED screen, indicating that the attack helicopter's targeting systems had acquired a lock on Epona, and the missile it would fire in three seconds would steer itself right into her no matter how fast she moved. As soon as the alarm went off, Link counted to two…then, as soon as the count was over, hit Epona's rear brakes as hard as he possibly could.

Epona had been traveling at just the right speed, neither too fast nor too slow, for Link to pull this off. The front half of Epona shot right up as the rear tires locked, sending her momentum forward and up, effectively performing a wheelie. Again, Zelda held onto Link tightly, realizing that she was in danger of falling backward onto the ground again. Epona had not been traveling fast enough for her to flip over backwards and dump Link and Zelda unceremoniously onto the ground, but she had been just fast enough for its nose – and machine guns – to point directly at the attack helicopter. The momentum died as soon as Epona achieved that angle, and it remained suspended in mid-air at that position for a split-second.

At the same split-second, the attack helicopter's right missile pod flared with a bright light as it was fired, the thrusters activating and creating a brilliant flash, and Link's reflexes were pushed to the limit…just enough for him to react within that same split-second as he shifted his weight to the left and pulled on the trigger for his machine guns.

It took just a bit more than half a second. The launched missile had left the attack helicopter's right hardpoint and was developing enough of a speed to streak unchallenged towards Epona. Its initial burn allowed it to travel only twenty-five meters from the wing it had detached from – a scant fifteen meters away from the nose of the attack helicopter – when the third bullet from Epona's machine guns accomplished what its two predecessors had failed to do, and instead of streaking right past the missile, that third round struck the warhead of the incoming weapon.

From one hundred meters away, the explosion from the missile's HEAT warhead felt overwhelming, especially since neither Link nor Zelda benefitted from the protection of a canopy, both of them fully exposed to the distant shockwave. From fifteen meters away, however, the instantly-expanding cloud of fire was lethal; the blast tore right through the helicopter's rotor and cockpit, vaporizing them in a miniature sun, and, in flames, the aircraft simply crashed down onto the highway as a burning wreck.

The impact reverberated through the highway, and, half-convinced that it would eventually roll onto them or bring another section of the highway crashing down, Link brought the front wheel of Epona back down and quickly backed up even further to a safer distance. The corpse of the attack helicopter neither crashed towards Link and Zelda, nor did the highway fall apart, but it had been prudent of Link to back up; flaming pieces of debris and scrap metal flew into the air, spilling across a lengthy radius before they landed, bounced, and stopped on various surfaces.

Sliding Epona to a halt, Link breathed heavily even as he cast another look at the burning wreckage of what remained of the attack helicopter, ensuring that no danger was going to come out of it. When nothing surfaced from the wreckage, nothing that would indicate any sign of pursuers, Link and Zelda exchanged a tired look, both of them bordering on a smile of mingled relief.

What sounded like a rumble interrupted their brief interval of peace.

Both Link and Zelda snapped their gazes to the left side of the highway towards the east. They couldn't see anything there, not with the darkness having fallen upon them, but neither of them couldn't help but hear what was definitely the sound of successive impacts of large objects growing in volume, headed their way. It was the sound of an approaching giant. Neither of them had actually ever heard of such a sound in their life, but there was no mistaking what the sound meant: Trouble.

Link did not wait to find out what the sound was. Ensuring that Zelda was securely holding onto him, he quickly turned Epona around and accelerated, speeding down the highway once more, even as the sounds came increasingly closer.

It did not take long for Link and Zelda to finally see what was causing the sound.

It happened suddenly. What seemed like a metallic pillar – Link thought it was a stray telephone pole at first – suddenly rose up from beside the highway and came crashing down end-first on the upper-level road with crushing force. Link quickly twisted Epona away from the point of impact, swerving around the pillar even as he willed for Epona to shoot faster down Highway A-7. He was just in time; part of the highway cracked and tumbled away down to the road down below behind them.

Then the pillar rose up once again, followed the motorcycle…and Link suddenly realized that it wasn't a pillar at all, but a leg. Looking back in bewilderment, he saw that, on the left side of the hallway, a large metallic sphere was suddenly visible, traveling right beside the motorcycle, barely matching Epona's speed. The sphere was definitely at least twenty meters in diameter, a smooth congregation of what was most likely hardened battle armor found on vehicles such as tanks. Connected to it were four powerful beams, each complemented with a large piston-like component, that kept the spherical main body attached to its four heavily-armored, metallic legs, powered by sturdy hydraulic devices. The main body bristled with weapons, from rocket ports to chain guns to missile pods.

Link and Zelda couldn't help but stare at this monster walker that reminded both of them of a spider. Neither of them had ever seen anything like this before, not an armored fighting vehicle with legs that seemed like it was pulled right out of a science fiction movie with too high a special effects budget, towering over the landscape as it stood at twenty meters tall, matching a seven-story building in height. Yet even as what seemed like a glowing, swiveling camera ran around its spherical circumference, centering its sights on the motorcycle they rode on, neither agent nor princess had any doubts as to what they had to do: Run.

A ramp came up on the right side, leading back down to the road on the lower level; Link knew he needed the cover, and quickly sped down the ramp…just as three separate sets of chain guns suddenly began to spin and, seconds afterwards, fired. Link did not clear the ramp in time to seek cover from behind the concrete guardrail, and all around him, his world suddenly exploded.

It was as if he was suddenly caught in the epicenter of a violent earthquake, and the ground suddenly cracked and buckled and shattered everywhere around him. Zelda did not scream, but her arms squeezed against Link, seeking protection from what seemed like a suddenly omnipresent hail of tracer rounds that came down from everywhere. Link was sure that it was the end of everything, that there was no hope left…until, miraculously, he finally cleared the ramp, and disappeared from outside the line of sight of the walker.

It was not until he gasped for air that Link realized that he had been holding his breath. He had been certain that he couldn't have made it…but apparently, the chain guns were designed to fill the air with gunfire instead of actually hitting a specific target. The highway around him had been completely riddled with what was probably hundreds, if not thousands, of bullets, but he himself had been fine. It was, he admitted, a very fine stroke of luck in what was a long succession of lucky events…and Link knew he was already pressing it; that kind of luck was not going to last.

There was an advantage of riding under the highway again; the armored walker was too large to be able to properly fire under the bridge to hit Epona. Link mentally compared himself to a mouse burrowing under something to evade the claws of an eagle, utilizing the highway as cover to protect Zelda, Epona, and himself. It most certainly didn't stop the walker from trying, however; a rapid chain of explosions right behind him was enough to tell him – even without looking – that the walker was rapidly firing rocket after rocket under the highway in an attempt to hit them. The shockwaves were not as powerful as the ones from missiles…but they were still powerful, and Link was hard-fought in his struggle to prevent the blasts from knocking Epona off its wheels even as it sped along, already reaching the edge of the Hyrule City Metropolitan Area. The walker barely managed to keep up, largely by virtue of its large size and the distance of the stride of its long, massive legs. A storm of fire divided the two vehicles even as the rockets blasted the road right behind Epona, incinerating everything in flames, and twisting and bending the highway supports even as the highway sections collapsed one by one behind Link, and the agent was once more concerned about the possibility that he might not actually be killed by the enemy, but crushed by a falling bridge.

Link eyed his GPS readout. Two kilometers ahead, the highway lowered itself back onto the ground as it completely left the Hyrule City Metropolitan Area, and, eight hundred meters after that, the highway entered a five-kilometer long tunnel under a patch of rolling hills that would end in the lonely outskirts of the city. If they could get there, if Epona could last until getting to that wide open expanse beyond the reaches of Hyrule City, then they had a much greater chance of escaping, with the odds even greater if there were no Valentine units posted in or within the tunnel. If anything else, it meant the walker wasn't able to pursue them anymore. At the moment, Link wanted nothing more than to be able to stay away from the mechanical spider with more ammunition than five attack helicopters combined. Never mind tanks he could outrun, motorcycles he could outmaneuver, and attack helicopters he could outwit; he had absolutely no answer for this enemy.

A flash and a cacophony of what sounded like a combination of cannons and gunfire sent another spike of adrenaline through Link's system, and his eyes shot towards the direction of the flash even as the highway began to lower and came to an end. At first, Link assumed that Valentine reinforcements had caught up, and had established a roadblock to the front, intent on cutting Epona off. However, as the tracers flew nowhere near him and struck the walker instead, Link squinted…and realized that up ahead, right in front of where the highway finally came back down to the ground, a group of Hylian military units, three tanks along with what was a platoon of Hylian soldiers, were holding down the position right between Highway A-7 and the tunnel in what was probably one of the last pockets of Hylian resistance in the area. Link felt a surge of excitement, not only because there was now supporting fire coming from a battlegroup much more well-armed than him, but because a Hylian roadblock there meant one other thing: The Valentine military had yet to hold control over this tunnel which the Hylians were defending.

Taking advantage of this distraction, Link swerved out from under the highway right before it joined the road, turning right as he began to make the last eight hundred meters until the tunnel. They sped right past the Hylian roadblock, shooting right past the tank on the right, and the soldiers thankfully did not give them any resistance or fire towards them. Either the soldiers were aware that the motorcycle was one of theirs…or, more likely, they decided that a twenty-meter-tall walking battle tank was much more of an opportune target than a reconnaissance motorcycle. Regardless, Epona shot right past them unfettered.

Plumes of smoke suddenly erupted from the top of the walker's spherical main body, and two dozen contrails of white gas shot right into the sky. Top-attack missiles were launched into the air, rocketing up into the air until they swiftly turned to a ninety-degree angle, streaking to the air above the roadblock and the tunnel, then, as soon as they reached a position right above the roads stretch from the roadblock to the tunnel, they sharply made another ninety-degree turn, shooting downwards towards the roadblock and towards Epona. Top-attack missiles were designed to fire at armored vehicles so that the warhead could be delivered from above, exploiting the fact that armored vehicles usually had thinner armor at the top.

Sparing a look back, Link watched even as the first cluster of missiles struck the roadblock, and the explosion immediately swallowed everyone and everything there whole, the tanks and soldiers completely disappearing behind great balls of fire. Then more missiles impacts engulfed the road between Link and the roadblock, and he couldn't see the area at all. He wasn't out of danger yet; at least a dozen of the remaining missiles were still traveling towards him at breakneck speeds. This was going to be close. Again.

Epona had barely made it right into the tunnel, the vehicle passing right under the rim of the tunnel's roof, when the first missiles hit, striking the street right behind them. Far enough to not force Epona into a slide, but close enough for Link to know that the missiles were getting far too close. But as Epona slipped further into the subterranean street, the remaining missiles, still tracking Epona's electronic signature, blasted themselves against the hill where the entrance of the tunnel was based. The explosions immediately pulverized tons of dirt and stone and concrete, and the tunnel entrance crumbled, crashed, and collapsed behind Link and Zelda, threatening to swallow them under the avalanche of debris.

But it didn't. Epona had gone fast enough to be completely out of range of explosion, and the collapsed tunnel entrance, a thick wall of ruined tunnel and hill, had all but secured their escape. The tunnel went silent. Epona rode on. Link and Zelda had made it.

It was at this point that Link moreorless jokingly told himself, if only as a means of self-relieving his stress, that if only Epona could cook, he'd probably marry her.

Princess Zelda refused to talk to Agent Link for the next several hours, and did not speak until they had finally reached a gas station at the early hours of dawn, when the sky began to turn from a dark ebony to a lighter shade of navy and purple.

Link honestly was not sure why Zelda didn't speak. Although he didn't initiate conversation – it was not in his nature to – he could venture a few possible guesses why. Perhaps she needed to get the shock out of her system and was in no mood to talk. Maybe she had finally fallen asleep with the fatigue, and was merely resting. Maybe she was infuriated that Link had dragged her through a motorcycle ride through hell, and decided she would loathe him for the rest of her life.

Personally, though, Link wasn't sure he minded the reason; with Zelda's heart beating stably against his back as she gently held onto him from behind for the remainder of the ride, the Joint Intelligence agent was just greatly relieved that Zelda – and himself, for that matter – had managed to escape Hyrule City safely.

Highway A-7 South led through a patch of rolling hills and plains making up the Greater Hyrule Field. A patchwork of green and brown, the area was hardly lush and rich in vegetation, but Link honestly didn't mind that terribly. It meant that the highway provided a smooth trip out, and the entire road from their escape of Hyrule City to the gas station was surprisingly empty. The moonlight lit up the road for them, so Link didn't have to turn on Epona's headlights. Eventually, they left the power grid of Hyrule City, and the streetlights beyond that were still on, so Link turned the headlights off. He wasn't terribly interested in revealing their location with a conspicuous set of headlights, and he took great pains in avoiding the Valentine roadblocks set up. Apparently, the offensive effort had gone further into Hylian territory than Link had expected, and he was careful not to make himself and Zelda a target once more.

They had not been pursued. Valentine forces were persistent, but no military force was going to allocate a pursuit force after a single military reconnaissance motorcycle, especially not when they weren't sure who was actually on it.

In hindsight, developed over the hours that Link had to himself, the agent realized that he had been extraordinarily lucky, and he was not likely to ever run into such a chain of fortune again. Everything had gone in his favor; the Haven's armory had been untouched, he had been able to take Epona, he had repeatedly pulled off stunts that defied the basics of logic and common sense, he had encountered surprisingly thin resistance, and his timing and aim had been miraculously spot-on. This was not going to be something he was going to attribute to his skills; they did factor in – somewhere – but Link did not deny that he had simply been utterly fortunate that the wheel of fate had spun in his favor.

When he finally pulled Epona into the gas station, Link first noted that the establishment was completely devoid of life. He was sure to make a quick sweep around the area with his gunsword, ensuring that the place truly was lifeless and there wasn't an ambush waiting for them there, before he finally returned and pulled Epona up to the gas station in what he felt was effectively the middle of nowhere, no sign of civilization of life in sight. At that point, after traveling nonstop for almost seven hours straight, she was already three-quarters empty. When Link detached Zelda's arms for himself – although he wasn't entirely sure if the crown princess was actually conscious, she certainly hung onto him tightly enough – she finally seemed to rouse, or at least make gestures of consciousness, and sat up straight instead of leaning against Link. She looked completely exhausted even as she tiredly rubbed her eyes, but, for the most part, she seemed alright.

Zelda remained sitting and unmoving where she sat on the motorcycle for the duration of Link refueling Epona, and she remained the same way when Link went into the gas station's convenience store to find something to eat and drink – the door was unlocked and askew, meaning whoever had owned the gas station must've been quick to flee when the area became a warzone – until Link finally came out with a plastic bag of chocolate chip cookies and two bottles of orange juice. The sugar would help combat the shock, but he didn't actually tell Zelda that as he handed her the bottle, which she took with slightly shaky and weak hands. Watching the princess wrestle against the plastic twist-cap of the bottle with her frail and exhausted hands was a rather painful-looking process, however, so Link ended up gently taking the bottle and opening it for her.

It was only after Zelda took a rather long swig of orange juice from the bottle – rather un-princess-like of her – before she finally spoke, and she did so in a tired, almost choked and raspy voice. "Do you think I had been too harsh on Director Leonore?" she asked, looking in a fatigued manner at the Hylian agent.

Blinking was the response provided to her. Out of all the possible responses that Link had expected from her – most of those options were either an expression of gratitude or a burst of outrage, with very little in between – this was certainly not one of them. If he had been inclined to respond verbally at all, that inclination was now replaced completely by confusion.

The princess looked away, dropping her head once more as her gaze drifted back to the orange juice bottle she was holding at her knees in gloved hands. Her hair, having been subjected to sweeping wings while riding Epona for seven hours, was now a tangled mess and a bit frizzled. The sorry state of her hair was pronounced when she leaned forward where she sat, and the mass of strands hung pathetically in the air. Her hair, usually tied with bands and framed with a tiara, had been let completely loose; the bands had loosened and were torn off by the wind, while riding with a tiara became a painful affair, so she kept it around her wrist like a bracelet instead, as her dress pockets had been too small to accommodate it. "I probably shouldn't treat her that way," Zelda admitted quietly, although her voice expressed far more exhaustion than it did remorse or reflection. "I have this…strange suspicion of her that I can never shake…" she shook her head, as if troubled or resigned at the thought – it was difficult to tell when Link couldn't actually see her face behind the curtain of brown hair. "It probably has to do with…your predecessor." She shrugged pathetically, then finished in an equally lame manner, "Maybe."

It was not until Zelda turned back to look at Link several seconds later that he realized she was waiting for a response of some sort. Thrust into a position of conflicting loyalties made Link tremendously uncomfortable even as he unsuccessfully attempted to stop himself from a small fidget. He chose to simply adopt a neutral shrug.

Zelda smiled at the display of awkward neutrality. "You're just being dispassionate, aren't you?" she asked.

Link responded by the furrowing of his brow and a quirk of his lips – almost a grin – that indicated amused curiosity as to why the crown princess was driving the topic down this direction.

Successfully reading Link's expression, Zelda gave a light, slightly suppressed giggle as she hugged herself and looked away. "I'm sorry, I just…need to get the adrenaline out of my system. I still feel shaky. That motorcycle ride was horrible." She turned her attention to Link, shot him what was probably a coy, amused look despite her words. "You're horrible, putting a princess on a motorcycle against her will."

Although not known for his sense of humor, Link still managed to convey a joke as he expressionlessly – no smile included – made what amounted to a slightly exaggerated bow offered in the presence of royalty. The message was awfully clear in its good-natured, well-intended sarcasm: "Well, excuse me, Princess." At that, Zelda giggled again in a manner that was far less restrained this time, appreciating the joke for what it was and somewhat glad to discover that her interim bodyguard did possess a sense of humor. Satisfied his work was done, Link twisted open his own bottle of orange juice, quietly began to drain the bottle of its contents after hours of not having drank anything at all.

Zelda's laughter eventually trailed away and died down when she cast an amused look at Link, or, more specifically, his eyes. "Don't you ever take off your sunglasses?" she asked.

The raised eyebrows behind the seemingly opaque sunglasses rose just enough for Zelda to see them above the upper frame of the sunglasses; Link was surprised at the question.

The princess quickly waved her hand weakly in an effort to dissuade Link from thinking Zelda might have something against his uniform or fashion sense…or whatever compelled him to keep his sunglasses on throughout the dark night. "No, it's nothing serious," she shook her head. "It's just…I didn't have a chance to say it earlier because of, you know, everything that's happened, but…" she grinned, looked back at Link, "…I find it almost funny that you wear your sunglasses even during nighttime."

Turning away, Zelda had expected that her statement would be the end of their "exchange" – if Link's silent conveying of ideas via body language counted as the other half of their "conversation" – but as she turned her attention back to the orange juice in her hands, she was suddenly surprised to see something come down right before her eyes. She recoiled in reflex, but kept that movement in check when she realized that Link was, from the side, gently fitting his sunglasses over Zelda's hidden ears and right in front of her eyes. As soon as the sunglasses were properly affixed on the bridge of her nose, however, Zelda immediately saw why Link always wore the sunglasses. The lenses seemed to be some sort of optic polarizer or photographic filter, which not only helped cut down on reflections but also cut down contrast of everything she saw; bright objects became easier to look at while darker environments lit up just a bit to make out more details; the world around her became that much visually clearer. It offered a good tactical advantage for something as small, portable, and unsophisticated as sunglasses. They weren't nightvision goggles, but they certainly made up in the departments of size, cost, and adaptability. Nightvision goggles certainly couldn't cut down on excessively bright lights.

"This is really nice," Zelda had to admit with a smile even as she looked around the darkened, dawn-kissed landscape that had transformed before her eyes, slowly turning towards Link in the process. "I can't blame you for wearing this all the time; I should ask Joint Intelligence to get me one of…" Zelda had meant to continue, but she suddenly trailed off as her eyes finally gazed upon Link standing right beside her. Her smile slackened and fell right off her lips even as she looked at Link's face.

It was the first time she had ever seen Link without sunglasses. Zelda had not actually seen Link's dossier before, and did not see the photograph of him without sunglasses. Now that she was looking directly into his blue eyes, however, sharp at the edges but soft within, the crown princess suddenly made a startling realization that this Joint Intelligence agent was actually…very attractive. She had not actually ever seen any boy or man possess eyes that were masculine-looking, yet also quite…pretty.

Zelda breathed. Somewhere in the back of her head, alarms were going off as they warned the princess that she was staring in a vulnerable manner into the eyes of a civil servant, but another mental voice whispered at them to be quiet because those eyes had so completely caught her off guard.

Link turning to meet Zelda's gaze after he had taken another sip from the bottle of orange juice was what finally brought her back to reality, and, afflicted with the realization that she might possibly be blushing, she suddenly turned away from Link, feeling greatly embarrassed even as she feigned struggling with the sunglasses in the attempt to take them off. Thankfully, Link did not help and expedite the process – the process being the façade for Zelda to orientate herself and fight off the wave of embarrassment – and displayed a largely expressionless face that betrayed nothing when she finally turned back around to hand the sunglasses back to Link. He accepted it gently, putting them back on and – with mixed feelings for Zelda – masked his eyes behind them once more.

It was a gentle, delicate moment as the two looked at each other, one individual who suddenly didn't know what to say, the other who never said anything at all.

Moments of silence passed before, finally, closing her eyes, Zelda inclined her head in what was a dignified bow of gratitude right before Link, her tired voiced breathing just loud enough for her loyal, dedicated, and steadfast interim bodyguard to hear, "Thank you, Link. Thank you for saving my life."

And, like before, the silent, wordless nod Link offered in return had a clear flavor of "you're welcome".

Exoria File #004
Valentine Revolution

Until seventeen years ago, the Kingdom of Valent enjoyed full diplomatic relations with both Hyrule and Gerudo under the reign of King Adam III and his wife Queen Eileen. Despite ailing economic conditions due to the national economic bubble, Valent remained the leading exporter of technological advancements. Its cutting of the military budget was heavily criticized by members of Valent's national defense and national security communities for undermining the safety of the country, which led to a plot to launch a coup d'etat by highly influential members in both communities, including members of the Valentine Joint Chiefs. The plot, however, failed during its preparation stages when it was discovered two years prior to the Valentine Revolution; the effort to undermine the coup was rumored to be led by Lord Tacitus, younger brother and only sibling to King Adam III. Members of the plot committed suicide to save themselves from disgrace, while others were subsequently jailed and sentenced to life in prison for treason. Two years after the arrests, however, a highly successful coup, coined the Valentine Revolution by its masterminds, was launched by forces loyal to the masterminds behind the original plot, including former chairman of the Valentine Joint Chiefs, General Alphonse, who had been among those jailed when the plot was first discovered. Historians and analysts are not certain who was the actual mastermind of the Valentine Revolution, General Alphonse, the original conspirator who was eventually killed during the fighting, or Lord Tacitus, who joined the coup for unknown reasons and became the new king of Valent afterwards. The end result, however, was the same: The coup d'etat forces achieved a decisive victory in the capital and throughout the nation after two days of strategic fighting. Their victory was cemented by the widely-believed rumor that King Adam III and Queen Eileen had been killed in the conflict, although this was never confirmed by third-party intelligences sources. Under King Tacitus' regime, Valent became an excessively isolationist nation, building up on a nationalistic and militaristic fervor that increased worry from its neighbors, Hyrule and Gerudo.

Author's Note: I have stated previously that, had Exoria possessed names for chapter, this one would probably be named "Motorcycle Chase Scene", in reference to Final Fantasy VII. The more I wrote the chapter, however, putting Link through one obstacle after another, that feeling changed, and I thought that I would make a shout out at the first Halo game instead: "Wait, It Gets Worse!" I will admit, however, that I spent the entirety (well, most of it) of writing this chapter listening to "Chase of Highway" from the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete sountrack.

Before I say anything else, I want to thank my first three anonymous reviewers, Ri2, The Pilot, and Warbandit. It's always heartwarming for an author to see that one's works are being read and appreciated, even if it's after a prologue and two chapters are properly written. I hope I can satisfy your needs in the future with further installments of Exoria.

I honestly don't like writing action scenes. Maybe "not liking" is too strong a phrase, though, so I guess I'll stick with I'm "impartial". For me, writing action scenes is taxing and somewhat monotonous; you go through repetitively rapid rounds of conveying some of the same ideas utilizing the same words and phrases that you have become familiar with, in an effort to try to convey a scene in a three-dimensional sense. You're always worried that you're not being descriptive enough and the readers have no idea what you're trying to convey and the relation of environmental aspects with each other, and, on the flip side, you're also always worried that you're being so worried that readers are stumbling across your words and finding it frustrating or boring. I'd actually be quite grateful if I left action-scene-writing to someone who's good at it and can write at my level (not to suggest that I write well, never mind superbly, so there's little room for me to be arrogant, but I do know there's quite a number of horrendous fan fiction out there), but since no such volunteer has been brave enough to stand forth yet, I guess I'll have to tackle this hurdle by my lonesome.

This chapter is notably longer than any of the previous chapters, so I'm going to make up for it by being less wordy in Chapter Four, which will be shorter. For those who have found an analogy to the normal Legend of Zelda formula, however, you have probably noticed that this is the conclusion of the first storyarc, the introduction of the world and the first crisis; after several more chapters of storytelling, we'll be moving onto the traditional element of dungeon-busting. I won't say how many dungeons there will be, though, and I'm not hinting what's going to happen after that. You'll just have to see for yourself, and I hope I can keep you all well-entertained until then.

Before I sign off on this author's note, however, I would like to remind everyone that AuraNightgale has been doing an unbelievably awesome and winsome job of proofreading my chapters, and I can't thank her enough for her patience – which probably exceeds the patience I have towards her not being online enough. She was also the one who helped me brainstorm some of Exoria, and, now that I've made the "Link jokingly wants to marry Epona" crack in canon, I should bring back an excerpt of an instant messaging conversation Aura and I had after she read this chapter and the joke.

Aura (6:40:39 AM): It was at this point that Link moreorless jokingly told himself, if only as a means of self-relieving his stress, that if only Epona could cook, he'd probably marry her.
...Once I finish laughing, that reminds me of something...

Sudentor (6:41:08 AM): Reminds you of? =3

*Aura pulls out IM history of conversation from months ago*

Sudentor: I'm also thinking of giving Link a Love Triangle.
Aura: Doesn't he usually have one in some form or another? =P
Aura: ...At least, according to some fans.
Sudentor: ...I guess? This one will be a bit more obvious, though.
Sudentor: One end is [censored, because there are spoilers].
Sudentor: The other is...well. You'll see. If I ever manage to write it.
Aura: Spoilaz, eh?
Aura: I'm trying to remember the thoughts I had for this.
Sudentor: Well, it'll to be tough explaining it to you.
Aura: "And some other girl."
"Okay, cool."
Aura: Epona! *brick'd*
Aura: *repeatedly*
Sudentor: ... ...
Sudentor: ... ...
Sudentor: ... ...
Sudentor: I am serious.
Sudentor: My head suddenly hurt.
Sudentor: In real life.
Sudentor: Not kidding.
Aura: xD
Aura: Then I've done my job.

*back to present*

Sudentor (6:44:33 AM): /me ROFLs.

Sudentor (6:44:45 AM): Okay.

Sudentor (6:44:46 AM): Fine.

Sudentor (6:44:48 AM): You got me. XD

Aura (6:44:49 AM): =3

Sudentor (6:44:51 AM): It's Epona. XD

Aura (6:45:02 AM): *score!

You now all have permission to laugh at me at my own expense.