Chapter Text
Demise was absolutely furious.
Granted, this wasn't anything new. Lots of things made Demise angry. The Kikwis, for one, had always annoyed him, and for the record the Gorons weren't much better. Sunshine innately ticked him off. Plans being foiled made him murderous even on his best days. The very concept of life in general was, in his opinion, the worst thing the goddesses had ever come up with because it had resulted in so many of the things that he hated. Like Kikwis.
Demise hated the Kikwis.
So the fact that he was angry really wasn't anything that hadn't already happened multiple times before. It was the reason why he was angry that was worth noting.
After millennia spent reconstituting and extricating himself from within the Master Sword – it'd had to be done very delicately, lest the goddesses notice – he'd finally succeeded in pulling himself together. But instead of being met as the conquering ruler of all creation, he was instead presented with the absolutely disgusting legacy of the Hero.
Specifically, the Hero whom he'd cursed so long ago. The Hero who, from what he could tell, was impossible for his Hatred Incarnations to defeat. The Hero who was responsible for his legacy failing time and time again despite everything he'd given them-!
Demise took a moment to calm down, since in his rage, he was idly burning away the very fabric of reality around him. It wouldn't do to reveal his location so soon after his escape, especially not if he wanted to stay escaped for longer than ten minutes.
The point was, a great number of things, mostly named Ganondorf, were tap-dancing on his very last nerve. His Hatred Incarnations were just that: incarnations of his hatred. They were literally embodying the force of his emotions and channeling his rage.
So WHY IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING HE HATED DID THEY KEEP FAILING!?
He could count on ONE HAND the amount of times any of his Incarnations had succeeded, and the worst part was that NONE of those times had been permanent! The longest one had lasted approximately seven glorious years before the Hero had resurfaced and put that sword (which ironically, Demise had been trapped inside of at the time; he'd spent the entire fight screaming profanities at both the Hero and his Incarnation depending on who was annoying him more in the moment) straight through his Incarnation's head.
Demise realized he was obliterating reality again and made a concentrated effort to stop. If he kept losing control like this the goddesses were sure to find him.
The most curious part about that particular Incarnation was that he hadn't even been close to being the only one to get stabbed through the head. It was a concerningly large trend he'd noticed over the centuries, and it only served to make him more fed up. At what point did the idiotic excuses for his Incarnations think it was a good idea to leave their skulls unprotected?
Cocky and overconfident, that's what they were, Demise decided. Clearly not suited for the task he had intended so long ago. Luckily, he was now free to take over where they had... failed.
...Keeping his cool while continuing this thought train was proving a lot more difficult than he'd initially thought. However, he was Demise, Demon King and He Who Causes Much Screaming. He could handle his own emotions.
Therefore, Demise returned his attention to the problem at hand. If he wanted to make any progress in his mission to destroy the universe, he had some issues to take care of. Most of them were named Ganondorf. And Demise was about to fix everything they'd ever done wrong.
At their core, the only thing that his Hatred Incarnations really were were pieces of himself, split off and given their own agendas to conquer the world while he was gone. This of course had failed spectacularly (Demise felt his eye twitch at the thought), and so the Demon King was going to take matters into his own hands.
He was going to reabsorb them.
A simple matter, he thought to himself. Wouldn't take more than five minutes at the most.
He reached out into the reality of the Universe and wrapped his hand – or rather, the manifestation of his hand – around the first of his Incarnations, an odd little purple creature who had chosen the designation 'Vaati'. He gave the Incarnation a tug.
Nothing happened. Demise frowned; that was unusual. It felt as though the universe itself was resisting him.
Well, no matter. He was, after all, Demise, Destroyer of Worlds, Burner of Reality, and He Who Made The Honey Badger Feel Fear. The universe was made to bow to his wishes.
With this thought in mind, Demise gave his Incarnation a sharp jerk. The purple creature came free with relative ease and was promptly absorbed. Demise gave a satisfied nod.
Then he noticed the hole.
Sitting in reality where 'Vaati' had been was a hole, utterly black and slowly, inexorably growing. Demise raised an interested eyebrow and stretched a hand towards the object. It was... a void, he realized. Caused by the impossible contradiction of something integral to the very fabric of existence suddenly and violently ceasing to be.
Demise felt a grin grow on his face.
While destroying reality and everything in it had always been his goal in godhood, there were a vast amount of things that always got in the way. Nearly all of them wore green, had pointed ears, and had an infuriating ability to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time with exactly the right set of skills to stop him.
This, however, was a reality-devouring hole powered by a universe-shattering paradox. Demise sincerely doubted something like that could be stopped with a mere metal sword and a green floppy hat.
And if all his Hatred Incarnations produced this kind of response in the Universe...
Demise's former grin turned vicious. In one violent snap on his arm, he ripped every single Hatred Incarnation that had ever existed out of their places in time and sucked them all in, ignoring the tiny insignificant screams of rage and confusion that they made. Just as he'd hoped, the resulting chaos in the fabric of reality tore open multiple other voids, all identical to the first.
The vicious grin turned into equally vicious laughter.
He couldn't wait to see how that so-called 'Hero' tried to deal with this.
Nayru, Keeper of the Triforce of Wisdom, Lady of Knowledge and Watcher of Time, cringed and clutched at her head.. Her temporal senses, normally calm (unless the Hero of Time had gotten himself into another paradox again) were suddenly screaming at her that SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG.
As cringing was not a behavior normally exhibited by Nayru, her two sisters immediately took notice.
“Nayru?” Farore asked. “What's wrong?” As the Keeper of the Triforce of Courage and Lady of Life, she had been designated as the one who usually asked questions, mainly because her sisters had said, 'Courage means being brave enough to ask Hylia if her Hero boyfriend has proposed yet'. Needless to say, thatparticular question had ended in an all-out prank war which Hylia had managed to win despite being reincarnated as a mortal at the time. And somehow, Farore had never quite managed to lose that reputation of being The One To Ask The Questions.
The green goddess glared up at something above her head and determinedly pulled the plot back on track by anxiously waiting for her sister to respond.
“...Not sure,” Nayru managed, cradling her temples in her hands. From what she could tell, there was only the one anomaly and although it was significantly dangerous it wasn't going to be impossible to-
Her thought train was viciously derailed as her temporal senses SHRIEKED and skyrocketed in their insistence that SOMETHING IS NOT VERY WRONG SOMETHING IS HORRIBLY IRREVOCABLY WRONG. Nayru doubled over and all but collapsed to the floor, trying desperately to think past her senses but failing spectacularly.
“Nayru!”
That was her other sister, Din. The Keeper of the Triforce of Power and Lady of Earth. She was forceful, loud-spoken, and fiercely protective of the things she deemed important. Nayru happened to be one of those things, and Din only wished that the reason Nayru was in pain was a physical being so that she could punch it.
“I'm fine!” Nayru gasped, forcing her senses to calm down. They subsided reluctantly, still insistent on warning her that SOMETHING WAS HORRIBLY WRONG, but as far as Nayru was concerned they could do that quietly.
“I'm fine,” she repeated, in a more normal voice. “My temporal sense just went haywire, that's all.”
“That's all?” Din repeated, eyebrows raised and voice highly skeptical. “You were on the ground! Writhing!'
“What could possibly make you react like that?” Farore cut in.
Nayru's face twisted. “Something's happened to the timeline. Something big.”
There was a moment of silence. Then all three sisters lunged for the portal that led to the universe, as opposed to the primordial space that was what the deities called home. There was a brief moment of shoving before Din, being the strongest, won and peered through the window at their creation.
“We really need to make that thing bigger,” Farore muttered. Nayru nodded ruefully in agreement.
A few moments later, Din stepped back, face white, and wordlessly motioned for her sisters to look. Another minute later had all three of them in mute shock, sitting and staring as they processed what they'd seen.
“...That,” Nayru said eventually, “is most definitely horribly irrevocably wrong.”
“It looks like swiss cheese,” Din said. “It's so riddled and mottled...”
“How did this happen?” Farore whispered. “Why didn't we notice?”
“I did,” Nayru said, looking rueful. “But since it was very painful I'm not going to gloat about it like I normally would.”
Thanks sis,” Din said dryly.
“One would have been manageable,” Farore mused, getting the conversation back on track. “We could have handled that without worrying about the Interference Laws. But this... there's no way. There's absolutely no way.”
“And we all know there's only one person who can cause this type of thing,” Nayru said grimly. “I'm going to ignore the fact that we previously thought it impossible on the grounds of his being imprisoned because that line of thought is clearly faulty and instead point out that we don't have the power to match him.”
“Hello? Goddess of Power sitting over here? I invented the stuff,” Din snorted. “I think we could take Demise no problem.”
Farore cleared her throat. “You put the majority of it into the Triforce.”
Din paused and scowled darkly. “Why the heck did I think that was a good idea!?”
“Demon War,” Nayru coughed.
Din growled and subsided into discontented mutterings.
“We do know someone who's faced him before though,” Farore pointed out. “Courage's first aspect did admirably.”
“That was before Demise gained millennia more experience and power,” Nayru sighed. “Besides that, the first time Demise wasn't fighting at his full strength. He's a god, just like us. He was humoring Courage and purposefully limiting himself to have some fun. He lost because he underestimated Courage the first time, and we all know that won't happen again.”
“You need to stop bringing your Wisdom into this,” Din grumbled, rejoining the conversation. “It's making me depressed.”
Farore frowned as she took that in. “Well... what about all of them?”
Her sisters stared at her.
“...What?” Din asked intelligently. “I could have sworn you just suggested sending allof Courage after Demise, but since I know you're smarter than that I'm going to ask you to repeat that so I can fix my ears.”
“No, hear me out,” Farore argued. “This is what Courage does. He fights to keep the world safe. Imagine what he could accomplish if all his aspects gathered together to take down their enemy.”
“Chaos of a collapsing timeline as the Universe snaps in half due to an irreparable temporal paradox,” Nayru said.
“Isn't it already doing that though?” Farore asked slyly.
Nayru opened her mouth, stopped mid-syllable as Farore's words registered in her head, and gave her sister an irate glare.
“She got you,” Din teased, giving Nayru an elbow nudge. Nayru swatted her away irritably-but-good-naturedly.
“...You have a point,” she grudgingly conceded. “And I guess things can't really get worse from here, as far as breaking the universe goes. But why Courage? Why not Power or Wisdom?”
Din cleared her throat before Farore could answer. “About that... Power's gone.”
Her sisters gaped. “How long has that been a thing!?” Farore sputtered. Din grimaced.
“It turns out that most of those holes correspond to where Power is supposed to be. He's not going to be much help, sorry girls.”
“Well... Wisdom's still an option.”
“She's not a fighter,” Farore said. “She's a thinker, a planner. She sets schemes into motion to handle her problems with someone else. I'm not saying she isn't an asset, because she is, and no doubt Hyrule would have been lost dozens of times without her. But Demise won't give her the time she needs to set any kind of plan into action, and he definitely won't give her time to talk. He knows what words can do.”
“Whereas Courage will meet him on the battlefield, where hopefully his superior numbers will be enough to equal Demise's superior skill,” Nayru finished slowly. “...You're right.”
“Where should we start then?” Din asked.
Farore pondered that for a moment, then turned to Nayru and, in an effort to make her sister feel better about the whole mess, asked, “Is there any point on the timeline to have Courage meet himself that will do the least amount of damage?”
Nayru furrowed her brow and consulted her temporal senses. A large majority of them were still screaming about the voids, but she was able to focus enough to get the answer she was looking for.
“Start at the most recent end,” she said eventually. “That's got the least amount of damage at this point, so if this whole idea turns out to be a terrible mistake the universe might be stable enough that we can contain it.”
“Got it,” Farore said, reaching out to her Attribute as she spoke.
Courage was going to be in for his biggest adventure yet.
Notes:
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 2: The One Who Got Split
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero(es) of Light?
Notes:
Disclaimer goes here. Not that I'm going to actually put one here, because you all know I don't own LoZ. And if for some reason you thought I did; what kind of rock do you live under?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The point which Nayru specified, at the very end of the timeline which doubled as what is generally known as the 'present', was inhabited by an aspect of Courage who, due to a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances, was operating as himself divided into different bodies. This was because of an item called the Four Sword; a rather uncreatively named weapon that did exactly what it's name said – split its wielder into four people. Link, being both the wielder and the local Courage aspect, was now effectively four different boys named Green, Blue, Vio, and Red.
Perhaps it was a naming trend of their particular time, but their names were equally as uncreative as their swords'. Red was named as such because his clothes were red. Blue had been so entitled because his clothes were blue. Green wore green, and Vio wore purple. It could be a matter of interest to note that Vio, unlike his counterparts, had a fairly original name if one thought about it, but the reality was that he had simply refused to be named 'Purple' and 'Violet' had sounded like a girl's name. Regardless, he had the unique distinction of having a nickname for his nickname.
None of them chose to comment much on their given titles though, because Red had been the one to come up with them. And if there was one thing that was extremely difficult to do, it was to turn Red down. He had a startlingly accurate Adorable Puppy face, and it was the great misfortune of Vio, Green, and Blue to have a severe weakness to adorable puppies. As a result, the names went uncontested.
The matter of names, however, was of very little consequence as far as the four Links were concerned. In part, this was because at this point, they just didn't care anymore, but most of the reason came from the fact that finally, finally, they were on their way to rescue Princess Zelda.
She was their childhood friend, as Link's father was the Captain of the Royal Guard and as such Link and Zelda had spent a good amount of time together when they were younger. Link may have even had a small crush at some point – before Vaati had kidnapped her, that is. Then Shadow Link had appeared, Link had drawn the Four Sword, the crush had probably gotten lost somewhere among the dividing of his base personality into four separate bodies, and after a lotof issues between his new selves they'd eventually gotten themselves on track and... mostly working together.
Case in point, they were currently climbing the exhaustingly tall mountain that Vaati had made his lair atop of, and were passing the time in their usual fashion.
That is to say, arguing.
“All I'm saying,” Blue said, “is that my swordsmanship is clearly better than yours.”
“According to what parameters?” Vio replied dryly.
“I kill more things than you.”
“You hack and slash at your target with all the precision of a brick,” Vio retorted. “I, on the other hand, fight with finesse.”
“Isn't that an illness?” Blue asked, aiming to rile his counterpart up. Unfortunately for him, Green chose that moment to intervene.
“Both of you, stop it!” he snapped. “You both fight fine! Now shut up and concentrate on climbing, because the sooner we get to the top the sooner we can get Zelda back.”
Green had - at some point during their adventure, nobody was quite sure when – established himself as the de facto leader of their little group. Most of the time he did a pretty good job, and this was the reason that Blue reluctantly obeyed and settled for grumbling to himself instead, while Vio simply crossed his arms.
Red walked behind Green and in front of Blue and Vio, smiling to himself and humming happily. While at first a dispute like this one would have alarmed him, by now he was used to his counterparts' antics and could easily tell whether or not a conflict was serious.
They all walked in silence for a while, except for the occasional heavy breath from someone. They were by no means out of shape, but climbing a mountain was strenuous for the obvious reason that it was a mountain. You don't just climb those things and not get out of breath. That's inhuman.
However, since the four boys were in fact Hylian, they were naturally exempt from this rule and reached the peak with no problems whatsoever.
The top of the mountain had the typical villainous color scheme, with dark rocks and overcast clouds. Why exactly all villains needed overcast clouds was a mystery to them, but it just seemed like something villains did.
The problem with this particular villainous lair, however, was that it appeared to lack the villain.
“...Shouldn't Vaati be here?” Red asked after surveying the area and finding a distinct lack of large purple bat. “Did we climb the wrong mountain?”
“No, this is the right mountain,” Vio replied, although he was already poring over their map to be absolutely sure. “This is definitely the right mountain.”
It was also, as a point of interest, the only mountain.
“Well then...” Green said slowly. “Let's investigate.”
Instinct honed by getting attacked by multiple unpleasant things multiple times grouped them together as they carefully advanced onto the center of the peak. There was no sign of Vaati; in fact, there was no sign of anybody. Considering that Vaati had been supposedly holding Princess Zelda with him, this was a concerning situation. The four of them exchanged glances and, on an unspoken signal, spread out across the mountaintop to cover more ground.
Of course, since this only lasted for about ten seconds, it was worth wondering whether it'd even been relevant as Red came sprinting back the way he'd came yelling, “GUYS! GUYS! GUUUUUUYYYYYYYS!”
“WHAT!?” Blue bellowed, racing to his brother's (supposed) defense. “WHAT'S HAPPENING AND WHO NEEDS PUNCHING!?”
“Guys, I almost fell in a hole!” Red gasped.
Immediately, his three fellow Heroes dropped their guard and frowned at him.
“Red, that's not exactly emergency material,” Green said.
“Certainly not 'sprint back this way and scream about it' material,” Vio agreed. “What have we told you about overreacting?”
“That it's usually not as bad as I think it is and I should wait and get the whole story before panicking,” Red recited. “But guys, I'm being serious! There's this hole in the air and it's really big!”
Vio blinked. “It's in the what?”
“How can it be in the air?” Blue asked, confused. “Can air even have holes?”
“I dunno, but it's big and black and it's floating and I almost walked straight into it.”
“...Show us,” Green decided.
“It's really weird,” Red continued as he led the way across the rocks. “It's like it just cuts off the whole mountaintop and there's this empty stuff there instead.”
“Red, that's impossible,” Vio informed him. “Empty voids don't just happen in the middle of an atmosphere, and there's nothing in Hyrule that could cause a – Sweet Din that's an empty void.”
He stared at the impossible rift blankly as his brain devoted all the processing power to processing and comprehending what his eyes were insisting was there. It went against every physics textbook he'd ever read.
“See?” Red said. “Empty void. Weird, right?”
Green took a cautious step forward, eyes narrowed. “Yeah... really weird. It's bizarre, actually. It's like gravity doesn't even effect it.”
This was in fact one of the reasons why Vio was having such a hard time accepting it, as defying gravity was one of those things that went against all the previously mentioned physics textbooks. There had to be some sort of thrust for it to be doing what it was doing, but it was a void, which meant that it couldn't have thrust because the inherent nature of the void meant that it was pulling instead, which meant that defying gravity ought to, by all means, be impossible.
Except for the fact that it clearly wasn't.
Blue frowned at the hole, stooped down, and scooped up a small rock laying near his feet. He tossed it in his hand a couple times, then lobbed the stone with all his might.
The stone proceeded to completely vanish from all existence. Everyone's jaws dropped.
“Okay,” Green said. “Nobody touch the hole.”
His three brothers nodded stunned agreement.
“...This still doesn't explain where Vaati is, though,” Blue pointed out after a moment. “Or Zelda, for that matter.”
“You don't think she fell in, do you?” Red worried. “I mean, I almost did...”
“Alright, split up,” Green ordered. “Look for Zelda, and keep an eye out for Vaati in the meantime. Don't do anything stupid, and for the love of the Sacred Realm don't try to take on Vaati alone.”
He paused, then added, “That means you, Blue.”
Blue snorted. “What do you take me for, a kitten or something? I can totally take Vaati if I tried.”
As he said this, however, Green fixed him with one of his Leader's Stares, which were specifically designed to make the target reconsider their words and think about the more important things, like cheese, the lifespan of a wombat, and how painfully his leader would bring him back to life and kill him again if he ever did something so abysmally stupid as to get himself killed in the first place. Faced with this look, Blue did the smart thing and amended his previous statement with, “I promise I won't do anything stupid without thinking about it first.”
Green glared at him. “You mean you won't do anything stupid at all.”
“I make no promises.”
Green pegged him with another glare, then subsided since he knew that was about as good of a acceptance from Blue as he was going to get.
“Just stay safe, okay guys?” he sighed.
“Yes mother,” Vio said, smirking before jogging off in a randomly but probably very scientifically chosen direction. Red, on the other hand, beamed earnestly and carefully gave the hole a wide berth before heading off in a different direction. And Blue, after subtly checking that Green was over their little issue (he was), set off as well.
Green took a deep breath, faced the last remaining directional option, and, hoping that his siblings would be alright, stepped forward.
“Princess?” Vio asked softly, pushing his way through some small, scraggly, and somehow-not-dead-yet trees on the far side of the mountaintop. “Are you here?”
The only thing he received in reply was his echo.
Vio sighed and ran a hand through his bangs. He'd really thought there was a good chance she'd be in here, perhaps hiding from Vaati after a cleverly constructed escape. He wouldn't put it past her; she was, after all, extraordinarily clever.
After another minute spent scouring the thin growth for signs of life, Vio gave up and moved on – or rather, he tried to. Unnoticed by him until it was far too late, one of the scraggly branches of the trees had become hooked in the fabric of his hat. When Vio moved away, his hat noticeably did not follow him.
Vio's first reaction to having his hat removed by an outside force was to automatically assumed Vaati was attacking, and his resulting response carved a deep slice into three different trees and cleared all the shrubbery within a five-foot radius. It did not, however, dislodge his hat.
Once he realized what had happened, Vio spent a moment being thankful that none of his brothers had been there to see his embarrassing display, then reached up and attempted to tug his hat free.
'Attempted' being the operative word, because his hat remained firmly stuck.
Vio's mouth tugged into a frown, and he gave his hat a sharper pull. Nothing happened. He looked around for a moment, rolled over a dead stump, and stood on the wood to try and disentangle the fabric that way. The problem was that, in his earlier tugging, he'd firmly trapped his hat around the wood in the process.
Vio's frown turned into a full-blown scowl. Yes, Zelda was important, and yes, if she ever found out about this he would probably get into somuch trouble.
But this tree had messed with his hat. This had just gotten personal.
Blue scratched behind his ear absently as he poked around in the rocks. He still hoped, sort of, that he would find Vaati and be able to smack the living daylights out of him for everything he'd put them through. He had many reasons for wanting this, one of which was bad judgement. But another, much more sensible one was that he was the best fighter of the group, and if anyone stood a chance facing Vaati alone, it was him. He would much rather get ambushed himself than have it be Red.
He would rather have a lot of things happen if it wouldn't happen to Red. Then again, he would rather have a lot of things happen if it wouldn't happen to Green or Vio either.
“Geez I'm sappy,” Blue muttered to himself, poking around more rocks. One of said rocks, upon being poked, let out a startled squeal (which Blue matched, not that he would ever admit that to anyone) and uncurled to reveal itself to be a sleepily-blinking Bokoblin, who promptly attempted to run Blue through the stomach. Blue returned the favor by chopping off the creature's arm.
The bokoblin shrieked, which, considering it had just lost a limb, was a perfectly reasonable response. But the other reason for the shriek made itself known as several other monsters poked their heads out from under, behind, and over the field of rocks and scurried to join the fight.
Blue blinked once, slowly, and it occurred to him that he'd just stumbled onto what was probably Vaati's monster army, which finally explained where all the minions had come from in all those temples. A slow grin spread across his face.
“You wanna play, huh?” he asked, casually raising his sword and sliding his shield off his back in the same smooth motion. “Alright. Let's play.”
After searching a couple alcoves and surveying the general area, Green concluded that the only thing inhabiting this section of the mountain other than himself were rocks and a few small lizards with exceedingly bad judgement in home locations. He let out a frustrated huff of air and stalked off to find out how the others were doing. In the distance, he could see Vio struggling with... a tree?
That seemed interesting, Green decided, and kicked his pace up into a jog, arriving at his destination a few moments later.
“Why are you losing a game of tug-of-war to a tree?” he asked in an amused tone, causing Vio to jump a good six inches into the air in surprise.
“Because,” Vio grunted, pulling, “it's a very tough and scraggly tree and my hat is very stuck to it, and I'm afraid that if I pull too hard I'll rip the fabric.”
Green winced at the thought of a ripped hat. “Well... have you tried better leverage?”
The look Vio gave him was drier than a desert. “Of course I tried better leverage. That was the first thing I tried. Who do you take me for, Blue?”
“Hey, Blue's pretty smart,” Green argued. “He just puts it towards swordplay and things.”
“Yeah, I know,” Vio conceded. “Now, have you got any better suggestions?”
Green took a step backwards and surveyed the tree. While it was quite short, twisted, and knobbly, it was also just tall enough that getting Vio's hat back was a piece of work. But because it was short, twisted, and knobbly, it was also a fantastic climbing tree.
“I'm gonna see if I can get at it from above,” Green decided, and set about doing just that. He got up the trunk and onto the branch just fine, but on his way out to the hat's location his leg slipped, sending him sliding towards the ground – until the strap that held his scabbard on his back got caught on a large protruding knob in the bark.
Green now found himself dangling about five feet off the ground, held up by a piece of equipment that he couldn't reach and a piece of tree that he couldn't break. Flailing proved to be of no use either, as it only resulted in him swinging a bit. He finally gave up after a few minutes and just let himself hang limply.
“Little help?” he asked plaintively.
Vio, in between snickers, reached up and gave Green's leg a strong tug – only to have Green's boot come off his foot instead and smack him in the face. Vio went down hard with a bruise on his forehead, and Green was left with a rapidly-getting-cold foot and a significant lack of a way down.
And through it all, Vio's hat hadn't budged.
“This tree is an evil mastermind,” Green muttered.
Unlike the others, Red was having a nicely uneventful search. The hole scared him, for obvious reasons, so he was basically looking wherever was farthest away from it.
Ironically enough, this turned out to be the right idea as he found Zelda sealed inside a crystal prison, floating serenely an inch or two off the ground at the very highest point on the mountain. Her eyes were shut, and if it weren't for the fact that she was being held against her will, Red would have assumed she was sleeping while standing up.
None of this, however, dampened Red's natural enthusiasm, and he let out an exuberant squeal at the sight of his missing Princess.
“Zelda! You're okay!”
He rushed up to the crystal and gave it a hug. But despite this adorable display of affection, Zelda abjectly failed to respond.
This might have been due to the solid rock she was stuck inside, but really it could have been any number of things.
Red noticed this about ten seconds into the hug, and his eyebrows furrowed in worry. “Zelda? Can you hear me?”
Zelda proceeded to do absolutely nothing.
Red reached out and tapped on the crystal, producing a pleasant tinknoise, but getting no other response. He frowned. Clearly this was in the way of Zelda being free... the question was, how did he release her?
“Hold still,” he warned her. Since she was already doing this, it wasn't much of a problem. She could have been a champion in musical statues.
Red drew his sword and carefully poked the stone with it, producing a louder tink but not much else. He tried again, harder this time. The tink turned into a tinnnnnggg, but that was about the only difference.
Now getting mildly annoyed that he couldn't free the Princess, Red began slashing at the crystal in earnest. Aside from making a lot of musically pleasant bell noises, which inadvertently ended up playing the 'You Got The Thing!' jingle that always popped up whenever they got a new item, nothing happened.
Red spent a few minutes cycling through his other items, which ranged from blasting it with fire and ice to just knocking his head against it in sheer frustration, before it occurred to him that Vio would probably know what to do.
With this thought in mind, Red bounced down the mountain's peak yelling, “GUYS, GUYS, GUUYYYYYS!” at the top of his lungs.
Blue was on the winning streak of his life.
When he'd stumbled onto Vaati's minion army, he'd stumbled onto allof Vaati's minion army. Everything that he and his counterparts hadn't already killed in some dungeon or another was literally right here practically begging to be chopped to pieces, and Blue was all too happy to oblige. He was already in the eighties somewhere – the Keese he'd just killed made eighty-four – which blew his previous record of fifty-seven straight out of the water, and to his delight the enemies didn't seem inclined to stop anytime soon.
“This is the best day ever,” he decided with a massive, slightly concerning grin on his face.
Vio, rubbing his head with one hand and trying to re-shoe Green's foot with the other, slowly became aware of the fact that someone was yelling for him quite loudly. In fact, it was getting louder and louder the longer that he listened-
Red came barreling through the trees, saw his brothers just a few seconds too late, and skidded straight into Vio's legs knocking them booth head over heels and giving Vio another collection to bruises to add to the one on his head.
“...Ow,” he decided once the world stopped moving.
“Oh gosh Vio I'm so sorry I should have been looking where I was going you're not hurt are you please say you're not hurt if you're hurt then I don't know what I'm going to do and-”
“Red,” Vio interrupted. “I'm fine. Stop panicking.”
Red duly stopped panicking.
“What was it you wanted Vio about?” Green asked, still hanging from the tree. Red opened his mouth to answer, but his brain kicked into gear at that exact moment and noted the fact that Green was in a tree.
As a result, what actually came out of his mouth was the perfectly on topic, “Why are you in a tree?”
Green turned pink. “...I'm stuck.”
“He was helping me rescue my hat,” Vio elaborated. “He slipped while climbing out on the branch and his scabbard strap's caught.”
“Oh,” Red said. “What happened to your hat?”
“It's in the tree,” Green sighed.
“Oh,” Red said again.
“Actually...” Vio mused in the tone that he used when he had an idea. “Red, can you get on my shoulders and reach my hat?”
“Sure!” Red chirped. Vio got down on his knees and Red awkwardly clambered over his head to his shoulders. Vio then stood up (though not without a good bit of wobbling, as this wasn't something they tended to do), and with the added height boost Red was able to reach out and finally disentangle Vio's hat from the branch.
“Thanks,” Vio said gratefully as he re-placed the garment on his head where it firmly belonged. A Link without his snazzy hat of snazziness had no snazz. Obviously.
Green let out a sigh of relief at the rescue and just let himself hang for a minute. Then he lifted his head and, with a sheepish smile, said, “Can someone get me down now?”
Blue disarmed the final Armos (Hah! Pun!), and the monster crumpled to dust, leaving Blue the only living thing in a sea of a clean freak's worst nightmare. He let out a small, contented sigh, which stirred up the still-settling dust from his victory.
After much trial and tribulation, he'd finally set his new record streak: two-hundred and forty-six kills. In a row.
This was worth celebrating, he decided.
The only problem seemed to be that there was nobody around to help celebrate it with him. This made Blue frown a bit, as he could only remember being completely separated from his siblings a handful of times – as in, he could literally count them on one hand – and he didn't remember why they hadn't been fighting with him. Come to think of it, why had he been fighting?
And why was he on a mountain?
As this thought ran through his head, Blue abruptly realized that this was Vaati's mountain. And with that epiphany came the memory of what he was doing there in the first place.
“Aww, crud,” Blue muttered, and took off sprinting.
Vio was never going to let this go if he figured out Blue had somehow managed to forget about Zelda of all people.
It took pushing, pulling, tugging, shoving, shouting, a very loud crack sound, falling, screaming, thumping, one casualty in a form of a severe grass stain, and a stick. But at the end of the whole mess, Green could, with confidence, say he had both of his feet firmly on the ground.
He also had a strong determination to never let his siblings 'rescue' him ever again, but that was beside the point.
“...Okay,” Green said, partly forcing himself to move on and partly because they actually did need to get back on track. “What did you need, Red?”
Red tilted his head, then jumped about a foot into the air and cried, “I found Zelda!” as he remembered why he'd come in running in the first place. Green and Vio immediately gave him their full attention.
“Where?” Vio said.
“Up on the top of the mountain, the very top. She's in this crystal thing, but I couldn't break it no matter what I tried. I figured Vio would know what to do, so I went looking for you but then your hat was in a tree and Green was in a tree and a lot of things revolved around trees for a while and I got distracted. Sorry.”
“It's fine, we know now,” Green reassured him. “Show us where she is.”
“Hang on,” Vio interrupted, frowning. “Where's Blue?”
Almost as if he heard his name, Blue came skidding around a pile of rocks and screeched to a halt, panting and looking as though he'd just taken a bath in mud. His hair was wildly sticking in various directions and aside from his obvious exertion, his face had a grin so wide it was threatening to escape his face.
“Hi, sorry,” he panted. “Got distracted.”
“Doing what?”
“Oh, things. Two-hundred and forty-six things, if you're interested.”
Almost simultaneously, his three brothers decided they were definitely not interested.
“Moving on,” Green said quickly. “Red found Zelda at the top of the mountain but she's inside a crystal prison like the other six maidens were.”
“Why didn't you say so!?” Blue cried. “We gotta rescue her!”
“We also need to figure out how first,” Vio reminded him dryly. Blue shrugged.
“Simple. I'm gonna hit it with my hammer.”
“Red tried that,” Green informed him. “Well, not with a hammer, exactly, but-”
“None of my items worked,” Red lamented. “Not a single one...”
Blue blinked and put away his hammer. “Okay then... what's the plan?”
“Figure out a plan later,” Green said definitively, and with that marched straight up the path to the top.
It turned out that they didn't actually need a plan, because Zelda was quite capable of freeing herself. She proved this when the crystal suddenly shattered as the four Links were brainstorming and released the Princess in a shower of light.
“What, you actually thought I was going to sit and be the damsel in distress?” She grinned at their dumbstruck faces. “I've been storing my power for weeks to break out of that thing. Nasty stuff, quartz. No breathability at all.”
“...You're okay, then?” Green asked slowly.
“Yes, I'm fine. Which is more than I can say for you boys.”
Zelda got a concerning look on her face, which was highly reminiscent of Green's leader stare but infinitely worse because it was a Royal leader stare.
“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, LINK!?” she exploded. “You drew the Four Sword!? How could you put Hyrule in danger like that!? You knew Vaati would be released, I know you knew! But here you are, standing with your four faces and gaping at me like idiots and I honestly thought you knew better, Link. Nothing could possibly be worth what you've unleashed.”
“Not even saving you?” Red asked quietly.
Zelda blinked.
“Shadow Link took you captive and tricked us into drawing the Sword to get you back,” Vio explained. “And then he made sure that we couldn't put it back in time to stop Vaati. We knew that the Four Sword was the only thing that could beat him, so... we just went with it.”
“We came up here to smack the ever loving crud out of him,” Blue said. He paused, then added, “And save you.”
“Oh. Well... I suppose I can accept that,” Zelda sighed. “You always did have a thing about keeping me safe. I suppose your father drove that into you.”
“Uh, Princess?” Vio said, raising his hand. “Just curious, why aren't you freaking out?”
“About what?”
“Well, your childhood friend is now split into four people, for starters...”
“I had to learn all about the Four Sword in my history lessons,” Zelda replied. “I know exactly what it does. I'm rather excited to see it in action, and there's a part of me that reallywants to ask you scientific questions about how it feels, but other than that I'm fine.”
“Okay, but what about the physics-defying hole?” Blue asked.
Zelda blinked. “The what now?”
“That now,” Red said, pointing. Zelda followed his finger to where the hole (now slightly bigger) floated a few inches off the ground, and her jaw dropped.
This lasted for a good minute and a half before Green cleared his throat awkwardly and Zelda was startled out of her thoughts.
“What the heck happened to Vaati!?” she sputtered.
“That was Vaati!?”
“That was where he was, yes...”
Vio frowned. “How do you know that? You were in a crystal.”
“I am able to know what goes on around me,” Zelda said dryly. “You know, since I happen to have magical powers and things.”
Vio closed his mouth awkwardly.
“But Vaati was right there,” Zelda continued, insistent. “I swear by the goddesses that's where he was. I mean, sure he hadn't made any noise in a while, which I thought was kinda odd but maybe he was alseep, you never know. But...”
Everyone stared in silence at the void for a moment.
“...It's bigger than before,” Red noted.
“Which means, if it keeps going, it'll eventually destroy the entire country,” Vio said somberly. “That's not good.”
“Well we can't do anything about it now,” Zelda decided. “So, would you be willing to escort me back to the Castle? We can do some research in the library once we're there and see if there's anything on world-eating holes.”
“Probably the best plan as of now,” Green agreed, sighing. “Follow us, Princess.”
As far as the people of Hyrule were concerned, the Four Sword Heroes coming down from the mountain with the kidnapped Princess was the best thing that'd happened since the discovery of How To Bake A Cucco Without Getting Yourself Killed – which, since Cuccos were known far and wide as the most vicious of beasts, had been heralded as a miracle in itself. But the Links and Zelda had more pressing issues on their minds and as such ignored the festivities altogether.
Hyrule was in danger and they had no idea how to stop it.
Notes:
Four Links down, about fifteen more to go. Let's do this thing.
Thanks to e_e_e, blingeekingdave, Guest #1, bookwormfaith, Nevalone, and Lyoth737 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 3: The One Who Got Lost
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of Hyrule?
Notes:
Mandatory disclaimer which states I do not own any of the content this story draws from. It would be annoying if it didn't keep me out of legal trouble. But it does. So it isn't. Yay!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Farore let out an annoyed huff. “Well that didn't work.”
“Wait, you were doing something?” Din said in a tone of great surprise. “All I saw was you staring at the universe hard enough to burn a hole in it, and it really doesn't need anymore holes.”
Farore glared at her. “I was trying to influence Courage to step into the hole so we could use the harmonic frequency of the antimatter to connect one reality to another and transport him to another position on the timeline so he could begin the process of meeting himself, but noooooo he had to think about what he was doing instead of following the mysterious urgings!”
“...Alright there?” Din asked cautiously as Farore panted.
“I'm just cranky,” Farore snapped. “Now all four of them are miles away from where they need to be and that makes my plan completely useless.”
“What if we try a different aspect?” Nayru suggested. “There's more than one possibility for the 'present' due to that alternate split back with the Hero of Time. We have at least two other options, so why not try them?”
“...That could work,” Farore said. “I mean, obviously the Four Sword aspect would have been the best choice, but we can make do with one of the others.”
“Your Attribute, your choice,” Din told her. Farore considered this and reached out to feel Courage's positions in the timelines.
“...Not the one from the Hyrule with trains,” she decided. “He's nowhere near where he needs to be right now, and influencing him there would stretch the Interference Laws too much... but the other option is a piece of work in himself.”
“That's the one who can't figure out where he's going to save his life, right?” Din checked.
“That's him,” Farore sighed. “He's been at it for two years and he still hasn't quite found Ganon yet.”
“Poor boy,” Nayru murmered. “But wouldn't that mean he's actually the worst choice for this?”
“On the contrary,” Farore said, waggling a finger. “His sense of direction is so marvelously out of whack that I can influence him in any direction I want and he won't notice.”
“Go for it then,” Din said. “Let's see if this works this time.”
Farore twitched and smacked her sister upside the head in vengeance.
The Link in question was the Hero of Hyrule, a somewhat short boy with dark brown hair, a roundish nose, and quite possibly the worst sense of direction in the universe.
One of the better examples of this was the quest he was currently on. He'd met a woman named Impa, who'd turned out to be in the employment of Princess Zelda, who'd been kidnapped. Link, being an agreeable boy, had agreed to search for the missing Princess and free Hyrule from monster influence along the way.
That had been two years ago. He'd been twelve.
Now fourteen, Link's sense of direction hadn't improved one bit. He had a vague impression that he'd been more-or-less lost for two years straight trying to figure out where Ganon was keeping Zelda, but he wasn't entirely sure due to the fact that he didn't quite know where he was at the moment either.
He hoped it was the place that held the Magical Sword, because that was what he was looking for. He knew, of course, that the fact that he was looking for it made it nearly impossible for him to find it, but Link was a natural optimist and hoped he'd found it anyways. It certainly looked like the sort of place one would keep an important enchanted weapon; dark and mysterious, with an intimidating entrance that for some odd reason had been hidden under a bush. Link didn't pay this much mind though, because a vast majority of things in his Hyrule were hidden in strange places. For example, every single elder he'd ever met lived in one of two places; in a cave, or under a rock. He had no idea why they didn't just build houses for themselves, but then again he'd never asked. It wasn't his business.
Link drew his sword, tried to draw his shield but failed because he'd lost it about a week ago, and took a deep breath instead. He would get a new shield, but he'd lost his wallet two weeks ago and didn't have the money for a new one. Link's sense of direction, unfortunately, extended beyond the location of himself and included the location of his items, much to his annoyance. In the two years he'd been questing he'd gone through several dozen shields, at least twenty Candles, three Rafts, thirteen boomerangs, and far, far too many bombs to even hope to keep track of. It also didn't help that he attracted monsters like honey attracts bees, and Like-Likes were among the most common ones he dealt with, which did not do his shield situation any favors.
Lost in his thoughts, Link didn't notice where he was going until he tripped on a small rock and looked up to find himself in the middle of the dungeon with absolutely no idea how he'd gotten there. However, since this was a completely normal part of his daily life, Link just sighed again and kept walking.
Link walked through a doorway into yet another dungeon room, having a small argument with himself about whether or not this was the fifteenth or twenty-first time he'd passed this way, before freezing in his tracks as a loud growl sounded above his head. He slowly lifted his eyes and met the gaze of a very large, very irate, and very, very intimidating four-headed dragon. Something made a meep noise. He was pretty sure it was himself.
“On the bright side,” he mused as he slowly backed out of the room, “I definitely haven't been here before. Maybe I'm getting better.”
An earsplitting roar and the CRASH of the stone wall as the dragon came charging through it let him know otherwise, and Link yelped before taking off at full speed. Interestingly enough, rather than the gibbering terror that most people would be feeling in this situation, the primary thought in Link's mind was, 'Oh come on, not again!'
He sprinted around a corner, skidded into the wall, regained his balance and pushed off into a different room as the dragon came sprinting around the corner, skidded into the wall – and went straight on through the next wall too. Conveniently, this wall happened to be the wall between Link and the outside, and despite the fact that there was a large fire-breathing reptile between him and it, Link ran through without hesitation. The dragon, which was regrettably not hampered by either wall in the slightest, was all too happy to give chase.
“Okay, so clearly that was not where the Magical Sword was,” Link muttered as he sprinted, the dragon roaring behind him. “I'll have to cross that off the mental list once I get a minute.”
He pounded around a corner, startling some Keese which then got ran over by the dragon five seconds later. They made little squeaky noises as they poofed into smoke. Link frowned for a moment and tried to remember if those had been the Keese by that one cave or that one other cave, but then two of the four heads of the dragon decided that it would be an excellent idea to breathe fire and Link suddenly had more important things to think about. It wasn't like he knew where either cave was in relation to anything else, after all.
The other two heads had noticed the fact that the first two were breathing fire and had decided to hop on the flaming bandwagon, which now resulted in Link running from lots more death than he'd been before. He really wished he had his shield – not that it would have done much against a fire-breathing dragon, but because it would make him feel like he could do something against the fire-breathing dragon.
He sprinted past a Like-Like, then two more – and screeched to a halt, because the second one had his shield in its gelatinous body and was happily dissolving it as he watched. He debated for a moment about the wisdom of getting his shield back, but then the dragon arrived, roared its superiority to the world, and ate the Like-Like because it was aiming at Link but missed.
“Oh, COME ON!” Link yelled as his shield followed the Like-Like down the dragon's throat. “NOT AGAIN!”
In Link's opinion, things like this happened far, far too often. This wasn't even his first time being chased by a dragon; it was actually his third. The only differences were that the first dragon had only had one head, and the second dragon had had only two. He actually wished he were being chased by the one-headed dragon again instead. At least that one hadn't taken his shield – that honor had gone to the two-headed dragon, and now this four-headed one.
Unfortunately for Link, said four-headed dragon took his annoyed yell as a signal that the chase was on again, and Link found himself once again running for his life.
Basically, just another normal Tuesday. Or Thursday. Or Saturday. They were all pretty interchangeable by this point.
The next forty minutes or so consisted of Link sprinting, the dragon chasing, and Link's misdirectional field landing the two in all sorts of odd places. Among the ones worth noting were the Boss Chambers of every single dungeon Link had beaten so far, the place where the Zoras lived on the ocean floor (which was really an accomplishment, as Link could neither swim nor breathe underwater), the top of a cliff which had no discernible way up (or down, for that matter), the chamber where Zelda was being held captive (Link tried to free her but the dragon tried to eat him again), Ganon's throne room (where the villain stared in confusion and Link tried to kill him but failed because the dragon tried to impale him), and the underside of a gravestone that turned out to be an old man's house where, in self-defense against the idiot and the monster who invaded his home, he threw a shield at Link's head – which knocked the hero straight back out the door – and slammed said grave-door in Link's face. Link had just enough time to process his new shield before the dragon tried to eat him again, causing Link to yelp, take off sprinting, and begin the chase all over again.
In his head, Link was trying to keep track of how long he'd been running. He'd lost count a couple times when the dragon had lit his hat on fire, but he was pretty sure he was nearing the hour mark. From his past experience with dragons, he needed to keep running for... about thirty more minutes, which would be when the dragon passed out from exhaustion and Link could finally get back to what he'd been doing. He remembered the time when he'd thought running for hours on end was inhuman and rolled his eyes at his younger self, who'd also thought rescuing the Princess wouldn't take more than a couple weeks at most and that losing his sword was the end of the world as he knew it.
Ah, the irony.
He jerked to the right as the dragon let loose another fire blast and sighed. Only about twenty-seven minutes to go.
Twenty-eight minutes later, the dragon, who'd been lagging slower and slower, put his foot down, missed and straight-up crashed into the dirt. A few seconds later, Link heard a muffled snoring issuing from the third head, while the first two tried to untangle themselves and the fourth head just laid there and panted. Link spent a second or two supporting himself on his knees and regaining his breath, watching the dragon warily to make sure it wasn't faking. Considering the fact that one of the heads was, in fact, asleep (much to the annoyance of the other three), he decided it was real.
“Finally,” he sighed, earning himself a glare from the dragon. “Took you long enough. I mean, seriously, I've got better things to do than run from you.”
The dragon snorted, flipped the sleeping third head onto it's back, and turned around with a huff as it proceeded to ignore Link entirely. Classic dragon procedure; in the event of escaped prey, one should then act as though said prey never held interest in the first place.
Granted, this wasn't the most effective of strategies, but dragons are stubborn creatures and refuse to admit it.
Link watched the still-huffing dragon leave and rolled his eyes before examining his surroundings. Much to his surprise, he was standing right outside the place where he'd heard the Magical Sword was kept. Link spent five seconds or so just blinking at it, as he'd fully expected to spend at least another week and a half looking before he stumbled onto it completely by accident.
But this worked too. He had no problems with this method.
Link shoved the stone aside and walked down the stairs that had been hidden beneath it. One story below the surface was another old man (Link had yet to meet another person his age in Hyrule; they were all either elderly, Impa, or the kidnapped Princess) and the Magical Sword being displayed in a pedestal.
“Can I borrow that?” Link asked, pointing. The elder blinked at him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I'm on a quest to save the Princess,” Link explained patiently, “and I need a better sword. I've been looking for the Magical One for about two months now.” He paused as a thought occurred to him and added, “That is the Magical Sword, right? Please tell me it's the Magical Sword, because if it's not I'm going to be somewhat annoyed because this would be the fifth time I've made that mistake.”
For the interested, the other four swords had been the Mildly Enchanted Sword, the Perfectly Normal Sword, the We-Think-It's-Cursed-But-No-One's-Sure Sword, and the Stick, which while not an actual sword had been carved to look just like one and had been painted silver. It had been very convincing.
“No, this is the Magical Sword,” the old man confirmed. “Might you be Link, the Hero?”
“That's me,” Link said, raising an eyebrow. “How do you know my name?”
“Impa told me that if I ever met you, I was to give you this sword,” the old man said, handing said weapon to Link, “and to ask you, 'What in the names of the Three Golden Goddesses is taking you so long boy!?'”
Link turned red. “...I got lost. Possibly more than once. I may still be lost, actually. I'm not quite sure.”
“Din help us,” the old man sighed. “You'd best be going, young one, if you want to make any progress by the end of the week. Good luck.”
Link thanked him, somewhat sheepishly, and traded out his current sword for the Magical one as he walked back up the stairs. He tucked the older one into his bag, though; with the rate he lost things, keeping a backup weapon seemed like a good idea.
He finished stuffing the sword into his bag, looked up at his surroundings, and promptly realized that he had no idea where he was.
“Look when you walk,” Link berated himself after he finished facepalming. “Note to self, pay attention to where I'm going, if only to know how I got here. It'd be a vast improvement.”
Then again, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know how he'd managed to get on top of that one cliff without actually climbing it... perhaps this was a blessing in disguise.
And then, because he was paying attention to his inner monologue and not where he was going (ironically enough), he walked straight into a rock wall. His newly-acquired shield bounced with the impact and rolled off somewhere, while his even newer-newly-acquired Magical Sword smacked him in the back of the head due to momentum. Link spent the next few seconds in considerable pain.
“...Ow,” he decided slowly, rubbing both his face and his skull as he glared up at the mountain in his way. He'd seen this mountain somewhere before, he thought, but then again he thought he'd seen everything somewhere before. The reason for this was usually because he hadseen it before, on his convoluted way to wherever he was trying to get to that was not where he was.
The black void was new though.
Link's thought train screeched to a halt as he ran that sentence through his head for a second time, then looked for the corresponding object that had prompted it. Sure enough, between this mountain and it's twin was a large, utterly black hole, floating a few inches above the ground and doing everything physics said it shouldn't. It was as though the hole had taken a good look at reality and said, 'Nope, not bothering with it' and proceeded to get rid of reality entirely.
Link took a few moments to stop gaping.
“FINALLY!” Farore exploded.
“Okay, I admit taking thirty-two hours to follow a prompting is a bitmore than I expected,” Din admitted in mild surprise. “And you're telling me he's usually worse than this?”
“Much worse,” Farore sighed. “Do you know how long he's been looking for that sword he just got?”
Her sisters both shook their heads.
“Three months. He'd even gotten directions to the place; he just can't find his way to save his life.”
Link finished processing the hole in the world just in time to notice the significantly-sized crowd of monsters that were all processing him. There was a frozen moment as everyone stared at one another.
And then they all freaked out.
“SWEET DIN!” Link yelped.
“GREAT GANON!” a Wizzrobe shrieked.
Pandemonium ensued.
Two minutes in, however, an Armos realized that they outnumbered Link by about a thousand to one and promptly capitalized on this fact by yelling it loudly. Link abruptly found himself surrounded by what seemed to be all of Ganon's minions. He even thought he saw the two-headed dragon from ten months ago that had eaten one of his shields.
Considering how he was being threatened by many pointy objects, however, Link pushed that thought to the back of his mind and said, “You really don't want to do that.”
“On the contrary, I really think we do,” the Armos growled.
Link frowned and switched tactics. “I thought I was supposed to get killed by Ganon himself though? Aren't the orders for you to be nuisances only?”
There was a bit of shuffling and muttering, before a Wizzrobe piped up with, “Ganon's not really around to give orders anymore-ow!”
The Lynel next to him had smacked him upside the head and growled something. Link got the impression that this particular Wizzrobe was a bit dim. Nevertheless, this sounded interesting.
“Why can't he give orders?” Link asked. “Is he out pillaging or something?”
All the monsters within earshot turned and glanced apprehensively at the hole.
“...Not exactly,” a different Wizzrobe answered. “What actually happened was-OW!”
A Bubble had... well, Link wasn't entirely sure what the Bubbles did, but it had apparently hurt. He was getting the impression that maybe all Wizzrobes were a bit dim. So, since none of the monsters seemed inclined to tell him, Link put two and two together and made an educated guess.
“Did he fall in the hole?”
“...Not exactly,” an Armos admitted. “It was more like... he turned into the hole.”
“And then he was gone,” a creature whispered from somewhere in the crowd. And with that, the dam broke, and nearly every monster visible started whimpering.
“It took my brother!”
“It ate my lunch!”
“It devoured exactly half of my sock drawer! Now one of my feet will always be cold!”
Link blinked. Then he shook his head and yelled, “HEY!”
The mob paused mid-wail.
“So what you're saying is, Ganon is gone?”
He was met with a great deal of wide-eyed stares before the entire horde broke down in sobs.
“THE MASTER IS GONE!” a Wizzrobe wailed, and everything went to the Dark World. The Armos holding Link at swordpoint opted for blowing his nose on his sleeve instead, a couple Like-Likes literally melted in their sorrow, and one strange moblin attached itself to Link's shirt and whimpered into the fabric. Link, not knowing what else to do, patted its shoulder awkwardly.
“Uh... it's okay little, um, guy. I'm sure he'll be back before you know it.”
Nobody paid attention.
“Alright, you asked for it,” Link muttered. “OI! EVERYBODY CALM DOWN OR I WILL SKEWER YOU!”
For whatever reason, this actually worked and Link was once again the center of monster attention. He briefly wondered why he'd thought this was a good idea.
“So,” he started slowly, “if I've got this right, Ganon got absorbed by a hole and vanished. Anyone and anything that touches the hole also vanishes. And as a result, you all are panicking. Did I miss anything?”
“You forgot the part where the hole grows,” an Armos contributed.
“Oh, it does? I didn't know that, thank you,” Link said. “Couple other things though, why was Ganon out here in the first place?”
A couple of the monsters winced.
“Ah, well, there was a security breach a few hours ago,” a different Armos said. “The Hero was being chased by our four-headed dragon and he somehow got all the way into the Lord Ganon's private chambers. His Highness wasn't very happy about that and he came out to punish us for our lapse in our duties.”
“Which we so richly deserved,” a Wizzrobe mourned. “Allowing a mortal near our Master... shameful...”
Link blinked. “Hang on. That was me.”
The monster horde stared at him.
“...You're the Hero?” an Armos checked.
“The one who's been killing us all?” a Darknut clarified.
“The person we've been fighting and dying against for two years now?” a Wizzrobe finished.
Link tugged on his bangs nervously. “I dunno about all that stuff, but... yes?”
There was about five seconds of pure silence. Then the Wizzrobe screamed, “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
Link was then treated to the wonderfully uncommon sight of a monster stampede running in the opposite direction of him. He stared after them in confusion.
“...Okay then,” he decided into the sudden silence. “That's new. Apparently I'm intimidating now...?”
He thought about that for a moment and shrugged. Either way, he was just glad not to be dead. Then, with nothing else to do, Link turned to examine the void.
It was a very intimidating void.
“...Yeah, not touching that with a ten-foot pole,” Link said firmly. If touching it meant obliteration, he was going to stay far away, thank you very much. It wasn't like he had an item for closing things either. Thus, Link decided that this would be one thing he was not going to mess with.
Still... he couldn't just leave it. The Armos had been right, it was growing. Sooner or later it was going to be big enough to cause some serious problems, and as the Hero of Hyrule Link couldn't just ignore it. No, he needed to stick around and figure out how to stop this thing. Without touching it in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.
Poking it was clearly out of the question.
“...He's not investigating,” Farore said slowly.
“He's sticking around, that's progress,” Nayru said encouragingly.
“But the plan relies on one of them investigating! If they don't investigate then they can't hop the timeline and meet themselves!”
“Somehow I think getting close to the reality-warping void is the last thing on Courage's mind,” Din noted.
Farore just let out a frustrated huff.
As a general rule, Demise did not do 'regret'.
However, he was seriously considering it.
It turned out, that when he'd absorbed his Hatred Incarnations, he'd literally absorbed them. He had their powers, yes. He had their memories. He had their knowledge, their experience, and their plans.
He also had their voices inside his head. And they were grating on his very last nerve.
I DEMAND TO BE FREED THIS INSTANT! One of the Ganondorfs yelled. I REFUSE TO BE HELD CAPTIVE BY SOME HALLUCINATING IMBECILE THINKING HE'S A GOD!
“I AM A GOD!” Demise roared. “HOW DARE YOU REFER TO ME AS AN IMBECILE! I CAN SMITE YOU WHERE YOU STAND, YOU INCOMPETENT EXCUSE FOR A VILLAIN!”
SAY THAT TO MY FACE!
“YOU DON'T HAVE A FACE! YOU LOST THAT RIGHT WHEN YOU LOST TO THE HERO, YOU MORONIC SIMPLETON!”
WHO CARES!? One of the multiple Ganons bellowed. JUST RELEASE ME AND LET ME TAKE MY REVENGE!
Hang on, I thought you'd been banished to the Dark World or something, a different voice said. Demise didn't know who it was, nor did he particularly care. That's what my history books said.
SHUT UP AGAHNIM!
YOU SHUT UP!
Something exploded in the back of Demise's mind, followed by the sound of an all-out brawl.
Morons, a woman's voice muttered. Despite the fact that he didn't care, Demise could recognize the woman simply because she had the distinction of being the only female Hatred Incarnation he had. He vaguely thought her name was Veran, but because he didn't care he didn't bother to see if he was right.
Another explosion interrupted Demise's thoughts, which annoyed him immensely. “WILL YOU KNOCK IT OFF IN THERE!?”
HE STARTED IT!
I DID NO SUCH THING!
ALL OF YOU, SHUT UP! A Ganondorf roared. I CAN BARELY HEAR MYSELF THINK WITH YOU IDIOTS TRYING TO KILL EACH OTHER!
Wait, people are killing each other? A new voice piped up. Why wasn't I invited? I love Killing-People-Parties!
Zant, go curse a Cucco, someone snarled.
Great idea! Cuccos are AWESOME at Killing-People-Parties! We can all wear Peahats!
Nobody cares, a new voice rumbled. Unless there will be trains. Then I will consider joining you.
Wait, you're the guy who can't do anything without a Train? That's pathetic! When did our kind stoop so low as to rely on a machine to do our job for us?
Oh, JUST because you can swing a massive mace, SUDDENLY you're better than EVERYONE else!
Do not make me show you how effective my mace can be.
LIKE IT COULD HURT ME!
There was abruptly a mind-shatteringly loud THUD, and the sound of something simultaneously squishing and breaking.
...ow...
He did not die, the voice that apparently wielded a massive mace said in mild surprise. Normally people die when I hit them. Perhaps I did not hit hard enough.
Another THUD ricocheted through Demise's head.
He's still not dead, the woman – Veran – said in a bored tone. Either we can't die here, or you're losing your touch, Onox.
Quiet, woman!
Don't make me show you your place.
...No ma'am. Sorry ma'am.
Did I hear you say we cannot die here? A new and curiously ambiguous voice said, sounding like it'd just heard the first interesting thing all century.
Well, it's only a theory.
I volunteer to test this theory. Who would like to help me?
Demise blinked as a squishing, bubbling noise replied to the question and briefly wondered if he was losing his sanity after all before remembering that one of his Hatred Incarnations, for some reason, had manifested as a squid.
I do not speak the ocean language.
He said he was interested, one of the Ganondorfs translated.
Ah. Good~
With a sudden, massive THWUMP and the sound of insane laughter, the ambiguous voice set the squid on fire that would put the tortures of the Dark World to shame. Demise wasn't entirely sure how he knew it was fire, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was. The squid, as was typical of things set on fire, began screaming, which went on for several minutes.
...No, it seems one cannot die while trapped in this prison, the ambiguous voice decided eventually, in a tone which implied extreme boredom. Pity... I was hoping to torture something to death today.
I think I'm going to like you, one of the previous voices said. Ganondorf, pleasure to meet you.
...That is debatable, but we shall see. I am Majora.
You can't be Ganondorf, MY name is Ganondorf! A different voice interrupted.
Highly unlikely, a third voice scoffed. I am Ganondorf.
All three of you are just mere posers, a fourth voice accused. You are simply taking MY name and adding 'dorf' to it!
Wait, your name is Ganon? A new voice repeated. You filthy thief! That's MY name!
This set off a whole cacophony of different voices arguing over who's name was who's, whether or not it had belonged to this person or that person first, and the various painful things they were going to do to one another if so-and-so didn't give up this name or that name within the next ten seconds. Demise slapped his hands over his ears, but then made the horrific discovery that it made absolutely no difference whatsoever because it was all happening inside his head, and resigned himself to massaging his temples instead in an attempt to get rid of the headache he hadn't known gods could get.
All of you, SHUT UP! Veran roared. We're going to settle this like civilized villains. Admittedly this may be a challenge for... all of you, but please do try, hmm?
You test my patience, woman, one of the Ganons growled.
And you test mine. Don't make me lose it. Now, you're having problems with naming?
However did you guess? A Ganondorf asked with extreme sarcasm. Veran ignored him.
The solution is quite simple, boys. Just number yourselves and be done with it.
I call Number One!
SHUT UP ZANT!
But I wanna be Number One...
YOU DON'T EVEN NEED A NUMBER!
Oh good, you agree with me, Veran purred. Alright, let's get to business. You'll be One, you can be Two, you'll be Three-
WE ARE NOT BEING NUMBERED!
But I wanna be Number One!
ZANT! NOBODY ASKED YOU!
Can I at least get a sandwich!?
YOU CAN NOT – wait, you want a sandwich?
Isn't that what we've been talking about?
But – how did you get a sandwich out of – no, that's not what we've been talking about at all! We've been... well among other things, we've been trying to get this pathetic excuse of a deity to release us, since he's somehow under the delusion that he controls us! We've been DEMANDING OUR FREEDOM!
Zant made a thoughtful humming noise. ...I'd rather have a sandwich. I DEMAND A SANDWICH!
...You're an idiot, Zant.
Couldn't agree more, One.
Veran, I am NOT GOING TO BE NAMED NUMBER ONE! IT IS AN ABYSMALLY STUPID IDEA!
Oh, and I suppose you've got a better one then!?
This sparked a debate which was so loud that Demise actually thought he might go deaf. But releasing the villains was out of the question, as putting them back in their places would restore the Universe to it's original, un-voided state and undo all the destructive progress made so far. That, and Demise was far, far too stubborn to bow to the demands of lesser beings.
Still... he should probably at least consider it.
Notes:
Five down, fourteen to go. Making progress.
Thanks to Guest #2, Guest #3, Guest #4, Shadowranger, and WellHeyHereWeGo for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 4: The One With a Train
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of Trains?
Notes:
Disclaimer! I own nothing but the plot. And possibly Zant's personality, as I don't think he ever wanted a sandwich in the games. Then again, maybe he did and I just missed it... he's crazy, it could happen.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Now this is just getting ridiculous,” Farore complained. “The Four Sword aspect is miles away in a library, the directionally challenged aspect is too wary to even get within ten feet of where I need him to be-”
“With good reason, as far as he's concerned,” Din pointed out.
“-and I'm running out of ideas!” Farore finished, ignoring the interruption like it hadn't even happened.
“We do still have the Train aspect,” Nayru reminded her sister.
Farore frowned, thinking. “Yes I'm aware of that, but that one is... busy.”
Din blinked. “Busy doing what?”
“Well...”
Link, the Hero of Trains, was being fired at by laser cannons.
Well, technically his Train was being fired at by laser cannons. Link, unfortunately, happened to be on the Train.
Behind him, a spirit was clinging to the train wall for dear life and trying not to be sick. Link wondered how Zelda could feel sick without a stomach, then wondered how she could have motion sickness now of all times after spending months traveling by Train with him.
Then again, none of the rides before this one had been quite this violent.
After dealing with Malladus for months on end, things had finally come to a head with the duel Link was currently in; racing his Train against Malladus'. It was a distinctly unfair fight, in Link's opinion, mostly due to the previously mentioned laser cannons on the Demon Train that Malladus was driving. Link, on the other hand, had regular cannons that shot regular cannonballs.
Totally fair and even odds, those were.
But that wasn't even the only problem Link was dealing with. Malladus had a completely warped sense of proper steering, and would randomly switch tracks at the most awkward and inconvenient times, usually right in front of Link's Spirit Train making the Hero pull some jarring and often straight-up illegal maneuvers to avoid a collision.
Abruptly, Malladus decided to do exactly that and the Demon Train jumped rails, making Link slam the brake lever to avoid a head-on crash with the back of the demonic locomotive which was now mere feet in front of him. The sudden movement threw Link onto the dashboard and Zelda to the floor, and Link threw a hurriedly worried glance at her.
“I'm fine!” she yelled over the noise in response, though she looked a bit paler than usual – and that was saying something, considering that she was transparent. “Keep going, we can't lose him now!”
Link nodded and returned his attention to the race – and just in time, because the Malladus had fired up the Demon Train's lasers again and was about to shoot him with them. Link yelped and switched rails as fast as he could manage, and the lasers carved a furrow in the rapidly passing ground instead.
“Just once,” Link growled, “I would like to drive my Train without another Train trying to kill me. Why is that too much to ask?”
Probably because you're the Hero, his subconscious answered. Link scowled and jerked the accelerator to move his Train up alongside the Demon Train again. He wouldn't mind being the Hero as much if the title didn't get him into so much trouble. Then again, the fact that he did tend to get into some questionable situations made for an excellent excuse to use the Spirit Train's cannons.
In fact, Link decided, that sounded like a fantastic idea.
“Zelda, watch the accelerator!” he yelled, sprinting to the cannon controls. Zelda shouted something about intangibility in reply, but Malladus had chosen that exact moment to fire more lasers and thus Link didn't hear her. He did, however, hear the screech of damaged metal as the lasers raked over the body of the Spirit Train and snarled incoherently.
Nobody messed with his Train. This had just gotten personal. And Link capitalized on that fact by slamming cannonballs into every inch of the Demon Train he could reach.
“Link!” Zelda yelled, materializing next to him. “Aim for the laser ports!”
...Yeah, that was probably a much better idea, Link admitted to himself, and reoriented his cannon. His next shot smashed one of the turrets into splinters, and Link grinned in fierce vengeance for his Train. Zelda let out a relieved sigh in tandem, then glanced ahead at the rails because she was smart like that.
“Link, there's a rail switch coming!” she said, pointing at the rapidly approaching mechanism. “We should probably use it!”
“Right, thanks!”
He really didn't know what he'd do without Zelda's second pair of eyes watching everything he couldn't. She'd saved his life at least four times on this adventure so far, and if he was being honest with himself basically every idea the two of them had was actually Zelda's that she gracefully let Link take half the credit for, exactly like the rail switch just now.
Link sprinted back to the Train controls and threw the rail switch just in the nick of time. The Spirit Train abruptly swerved onto a different track, a good twenty feet further away from the Demon Train. This, in Link's opinion, was a very good thing, because the farther he was from that monstrosity the better.
But then a different laser turret swiveled, locked, and shot the Spirit Train's siding right where the engine would be. Link yelled in surprise and slammed the brake lever to get out of range, which threw Link onto the dashboard and Zelda, despite being incorporeal, sliding across the floor and straight through Link and the dashboard.
“Sorry!” Link yelled as she pulled herself back out of the machinery, looking slightly annoyed.
“A little warning next time would be nice,” she chided. Neither of them mentioned the part where she'd slid through Link, because that part was considerably awkward and they were far too busy to bother with something as trivial as awkwardness anyways, not to mention that the noise of the lasers, cannonballs, brakes, Train engines, and just about everything else was incredibly loud and made it hard to even think about bothering with feeling awkward.
Put simply, neither of them cared.
Link stuck his head out the window to make sure they were out of firing range of the lasers, and seeing that they were, ran back to the cannon to fire some shots of his own. Unfortunately, he'd left the brakes on and thus spent the next few seconds with absolutely terrible aim before he figured out what was going on and sheepishly ran back to the controls.
That problem fixed, he ran back to the cannon and started firing again, this time hitting the laser he was aiming for with relative ease and demolishing it too. Then he scrambled back to the controls, because the Demon Train had just switched lanes to close the distance between the two of them and was using the proximity to cause some significant damage with its two remaining laser guns.
Why the heck did a Train even have laser guns in the first place!?
Lost in his annoyance, Link missed the Demon Train switching rails again until Zelda pointed and shrieked, “LOOK OUT!”
Link obediently looked, and promptly freaked.
“HOLY DIN!” he yelled in a panic, and once again sprinted for the Train controls, because the Demon Train was right in front of them and they were about to collide with it. He jerked the brake lever just in time to prevent a nasty crash and quickly threw the upcoming rail switch to get as far from the Demon Train as he could.
“Oh, that was way too close,” he gasped. “Thanks, Zel.”
“Well, we wouldn't want you turning into a ghost too, now would we?” Zelda replied. Link tilted his head, confused.
“...I thought you were a temporarily disembodied spirit.”
“Link, drive the Train.”
“Oh! Right.”
With his attention back on the steering, Link had a clear view of what was in front of him. Thus, he essentially had front row seats when the Demon Train missed a rail switch and plowed headlong into a rock wall.
Lin's mouth dropped. So did Zelda's.
“...Did the Demon Train just crash?” Link asked slowly.
“Looks like it....”
“Even though Malladus has never made a driving mistake before this, ever?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You're coming with me when I investigate, aren't you.”
“Pretty much.”
Link sighed. “Just give me a minute to stop.” As a general rule, he did not approve of the Princess following him into possibly dangerous situations, regardless of the fact that whatever the danger was probably couldn't touch her. Call him protective, or whatever, but it freaked him out when the life of the future ruler of his country was solely in his thirteen-year-old hands.
Unfortunately, Zelda was stubborn enough that she would follow him anyway, and he couldn't exactly order her back to safety because, one, she outranked him by a lot, and two, he couldn't move her even if he tried. He'd just go straight through.
The Spirit Train, which he'd been steadily braking the whole time, slowly chugged to a halt in a cloud of white smoke a few hundred feet away from the Demon Train, which suited Link just fine. The face on that thing creeped him out. He threw a few more levers to lock the Train in place, then hopped out of the engine car and began slowly approaching the Demon Train, with Zelda floating close behind.
As a result of smashing straight into a mountain, the entire front of the Demon Train was a complete chaotic mess. Metal was twisted, paint was scraped, wheels were bent, and that face which had been creeping Link out for months was so mangled that it was unrecognizable. Link made a little fist-pump when he noticed that.
Luckily, the door wasn't nearly as damaged as the rest of the locomotive, and Link was able to climb in with relatively little difficulty. Zelda, on the other hand, just floated through the wall and feigned impatience with a little smile on her face as she watched Link come in.
“That's not nearly as funny as you think it is,” Link informed her once he was through. Zelda just shrugged, smile still firmly visible, and Link rolled his eyes good-naturedly before starting off down the hallway.
After a few steps, the hall opened up into the engine room, which was much larger than the one Link had in the Spirit Train. But this was hardly worth noting, because there were three other things in the room that most definitely were worth noting.
One was Zelda's body, laying 'lifeless' and unoccupied on the floor. The second was 'Chancellor' Cole, who was also on the floor but seemed to be regaining consciousness.
The third was a middling-sized utterly black hole over by the Train's controls, which was slowly growing as Link watched and making the machinery rattle as the void pulled on it.
“Link...” Zelda said, with a little catch in her voice as she stared at her body.
“Just hang on a sec,” Link replied, narrowing his eyes at the scene. Months of narrowly escaping getting killed had taught him to never, ever, take a seemingly harmless room at face value unless you wanted to die a very painful death. With this thought in mind, he slowly advanced into the middle of the floor with his sword drawn and his shield ready to be used at a moment's notice.
Thirty seconds crawled by. Nothing attempted to kill him.
“...Okay,” Link decided. “We're good.”
Zelda rocketed past him the instant the words left his mouth, so fast that she actually created a wind in her wake that buffeted Link's hair. Link decided to give her and her body a few moments to get reacquainted and used the fact that Cole was groggily blinking at him as his excuse. He grabbed Cole by his collar and hoisted him to his feet – which wasn't very hard considering that Cole was actually slightly shorter than Link himself, which was a real novelty to the Hero because he was a naturally short and stocky boy.
“You've put me through a whole lot of garbage, you know that?” Link growled into Cole's face.
“Cheese unicorns,” Cole wheezed, excellently demonstrating the concussion he had from the crash. Link blinked, then dropped the little demon man unceremoniously to the ground again. Clearly, he wasn't going to be much use.
A little gasp to his left caught his attention, and he turned to see Zelda back in her body and taking her first real breath of oxygen in months. She inhaled, slowly, then exhaled just as slowly. A beaming grin spread across her face.
“We did it,” she said, euphoric. “I've got my body back!”
“Awesome,” Link told her. She beamed again and caught him in a quick hug.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Link had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation, and it showed in the fact that he couldn't figure out where to put his hands. He settled for flailing them awkwardly. “Anybody else would have done the same thing,” he managed.
“Shut up and accept the gratitude,” Zelda said, releasing him and rolling her eyes.
“Sure thing, Your Highness.”
“Avocado chutney,” Cole warbled from the floor, completely breaking the mood. Zelda's face darkened like a thunderstorm, and she veritably stalked over to the man who had posed in her court for months.
“Link,” she said coldly, “could you stand him up, please?”
Normally, Link would have said something about how violence was unbecoming for the future Queen, how revenge was almost never the answer, and a lot of other cliched but true stuff about taking out your feelings on people. However, the look on Zelda's face scared the living daylights out of him.
So he did the smart thing and stood Cole up instead.
“You,” Zelda hissed, “have betrayed me, plotted against me, tried to destroy Hyrule, ripped me from my body, gave my body to someone else, tried to kill me and Link more times than I can count, and broken almost every single traffic law we have. I can think of only one punishment good enough for the likes of you.”
So saying, she wound up and SLAPPED Chancellor Cole across the face so hard that he impacted the far wall.
“That,” Zelda said in tones of supreme satisfaction, “felt amazing.”
Link was too busy watching Cole burst into smoke and blow away in the fashion of all defeated monsters to respond. He suddenly felt both very proud, and very terrified, of the girl standing next to him.
“...Did you just vaporize Cole by slapping him?” he asked, just to be sure of what was happening.
“And I'd do it again in a heartbeat,” Zelda nodded firmly. “Now, let's finish the job. Where's Malladus?”
That, Link realized, was an excellent question. Malladus was supposed to be driving the Train, although if he was gone and Cole had been driving, that explained why he'd crashed. Still, demonic overlords generally didn't just vanish into thin air.
“...He ought to be here somewhere,” Link said. “I mean, Cole was here, and your body was here, and we know Malladus wouldn't have left your body lying around like that.”
“Except that he apparently did,” Zelda frowned. “I wonder... Link, what do you make of that hole?”
Link turned and gave said hole an appraising glance. “It freaks me out a little, not gonna lie. I've never seen anything like it.”
Zelda frowned more and took a few steps closer to the void, examining it closely. It had grown a little bigger since Link had looked at it last, and was now in the process of eating through the accelerator.
“...Ah,” Zelda said. “That's bad. That's very, very bad.”
“Why?”
“That's a hole,” she replied. Link nodded slowly.
“...I knew that,” he said. “I can see it's a hole. Now why is it bad?”
“Because that's a hole in the world.”
Link took that in for a moment.
“Okay, yeah, that's bad,” he decided. “But I'm still not seeing how this tells us where Malladus went.”
“Well...” Zelda started hesitantly. “I think... that he might have been... absorbed.”
Link blinked and gave the hole a more thorough once-over. Still black, still growing, still eating the accelerator... wait.
The accelerator... which the engineer would have been standing in front of. The engineer, who would have been Malladus.
“...So, do we panic, or celebrate, or what?”
“Bit of both,” Zelda decided. “We can't leave this here. We need to take care of it.”
Link's eyes narrowed as his instinct to protect kicked in again. “Oh no. I can take care of it. You can head back to the castle where it's safe and reassure your probably sick with worry father that you're alright.”
Zelda's eyer narrowed to match Link's, and she crossed her arms authoritatively. “And what makes you think that I'm going to leave you alone with a world-threatening crisis to deal with? We only made it this far because we worked together, and I am not going anywhere while Hyrule is still in danger.”
“Oh yes you are,” Link retorted, “because I am not going to let anything happen to you now that we've finally got your body back. I understand you're worried about Hyrule, which is perfectly understandable, but you are the freaking Princess! What happens if you get absorbed just like Malladus? What am I supposed to do then? Heck, what's Hyrule supposed to do then?”
To her horror, Zelda found that she couldn't actually argue with that logic. So she settled for scowling in Link's general direction instead. Link himself breathed a silent sigh of relief. Zelda could be monumentally stubborn if she wanted to be, and the argument could have easily gone on for hours. Luckily, her country came before almost anything else, otherwise Link probably would've never found a way to make her go.
“Now,” Link said, “how are we gonna get you back?”
“...Maybe they'll be willing to escort me,” Zelda offered, pointing behind him. Link turned to see Anjean and Byrne materializing out of thin air, the instrument at Anjean's mouth showing how they were doing it.
“Yeah, that'll work,” Link agreed.
Link waved as the Spirit Train chugged away without him, although it felt really strange to not be driving the machine himself. In fact, he was having a hard time reminding himself that nobody was stealing it, that he'd agreed to this, and he'd get his Train back as soon as Zelda was safe.
...He missed it already.
Link shook his head rapidly and flicked himself in the temples in an effort to get his mind back on track. He needed to do something about the hole, which by now had grown large enough that it was starting to be visible from the outside of the Train.
“...What am I going to do with you?” he asked the hole rhetorically. The hole didn't answer, which was a good thing. In Link's opinion, talking to inanimate objects was perfectly normal, but if they talked back, that was when you needed to be worried.
But since the hole hadn't said anything, it was all good.
Link pursed his mouth thoughtfully, then upturned his Adventure Bag on the ground and began sifting through the contents. Bombs, boomerang, arrows, Sand Wand, Whirlwind, whip, Spirit Flute... none of this seemed like it would do much. Still, Link decided, wouldn't hurt to try.
The bombs exploded, but did absolutely nothing as the hole then ate the explosion while it was happening. Arrows just vanished upon contact, the sandstorm summoned by the Sand Wand did squat, the Whirlwind was equally useless – and somewhat puzzling, because Link couldn't tell if the hole had eaten the wind or not. The boomerang just seemed like a bad idea, the whip seemed like an even worse idea, and the only thing he achieved playing the Spirit Flute was a snappy dance tune once he determined that every other song he knew did exactly what his other items had done – nothing.
Now he kinda wished Zelda was still around. He was out of ideas.
“Unbelievable,” Farore said, throwing up her hands. “I even went to all the effort of keeping the hole moving with the Train so he'd run into it! What does it take with these boys!?”
“Shame we can't actually close them ourselves,” Nayru mourned.
“I know, I honestly thought we had a chance when Farore managed to move that one, but I guess moving them around is all we can do,” Din agreed ruefully. “Better than nothing, I guess, but still...”
“Right, that's it,” Farore decided, having ignored the conversation her sisters were having. “It's time to get serious with this. If they won't investigate themselves, then I'll make them investigate!”
“Or we could try tact?” Nayru suggested. “So Courage doesn't freak out at feeling his body moving on it's own and we don't break the Interference Laws?”
“Okay, I'll make them investigate subtly.”
“Have we considered just sending them a message? You know, have the local Great Fairy turn up and say, 'Hero, thou must goeth into yonder hole'?” Din said.
Farore gave her a flat look. “Nobody talks like that.”
“It was more subtle than your suggestions, though,” Nayru pointed out.
Farore opened her mouth to retort – then paused, as something occurred to her.
“...that could work...” she said softly.
“...What could work?” Din asked.
“You'll see, if it works,” Farore replied, suddenly in a better mood than she'd been all week. “Nayru, where's the Four Sword aspect right now?”
“...On their way back to the mountain, actually,” Nayru replied after a moment of concentration. “Looks like they're done with the Library, for now.”
“Excellent,” Farore grinned. “Now, let's see how this works.”
Notes:
Six down, thirteen to go. Writing a Train battle is... surprisingly difficult.
Thanks to Guest #5, panic_at_the_everywhere_22, Guest #6, Guest #7, and Guest #8 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 5: Link, meet Link
Summary:
And so it begins.
Notes:
Disclaimer: a generic statement that usually implies non-ownership by an obsessed fan using trademarked characters for a story which may or may not be illegal without said statement. Ex: I do not, nor will I ever, own the Legend of Zelda. Sadly.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Come on... little closer...little closer... just one more step-no! Don't back away, you overly suspicious hatter! Get back there and let me work with you!”
“I think she's about to short-circuit,” Din whispered.
“LET ME MAKE YOU SAVE THE UNIVERSE!” Farore screeched at her Attribute.
“And here I thought being impatient was your job,” Nayru murmured back.
“Hey!”
Nayru ignored her now sputtering sister and placed a (hopefully) calming hand on Farore's shoulder. “Calm down,” she advised. “Just be patient, remember? They'll be in position eventually.”
Farore took a deep breath. “...Right. I know. You're right. I'm just a little fed up with all the manipulating and maneuvering I've had to do with very little to show for it.”
“That would make anybody tense,” Din agreed. “Still, Nayru's got a point. Just be patient a little while longer, and you can do whatever thing you're planning to do, okay?”
Farore took another deep breath, actually calming down this time. “Yeah. Thanks, girls. What would I do without you?”
“Go crazy,” Din said matter-of-factly. “That's how Ordona went.”
“I remember her,” Nayru mused. “She was... odd.”
“Didn't she retire to be a Light Spirit in a goat province or something?” Farore asked.
The Three Sisters were silent for a moment.
“...Yeah, she was weird,” Din decided.
Green, Blue, Vio, and Red surveyed the results of the latest attempt to close the hole, being a complicated setup involving a mirror, three bombs, time-delayed wicks, and an application of physics to invert the explosion.
It hadn't worked.
“...Dang,” Green sighed. “Alright, Vio, what's next on the list?”
Vio flipped open a book and paged through the contents before stopping a good ways in.
“By this point... we're down to either throwing things at it, or going and getting another magic-user to see if they know any different spells used for closing stuff. And as a last resort, asking nicely.”
“Somehow I doubt getting another magic user will do much,” Blue commented. “I mean, we've already tried all the spells Zelda sent with us, all six of the other Maidens already tried their luck, and I'm really not sure who else we could find that would have a better chance than them.”
“True...” Green said. “But that just leave us with...”
“Throwing things and asking nicely,” Vio supplied.
“What would we even throw?” Red wondered.
“Let's chuck a Cucco at it and see what happens,” Blue suggested. His three counterparts glared at him.
“That's a terrible idea,” Vio stated.
“If anything, that's going to get us killed,” Green added.
“So... that just leaves asking nicely?” Red asked curiously.
Everyone exchanged dubious looks.
“...If someone wants to try,” Green said doubtfully.
“I'll do it!” Red said cheerfully. He took a step forward and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Hole? Would you mind closing yourself for us? It'd be a huge help.”
A good sixty seconds crawled by as nothing happened, the silence broken only by the birds and Blue's muffled snicker at the absurdity of it all.
“...Well it was worth a shot I guess,” Green sighed. “Anybody have any other ideas?”
“I could punch it,” Blue offered.
“And then you'll go the same way that rock did,” Vio retorted.
“We don't know that...”
Vio pegged him with a dry stare.
“...It was the only idea I had left, okay?” Blue defended himself. “And it's not like anybody else was saying anything...”
“I could ask meanly this time instead,” Red suggested.
“If asking nicely didn't work, what makes you think asking meanly will? Heck, what makes you think asking will work at all?”
“Well, 'It's not like anybody else was saying anything', right?” Red quoted.
“Vio said that,” Blue said unconvincingly.
“I did not!”
Green sighed as the two got into another of their usual spats and took over the conversation. “If you wanna give it a go, you can certainly try, Red. We're out of ideas otherwise.”
Red nodded and took a second step forward. He took a deep breath, got himself into a 'Blue' mindset, and snapped, “You close up right now or I'm gonna smack the black right off your umbra!”
Despite this most convincing threat, the hole did not respond.
“...Dangit,” Red sighed, deflating back into his normal personality.
“On the bright side,” Green said, “I thought it was a very convincing 'Blue' impression.”
Red turned and beamed at him. “Thanks!”
Green returned the smile, then paused. Over Red's shoulder, where the handle of his Four Sword poked out, the red stone in the pommel seemed to be ever-so-slightly glowing. Green frowned, confused, then shot a quick glance over his own shoulder at his own Four Sword.
It was perfectly normal.
A look at the still-arguing Blue and Vio showed that their swords weren't doing anything unusual either, so Green turned back to Red to make sure he wasn't imagining it.
...Nope, still glowing.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Red asked curiously.
“Not you,” Green said. “Your Sword. It's glowing.”
“Really?” Red twisted around to see for himself. “Oh neat! ...Why's it doing that?”
“No idea,” Green said. “Hey, Vio!”
“What!?” Vio snapped, then winced. “Sorry, wrong conversation – what?”
“Red's Sword is glowing. Any idea why?”
“It's doing what?” Vio repeated, coming over for a closer look and leaning in to examine Red's weapon more closely. “That's odd...”
“It can't be that weird though, since yours is doing it too,” Red pointed out. Vio raised an eyebrow at that, then glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, the violet stone in the pommel of his Sword was glowing just like Red's was.
“...Huh?” Vio said knowledgeably.
“Now that's just bizarre,” Blue decided, having joined the group again after Vio got distracted. “Has anyone's Sword ever done this before?”
“Not that I can remember,” Green replied, while Red shook his head and Vio frowned.
“...There's a reason for this,” he muttered. “There's always a reason...”
He started pacing back and forth in front of the other three, a habit he'd developed sometime during the fiasco in the Village of the Blue Maiden. That town had been absolutely infuriating and ended up pushing the four Links' deductive skills to the limit, and one of the side effects had been Vio manifesting a tendency to pace and think things through aloud.
“We know it's not an enemy, because we're the only ones around,” he mused. “It can't be a Moon Gate, because we would have found that by now. There's no indication of a Great Fairy...”
The other three, knowing how Vio tended to get, sat back and watched, their heads following him back and forth rather like a cat following a light on the wall. Because of this, they then noticed the glow from Vio's Sword becoming brighter and dimmer in direct relation to when Vio walked past the hole.
“I think it's the hole,” Red said, interrupting Vio's theory that Kaepora Gaebora was actually a Cucco in disguise and their Swords were detecting the presence of pure evil behind the costume.
“...That's highly unlikely,” Vio replied slowly. “What makes you think that?”
“Watch,” Red told him, pointing at his own weapon and walking towards the hole as he did. With each step he took, the red stone glowed brighter and brighter until it was comparable to a small red star, with Red himself standing a mere two feet from the void itself.
“...Okay, that's fairly convincing evidence,” Vio conceded. “Now the question becomes, why?”
“Maybe if we hit the hole with the Swords instead of just punching it,” Blue suggested. “That could explain the glow. It's showing us the way to fix it.”
“The Four Sword doesn't have that kind of power,” Vio argued. “We should know it's limits better than anyone, right? I'm positive it can't do that.”
“We won't know until we try though, right?” Blue countered.
“But what happens if our Swords go the same way as that rock? What happens if we go the same way as that rock because we were holding the Swords that were touching the hole?” Vio crossed his arms. “There's too many variables.”
“Who cares about variables?” Blue asked, exasperatedly throwing his arms up.
“I do!” Vio retorted. “It's the kind of thing that keeps you from getting yourself killed, not that you ever pay attention to that anyways...”
“I pay plenty of attention, it just needs to be important!”
“Variables are important-”
“Both of you, knock it off!” Green snapped. “This isn't the time!”
Both boys subsided into disgruntled mutterings, but otherwise obeyed. Green let out a controlled, exasperated sigh and rubbed his eyes with one hand.
“You two are the reason I get headaches,” he muttered.
There was a moment of silence.
“...So, um, are we doing anything about this?” Red asked, pointing to the still-brightly-glowing pommel of his Sword.
“Well...” Vio said, scrutinizing the whole scene closely. “It's proximity-based, so... I can't believe I'm saying this... maybe get as close as you can without actually touching the hole?”
“Okay,” Red said brightly, and took the extra one-and-a-half steps that put him literally within inches of the reality-eating void. His three brothers promptly had minor heart attacks.
“What?” Red asked innocently, seeing their expressions. “You said to...”
“...That doesn't mean I'm okay with it,” Green managed after a moment spent finding his voice again.
“Don't do that!” Blue gasped. “Din, I thought you were going straight in...”
“Silly, I wouldn't do that,” Red smiled. “Besides, I-”
Whatever he was going to say was abruptly cut off as the gem in Red's sword lit up like a firework, much to the surprise of the four Links who, unfortunately, had been more or less looking right at it. Caught off guard, Red flinched backwards – and in the process finished covering the extra six inches in between him and the hole.
He promptly vanished.
“CRAP!” Blue yelled, and sprinted forwards into the void, more on instinct than anything else. Considering the fact that both Vio and Green were right behind him, he couldn't really be judged on it either.
Of course, by the time their brains caught up with what they were actually doing, it was far too late to stop.
And all four Links disappeared into nothingness.
Farore was doing her happy dance. It looked rather like a Cucco stuck in Chu jelly while swimming underwater.
“...Please stop,” Din said, grimacing. “That's freaking me out.”
“I don't even care!” Farore enthused. “It worked! It finally worked!”
She did a little impromptu twirl.
“So your plan was to... what, flash them?” Nayru asked.
“No,” Farore said, annoyed. “The plan was to use their Sacred Item to show that the hole wasn't dangerous. I would have used the Triforce and shown them that way, but for some reason that particular aspect never picked it up, so I had to improvise. Luckily that Sword of theirs counts just as well.”
“Well played,” Nayru said approvingly. “Now what?”
“Now, “ Farore said, flexing her hands, “we get down to business. Courage is about to meet himself, and I'm about to become very busy.”
Red tumbled forwards and sprawled onto the ground, narrowly missing a remnant piece of metal from something that looked mechanical.
“Owww...” he whined, sitting up and rubbing his head. “That really hurt...”
Three-and-a-half seconds later, his pain was exponentially doubled as Blue, Green, and Vio manifested and landed on top of him.
“...ow,” Red whimpered.
“Red!?” Green exclaimed. “You're alright!”
Despite the fact that they were all piled on top of one another, they managed to give Red a group hug anyways.
“Why wouldn't I be alright?” Red asked, confused but returning the hug anyways. “I mean, I just fell a little...”
“You fell in the hole,” Vio said solemnly. “We thought you'd been... you know.”
Red absorbed that and frowned. “So... your first reaction was to throw yourselves after me?”
“...To be fair,” Blue replied awkwardly, “I think we were too busy panicking to register that.”
“Well, if you're done panicking, can we stand up now? It's getting hard to breathe under you guys.”
“Oh! Sorry.”
They took a few moments to extricate themselves from one another and stood, brushing off dirt and various pieces of debris from the ground, then decided it would be a good idea to check their surroundings.
There was the hole still, but that was about the only thing familiar. Instead of a mountaintop, the four Links were standing on a plain surrounded by mountains far off in the distance. There was what looked like the remains of some massive metal machine off to their right – most of it appeared to have been eaten by the hole – and the whole landscape in general looked barren.
“...This is new,” Blue decided. “Any ideas what just happened? Or where we are?”
“If it weren't impossible due to the functionality of a void and the workings of physics, I'd say we just jumped across the spatial plane,” Vio said, sounding like he'd swallowed a textbook. “But that's impossible...”
“And yet,” Green said dryly, gesturing to their clearly not-where-they-used-to-be surroundings.
“I can see that, it's why I've got a headache right now,” Vio retorted.
A loud CLANGGGGGG from the remains of the metal machine made them all jump, which effectively cut off the conversation, and an unfamiliar voice groaned, “Owww. Okay, not doing that again...”
Green exchanged glances with his three counterparts, then stepped forward and called, “Hello?”
“Who's there?” the voice called back. “I don't know what brought people here, but it's kinda dangerous right now. You should probably leave.”
“Well, we're a bit lost,” Green replied, “and we don't really know where we are, so... can you give us directions?”
“Yeah, just hang on a sec,” the voice said, and another CLANGGGGGG reverberated through the plain, accompanied by another, “Owww! What the heck, I didn't even use the wrench that time!”
“...You okay?” Red asked.
“Fine, just... having some issues,” the voice grumbled, now closer than it'd been before. “Note to self, don't use metal implements to knock metal pieces out of place, it just bounces off and hits me in the head.”
“This guy sounds like a wackjob,” Blue opined.
“Hey!” the owner of the voice protested, coming around the far corner of the metal machine. “I'll have you know... that... What in Nayru's Name?”
“Vio,” Green said calmly. “Care to tell me why the Four Sword is malfunctioning?”
“This is just not a good day,” Vio sighed, which told Green he was at a complete loss.
Standing in front of them was a boy who, aside from a few minor differences, looked exactly like they did. Messy blond hair, wide eyes, unfortunately short stature, it was all there. He was even wearing the same outfit, hat and all.
“...That's freaky,” Blue muttered.
“You're telling me,” the lookalike agreed, staring. “Farore, it's like looking in a mirror that can look back!”
Red shivered. “That sounds creepy.”
“This is creepy,” the new boy replied. “Who the heck are you people!?”
“Oh, uh, I'm Green,” Green said, stumbling over his words a little due to the fact that he was having an internal panic attack but hiding it rather well. “This is Vio, over there is Blue, and that's Red,” he finished, pointing as he named.
The lookalike raised an eyebrow. “You're named for the color of your clothes? Weird. Were your parents so surprised at having quadruplets that they ran out of inspiration or something?”
“What?” Blue asked, confused. “Quadrup- oh! No, we're not actually brothers, we just got split.”
“Split?”
“Well, formerly we were a boy named Link,” Vio explained. “But due to some complicated complications we-”
“Wait wait wait,” the new boy interrupted. “Hold up. Did you say Link?”
“Yeah,” Red said slowly. “That's our name. Why?”
The lookalike stared at them all for a few seconds before saying, “My name is Link.”
There was a long period of shocked silence.
“...What,” Blue said eventually. He was too surprised to even make it a question.
It summed up everyone's thoughts quite nicely.
Despite multiple Death Threats, an absurd amount of fighting, Zant's continual demands for a sandwich, and the vast multitude of yelling, screaming, shouting, bellowing, roaring, shrieking, howling, and screeching that every single voice in Demise's head seemed dead set on using, the villains had managed to come to a consensus regarding the naming problem.
Some of them didn't have a problem and just used their name, these being Majora (who had issues), Malladus (he claimed to be a Demon Lord; this amused Demise immensely), Bellum (distinguishable by being a squid; Demise still wasn't sure why this was), Zant (who was absolutely insane, but in the way that made him an idiot rather than evil), Onox (he liked to smash things with his mace, the bloodier the better), and Veran (who was a woman, and who had the personality of a lethal snake). Then there were the duplicates, which were a bit more complicated. After much discussion, they'd decided to identify themselves based on what they did and where they came from, which was... simple, but effective. Hyrule Ganondorf was from Hyrule, obviously, and had managed to rule for seven years. Twilight Ganondorf had been banished to the Twilight Realm, and because he'd been the one to manipulate Zant into invading, Zant referred to him as 'his god'. Ocean Ganondorf came from a Hyrule that was completely underwater, and as a result was one of the two people who could understand Bellum. The other was Malladus, who apparently knew the language simply because both he and Bellum were demons.
Demon Vaati and Picori Vaati weren't all that hard to tell apart, mostly because Demon Vaati was a giant, one-eyed bat, and Picori Vaati had an actual body with hands and things, but their actions were quite different as well. Picori Vaati had, with the aid of a magical hat, had gone on a quest for something he called 'Force', while Demon Vaati had basically kidnapped the Princess but then turned out to be a puppet figurehead for Hyrule Ganon
Hyrule Ganon, not to be confused with Hyrule Ganondorf, had also been in Hyrule – obviously. He'd been the one behind Demon Vaati's takeover, and resembled a large, slightly blue pig. Lorule Ganon had, at one point, been summoned and controlled by a man named Yuga, and since Yuga was from Lorule had reluctantly consented to use the moniker until further notice. He also resembled a large pig, with the exception of being slightly purple instead of blue.
Then there was Original Ganon, though what made him original was anybody's guess. He'd been waiting for the Hero to challenge him for two years and counting by this point, and was colored a bright teal, with an unusual weakness to silver. And lastly, there was Past Ganon. He'd also been summoned, but by a man named Agahnim, and then later by a pair of witches working with Onox and Veran. Apparently he didn't take very well to that kind of thing and had responded by taking over Agahnim entirely.
Demise approved of that, at least.
Unfortunately, that was about the only thing he approved of. The villains had decided that if he wasn't going to release them willingly, then they would simply have to force him to release them.
And after discovering that physical torture was off the list of methods, they'd moved on to something that was almost worse.
Annoyance.
And thus, Demise found himself being forced to listen to a game of cards that made so little sense he doubted if the players even knew what they were doing.
I play the Queen of Hearts, forcing everyone else to Go Fish, Veran said.
Curse you, woman, Ocean Ganondorf growled. I'd almost gotten rid of all my Red Threes, Fives, and Sixes!
Oh shut up, that would have only gotten you eight points at the most, Lorule Ganon sighed. I move my Joker to the nineteenth space, forcing the rest of you to get rid of your clubs and causing a sudden deficit in the golfing world.
There was a surge of annoyed grumbles as the other players discarded their clubs.
My turn, Picori Vaati said. I draw... and now I can declare Cribbage! I challenge Bellum in the art of the Poker Face for the entirety of his spade cards.
Bellum made a bubbling noise, followed by a few moments of silence -
HAH! Picori Vaati exulted as Bellum bubbled violently. Now All Your Spades Are Belong To Us!
Nice play, Malladus said approvingly, and a slap noise indicated that he'd given his cards partner a high-five.
Not so fast, Majora said coolly. I use the Ace of Diamonds to activate a Dutch Blitz and combine it with my Black Jack to take the Fish Pond.
That is not a valid move! Onox protested.
Yes it is. The Fish Pond is still in existence from Veran's turn, when we all had to Go Fishing. It lasts two-and-a-quarter rounds, remember?
Onox huffed angrily, but said nothing else.
My turn! Zant exclaimed excitedly. I activate my Face-Down, Monster Reborn! Wiith it, I can resurrect one of my defeated monsters, and I choose Dark Magician! Then I combine my Dark Magician with the Staff of Mystics, giving him three thousand attack points and letting him attack your Life Points directly! With that, Hyrule Ganondorf is disqualified and I end my turn!
There was dead silence for a moment.
...Zant, what are you doing?
Playing card games. Oh, do we have any motorcycles? Because then we could play card games on motorcycles, and that would be fun. We could have Peahats for helmets!
Excuse me, everyone, I'll handle this,Twilight Ganondorf said. Zant, do you actually know what comes out of your mouth or do you just blabber like a mindless twit?
Launch the cabbage cannons!
That's what I thought. Majora, please incinerate his cards, I have no idea where he got them from.
There was a sizzling sound, followed by Zant's anguished cry of, NO! NOT THE KURIBOH! HE WAS SO YOUNG!
How, exactly, did you ever get him to do anything for you if he's this idiotic? Ocean Ganondorf asked curiously.
I bribed him with Peahats.
The rest of the villains made 'Ohhhh' noises, while Zant sobbed for whatever a Kuriboh was in the background.
Shall we get back to the game? Onox asked impatiently. It's my turn.
By all means.
Right. I play...
There was a pause, and the sound of shuffling.
Aha! Onox declared. I have a straight flush!
That means you're out, Veran informed him.
What!? No it doesn't, it – oh wait. ...Curses.
Dangit, Picori Vaati muttered. There goes my last teammate.
Bellum made some bubbling noises, and after a moment of awkward silence Malladus spoke up with, He says he wasn't paying attention and wants to know what happened to the others.
YOU were the 'others'!Picori Vaati sputtered. Lorule Ganon played the eight of hearts which let him steal a teammate and he stole you! It was in the very first turn!
There was another series of bubbles, and Malladus translated, He does not remember this.
I – You – Just forget it.
Bellum responded with a large string of bubble noises which went on for a good thirty seconds or so.
Bellum says that he activates his Pair of Fours, making every other Pair obsolete and winning the hand for this round.
There was an explosive amount of cursing, followed by loud complaints and grumbles as the other players got rid of any Pairs they had.
And... that marks the end of the round, Original Ganon commented. Annoyance Check!
Demise's whole head immediately went silent, and he gritted his teeth. “No, I am not going to release you, and no, I'm not even annoyed enough to consider it. Also, no, there's nothing you can do to make me consider it, and no, I do not care about whatever you'll come up with next because, no, I am not going to release you!”
...Maybe if we tried bad music, Demon Vaati mused.
That could work. Does anybody have banjos?
I have this mental construct, will that work?
Close enough!
Demise just barely held in a groan.
Notes:
Nobody new this time, but the plot called for advancement. Also: the card game is not supposed to make sense.
Thanks to Guest #9, Guest #10, and Guest #11 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 6: Link, Meet Link - Again
Summary:
Farore's on a roll now.
Notes:
This is a disclaimer. Feel free to ignore it as it has nothing to do with the plotline whatsoever.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Despite the fact that the whole thing was their idea in the first place, the Three Godesses still held their breath and crossed their fingers as the two aspects of Courage met themselves, and exhaled sighs of relief when they didn't decide to kill each other. The Interference Laws meant that they couldn't intervene if something went wrong – which mean that if something did go wrong, they were basically dead because this was their only plan to save the Universe and they hadn't thought of a backup yet.
In their defense, they hadn't had much time to make said plan but still, it was not their best move. Hence the sighs of relief when the plan went according to... well, the plan.
“Good,” Farore exhaled. “First introduction down, only about ten more to go. Ish.”
“'Ish'?” Din repeated. “Why 'Ish'?”
“The Hero of Light is technically only one person,” Farore informed her.
“Yeah... so?”
“So, do I count his one original personality in one body, or the four current personalities in four different bodies?”
Din paused. “...Okay, I see your point.”
“Can we not bother with the stupid stuff right now?” Nayru interrupted. “They're bonding, and I want to watch. It's kind of cute.”
Her sisters crowded around and peered down at reality, where the five Links were scrutinizing each other and occasionally poking.
“...Yeah, that is kinda adorable,” Din admitted.
“Just wait 'til there's more,” Farore grinned, then frowned. “I do hope they'll all get along...”
“He's your Attribute, shouldn't you know?” Din asked.
“Look at it this way. If you met yourself, would you like you?”
Din considered this. “...No. I would think I was an overzealous power-freak with violent tendancies.”
“My point exactly,” Farore said. “So... here's hoping.”
“So just to clarify this completely,” Green summarized, “we're all Link in some way or another.”
“Seems like it,” Vio agreed. “I don't know if we're related somehow, or if this might be an alternate dimension, but for all intents and purposes we appear to be to versions of the same person.” He looked as though he couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his mouth even though he was the one saying them.
The new boy – Link – scowled at the middle distance. “I really don't know about that. I mean, how do I know that you're not manifestations created by Malladus in his absence to kill me while I'm not looking?”
“Who?” Red asked blankly. Link matched his look almost blink for blink.
“...You're kidding me,” he said. “Seriously? You don't know who Malladus is?”
“An illness?” Blue offered. “Malladus, malady... sounds similar.”
“You know what a malady is?” Vio asked, surprised.
“Hey, just because I'm not as good at the smart stuff as you doesn't mean I don't know things! I listen to your weird lectures every now and then, okay!”
“Could have fooled me,” Vio sighed. “But I'm gratified to know that you learned something.”
“Malladus,” Link interrupted pointedly, “is a demon who possessed Zelda's body and sent me and her spirit on a country-wide quest to stop him from destroying Hyrule. You remember the evil trains that tried to kill everyone on the rails?”
He received four identically confused looks in response.
“Okay, is any of this ringing a bell for you?” Link asked in exasperation.
“Well, we do know Zelda,” Green conceded. “But we left her in Hyrule Castle with the other six Maidens. She should have been safe there... and I really think we would have heard if she got her body stolen, right guys?”
“She got it back though, right?” Red asked in concern.
“Yeah, she did,” Link nodded, smiling at the memory. “But how do you know Zelda? She would have mentioned if she knew quadruplets who looked like me, I'm pretty sure...”
Blue huffed. “For the fourth time, we're not quadruplets. We're one guy magically split into four people, okay?”
“...If you say so,” Link said doubtfully. Green frowned.
“So you're perfectly accepting of Zelda losing her body, her spirit following you around, a spiritual Train, a demonic Train, and just demons in general, but when one boy splits into four it's suddenly too weird to be true?”
Link turned a bit red. “Well, when you put it like that...”
Vio sighed. “Okay, maybe we should start over. We're the Hero of Light, formerly named Link, but we go by nicknames to avoid confusion. I'm Vio, that's Green, he's Red, and that's Blue. Nice to meet you, what's your name?”
“Link, Hero of Trains,” Link said, amused. “Nice to meet you all too.”
“Hero of Trains?” Blue repeated, a grin breaking onto his face. “What, did the poor machines run out of coal and need someone to shovel more in?”
“Don't even start with me!” Link snapped. “You didn't even know what a train was until I explained it to you!”
“About that,” Vio interrupted. “If we didn't know what a train was despite the fact that living here would make it impossible for us not to know what a train was, why do you still think we might be lying?”
Link stopped mid-sentence and worked his jaw for a few seconds before snapping it shut and scowling at the middle distance again.
“...I don't know,” he admitted ruefully. “It was easier to believe than the alternative, I guess.”
“True,” Green agreed. “It's a lot nicer to think that some people are just ignorant rather than that they're from an alternate universe suddenly connected by voids that are simultaneously eating away at the fabric of reality itself.”
Link winced. “Zelda said something about that, but... I didn't really want to believe it.”
“I don't think any of us do,” Vio said solemnly
They all regarded said hole, which they were a solid fifty feet from, in silence.
“...So, um, I'm kinda curious,” Red said. “About what you did, and stuff. Would you mind telling us about it?”
Link frowned. “Uhh... well, I told you about Malladus, kinda. Basically he stole Zelda's body and masqueraded as her while Zelda herself floated around and eventually found me because I was the only one who could see her, for some reason.”
“Again, why is our circumstance so hard to believe if that happens to you?” Blue asked.
“I get it, you're telling the truth, point taken,” Link said, rolling his eyes. “Anyways, we got into an adventure, lots of complicated stuff happened, there was a Train battle, and then poof! Hole.” He motioned vaguely over his shoulder in the general direction of the void. “That's a vast simplification, but the whole story would take a lot longer.”
“Alright,” Green said, smiling mischievously. “Our turn. A large purple bat named Vaati kidnapped Zelda and the six Maidens and took over Hyule, and in order to stop him we drew the Four Sword which did this,” he motioned to his three other counterparts. “We got into an adventure, lots of complicated stuff happened, we climbed a mountain for the Final Confrontation, and then poof! Hole.”
“You stole my lines,” Link accused.
“Well, it was a vast simplification, but the whole story would take a lot longer.”
“I don't think I like you anymore,” Link muttered, but with a grin on his face. “So... you're really me from another Hyrule?”
“Pretty much,” Blue confirmed. Link took a deep breath as he accepted that, then frowned.
“Er... this is only just occurring to me, but... how did you guys even get here?”
The four Links looked at each other.
“It... kinda started when my sword started glowing?” Red hedged hesitantly. “And then things kinda snowballed.”
“We noticed that our weapons glowed in direct correlation with proximity to the void,” Vio explained. “So we did some experiments that put Red a little too close, and when his sword lit up correspondingly it startled him a bit and he went over backwards into the hole.”
“Then we all freaked out and jumped after him, and ended up here,” Blue finished.
“Wait, so they're portals?” Link said in surprise. “Shoot. One of the first things I tried to close it was to use my items on it, and I know I put at least a few bombs and more than a few arrows into that thing before I tried something else. I didn't even think I might be blowing something up on the other side...”
“But if we're the other side, we would have seen evidence of that,” Vio mused. “There was nothing to indicate a possible connection.”
“So then... what, this is all a fluke?” Green asked worriedly. “One time luck of the draw type thing? How are we going to get back if that's true?”
“We don't know that we can't,” Vio reassured his leader, though he looked worried as well.
“You said your swords lit up?” Link checked. When he received nods, he said, “Well, why don't you try that? If they glow, you know you can get back.”
“That's not half-bad,” Blue said. He unsheathed his sword, so he wouldn't have to crane his neck around, and took slow, measured steps towards the void. Sure enough, the blue stone in the pommel began to light up the closer he got.
“Well that answers that,” Green said in relief. Link, meanwhile, blinked rapidly at the glowing weapon. Despite the whole thing being his suggestion, he still hadn't quite accepted the whole situation and was thus significantly surprised.
“...I kinda thought you were making that up,” he admitted slowly, approaching Blue and poking a finger at the glowing gem. “That's... weird and kinda pretty at the same time.”
Blue wasn't paying attention to this, however. “Dude, yours is doing it too.”
Link paused and processed that, then turned his head to get a better look at his own weapon. In the crossguard of the Lokomo Sword, the single golden gem was emitting the same level of light that the Four Sword was. Link's jaw dropped.
“Well,” Red offered, “at least you really know we're not lying now.”
Link stared at his sword, then at the four boys who he was now really, actually realizing were him in some way, then at the hole a couple dozen feet away.
“...You mentioned something about the Universe dying?” he said slowly. “I'm thinking that there's a possibility that I may be supposed to be involved in fixing it.”
“Oh thank goodness,” Blue said. “I was beginning to wonder if it was just the four of us again. Saving Hyrule is one thing, saving the Universe is entirely something else.”
“Yeah,” Link replied, frowing at the hole. “So... what, do we just jump at it?”
The colored Links exchanged glances with each other.
“...No idea,” Green admitted. “Let's go with 'Yes' and see if it works?”
“Right. Okay. I'm about to do something stupid and probably extremely dangerous with the vague hope that it won't kill me. Cool.”
“So, nothing new then?” Red clarified.
“Pretty much,” Link agreed. He then threw himself into a sprint and, eyes tightly shut, ran straight into the void and disappeared.
“...I really hope he's not dead,” Blue commented, before screwing up his courage and doing the exact same thing, his three brothers right behind him.
One dimension over, the Hero of Hyrule was debating whether or not he should leave the hole and go find his shield, which he'd already lost – though he wasn't sure when. On one hand, having a shield made him much less likely to die.
On the other hand, once he left the hole in search of his shield, the odds of him finding it again were... basically nonexistent. Link, while adamant that he was not that bad at directions, was also smart enough to acknowledge when he had a problem. And losing the reality-threatening hole would definitely count as a problem.
With a heavy sigh, Link resigned himself to going shieldless for a while longer, and turned his attention back to the hole-
-just in time to catch a glimpse of the smallish, green-clothed boy right before he landed on top of him.
“Ow,” Link complained through the face-full of dirt he now had. “What just hap-”
Four more boys abruptly landed on top of the both of them, effectively cutting off anything Link had been about to say and putting a highly uncomfortable amount of weight on his ribcage. He wheezed squeakily as his lungs deflated, but nobody heard it because they were all too busy arguing with each other.
“Vio!” someone snapped. “Get off my leg!”
“I can't, Green's on top of my shoulders,” somebody else retorted.
“Well you're both on top of my stomach,” a third voice moaned from right above Link, “so maybe we can fix that before anything else?”
“Sure,” a fourth voice replied. “I just need Red to get off my torso so I can get off Vio.”
“Oh, sorry!” a fifth voice exclaimed, and the weight on top of Link decreased by a bit. A pair of legs shuffled into his vision, and the fifth voice said, “Hey, guys? I think we landed on somebody.”
“You know, that would explain the soft landing,” the third voice commented.
“Don't be getting snarky now, that's my job,” the first voice warned, and then the whole pile on top of Link began shifting. The weight disappeared within a few seconds, and Link drew in a gasping breath as his lungs were suddenly freed.
“Sorry,” one of the voices apologized. “We didn't even think we'd land on somebody...”
“No harm done,” Link gasped. “I think.”
“Want a hand?” another voice asked, extending said appendage into Link's field of vision. He blinked at it, then took it and used the leverage to haul himself to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said. “Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but did you just fall out of the hole that's eating the world?”
“No, that's about right,” one of the boys said, looking at him. Come to think of it, all five of them were looking at him rather closely.
“...Is there something on my face?” Link asked slowly.
“D'you think?” the boy in blue asked one of the boys in green.
“Not sure,” the green-clothed one answered. “Vio?”
The boy in purple gave Link a much more thorough look-over. “Definitely possible,” he said. “Lots of facial similarity, which makes up for the hair.”
“What's wrong with my hair?” Link protested. Then he frowned and asked, “And why do you all look alike?”
The boy in purple – Vio – ignored this and instead asked, “What's your name?”
“Link,” Link said. “Why?”
The five boys (quintuplets, maybe?) exchanged glances.
“You may wanna sit back down for this one,” the other boy in green suggested.
“For... what?”
“I'm also Link,” the second green boy informed him. “And so are these four here.”
“Well, technically we're one boy named Link currently split into four separate personality aspects,” Vio rattled off. “But... yeah, we're Link.”
“Nice to meet you!” the boy in red chirped.
Link stared. Then, very slowly, he lowered himself to the ground and sat himself firmly on the dirt.
“...You okay?” the blue-clothed boy – did that make him Blue? That was original – checked.
“This week just got exponentially more bizarre than I thought it could,” Link decided.
Ten minutes later had Link getting the full story, more or less, and attempting to process everything he'd just been told. Granted, there was a lot to process.
“So you,” he said, pointing at the other Link, “come from a world where Hyrule replies on large metal... what did you call them?”
“Machines,” the other Link told him. “The specific ones I'm talking about are called trains.”
“Right,” Link said, frowning. “Your Hyrule relies on... trains... to get around? What happened to horses?”
“...What's a horse?”
Link, and the four other boys he'd learned were named for the color of their clothing, stared at him.
“...What do you mean, 'What's a horse'?” Blue asked incredulously. “They're large farm animals that you can ride to get places faster. You know... a horse.”
He received a blank look in return.
“Okay, never mind that then,” Link decided, on the grounds that he had more important things to be confused over than an odd lack of livestock. “Back to the trains. You had a Train Battle to save your country?”
“That's a very short version, but yeah,” the other Link agreed.
“And you guys,” Link said, turning to point a finger at the four colored Links, “were previously one person who got split into four by a magical sword.”
“Putting it bluntly,” Vio sighed.
“And all five of you,” Link continued, “are versions of me from various other dimensions?”
“That about sums it up,” Green confirmed.
Link considered this carefully.
“...How good are you with directions?” he asked after a few moments.
“I can read a map just fine,” the other Link said.
“Vio's our navigator,” Green said, “and he's pretty good at it, all things considered.”
“Oh thank goodness, I was worried it'd be contagious,” Link sighed. “Okay. I'm up for saving the Universe and all that, but I need to find my shield first and I have a... complicated relationship with directions. Can you guys help me look?”
“You lost your shield?” Red asked in slight disbelief. “But... how do you fight stuff?”
“I improvise,” Link replied, shrugging. “And I run a lot. Which also means I get lost a lot, which means I can't usually find my shield because I'm too busy trying to find myself... did that make sense?”
“No,” Vio informed him.
“Dang. Anyways, I think it's over there...” he waved his arm in a general 'everywhere' direction, “...somewhere.”
“...And here I thought meeting you was interesting,” Blue commented to the other Link.
Notes:
Will you look at that? More plot. Moving along fairly quickly now.
Thanks to Zotinha456, RiadaMoonBlood_I_suck_with_names, catfire13, Guest #12, Guest #13, Guest #14, Guest #15, Guest #16, Guest #17, Guest #18, Guest #19, and Guest #20 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 7: Nicknames
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of Twilight?
Notes:
Insert obligatory disclaimer here, stating that I do not own a specified franchise and that all characters belonging to said franchise are property of said franchise's creator, whom I am not.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Hey, Link?” Red asked.
“What?” Link said, at the same time that the other Link said, “Yeah?”
“No, the Link with brown hair and bad direction,” Red clarified.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” the other, blond Link said.
“What was the question?” the brunet Link asked.
“What does your shield look like?”
Link thought for a moment, as it'd been a while since he'd last seen it and all the details weren't as firm in his mind as the used to be. “It's large and brown, with a red cross. Why?”
“I think it's in that tree,” Red replied, pointing.
Link followed his finger and squinted. Sure enough, there was a tree, with something large, brown, and squarish lodged between two branches near the top.
“Hey, that's a whole five feet lower than the last tree!” Link exclaimed happily.
“Wait, what?” Blue said. “The last tree? You mean to say that this isn't the first time you've gotten your shield in a tree?”
“No,” Link replied simply. “Although last time was because a flock of Keese stole it when I wasn't looking because of the Like-Like horde.”
“...I'm slightly scared to ask,” the blond Link began, “but what was the reason this time around?”
“Oh, I was running from a four-headed dragon for about an hour or so, got lost, and ended up in the middle of a minion horde rather than a generic monster horde. Then there was a panicked stampede, and I kinda lost track after that because everything got a bit muddled.”
“...You're joking.”
“Well, compared to the one and two-headed dragons, the four-headed dragon was actually the slowest runner of the bunch, probably from all the extra heads. Running from the one-headed dragon took a bit over three hours..”
“That's not what I meant,” the other Link protested. “I was talking about – wait how many dragons have you ran from?”
“Oh, just the three,” the brown-haired Link assured him. “The three-headed dragon was asleep when I found him, and the five-headed dragon is just too lazy to bother with me.”
Every so slightly, the blond Link twitched.
“Link, you okay?” Vio checked.
“I'm fine, why?” the brunet one said in a confused tone at the same time the blond one said, “I've just got a slight headache is all.”
“Right, that's annoying.” Vio muttered. “Link with bad direction, shush. Link with trains, could you repeat that?”
Link duly repeated himself.
“Alright, just checking,” Vio said. “But I don't think we can keep calling you both 'Link'. This is only going to get more confusing the longer it goes.”
The two Links exchanged glances with each other.
“Yeah, but... if we can't use 'Link', what do we call ourselves?” the blond Link asked. “I mean, I've only ever had the one name.”
“We can use nicknames!” Red exclaimed suddenly. “That's what Green, Blue, Vio and I do, and it worked out great for us!”
Blond Link regarded him dubiously. “That's nice, but I don't think my clothing color is going to be the best choice here, since 'Green' is already taken.”
“And I don't really think I want to go by 'Brown',” Brunet Link decided, looking down at his sleeves. “It kinda gives the wrong impression, you know?”
“Not those kinds of nicknames, silly,” Red snickered. He pointed at Blond Link and asked, “Your title is the Hero of Trains, right?”
“Right...” Blond Link replied slowly.
“Wanna use it?”
Blond Link blinked. “What now?”
“Do you want to use 'Train' as your nickname?” Red elaborated.
“No!” Link sputtered.
“Why not?”
“Because 'Train' is a stupid thing to name somebody!”
“But it's nicely relevant to you and your adventure and not at all a really obvious tie-in to your mode of transportation!” Red pleaded. Blond Link glared at him.
“You. Are. NOT. Naming. Me. Train.”
Red deflated a bit, but rallied right back to the challenge. “Alright then. Vio?”
“Yeah?”
“What kinds of things are associated with trains?”
Vio raised an eyebrow. “Red, we only just learned what trains are a few hours ago. What makes you think I know about them now?”
Red just gave him an expectant look.
“...Okay, yes, I read the instruction manual that Link had, but that still doesn't mean I'm an expert!”
“Please?” Red chirped.
Vio sighed. “Umm... gears, pistons, wheels, tracks, engines, coal, steam, whistle-”
“Ooh, I liked that other one,” Red interrupted. “What do you think, Link?”
Blond Link tilted his head. “Uhh... which one are we talking about...?”
“Steam!” Red said. “Trains make it, right? Nicknaming by association.”
“...It's better than 'Train',” Link admitted. “But I'm not sure I-”
“Steam it it!” Red cheered.
“That wasn't an agreeing sentence!” Link yelped.
“Your turn!” Red told an apprehensive Brunet Link, completely ignoring the protests coming from his previous victim. “What's your title?”
“Nothing fancy like his,” Brunet Link said. “I'm just the Hero of Hyrule.”
Red paused, almost literally putting his enthusiasm on 'stop'. “Awww, we can't call you that.”
“...Eh?”
“Hyrule,” Red explained. “We can't call you 'Hyrule', it's already taken. Besides, think about how confusing that would be.”
“Yeah, about as confusing as having two Links at once,” Blue said dryly.
“Exactly!” Red agreed, completely missing the joke. “Okay, Hyrule is a country... which is a land... which is a place... Vio, can you list some words that mean 'country'?”
“It's called a synonym,” Vio sighed.
Red frowned. “...No, I don't like that one. Are there any others?”
“No, a synonym is – never mind. Yes, there's others, just give me a second... state, tribe, empire, realm, union, land, area, turf, kingdom, territory, province-”
“Wait, go back,” Red interrupted again. “What was that one that started with an 'R'?”
“Realm,” Vio replied after cycling through the list in his head again.
“Do you like that one?” Red asked the currently-without-a-nickname Link, practically bouncing in place.
“Uhhh...” Link responded decisively. Blond Link took the stall in the conversation to put in, “And I never agreed to mine either!”
“Please?” Red asked. His eyes which were already considerably large, somehow got even wider until both Blond and Brunet Links were looking at a passable representation of an adorable puppy. They spent a moment silently cursing their weakness to adorable puppies before exchanging helpless glances with each other.
“...It's better than 'Train',” the newly-dubbed Steam decided.
“And there's definitely worse things to be called,” Realm agreed.
“Yay!” Red cheered, giving them both spontaneous hugs. “You like them!”
Over Red's shoulders, the other three colored Links gave the new guys sympathetic smiles.
“The new names grow on you, trust me,” Blue whispered to them with a knowing smirk.
“I'll take your word for it,” Steam replied.
Realm just smiled, then remembered something and cleared his throat. “Uh... not to ruin the moment or anything, but we still need to get my shield down from the tree.”
“I've got it,” Vio said, pulling out his Bow and nocking an arrow on it. It took a few shots, because the shield was really lodged in there, but eventually an arrow dislodged it entirely and the shield bounced to the ground with a resounding metallic clanggggggg.
“And here I was gonna try climbing for it,” Realm said, grinning as he picked up his equipment and slung it onto his back – and frowning as something struck him as off. He twisted his head around to look, stared for a few seconds, then turned to face the other five Links with a sheepishly resigned look on his face.
“By any chance,” he began awkwardly, “did any of you seen my sword while you were looking earlier? I seem to have misplaced it.”
“...You're kidding,” Blue said blankly. “You've got to be kidding. How in Nayru's Name do you lose track of your sword?”
Realm shrugged. “Actually, it's been a little over four days or so since I lost my sword the last time. That's pretty good as far as I'm concerned.”
“Let me get this straight,” Steam interrupted. “Ninety percent of the time you have no idea where you are. Fifty percent of the time you don't know where your shield is, and the other fifty percent you don't know where your sword is. You run into a ridiculous amount of monsters, it takes you ages to get anywhere, and you can't read a map to save your life?”
“That about sums it up,” Realm agreed.
“...Exactly how long have you been at this whole Hero thing?” Green asked.
Realm considered this. “Um... a couple years, give or take a few months?”
“Do you have any idea where your villain is?” Vio questioned.
“Yes,” Realm said defensively. “And I'll have you know that I'm almost ready to challenge him. I just... have some issues figuring out how to get there.”
“Without your sword,” Steam pointed out bluntly. Realm turned red.
“Yes, well... I did say 'almost'.”
Everyone stared at him for a few seconds.
“...I know that I just met you,” Blue said slowly. “And I know that you're probably very capable of being a Hero once you get to wherever it is you're going. But if it legitimately takes you that long, and you lose your stuff that often, how in the world do you ever get anything done?”
Realm just shrugged again.
“Alright,” Farore nodded in satisfaction. “I think we can safely say that those six are not going to be killing each other. Time for phase two!”
“Now that events are in motion, we can work ahead to the aspects further up the timeline,” Nayru mused. Din gave her an odd look.
“Why did you say that out loud?”
Nayru paused, and blinked. “Well, because I was explaining it.”
“To whom?” Din asked. “It's Farore's plan, so she already knows, and both you and I know what she's doing. We're the only ones here. Who are you explaining it to?”
“I would tell you,” Nayru said slowly, “but that would require breaking some walls, and we both know the Universe is too unstable for that right now.”
Din absorbed that, and her eyes widened as she nodded in understanding. “Oh, right. Sorry, I'm just kinda used to us addressing them directly.”
“Din,” Farore called warningly.
“Sorry!” Din replied. “Geez, this is going to be harder than I thought...”
“Just do what I do,” Nayru said, shrugging. “Say everything out loud to make up for the fact that we're ignoring them.”
“Girls,” Farore interrupted. “I think I've found the next candidate. He's even heading in the right direction.”
“Which one is this, then?” Din asked.
“This is the one I had to make a special intervention for,” Farore said. “With that piece of nasty Curse work.”
“Oh, the wolf-one,” Nayru remembered. “Good choice. He tends to take things in stride, doesn't he?”
“Exactly,” Farore agreed. “A dimensional rift shouldn't get more than a raised eyebrow and a shrug.”
“Let's get to it then,” Din said.
One timeline over, Link was having an argument.
This wasn't anything new, per se. His partner, Midna, was an insufferable little imp who was convinced she was always right and had the attitude to back it up, and as such the two of them got into their fair share of spats.
The reason this particular one was worth noting, however, was because Midna had just turned Link into a wolf, and the 'arguing' part of the argument was rendered rather moot considering that Link was currently unable to speak Hylian, much less words.
So he settled for glaring at her instead.
“Oh, don't give me that,” Midna sighed. “You know I don't enjoy it when you sulk.”
“I am not sulking,” Link growled – literally.
Now, Midna, not being a wolf, couldn't actually understand Link at the moment. Normally, this wasn't much of an issue because they had workarounds: turning his head and blinking meant 'I want to warp', twitching both his ears meant 'Change me back', and everything else Link wanted to say could usually be postponed until he was Hylian again, or communicated through body language and the occasional snarl depending on how much Midna was annoying him.
In this case, however, Link could tell Midna had no intention of changing him back, and he had no real way of telling her exactly how he felt about the whole situation. Midna knew this, naturally. And so, when faced with Link's growled response, she reacted as only she could.
“What's that?” she asked, hand perched tauntingly on the outside of her helmet where her ear would be. “I don't think I heard you, there's some sort of loud dog around.”
Link pegged her with another glare, then whipped around and stalked away, tail lashing behind him. If that was how she was going to be, then he wasn't going to waste his time.
Unfortunately, Midna had other ideas.
“Where are you going?” she asked slyly, floating along above his head and flashing her fanged grin at him. “We've got a job to do, remember?”
“No, I've got a job to do,” Link retorted, forgetting that he couldn't be understood. “I'm the one with the weapons, I'm the one doing the job. And don't you even start with me on that!”
Midna did not start with him, mostly because his entire sentence had gone right over her head. Instead, she rolled her eyes and announced, “Goddesses, you whine too much.”
“I'm not whining,” Link said with false calm. “I'm actually incredibly pleased with my current situation.”
Even though she couldn't hear the words, Midna could definitely hear the sarcasm and she grinned. Link was rarely sarcastic; in fact, most of the time he was content to listen and watch and take everything in stride. The fact that he was retaliating told her exactly how annoyed he was, and Midna took a moment to relish it. An annoyed Link was a real rarity to her.
“Geez, what got under your fur?” she taunted.
Link threw a third – and by this point, slightly ineffective – glare at her, and pointedly turned his back.
“Oh?” Midna mused. “Are you ignoring me?”
Link's left ear twitched, but other than that he gave no response that he'd heard.
“Are you sure you want to be doing that?” Midna's voice suddenly sounded in his ear. Ironically enough, it was the one that had twitched. Link stiffened, but determinedly kept his gaze fixed in front of him.
“Right then,” Midna said cheerfully, which made Link shudder. The only times he remembered Midna being cheerful had ended badly for him. “You brought this upon yourself.”
Her hand shot out and latched onto a certain spot behind Link's ear, and Link froze.
“Midna...” he said apprehensively.
“I warned you,” she said flippantly. And she began scratching Link's head.
The day she had discovered Link's sweet spot had been a day of joy – for Midna, anyways. Link on the other hand regarded that discovery with the attitude that one would generally have towards their least favorite vegetable. He hadn't even known he had a sweet spot until Midna had found it. He certainly hadn't had one before he'd been turned into a wolf.
The present day was a completely different story. Not only did he have a sweet spot, but it apparently now existed whether he was Hylian or not, and scratching it basically turned him into a content pile of fluff.
Case in point, Link was already leaning into the scratch despite the yelling of his brain at the rest of him to do anything else. If he weren't currently being scratched, he would absolutely listen, but... it felt very nice...
Midna kept up the motion for a few seconds longer before withdrawing her hand and smirking in a very satisfied fashion. Link took a few more seconds to shake himself back into alertness and made to glare at her again-
“Oh, you want more, little wolf?” Midna asked innocently, raising her hand again. Link stopped mid-glare and huffed irritably instead.
“Good,” his partner snickered. “Now, we're going to come at this from a more reasonable perspective this time, okay? Talk like nice civilized imps and goatherds.”
Link grumbled at the ground. The downside of Midna controlling his transformations was just that: Midna controlled his transformations. She wasn't going to change him back until he agreed.
Even more annoying was the fact that, until she changed him back, he couldn't tell her off for it. And on top of everything else, she was not above using his sweet spot to make him obey, and the sheer nature of their partnership made running impossible.
So really, Link had absolutely no choice in the matter, and both he and Midna knew it. Therefore, Link heaved a sigh and gave his partner a short, if annoyed, nod and flicked both his ears in their 'Change me back' signal.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Midna teased, tapping Link's forehead and drawing out the Curse Stone in one smooth movement. As usual, the Stone took with it an awful lot of Twilight stuff, and the ensuing cloud completely hid Link for a brief moment. When it cleared he was standing on two feet, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, and giving Midna the kind of stare that meant he was not going down that easily.
“You know there are easier ways to get your point across,” Link informed his partner.
“They're not as fun, though,” Midna pouted.
“How was turning me into an animal who can't talk going to solve this, though?” Link challenged. Midna considered that, absentmindedly tossing the Curse Stone in one hand.
“...It's a lot easier to manipulate you when you can't talk back,” she decided. Link groaned to himself and ran a hand down his face; that was classically Midna.
“The only thing it did though,” he pointed out after a moment, “was 'force' me to talk about it, which I'd already been doing before you changed me when I wasn't looking.”
“Oh?” Midna replied. “And what was it that you were saying? I'm afraid I wasn't paying much attention, there was this cute little wolf and it distracted me.”
Link sighed again. “I was saying that I strongly disagreed.”
“And why do you do that?” Midna asked, rolling her eyes at him.
“Because it's reckless, liable to get you or someone else killed, and is quite possibly the worst idea you've ever had.”
Midna raised a finger-
“Including the one where I got shot from a cannon,” Link interrupted, staring her down. Midna just shrugged.
At the time of said cannon idea, Link had been quite adamant that it was the worst idea she'd ever had. It wasn't so much what they were using it for, or where he was going; it was the fact that he was literally being used as cannon fodder, and he was quite sure that there was a distinct possibility of him getting blown to bits rather than up to the Occa's city. The fact that there was a new 'Worst Idea Midna's Ever Had' was a fairly significant event.
“Well then,” Midna said after a moment. “Do you have any better ideas?”
Link internally cursed his luck, because of course she would ask that question. The problem was that he actually didn't have a better idea; he just really, really didn't want to use the current one.
“Look, Midna, you know as well as me that the Fused Shadows are dangerous. I know that you've got a higher tolerance than most people, but remember Darbus? Just touching that thing turned him into a mindless monster, and here you want to put on all of them?” Link gestured at the air in an attempt to express his feelings on the subject even more than he already was. “I get that it's to storm the Castle and rescue Zelda, and I'm completely behind that course of action, but could we please find some other way of doing it?”
“Link, I've been wearing a Fused Shadow this whole time,” Midna reminded him. “I'm perfectly fine. I'd even say I've built up a tolerance.”
“That's just one piece,” Link reiterated. “Who knows what could happen if you put on all four! Twilight magic is dangerous, Midna, and don't even try to tell me you don't know that. Remember what happened to Yeta? I don't even think she so much as touched that Mirror Shard. Heck, all she did was look at it, and what happened?”
“She rampaged,” Midna summarized in a bored tone. “I know, Link, I was there.”
“So was I, and I was the one who had to deal with her!” Link exclaimed.
“So you're worried,” Midna stated. Link gave her a flat look.
“I'm a wolf,” he said bluntly. “We travel in packs. Right now, I have a very small pack, and it basically consists of you.” He thought for a moment, then added, “And possibly Telma. But my point is that it's literally in my nature to worry. Or have you not noticed the fact that I practically need to protect people?”
This was true, in more ways than one. While Link had always been a rather protective person, that particular personality trait had almost doubled once the whole wolf thing kicked in. Wolves in general had a strong family unit and were very closely bonded with their pack members. Granted, Link didn't have much of a pack; as he'd said, Midna was basically the only other member. Ironically enough, in wolf terms she was probably the 'Alpha', while Link was a 'Beta'. He didn't mind this much. He was fairly certain he'd be absolute rubbish at leadership, so being a 'Beta' suited him just fine. He was just a highly protective one.
“Tone down the drama, little wolf,” Midna told him. “You make it sound so end-of-the-world-y.”
“While you make it sound so frivolous,” Link retorted. “I do not want to deal with your weird hair magic powered up by a thousand if you go on a rampage. I've spent enough time trying not to die already, I have no interest in adding more time to that list.”
Midna sighed. “Look, Link, it's nice that you care, it really is. But we both know that the Fused Shadows are the only way to break Ganondorf's barrier around the Castle, and we also know that I'm the only one who can use them. If you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them, but as it stands right now...”
Link glared at the ground and let out a growl that would have been much more suited to come out of his wolf form. He absolutely hated when she was right about things like this.
“...Fine,” he conceded. “But if anything goes wrong-”
“You get to tell me, 'I told you so',” Midna interrupted, smirking.
“Which I will relish,” Link informed her. “I mean, I'll wait until after I've saved your Twili skin to do it, but I will absolutely do it.”
“Yeah, I suppose you need to win at least one of our arguments,” Midna mused.
“I've won an argument with you before,” Link retorted.
“Really?” Midna said, in tones of great surprise. “When was this?”
Link opened his mouth to reply – and abruptly realized that he couldn't think of a single one. Midna read the look on his face and flashed him her fanged grin.
“That's what I thought.”
“Shut up, I'll win one eventually,” Link sighed, walking off. Midna followed him through the air, yawning idly.
“Where we going?”
“Hyrule Castle,” Link replied. “We might as well get it over with. Besides, I've got this weird feeling that we're supposed to be there.”
Midna just shrugged. A 'weird feeling' as Link put it didn't exactly rate very high on her scale of things to worry about.
Meanwhile at Hyrule Castle, things were a bit... chaotic.
For starters, Ganondorf had spawned his barrier in the middle of a guard post, which meant that there were a large amount of soldiers trapped inside the Castle walls as well as outside. For another, Ganondorf himself seemed to have disappeared entirely, and there was an odd black hole-thing in the throne room that nobody could get rid of. On top of that, Zelda had been discovered to be out cold in the same room not twenty feet away from said hole, and regardless of what the soldiers did she obstinately refused to wake up. And as if none of that was stressful enough, the roof of the Castle seemed to have vanished entirely as if it never existed in the first place, and there was an eternally stubborn raincloud that seemed dead-set on sitting right above the place where the roof ought to have been and raining on everyone inside.
This could have been because of the afore-mentioned barrier keeping everything in (and out), because it certainly wasn't raining on the other side of the wall. However, with no real way to escape the weather, the soldiers had resigned themselves to being wet and had basically given up on staying dry. Because, really, there was only so much that holding one's shield above the head could do.
But then the barrier had vanished, not that this did anything to the raincloud, and the whole situation was compounded by the flock of very lost Keese that flew in and got themselves stuck in the hallways, much like an insect gets stuck in an open-ended jar. They just couldn't seem to figure out that 'Up' was synonymous with 'Out'. Granted, they were usually in a cave, which had no 'Up', but still.
The soldiers tried to comfort themselves with the notion that they could at least leave now, but the fact of the matter was that Zelda was still unconscious, and the very nature of their job meant that until she woke up, they were honor-bound to protect her. So, with much (albeit muted) grumbling, the men resigned themselves to being constantly wet and frequently chased by the confused Keese flock.
All in all, it was not a good day to be a soldier.
Notes:
Alright everybody, start memorizing. We've got at least twelve more Heroes to name.
Thanks to Aeldor, Guest #21, Guest #22, Guest #23, Guest #24, Guest #25, Guest #26, Guest #27, and Guest #28 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 8: The One Who's a Wolf
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of Legend?
Notes:
Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever, own Sonic the Hedgehog.
(Wait, what? That isn't my typewriting... where'd that come from?)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
To the significant dismay of Demise, none of the Incarnations in his head were musically inclined in any way. And while this normally wouldn't be much of an issue, the villains were currently seeing if bad music would work where improbable card games had not. The problem lay in the fact that they were using banjos, and Veran and Picori Vaati were the only ones who had hands small enough to even attempt the necessary fingering.
Majora didn't even have hands, Malladus could only pluck so hard before his claws snapped the strings, Bellum could only strum tunelessly because his tentacles had no fingers, the Ganondorfs simply had too-large hands, the Ganons had sausages for fingers, Demon Vaati was in the same boat as Majora, Zant was trying to play his banjo in reverse (he was strumming the frets and trying to finger the hole), and Onox was wearing a full suit of armor and thus had all the mobility complications that went with it.
Put very, very simply, the resulting din was quite possibly one of the worst things Demise had ever heard.
"WILL YOU ALL SHUT UP!" he roared. The cacophony abruptly cut off with a strangled twannngggggg of off-key strings.
Will you release us in return? Veran asked sweetly.
"You never had freedom to begin with," Demise scoffed.
So be it. On three everyone, and Bellum, do try to keep the beat this time?
There was a brief spout of irritated bubbling, though the squid sounded more annoyed at the instrument rather than Veran, and the 'music', if one could even call it that, started up again.
Demise just gritted his teeth and, in an attempt to distract himself, imagined a Cucco horde descending on the villains. He smiled at the thought.
Abruptly, one of the banjos let out an abused screeeeech of breaking strings and Malladus asked, Is anyone else seeing the evil-looking poultry?
He sounded significantly surprised.
That is called a Cucco, Hyrule Ganondorf informed him. Truly a vicious creature. Do not antagonize it or we are all doomed.
Did you know you have livestock in your head? Onox asked Demise.
Demise narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and imagined the Cucco attacking. A loud squawk resounded through his brain, followed by the sound of breaking banjos.
WHAT IDIOT DECIDED TO HIT THE CUCCO?! Twilight Ganondorf bellowed.
NO-ONE DID!
WELL SOMEONE MADE IT ANGRY!
I believe, Majora said, sounding remarkably calm amidst the chaos, that this bird may be the result of our captor's wishes. We should regard this as a great success; we have driven him to imaginative defenses.
Why don't you come over here where the bird actually is and say that?! Veran hissed.
No, thank you. There are certain forces that one should not mess with.
Zant's messing with it, Onox pointed out.
Zant is insane.
Who's a pretty birdie? Zant cooed. Who's a monstrous bringer of death and destruction? You are! You are!
There was another squawk, which was immediately followed by screaming.
...and he's made it angrier, Ocean Ganondorf sighed.
You know, all this needs is some musical accompaniment and this whole thing could be hilarious, Malladus mused.
I'm on it, Picori Vaati said. One single surviving banjo began playing, and since Picori Vaati was one of the two people who could actually play, it didn't sound too bad. The tune he was playing, however, was a bouncy whimsical thing that made Demise cringe.
You know you're right, that really does make it funnier, Veran commented.
Demise gritted his teeth. For on brief, beautiful moment he'd thought he could punish his Incarnations for their insolence... but of course that would backfire on him. Why ever would it not?
Zant let out a shriek, accompanied by furious clucking and a sudden tempo increase in Picori Vaati's soundtrack. Demise twitched.
"Alright," Farore said, flexing her hands. "The wolf aspect is on his way, the first six are still looking for the directionally challenged aspect's sword, and since we've got some meantime in between time..."
"We can have some fun looking in on alternate universe?" Din suggested. Farore blinked at her.
"Um... no, I was going to say that I could work on getting another one of my Attribute aspects heading towards his relevant hole-in-the-world."
"That's not nearly as amusing," Din grumbled.
Meanwhile in an alternate universe where Hylians and Cuccos have switched places:
"Don't... make... any... sudden... moves..." Link clucked quietly to his partner as they slowly backed away.
Thankfully, the mob of Hylians were too busy squabbling with each other over the movements of small green pieces of rock to notice them.
"Somewhere something hysterical is happening, I just know it," Din huffed.
"While here, something world-ending is happening, I can see it," Farore retorted. "Can you please concentrate?"
"Yeah, fine, I'll just bookmark it for later," Din sighed, tossing a bright-red sphere over her shoulder where it vanished into thin air (and presumably somewhere significantly funnier). "Which aspect did you have in mind next?"
Farore smiled nervously. "The one whose sanity is... questionable."
"Isn't that the one who ended up in all those different countries?" Nayru checked. "Labrynna and Holodrum and that?"
"After saving Hyrule, yes," Farore confirmed. "But he just got done saving some place called..." she squinted at reality for a moment, "...Koholint?"
Both her sisters frowned in confusion.
"Okay, I'm the one who made all the land and I can tell you right now I didn't make that one," Din said bluntly.
"Apparently it's not actually real," Farore replied, sounding just as confused. "From what I can tell it was all a dream of some sort..."
"He saved a dream?" Nayru repeated. "No wonder he's a bit off..."
"How does that even work?" Din wondered, peering at reality. "...Hang on, is that Levias?"
"It is!" Nayru agreed. "So that's where he went for his vacation! I did wonder."
"I believe he goes by the Windfish now," Farore commented. "Or at least, that's what my Attribute has been told."
"Geez, you take a few millennia off and suddenly you're a hippie," Din remarked, rolling her eyes. "So if this aspect just finished saving 'the Windfish', what's he doing now?"
Farore paused.
"...I believe he's cursing in five different languages."
Link, the Hero of Legend, finished insulting the Windfish in Hylian and moved straight into Labrynnian, which was his personal favorite simply because of how many descriptive adjectives he could string into one sentence. Once he ran out of insults in Labrynnian, he moved onto Holodese and spent a few descriptive minutes on the Windfish's appearance before branching into a sub-dialect of Holodese called Subrosian and cycling back to the descriptive adjectives because Subrosian had some reallygood ones that the Windfish absolutely deserved to be on the receiving end of, and finished it all off with a single choice word of Darkling that he'd learned during his time in the Dark World.
He knew a few other languages, such as Ancient Hylian from the time he'd been to the past and back, but he'd already said everything he felt like saying at the moment.
"Flipping useless fish," Link growled in a foreign accent that he hadn't had before he'd started the Hero gig. He wasn't entirely sure when he'd altered his vowels like that, but he liked how it sounded and had never bothered to try and change his speech back. Besides, with the amount of languages he knew and tended to pick up, he'd doubtless gain a different accent right as he got rid of the first one.
Which he didn't want to do, obviously. He liked his current accent, and there was no way to tell if he would like the next one. Therefore, he wasn't going to try.
It made perfect sense... to him, anyways.
Link sighed and muttered "Yūvūtōneegirh-Ai teah," which basically translated to 'I hate everything' in Labrynnian, before turning his attention to his situation, which quite frankly was begging to be paid attention to.
He was floating on a splintered piece of the remains of his boat – he could remember being caught in a storm before 'waking up' on the shores of Koholint – but surprisingly nothing else seemed to be damaged. His bag was still closed, his hat was still on his head, and none of his items were floating away in the ocean.
Or at least, he hoped none of his items were floating away in the ocean.
He could see the Windfish up overhead, not that the whale was paying any attention to him. Highly ungrateful, in Link's opinion. Even if it hadn't been real time Link was spending, he'd still spent a danged long time rescuing that whale's subconscious from nightmares. And that wasn't even getting into all the junk he'd had to do to wake up the darn fish in the first place!
Link wasn't even sure he'd been musical before this whole fiasco, but digging around in his memory informed him that yes, he actually did know how to play all those instruments now. A bit more thought on the subject revealed that yes, he really could play all eight of them at once despite how anatomically impossible that ought to have been, and a quick check in his bag showed that somehow, he actually had all eight of the instruments.
Had Link not been an adventurer with years of experience and a distinct lack of caring about such things like logic, he would have spent a few minutes sputtering over how impossible that was. However, he was an adventurer with years of experience and a blatant lack of caring about such things like logic. So he simply noted that the instruments were there and proceeded to ignore them.
What Link was really miffed about, he decided, was two main things. One, he was now the only speaker of Koholish – which he supposed was a made-up language anyways at this point – but he was only intermediate-level! How was he supposed to become fluent if all the native speakers were no longer in existence!?
...but, Link conceded reluctantly, that was beside the point. The main reason he was peeved was that the Windfish had just swam (flown?) off into the sky, leaving Link behind without a single backward glance.
Link, who was stranded in the middle of THE FLIPPING OCEAN!
At the very least the stupid fish could have provided a tow! Or if not a tow, then directions would have been just as good! Link wasn't the worst with directions – he had to be at least a bit competent, given all the foreign countries he ended up in – but he was not good enough to navigate a featureless body of water with no landmarks and a lack of a waterproof map.
"Thanks for absolutely nothing," Link grumbled, and pushed his very sticky-with-seawater ginger bangs out of his face. There had to be something he could use to find his way.
First things first, he needed to choose a direction. The Windfish was heading into the sun, and Link most definitely was not going to follow that ungrateful excuse of a marine mammal. But that was fine, because the sun was heading down in the sky, which meant that the Windfish was heading in a generally western direction. Link, from what he could remember, had left Hyrule heading in a generally western direction, therefore to get back to Hyrule he needed to head generally east.
...Of course, he had no idea how far it was to Hyrule by this point. Link was fairly sure he'd been asleep inside the Windfish's dream for at least a few days, if not more, and who knew how far he'd drifted in that time. But he'd rather do something than just sit and wait to die of sunburn, dehydration, and the dreaded (and possibly mythological) Sea-Cucco. They were regular Cucco birds that could swim, but with teeth.
Link shuddered and pulled himself up onto his driftwood remains in order to get out of the water, and sat on the part with the least amount of splinters, then rummaged in his bag and pulled out all the aquatic equipment he had.
His options were: a pair of Zora Flippers, or a Mermaid Suit.
After careful consideration of such things like coloring, ability to wear while still looking dignified, and whether or not wearing one or the other would attract a lovesick seahorse, Link decided on the Mermaid Suit on the grounds that nobody was actually around to see him look ridiculous and that the coloring clashed less with his snazzy green hat.
There was also the design advantage, the better maneuverability, and the magic that made it impossible for the Suit to fall off (it fused with his skin and quite literally gave him a mer-tail while in use), but really, those weren't nearly as important.
With that done, Link rummaged in his bag again and pulled out a coil of rope, trying one end around his waist and the other end to his wrecked ship. While the Mermaid Suit definitely made swimming easier, he couldn't tread water indefinitely. He would need something to float on every now and then while he caught his breath.
He finished tying the knots and gave the rope an experimental tug. When nothing fell off, Link beamed at it.
"You're a brilliant piece of rope, you know that?" he said.
The rope did not respond. This did not bother Link in the slightest.
"Good rope," he praised. "Now, onward!"
He ducked beneath the waves and started swimming, glancing up every few seconds to make sure he was going in the right direction. Unfortunately, he got bored of this within the first ten repetitions, and in an effort to keep himself occupied began singing the Ninety-Nine Potions of Health on the Wall song.
In Holodese.
And in every other language he knew, as well as some he didn't.
"Dang," Din commented.
"I'm quite impressed," Nayru said. "Mortals usually only know a few languages at best. He seems to be fluent in at least five, intermediate in four others, and knows at least a few words of basically every other language he's ever come across."
"He's one of my more unusual aspects, that's for sure," Farore said. "Anyways, he's going in the right direction, but it's gonna be a while. He's got a whole ocean to cross."
"Makes sense," Din agreed. "Who's next then?"
"The wolf-one is getting close," Nayru reminded them.
"Oh, that's right," Farore said, snapping her fingers. "He should be arriving at his relevant hole any minute now. Thanks, sis."
"No problem," Nayru replied.
"Awww..." Midna whined, looking up at the distinctly-not-trapped-in-a-barrier Hyrule Castle. "I wanted to blow stuff up too..."
Link rolled his eyes.
"It would have been epic and you know it, little wolf," Midna retorted.
"Epically terrifying," Link corrected, secretly relieved that she wouldn't have to use the Fused Shadows after all. He'd been prepared for it, of course, but he much preferred this version of events.
Midna just huffed irately. "Oh well, at least getting in will be easier," she decided. "Shall we?"
"Shadow first," Link instructed. "Remember what happened last time?"
'Last time' had been when Midna, so used to being outside of Link's shadow during dungeons and temples and whatnot, had forgotten to conceal herself as she usually did and ended up causing a mass panic that had ended in the largest mobilization of the Hyrule Guard force to date, which was now considered to be one of the most impressive response times in history outside of outright war. Midna had found it hilarious. Link, who'd had to deal with the fallout, had not.
"Fine, spoilsport," Midna sighed, and vanished into Link's shadow with her trademark fanged smirk. 'You'd better relay my comments, though,' her voice sounded in his head. 'I still want to see the reactions.'
"I make no promises," Link replied, and walked through the Castle doors. Midna grumbled in response, which was slightly distracting as the sound was passing through Link's mind as well. Sure, he had practice now, but keeping a conversation while a running commentary from Midna ran through his head was never an easy task.
The Throne Room was basically straight shot from the doors, thanks to the Castle Guard having removed the various bits of obstacles and rubble left from Zant's invading force. Link had to admit, as bad as the Guard was at things like fighting, they could clean up like nobody's business. The actual Throne Room itself, however, was a bit of a different story.
"Hero!" a soldier exclaimed as Link walked into the room. "Oh, thank the goddesses. You were the only one we could think of that might qualify."
Link raised an eyebrow at that statement. "Qualify for... what?"
"Well sir," the soldier began. "The Princess Zelda, she won't wake up, you see. We've tried everything we could think of. Smelling salts, foot massage, bucket of water..."
'Wait, they threw a water bucket on Zelda?' Midna repeated. 'That's amazing! Oh, I wish I'd have been here to see that...'
"You threw a water bucket on Zelda?" Link said in lieu of Midna's physical presence, though he left out the second bit. The solder flushed awkwardly.
"Not me, sir, but one of the others did. My idea was the hot sauce."
"The... hot sauce," Link said flatly as Midna cackled with laughter.
"On her tongue, sir," the soldier explained. "It didn't work."
"Okay, what exactly do you need me for?" Link asked, now becoming somewhat concerned about where this conversation was headed.
"Well sir, one of the boys had an idea, that... well... maybe it was like those spells in the old tales, you know? Maybe she needed a kiss from a noble prince to wake up."
Link's jaw dropped, though he closed it quickly, and his face turned bright red. "Excuse me?" he sputtered.
"None of us are prince material, you see," the soldier informed him with an embarrassed expression. "And we don't really have one just lying around, so we thought you might be the best match given our lack of actual male royalty."
Link sputtered some more, his face now the color of a ripe tomato, and failed to produce any words whatsoever. He'd never been this tongue-tied in his life.
"...I'm a goatherd," he finally managed.
The soldier shrugged. "My dad was a farmer. Best man I know."
"I just... I... You... You want me," Link said, excruciatingly slowly, "to kiss Princess Zelda?"
"On the mouth," the soldier clarified apologetically.
Link moved from a ripe tomato to an overripe tomato.
"Or not," the soldier said, observing this phenomena. "There's probably another way, after all."
"...yeah," Link said weakly. "Probably. Hopefully. Please."
"Well, sorry to bother you with it, sir," the soldier said. "I'll just leave you to... recover. If you need me, I'll be over with the boys trying to eradicate the lost Keese flock. Sorry to bother you, sir."
Link watched the man leave and took a deep breath, trying to cool himself down. Yes, he admitted that he... may have a small crush on the Princess, but that did not mean he wanted to kiss her! Well... maybe eventually, if it was her idea and he was sure she wanted to, but not right this second! Oh, his face felt so hot...
'Wow,' Midna snickered. 'I knew you had it bad, but I didn't think it was that bad. You're about as obvious as a black wolfos on Snowpeak, you know that?'
"Shut up, it's not like that," Link muttered, face in his hands. Midna was never going to let him live this down.
'Of course it's not,' Midna said in a tone which told Link that she didn't believe him in the slightest. 'But, I think I know why she's not conscious. Remember when she gave me her... essence, so to speak?'
"Yeah," Link said.
'Well, I've still got it. I think it's time I returned the favor, don't you?'
Link opted for saying nothing on the grounds that it was probably the safest option and made his way over to the Princess in response. She was, indeed, out cold.
Midna spun up out of Link's shadow and surveyed Zelda with her one visible eye. "Wow, she's really zonked there. You sure you don't wanna try the kissing idea? Even if it doesn't work I doubt she'd know."
"MIDNA!" Link sputtered. His partner snickered uncontrollably.
"Kidding, little wolf," she told him. "Lighten up, eh?"
"Just return the stuff," Link groaned. His face was still a bit pink.
Midna landed lightly next to Zelda's shoulder, reached out, and touched Zelda's hand with hers. What looked like large fireflies gathered on Midna's skin and crossed over onto Zelda's, where they vanished into her body as though they'd never been there in the first place.
"That should do it," Midna said decisively, jumping back into the air. "Now come here, I want to have my armrest ready so I can look all casual and nonchalant."
"You know, gratitude isn't entirely out of the question," Link informed his partner as she perched her elbow on his shoulder.
"Are you kidding me? If you let these people know you owe them, they'll take the clothes off your back before you can even blink."
"I doubt Zelda is that kind of person," Link pointed out dryly.
"Maybe she's not, but I'll bet my helmet that the lower nobles are."
That, Link admitted, was probably an entirely valid point, but before he could say anything about it Midna said, "Hey, I think she's waking up."
Zelda's eyes twitched, then opened in the manner of someone who has gotten far too little sleep and is having trouble dealing with it. She blinked a few times at the ceiling, then took a breath and sat up with excellent posture, looking wide awake in seconds as though she'd done it through sheer willpower.
"Midna, that was supposed to be a gift," she scolded lightly. "I appreciate your thoughtfulness in restoring me, however, but still."
Midna scoffed. "Yeah, like I'm gonna owe somebody for any longer than absolutely necessary. Not happening, Princess!"
"Midna, please be nice for once," Link pleaded. She merely flashed him her trademark fanged smirk and proceeded to ignore his request entirely.
"Oh," Zelda said, looking surprised. "So then that means..." her gaze locked onto Link's face and he felt himself turning red. "You are the wolf, correct?"
"Yeah," Link managed. "Nice to be able to speak to you."
Zelda continued to to scrutinize him with very, very blue eyes. "Indeed," she said. Then she smiled. "This is a good look for you."
Link frowned. "Er... my clothes?"
"Among other things. Green is your color, I think."
This conversation was going in a direction that Link knew would end badly for him. Namely in that he was encroaching on tomato status again.
"So... this is amusing and all," Midna said, rescuing Link from his embarrassment, "and I do like the word green, but aren't there more important things to talk about? Like, I dunno, the fact that Ganondorf's gone missing, or that large gaping hole in the world over there?"
"Hole in the what?" Link repeated in surprise, and followed his partner's pointing finger. Sure enough, up where the throne ought to be was an utterly black void that, to Link's eyes, was defying all laws of causality and logic simply by being a thing. It was the type of object that was completely unmissable.
"How in Din's Name did I miss that?" he boggled.
"You were a bit distracted," Midna said slyly. "I think there was this pretty girl with bright blue eyes?" Link shot her a look that very clearly said, Not now, dangit!
"You know," Zelda said, seeing the brewing argument, "it comes to my attention that I have been unconscious for a good few weeks. If you will excuse me, I believe I shall question my Guard about what has happened in my absence."
She nodded to both the Hero and his partner, then stepped past Link, paused, leaned over and quietly said, "Green is your color, but I more meant your humanity. It suits you," into his ear.
Link revisited his previous status as an overripe tomato. Zelda smiled at him, tucked her hair behind her ear, and continued on her way towards the cluster of soldiers – who for some reason, appeared to be badly losing a fight to a flock of Keese of all things.
"Wouldja lookit that," Midna mused. "She likes you back."
"We are not talking about this right now," Link growled, moving past tomato territory entirely and encroaching on eggplant status.
"Whatever you say," Midna smirked. "So then, what are we talking about if not this?"
"That," Link said, pointing to the void.
"...Yeah, that's a pretty good alternative topic," Midna admitted. She floated a few feet closer to the hole and examined it as much as her instinct to stay away would let her. "What even is this thing?"
Link picked his way over a pile of rubble to join her, and she yawned pointedly at him. Link raised an eyebrow and mildly said, "Not all of can float, you know."
"You should fix that," Midna told him. "But seriously, what do you think about this?"
Link gave the void an appraising look. It was bigger than he'd first thought, well on it's way to the ceiling – and the walls in the Castle weren't exactly short either. From the looks of things, it appeared to be getting slowly but steadily larger, and as Link watched the edge of the void crept out and touched a nearby rubble chunk.
Said rubble immediately proceeded to vanish from all visible existence.
"...Did you see that? Tell me you saw that," Midna said, staring
"I saw it," Link replied.
"That's not good."
"Nope."
"Any ideas?"
"Doubtful. Weapons will probably be just as useless as the rubble," Link guessed. As a side effect of dealing with a ridiculous amount of protective Temple measures that almost always manifested as some sort of massive puzzle-system, Link was now a rather strategic thinker as far as riddles and things went.
"Magic?" Midna asked.
"Equally doubtful. This doesn't seem like the type of thing to be affected by spells."
"...I could manifest a Cucco on it."
"...Okay, keep that one in mind as a last resort. We only use Ultimate Evil if absolutely necessary."
Midna huffed. "In that case, I'm fresh out of ideas."
"Same," Link admitted, running a frustrated hand through his bangs. "I can't believe-"
"Link," Midna interrupted, eyes narrowed. "Do that again."
Link tilted his head in a gesture remarkably similar to a confused canine. "Uh... do what?"
"Put your hand through your hair."
"What does that have anything to do with-"
"Just do it," Midna snapped.
Link gave her a highly confused look, but complied and raised his hand to his hair again. Midna watched the movement like a hawk.
"...I think your hand is glowing," she said.
"It's what?" Link asked intelligently.
"Glowing."
"Why should touching my hair make my hand glow?"
"It's not that!" Midna retorted. "The light's behind us and your face is in shadow, and when you put your hand in the shadow it looked like your Triforce was glowing!"
"It is?" Link said, bringing his left hand up to his eyes to check. ...He supposed that might be called glowing... maybe...
"But why is it doing that..." Midna mused, putting a hand to her chin. "Link, we're going to play a little game."
Link twitched.
"Hey, it'll be fun, trust me."
"The last time you said that, I spent the next hour being chased by Wallmasters," Link reminded her bluntly. "I don't care how you look at it, that was not fun!"
"You're just a wimp. Everyone knows Wallmasters are the best players for Capture-the-Sol."
"It was legitimately terrifying," Link argued.
"Well lucky for you, we're playing Hot-or-Cold instead. Just walk where I tell you to."
"That's it?" Link asked suspiciously.
"That's it," Midna confirmed. "Now do me a favor and move to the left."
Link dutifully – though cautiously – moved to the left. Nothing happened. Midna scowled and had Link move to the right instead. Nothing insisted on continuing to happen.
The next ten-to-fifteen minutes consisted of Midna placing Link in every spot she could think of that wouldn't get him killed in various violent or painful ways. The longer they went, the more frustrated she got, because no matter where Link stood nothing happened. At this point, Midna was almost convinced that she'd been imagining the glowing of his Triforce-
Midna's eye widened as an idea occurred to her, and Link, currently balancing on top of a partially-collapsed pillar halfway up the wall, glanced at her apprehensively.
"That's not an expression that ends well for me," Link muttered.
"Shut up, I'm thinking," Midna ordered. "Link, climb down from there and go stand next to the void."
"I thought you said this wasn't going to turn out like the Wallmasters," Link sighed, though he did as instructed and slid down the column.
"It won't!"
"It's a hole in reality, I really don't think you have the authority to decide that," Link replied. He jogged back to the rift and brought himself to a halt about ten feet or so from his target. "There are some things you can't control, you know."
"Now that's only because I haven't figured out how yet," Midna said lightly. "Now quit distracting me and show me your hand."
Link rolled his eyes and raised his left hand up for Midna to see, fully expecting another annoyed outburst at the fact that nothing was there. Instead, he got-
"Ha! I knew it!" Midna crowed. "It's totally glowing!"
Link blinked in surprise and glanced at his Triforce. Sure enough, though it was rather dim compared to the other times he'd seen it active, the bottom right triangle was lit up like a lantern. Link's mouth formed an 'o' of surprise.
"It's only ever done that the first time I entered the Twilight and when I pulled the Master Sword..." he murmured in astonishment.
"Well I can tell you there's no Twilight here," Midna informed him, drifting around his head and perching her elbow on his shoulder. "Personally, I think it's because of this hole here. The only time your Triforce has glowed so far has been when you're close to it. Why don't you step closer and see what happens?"
Link considered that, then took a single solitary step forwards and stopped. His hand glowed slightly brighter in response, but nothing else happened.
"...That was pathetic," Midna said bluntly. "One step? Really? That's all you're doing?"
"I am not interested in being erased from reality, thanks," Link said.
"You'd have to touch it to do that, and I don't see you touching it," Midna pointed out in a false-sweet manner. "Get closer, little wolf."
Grudgingly, at Midna's urgings, Link took progressively closer steps until he was standing literally right next to the void. His left hand was shining like a star at this point. Midna stared at it, then moved her gaze to the hole. She tapped her chin contemplatively.
"No doubt about it, this is what your mojo's reacting to," she decided.
"That's nice," Link said, leaning backwards a bit as the hole grew ever-larger. "Can I back up now?"
"Of course not," Midna scoffed. "You're going inside to investigate."
Link spun around and gave his partner a glare. "Excuse me?"
"Your glowy hand is a gift from the gods or whatever, right?" Midna asked. "Let's go over what happened the other time it lit up. Instead of being cursed into a formless phantom by the Twilight, you were turned into a wolf instead who could actually dosomething about the problem. You were protected. It's pretty obvious to me what that little triangle does for you, and if it's glowing now, I think that's a pretty obvious indicator."
"We don't know that for sure," Link replied, although he had to admit she had a point.
"Only one way to find out," Midna smirked, and before Link could even think of a reply her hair had shot out and wrapped around his torso, picked him up, and tossed him through the hole. His startled cry of "MIDNA!" got cut off halfway through the word, which sounded absolutely hilarious to the imp herself and she made sure to make a note of it in her mind as she drifted forward to follow her partner-
"Ah!" she gasped, snatching her hand back from the void with three less fingers than she'd had before. She stared at her hand, then the rift. Her eye narrowed.
"I do hope you haven't just killed our Hero," Zelda's voice said, announcing the ruler's arrival. "My Guard tells me that what goes into the void doesn't come out, and you seem to have thrown Link directly into it."
Midna scowled and channeled some of her magic down her arm, forming new digits where her old ones used to be. "Don't give me that, Princess. I know you'd know if he's actually dead, you Triforce people always do. Plus, you'd be much angrier."
"True," Zelda acknowledged. "No, he's not dead. You, on the other hand, will be if you try and follow him."
"I figured," Midna admitted ruefully, wiggling her new fingers to make sure they worked. "Dang, I just sent him to who-knows-where without any backup... or his wolf form," she realized.
"Not necessarily," Zelda told her. "As a Triforce wielder, I can use some of it's magic to help you send an item after him."
Midna glanced at her. "That's real convenient, isn't it?"
Zelda shrugged. "I have my moments."
Midna, after a few seconds spent considering, decided to go with it and pulled the Curse Stone out of wherever she kept it. After another few moment's though, she materialized a small black bag on a drawstring and dropped the Stone inside.
"He changes as soon as he touches it," she explained to the watching Zelda. "He'll need a way to carry it around while it's not in use."
"Smart," Zelda said, taking the drawstring pouch in her hands and conjuring a golden glow around it as the Triforce on her right hand lit up with similar intensity. "There we go. Would you like to do the honors?"
"Absolutely," Midna replied, showing her fanged grin. She took the small bag in her hair-hand, yelled, "HEADS UP!" into the hole, and chucked the package with all the strength she could muster. "With any luck, that'll clock him right in the face," she said, snickering. Zelda gave her an odd glance.
"You haven't scarred him for life or anything of the sort, correct?"
"Eh, maybe, maybe not. He hasn't run screaming from me yet, and I'll take that as a win."
"...We need to recruit that imp," Farore decided, staring.
"Er... how? Isn't she just mortal?" Din asked.
"I don't care. She just single-handedly cut his expected stall time by eighty flipping percent."
"She bodily chucked him through!"
"Exactly," Farore said. "Exactly."
"Huh," Realm said knowledgeably, scratching his head. "How'd it get up there?"
"I can safely say that I don't want to know," Steam groaned.
"How are we supposed to get that down?" Red asked, bewildered.
Realm's sword, which he'd only just managed to get a little over forty-eight hours ago, was lodged point-first about six feet up a cliffside. The crevice that the blade was buried in covered it nearly all the way up to the hilt.
"That's really wedged in there if it hasn't fallen out already," Vio noted. "Especially given the time it took us to get here."
Saying it like that was a bit of an understatement; it'd taken them no less than six hours, eight backtracks, three different monster hordes, and twelve separate times retrieving Realm from whatever wrong turn he'd made that time before they finally found his weapon.
The problem now, of course, was getting said weapon down. None of the Links were particularly gifted in the area of height; they were all built short and stocky for some reason. So after a bit of discussion, Blue stood on Realm's shoulders and pried the sword out of the rock wall while the other four remaining Links kept Realm steady and less likely to fall down.
"There we go!" Blue announced satisfactorily as he finally yanked the (very stuck) sword out of the cliffside and handed it down to Realm. "Put a bell on the thing or something, why don't you?"
"Because then I'd lose the bell too," Realm sighed, taking the weapon and sheathing it with moderate difficulty due to Blue still balancing on his shoulders.
"You got some problems, dude," Blue informed him, before gathering himself and jumping down. Realm stumbled a bit as all the excess weight suddenly left.
"Everyone has problems," he replied once he regained his footing. "Mine are just... slightly more complicated."
"Speaking of which, is there anything else you've lost that we should go find?" Green asked. Realm frowned.
"Well... I may have lost the hole. Does anybody remember which way we came from?"
"No, but I can figure it out," Vio sighed. "Can I have your map?
"Funny thing there," Realm said, rubbing his head in an awkward fashion. "I don't actually have a map."
Everyone stared at him.
"You mean... what, you never bought one?" Steam asked.
"No, I mean there's literally no map. Nobody has one. In fact," Realm frowned, "I'm not even sure a map of Hyrule exists right now."
"That explains so much," Blue commented.
"I mean, there's maps of dungeons and things, even if I don't know who made them or why they keep leaving them behind," Realm continued. "But there's nothing for Hyrule itself."
"Wait, so you do have experience with maps, at least?" Green checked.
"If staring at them in confusion counts as experience, then yes," Realm said. "I could never figure out where I was in relation to everything else, no matter which way I held the darn thing."
"Then... how are we supposed to get back to the hole?" Vio asked. "It's kind of our ride."
"Well, I usually start walking," Realm said, doing just that. "And sooner or later I eventually end up at wherever I was trying to get to."
"...We're doomed," Blue decided.
Five more hours later, after one of the most ridiculously complicated directional mishaps that the five non-native Links had ever had the misfortune of being in, Realm marched around a corner of rock wall and came face-to-nothing with the rift they'd been looking for. Everyone behind him immediately keeled over in exhaustion.
"What, are you guys tired or something?" Realm asked, confused. "It only took us five hours to get here! We probably just broke my all-time record by at least a day or two."
"We spent four of those five hours running from Like-like hordes!" Steam gasped. "Consecutively!"
"Yeah... so?"
"That's not normal!"
"It's not?" Realm repeated, confused. "How long does it take you to get away from Like-like hordes?"
"I don't run into Like-like hordes!"
"You don't?" Realm by this point was legitimately surprised.
"It's just you," Vio wheezed. "Nobody else has this problem."
"Well... it was still only four straight hours of running, that really isn't all that long."
"YES IT IS!" the five other boys chorused in disbelief.
Realm raised an eyebrow. "You're all weird."
"We're weird?" Blue scoffed – then coughed because he was scoffing and didn't have enough breath for it. "Look at you! You don't even look tired!"
Realm opened his mouth to respond, but the entire issue suddenly became a moot point as a green teenaged figure shot out of the hole and flattened Realm face-first to the floor. The new boy stared at the sky for a brief moment while everyone else stared at him and Realm feebly lifted his head out of the dirt floor to see what had just landed on him.
"...I'm going to strangle her," the teen decided quietly. "I'm going to strangle her within an inch of her life. And then I'm going to tie her to a boulder and torture her with all the people she could be making fun of but can't because of the spell I'm going to have Zelda cast on her mouth to prevent her from talking until I extract an ironclad promise from her to never do this to me ever again."
"I like this guy," Blue decided.
"What just happened?" Red asked.
Before anyone could answer, a small black pouch came sailing out of the void and clocked the new boy right between the eyes. It sat there for a moment, then slowly fell off the side of his face and landed with a soft plop next to his right shoulder.
"On second thought," the teen corrected himself, "I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill her, then bring her back to life and kill her again just to make sure she's got the point, and then I'm going to bring her back to life a second time so I can chain her to a Cucco for the rest of her existence."
Oddly enough, he never raised his voice during his description of revenge on whichever female he was referring to. It was steady, controlled, the kind of tone you'd use for a casual conversation with your good friend.
It also sent a large amount of shivers up everyone's spines and made everyone take a note about not getting on his bad side.
The new boy took a deep breath and seemed to calm down a bit, then noticed what he was on top of as Realm waved awkwardly at him, taking the chance to get a good look at the new arrival. He had sandy-blond hair, a somewhat angular face, and bright blue eyes that quite honestly looked slightly feral. There was a long green hat perched on his hair with a tunic to match, two small blue hoops in his ears, and he appeared to be wearing chainmail underneath the tunic. A blue metal shield was strapped to his back over an equally blue scabbard. He looked like a warrior, all things considered.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," the teen said, launching himself to his feet and scooping up the black pouch in the same motion. He examined the small bag briefly, glanced inside, then looped it around his neck and tucked the pouch under his tunic. "My partner decided it would be fun to throw me, I didn't know there were people over on the... other... side?"
He turned, looked over his shoulder and noticed the hole, gave his surroundings a brief but fierce scrutiny, then turned his attention to the six Links in front of him.
"Care to explain why what I'm pretty sure is a hole in reality is acting like a two-ended tunnel instead?" he asked with a dangerously raised eyebrow.
Notes:
NOTICE: LABRYNNIAN NOW HAS AN OFFICIAL CIPHER AND HAS BEEN UPDATED ACCORDINGLY.
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian
Yūvūtōneegirh-Ai teah. (I hate everything)
Thanks to Guest #29, Imoyn_Writer, Guest #30, and pocketramblr for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 9: The One Who's a Painting
Summary:
May I introduce the New Hero of Hyrule?
Notes:
Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever, own Nintendo. And by extension, the Legend of Zelda. I do, however, own Sega.
(Wait, what? What the heck, I didn't write that!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"That looks like it's going well," Nayru observed as several smaller blond Heroes attempted to explain things to the taller one. It involved a lot of emphatic gesturing and what was presumably a good deal of confusion.
"He'll be fine," Farore said confidently. "If any of my Attributes can handle this situation without issue, it's this one."
"I don't think I've ever realized how many Attributes you have," Din commented. "I mean, we've already assembled six, the new guy makes seven, and there's still at least eight or so left to gather. The fact that you can keep track of them all is impressive."
"Practice," Farore replied, shrugging. "Now, while those seven are bonding, I'm going to look in on some of my other Attributes and see where they are. Let me know if anything interesting happens here, okay?"
"Will do."
"So... you're all me," the new Link said.
"Yep," Steam replied.
"But you're from alternate... what, dimensions? And there's holes there too?"
"That's the general gist," Vio agreed. "From what I can tell, the universe as we know it is being destroyed and the voids are a result of that. What we perceive as a hole is actually the physical manifestation of literal nothing where something used to be."
"Which, for some reason, you six can travel through," Link said.
"So can you," Red pointed out. "You just did, when you landed on Realm."
Link closed his eyes. "Yeah... sorry about that. If I'd known you were there I would have tried to miss you."
"Okay, that's like the fifth time you've apologized," Realm chuckled. "I think I've forgiven you by now."
"Right," Link smiled. "Well, I won't deny that this is weird, but it's nice to meet you all. Now, exactly how do I get back to where I live? I need to chew my partner out for throwing through a cross-dimensional void."
Green frowned. "But the universe is dying. Did you not hear that bit?"
"No, I heard that bit," Link said. "I'm just not sure I believe it. Don't get me wrong, you all seem like nice people – and you do look like me, which is odd. But other timelines, other mes? That just seems a little too far-fetched..."
"You don't believe us," Blue accused.
"Would you believe it if someone walked up and told you what you just told me?" Link replied.
The six Links exchanged concerned glances. "Okay, what would make you believe us?" Vio asked.
Link pursed his mouth, glanced around, then lifted his left hand up to eye level. "If you're really me," he said, "then you should have this."
On his skin was a three-triangle mark – clearly part of his hand, but so geometrically perfect that it looked impossible. Everyone stared at it.
"The Triforce has three pieces!?" Realm sputtered.
Link blinked. "Say what now?" That had not been the reaction he'd been expecting.
Realm openly gaped at Link's hand for a few seconds. "I... in my Hyrule, there's only two. Ganon has one, he holds Power, that's why he was able to take over, but Wisdom was scattered through the kingdom. It's kinda been my job to collect it – but now you're telling me there's a third one?"
Link nodded slowly. "Well, yeah... I mean, it's the Triforce."
"...Can I see?" Realm asked, almost reverently. Behind him, Steam, Green, Vio, Blue, and Red were all exchanging worried looks. As far as they knew, none of them had a Triforce piece.
"...Sure," Link said, after a moment of careful consideration. Realm slowly reached out a hand and traced the pattern on Link's skin, staring wide-eyed.
"There's three pieces," he said, wonderingly. "Wow. Kinda makes me wonder where the third piece is back home..."
His fingers passed over the third of the Triforce where Link's skin was lighter than the other two triangles, and Link let out an exclamation as the back of his hand flared hot – but that was nothing compared to the startled screech that Realm emitted. He flinched backwards and violently shook his left hand as a golden glow shone off the back of it and hissed through gritted teeth.
"Nayru's Love that hurt!" he cursed, and glared at his hand. "What the heck was that-!"
He froze.
"...Alright," Link said, dumbfounded. "That'll work."
Pulsing dimly on the back of Realm's left hand was a Triforce mark.
"What." Realm said emotionlessly. "What. The. Actual. Heck."
"If I had to guess," Vio said, sounding just as surprised, "it looks like you've had the potential to be a Triforce Bearer lying dormant in your body. Possibly the close proximity to another Triforce brought your ability to the surface?"
"I have the Triforce!?" Realm repeated frantically.
"On the bright side," Link out in, "I believe you now."
"I have the Triforce," Realm said again, and ran his glowing hand through his bangs in disbelief. "Oh my goddesses, I have the Triforce. This is insane."
"I think he's in shock," Steam noted.
Realm didn't seem to hear. "What was it even doing in me? Why me of all people?" He paused as something occurred to him. "And is this why Impa never seemed to have a problem asking a small boy to kill a demon? That whole conversation makes so much more sense now..."
"You gonna be okay, dude?" Blue asked. Realm inhaled excessively.
"I think so. Wow. Okay. This is gonna... wow. I'm... I'm gonna need a minute. To, uh, get used to this. Wow."
"Sure thing," Green said. "We'll be over there when you're ready."
"Do the rest of you have hidden Triforces?" Link asked hesitantly as they all moved to the spot Green had indicated. "Because activating his kinda hurt and I'm not keen on doing that again."
"No, no Triforce here," Steam sighed.
"Same," Vio agreed. Link paused and gave the five of them a searching look.
"...You don't actually have a Triforce, do you," he said. It wasn't a question.
Steam shrugged. "Maybe I do and it's just hiding, I dunno. Where I come from, the original Hyrule is submerged. I don't know where our Triforce might be, but I can tell you that I don't have it. The closest thing I've got to a 'gift from the gods' is my sword." He unsheathed the weapon to demonstrate, and continued, "Well, that and my Spirit Train, but that's in another dimension and you understand that it might be hard to get that here. So unless you wanna, like, see if my weapon resonates with yours or something like that, I've got nothing."
"And essentially, that's our situation too," Green sighed. "And it was Realm's, up until about two minutes ago."
Link considered that.
"Okay," he said simply, and unsheathed his own sword. "If that's the closest thing you've got, then they should resonate, right?"
"That seems a bit ridiculous if you ask me-" Steam started, and was abruptly cut off as all six weapons began to glow. "...Never mind."
"Alright then," Link said, and sheathed his sword in one swift movement. "That settles that."
"How, exactly?" Blue said, confused. "I mean, I'm not complaining, but...?"
"This is the Master Sword," Link said, motioning over his shoulder. "And yes," he continued as Steam let out a snort, "I know it's a pretentious title. Long story short, it's a sacred blade. No evil can touch it without pain and it pretty much exorcises anything bad that it comes across. Logically then, if your weapons are resonating, that would mean that you've got sacred blades too. Which would also mean that you're not evil, which probably means you're telling the truth. Plus," he smiled, "you really do look an astonishing amount like me."
"But you're not blond," Red pointed out.
"Realm's brunet," Link replied, shrugging. "Think of me as a combination."
"I've never really considered it," Vio mused, "but it really does make sense for the Four Sword to be sacred."
"Wait, is that what your sword is called?" Steam said, grinning. "That's ridiculously literal. Whoever named that thing must have been severely lacking in creativity."
"Well, what's yours called?"
"The Lokomo Sword," Steam replied.
There was a moment of silence.
"Er... what's a Lokomo?" Link asked.
"I... don't actually know," Steam admitted, a frown creeping onto his face. "It's a people group, but as to what a Lokomo is, I'm not actually sure."
"Might be an alteration of the word 'locomotive'," Vio theorized.
"Okay, but what the heck's a locomotive?" Blue asked.
"It's another word for train," Vio sighed. "Honestly, weren't you listening when Steam explained this to us?"
"I was, I just didn't listen to the detail stuff."
"Well if you had, then you would have known what a locomotive was."
"Why do I need to know what a locomotive is, you memorize all that stuff anyways!"
"Because knowledge is important and you never know when you might need-"
"Will you both quit it!?" Green snapped. "Now is not the time!"
"Is this a common occurrence?" Link asked Red and Steam.
"Dunno," Steam shrugged. " I only met these guys yesterday."
"It's fairly common, yes," Red answered.
"Right..." Link contemplated that. "Sibling arguments. I can handle that."
"Handle what?" Realm asked, walking up next to them. He still looked somewhat shaken, his left hand angled firmly away from his line of sight, but he was significantly less pale than he'd been.
"You guys," Link replied. "After all, if you're telling the truth about yourselves, that means that you're telling the truth about the holes, and what kind of Hero would I be if I let Hyrule get wiped from existence?"
Steam snorted. "A really bad one."
Red let out an excited squeal. "Welcome to the group! Any opinions on your nickname?"
"My what now?"
"If we're all called Link, it gets really confusing," Realm said informatively. "Red gave us nicknames to differentiate."
"I did wonder about that," Link commented. "The word 'Green' hardly seemed like a name one would be born with."
"So," Red said, bouncing in place a little. "What's your Hero title?"
"Hero of Twilight," Link replied.
"Wanna use it?"
Link blinked. "Uh... not really. It's already the name of a people, a place, and a substance, not to mention that I don't have the best memories of the word."
Red was only mildly dissuaded. "I get to be creative instead! Vio, can I get some words that mean 'Twilight'?"
Vio thought for a moment, then rattled off, "Sunset, evening, dusk, dark, gloom, nightfall, shadow, sable, sundown... any of those sound good?"
"Dusk wasn't too bad," Link said helpfully.
Red beamed. "Dusk it is, then!"
"How come his gets to sound cool?" Steam complained.
"You don't think 'Steam' sounds cool?"
"I mean, it's nice enough, but his sounds like the name of a guy who means business."
"Actually, I just liked the phonetics," Dusk admitted.
"The heck is a 'phonetics'?"
"Phonetics are the sounds that form words," Vio explained quickly.
"Well, his phonetics sound cooler."
"I think they both sound cool," Red pouted. Steam made the mistake of turning to face the smaller Link and was promptly hit with the surprisingly accurate image of an adorable puppy. Curiously enough, he also discovered his weakness to adorable puppies in the same moment.
"...Yeah," he replied weakly. "They both sound cool."
"Question for you guys," Dusk said, attempting to get the conversation back to something resembling 'on-topic'. "What now?"
The other six Links exchanged glances with each other. "Well," Green said. "We've basically just been portal-hopping. It started as us four," he gestured to his three siblings, "trying to get back home, but now it's more of a 'let's see who else we meet while trying to find the source' type of thing."
"Which I'm now part of," Dusk finished. "Right. So, do I just run and jump, or...?"
"Yeah, pretty much," Blue said. "And something will probably start glowing to let you know it's safe."
"Oh," Dusk said in tones of realization, looking at the void then down to his hand. "That makes more sense now."
"You know what glows?"
"My hand," Dusk replied, lifting it for them to see. "It was glowing right before my partner threw me in."
He paused. Then he smiled in a way that was somehow altogether more toothy than it ought to have been and reminded everyone rather forcibly of a feral beast. "Would anyone like to help me take revenge on her for that?"
"...I think I'm going to like you," Blue informed him.
"Well, they look like they've bonded successfully," Din observed, stretching. "Think we should tell Farore that one of the Aspects manifested his Triforce early?"
"I'm sure she already knows," Nayru responded. "Besides, she's busy influencing that Aspect with the paint gimmick, remember?"
They both paused for a moment as Farore let out another string of frustrated complaints – from the sound of things, the boy was heading in the exact opposite direction of where she needed him to be.
"...Yeah, we can fill her in later," Din agreed.
Contrary to his patron goddess' current belief, the New Hero of Hyrule was not directionally challenged. He was just in a very tight spot that required him to go in a very certain direction due to the fact that any other direction was going to get him killed.
He was also currently a painting on a wall, but that was surprisingly not the reason he may or may not be dead within the next few minutes. No, that reason belonged solely to the vast number of guards patrolling the outer borders of the Castle.
Link frowned irately at the guard walking past his currently-pigmented body, keeping a mental tally of how much magic he still had. This was vitally important, as running out of magic would result in Link turning back into a normal, three-dimensional boy and would almost certainly get him killed.
Quite a lot of things would get him killed right now, Link belatedly realized.
To his substantial relief, the guard moved on after a few more seconds of scrutiny, and Link let out a sigh before popping himself off the wall. This was ridiculous. All he wanted to do was get past the Castle to use a Lorule Gate to inform Princess Hilda that he'd finally figured out how to beat up Yuga/Ganon/whoever he was now so that he could rescue Hyrule and get everything back to normal. Was that really too much to ask?
Apparently.
The thumping of metal footsteps alerted Link to the fact that the guard was making his circuit again, and Link cursed to himself before activating the bracelet on his wrist and fusing back into the wall. It was a strange feeling, when he thought about it. He was literally turning into paint, going from three-dimensional to two-dimensional in seconds and trading his hylian body for one that was made of... watercolors, he thought, judging from The Rain Incident.
He shuddered briefly. He didn't like thinking about The Rain Incident.
Unfortunately, Link had forgotten that he was hiding from a guard (nobody looked at artwork for some reason), and the shudder earned him the full attention of a heavily armed and armored knight who, now that Link looked closer, seemed to be made entirely of Yuga's/Ganon's/whoever he was now's living paint.
Well, that explained a lot.
Link froze, holding his breath for good measure, and nervously checked on his magic levels. He was about halfway depleted – he should really look into some stamina training – which technically should last him until the guard lost interest, unless he was unlucky.
The guard spent a few more seconds scrutinizing Link's painted form on the wall before shrugging and lumbering off to continue his route. Link waited until the henchman was out of sight entirely before popping off the wall again and letting out his breath in one explosive burst.
"And that," he muttered, "was way too close."
He wasn't keen on repeating that experience, so he beelined past the Castle gates and rushed down the path that led to his house/Ravio's shop/he didn't actually know what to call it anymore because Ravio spent more time in it than he did. The rock wall in front of the building had the next-closest Lorule Gate from the one in Hyrule Castle itself, which Link unfortunately couldn't get to because the Castle had been closed off ever since Zelda had been kidnapped. It turned out that having your Queen-to-be transformed into a painting and taken into a different dimension caused lots of panic. Who knew?
Link veered around the turn and stopped in front of the wall he needed. He glanced up at his house/Ravio's Shop for a moment and wondered if he should drop in, then decided against it. He'd already been working towards this final confrontation for weeks. He didn't want to delay it anymore. So he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and approached the Lorule Gate.
Lorule Gates basically just looked like cracks in the walls, regardless of what the walls were made of. Link had learned, however, that only a crack that emitted smoky-mist-type stuff would lead him to the alternate world. He'd found that out the hard way after one adventure through a wall crack had landed him in Hyrule's sewer system.
In hindsight, though, it did explain the smell that everyone complained about.
Link abruptly stopped again and took a quick inventory. Sword and Shield, check. Red Potion and emergency Fairy, check. Dungeon Items, check. As far as he could tell, he was good to go.
So, Link steeled his nerves, fused with the wall, stepped forwards into the Gate...
...and came out on a tropical island.
Well, technically he was fused with a large rock sitting on a sandbar about fifteen feet off a tropical island, but still. There was a flipping tropical island.
Link stared.
Clearly, something was not quite right.
He detached from the boulder that the Gate had led to and blinked confusedly at what was very clearly the ocean around him. He looked to his right where the island was and was greeted with a cluster of cheerfully swaying palm trees. On his left was a black-and-white bird that he'd never seen before bobbing up and down in the waves. He glanced down and watched a... actually, he had no idea what it was, but it had a bright red body and six frantically moving legs that propelled it sideways, for some bizarre reason, and an alarmingly large set of claws for a creature smaller than his foot. Link prudently stepped out of the way, and the thing shot off diagonally across the sand to bury itself in a hole.
He factored all of this into his mind and came to a conclusion.
"This," Link decided in a highly confused voice, "is not Lorule."
At any rate, it was more pleasant than the sewer, which Link was grateful for. But he really did need to meet up with Princess Hilda. He turned around to go back through the Gate-
-and stopped, because the boulder where the Gate had been now appeared to have been swallowed by a large black hole.
Link stared at it, too. For a good twenty seconds. Idly, his brain noted the odd clawed creature from a few seconds earlier side-swimming against the current and brushing up against the void. It promptly ceased to exist.
Link took a very large step backwards.
It was at that point that his mind registered the fact that he was on a sandbar and pointed out all the relevant information that went with it, such as the bit where sandbars are in the ocean and the ocean was made of water. Link's mind immediately flashed to The Rain Incident and he had to fight to keep himself from panicking.
The Rain Incident had the distinction of being the single most traumatizing experience of Link's life and was something that he actively tried not to think about most of the time. When Yuga had cast his spell, Link's body had been transformed into paint. Watercolor paint, to be exact. Why did Link know he was made of watercolors? Because when watercolor paint got wet, it bled. And when Link had gone out in the rain one day and fused with a wall in order to solve a puzzle, his pigment had literallybegun running off the stone. And it had hurt. It was just a dull ache, the kind of pain that bruises come with, but it had been enough to alert Link to the fact that something was wrong and he'd looked down to discover that his entire lower torso was nearly unrecognizable. And to top it all off, his legs hadn't even moved like legs anymore, so distorted from the water running down the wall that they'd functioned more like tentacles than anything else. Link had popped off the wall in a frantic rush and dragged himself to the nearest shelter, gasping until his limbs had slowly corrected themselves again.
He'd had a bad case of hydrophobia ever since. Thankfully, water only seemed to affect him in that way when he was a painting, because when he was Hylian the only thing that happened was that he got wet. But the memory of seeing his legs disfigured and having to drag himself to safety when they wouldn't work right was never very far in his mind.
In fact, right now it was about the only thing on his mind, and he forced himself not to look down.
"Just get to the island," Link told himself. "Just get to the island and you can freak out there."
Goddesses, he hoped he didn't have to swim.
Ten minutes of barely controlled panic later, Link lunged out of the surf and scrambled up as far onto the beach as his limbs would let him before he collapsed in the sand, chest heaving. He rolled onto his back and squeezed his eyes shut , feeling for his limbs and tracing their shapes to reassure himself that he wasn't melting.
He wasn't.
"I gotta get over this," Link moaned to himself, pressing his hands against his still-closed eyelids. Even if he acknowledged that he had a perfectly legitimate reason for his phobia, that still didn't make it acceptable! He was the freaking Hero, for Din's sake, water shouldn't be the thing that brought him down.
Link entertained that thought for a few more seconds before sighing resignedly and opening his eyes.
Now, since Link was lying on his back, he was looking straight up. Since he was looking straight up, he could see the clouds. And since he could see the clouds, he could also see that they were rather, big, dark, and very wet-looking clouds.
Said clouds then chose that moment to let out a jarring BOOM of thunder and start pouring right onto Link's island. The Hero let out a yelp and scurried off the sand under the copse of palm trees he'd noticed earlier.
...Well, this was just peachy.
"You know what?" Farore said to nobody in particular. "Close enough. Wasn't even near to the hole I was going for, but it's still a hole. Close enough."
"You talking to yourself again?"
"It's only a problem if I get an answer!" Farore yelled. "Any updates on Courage?"
"Well, the seven in the group worked out their differences and look like they're heading through the void again," Nayru listed. "I took the liberty of checking in on a few other Aspects that you got started with, and the one who just dealt with the Windfish is getting close to land."
"Right." Farore quickly checked on her painted Aspect again; aside from an obvious distaste for the weather, he seemed fairly stationary for the moment. "I'll be there shortly. He'll need some guidance once he makes landfall, the way the current pushed him will put the boy a long ways from where he needs to be."
There was only so many times one could sing the 'Ninety-Nine Potions of Health On the Wall' song before it got very boring. That, and Firetongue – the language of the Dragons – translated horribly into the rhythm of the tune and pretty much ruined the whole experience.
Thus, Link was now bored. And a bored Link was something that had, on at least one highly memorable occasion, sent Gibdos running for the hills.
Unfortunately, Gibdos didn't live in the ocean. Link spent a few moments being annoyed at this fact, then moved on because being annoyed was depressing and he made a point of not being depressed for more than five minutes a day.
Technically though, with all the days he'd missed regarding his five-minute depression limit, he could probably spend the next straight day or so being depressed... he just didn't want to. Depression was depressing.
So with a severe lack of literally anything else to do, Link began swimming on his back instead.
It wasn't all that different from swimming on his front, actually. There just wasn't a lot of things to look at when everything was blue.
Although, that bit up there was white.
Link paused in his stroke and just floated, staring at the bit of white. It wasn't a cloud. It looked like a bird. A seagull, to be precise.
Seagulls were shore birds.
"Goddesses, I'm a RRRHAaarrRRKKH!" Link exclaimed, slipping into Firetongue for a brief moment because the Dragon language expressed idiocy far better than any of the others he knew. He should have looked up ages ago, he probably could have made land by now!
He turned in the water and snagged the piece of driftwood, which he'd been towing the whole time, and perched his upper torso on the board while the half of him that wore the Mermaid Suit remained in the water. It was going to be a lot easier to follow the birds if he could both look up and where he was going at the same time, and having a stable base to lean on helped that tremendously.
Although... was that east, where the birds were going? He really wasn't sure anymore; astronomy had never been his strongest point (the stars were just pretty points of light as far as Link was concerned), and while he could read a map without any problems, there was an astounding lack of maps that depicted the middle of the ocean. He could, technically, try and use the sun, but he hadn't paid attention to which direction it had risen from and as it was now smack in the middle of the sky, told him absolutely nothing about which direction it was going. Basically, following the birds was his best bet.
So follow them he did. For the next three hours. By which point it was quite dark, and the only reason Link realized that he'd hit land was because he swam straight into the beach.
It was mildly painful.
Link, however, was far to excited to be out of the ocean to care about scratchy grains of sea detritus, and after pulling off the Mermaid Suit, veritably bounded up the coastline.
Of course, then his multiple-day ocean excursion decided to remind him that he hadn't actually eaten or slept in a very long time, and Link's legs gave out on him as his body initiated a full muscle lockdown until it got some rest in.
"Alright, I can get behind a nap," Link agreed out loud, even though nobody was around to hear him, and nestled his head into the sand a bit to hollow out a space. The substance scratched at his cheek as he moved, and he paused, frowning. He knew this feeling. There was a very specific kind of sand that scratched in this manner, and there was only one place that had sand like this.
"Yūvūtōneegirh-Ai teah," Link muttered as the realization hit him, feeling the phrase was only appropriate considering that it was the native language here.
Link was in Labrynna, which was nowhere near Hyrule. He was going to have to walk all the flipping way back to Hyrule.
Again.
"I don't know where, how, or why," Link decided, "but somehow this is all the Windfish's fault."
"...Well, he's making progress," Nayru offered.
"Yeah..." Farore frowned, tilting her head. "Nayru, do you... feel something odd?"
Her sister thought for a moment, while Din quietly took over at the reality window. "Aside from all the voids in space-time, you mean?"
Farore gave her a Look.
"Just checking," Nayru chuckled. "Not particularly, though that might be because the holes are so big that they drown out everything else. Was there something specific that you-"
She stopped mid-sentence. At the same time, Farore's breath caught in her throat, and Din called, "Hey girls? You might want to see this."
"Oh," Nayru said quietly, as Farore hurried to look at what Din was indicating. "That is odd."
"Are they stable?" Farore asked quickly.
Nayru concentrated. "I... believe they are. For now. We'll have to monitor this carefully to see how their individual time-streams interact with each other, but at the moment... Yes."
Farore sagged in relief and dragged a hand down her face. "Of all the things... I wasn't expecting this kind of a split. How did that even happen?"
"Time is in such a mess right now, I honestly can't say," Nayru sighed.
"Girls!" Din exclaimed, motioning rapidly. "They're interacting!"
Nayru crossed her fingers.
Link stared.
Link also stared.
They both stared for a while. Identical pairs of angled blue eyes met and blinked at each other, then moved and took in the messy straw-blond hair, the forest-green tunics, the matching hats, and the swords strapped to each other's backs. Because, aside from a few superficial differences, they were exactly the same.
The younger one eventually broke the stunned silence with a small, muted, "What... the... heck...?"
The older one suddenly inhaled sharply, like he'd been forgetting to breathe for the past minute or so. "Are you...?"
Younger Link examined Older Link like he was under the Lens of Truth. "Are you?"
"Er, well... I'm the Hero of Time."
"So am I."
Older Link stared again. "But... how?"
"I'm guessing something broke?" the younger Link theorized. "Did you drop the Ocarina of Time?"
"No!" Older Link snapped, scandalized. "You of all people should know I'd never be so careless!"
"I'm not sure about that," Younger Link replied skeptically. "How do I know you're me and not some doppelganger rip-off that I have to deal with? Again?"
"Well how do I know that you're not some doppelganger rip-off that I have to deal with? Again?"
Younger Link regarded Older Link with a blank face. "For someone who's supposed to be my older self, you seem remarkably immature."
"Oh... uh..." Older Link suddenly became significantly more awkward. "I'm not, um, not actually sixteen. Well, I mean, I am, I just... wasn't awake for the time in between... it's just kinda complicated?"
Younger Link blinked at him. "Hang on. Are you in Hyrule? Fighting Ganondorf? Like, with Navi and the Seven Sages and Sheik and all them?"
'Older' Link raised his eyebrows, surprised. "I thought you hadn't experienced that yet?"
"Oh my goddesses," 'Younger' Link said. "I'm older than you. You're technically nine, aren't you?"
"Mentally...yes?"
"I'm twelve."
The taller Link stared again. "You're twelve?"
"Time flies," the younger-but-older Link replied with a small grin. His counterpart immediately scowled.
"Don't go starting that again."
"I won't if you won't."
"I'm not the one who said it."
"Point," the shorter Link conceded. "You know, if you're a doppelganger, you're doing a really good job."
"Same to you," the older-but-younger Link replied, nodding at his double. "Unless you're actually me..."
There was another stretch of silence as both Links sized each other up. Then they both reached for their bags, paused as they saw the other move, and locked eyes.
"I'm not going for a weapon," the older-but-younger Link said.
"Neither am I."
They slowly completed the motion and pulled out... ocarinas. Specifically, the Ocarina(s) of Time.
Both Links regarded each other in surprise, partly because, what were the odds, and also because they'd been expecting some sort of paradox and resulting end of the world due to two identical objects occupying the same space at the same time. But nothing happened except for more surprised staring.
"Okay," the younger-but-older Link said. "That's a fairly strong point for the 'Not a doppelganger' argument."
His opposite hummed noncommittally. A moment passed; then they both raised their ocarinas to their mouths and played the Song of Storms in perfect synchronization.
Ten seconds later, they played the Sun Song to get rid of the thunderstorm, then locked eyes with each other again, grinned, and went on a medley of all the songs they knew, soaring through Saria's Song, lingering on Zelda's Lullaby, and then dropping into the Song of Time. Younger-but-older Link smirked around his mouthpiece and then switched over into a harmony right as the two transitioned into the Bolero of Fire, causing his counterpart to roll his eyes and begin improvising a crescendo into the Minuet of the Forest, which the first Link matched perfectly. Their back-and-forth duet continued through the Requiem, Nocturne, Serenade, and Prelude until the younger-but-older Link began playing some he knew that his younger self didn't and the latter was forced to stop.
"Now that's not fair," the taller Link complained, stowing his ocarina back in his bag. "I haven't learned that one yet."
"Perks of being the older one," his counterpart laughed, and did the same thing with his own instrument. "That was honestly... extremely convincing. You even improvise the way I do."
"Which means... you're really me."
"And you're really me..."
They examined each other fiercely.
"...I looked good with earrings," the younger-but-older Link decided. "I should get those again when I'm old enough."
"Thanks," his other self said, grinning. "But remember to remind Impa to use ice."
The shorter Link winced at the memory. "Ouch, yeah,"
More silence. It wasn't awkward, not really. It was just that neither of them knew what to say to themself.
"...So, since you're my future," the taller Link started, "what do I get into?"
His counterpart frowned. "Can I even tell you without risking a temporal collapse? We're already pushing things enough as is by meeting."
"Oh, right. Uhhh... general details?"
"...Probably can't hurt," the shorter Link decided. "We briefly get cursed, but we get over it. We spend a lot of time playing with masks, and we learn that Mask Salesmen are far creepier than we gave them credit for. We develop a severe aversion to moons, especially if they have faces on them-"
"I'm sorry, what?" the other Link interrupted, looking extremely confused. "Moons? With faces?"
His other self shuddered. "Trust me, you want to stay as far away from that thing as physically possible."
"...Is this one of those things that'll make sense when I get there?"
"Probably."
All three goddesses breathed sighs of relief.
"Oh, that could have gone so much worse," Nayru sighed, slumping. "I have a big enough migraine as it is from the voids in the universe, I do not need a paradox on top of everything else.
"Well, it's already a paradox," Farore pointed out tiredly. "It just happens to be self-sustaining."
"The best kind of paradox," Nayru replied.
Farore let out a puff of air, then launched back to her feet and said, "I'll be right back. I want to check in on my boys again; I think my painted Aspect is about to meet himself."
She was gone before either of her sisters could respond.
"I don't think I've ever seen her so busy," Din commented.
Link dearly wished that the storm would let up, because he could only take so much stress. He decided right then and there that immersion therapy was not his chosen method of getting over a phobia. Although, he had to admit that, after a while, there was only so much paranoia he could feel before everything started to go a bit numb.
...That probably wasn't a good thing, now that he thought about it.
The copse of palm trees above him had proven to be spectacularly useless as far as shelter went, and chose that exact moment to once again prove why as they dumped a veritable bucketload of water on Link's head. Tropical foliage, Link decided, was ridiculously flimsy. The fronds above him could barely hold their own weight, much less water weight.
The wind didn't help much either.
So, put very, very simply, Link was absolutely soaked and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, aside from perhaps resigning himself to his fate.
Naturally though, as soon as he'd decided to do just that, his fate decided to play a joke on him.
High above the wind came a rolling, trilling tune that made Link blink and tap at his ears to make sure they were still working. Music in the middle of a storm? Who would be stupid enough to bring an instrument out in this weather?
The song built up to a crescendo, and as it did the clouds abruptly stopped pouring rain and in fact just ceased to exist altogether. Link spent a brief moment gaping at what was clearly not normal cloud behavior before the sun broke out and proceeded to blind him, as he'd unfortunately been looking right at it when it did. He rubbed his eyes and furiously blinked the dark spots out of his vision.
Then he blinked again, because now instead of dark spots he was seeing a small red boat with a face, and a somewhat smaller boy wearing a very familiar green tunic.
"...What?" he breathed, thoroughly and utterly confused.
The boy steered the small boat up to the island and anchored it on the sandbar – giving the large black void a wide berth and apprehensive look as he did – then hopped out of the vessel and splashed his way to shore.
"Hi," he said, wringing out the hat hanging from his head and sending Link a friendly grin. "My name's Link. Can I ask you something?"
Upon hearing this, Link's brain decided that it needed a break from all the insanity and just gave up on trying, which left Link gaping like a fish and rather unable to do anything else. The new boy raised an eyebrow in concern.
"Uh... okay, I'll just be quick then. Have you by any chance seen a giant squid? I need to destroy it to save a pirate princess and a whale god." Then he blinked, and muttered, "That made a lot more sense in my head."
Link processed all this vaguely due to the fact that most of his attention was on the boy's face. While his hair was almost bleach-blond instead of auburn and his face was a bit rounder due to being younger, the kid looked almost exactly like Link himself.
"Hey, um, are you okay?" the boy asked, waving a hand in front of Link's face. "You look like you've seen... a..."
He paused, and from the way his eyes widened, Link could tell that he'd just noticed the freakish similarities as well. Both boys stared at each other for a moment, utterly silent.
The new boy reached out and gingerly poked Link's hat, then made a complete circle and pursed his mouth in utter confusion.
"...Okay, who are you, and why have you got my fashion sense?"
Notes:
Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking when I decided to try writing eighteen main characters at once. Still, moving right along.
Linguistic Translations
Firetongue
RRRHAaarrRRKKH (idiot)
Labrynnian
Yūvūtōneegirh-Ai teah (I hate everything)
Thanks to MillyTheDragon, ashlee1068, SansThePacifist, BoaHancock1, Guest #31, Guest #32, Guest #33, Guest #34, and Guest #35 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 10: Storytime
Summary:
This is the part with ALL the origin stories.
Notes:
I do not, nor will I ever, own Sonic the Werehog.
(Okay seriously, where is this coming from? That's supposed to say the Legend of Zelda! I didn't even play Unleashed!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"Okay," Farore said, looking slightly frazzled. "The group of seven is portal-hopping, the multilingual Aspect is in Labrynna, the time-traveling Aspect is getting along with himself fairly well, and the painted Aspect just met up with the sailing Aspect. Have I missed anything?"
"Don't think so," Din replied, counting up the tally on her fingers. "You doing alright?"
"It's just a lot to keep track of," Farore sighed. "It's times like these that I dearly wish we were omniscient."
"If we were omniscient," Nayru said, "we'd likely be one of those stuffed-up elder gods who just sits and watches everything and never intervenes at all."
Farore grimaced. "Yeah, I much prefer being able to do something."
"Speaking of which," Din gestured to the reality window. "You might want to check in on the group again, they're on the move."
"Thanks," Farore breathed, rushing over. "Can you do me a big favor and keep an eye on the others? Let me know if the multilingual Aspect wakes up from his nap."
"Sure thing. I can check in with the sailing and painted ones too, a sleeping Aspect won't do much for a bit."
"And I'll keep an eye on our time-traveling duo," Nayru volunteered.
Farore smiled. "Girls, I don't know what I'd do without you. Now," she flexed her fingers, "let's get to it. We've still got a lot of work to do."
It was a strange thing, Dusk decided, to throw oneself through a black reality-eating void and have reasonable expectations to not be eaten in doing so. Probably, if it weren't for the fact that he was a Hero and had a vast amount of practice in stuffing his common sense down a hole in order to confront some ridiculously intimidating monster, he would have had more problems with this whole situation.
However, since he was a Hero and did have a vast amount of experience in stuffing his common sense down a hole, he followed his newly-met counterparts through the rift without issue.
Of course, when he popped out the other side and promptly tripped over the pile-up of other Links, he had a bit more of an issue.
"...Ow," he decided.
"Oh, like you've got problems," Blue snarled from somewhere underneath him. "Vio, get off my leg!"
"I only fell on your leg because you tripped me!" Vio shot back hotly. "If you weren't sprawled all over the floor right as I came out, we wouldn't be in this situation!"
"Well I only fell because Steam tripped me!"
"Oi, don't bring me into this," Steam grumbled from somewhere farther below. "You're all heavy enough as it is..."
"Speak for yourself," Realm wheezed, sounding as though he was on the very bottom.
"Blue, how can you complain about your leg when Realm has a bigger problem?" Vio demanded.
"Because I can't feel it, that's how!"
"I can't breathe," Realm gasped.
"Could whoever has their foot in my face please move it?" Red asked plaintively from... somewhere.
"Sorry Red, but I can't move my foot until I can feel it, and that won't happen until Vio gets off it!"
"Okay, could someone move!?" Steam snapped. "Who's on top?"
"Me," Dusk replied. "Hang on a minute, I'll get off."
"Thank you," Realm managed, sounding strained.
"VIO!"
"I can't get off you until Green gets off me!" Vio shouted. "Would you calm down already?"
"BOTH OF YOU, SHUT IT!" Green bellowed. "You're not helping anything! Blue, shut up and be patient, Vio, shut up and help me untangle our weapons."
"See Blue, I told you there was a reason-"
"VIO!"
"Right, sorry."
Dusk stooped down to where Red was sandwiched between Blue and Steam and asked, "Are you sure this is normal?"
"Yep," Red nodded happily.
Anything Dusk would have responded with was interrupted by a metallic clatter as Green and Vio got their equipment separated, followed by a rustling of fabric and a relieved gasp from Blue as his leg suddenly received circulation again.
"Owww, pins and needles," he announced.
"Sorry," Vio muttered.
"I mean, it's not like I lost the leg, but this is the second time! This really doesn't need to become a thing."
"It's not like I aim for you, it just happens."
"Well, maybe next time you can aim away."
"In midair?" Vio gave his sibling a skeptical look. "That's physically impossible."
"For you, maybe."
"It's impossible for everybody!"
"Have you ever tried?"
"That doesn't make any-"
"Seriously guys?" Green interrupted. "Seriously?"
Dusk tilted his head. "...he has his work cut out for him, doesn't he?"
"He always does a good job, though," Red replied, grinning. He slid off the pile and tugged his tunic back into place, and turned around to give Steam a hand up while Dusk reached down to Realm.
"You okay?"
Realm took a deep breath in and grinned. "Yeah, just slightly oxygen-deprived for a minute. Weird feeling, that. I don't feel it very often."
"What, you've never been out of breath before?"
"No, I have," Realm assured him. "It just doesn't happen very often."
Dusk gave him an odd look. "Er... were all your battles just really stationary...?"
"Oh, gosh no," Realm snickered. "I ran for my life for hours."
"Then how...?"
"Don't ask," Steam cut in. "Trust me on this. You don't wanna know."
"People can't run for hours," Dusk said blankly.
Steam seemed to shudder at a memory. "You don't wanna know."
"I'm not that bad, am I?" Realm asked.
Steam ignored him entirely, shuddered again, and walked off to the Four Sword Links instead. Dusk met Realm's confused gaze and just shrugged.
"I'm pretty sure I've missed something, so I'm just gonna go with it."
He turned around to find the rest of the group-
-and came face-to-face with the rather terrifying image of a ticked-off Midna.
"AND WHERE EXACTLY HAVE YOU BEEN?" She yelled into his face. "I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU FOR HOURS! HOURS! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW BORED I'VE BEEN?"
"Oh no" Dusk said, realizing that a bored Midna was even more dangerous. "Please tell me you didn't do something incredibly dangerous and stupid that will most likely end with me running for my life. Again."
"What kind of answer is that!?" Midna shot back, thankfully at a lower volume this time. "Of course I did! Who do you take me for, Shad? But that doesn't answer my question. So, Link, where have you been?"
"Uhh..." Dusk was just now realizing that he had no idea, and he glanced at Realm in the hopes that he would know. Unfortunately, Realm was staring at Midna and looking as though he'd just been slapped in the face with a fish. Dusk knew this look all too well; it was the default expression for anybody who'd just met Midna for the first time. He grimaced – Realm would be out of commission for at least four more minutes.
"I think it was Hyrule?" he offered eventually.
"You think it was Hyrule," Midna repeated dryly. "Well that's specific. Anything else you'd like to vaguely inform me about?"
"I met some people," Dusk said. "Want me to introduce you?"
"Is this kid one of them?" Midna asked, examining the still shell-shocked Realm curiously. "He looks kinda familiar."
She frowned at him, then flicked her eyes back to Dusk. Then back to Realm. Then back to Dusk, longer this time.
"Link," she said evenly. "Why does this kid look like you?"
"Well-"
"Why is there a floating dalmatian with a helmet?" Blue said abruptly.
"What did you just call-"
"Midna," Dusk said hurriedly, "this is Link. Over there is also Link, the guy next to him is also Link, and then we have Link, Link, and the boy behind them all who's also Link."
Midna paused, gave all of them an intense scrutiny, and then stared at her partner for a minute.
A cricket chirped awkwardly.
"...This is revenge for me throwing you through, isn't it?" she asked eventually.
"Added bonus, actually," Dusk replied, smirking.
"This probably should have occurred to me sooner," the older-but-younger Hero of Time said, "but how in Nayru's Name did you get here?"
His counterpart frowned. "I'm... not quite sure. Everything was moving very fast."
"Okay, but... do you have any ideas?"
"I think there was something black?" the other Link offered. "I was on my way to confront the thing that was trying to end the world and there was this tunnel, but everything sorta blurred once I got in there and then there was a black thing and then I was here. Which is why I thought you were a doppelganger rip-off, actually."
"When you say 'something black'," the taller Link said, "would that thing over there fit the description?"
Both Links turned and eyeballed the middlingly large, utterly black void that was happily eating away at Hyrule Field as they watched.
"...That's pretty close, yeah," the shorter Link agreed. "Think I can get back through? I was kinda in the middle of saving a country."
"Do you think you can?" his counterpart wondered. "I mean, it kind of looks like it's devouring reality."
As if to prove his point, a Cucco pecked at the edge of the hole and promptly ceased to exist.
"...Maybe not," the younger-but-older Link decided, looking queasy. "But I have to do something, the world was about to end!"
"The world was what?"
"Oh, uh – spoilers."
"You can't just say something like that and not expect me to notice!" his other self snapped. "I have to save the world again?"
"Stop talking before you cause another paradox!"
"That was a one-time thing!"
"A one-time thing which would have ripped the fabric of reality in half if it hadn't turned out to be a stable loop," the shorter Link retorted. "The Song of Storms technically shouldn't even exist because it was technically never written and don't even get me started on the temporal mechanics of how that works but we were lucky and that's all there is to it. I am not going to risk another reality collapse like that, got it?"
Older-but-younger Link stared at younger-but-older Link.
"...When did I become such a stick-in-the-mud?"
"How was I ever this immature?"
"I am not immature!"
"You're nine."
"What does that have to do with being immature!? Would people really leave the fate of the world to an immature nine-year-old!?"
"Apparently," the shorter Link muttered. "Though I don't know what they were thinking. I must have been a nightmare to work with."
"I am not a – actually, Impa would probably agree with you..."
Link snorted. "To be fair, Impa thinks everybody is a nightmare to work with. She likes her partners to be efficient to an impossible degree."
"That's true, but you'll remember that we kinda broke into the Castle and made the guards she trained look like idiots."
"If people are going to be stupid enough to only look one way in thirty second intervals, I'm going to take advantage of it," the smaller Link said. Then he added, "Remember that experience for when you meet Deku Scrubs, by the way."
"I assume that'll make sense once I get there?"
"Pretty much."
"That's really annoying," the taller Link informed his counterpart.
"It's either that or the paradox," the other Link replied.
Older-but-younger Link let out an irritated huff. "On second thought, you're annoying, which is why everything you say annoys me. Annoyance by proxy."
"Hey, a lot of what you say annoys me too," Younger-but-older Link retorted. "And for the record-"
He stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide as a thought occurred to him.
"I just realized – you're me and I'm you. We just insulted ourselves and then agreed on it."
The other Link blinked, then grimaced. "Okay, wow. I just gave myself a headache trying to think through that one."
"...Do you mean that you you gave you a headache, or I you gave you a headache?"
"You just made it worse!"
The future Link paused, then grinned mischievously. "Okay, but is that you you making it worse or I you making it worse?"
His counterpart just groaned.
"So, let me get this straight," Midna began, having processed the abnormal amount of her partner in a surprisingly short amount of time. "There's seven of you scattered throughout various dimensions or what-have-you?"
"Theoretically, there could be an infinite amount of Links in the universe," Vio said. "But yes, we currently know of seven."
Midna gave them all an appraising stare. "Mm-hmm. So, do all of you turn into wolves, have an utterly gorgeous partner, and have to deal with an insane wackjob from another world, or is that just my Link here?"
"Gorgeous?" Dusk sputtered.
"Wait, insane wackjob?" Realm repeated, confused.
"Another world?" Steam added, equally confused.
"Who turns into a wolf!?" Blue yelped.
Dusk gave Midna a Look, which held the unspoken message of, 'This is why I don't let you do the talking anymore', then sighed and said, "I do."
Everyone gaped at him.
"You do what!?"
"I turn into a wolf," Dusk repeated, shrinking awkwardly under the incredulous looks. "It's a bit of a long story, but, uh, there was a curse, and I kinda got pulled into it. And now I turn into a wolf."
"Only really when I want you to, though," Midna added.
"That's only because you could actually hold the thing," Dusk retorted. "And it is most certainly not 'your' decision, it's mine."
"Except for the times when it is my decision," Midna yawned. "Want me to decide now?"
"You can't," Dusk said, smirking. "I'm holding it, remember? Thanks for figuring out a solution to that problem, by the way."
"I knew I was going to regret that," Midna muttered. "Good thing I can still do this, then."
She jerked her fingers in a sharp slashing motion and the pouch underneath Dusk's tunic flew into her palm, where she bounced it playfully and eyed her partner in a pointed manner. Dusk made a futile grab for the pouch, then settled for narrowing his eyes and growling at her – literally, much to the surprise of everyone else.
"Well, dang," Steam commented.
"I think we owe your counterparts a little show and tell, Link," Midna said, tossing the pouch up and down in her hand. "What do you think?"
"I think you enjoy freaking people out way too much," Dusk muttered, but held out his hand in a resigned manner. Midna flashed her fanged smirk and upended the contents of the pouch, an orange-and-black stone that was carved into an intricate, almost tribal shape, into his palm. Upon contact the crystal immediately sunk into Dusk's skin and a smoky-gray shroud raced up his arm and over his torso in a matter of seconds.
The actual change didn't hurt; not anymore. In the beginning, sure. Heck, the very first time Dusk had been transformed, he'd passed out because of the pain. But over time the sensation had dulled to the point where it now just felt a bit like his entire body had filled with pins-and-needles for a brief moment. Which was good, in Dusk's opinion, because wolf physiology was almost nothing like hylian physiology, and he would rather not be able to feel his spine moving into its new configuration, thank you very much. Given what he could be feeling, pins-and-needles were a welcomed sensation.
As the last wisps of the shadow magic settled in, Dusk shook himself and glanced up to find six pairs of eyes staring at him in identical startled interest.
"Well, dang," Steam repeated. "You're a wolf. You're an actual, literal wolf. I did not see this coming."
"You're fuzzy!" Red enthused.
"He's not feral, is he?" Vio asked Midna, who rolled her eyes.
"Of course not, you idiot. He's still Link, he's just got more fur now." To prove her point, she then dropped onto Dusk's back with all her weight, earning a heavy exhale and an annoyed look from her partner but no other form of retaliation.
"Okay, yeah, that's him," Vio smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."
"You're fuzzy," Red repeated with a beaming grin. "Can I pet you?"
Midna turned her head to gauge her partner's response. In general, she didn't treat him like an actual wolf because he wasn't, and because doing so would be highly demeaning – although she made an exception for ear scratches. Normally this meant that things like petting – activities normally bestowed upon pets – weren't part of their normal interactions.
But after a few seconds of contemplation, Dusk nodded his head and rumbled, "Just be gentle please."
Red's grin got even wider and he all but buried his fingers in the fur of Dusk's neck. "Ooh, you're really soft," he complimented. "I see why you like to sit there, Midna."
"He's not a bad ride, all things considered," Midna replied, and yawned. "Little bumpy sometimes, but not bad."
"I only jolt you because you drop on me," Dusk muttered, forgetting that nobody could understand him.
"Can I feel?" Blue asked curiously, reaching out a hand and joining Red at Dusk's neck. "Oh wow, that is soft. Is this what your Hylian hair feels like?"
That was a good question, Dusk realized. Then he realized that he had no idea whatsoever, and shrugged as best he could to communicate it in lieu of words.
"Let me feel," Steam said, and ran his hand along Dusk's back, where he was quickly joined by Vio, Green, and Realm while Midna took up her usual seat in midair. Everyone spent a few minutes petting the slightly bewildered-at-how-he-got-in-this-situation wolf, although they were all careful to avoid Dusk's face. Everyone understood that there were some lines they just shouldn't cross at the moment and did their best to avoid them.
"Alright lookalikes, break it up," Midna said after a few more moments. "He needs room to change back, you know."
"Right sorry," Green apologized. "Just... I think I can speak for everyone when I say I've never seen anybody do that before."
The other five Links nodded in earnest agreement.
"Fair point," Midna mused, drifting down to Dusk's head level. She placed her hand on his forehead and made a grabbing motion, then pulled out the orange-and-black curse like she had it on strings.
Changing back felt exactly the same as changing; the only real difference was that the process happened in reverse. That, and Dusk didn't shake himself once the process was over with – he just shifted his weight a little and rolled his shoulders back slightly. It was basically his way of quickly familiarizing himself with whichever body he was in before getting down to business.
"It's not that big a deal," he said, taking back the pouch and its contents from Midna and stringing it around his neck again. "I'm sure one of you's done something equally impressive, right?"
"That might depend on what you did," Realm replied. "I, for one, am extremely curious."
Dusk blinked, then exchanged a glance with Midna. "It's more your story than it is mine," he said. "May I?"
"They are you," Midna reminded him. "Go right ahead, little wolf. In fact, I'll help you out just to make sure you don't mess up anything."
Dusk just sighed. "Alright then... basically, everything started when a group of monsters attacked my home village and kidnapped all the children as part of a country-wide hostile takeover by a race from another dimension who were trying to turn Hyrule into a second version of their home by covering the land in a substance called Twilight. I got pulled into the Twilight while chasing after the bulblins who kidnapped my adoptive brother and because Hylians can't actually exist in Twilight, per se, I got turned into a wolf as opposed to the normal result which is turning into a spirit."
"That's when he met me," Midna put in. "I saw him get pulled in and transformed and I followed him until he was thrown into the Castle dungeons, which was where I introduced myself and helped him escape."
"Your definition of 'escape' did not match very closely with mine," Dusk said dryly. "You know I've still got that cuff clanking around on my foreleg?"
"Details," Midna waved a hand idly. "Anyways, I told him what was happening-"
"Barely," Dusk added.
"-and recruited him to help me fix it."
"You blackmailed me with Colin and Ilia," Dusk corrected bluntly. "And then you dropped me off outside the Twilight as a wolf and left me to deal with my village thinking I was a monster and attacking me every time I took a wrong step."
"Good times," Midna sighed.
"...Is there a point to this?" Vio asked.
"Don't interrupt and there might be," Midna retorted.
After it had become clear that the banjos weren't working, the villains had switched to an even more annoying instrument – and Demise had legitimately not known that was possible.
It wasn't that bagpipes couldn't be epic. Everyone knew that a professional bagpipe player could riff like nobody's business. The problem lay in the fact that none of the villains actually knew how to play bagpipes, and only a select few of them actually had the lung capacity to blow hard enough to keep the bag inflated to keep the sound going. Of the five villains who actually made it that far – the three Ganondorfs, Onox, and Malladus – all of them had far too much muscle mass to control the airflow with the delicacy required, and thus made horrible squawking noises that rivaled a Cucco horde on a rampage.
Mixed in with the overly loud screeching was the feeble (and badly out-of-tune) blats from Veran, both the Vaatis, most of the Ganons (with the exception of Lorule Ganon, who had smashed his in a fury sometime earlier and was now making an earsplitting screech instead), and Zant. And rounding out the abysmal orchestra was Bellum, who instead of blowing air was apparently squirting ink through his bagpipe instead, and Majora, who hadn't even bothered playing its bagpipe and had simply set the whole contraption on fire and cackled madly while doing so.
Demise hadn't thought anything could have sounded worse than a group of people who didn't know how to play banjos.
He'd been so very, horribly wrong.
"STOP THAT INFERNAL NOISE THIS INSTANT!" Demise bellowed vainly for the thirteenth time. And for the thirteenth time, absolutely no one paid attention to him.
"I will eradicate you from all existence," he threatened, in an effort to be regarded with the respect he deserved.
You already did, fool, Majora said scathingly, pausing in its maniacal laughter for the moment. Why do you think we're stuck in your pitifully small mind in the first place?
"Well, this time I will be successful," Demise snarled.
Majora made a snorting noise. I doubt that. Then it went back to laughing maniacally, which grated on Demise's mental eardrums – when he could hear it over the rest of the bagpipes, anyway.
"Would someone at least take away Bellum's bagpipe," Demise growled irritably. "He sounds worse than all the rest of you put together."
Bellum's 'playing' suddenly cut off to be replaced by infuriated bubbling, until Malladus interrupted him with, No, that's a good thing! Play louder, you annoy him the most!
"DO NOT TOUCH THAT INSTRUMENT AGAIN OR SO HELP ME I WILL TIE ALL YOUR TENTACLES INTO GORDIAN KNOTS!" Demise roared.
Bellum bubbled something.
No idea, Malladus replied. I think it's supposed to be a threat. I wouldn't take it very seriously.
"On the contrary, I really think you should," Demise spat.
How? You can't touch us and we took out your mental defenses ages ago. You really should've picked something less edible than poultry.
"In my defense, I have never gotten close enough to know they tasted good," Demise muttered. "And I did not think you would be foolhardy enough to test the theory."
Well we did, and the Cuccos were delicious. The point is, there's nothing you can do to stop us. Bellum, use all the ink you've got!
Bellum bubbled enthusiastically. Then his bagpipe produced a sound that was somehow both squishy and screechy at the same time, and Demise shuddered.
Demise had never before regretted his actions. Heck, as a general rule, he didn't do 'regret' at all.
But he knew, without a doubt, that he regretted not killing the imbeciles inside his head when he'd had the chance.
"-and then we kicked Zant's fake-royal behind into next week," Midna said smugly. "It was immensely enjoyable."
"And by that, she means that she sat back while I did most of the work," Dusk added neutrally. "After that we went back and made a plan to take down the barrier around Hyrule Castle, until it turned out we didn't need it because, for some reason, Ganondorf was gone and there was this weird black hole in his place."
"Wonder what that means," Midna interrupted dryly, giving all the Links a look.
"So we investigated, Midna threw me in, and you all know the rest from there," Dusk finished. "Any questions?"
"Just one, yeah, how are you still sane?" Steam sputtered.
Dusk blinked. "Er... I just am?"
"If it helps," Midna added, "I made sure he kept his sanity. I didn't pay as much attention to his mind though, so I'm pretty sure he lost that somewhere..."
"Probably in the Lakebed Temple," Dusk agreed ruefully. "That's about where I just stopped caring altogether."
"...Okay, that's a bit more believable, but still," Steam complained. "I thought I had some wacky junk to deal with. You've got about three times as much."
"Oh?" Dusk replied in an interested tone. "What did you do? I don't think I ever actually got to hear... something about trains, whatever those are?"
"Trains are machines," Steam explained. "You know what a machine is, right?"
Dusk nodded.
"Okay, so they're basically big metal machines designed to carry a lot of people over a lot of distance. The Hyrule where I come from is kinda built around them – from a societal standpoint, I mean."
"Makes sense," Vio commented.
"So, I was in training to be an engineer, which is the person who controls the train. I'd just passed my exam so I went to the Castle to receive my Certificate from the Princess. That went fine, although I kinda rubbed the wrong way on this little toad-looking advisor with two hats." Steam paused to shudder for a moment. "Nasty dude. I'll come back to him later. Anyways, Princess Zelda used my Certificate Ceremony to sneak me a message in order to hire me to drive her to the Tower of Spirits because she had a suspicion that something was wrong with the Spirit Tracks, and she was right because once we got there it turned out that there was a demon breaking loose and a conspiracy behind Zelda's back and then there was a lot of magic thrown around and the next thing we know, Zelda's body's been jacked by the demon, everyone thinks the demon is actually Zelda, and the real Zelda is floating around as an incorporeal spirit and for some reason only I could see her-"
"Whoa, whoa, hold up there," Green interrupted. "Can you, like, rewind to the Tower of Spirits, explain what that is, and then go from there? Because that's about where you lost me to confusion."
Steam flushed. "Ah. Sorry."
"Can I get a quick check-in?" Farore called to her sisters.
"The Hero of Time hasn't caused a paradoxical meltdown yet and won't for the foreseeable future," Nayru replied.
"Your painted Aspect and the sailing one are still getting over their surprise," Din said. "And the multilingual one who fell asleep in Labrynna might be waking up."
There was a bright green flash and Farore was suddenly right there next to Din. "Switch me," she demanded. "I need to influence this."
"Sure," Din yawned, sliding out of the way. "Whatever you've been watching can't be more boring than staring at a sleeping guy."
Link yawned, immediately regretted it because now he had sand in his mouth, and groaned irritably as he sat up and spat a couple times to get the grittiness out. He grimaced, then opened his mouth and scraped a finger across his tongue just to make sure he'd gotten all of it out. Sand – particularly Labrynnian sand – tasted awful.
Link spat one last time, just to be absolutely positive, then got his feet underneath him and launched upright like a rabbit, thoroughly startling the seagull that had been eyeing his head as a prospective perch which resulted in a lot of alarmed squawking. Link, being himself, promptly squawked back.
The next few minutes would have been vastly confusing to any outside onlookers, if they had existed, because the sight of a boy having what appeared to be a shouting match with a bird was not something one saw every day.
Link eventually stopped squawking because the bird was winning whatever perceived argument was going on and moved on to surveying his surroundings instead. He was still on the beach, which was good because that was where he'd fallen asleep, and if he'd woken up somewhere else that would have been weird. It was a fairly standard beach; sand, absurdly salty water, the works. A few dozen feet up the shore, the sand met a dark green forest-type landscape which Link knew he would not enjoy slogging through in the next few minutes.
The shore wind chose that moment to kick up and blew Link's rather substantial ginger bangs into his face, which he pushed out of the way absently. He glanced up at the sky; judging by the light quality, it was still morning. Good, he had plenty of time to be bored out of his skull as he walked all the immensely long way back to Hyrule.
May as well get started now.
He trudged up the beach to the edge of the trees and paused to shake the sand out of his clothes. Then he did a double check on his items just to make sure nothing had washed away while he was asleep.
Nothing had. This was a good sign, Link decided, and capitalized on it by closing his bag and marching into the woods with a determined gait and an equally determined look on his face.
It would take him all week to hike his way back to Hyrule, and that was only if he got lucky. The sooner he got started, the sooner he could get it over with.
...But Goddesses he was going to be so very bored in the meantime.
"Alright, he's going in the right direction," Farore sighed. "Thank Me that he's self-sufficient most of the time. We can let him do his thing for now, he shouldn't get to where he needs to be for a while yet."
"His scheduled arrival time is approximately six days and ten hours from now," Nayru supplied helpfully.
"That's what I said, a while yet," Farore agreed. "Are the others still talking among themselves?"
"Yep," Din said, popping the 'p'. "It's only marginally less boring than staring at a sleeping guy. And by that I mean I'm basically the same amount of bored as I was beforehand."
"Then move and let me watch," Farore said, giving her sister a shoulder bump and a playful grin. "You can go help Nayru watch the other two."
"They've moved onto slowly poking one another," Nayru put in brightly.
"I'm not sure that's a much more interesting alternative," Din muttered.
"-so that all ended up leading into a massive Train battle between Malladus and I, which was really unfair because he had laser cannons and I didn't," Steam complained. "But at that point this whole void-in-the-world thing kicked in and I'm pretty sure it ate my villain, because the Demon Train crashed into a cliffside and that kinda put a damper on the whole 'fight' thing."
"Makes sense," Green nodded.
"After that, Zelda got her body back and went back to the Castle to deal with the mess Malladus caused while I stuck around to see if I could do anything with the hole. Then those four dummies fell out of it," he gestured to Green, Red, Vio, and Blue, "and we all freaked out a bit, but once we got over it we ended up hopping through the hole and ended up falling on top of Realm here and then we all freaked out again. And then Dusk fell on Realm, and you all know the rest."
"I wonder, since we're all Link, if we would have been able to see Zelda as well," Vio said thoughtfully. "Or perhaps you just have a special sight, of some sort?"
Steam shrugged. "Dunno. I wasn't the only one who could see Zelda's spirit, but aside from me they were all either wise and elderly, part of a magically-gifted race, or both, so... make of that what you want? And I never got to ask about the other stuff that I see because the timing just… never quite worked out."
"I have an idea," Midna said, which made Dusk grimace and take two steps out of the blast zone. "Oh, I haven't even done anything yet," his partner scolded. "You're being rude, little wolf."
"Ninety percent of your ideas end with something exploding," Dusk replied bluntly.
"That is blatantly untrue. Things only explode eighty percent of the time," Midna replied. "And for your information, this one is in that much-more-boring twenty percent, so keep your fur on."
"'Little wolf'?" Blue asked, amused. Dusk gave him a Look.
"Do you want to make something of it?"
Blue opened his mouth, abruptly remembered that Dusk could be a lot more terrifying if he needed to be, and opted for the much safer answer of, "Not really. It's just kind of amusing, is all. I wouldn't have pegged the word 'little' as being part of your nickname." Especially given that his wolf form was anything but.
Midna cleared her throat in annoyance. " If we're all done?" she said archly, then turned to Steam and continued, “What other stuff do you see?”
“Well, er,” Steam said, and then he seemed to look at something above Midna. “I wasn’t sure if this was polite to mention, but now that you’ve asked… why is there a very tall and very intimidating woman copying your every move?”
Midna paused. “Describe her.”
“Uh, very tall,” Steam repeated. “Orange hair, I think it’s pinned up? And there’s a hooded robe. She’s got… the same, I think, skin patterns? As you do, and she literally does the exact same thing you do at the exact same time that you do it, even words. Oh, and she’s sort of see-through. It’s like she’s a shell around you.”
Midna, for the first time that Dusk could ever remember, was visibly at a loss for words. Steam waited for her to respond for a few moments, got progressively more nervous when no response came, then glanced at Dusk and blurted, “Also he’s got his wolf markings overlaid on his face but I’m less sure if that’s a me-thing or not.”
“No, that’s still a you-thing,” Realm confirmed. “Clear skin on my end.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“...Special sight it is,” Midna muttered. She shook her head sharply and slapped her palms together, fixing a grin back into place. "Congratulations, all that jazz. Moving on!" She pointed imperiously at Realm and commanded, "You next, brownie."
Realm blinked. "Uhh... okay...?"
"Get started," Midna urged. "The sooner you get to talking is the sooner we can get this whole introductory garbage over with."
Behind her, Dusk made an embarrassed and apologetic smile, accompanied by a neutral shrug which basically communicated, 'Might as well'.
Realm blinked again, then just went with it. "Well, it started because I got lost-"
Blue promptly broke down in hysterical giggles.
"I'm not that bad," Realm said, annoyed. "And I'll have you know that it only took me six days after that until I figured out where I was."
This only made Blue laugh harder.
"Ignore him," Vio sighed.
Realm rolled his eyes. "Sure thing. So anyways, I was lost somewhere in... Hyrule, and I ended up walking into the middle of an ambush that some monsters were springing on this old woman. I really couldn't just let that happen, so I beat off the monsters and rescued her. It turned out that she was the nursemaid of the Royal Family, that the Royal Family had just been attacked by a demon pig, and she was looking for somebody to help rescue the Princess. I ended up volunteering."
"And you said you've been at this for two years now?" Green checked.
Realm turned a bit red. "Not for lack of trying!"
"It's fine," Dusk soothed. "So what happened after that?"
Realm turned a bit more red. "Well... I got lost. And I'm not entirely sure I ever figured out where I was." He blinked as something occurred to him, then said, "Come to think of it, where are we right now?"
"We moved out of Hyrule Castle to avoid making a scene, remember?" Dusk informed him.
"No."
"Well that's understandable," Blue said. "I think the author executed a line break right about then to look in on some other characters."
Everyone stared at him blankly.
"...That made no sense," Midna told him.
"Not to you, maybe," Blue said, shrugging. "But it makes perfect sense to the readers and those are the only people who really – OW!"
Vio retracted the hand he'd just used to clock Blue over the head and glared at his brother. "You aren't supposed to show that you know about that sort of stuff! You're going to break the walls!"
"Okay, geez," Blue muttered, rubbing his head. "You didn't have to hit so hard..."
"Next time it'll be a flying tackle," Vio warned.
"Ooh, I'll help!" Red chirped.
"What's going on?" Realm asked, utterly confused.
"Nothing important, Blue's just being stupid," Green assured him. "Please continue."
Realm blinked. "Okay... um, anyways, I stayed lost and ended up stumbling into a dungeon where I got chased by the two-headed dragon for about two-and-a-half hours. That got me lost again for about... two weeks, and then I fell down a hole and ended up in a different dungeon. That was where I lost my first shield to Like-Likes... and now that I think about it, that was also where I lost shields two-through-fifteen."
"Is that shield sixteen then?" Dusk asked, nodding towards the one on Realm's back.
Realm frowned in thought. "No, this is shield eighty-three... I think. I kinda lost track during the Like-Like horde that lasted for two weeks back a couple months ago, so..." he shrugged.
Dusk stared at him. "...I'm not sure I'm going to believe the rest of your story."
Realm shrugged again. "Sometimes, neither do I. Where was I?"
"Shields two-through-fifteen," Red supplied helpfully.
"Oh yeah. So I actually made it through that dungeon eventually, then got lost again and ended up back in the dungeon with the two-headed dragon, which resulted in another two-and-a-half hour chase, which got me lost again. That lasted for about a week until I accidentally walked onto a beach that belonged to a tribe of Zora. They didn't take that very well so I spent about three days running and hiding from them until I hid inside a tree and ended up inside a different dungeon in the process-"
"The Zora I know are friendly," Dusk interrupted, frowning.
"Lucky you," Realm replied with a sigh. "So, do they only chase you once a month or something?"
Dusk stared at him. "No... they don't chase me at all. I'm on good terms with them."
Realm stared right back. "Now that's just weird."
"I'm not entirely sure that you're the best judge of what's weird."
Link poked Link one last time, then stood back and just stared for a bit.
Link stared back.
They both stared for a while.
The Link who'd pulled up on a red boat blinked a couple times, then said, "Okay seriously, why do you look so much like me?"
The Link who'd walked through what he'd thought was a Lorule Gate swallowed heavily and booted his brain back into gear. "I... I don't know."
"Weird," the Link with the boat decided. "Hey, what's your name?"
"...Don't freak out?"
"Why would I freak out?"
"Because my name is Link too?"
Boat Link paused. "...Okay, that's a pretty good reason."
Gate Link shrugged nervously. "Just, when you introduced yourself, my brain kinda broke, so... I dunno, I thought maybe fair warning would help?"
"Not really," Boat Link admitted, eyes still wide in surprise.
"Oh. Sorry."
They stared at each other again.
"Question," Boat Link said after a moment. "I've been to just about every island in the ocean and I've met pretty much everybody who lives on them. I've never met you before. How, exactly, did you get here?"
"Well... uh..." Gate Link ran a hand through his bangs, as he wasn't entirely sure himself. "I think I came through that hole over there, but I don't really know how that happened, to be honest."
Boat Link turned and surveyed the hole.
"Er... how?"
"Well, I was trying to use a Lorule Gate, but I guess I mixed up which type of portal I was actually going through and-"
"Hang on, 'Lorule Gate'?" Boat Link interrupted, furrowing his brow. "What's that?"
"...You've never heard of Lorule?"
"Well, no."
"Okay, what about the people turning into paintings? You had to have heard the rumors about that, right?"
Boat Link raised his eyebrows. "People turning into what?"
Gate Link was getting mildly annoyed. "Okay, seriously? What about Princess Zelda getting kidnapped by Yuga? Hyrule Castle being taken over by Paint-Guards? The weird smoky cracks in the walls that came out of nowhere one day? Is any of this ringing a bell?"
"...No," Boat Link said slowly. "Because Princess Zelda got kidnapped by Bellum, not 'Yuga', Hyrule Castle is at the bottom of the ocean, and, again, I've been to every island in the ocean and there are no 'weird smoky cracks' in any walls, anywhere."
Gate Link gaped at him. "WHAT!?"
"I could say the exact same thing to you," Boat Link muttered. "Seriously though, paintings? That's a thing that happens?"
"Forget about that, let's revisit the fact that Hyrule Castle is underwater!" Gate Link sputtered. "How did that happen!? When did that happen!?"
"...A couple centuries ago...?"
Gate Link stared, utterly flabbergasted.
"...How did that happen?" he repeated weakly.
"You know what, I'm gonna start over," Boat Link said, "because clearly all we're accomplishing here is more confusion. Hi, my name is Link, and I'm the Hero of Wind and the current Wind Waker. Nice to meet you."
"...Yeah," Gate Link managed. "...Okay. Um. I'm Link, the New Hero of Hyrule. I don't really have a second title."
"Nice to meet you," Boat Link said again. "Now that we've got the official introductions done, should I explain why Hyrule is about three-thousand feet below the surface?"
"Yes please," Gate Link said fervently."
"-then I got lost again and ended up in another dungeon instead," Realm said, "and then I got chased by the four-headed dragon because it turned out that he lived there. That lasted for about an hour and a half, until I literally tripped over the place where the Magical Sword was. So I switched out my weapons but got lost again and ended up in the middle of basically all of Ganon's minions and a large black hole. The minions all ended up running, but the hole seemed important so I made a concentrated effort to stick around, and then those five there fell on me." He shrugged, and said, "and that's about it."
"Two hundred and twenty six," Blue said.
"What?"
"That's how many times you remembered getting lost," Blue informed him. "I counted."
Realm considered that. "...You should probably add an extra fifty or so for all the times I forgot about."
"That's just ridiculous," Steam said, shaking his head in disbelief. "How does that even happen?"
Realm frowned. "I have no idea. I start walking and then I just end up places. You would not believe the amount of islands I've ended up on even though I can't actually swim."
"That's impossible," Vio said bluntly.
Realm just shrugged.
"I like him," Midna said to Dusk. "He's amusing."
"Glad to hear it," Dusk replied in a mildly confused tone, as he wasn't entirely sure why she was sharing this with him.
"I have a question," Red said, raising his hand. "Is it our turn now?"
Blue grunted. "What makes you think it's 'our turn'?"
"Because everyone's told their story but us," Red said. "So it's our turn now, right?"
"Knock yourself out blondie," Midna said.
Red tilted his head. "But that would hurt..."
"Figure of speech, Red," Vio informed him.
"Oh."
"I'll just get us started then," Green decided hastily. "Originally, we were one boy named Link-"
"Wait, what!?" Realm sputtered. "How!?"
"I'll get to that," Green told him. "So we were one boy named Link living in Castle Town and we were good friends with Princess Zelda-"
"-probably the only friend she had, now that I think about it," Vio suddenly said, picking up Green's sentence like it'd been his instead and giving the listening group a bit of whiplash trying to follow the speaker. "But anyways, she'd always been pretty sensitive to things like spiritual imbalance and one day-"
"-she sensed that something was wrong with the Four Sword," Blue abruptly put in, completely taking over the explanation while Vio settled back like he'd never been talking. "So she gathered the Spiritual Maidens-"
"-they're the ones who help keep Hyrule safe, because of their magical abilities-" Green took over quickly.
"-and took them and us into the Four Sword Shrine to check on the seal," Blue picked the explanation back up as though Green hadn't interrupted at all. "The only problem was that the whole thing turned out to be a trap-"
"-and Zelda and the Maidens got captured!" Red wailed, taking over from Blue without seemingly any communication between them. "So we had to do something about it and the only thing we could think of-"
"Was drawing the Four Sword," Vio said, smoothly taking the explanation again. "Now the Four Sword is called that for a reason, and you've probably already guessed what it did-"
"-and this is the result," Green spread his arms to gesture at himself and his three brothers. "The only problem was that-"
"-drawing the Four Sword broke the seal and released Vaati," Blue growled. "And he basically went out and made Hyrule a big fat mess, which of course-"
"-we had to fix because it was kinda our fault that he was released," Red said sheepishly. "So after we got ourselves sorted out-"
"-and stopped panicking," Green addded ruefully. "We set off to the nearest-"
"Okay, could you stop that!?" Steam demanded. "Pick a speaker and stick to it! Trying to follow you guys is giving me a headache!"
The four colored Links exchanged confused glances.
"Er... doing what, exactly?" Blue asked
"You're, like, picking up each other's sentences like you know what each other is going to say and it's seriously messing with me!"
The colored Links exchanged another round of looks. "I didn't think we did that," Vio mused.
"We'll try to tone it down," Green said hesitantly. "But we might slip up a bit-"
"-or a lot," Blue added.
"Guys no, we just said we wouldn't do that!" Red scolded.
"Farore," Nayru said gently. "I think you ought to rest."
"Not now," Farore said, not looking up from her reality window. "There so much I need to monitor and so much that could go wrong if I don't. We can't chance anything right now."
"Alternatively," Nayru countered, "You could let Din and I take the reigns because nothing is happening or going to happen for a while and there's not a lot you can do if you're too tired to notice something's wrong."
"I will notice when something's wrong," Farore insisted, still not looking up. Nayru raised an eyebrow that her sister didn't see.
"So, you've been aware that Din swapped your necklace for a fishhook and some string half an hour ago and just haven't done anything about it, then?"
"What?" Farore said, looking down. "DIN!"
"Took you long enough!" the goddess called back. "Your jewelry's tied around your ponytail, if you want it."
Nayru smiled in a satisfied fashion as Farore fixed her accessories. "So, about that rest."
"Yes, fine, I'll take a break," Farore agreed irately. "But you come and get me the minute anything goes wrong, got it?"
"Absolutely," Nayru said. "Now rest."
"I'm going, I'm going..."
"-so we climbed the mountain to Vaati's Palace without a lot of trouble, because it turned out that there wasn't actually anyone at the top-" Green explained, then nodded to Red as a signal to continue the narrative. Attempting to stop picking up each other's sentences had turned out to be really hard to do, so in order to spare their audience the confusion the four Links had moved to visually cueing who would take the sentence next instead. It helped... mostly.
"-and so we all split up to look for Princess Zelda, because she was still up there somewhere," Red chirped, taking the cue effortlessly. "But then Green got stuck in a tree and everything revolved around trees for a while-" he tapped Vio on the shoulder to pass the sentence on.
"-not terribly long, but enough to slow us down," Vio agreed. "But after we fixed that and regrouped, we went and found Zelda at the mountain's peak and escorted her back down the mountain. Then we spent a while in the Castle Library-" he gave Blue a gentle nudge in his ribcage and Blue took over the explanation without even pausing.
"-because there was this big black hole where Vaati had used to be," he continued. "That was boring and lasted longer than it needed to, but eventually we climbed the mountain again and tried to apply Vio's research to the hole."
He poked Green's arm as his cue and Green said, "None of it worked. Then we kinda found out completely by accident that we could travel through the thing and fell into Steam's Hyrule, and... you know the rest."
"The end," Red finished brightly.
There was a moment of silence as the listeners all took a moment to piece together the explanation they'd just been given.
"That," Steam said eventually, "was like listening to a conversation run through a blender."
Realm frowned. "What's a blender?"
"It's a machine, it mutilates food. Usually on purpose."
"...That doesn't explain it to me."
"Whose fault is that?"
"...Yours."
"Well," Midna interrupted pointedly, "this was... mediocre. Moving on to something much more interesting, what are you all going to do now?"
"Well, I would assume that we're going to keep hopping through the dimensions or whatever these are until we find what the problem is," Vio theorized. "Why?"
Midna yawned. "No real reason. I just wanted to make sure you were all okay with me bodily chucking you through." Before anyone could really respond to that, Midna flexed her hair and snatched all seven of them into the gigantic fist protruding from the top of her helmet. Blue yelled in surprise, Steam flinched, the other four just stared blankly as they registered things, and Dusk let out an annoyed groan.
"Seriously, again?" he asked.
"You should thank me," Midna sniffed. "I'm cutting your stall time by eighty percent, I'll have you know."
She snapped her fingers and they all briefly vanished to reappear once again inside Hyrule Castle's main hall, where the hole had grown large enough to swallow both the throne and the dais that the throne had sat upon, then arched her hair-hand and launched her cargo through the hole all within the span of about five seconds. This was done on purpose, so that she could have the last word in. Midna loved getting the last word in.
"Pardon my intrusion," Princess Zelda said suddenly, having been inside the hall at the moment. "But did you just throw Link and six doppelgangers through the hole? Again?"
"They're saving the world," Midna explained. "I was cutting their stall time."
Zelda considered that, then decided that it made enough sense for her to accept it. "As long as Link comes back at some point. We still need to do damage control on all those bridges Zant collapsed." She paused, and gave Midna an appraising look. "Speaking of which, I'm officially drafting you onto the Repair Crew."
"Excuse me?" Midna said. "Why on earth is that a good idea?"
"Because you can lift things thousands of pounds heavier than yourself and I'll pay you in opportunities to humiliate the Castle Town nobility," Zelda informed her.
"...I'm listening."
Notes:
And in other news, I somehow continue to find a way to spend six-thousand words or more on the interactions of a bunch of green dorks. I may have a problem.
Minor Content Edit on 7/29/25
Thanks to Guest #36, Shukaku, Guest #37, Guest #38, Velracxx, and Guest #38 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 11: The One With a Boat
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of Wind?
Notes:
I do not, nor will I ever, own Shadow the Hedgehog.
(Okay, seriously? I didn't play that one either! Not to mention that it made no sense whatsoever and it's that game's fault that I can never decide if Shadow's a clone or not – wait, that's not the point. The point is, that's not my disclaimer!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"...and that's why I was out on the ocean in the first place, which led to me finding you," Boat Link finished, coming to the end of a very long and complicated explanation of the history of his Hyrule and his life in general, since the two were intertwined rather impressively. "Does that answer your questions?"
"I think it just made more, actually," Gate Link admitted. "Because that's not how my version of history goes, like at all. I'm not sure if we had a Hero of Time or not because up until a couple centuries ago we basically had a... dark age, I guess? It's only been fairly recently that we've gotten ourselves up and running again, and as far as I'm aware the only past Hero we have is the Hero of Legend."
Boat Link frowned in confusion. "Er... who?"
"The Hero of Legend. You know, the guy who saved Hyrule and a couple surrounding countries? Singlehandedly responsible for the peaceful relations between Labrynna, Holodrum, and us? Ringing any bells?"
"No," Boat Link admitted. "But I'm pretty sure it's all underwater anyways."
Gate Link wilted. "Right... so, just to clarify, I'm in a Hyrule that's clearly not mine with no idea how I got here and no idea how to get home." He let out a sharp breath and ran a hand through his bangs. "This day could not get any stranger."
"I doubt that," Boat Link observed. "It's been my experience that things can always get stranger regardless of whether it should be possible or not. For example, my talking boat turned out to be the King of a country that stopped existing a couple centuries ago. I'm still not sure how he managed that, much less how he figured out how to live well past his life expectancy. Although he did end up being a ghost, so..."
"On that topic," Gate Link interrupted. "Well, not actually that topic but something else you said. You mentioned something about controlling the weather?"
"Oh yeah," Boat Link said, and pulled out a silvery, ornate baton in his left hand. "This is the Wind Waker. It's got some sort of magic that lets me direct the... well, wind."
"Sweet," Gate Link said, impressed. "Can I get a demonstration?"
Boat Link shrugged, then waved the item in an up-left-right pattern, which somehow caused peals of bells to ring out from absolutely nowhere, making Gate Link jump while his counterpart snickered at his reaction.
"No, I don't know where it comes from," Boat Link said preemptively (Gate Link had been opening his mouth in confusion) and pointed the Wind Waker decisively to the left. A sudden blast of air shot past the two boys in blatant defiance of the previous wind direction and turned the whole weather pattern around in a matter of seconds. Gate Link stared up at the clouds in surprise and watched as they scurried in the opposite direction from moments ago, and clamped a hand on his hat to keep it in place in the new breeze.
"That's really something," he commented. "How does it work?"
"Magic," Boat Link shrugged. "I never got a more specific explanation than that. Needless to say, my life got really weird afterwards."
"I hear that," Gate Link sighed. "I've spent the last few months hopping between my world and a mirror reflection of my world where all the people have counterparts with exactly the same face. You'd think that somebody might have discovered there's an alternate Hyrule before me, but nope. I got to find out when we got invaded and turned into watercolors."
"You mentioned that before," Boat Link remembered. "You said that people got transformed into paintings?"
"...It'll probably be quicker just to show you," Gate Link decided, and promptly fused with the trunk of the tree he was standing next to. Boat Link raised both his eyebrows in surprise.
"...I did not see that coming," he admitted, and leaned in close for a better look. When Gate Link blinked and waved at him, he jumped back again and stared. "You can move?"
Gate Link nodded, then glanced around as if checking something and popped off the tree with a bright flash. "Wasn't entirely sure that would work, but I guess wood is as good a canvas as anything," he mused.
"Does it hurt?"
"No – well, kinda. At first, yeah. I'm pretty sure it was originally a curse, but mine got... modified?"
Boat Link grinned. "You have no idea, do you?"
"Look, it hurt the first time, less the second time, and now not at all," Gate Link retorted. "That's about as specific as I can get. But I am pretty positive about the curse bit."
"That's unfortunate."
"Eh, I got over it. Helped that the thing comes in handy so often."
Boat Link tilted his head. "So, how much do you use it, then?"
"It's the only way I can get to Lorule," Gate Link explained. "So... couple dozen times a day?"
"And there's no side effects whatsoever?" Boat Link asked. "I mean, when you were on that tree you looked a bit... malformed."
Gate Link frowned. "How so?"
"You were doing this weird thing with your arms," Boat Link held his hands out, trying to demonstrate and failing because he just couldn't contort himself that way. "Like, your arms were sideways, but your body wasn't?"
Gate Link's eyebrows furrowed, and he attempted to mimic what Boat Link was doing. He failed miserably. "Okay, ow," he said, trying to twist himself into position. "This seems physically impossible. Are you sure that's what I was doing?"
"Pretty sure, yeah," Boat Link grunted.
Both boys spent a minute more on their efforts, then unanimously decided that it wasn't doable and eased out of their positions, wincing.
"Now I'm a bit freaked out," Gate Link decided. "Apparently I'm breaking the laws of anatomy and physics."
"What I'd like to know is how you're doing it," Boat Link said thoughtfully. "Theoretically, I'm pretty sure your spine should not be able to twist like that."
"I... don't know," Gate Link said. "How am I doing that?"
Unnoticed above their heads, a wall began to crack ever so slightly.
"Code Four!" Nayru screeched. "They're questioning the Nintendo Logic!"
"Distract them!" Din ordered. "Drop a squid on them or something!"
"Let's go with 'something', okay?" Farore said quickly, eyes narrowing in concentration.
Two dimensions over, a hole was suddenly rerouted from where it would have led (and a certain multilingual Link on the other end) and instead dropped the seven Heroes currently using it as a portal on a sandbar in the ocean. On the beach of the island, Boat and Gate Link jumped in surprise and immediately forgot what they had been talking about in favor of the much more confusing presence of the boys who were now spitting saltwater from their mouths and looking extremely bewildered.
Above the island, a wall with a crack in it fixed itself and vanished, leaving three Goddesses very relieved and the Heroes none the wiser.
"...The heck?" Gate Link said knowledgeably. Boat Link just blinked and tilted his head, eyebrows expressing his confusion. They were experiencing just a bit of deja vu, because the seven boys on the sandbar bore an awful lot of resemblances to the two of them, and said resemblances weren't just limited to the tunic and the floppy hat.
"Alright, roll call," one of the taller boys on the sandbar announced. "Does everybody know how to swim?"
"No," said the only brunet in the group, which earned him incredulous looks from the other six.
A smaller boy who wore all blue let out a disbelieving snort. "Okay, seriously? You've literally ended up on, and I quote, 'the only island in the lake' over a dozen times based off your story, How did you get there if you can't swim?"
"I have no idea."
"...Holy Din you're serious."
"Can we discuss this when we're not in the middle of the ocean?" another boy broke in. "We can just give Realm a tow or something, right? Somebody's got to have a rope."
"I've got it," the teen who'd called roll said, and promptly took out said rope to tie around the brunet boy's waist.
"Is this normal for your ocean?" Gate Link asked his counterpart quietly. "Random clones of you just showing up out of nowhere?"
"Not usually," Boat Link replied. "This is a first."
By this point the teen who couldn't swim had been pulled to shore by the ones who could, and the whole group was wringing out their respective hats and looking at their new surroundings.
"Farore, it is really warm," one of the boys said, squinting up at the sun.
"We do appear to be in a tropical environment," a smaller boy dressed in purple noted. "Places like this are known for hot climates."
The tallest one glanced around and shrugged. "I've felt hotter," he said. "Then again, I was inside a volcano at the time, so perhaps I'm not the best judge."
"Why were you inside a volcano?"
"Fused Shadow piece, remember? I spent a good half hour telling you guys about it."
"I was more questioning your sanity than your reasoning," the boy wearing blue muttered.
At this point, Boat Link decided he ought to introduce himself and his counterpart. Plus, he had an important question. So he cleared his throat and said, "This may sound like a stupid question, but have any of you seen a giant multi-eyeballed squid?"
Unfortunately, Boat Link had not taken into account the fact that none of the newcomers had actually noticed his presence yet, and his unexpected voice caused nearly all of them to flinch. In one case, however, a boy in red jumped an entire six inches into the air, came down farther left than he meant to, and landed more-or-less on top of the boy in purple. This knocked him off-balance and caused him to fall on top of the boy wearing blue, who staggered and promptly went down on top of one of the smaller boys in green. Then that boy flailed for balance, accidentally hit the brunet in the face, and they both ended up on the ground – the only difference was that the brunet was still tied to the tall teenager with the rope and ended up pulling him down too, right on top of the seventh and final boy who let out a startled expletive that almost managed to drown out the angry ranting of the boy in blue, who apparently had his leg trapped under the boy in purple and was not happy about it.
"...Oh dear," Boat Link said. Gate Link flicked him in the forehead.
"Congratulations, you've single-handedly caused the fall of the green-hatted empire," he said dryly. "Maybe next time you should let people know you're there before you ask them random questions."
"It's not a random question, it's a perfectly valid one," Boat Link argued, somewhat forgetting about the pile-up in front of him. "I need to find the giant squid so I can kick his tentacles so I can save a pirate princess and a whale god."
"Do you even hear how ridiculous that sounds?"
"Well, you're just going to have to take it up with reality, because I promise you that's what needs to happen," Boat Link sighed. "Except that I've been having a really hard time finding the squid, which is why I've been asking around. Which reminds me," he said, turning to the pile of green-clothed boys in front of him, "you guys haven't answered my question. Has anyone seen a giant squid? I need to-"
"Does it look like we'd be able to see a giant squid!?" someone snarled – from the sound of things, it was the boy in blue. "Who even asks about squid? Who even cares!?"
"Uh... I think we do," the boy in red at the top of the pile offered.
"That was fast," the brunet commented.
"Great, they can keep caring because I don't," the blue boy growled. "Vio, get off my leg."
"This wasn't my idea, you know!"
"Doesn't mean you can't fix it!"
"Oh for crying out loud," one of the smaller boys in green moaned. "Blue, Vio, this is not the time! There are more people in this pile than just the two of you and I would appreciate it if you'd think of the rest of us for a change! Now shut up and act like the civilized people I know you can be so we can all stand up."
"And greet the two new Links," the teenager near the bottom added.
"That too," the small boy agreed. "Okay?"
Amidst much grumbling, the boy in blue and the boy in purple – wait, were they named for their clothing or did they color-code themselves according to their name? Who even named their kid 'Blue' anyway? – got themselves untangled within a few short seconds, and it only took a few more before the whole group was on their feet again and sizing up the two newest Heroes.
"Seriously, is no one going to answer my question?" Boat Link asked.
"No, we have not seen a giant squid," recited a different boy in green. "We haven't seen any regular-sized squid either. Heck, we haven't seen any squid period." He paused, then added, "Although I'm not sure I actually know what a squid even is. Is it mechanical?"
"No," Boat Link said.
"Then I've got no idea. Sorry."
"We haven't seen a squid," the brunet teen clarified. "Would your name be Link, by any chance?"
"Both of us, actually," Boat Link said, indicating Gate Link next to him with a hand wave. "Why?"
"So are we," the tall teen answered with a slight, apologetic smile that wordlessly expressed sympathies for any following confusion.
Gate and Boat Link stared silently for a moment.
"...Huh," Gate Link said. "Wasn't expecting that. Does this mean we're gonna have to talk over the history differences again?"
"You're taking this better than I expected," the brunet boy observed. "I was expecting something more along the lines of confused gibbering or a blatant refusal to acknowledge our existence."
"We kinda did that already," Gate Link informed him.
The brunet teen blinked. "That is really convenient, we should try to make that happen more often. Anyways, I'm Link, you knew that already, but to avoid confusion we've given each other nicknames. Mine's Realm, nice to meet you."
"Same..."
"Over there is Dusk," Realm continued, pointing to the tall teen. "The short blond one is Steam, and the quadruplets over there are Red, Vio, Blue, and Green – yes, they're dressed by color, and no I won't tell you which is which because it really should be obvious."
"We're not quadruplets," Vio sighed. "We're-"
"I know what you are, but if I try and explain that now we're gonna be here for hours," Realm said. "Let me drop one bombshell at a time, okay?"
"That does make sense," Vio conceded.
"Anyways, that's us," Realm said, turning back to Boat and Gate Link. "The Heroes of Hyrule, Twilight, Trains, and Light, respectively. Your turn."
The two boys exchanged glances; then Boat Link shrugged and made a submitting motion in order to let Gate Link go first.
"Uh, well, I'm Link," he said somewhat awkwardly, "the New Hero of Hyrule... and I don't have a nickname."
"New Hero of Hyrule?" Realm repeated. "Why is your title a direct copy of mine with the word 'new' in front of it?"
Gate Link shrugged helplessly. "Search me. Now why, exactly, am I introducing myself if we're all named Link and we all know it?"
"Because you need a nickname," Red informed him, "and I need to know how to give it to you. Now clearly I can't use your title because that would be repetitive and unoriginal, so! Did you do anything weird or special during your Hero-ing?"
Boat Link poked Gate Link in the arm and pointed at the bracelet on his wrist, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. Gate Link stared pointedly back, then said, "You don't say. I totally wasn't going to mention that. It's completely normal."
"So sarcastic," Boat Link grinned.
"Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer," Gate Link replied, grinning back. Then he looked back at Red and said, "I can turn into a painting at will."
"Cool," Red breathed. Behind him, the other six Links exchanged surprised looks. "Vio, give me every art-related word you can think of!"
"How about just the ones you've heard of," Vio said amusedly. "Draw, sketch, render, trace, outline, illustrate, paint-"
"Sketch!" Red interrupted triumphantly. "Thanks, Vio!"
"No problem."
"'Sketch'?" Gate Link repeated. "That's my nickname?"
"Well, I also liked 'Trace'," Red chirped. "But 'Sketch' just flowed better. What do you think?" He pinned Gate Link with wide eyes and an earnest expression, which made him look remarkably like an adorable puppy. Link internally cursed his weakness of adorable puppies.
...He actually did like the name, though. He just didn't like feeling as though he'd been coerced into it.
"I think it works," Sketch said, and was promptly glomped by an excited Red. "Try not to strangle me-!"
Red abruptly released him and turned his adorable puppy expression on Boat Link, who had been watching the whole thing with supreme amusement. He was forcefully reminded of his younger sister, who was a certified master of the precious kitten expression, and sighed good-naturedly.
"Link, Hero of Wind," he said. "I assume I'll be called 'Breeze' or something?"
"Unless you want to use 'Wind'," Red replied. "Nobody wants to use their Hero title as their nickname for some reason..."
"I like my title," Wind said. "I'm fine with using it."
"Yay!" Wind was immediately glomped. "Welcome to the group, you guys!"
"Sorry, what?" Sketch said. "Why is there a group, how are we suddenly a part of it, and what is even going on? Someone explain to me how you all came out of that hole because everything that touches it vanishes from existence and I still need to get back home and literally none of this makes any sense right now."
"This feels familiar," Dusk murmured. "Alright. As it was explained to me, a large amount of holes have opened up in the fabric of reality because of a yet-to-be determined reason. Everything that touches them gets obliterated, except, for some reason, us. It turns out that there are multiple Hyrules, versions of Hyrule, or many different time periods of Hyrule that have had a Hero save the world and that's who we all are. We appear to have been recruited, of sorts, to find the problem with the universe and fix it, and we've concluded this because we all have something sacred or given to us by deities that provides protection when we jump through the holes, which for us act as portals between one Hyrule and the next." He paused for breath, then asked, "Did I miss anything?"
"No, you were quite thorough," Vio said. "Nice job."
"Thanks. And that's the gist of things, anyways," Dusk said to Wind and Sketch. "We've also been running into more versions of ourselves the more Hyrules we go through trying to find the source, so we all started tagging along, and... well, that's how I ended up here, anyways. Somewhere along the line it became a given that any new Links we find just end up coming with."
Sketch blinked, then threw up his hands in exasperation. "Are you kidding me? I'm not even done saving the world in my Hyrule, now I've got to save the universe too!?"
"Looks that way," Wind said. "At least I got a proper warning this time. I'm in."
"'This time'?" Green repeated.
"Yeah, well, the first adventure I went on started off as me trying to save my sister, but somewhere along the line it turned into saving all of Hyrule and I'm still not quite sure how that escalated so fast. I'm just glad to know what I'm getting into for once."
Aside from Sketch, who had heard all this beforehand, everyone stared for a moment.
"...Mind elaborating on that a bit?" Steam said eventually.
"Do we have time?" Wind asked, glancing at the hole which was now happily eating away at the actual sandbar rather than the water above the sandbar.
"Hard to say," Vio said. "But I would rather save the world with somebody I know rather than somebody I don't."
"Good point," Wind said, and sat down on the sand to get started, as he had a substantial amount of adventure before this and telling it all out loud was going to take a while. "So I got started on my thirteenth birthday, when a dragon-sized bird kidnapped my sister."
"WHAT!?"
"Is she okay!?"
"She's fine, I rescued her," Wind said, amused. He waited until everyone relaxed again, then continued, "Anyways, I ended up more-or-less bullying my way onto a pirate ship where I eventually convinced the captain to follow the bird to rescue my sister because it turned out that the only reason the bird was here in the first place was because the pirates were and it was after their captain. It mistook my sister for her, so... it sorta made sense."
"Wait," Blue said. "The captain of the pirate ship was a girl?"
"Yes," Wind said. "Her name's Tetra. Don't underestimate her. She can be properly terrifying when she wants to be."
"How?"
"She shot me out of a catapult," Wind said matter-of-factly. "Anyways, after I finagled my way onto their ship we sailed to this place called the Forsaken Fortress – which was where I got shot from the catapult, by the way. That turned into an experience of it's own which ended with me getting the crap kicked out of me by this green-skinned ginger dude in a silk robe. He actually turned out to be the Big Bad, but I'll get to that later."
"Would his name be Ganondorf, by any chance?" Dusk asked.
"Uh, yeah. How'd you...?"
"I've got my own version," Dusk said. "Continue, sorry to interrupt."
"Right. I ended up getting flung across the ocean and I'm not really sure how far, but I woke up in a talking red boat who introduced himself as the King of Red Lions and agreed to help me get my sister back. So that meant I had to find a sail, which took a while because I had to go on this complicated fetch-quest to get the thing, but I did find one eventually. That's why the King gave me the Wind Waker, so I could use the wind to steer."
"Wind Waker?" Steam repeated.
"I'll just demonstrate," Wind decided, and pulled out the silvery baton.
Sketch clamped his hands over his hat in preparation.
"So... what do I call you?" the older-but-younger Hero of Time asked his younger-but-older counterpart. "We literally share every single name I can think of."
"Hey, if you want Fairy Boy, I am perfectly fine with letting you have it," the shorter Link said.
"Okay, if anyone passes for a 'Fairy Boy' right now, it's you."
"What, just because I'm shorter? I'll have you know that I've got at least a foot of height on you in maturity levels."
"Could've fooled me."
"Oh for – we're not doing this again," the shorter Link groaned. "Let's just pick new names that we haven't been given by somebody else, okay?"
"Sure," his counterpart shrugged. "But, won't my nickname also be your previous nickname?"
"Din I hate time travel," the older Link grumbled. "Let's deal with that when it comes, okay? In the meantime, do you have anything that can distinguish you from me?"
"You're the older one," the younger Link pointed out. "Everything I've got, you have stashed away somewhere. If anybody's going to have something that the other doesn't, it'll be you."
"Point," his counterpart conceded. "Okay, let me think... have you got a Lens of Truth?"
"Yes."
"Darn. Umm... oh. Do you have any masks?"
"Just the ones I sell for the Mask Salesman."
The shorter Link shivered briefly, for no reason that his counterpart could readily think of. "Right, but we didn't use any of them?"
"Well, no, but why does that matter?"
"That's what I've got that you don't," the older Link said. "Masks."
"Should I call you Mask, then?"
"I can live with that," Mask agreed. "As long as you don't call me Majora."
"Who?"
"Er... nobody really important. Got any ideas for your name?"
Link frowned and marked down the name 'Majora' to ask about later, but accepted the topic change without complaint. "Well... no."
"If you ask me, 'Ocarina' doesn't sound too bad," Mask offered. "And technically, you know..."
"Yeah yeah," Link said. "But I don't know if I want to be named after what's probably the most sacred instrument in the country. Isn't that sacrilege or something?"
Mask shrugged. "Beats me. But if there's anybody who can get away with that type of thing, it's probably the Hero who saved the world, yeah?"
Link was silent for a moment. "...You've loosened up our morals quite a bit, haven't you?"
"More fun that way," Mask said. "So, are you Ocarina or should we keep brainstorming? 'Cause I've got a few more we can try out. 'King Zora' for example, flows pretty well."
"We were never engaged!" Link sputtered.
"Ruto thinks otherwise," Mask singsonged.
"I'll take Ocarina, thanks" the very flustered teen muttered.
"That's settled, then," Mask said decisively. "So... now what?"
"I have no idea," Ocarina admitted. "Under normal circumstances I would say, 'Let's put you back in your time to avoid a paradox', but that's not really an option..."
"We could try the Temple of Time," Mask suggested. "I'm only from the future, not an alternate dimension or whatever, so maybe it can put me back?"
"Worth a shot," Ocarina agreed. "You remember the way?"
"Do I remember the way," Mask snorted as he started walking. "I only spent the better part of seven years running in and out of that thing every time I needed a time switch."
"That's not how it works!" Ocarina protested.
"Details. Point is, I know how to get there, so you don't need to come if you don't want to."
"Actually, I was heading in this direction anyways," Ocarina said. "I'm actually on my way to confront Ganondorf once and for all."
Mask paused. "...oh, I'm really interfering with history here, aren't I?"
Ocarina shrugged, looking unsure. "Dunno. Maybe, just... don't help me fight the guy and we'll be good?"
"Yeah, I'll just cheer from the sidelines," Mask snorted. "You'll be fighting for your life and suddenly you'll hear, 'You can do it, Past Me! I know because I was there!'"
They both broke down into snickers.
"...Actually, would you mind?" Mask asked after a moment. "I think it'd be fun."
"You're the one worried about paradoxes, you tell me."
"It should be fine... I think," Mask decided. "Besides, the worst that could happen is a blatant breaking of the space-time continuum and to be perfectly honest I'm pretty sure that's the reason I'm here right now. Therefore, all the consequences to worry about have already taken place and thus we have nothing to stress over."
"I'm not entirely sure that's how it works..."
"Hey, when you can make sense of the Ocarina of Time's manual, you let me know. Until then, I'm sticking with this explanation."
"Oh what, you've managed to figure it out?"
"Heck no, are you kidding? That thing's got more contradictions and complications then the list of steps you need to follow to bake a Cucco without getting killed. I stopped trying after page three."
"I got to page five."
"You did not, I would remember that!"
"...so now I've been just sailing around looking for Bellum because he wasn't where he was supposed to be and I still had the King around to use. He's still a perfectly functional boat even though he's not really alive anymore, so it wasn't much of a hassle. Then I met Sketch here and we freaked a bit and eventually got around to introducing ourselves, and then you guys showed up." Wind shrugged. "And that's about it, really."
"Okay, how old are you?" Steam asked.
"I turned fourteen last month. Why?"
"You stabbed a man in the head."
"Yes, but in my defense he'd tried to kill me at least six times beforehand."
"You buried your sword in his face," Steam enunciated. "How are you not, like... suffering from mental trauma or whatever?"
Wind tilted his head. "Well... at that point, he'd sent the Helmaroc King to kidnap my sister, blocked up all the Great Fairy Fountains, put curses on at least two different islands to prevent anyone from accessing specific items that could help defeat him, set a monster on the Great Valoo, tried to kill me, tried to kill Tetra, ended up forcing Tetra into hiding so he wouldn't be able to get her Triforce, was the whole reason the original Hyrule had to be sunk in the first place, was the whole reason the Royal Family had turned into pirates, stole power from the Master Sword to ensure that it couldn't be used against him again, killed the original Sages of Earth and Wind, caused the Triforce of Courage to break into pieces so I had to go search them out, tried to kill me again, almost succeeded, stole mine and Tetra's Triforce pieces, and almost caused total world domination by wishing on them. I was sorta just fed up with him by then." His eyes hardened, and he added, "Also, he hurt my sister. Nobody hurts my sister."
"Duly noted," Steam muttered.
"I tend to look at it this way. If I hadn't done it, who would?"
"Logical," Vio agreed.
"Anyways, that's me in a nutshell," Wind finished. "Sketch, I think it's your turn?"
"This day has taken a bizarre turn of events," Sketch said idly. "Okay, so everything really kicked off on the day I went to deliver the Guard Captain's new sword. I was an apprentice blacksmith at the time, so I usually ended up being the go-for when I wasn't helping with a job."
"Wait, so you can do metalwork?" Steam asked, eyes gleaming.
"Some," Sketch said. "I was always better at the fancy stuff than the actual functional things, though. Drove my teacher crazy, I could never get a sword-point right."
"If we get the time, you wanna help me make the parts for a fully-functional self-lighting lantern? I've got this idea involving friction and some flint but I have no idea how to work a forge."
"Sounds interesting," Sketch said thoughtfully. "Sure, why not."
"Um, not to be rude," Green said. "But what does this have to do with your story?"
"Oh, my bad," Sketch apologized. "Anyways, I ended up going on what was more-or-less a wild goose chase because the Captain, for some reason, had gone all the way to the Sanctuary on the far side of Hyrule Castle."
"But you said he was the Captain of the Guard," Realm said. "Shouldn't he have been, you know, with the Guard? Doing his job?"
"Yeah, well, he's got a crush on the daughter of the Sanctuary's priest. He does stupid stuff to please her sometimes."
"And to think we trust people like that with the safety of our Princess," Steam muttered.
"Hey, I didn't hire them. The point is, it took me almost an hour to find the man, but when I actually tracked him down I got caught in the middle of an attack that this redheaded dude named Yuga was launching on the Sanctuary. He kidnapped Seres – that's the daughter – because she was photogenic or something and then made it literal by turning her into a painting."
Vio straighted. "That's new."
"He turns into a wolf," Blue snorted, pointing at Dusk who subtly averted his gaze to a nearby palm tree. "Why is artwork more impressive than that?"
"I meant that it's new in that we haven't come across anything like it before," Vio retorted. "Honestly, do you even look for subtext?"
"People should say what they mean," Blue rolled his eyes. "The world would be a lot less complicated that way."
Vio opened his mouth for a comeback, then paused. "...Point," he admitted. "I can agree with you on that."
"Farore," Green said, in shock. "Red, I think the world is ending. Blue and Vio just agreed on something."
"Can I continue now?" Sketch interrupted, looking mildly annoyed.
"Oh! Uh, yeah – sorry."
"Right, so I walked in and saw that, and I was still holding the sword that I was gonna deliver to the Captain, so I made the completely smart decision to attack the scary magic dude head on. It went about as well as you would think. I ended up slamming headfirst into a wall when Yuga turned himself into a painting and I kinda blacked out."
"Ouch," Dusk winced.
"Yeah, not my best moment. After that I woke up back in my house with this guy in a purple rabbit costume standing over me. Turned out he was a traveling merchant of sorts, found me knocked out, and brought me to the first unoccupied house he found, which happened to be mine, ironically. Somehow we ended up making a deal where Ravio – that's his name – would run his business out of my house and let me rent items from him in return. He also gave me this bracelet," Sketch held up his left wrist in display, "as rent, or something like that."
"That is a really musty piece of jewelry," Realm observed.
"Don't knock it," Sketch warned. "This thing saved my life. Basically, I went to Zelda who gave me a pendant and sent me to this sage who lived in some nearby ruins, and he sent me after his smug narcissist of an apprentice who turned out to be Yuga's next victim, and when I tried to charge him again Yuga got annoyed and turned me into a painting too."
"But you're not..."
"Turns out that this bracelet," Sketch tapped it for emphasis, "lets me control Yuga's curse-spell-thingie at will. When I got turned into a painting it activated and pulled me back off the wall. Now, I can basically do it anytime I want, as long as I've got a surface to merge with."
"Can we see?" Red asked eagerly.
"Yeah, sure, can't let Wind steal all the attention," Sketch replied. "Give me a minute to find a good tree."
"Courage Check!" Farore called.
"Mine is still walking," Din replied. "And he's getting very creative with the number of ways he's thought of to curse out the Windfish in thirty words or more."
"...I'm sorry, how is that impressive?" Nayru asked, distracted.
"Well, he's doing all the cursing in Darkling-"
"Ah," Nayru said. "That is impressive. Vulgar, but impressive. I'm sorry I asked."
"Girls," Farore sighed.
"The Heroes of Time still hasn't caused a paradox with himself," Nayru reported. "I think we can relax on that front."
"Question," Din said. "How do we know that, once they're all together, they won't cause a paradox with each other? More than one of them is capable of manipulating time – I mean, suddenly we've got two Ocarinas of Time now, and I'm pretty sure I remember the Hero of Legend has a Harp that can basically do the exact same thing. What happens if they try to see who can do it better?"
There was a soft thump as Nayru's temporal senses considered this, panicked, and promptly knocked their host out in a fit of hysterics. The Goddess of Time slumped to the floor, thoroughly unconscious.
"...You broke her," Farore said in tones of great realization.
"Ah, dangit," Din muttered.
"...and since I'd finally gotten everything I needed to take Yuga down, I tried to head back to Lorule to help Hilda seal him. The only problem is that I apparently used the wrong portal... somehow... and instead of Lorule I ended up on this island after popping out on that sandbar." He nodded towards said sea feature. "Then Wind found me and we both freaked out, and... you know the rest."
"...Does anyone else get the impression that we get into an awful lot of painful and possibly fatal situations considering that most of us haven't even hit sixteen yet?" Steam commented.
"Oh, that's right," Wind remembered. "You guys have stories too, don't you?"
"Oh crap," Blue groaned. "We're going to have to do this every time we meet someone new, aren't we?"
"Right, I'm going first," Steam said quickly. "That way I can take a nap for the remainder."
"...Should have thought of that," Realm muttered as Steam launched into his adventure.
"Walking," Link grumbled, pushing through the Labrynnian undergrowth – which, if he thought about it, really wasn't all that different from Hyrulean undergrowth, but it made him feel more justified for being annoyed at it if it didn't belong to the bush that grew right next to his house. "Who even invented walking? It's tedious and boring and it makes all the self-aware blue-and-winged ride-giving bears unemployed."
He continued walking in silence for a few minutes.
"What's the point of ground?" he said suddenly, even though nobody was around to hear him. "All it does is make people upset that they can't get off it. Which is really odd, considering how much they walk around on the stuff. But no, people can't stand ground. We've got witches who use brooms to get away from it, blue bears that grew wings to get away from it, a kīnfegiar whale that figured out how to fly to get away from it... So why have it?"
Nobody answered him.
"Ossōseegēdd, rōbdeo-Ai ma os," Link sighed, foregoing Hylian altogether for Labrynnian again. He'd already used it to insult the Windfish in a previous sentence, he might as well just convert for the time being.
Then he decided against it. He didn't really have a reason why, he just felt that not speaking Labrynnian for the next six-and-four-thirds hours would be equally boring as just speaking Hylian, and since there was no discernible difference between the two he was fine being bored in his native language. Fewer tenses to remember that way.
"Goddesses, I'm so bored," he groaned, repeating what he'd said in Labrynnian just to make a point to whoever might be listening. There wasn't anyone listening, but if there had been, Link wanted them to have known how bored he was right now. "All there is to do is walk! Walk and talk to myself and think of new ways to make Zelda doubt my common sense."
More silence.
"I should write a book," Link decided suddenly. "I should write a book about my life, exploits, and ability to make an entire country question my sanity in three days or less. Size of country notwithstanding." He tapped his chin. "I could call it, 'All Your Pots Are Belong To Me'. It'd be filled with nothing except an overly detailed and outright contradictory step-by-step instruction manual telling the reader exactly how to properly destroy a ceramic container." He considered this for a moment, then frowned. "On second thought, it might be more confusing if I wrote a perfectly normal autobiography and then acted like nothing was wrong. Few things perplex people more than if the local crazy starts acting sane." He chuckled. "They never believe me when I tell them I am sane... I'm just really, really bored."
This reminded him of his current predicament, and his mood dropped right back down again. "Dangit, I'm so bored..."
Why did walking like an ordinary person have to be so... ordinary?
"...and that's how I met the group, got acquainted, and ended up here," Dusk finished, bringing the rather long and complicated explanation of everyone's backstories to a close. "Anything else you want to know about us?"
"Do you give rides?" Sketch asked.
"No," Dusk said firmly, and thanked the Goddesses that Midna wasn't around to contradict him this time. "Anything sensible?"
"I'm fine," Wind said. "You were all very thorough. And I enjoyed hearing about everyone."
"Good," Dusk said, standing up and brushing sand from his tunic. "Think you're ready to go, then?"
"Are you sure that thing's safe?" Sketch said, eyeing the void with no small amount of trepidation. "I've seen it eat anything that gets close."
"I'm sure. Watch."
Dusk took a few measured steps towards the void, enough that he was standing in the surf, and held up his left hand for the two Links on the beach to see. A Triforce mark was glowing faintly on the back.
"Right, it glows when it's safe," Wind remembered. "You did mention that." He walked up to join the taller Link and looked down at his own hand, which had lit up as he'd gotten closer. "Neat."
"Yeah, cool," Sketch said, from the beach where he hadn't moved. "I'll take your word for it."
"Something wrong?"
"Well, uh... remember what I said, about being a painting and not mixing well with water as a result?"
"Ah," Dusk said, remembering. Sketch had skimmed over that part of the story, as it had obviously been a bad memory, but he'd said enough for the group to know that he and liquids didn't really get along. "Hydrophobia?"
"More or less," Sketch replied.
"Would it help if I gave you a lift?"
Sketch tilted his head. "I thought you just said you didn't do rides?"
Dusk rolled his eyes. "On my shoulders," he clarified. "It's not that deep from here to there, you should be fine if you're up top."
"I..." Sketch paused, stretching out the word. He was grateful for the offer, no doubt. But as a Hero, he didn't like to admit that he needed help – at least, not help like this. There was just something about relying on someone else because he couldn't conquer his own fear that made his pride wilt.
But... the thought of getting wet triggered a far worse reaction than the thought of accepting a ride did. "I'd appreciate that," Sketch said.
To his eternal gratitude, Dusk didn't say anything; merely smiling and kneeling down to help Sketch up. Then, once his passenger was firmly in place, he turned and called down the beach to the rest of the group (who had all been asleep while Dusk finished off the storytelling), "Hey guys! We're leaving!"
There was much yawning and annoyed grumbling as the six other Links rejoined with their companions. But for the most part, everything was going fairly smoothly.
That was, until Realm suddenly turned around, patted at his back, and said, "Not to alarm you guys, but has anyone seen my sword?"
Everyone stared at him.
"...You're kidding, right?" Blue asked.
"Ah, ha," Realm laughed weakly. "No...?"
"Okay," Vio said after a moment. "When do you last remember having your sword?"
"I... have no idea," Realm admitted. "But, um, while we're on this topic, I also seem to have misplaced my shield...?"
"Wait, this is actually a thing?" Sketch exclaimed. "I thought he was joking!"
" Unfortunately not," Dusk said, lowering Sketch off his shoulders and taking a look around the island. "At least we've got a limited area to search in, your stuff can't have gotten far."
"I think you're forgetting," Steam contradicted, "this is the guy who can, apparently, get from a desert to an island within ten minutes and without being able to swim."
Realm smiled apologetically.
"...If we start now, I think we have a decent chance of finding his stuff by midnight," Vio opined.
Notes:
Now we're getting some story traction.
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian
kīnfegiar (a mild Labrynnian intensifier)
Ossōseegēdd, rōbdeo-Ai ma os (Goddesses, I am so bored)
Thanks to Guest #39, notall2gether, TumblrSquirrel, and Guest #40 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 12: The One Who's Multilingual
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of Legend?
Notes:
(The problem here, is that nobody else can get on my account to mess with my chapters. So how the heck does this keep happening?)
I do not, nor will I ever own Knuckles the Echidna.
(And for that matter, why is everything altered to Sonic characters? That doesn't even make sense! I don't even have a story about the Sonic characters!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"You are kidding me," Sketch said blankly. "How in Hyrule did that even get up there?"
Realm just shrugged and began climbing the tree, albeit with some difficulty because it was a palm tree and didn't have any helpful branches on the way up.
"He was on the ground the whole time," Sketch continued in disbelief. "He was asleep on the ground the whole time. How the heck did his sword get lodged in a coconut that's still in the tree?"
"Sometimes it just happens," Realm replied from a few feet above Sketch's head, and hoisted himself up a few more inches.
"HOW!?"
Realm shrugged again. Sketch stared, then pressed his hands over his face.
"I do not have the sanity to deal with this," he groaned.
"You could always do what I do," Wind offered.
"And what's that?"
Wind made to reply, then paused. "...I was going to say that I go sailing because it helps clear my head, but then I remembered why that was a bad idea for you."
"Great," Sketch said through his fingers.
"Can one of you spot me?" Realm called from above. "There's a palm frond in my face and I can't see where I'm reaching anymore."
"Move your hand to the left," Wind advised.
"This is my life now," Sketch told himself, lifting his head out of his hands and shaking it in bewilderment.
"Personally," Dusk said to Sketch quietly, "I just accept the weirdness and go with it. That way when a woman-bird pops out of a pot in the middle of a frozen arctic mountain on the kitchen floor of a Yeti's mansion and offers to let you use her as an item, you can just smile and nod."
Sketch blinked. "...Do I want to know?"
"Probably not," Dusk replied.
"Got it!" Realm announced cheerfully from the treetop, and a few seconds later landed in the sand with a muted thump. He sheathed his weapon in a fluid motion and said, "That went much quicker than usual."
"I don't want to know your usual," Sketch immediately declared.
Realm was entirely unoffended by this and just chuckled. "Suit yourself. Hey, has anyone found my shield yet?"
"Steam saw something shiny in the water," Dusk said, pointing, "so the others went to investigate. I don't know what they're going to find, though..."
"Eh, wouldn't be the weirdest place. Once I had to get my shield out of a Like-Like that was inside a Lynel that was inside a Dragon" Realm replied, and proceeded to march off to join the shield search like he hadn't just said something completely insane.
"...This is going to be an interesting adventure, isn't it?" Wind observed.
"Tell me about it," Sketch agreed.
Ocarina glanced down at Mask.
Mask raised an eyebrow.
Ocarina mirrored him, then cleared his throat and said, "So... you've beaten Ganondorf already?"
"No, I will not tell you his attack patterns," Mask said.
"Oh, come on! It would be a huge help!"
"And mess up our timeline, cause a paradox, and probably melt the universe even faster than it already is," Mask shot back. "If I had to beat up the creep on my own, so do you."
"That is so not fair."
"That's exactly the definition of fair!"
"Doesn't mean I have to like it..." Ocarina muttered.
Mask let out an exasperated sigh. "Look, I'm just trying to stave off the probably inevitable paradox for as long as I can. Can you at least get behind me on that?"
"But if it's inevitable, why bother?"
"Because," Mask said in the tone of voice which told his counterpart that he was keeping a tight reign on his emotions, "paradoxes tend to be world-ending, and I happen to be living in the world that would be ending, and I would personally rather not go through that for the fifty-seventh time in a row!"
"Fifty-seventh time in-"
"Spoilers!" Mask snapped, then rubbed his eyes and let out another sigh. "I just... I already deal with this kind of mess way too much for my liking, can you just trust me on this and not ask me for future knowledge?"
Ocarina was quiet for a minute. "...Yeah. Sure."
"Thank you."
"...But can you just tell me one thing that I should watch out for-"
"Oh for the Love of Nayru!" Mask threw up his hands. "You want spoilers? Fine, here's a spoiler. He's going to try and kill you. Don't let him do that."
Ocarina scowled. "I literally already knew that!"
"Well then, you should have been more specific."
"You are such a jerk."
Mask flashed a smug smile. "Well then, you should start taking notes for your turn."
"I can't believe I grow into you," Ocarina griped.
"And I can't believe I grew out of you, so we're even. Now, don't you have a villain to beat up?"
Ocarina frowned. "We haven't gotten to the Castle yet, though."
Mask raised an eyebrow and pointed to Hyrule Castle, which the two of them had walked up to seconds ago without really noticing. It was gray and dismal-looking, with a lot of yellow clouds doing a swirly-thing around the tallest spires for no readily discernible reason.
"This is a lot less depressing than I remember it being," Mask noted.
"Personally, I think it's pretty bad," Ocarina replied.
"I've seen worse," Mask said. "I've seen a lot worse."
Ocarina briefly wondered exactly what he was in for in his future, then thought about asking, then realized that all he would get in answer was "Spoilers," and just kept quiet. Besides, he was currently standing in front of the stronghold of his greatest enemy and his stomach was doing backflips. He swallowed nervously.
"I know you won't – can't – tell me much," Ocarina said slowly, "but can you at least tell me how much I should brace myself?"
Mask considered that, then sighed.
"A lot," he said. "Brace yourself a lot."
Ocarina nodded, then checked his Adventure Bag to see what he had in the name of healing items. Which meant that he checked his Adventure Bag to see what he had in the name of Red Potion.
He had three, for the interested. Ocarina frowned at them.
"Maybe I should go buy a fourth," he muttered.
"Hey, you'll be fine," Mask said. "The laws of time basically guarantee you win. I'm kinda the physical embodiment of the proof."
"That doesn't exactly make me feel better."
"Want me to be your cheerleader? I' think I can improvise a thing or two."
"Please don't."
"You can do it, Past Me! I know because I was there!" Mask yelled, using his hands to funnel the sound straight into Ocarina's face.
"...You're enjoying this, aren't you." Ocarina accused levelly.
"Wouldn't you?"
Ocarina suddenly found himself torn between agreeing that he would, and holding onto his annoyance for the sheer sake of not giving his older self the satisfaction. It was truly odd just how quickly having his future self hanging around was becoming 'normal' in his mind. Part of him wondered if he ought to be taking notes for when he grew older and did this the second time around. Then he ran that thought through his head again and raised a finger in confusion.
"Question," he said. "If you're me in the future, does that mean you remember this from my point of view?"
Mask paused, thinking it over.
"...No," he said at length, looking just as surprised as he sounded. "It's... weird, there's like two sets of memories from the events the two of us have already experienced, but I've got nothing as far as what happens beyond this. Huh."
"So... this is the first time that you're experiencing this too?" Ocarina clarified.
Mask inhaled sharply "Ah, crap. We're living in a paradox right now, aren't we?"
"Maybe?"
"Time travel hates me," Mask groaned. "And I'm beginning to return the favor. Can we just get a move on with your whole Final Battle so we can hopefully fix whatever's wrong and avoid universal collapse?"
Ocarina shrugged hopefully, then drew his sword and hoisted his shield and marched determinedly over the Sages' Bridge and through the doors on the other side. Mask watched him go and ran a hand through his bangs.
"Goddesses above, please don't let this come back to bite us," he muttered.
Abruptly, Ocarina let out a yelp, which was followed rapidly by the sound of a laser being fired multiple times and multiple objects subsequently breaking. Mask poked his head through the doors to see Ocarina sprinting madly across the entrance hall and just barely staying a few inches ahead of the aim of the Beamos intent on incinerating him. Mask winced.
"Potential paradox notwithstanding, mayyyyybe I should have warned him about that."
"If it were near the sandbar with the hole on it, I would understand how it got there," Steam complained. "But that was nowhere near any of the places we've been!"
"Oh thank Din," Sketch breathed. "I'm not the only one who thinks this is insane."
"I wouldn't say my life is insane," Realm said thoughtfully, drying off the last of the saltwater from his shield. "Just... very mentally taxing."
Steam planted his face in his hand. "Realm, we haven't left this beach. At all. So how, just, how, did your shield get from your back to the bottom of the ocean floor four feet underwater on the other side of the island?"
Realm just shrugged.
"He's insane," Sketch said decisively. "All of this is absolutely insane."
"Hello pot, my name's kettle," Realm grinned, and swing his shield onto his back where it belonged – though whether or not it would stay there was another issue entirely. "You turn into a literal piece of art. Remember your own insanity before pointing out someone else's."
Sketch had to admit that the brunet teen had a point.
"Anyways, that should be everything I misplaced," Realm continued. "Are we all good to go?"
"We should be," Dusk replied. "Sketch, do you still want that lift?"
"...Yeah," Sketch admitted. Dusk wordlessly knelt down and helped his shorter counterpart climb up onto his shoulders before standing back up and wading into the surf towards the sandbar.
"Oh, before I forget," he said over his shoulder (and Sketch), "when you all follow me, could you do it single-file? I'd rather not repeat our usual pile-up while I've got a passenger."
Blue elbowed Vio in the ribs. "He's talking to you."
"Oh, and I suppose you were entirely blameless in all those situations?"
"Hey, I was on the bottom. That means you were the one causing the pain."
"No, it means you tripped me, and if you'd be more careful then I wouldn't have to watch my feet!"
"Well clearly you don't do a very good job, because despite you apparently watching your feet you still trip one me anyways!"
"Why are you even on the ground is what I want to know! There should be no reason for you to lose your balance, yet there you are, laying right where I'm going to step! Honestly, you should be grateful I've only ever landed on your leg and not your head."
"Okay, now you're-"
"NOW IS NOT THE TIME!" Green bellowed, shutting both of his bickering siblings up. "Do you two ever take a break?!"
"Blue started it," Vio accused levelly.
"Vio needed the reminder," Blue retorted
"You two are going to be the death of me, I swear to Nayru," Green groaned. "Alright. Vio, you go first. Blue, you go last. And so help me, if I see either one of you within ten feet of the other while we go through that hole, I will smite you myself. Clear?"
"Clear," his brothers muttered sullenly, moving to their respective assigned positions while Green took a calming breath and Red smiled happily. Sketch visibly decided not to ask, while Wind just watched and shrugged. Everyone else took it in stride, having seen it all before and not finding anything to be concerned about.
"Alright then, let's go," Dusk said, and waded out into the ocean with an increasingly tense Sketch on his shoulders and the rest of the group on his heels. One by one they jumped into the hole – and in actual orderly fashion, for once.
Five days.
Link had been walking for five days.
And he still hadn't reached Hyrule yet.
The only reason he hadn't just flopped down and called it quits for the day was that he could see the Black Tower waaaaay far off in the distance, and he knew that Hyrule was only about a day-or-so's worth of travel from there.
"Whoever's idea it was," Link grumbled, "to make Labrynna twice as long as it is wide deserves a good kick in the shin."
For no readily discernible reason, Farore decided that Din needed to have her shin kicked right that instant.
"Oi! What was that for!?" Din snapped. Farore shrugged.
"Apparently you deserved it," she said.
"What did I do!?"
Link tilted his head curiously.
"I suddenly feel vindicated," he observed. "Wonder why."
Then the feeling wore off. He peered at the Black Tower, which was still waaaaay far off in the distance, and sighed.
"Walking," he grumbled, setting off yet again. "Who even invented walking?"
Sketch clambered down off Dusk's shoulders and observed his surroundings with a mixture of relief and confusion.
"I'm home," he said, bewildered. "This is my Hyrule. I thought I wasn't going to be seeing this again until we fixed the universe?"
"It could be that the connections between times are more linear than we thought," Vio offered. "Or maybe the goddesses are streamlining our destinations. You never know."
"Yeah..." Sketch stared up at his house with a conflicted expression. "Hey, um... do we have time for me to, you know, take care of my villain real quick...?"
"Are you sure he'll be there?" Steam asked. "It seems like everyone's villain up and vanished right when these holes popped up."
Sketch frowned. "Okay, new question. Do we have time for me to go and check if I should take care of my villain real quick?"
Nobody answered for a moment. Then Dusk cleared his throat and said, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been under the impression that the universe is ending."
"More or less," Vio agreed.
"So, is there any point in saving one period of Hyrule when all periods of Hyrule will be obliterated?"
Sketch grimaced. "...Good point. It just... it rubs me the wrong way, to just up and go somewhere else and leave this job unfinished."
"Tell me about it," Steam growled in agreement, eliciting nods from everyone else. "You're not the only one who had to leave their country undefended from a possible threat."
"All the more reason why we should take care of this threat as soon as possible," Dusk stated. "Now, any ideas on where we go from here?"
"Normally we just find the local Link and recruit him," Green remembered. "But since we kinda already did that..."
"No need to thank me," Sketch grinned.
"...I guess we should just hop back through the hole and see where we go next?" Green finished questioningly.
"Won't we end up back at the beach though?" Realm asked.
"Actually, that's been proving to be extremely unlikely," Vio answered. "These holes don't appear to follow any of the laws of physics. If they did, then we-" he gestured to his three brothers, "-and Steam should have ended back in our Hyrule the first time we jumped through. But we landed in Realm's time instead. As far as I can tell, we end up wherever we need to be next. I'm suspecting divine intervention, but 'temporal shenanigans' are also in the running as a viable explanation."
He received more than a few stares at that.
"...So what you're saying is," Blue said slowly, "the goddesses are the ones doing the steering."
Vio sighed. "That's putting it a bit bluntly, but yes. Something or someone else is determining our destination."
"...So, the author."
It took approximately six seconds for Vio to execute a flying tackle directly at Blue's stomach, following closely by Red who took the much more moderate approach of swatting Blue in the shoulder with his hat.
"...Ow," Blue wheezed.
"I did warn you about breaking things," Vio replied.
"I didn't think you were serious..."
"What just happened?" Sketch asked, sounding quite lost.
"I have no idea," Wind replied, equally lost.
Dusk sighed, then stuck his fingers in his mouth and wolf-whistled to reclaim everyone's attention. Then he fidgeted a little, because he was now the central focus and he didn't have very much experience with that. "So, back through the hole then?"
Everyone gave a general agreement and started filing back through the hole.
Link looked up at what used to be a perfectly functional Black Tower and tilted his head exactly thirty-six-point-two-four-two degrees to the left in confusion. He looked to his left and found a tumbleweed, then looked to his right and found two more tumbleweeds. Then he checked behind himself just to make sure nobody else was around and found a lack of both people and tumbleweeds.
"...Weird," Link decided, and stared up at the former Black Tower again.
There was a large colorless void hovering asymmetrically at the middle of the Tower, happily eating away at the stonework of said Tower and growing ever larger in the process. Despite having been all over the continent and rarely, if ever, being surprised by anything anymore, Link had to admit that this was something he hadn't seen before. Therefore, the only logical explanation was that someone was pranking him.
The only problem was that the only things around were tumbleweeds. Link knew he was a bit odd in the head sometimes, but even he could admit that tumbleweeds did not roll around pulling practical jokes on random passerby.
He stared up at the Tower and the hole eating the Tower. This was... new.
This was new. Link just about exploded with sheer happiness upon realizing this fact. He hadn't come across anything new in ages.
And now he had a whole bunch of new stuff to mess with!
"Oh, this is gonna be fun," Link grinned, and plopped down on the ground to sort through his stuff. The first thing to do was to get a closer look, and for that he needed his Hookshot. He'd accumulated a lot of random junk over the course of his adventures, and finding what he needed nowadays usually took a couple moments.
He had only just pulled out the desired item with a triumphant flourish when a violet-colored humanoid materialized from within the hole and promptly fell about thirteen feet to land haphazardly on the ground mere inches from Link's position. The Hero stared at the new arrival for a moment before beaming in delight. All sorts of new things were happening today!
The humanoid let out a groan and slowly sat up, which let Link see that it was a small blond boy wearing an entirely violet outfit. This kick-started Link's protective Hero instincts, because he hadn't spent all that time saving all those countries for nothing and falling a dozen feet onto hard earth wasn't the best idea for one's health.
"Yeh, tōlgiarh-uyo?" Link asked, putting away his Hookshot and pulling out a Red Potion instead.
The boy blinked and frowned in confusion. After a moment, so did Link. He was in Labrynna, right? So this boy should be native Labrynnian, right? Link quickly ran over his question in his head to make sure he hadn't mixed up the present and future tenses again. Upon discovering that he hadn't, his confused frown deepened. Maaaybe he was actually in Holodrum and hadn't realized... but that would mean that he had been walking in the wrong direction this entire time. Link began cursing the Windfish inside his head for the umpteenth time that day.
"Uh," the violet boy started, "...noffay, um, aye?"
So he was in Labrynna! Link beamed and mentally apologized to the Windfish, then thought better of it and focused his attention on the blond boy instead. For a native Labrynnian, he had terrible pronunciation.
"Tōcxūnlleełe!" Link said emphatically. "Yeh, oknīw-uyo uolwūd ton fi veah-uyo ea ucācoossōnni?"
The boy furrowed his eyebrows and mouthed several of Link's words to himself, then tentatively opened his mouth to answer – but then another boy in blue abruptly landed on top of him, followed rapidly by about six more boys in green and one in red.
"...Ow," the violet boy wheezed from the bottom of the pile he was now stuck under.
"What the heck!" one of the green boys exclaimed. "Why is the hole in the middle of the air!?"
"Beats me," the boy in blue groaned. "I can't feel my feet..."
The rest of the pile began trying to un-pile themselves, which let Link simply stare and grin uncontrollably at his good fortune. This was turning out to be the most interesting day he'd had in weeks!
"You know, purple boy," Link said, crouching down to meet said purple boy's eyes, "you really should have told me you were Hyrulean from the get-go. Now I have to apologize for calling your pronunciation terrible."
"Just a minute," the violet boy gasped, and pounded weakly on the blue boy right above him. "Blue, I can't breathe."
"Well I can't move, Realm's on top of me."
Link grinned. "Let me help you out with that." He stood up and gave the pile-up a fierce scrutiny – then he reached out and, very precisely, poked his index finger right between someone's arm and someone else's leg.
The entire pile toppled.
"And they said paying full price for that trick was a mistake," Link said in a satisfied tone of voice.
"Who's 'they'?" One of the boys in green asked.
"Oh, They's a close relative of Them," Link replied. "Nice family. Bit hard to tell apart though. What brings Hyruleans to Labrynna?"
The boy in purple made a noise of realization. "So that's what you were speaking! I knew I recognized it somehow, I just couldn't remember what it was!"
"Yeah, your accent needs work," Link informed him. "And your diction. And your pronunciation. And probably almost everything else."
"I guess a native would know best," the violet boy agreed.
Link burst out laughing. "Who, me? Native? Oh, no no no no no. I'm Hyrulean like the rest of you. I just picked up the language."
"Then why did you talk to me in Labrynnian?"
"Because I assumed you were Labrynnian. We're in Labrynna. Unless we're in Holodrum. But I'm pretty sure we're in Labrynna, because otherwise there would be a lot more tiny people in cloaks. You haven't seen any tiny people in cloaks, have you?"
One of the boys in green raised an eyebrow. "Are you sane?"
Link shrugged. "Maybe. Depends on if I think insanity would be more fun at the time."
"Ooookay."
Link ignored the awkward pause with the skill born of being someone who simply does not care and said, "So, I repeat my earlier question. What brings Hyruleans – other than me – to Labrynna?"
"We're trying to save the universe and our dimensional transportation dropped us here," the boy in red chirped.
Link beamed. "Ooh, saving the universe? Heck yes, count me in."
The tallest boy in green did a double take – and so did everyone else. "Sorry, what?"
"Count me in," Link repeated. "I've been so bored lately you wouldn't believe it! Save a country, get a bit of wanderlust. Save another country, get a little stir-crazy. Save another country, buy a boat and go exploring just for something to do. Save a dream country... and now nothing really surprises me anymore. You guys have no idea how stoked I am that you showed up, because this is literally the most exciting thing that's happened to me in weeks. So count me in, sign me up, do whatever! I don't care, I'm just coming for the ride."
"...Weird question," one of the shorter boys in green began, "but is your name Link, by any chance?"
If possible, Link's beam grew even wider. "And you're psychic! Oh, this day just gets better and better."
"Nobody's psychic," the green boy replied wryly. "We just all happen to also be Link."
"...Cool," Link decided. "How's that work? No, wait, lemme guess. I'm gonna say... different dimensions and/or times adjacent to each other within our known universe which is currently being threatened by reality-devouring voids that for some reason function as portals for your specific group and that lets you hop from one time period or dimension to the next collecting all the different incarnations of yourselves to eventually find the source of the problem and kick it's butt with the collective power of all your versions combined?"
"...How did you do that?"
"Oh, I was just guessing. If I was wrong about that one, my next guess was going to be Cuccos."
"Okay, why would Cuccos be-"
"Oh, they'd find a way," Link said darkly, his face suddenly cast in shadow despite the fact that the sun was shining cheerfully enough to make a pessimist cringe. "The Cuccos always find a way..."
"...Are you sure you're sane?"
"Not a clue. Now! How do we do this, is there a numbering system or whatever?"
The violet boy raised an eyebrow. "A numbering system for...?"
"Well, we can't all be Link, that would be impossibly confusing," Link said. "So, who's Number One and how many Rupees do I have to pay you in order to be the new Number One?"
"How many Rupees do you have?"
"Blue!"
"What, it was a valid question!"
"Nobody's Number One, we all have nicknames," one of the other green boys said. "Speaking of which, I'm Steam."
Link nodded. "Gotcha. What about the rest of you?"
Everyone quickly introduced themselves, some of which gave Link a good snicker. Named for their clothing, really? Link wished he'd thought of that, there were some fantastic possibilities for pranks and confusion.
"So that's us," Dusk said. "What about you?"
Link grinned. "Glad you asked. I'm Link, Hero of Legend, and single-handedly responsible for saving Hyrule, Labrynna, Holodrum, Subrosia, and a flying whale, but not necessarily in that order. I'm multilingual and if any of you know a language I haven't heard of, I immediately request lessons."
"So that's why you've got an accent," Wind snapped his fingers. "You said you were Hyrulean, but you talk like a foreigner. It was a little confusing."
"Oh, I can drop that," Link said, abruptly sounding entirely Hyrulean. "I can also adopt a different one, if you'd prefer. Labrynnian just happens to have really nice vowel acoustics."
Wind blinked. "Uh... no, however you want to talk is fine."
"Nice of you," Link said, suddenly with an accent again. "Funny thing, I don't actually have a default pronunciation anymore – I think I put so much effort into other languages that I just integrated all of them. Nowadays I just pick whichever one I feel like at the time. Say, when do I get a nickname?"
"Are you always this... random?" Green asked.
"Eh, depends on my mood. Seriously though, nickname? Don't leave me out of the party."
"Finally, someone who appreciates my nicknames!" Red enthused. "Okay, you said your title was the Hero of Legend?"
"That's me!" Link beamed.
"Vio, words that mean legend please!"
Vio sighed. "You know, you really ought to try a thesaurus."
Red frowned. "I don't think that's a very good nickname. Are there any others?"
"No, Red, a thesaurus is a list of – actually, never mind," Vio let out another sigh, then thought for a moment. " Myth, fable, lore, saga, story, epic, tale, fiction, fantasy, anecdote, ballad... should I keep going?"
"I liked Lore," Link put in. "Can I use it?"
"Absolutely!" Red beamed.
"Awesome," Lore declared.
"Quick question," Realm said. "Why exactly are you so okay with all this? I think you're the only one who hasn't freaked out when we explained all this to you."
"Well," Lore said, "that is a very long and complicated story and it starts about six years ago back before I stopped caring about my sanity. See, I had this dream one night where Princess Zelda spoke to me through telepathic transmission and told me she was being held captive in the Castle dungeons and needed to be rescued. I assume she was going for someone a bit more experienced than a ten-year-old, but then again I did get the job done so what do I know."
Sketch and Wind exchanged glances, then promptly sat down as this seemed like a story with a long haul.
"Now, I knew that wasn't normal, so I woke up my uncle and asked him about it. He decided that Hyrule Castle was in danger and went out to see what the problem was, and naturally I went against all natural instinct and instruction and followed him. Good thing I did, because he'd gone and tripped and stabbed himself in the foot because he forgot to bring a torch and didn't see the rock until it was too late. He gave me his weapon, told me to go save the Princess, and passed out from blood loss."
"Is he okay?" Green asked.
"Oh, he's fine, he just has this weird overly-dramatic hero complex. Granted, I haven't seen him since I bought a boat and ended up saving a flying whale, but last I checked he just has a bit of a sore ankle on rainy days. Where was I?"
"Your uncle passed out," Realm supplied.
"Oh yeah. Basically I dragged him out of the way so people wouldn't step on him and then I bumbled my way into the Castle dungeon. Zelda really should have provided a mental map or something, because I would have gotten to her so much faster if I'd known where I was going."
"I hear that," Realm said. "So it took you about a week, then?"
Lore blinked. "Say what?"
"He's not exactly normal, we'll tell you about it later," Dusk said quickly. "You were saying?"
"I look forward to that conversation," Lore grinned. "Anyways, I rescued Zelda and then we escaped by mucking our way through a sewer system – she wasn't a big fan of that, but then again it smelled awful so neither was I..."
Much to the dismay of the villains inside his head, Demise had discovered a solution to the bagpipes. He simply imagined that bagpipes didn't exist. And just to make sure that nothing else would happen, he also imagined that no musical instrument existed.
Because the villains were a rather unimaginative bunch, it did not occur to them that there were plenty of other objects they could use that made obnoxious noises. If it had, then they would have conjured airhorns.
But it didn't, and so the villains were all having a meeting as to what to annoy Demise with next.
We could try interpretive dance, Veran suggested.
First of all, Ocean Ganondorf growled, we cannot be seen, only heard. Second of all, I do not dance. And third, I am not sure that most of us even know how.
Well that would have been the point, Veran sniffed. Our dancing would have been so horrible as to make his eyes bleed rather than his ears.
Okay, there is no point in doing that because, as Ocean Ganondorf said, we can't be seen, Malladus pointed out. What if we try bad puns instead?
...Does anyone here even have a sense of humor?
I personally find burning people alive to be rather amusing, Majora volunteered. Shall I demonstrate?
I don't really think that's necessary, Onox said.
...If you insist.
There was a collective sigh of relief.
We could try singing, Original Ganon suggested. I have a terrible voice.
I know a song that never ends, Picori Vaati offered. We could start now and see how far we can get before we pass out.
"Don't you dare," Demise snarled.
That sounds promising, Twilight Ganondorf mused. How does it go?
It just repeats over and over, you'll pick it up soon enough. The sound of someone clearing their throat echoed through Demise's head.
This is the song that never ends; it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was; and they'll continue singing it forever just because: This is the song that never ends-
"May the goddesses find me and smite me now," Demise groaned.
Notes:
Lore is the future fan-favorite Link right here, y'all. Trust me, I KNOW.
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian
Yeh, tōlgiarh-uyo? (Hey, you alright?)
Uh... Noffay, um, aye? (Uh... I, um, fine?) (Basically, Vio has really bad pronunciation and forgot the possessive. What he wanted to say was 'Nōfei-Ai ma', or 'I am fine'.)
Tōcxūnlleełe! Yeh, oknīw-uyo uolwūd ton fi veah-uyo ea ucācoossōnni? (Excellent! Hey, you wouldn't know if you have a concussion?)
Thanks to Guest #41, Guest #42, GuiltyPleasure403, Guest #43, Haemin, glowingjellyfishtreelights, Guest #44, and WanderingDemon for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 13: The Two Who Are Supposed to be One
Summary:
And the Hero(es) of Time get the Group Introduction.
Notes:
(...This is getting ridiculous.)
I do not, nor will I ever, own Mighty the Armadillo.
(I think I need protective measures. Possibly explosives. Or maybe I should just hire a Minecraft Creeper. After all, if he explodes then I don't have to pay him.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Din tapped her chin. "So that takes care of... Lore, they called him?"
"Yes, he's taken care of," Farore agreed. "How's Nayru?"
"Fine..." Nayru called from her horizontal position. "Just really, really dizzy..."
"It's when stuff like this happens that I thank myself for not taking charge of time," Din said sympathetically. "You sure you're okay?"
"I'm certainly getting there," Nayru replied. "I just got caught off-guard. It won't be happening again."
"Let's hope not," Farore agreed. "Think you can join us on Courage Watch soon? Things are either getting interesting or getting close to breaking the Universe and I'd like to know which it is."
"Let me look," Nayru said, pulling herself into a sitting position and peering through the reality window. "Okay... oh, we're good. It's just getting interesting. Out of curiosity, how long has Lore been talking?"
"At least a couple hours. He's almost done detailing that mess with the island that doesn't exist."
"Good riddance too," Din said huffily. "Honestly, the nerve of some deities, making their own land without asking me first..."
Nayru tilted her head. "Wasn't he asleep at the time? Can you really hold someone responsible if they didn't know they were doing it?"
"Just watch me."
"I don't quite think that's how it works..."
"-and after I finished cursing out the Windfish, I started swimming in a half-randomly chosen direction and was very, very bored for a very, very long time. Then I hit land, went to sleep, woke up, started walking, and was very, very bored for a very, very long time again. Then I found the Tower along with this hole, and then you all fell out of the hole and we started getting acquainted. After that I got a nickname, then Realm asked me about my life story and I started telling you all about how Princess Zelda sent me a telepathic message in the middle of the night-"
"We know that part, you don't need to tell it again," Blue interrupted.
Lore pouted. "Killjoy. I was this close to establishing a full story loop too... Anyways! That's me in a contradictory nutshell. What do we do now?"
"Previous experience says we climb back through the hole and see where we end up next," Dusk informed him. Lore eyed him, then the hole, which was now twelve feet off the ground rather than thirteen due to having grown a bit.
"So one of you can fly, then?" he asked curiously. "I don't know if you've all noticed, but we Links are a bit vertically challenged and that hole is way far out of our reach range."
"Hookshot," Dusk said, holding said item up in demonstration.
"That'll work," Lore agreed. He tilted his head, then asked, "So are you the leader then?"
Dusk blinked. "I... sorry, what?"
"You seem to be the one with the best grasp of what's happening," Lore said. "Or you just take everything in stride. Possibly both." He paused. "Then again I could be reading this completely wrong and your leader is actually Realm."
"It's definitely not Realm," Blue snorted. "He can't keep his bearings to save his life. He could get lost in a hallway."
"...That's actually happened before," Realm said sheepishly. This statement was met with a loud smacking noise as the more easily irritated of the Links facepalmed themselves.
"Of course it has," Sketch groaned.
"I'm not the leader," Dusk said firmly. "I'm about as far from being a leader as you can get."
"You're not?" Sketch repeated, surprised. "Din, I totally thought you were the one in charge." He turned to Wind and said, "Didn't you think he was the leader?"
"I definitely thought he was the responsible one," Wind agreed.
Lore frowned. "What then, is Green the leader? I'll be honest, I thought he had his hands full with just his three immediate siblings."
"I do," Green replied. "Trust me, the last thing I want is to be in charge of more people. It's not me."
"Technically," Dusk said, "we don't have a leader. We just kind of wander along and take majority votes."
"That won't work," Lore said, shaking his head. "We're gonna need a leader. The bigger this group gets, the more we're gonna need a governing structure of some sort. And you do seem like a competent candidate."
Dusk stared at him. "Okay, two things. First, I'm not leader material. My pack function is Beta, not Alpha, and my Alpha isn't even here right now so there's really no point in arguing about it."
Lore raised a finger questioningly and Dusk said, "I'll explain later. Second – did you just say something logical?"
Lore grinned and shrugged. "I never said I don't pay attention. Now what's this about your Alpha being AWOL?"
"Here we go again," Steam grunted, and made his way over to Sketch as Dusk began telling his story for the third time. "We're gonna be here awhile. Wanna pass the time by helping me with that self-sustaining lantern idea?"
"Sounds fun," Sketch agreed. "I actually had some ideas about that involving the holder for the wick – if you're incorporating flint into the design, I think I might be able to adjust the shape to allow for a greater increase in the output..."
The two Links trailed off into metalwork jargon while the remainder of the group blinked in confusion.
"I'm not the only one who's missing about half of their conversation, right?" Realm asked.
"I'm following it," Vio said, shrugging.
"Of course you are," Blue sighed.
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"You're just such a bookworm that it figures that you'd know."
"There's nothing wrong with being a bookworm," Vio argued.
Blue smirked. "I never said there was."
"Your tone implied otherwise-"
"Seriously!" Green broke in. "Knock it off, you two!"
Wind started snickering "Just like me and Aryll," he observed with a grin.
"Siblings are fun," Red agreed, giggling.
-song that never ends; it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was; and they'll continue-
"I will imagine muzzles on each and every one of you," Demise snarled.
-singing it forever just because: This is the song that never ends; it just goes on and on-
"Muzzles with two-inch thorns placed just so they'll tear into your lips every time you move your mouth to sing that infernal song," Demise continued darkly. "And the thorns will be made of acid."
-my friends. Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was; and they'll continue singing it forever just because: This is the song that-
"Fluorosulfuric acid," Demise elaborated. "Which will eat through the muzzle in little over two minutes and then go to work on the very delicate, very fragile skin that makes up your face. It will be very painful and I will highly enjoy listening to your screams."
-never ends; it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started singing it, not-
"But I will be merciful," Demise said, "and will grant you pardon from this fate if you would just SHUT UP."
-knowing what it was; and they'll continue singing it forever just because: This is the song that never ends-
"So be it," Demise said silkily. "Majora, take notes. This is how a professional inflicts burn damage."
I'm sorry, did you say something? Majora asked over the unending chorus in the background.
-it just goes on and on my friends. Some people-
"Take notes," Demise repeated. "I think you'll appreciate this."
Bake coats? Majora repeated. Why would I do that? Coats make for terrible fuel, not to mention that they burn out almost instantly and never retain a flame for more than twenty minutes at the most.
-started singing it not knowing what it was; and they'll continue singing it forever just because: This-
"Who said anything about coats?" Demise snapped.
There is no such thing as cat boats, Majora said. Good news everyone, I believe we are whittling down his sanity.
-is the song that never ends, went the chorus in the background, now with much more enthusiasm. It just goes on and on my friends-
"DO NONE OF YOU CARE ABOUT MUZZLES WITH FLUOROSULFERIC ACID?!" Demise roared.
-Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was; and-
"Oh, I'm going to enjoy this," Demise growled, and promptly manifested the fluorosulferic acid muzzles on everything in his head that had a mouth.
All it really seemed to do, though, was augment the already-infuriating song with timely screaming.
"-so I decided to start searching for Bellum on my own because I still had the King even though he wasn't alive anymore and ended up finding Sketch on an island... and from there it all just sorta snowballed," Wind finished. "Am I the last one?"
"Yes," Sketch called.
"Good job," Lore said, clapping. "You all just managed to pack six-plus adventures into less than six hours. That is impressive."
"We've had a bit of practice by this point," Realm admitted. "I think a couple of us have told their stories about... three times by this point?"
"Four," Vio corrected.
"Four times," Realm agreed. "I'm a little confused though... are you sure you told your story right?"
"Eighty-six-and-a-half percent sure, why?" Lore asked.
"You mentioned a sentient blue bear with wings?"
Lore tilted his head, then reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of half-moon librarian glasses, which he then stuck on his face and pulled halfway down his nose to look at Realm over the tops of them. "You can get lost in a hallway," Lore pointed out. "Dusk turns into a wolf, Sketch turns into artwork, Wind can control the weather, Steam can see dead people-"
"Zelda was never dead!" Steam protested.
Lore turned his over-the-glasses look on Steam for a moment. "Shush, I'm making a point here," he said, then looked back to Realm and continued, "Steam can see dead people and four of you used to be one person. Does the blue winged flying bear sound so absurd compared to all that?"
"...Okay, point taken," Realm admitted. Lore grinned and immediately stuffed the glasses back into his bag.
"Where did you get those?" Red asked curiously.
"Oh, it's bigger on the inside," Lore said, pointing to his bag as though that explained everything. "And on a completely unrelated note: now what?"
"Well," Dusk said, "unless you've got something you vitally need to do before heading off to save the Universe, you're going to Hookshot up to the hole with us and see where it goes."
"Good thing I have absolutely nothing that I vitally need to do," Lore grinned. "After you. Leader's privilege and all."
Dusk grimaced. "We've been through this already. I'm not the leader."
"Well if you're not, and nobody else is, does that mean the position is open?" Lore asked. "And can I apply?"
"...Are you sure you want the position?" Steam checked. "I'm almost positive we're cultivating our own brand of insanity and that can't be easy to deal with."
"Well then, it's a good thing I already lost my sanity ages ago," Lore said emphatically. "Who better to lead the bunch of crazies than the craziest in the bunch?"
"Not all of us are crazy," Green objected. "Some of us are just really exhausted and go along with the weirdness because it takes less effort that way."
"Tell me about it," Vio grumbled, and threw Blue a pointed stare, which Blue completely missed much to Green's eternal gratitude.
"Eh, my point still stands," Lore decided. "Can I get a test run, at least?"
There was silence for a moment as everyone considered that. Then Realm shrugged.
"I can get behind a test run," he said. "If it doesn't work we can always make Dusk the unofficially unspoken leader again."
Dusk blinked in confusion, but everyone else seemed to agree with that idea without much issue.
"Excellent," Lore beamed. "I'm officially LiT!"
"...What?" Blue said.
"Leader in Testing," Lore explained. "And for my first leadershippy order in my test run, I say we should all head through the hole and see where it takes us!"
"Problem," Steam said, raising a hand. "I don't own a Hookshot. I've got a Whip, but there's nothing to latch to between here and the hole, so..."
"Hitch a ride with Dusk," Lore decided. "Does anyone else have issues?"
Red, Green, Vio, Blue, and Realm all raised their hands. Lore blinked at them.
"And you couldn't have mentioned this earlier?" he said teasingly. "Okay. I've got a couple extra hookshots I can pass around, so Steam can hitch a ride with Realm and make sure he doesn't lose my stuff, and... Blue can give his siblings a ride?"
Blue frowned for a minute as he thought that over, then turned to Green and said, "You remember that Power Bracelet that I'm only allowed to use when absolutely necessary?"
Green sighed, then dug out said bracelet from his bag and held it out to his sibling with a resigned look on his face. Blue snapped the trinket onto his wrist, then gave Lore a grin and said, "I can absolutely give my siblings a ride."
"Ooh, my first leadershippy order is a success!" Lore enthused, handing his two extra Hookshots out to his designated Links. "Let's see if my second leadershippy order follows the trend. Everyone, let's go!"
He held his arm out and fired his Hookshot, but he didn't actually turn his head to see where he was aiming. Instead, he just grinned at his newly established underlings until the item snagged on something and pulled him into the hole. It was both impressive and ever so slightly concerning.
"Well," Sketch said," at least this won't be boring with him around."
"And they're on their way again," Farore noted. "Who should we have them meet up with next?"
"The Heroes of Time," Nayru said immediately. "The sooner those two get within a relatively stable sphere of influence the less likely they are to accidentally cause a universal collapse."
"Good point," Farore agreed. "Unless there's a different Hero that would benefit more. Din?"
"Well, the other set of Four Sword heroes seem to be in good position..."
There was an interesting fact about sacred swords that nobody except the swords themselves knew – and of course, the swords weren't telling, so how could anyone figure it out in the first place?
Basically, they were all rather snobby.
Of course, since all the sacred and divine weapons were, in fact, weapons, this little characteristic tended to come out in the sword's choice of wielder. The Master Sword was the most well-known for this; if you were considered unworthy, you were severely burned at best and outright killed at worst. To date, the Master Sword had only allowed exactly five people to wield it – and, given that those five people were actually the same people just reincarnated a bunch of times... well, you get the picture.
A similar case could be found in the wielders of the Four Sword – and not just because historians had a terrible debate over whether to count the wielders by the number of people they used to be versus the number of people they were while doing said wielding. When it came right down to it, the Four Sword had exactly three wielders.
One of them happened to be the one who 'built' it, more or less, but because the Four Sword was one of those weapons which needed to charge up in order to get the full effect, the Hero of the Minish never experienced it in the way that his reincarnations would. As such, his 'wielder' status was a bit suspect, but because he'd been the one to make it work in the first place he was on the list simply for being the guy who did it before anyone else.
Of the two who actually used the Four Sword in all it's ability, there was Link, the Hero(es) of Light and the composite of Blue, Red, Vio, and Green; and Link, the Hero(es) of the Four Sword and the composite of a rather odd hive-mind construct known as the Four. They also, conveniently, happened to be the exact Hero(es) that Din was looking at.
The Four, unlike their counterparts who would come into existence some few centuries later, didn't exactly have separate personalities. Or... maybe they did, but it all got smushed because of the hive-mind. It was a difficult to tell, really, and so the Four had given up on that venture within the first week of drawing their swords.
Everything they did, they did in unison. They moved in unison, they talked in unison, they even thought in unison, most of the time. The Four were perfectly synchronized with each other, and when they weren't it usually ended with them all sprawled on the ground with headaches from the discordant feedback.
This happened very rarely, though, because it was deeply uncomfortable and none of the Four liked it, and so they went out of their way to make sure it didn't happen. Of course, having the hive-mind made it easy, but there was still the danger of a treacherously-placed pebble sitting innocently on a path just waiting to trip one of them up.
The Pebble Incident, as it was later dubbed, was firmly filed under 'Never Mention Ever Again'.
The Four were aware, of course, that normal people didn't have the connection that they did, and that seeing four identical boys moving and speaking in complete unison might cause more harm than good in some cases. It had taken weeks of practice, but the Four were able to ignore the hive-mind and act separately, if they needed to. The problem with that, aside from the mountain of slip-ups and accidental use of plural possessives in a singular setting, was that it felt wholly and utterly wrong. Almost integrally wrong, as though the very core of their existence was being pulled apart.
It wasn't so much like one boy had been split into four boys, the Four decided later, but more like one boy had been split between four bodies. And while those bodies had a few differing traits between them – the red one, for example, was a bit more prone to giving strategic input to the hive-mind than the others – for the most part, all four of them thought the exact same thing. At the moment, they happened to be on their way to Vaati's Palace to rescue the kidnapped Princess Zelda, but curiously their thoughts didn't necessarily reflect this. In fact, the thing going through the Four's heads was about as far from Princess Zelda as it could get.
'Who's idea was it to make mountains so freaking high?' to be specific.
"...or they're on their way, at least," Din concluded, then tilted her head in confusion. "Huh. For some reason I feel like I've just been criticized."
"It's probably nothing," Farore dismissed. "What about the other two?"
"Well, the little guy keeps shrinking when I'm not looking and then I lose him," Din complained. "And the first Hero isn't near a hole at all so there's no real point in that. I would just direct the main group to pick the second Four Sword set up after we take care of the Heroes of Time."
"Sounds good," Farore agreed. "Speaking of which, I'd better go influence the Heroes of Time. If I learned anything from all my other aspects, it's that none of them know how to recognize a divine prompting anymore..."
Ocarina poked his head into the Throne Room and frowned. He continued to frown for about twenty seconds, then pulled his head out and gave his older-but-younger self a confused look.
"Correct me if the answer won't cause a universal collapse," he said. "I thought that I was supposed to be having a fight in this room, but there's nothing here. Did I take a wrong turn?"
Mask raised an eyebrow, then poked his own head into the Throne Room and spent about twenty seconds frowning at it.
"No, this is the room," he replied slowly. "Just... advance with caution. Lots of caution. Like, enough caution to make overkill look like it's not enough."
"I cannot possibly need that much caution," Ocarina argued. Mask raised his other eyebrow to join the first one.
"Wanna bet?"
"Not against you," Ocarina muttered, and poked his head into the Throne Room again. When nothing tried to decapitate him, he slowly moved until he was standing just inside the entrance and waited to see if he'd set off anything.
When nothing continued to happen, he relaxed his tense stance by a tiny amount and began advancing further into the room. Mask trailed behind him, looking markedly less worried than his counterpart if one ignored the small crease between his eyebrows as he glanced around.
"It shouldn't be this quiet," Mask muttered, which startled Ocarina for a second. "There should be an organ..."
"The instrument or the body part?" Ocarina asked. "Because I'll be honest, I'm hoping it's the instrument."
"He should be playing an organ," Mask said as if he hadn't heard the question. "Something's wrong."
Ocarina looked around, then sheathed the Master Sword on his back and stood up from his ready position. "Maybe you should have a look around, then. You've been here before, technically speaking, and you'd know better than me. If something's wrong, you're a lot more likely to know than I am."
"There's already at least four things wrong," Mask said, scowling. "There's supposed to be an organ."
"Yeah, I got that, thanks. What about the other three?"
"Spoilers, spoilers, and... yeah, spoilers."
"How helpful."
"Glad you agree," Mask smirked. "Someone has to keep the continuum in one piece."
There was a moment of silence, during which Mask continued to smirk and entirely expected his counterpart to sputter some retort about how annoying he was. However, when this summarily failed to happen, he glanced up at his (infuriatingly taller) older-but-younger self to see what the issue was.
Ocarina seemed to have been rendered entirely speechless. He worked his mouth for a few seconds before eventually managing to say, "Didn't we leave that back in Hyrule Field...?"
Mask frowned, followed his gaze, and promptly forgot about everything else. Sitting against the wall in a manner that had made it previously unnoticeable was a fairly sizable and utterly black, and extremely familiar hole.
"...What the heck!?" Mask sputtered. "Do these things migrate now!?"
"I'm going to take a guess that this isn't supposed to be here?" Ocarina asked.
"This is definitely not supposed to be here!"
Ocarina considered that for a moment, then looked at at his counterpart's face to gauge how serious this was. This immediately proved to be a mistake.
"Stop enjoying this!" Mask snapped as Ocarina tried and utterly failed to keep a straight face. Mask had been taking everything with a maximum of fifty-percent seriousness ever since he'd shown up, and Ocarina was dearly relishing seeing his future self look so flustered.
"Sorry, sorry," he said in a strangled sort of voice. "It's just – I never realized karma was so funny."
"Shut up and take notes for your turn," Mask retorted. "Seriously though! This is a problem!" He gestured wildly at the empty room with the hole in the wall. "There's supposed to be an organ!"
"Okay, why is an organ so important?"
"Because Ganondorf is supposed to be playing it!"
Ocarina blinked at the sudden information while Mask slapped his hand to his face. "I shouldn't have said that," he muttered. "Oh, I think I just took the timestream and strangled it."
"Bother the timestream," Ocarina interrupted. "You said Ganondorf was supposed to be here?"
"Really shouldn't have said that..."
"Get over it, I think we've got a slightly bigger problem."
"Bigger than the strangling of the timestream? Do tell."
Ocarina stared. "Okay, are you sure you're me? How can I see the bigger issue before me does?"
"I'm too old for this..."
"You're twelve."
"That is entirely irrelevant," Mask sniffed.
"Oh my goddesses," Ocarina groaned. "Look, if Ganondorf is supposed to be here but isn't, and this hole is here instead, and we saw a different hole literally erase a Cucco from existence, then does that mean what I think it means?"
Mask paused. "...Yes," he said after a moment. "I think that means exactly what you think it means."
"...Is that good?"
"I don't know."
They both observed the hole for a minute as they attempted to process that fact that Ganondorf had apparently been eaten by it.
"Is it growing?" Ocarina asked after a while.
"Looks that way."
"...Great."
Mask sighed. "We're gonna need to fix this."
"I didn't even get done fixing the first mess though," Ocarina complained.
"I didn't even get done fixing the second," Mask griped.
"About that-"
"No, I will not tell you how to fix the second."
"Dangit," Ocarina sighed. "One day I'll catch you in a slip-up, and it will be glorious."
"Keep telling yourself that," Mask replied, grinning despite the situation. "That aside, any ideas for this?"
Ocarina studied the hole. "Adventuring Rule Number One?"
"You think explosives will somehow make this better?"
"Could they somehow make this worse?" Ocarina countered.
Mask paused. "Point," he conceded. "Do you want to do the honors or should I?"
"Both of us at once," Ocarina said. "That way nobody gets denied an explosion."
"That would be such a shame," Mask agreed teasingly as they both pulled out bombs from their Adventure Bags and tossed them at the hole. This almost immediately went wrong in two distinct ways.
Firstly, the hole seemed to be entirely unaffected.
Secondly, and far more interestingly, there was now a ginger teenaged boy in the room with them. He was covered from head to toe in soot from the detonations, in addition to a few burn marks on his clothes and the tip of his hat which appeared to be slightly-on-fire.
"...Is this something that bombs do in the future?" Ocarina asked his counterpart in a quiet voice while the ginger teen blinked in confusion and quickly extinguished his hat.
"Of course not, what kind of a question is that?"
"A bewildered one," Ocarina replied, right before the new arrival locked on to their position.
"Did you just try to explode me?" he asked. "Did you actually just try to explode me? That's amazing! Well, either that or it's rude. Give me a minute, I need to run through all the cultures I'm aware of to see if you just insulted me or not." He abruptly began muttering gibberish to himself under his breath.
"I have no idea what's happening," Ocarina said.
"...sm'f om y'jr rb'rᾳmy pᾳg sᾳm rcok'pdobr, y'jr yjᾳt'pert nidy..." the boy mumbled.
"Is he even speaking Hyrulean?" Mask wondered.
"Holodese, actually," the new arrival said abruptly. "And unfortunately for you, I've just been insulted according to their customs. Plug your ears."
"Plug our-"
"I HAVE BEEN INSULTED!" the ginger boy bellowed. "WHO WASTES PERFECTLY GOOD BOMBS ON LOWLY INTER-DIMENSIONAL TRAVELERS!? IT'S A TRAVESTY TO THE EXPLOSIVE!"
"What...?"
The teen stuck a smoky finger into Ocarina's face, since he was the taller of the two and thus a more visible target. "Do you have no respect for the great and awesome awesomeness that is TNT? You don't just waste something like that on travelers! We're dusty, have no idea where we're going, and entirely liable to misplace your entire towel population."
"None of those words made sense in the way you put them together," Mask sputtered. The newcomer took absolutely no notice of him.
"Honestly, if you're going to use bombs, you need to use them right," he continued disapprovingly as though Mask hadn't even said anything. "Clearly, you have no idea how to do this, so I shall take it upon myself to educate you, poor little lost lambs that you are. Bombs, as we all know, are the greatest tool to have ever been bestowed upon mankind. As such, there are certain rules one must follow to appease the gunpowder gods in everyday use. Firstly! Always thank the explosive for it's noble sacrifice to your cause..."
The ginger teen proceeded to go off on a wildly confusing tangent, which neither Ocarina nor Mask followed in the slightest. At that point, though, the hole in the wall began ejecting multiple other teenaged boys as if it was perfectly normal.
"I really have no idea what's happening," Ocarina repeated weakly, watching this. For a void that had previously devoured everything that came into contact with it, there were a startling amount of people using it as a doorway.
One of the new arrivals, a taller boy with fierce eyes and sandy-blond hair, gave them an apologetic smile before focusing on the ginger teen. "Does anybody know what he's doing?"
"Being himself," a brunet teen offered.
"AKA, scaring the locals," a shorter boy finished.
The tall one let out a sigh. "Right, I'll get it," he said, and proceeded to walk right up to the sooty ginger boy and smack him upside the head, which effectively cut off whatever the redhead had been saying about matchstick sacrifices in the meantime.
"Oi," the ginger boy complained. "I was on a roll!"
"You were making the locals question both your and their sanity," the other teen retorted. "I know you literally just joined up less than twenty-four hours ago, but there's times to be serious and I think this it one of them. So just, not now, okay?"
"...Killjoy."
The calmer one promptly flicked him in the forehead, eliciting an "Ow!" before turning to Mask and Ocarina and saying, "Sorry about that. He's new."
"...Okay," Ocarina said in the manner of someone who has just given up on making life make sense. "I'm just going to stop caring now.
"Good plan!" the ginger teen exclaimed. "Life's more fun that way. Are either of you Link, by any chance?"
Both Hero(es) of Time blinked in utter bewilderment. "...We both are," Mask said after a moment. "But how did you...?"
"You're wearing hats," the ginger boy said, as though that explained everything. "The only people I've ever met that wear hats are usually important in a way that's curiously relevant to whichever quest I'm currently on, and since I'm currently trying to meet more of me and save the Universe and you're wearing hats while I'm trying to do it, that means that you're probably me. Make sense?"
"No," Ocarina said.
"Perfect! So, I'm Link, Hero of Legend, but you can call me Lore for the sake of convenience and avoiding that awkward moment when someone has the same name as you and neither of you know which one is being addressed. This is Dusk, over there's Realm, those two are Wind and Sketch, Steam is next to Wind, and Green, Blue, Red, and Vio are the colored cluster in the back." The newly-introduced Lore grinned concerningly. "Welcome to the group! Please direct any questions, comments, concerns, and/or cries of anguish at Dusk until otherwise noted."
Dusk, who turned out to be the one with the fierce eyes, let out a sigh that sounded very-well used. "Why me?"
"Because you're much less likely to make said questions, comments, concerns, and/or cries of anguish worse," Lore responded without missing a beat. "Now then! You two new Links, make your way over to Red and tell him your Heroic Title and any special ability you may or may not have picked up over the course of your adventure, and be prepared to receive an awesome nickna-"
"Is this supposed to be impressive?" Mask interrupted.
He received confused and surprised stares from everyone else present, including his older-but-younger self. Mask met all the looks with a shrug, then continued, "Sorry, I just don't feel impressed. In fact, I'm pretty sure whatever effect you were going for just skipped me entirely."
"...This is new," Lore admitted. "You seem to be mildly immune to... well, me. How are you doing that?"
Mask shrugged again. "I've seen some weird stuff. Between the accidental time travel, getting engaged to a Zora, finding out my actual species, dealing with the Happy Mask Salesman, not to mention all the actual masks and the insanity that went with them, owning an instrument that literally warps physics, getting stuck in a three-day time loop, switching my species on whim, a doppelganger of me, countless doppelgangers of everyone else, an entire country I've never even heard of before, and the single most messed-up celestial body I've ever had the misfortune to see... well, at some point I think I just stopped being surprised."
"I hear that," Dusk agreed.
"I'm sorry, 'switching our species on whim'?" Ocarina repeated incredulously.
"Ah crap. Can I still say 'Spoilers' and get away with it?"
"No."
"Of course not." Mask let out a sigh, then turned to the group of apparent other Heroes and said, "Anyways, I'm Mask, and this is my older-but-younger self, Ocarina. We're the Hero of Time but from two different points in our life."
This statement was, surprisingly, not met with exclamations of shock and surprise. Instead, most of the other Links just nodded like they'd all heard similarly ridiculous things before and were used to it. The two exceptions were Sketch and Wind, who glanced at each other with expressions of, 'Is it weird that this is our new normal?'
"I'm guessing, by the way you two talk," Realm said after a moment, "that Ocarina's actually the younger one? How's that work?"
"There was time travel involved," Ocarina replied. "A lot of time travel. It was very confusing. The simplest version is that, mentally, I'm about nine, more or less, but then the time travel happened and I ended up in my sixteen-year-old body because of Reasons."
"Then you have me," Mask explained, "who went through more time travel and then grew from there, making me physically twelve. But because of more Reasons, I'm mentally somewhere in the teens."
"...That is incredibly complicated," Steam said.
"That's time travel," Mask shrugged. "My personal theory is that if you don't have a headache, you're not thinking about it right."
"Ooh, that's good," Ocarina said suddenly, snatching a piece of parchment from his bag and scribbling something down on it. "I'm gonna use that."
"Go ahead," Mask replied with a look of extreme amusement.
"Did... did you just give yourself your own personal theory?" Vio questioned. He looked as though he had the beginnings of a headache, and Mask grinned at him.
"There you go, now you're getting it."
Notes:
For some reason, I have written myself into a Time Travel story with very little idea of how the physics of Time Travel actually work. How the Hero(es) of Time deal with it, I'll never know.
Linguistic Translations
Holodese
...sm'f om y'jr rb'rᾳmy pᾳg sᾳm rcok'pdobr, y'jr yjᾳt'pert nidy... (...and in the event of an explosion, the thrower must...)
Thanks to VirgoDragon, Guest #45, Guest #46, Guest #47, PumpkinBoss, Guest #48, gurleen, Superbly_obsessed, BandGeekOfSax, seekingSolar, and Guest #49 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 14: The Four Who Are One
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero(es) of the Four Sword?
Notes:
(Okay. So. Hiring the Creeper did not work, and now I have a really big explosion aftermath to deal with. Cleaning this up is gonna take weeks.)
I do not own Espio the Chameleon.
(And I still can't fix my disclaimer.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It took a few hours for Mask and Ocarina to tell their stories to everyone – mostly because Mask kept censoring himself due to "Spoilers" and using long, complicated and downright confusing sentences to attempt to explain it all anyways, but without killing the time-stream. He also kept interrupting Ocarina whenever he felt his younger self had forgotten something. And by the time it all was said and done, the sky had grown dark, the moon had come out, and it was somewhat difficult to navigate the room of the castle because people were liable to walk into each other, trip, and fall to the floor, where someone else would trip over them and fall over someone else in the process, who would also go down and bring his three other siblings with him because they were all standing next to each other, which would then cause a small chain of effect due to an unfortunate close proximity with someone else and... well.
After that, everyone just decided to go to sleep. They were already all lying down anyways, not to mention that more than a few of the group had had an extraordinarily long day. Plus, the rest of the storytelling would take several more hours, especially given how many people still had to relay their adventures to the two newest Links, and it would be better if the intended recipients could stay awake to hear it all.
Actually, it had probably been a few days by this point. Time got weird when dimension-hopping was involved. No wonder everyone was exhausted.
The next morning arrived with obnoxiously cheerful sunshine and even more obnoxiously cheerful birdsong, which immediately made everyone except for Lore and Dusk disgruntled. Lore was exempt because he didn't see the point in wasting time on being disgruntled because there were so many other things he could be doing. Dusk was exempt because... well, he just was. Dusk so far seemed to have one basic mood, which was 'agreeable'. He just went with it, regardless of what 'it' actually was.
Strange that there was sunshine and birdsong, given that all the birds seemed to have left the country quite some time ago and that the sky was covered in sickly yellow clouds that looked as though they'd sooner drop rocks than let sunlight through. But then again, there were also holes in the literal reality of the universe, so... well, everything's relative.
Eventually, Ocarina eyed the void happily devouring the Royal Throne and ventured, "Should we do anything about that?"
"Conveniently," Steam replied, "that's why we're here."
"I gotta see this," Mask decided. "Fix away."
"Er... not here."
"Uh-huh," Mask said, sounding unconvinced. "And why not?"
"Because literally nothing works," Wind told him, and threw a small rock to demonstrate. It promptly vanished. "The only things that don't seem to vanish from all reality are, well, us. Oh, and anything we happen to be carrying."
"So..." Mask drew the word out for a good five seconds. "You're just hopping randomly and hoping to pop out at the source or something?"
"That's about it, yeah," Blue said.
"It's a bit more sophisticated than that," Vio edited. Blue frowned.
"But that's the general gist, isn't it?"
"Well I suppose, but-"
"So why is that a bad answer?"
Vio grimaced. "It leaves something to be desired..."
"And that means?"
"It means it could have been phrased better."
Blue grinned triumphantly. "But I'm not the one who phrased it."
"He's right, you know," Mask put in, having been following the back-and-forth and enjoying it immensely. "It's actually my phrasing."
Vio looked back and forth between the two of them and slowly paled a little bit. "Oh Din there's two of them."
"I think I like you," Blue said, holding his hand out for Mask to shake.
"Likewise."
Vio, in an effort to preserve his sanity and dignity, went to talk to Ocarina instead.
By the time the Four made it up the mountain, broke into Vaati's Palace, dissipated all the monster minions, and all but broke into the Throne Room where the wedding ceremony would presumably take place, they were very tired, very irritated, and very, very confused.
The tiredness came from the fact that they'd just hiked up a mountain and invaded a Palace – or at least, most of the tiredness. The rest came from the fact that the Four had been all over Hyrule already trying to 'prove themselves worthy' to climb the mountain, invade the Palace, and rescue the Princess in the first place. For some reason, the Great Fairies of the land functioned as not only proper authority on who got to rescue the Princess, but also when. Understandably, the Four were a bit disillusioned with the Great Fairies by this point.
This was also, coincidentally, where most of the irritation was coming from. It was primarily aimed at the Great Fairies, because the Four had volunteered for this thank you very much and were largely unimpressed with all the hoops they'd had to jump through to prove their 'worthiness'. There was, of course, a bit of irritation aimed at Vaati as well for being the one responsible for kidnapping the Princess in the first place.
The confusion, however, was all Vaati's fault. Because he really was supposed to be on the other side of the altar about to get married, and not nowhere to be seen with a large black hole substituting his place.
But at least Zelda was there... even if she was wearing high heels and a wedding dress and looked absolutely livid because of it.
"Link!" she exclaimed. "Come over here and lend me a dagger or something, would you?"
The Four paused in what had previously been their hurried rush to their Princess and quickly conferred with themselves. Then the blue member, who had been abruptly voted as the spokesman for this conversation, stepped forward with extreme difficulty and discomfort and handed Zelda an arrowhead instead.
"We," he said slowly, grimacing with effort, "don't have... a dagger, but... will... this work?"
"Absolutely," Zelda replied, accepting the projectile. Then she stabbed it into her dress and tore the entire skirt up to her thigh on both sides. "You would not believe," she informed the Four between ripping noises, "how annoying this thing is. It's like it was specifically made to be impossible to move in."
"Um," the blue member said, partly because his hive-mind instinct was screaming at him, but mostly because he had exactly nothing to offer on the topic of wearing wedding dresses. Zelda tactfully ignored this and began hacking off the heels of her shoes.
"Nayru help the idiot who thinks I'm hiking down a mountain in these things," she muttered.
Once she'd mutilated her outfit to her satisfaction, she handed the arrow back to the blue member and said, "Thank you, that's much better."
"You're... alright?"
Zelda smirked. "Please, he didn't even touch me. He was too busy with all my 'requests'."
The blue member made a confused face in lieu of an actual question; he could feel his grip on individuality slipping. Maintaining himself as separate from the hive-mind was hard.
"Oh you know," Zelda replied. "Color scheme, invitations, bridesmaids, flowers, catering, the guest list, his tuxedo, locale, the type of icing on the cake..." She smirked again. "I fought that jerk every inch of the way. You should have seen the fight we had over whether or not my bouquet should have been color-coordinated with the napkins."
"Oh," the blue member said, having a severe lack of anything else to offer on the subject.
"But enough about that, obviously I came through just fine," Zelda said. "Much more importantly right now, Link, what are you doing?"
The blue member gave her a confused look, which the other three members of the Four fought to keep from appearing on their faces as well. "Uh... rescuing you?"
"Not that," Zelda waved her hand in the air as if to brush aside something utterly inconsequential. "You pulled the Four Sword to rescue me, right? So why are you doing that... individual thing?" She looked him up and down skeptically. "You look like you're about to either fall over dead or explode from all that tension."
The blue member frowned and abruptly realized that he actually was incredibly tense. "You wouldn't... mind?"
Zelda sighed. "Of course not. I'm not dense, I'm perfectly aware of what the Four Sword does and how the effects might manifest. Let me guess, though, you met some less-than-understanding people before finding me?"
"Uh..."
"Oh, never mind," Zelda said. "Just be normal, will you?"
The blue member exchanged a glance with his other three counterparts before stepping back into the formation. They breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief.
"Thanks," they said.
"Don't mention it," Zelda replied, waving it off. "Now, the next problem. Vaati appears to have been abducted by a void which still hasn't disappeared and seems uninclined to do so anytime soon. It also seems to be destroying whatever it touches. Thoughts?"
"Could be a curse?"
Zelda considered it. "...Unlikely, given that Vaati would have been the caster and I doubt he would have meant to cast it on himself," she decided. "But honestly, this kind of magic – if it even is magic – really isn't my thing. I'm a Light magic specialist and not much else. We're gonna need some experts if we wanna figure out what this is."
The Four frowned thoughtfully. "So, like the Great Fairies?"
"That is an option," Zelda agreed. She tilted her head, thinking. "Actually, that's probably our best option. The Great Fairies attuned themselves to me a long time ago in the name of protection, even if what they actually do is send hapless heroes after me instead – no offense."
"Some taken, but continue."
Zelda did so. "My point is that I can find them much more easily than anybody else. So, here's what I'm thinking. I'm going to go hunt down the Great Fairies and see if I can't get their input on this. Meanwhile, I'd like you four to stay here and keep an eye on that thing." She turned a glare on the void and watched it suspiciously. "It may have done Hyrule a favor by getting rid of Vaati, but that doesn't mean I trust it."
"Uh... it's just a hole, remember?" the Four ventured.
"It never hurts to be cautious."
The Four had to admit that she had a point. "How long should we wait?"
Zelda considered that. "...Give it a week," she decided. "If I'm not back by then, storm the Sea of Trees because the Great Fairies will probably have 'kidnapped' me in an attempt to prevent any future kidnappings."
"Got it."
Zelda gave them a firm nod, then hiked up what was left of her skirt and marched down the mountain like she was off to murder the inventor of stiletto shoes. The Four watched her go.
'Do you guys ever think that she's not the most normal girl?' the green member asked.
The violet member gave a mental scoff. 'What was your first clue?'
'Mine was when she used the arrowhead to mutilate her shoes,' the blue member admitted.
'Wait, really? What about that time when we were kids and she found that snake in the gardens?' the red member asked. 'She named it Legless and made it the unofficially official mascot of the Castle, remember?'
There were several agreeing and reminiscing noises from the other three. Then-
'Why are we even talking about this?'
'I think she's just a refreshing personality. She's the first person we've met while like this who hasn't tried to perform an exorcism or thought we were psychically empowered quadruplets.'
'True.'
'That exorcist guy was weird , though.'
There was a moment of contemplative mental silence.
'...Let's not talk about him.'
Meanwhile, Lore had let his curiosity get the better of him.
"I wanna hold it," he said, staring at Curse Stone that Dusk was carefully holding out for examination. Dusk blinked.
"...Why?"
"Because it's shiny," Lore said, as though that explained everything.
"I don't think that's the best idea," Dusk said tactfully. "We don't know if it will have the same effect on you as it does on me."
Lore grinned. "And that's all the more reason to try!" So saying, he darted out his hand before Dusk could stop him. Sure enough, the moment he made contact with the Curse Stone he vanished into a cloud of Twilight. There was a startled yelp, followed by a small thump, and when the Twilight cleared away Dusk found himself at a loss for words.
"...This is not what I was expecting," he admitted after a moment spent staring.
"Oh my Goddesses," Sketch said, gaping. "Is... is he pink?"
"He's pink," Wind confirmed.
"Oh my Goddesses."
"Lore," Dusk said quietly, "why are you pink?"
Lore, who was now a small, pink, and incredibly irate rabbit, gave him a shrug. Apparently he didn't know either.
"He's pink," Sketch repeated. "He's pink and fluffy and adorable. This is amazing."
"I kinda wanna pet him," Steam muttered. "Is that weird?"
"Probably," Realm muttered back. "But I want to pet him too, so..."
Lore gave them both a Look which interpreted itself as 'Absolutely not', and the two suddenly remembered that rabbits had extremely good hearing and promptly stopped talking. Red, on the other hand, had no such qualms and proceeded to outright ask, "Can I pet you?"
Behind him, Green and Vio made apologetic gestures.
Lore squeezed his eyes shut in the true fashion of the long-suffering, which proved to be a mistake because Red took that as a 'yes' and began stroking the fur on top of Lore's head between his ears. "You're so soft," he giggled.
Lore's nose twitched, which was probably in irritation but just looked adorable instead. Dusk took that as his cue to rescue his fellow Hero and unsheathed the Sword from his back.
"It changes me back," he reminded Lore when the rabbit gave him a curious glance. "So it'll probably do the same for you."
He tapped Lore's head with the flat of the blade, and was promptly concerned when exactly nothing happened. He frowned; Lore's nose increased in its twitching frequency.
"Maybe it's specific only to you?" Vio suggested, having wandered over from somewhere and bringing Ocarina with him. "Since it's your Sword and all?"
Dusk frowned some more. "That's all well and good for me..."
"Didn't Lore say he had something for this, though?" Green asked. "That whole Dark World thing he told us about, remember? It was like a pearl or something."
"Moon Pearl," Sketch supplied, snapping his fingers. "He said he used a Moon Pearl to counteract his transformation."
"Do you still have one of those?' Dusk asked. Lore nodded rapidly and pointed a paw at his Bag, which was slumped on the ground and held shut with a button that a rabbit would have no hope of undoing.
"I'll get it," Wind volunteered. He sifted through the contents for a moment, then asked, "Does anyone know what it looks like?"
"Probably like a pearl?" Sketch said. Wind gave him a look.
"I never would have guessed," he said dryly. "But like, how big is it, what color, that sort of thing."
"How much stuff is in there that you need to ask?"
"A lot," Wind said, rustling around and producing muffled clank noises. "A lot."
Everyone looked at Lore in askance, who flipped an ear and made a general 'it's this big' gesture. Wind nodded and dove back in.
"I think I found it," he announced after a few more moments, and pulled out a red, fist-sized sphere which had swirls of violet rolling through it.
"That is not a pearl," Vio said. "And if it is, then I want to see the oyster."
Wind ignored him, instead looking at Lore and asking, "Is this it?"
Lore responded by hopping over and pressing a paw to the surface of the orb. There was a bright flash and an odd waver in the air around the light, and suddenly Lore was crouched next to Wind with one hand on the Pearl and the Curse Stone lying on the ground a few feet away.
"Well," Lore decided, standing and taking the Pearl with him. "That was unexpected."
"I would like to put it on record," Dusk said, "that I did warn you."
"That you did," Lore agreed. "However, I still stand by my reasoning."
Vio leaned over to Realm. "What was his reasoning?" he whispered.
"It was shiny," Realm murmured back.
"It was!" Lore agreed, completely ignoring the fact that he wasn't supposed to have heard that conversation.
Dusk just shook his head and sighed before scooping the Curse Stone back into his drawstring pouch with a practiced motion. Ocarina, who had been watching the whole spectacle with the look of someone out of his depth, raised his hand hesitantly.
"What, exactly, just happened?" he asked. "And... why were you pink?"
"Alright," Lore said authoritatively. "Sit down and take notes, 'cause we're gonna be here a while. It all started when I was about ten and was for some reason the only hope to save the kingdom..."
Vio discreetly went to round up Mask and Blue, because the story rounds were starting up yet again and it really did go smoother when everybody was around to listen in.
Demise was at his wit's end.
This was mostly because he was the patron deity of destroying things, which meant that he wasn't very good in the creative department and had thus already used all his ideas to get the voices in his head to shut up ages ago. The problem with this was that his fallback idea was death threats, and with the villains being who they were, well... none of them felt very threatened.
By this point, Demise was going on two weeks Reality Time with his Hatred Incarnations in his head. As a god, he was very used to things happening exactly the way he wanted them immediately when he wanted them to happen. Whenever that scenario didn't happen, he tended not to take it well. A good example of this would be during the Demon War, in which Demise had been thwarted by Hylia and sealed away in the form of a (quite frankly hideous) beast. He'd been quite unhappy with that. He'd also thrown the godly equivalent of a temper tantrum by taking every advantage of escape that he possibly could and expressing his irritation by targeting Hylia's nearest Temple whenever the opportunity arose.
A second, and equally good example, would be when the Chosen Hero had harnessed a lightning bolt, planted his ridiculously holy sword in Demise's ribcage, and proceeded to seal the deity away in said sword for the next several hundred years. Demise hadn't been very happy with that either, and had promptly taken it out on the nearest target (which happened to be the Hero, conveniently enough) by casting a curse to forever haunt the cursed one with incarnations of Demise's hatred.
It should be noted that, had Demise kept his head just a bit better and thought that whole thing through, he could have avoided his current situation entirely. However, foresight was not one of Demise's better qualities.
Neither was hindsight, for that matter, but that was another issue entirely and not at all related to what Demise was about to do.
Demise was going to strike a deal.
"All of you shut up right now and maybe I won't eradicate your existence from the fabric of reality!" he snarled.
...He wasn't the best negotiator.
You did that already, Majora pointed out disinterestedly. That is why we are stuck with you, correct?
"Incorrect," Demise snapped, "because if that were the case then I wouldn't have to deal with you imbeciles!"
Well, who's fault is that?
Demise let out a growl, which didn't actually do anything productive, but it made him feel better. "Give me one good reason why I ought to even consider giving you lot the time of day in the first place."
Have you even been paying attention? Hyrule Ganondorf asked derisively. We are villains. Everything we do is worth your pitiful 'time of day'.
"Really," Demise replied drily. "Tell me then, how many of you have managed a successful takeover and subsequent subjugation?"
He was immediately met with an indignant chorus and some bubbling, as every single voice in his head promptly declared the superiority of their own individual takeover to him. Demise bit back a sneer.
"Let me be more specific," he interrupted. "How many of you can say that you were not thwarted by a Hero within two months of your takeover?"
I can, Hyrule Ganondorf stated smugly
I threw a Peahat party that lasted for a week! Zant exclaimed.
There was a low, entirely-fed-up groan, then Twilight Ganondorf said, Zant says yes, but I'm taking the credit. It was my plan, and we all know Zant is too much of an idiot otherwise.
The Hero didn't even know I was there, Veran sniffed.
The Hero hasn't even found me yet, Original Ganon informed them all, sounding incredibly full of himself.
I've been ruling Hyrule for decades, Ocean Ganondorf proclaimed.
Demise smiled thinly. "And how many of you can say that the Hero never thwarted you at all?"
I literally just said that the Hero hasn't even found me, Original Ganon said, annoyed. Weren't you listening?
Yes, I'm sure you think that's quite impressive, Majora mused absently.
And I suppose you've done better?
Of course I have, Majora said pleasantly, which promptly gave everyone shivers because Majora never sounded pleasant unless someone else was in extreme pain. Before this oaf stole me away, the Hero was dying in fire and pain.
You're sure about that, Twilight Ganondorf said sarcastically.
Oh yes, quite sure. I brought the Moon down on his head, you see. If the burning atmosphere doesn't kill him, then the several million tons of rock certainly will.
But, Twilight Ganondorf pressed, you don't know for sure, because you were taken before you could see it happen, correct?
There was a brief moment of silence. Then Majora let out a quiet, contemplative hum, and Twilight Ganondorf abruptly shrieked as a sharp fwump informed Demise that he had been set on fire.
Any other delightfully informative tidbits that people might feel like sharing? Majora asked calmly, somehow managing to be heard over Twilight Ganondorf's screaming without any issue.
Nobody responded.
"I do believe he had a point," Demise said, smoothly taking the conversation back. "How can any of you be sure that the Hero hasn't taken back their home in your absence? Not one of you seem to have had a stopgap measure in place. I must say, I'm disappointed."
What else is new, Malladus snorted. You hated us from the moment we showed up. Though, I for one have been happy to return the favor.
Same, Picori Vaati agreed, and the other villains gave murmured assent. Well, except for Twilight Ganondorf, whose screams were now punctuated with occasional breaks where his voice gave out.
"I noticed," Demise said shortly. "However. I have had a thought on the subject. Alone, you all have faced the Hero and failed. Spectacularly. So spectacularly, in fact, that I sometimes have trouble believing that you people are supposed to be the embodiments of my hatred. The sheer scope of your failure boggles my mind to the point where I am not quite sure to believe your incompetence or not. It takes skill – expertise – to approach a goal with the abilities you people have and still manage to be thwarted anyways-"
WE GET IT, Demon Vaati roared.
"I really don't think you do," Demise retorted. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have so very much material to give examples with."
What is your point? Onox ground out impatiently.
"Clearly, you are all incompetent to an astonishing degree," Demise replied bluntly.
Right, that's it. Bellum, go get your bagpipe, we obviously haven't made our opinions clear enough to-
"BELLUM YOU WILL REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE OR SO HELP ME I WILL SET MAJORA ON YOU!" Demise bellowed. "And the rest of you, shut up and listen. Has it occurred to any of you what a golden opportunity this is?"
...Explain, Ocean Ganondorf said slowly.
Demise gestured to himself, which was a somewhat futile effort since all the villains were in his head and couldn't actually see him move. "Every one of you has tried to defeat the Hero, and every one of you has failed – or is going to fail," he added, just to cut off anyone who might have been getting ideas. "But right now, you're all in one body. My body. And I just so happen to be a god. If we were to, say, work together to destroy the mutual thorn in our sides, combined your abilities and experience in using them with my superior physical ability and pure godly power-"
Could you brag just a little more, I don't think Zant quite got the full impact, Veran scoffed.
"My point is," Demise snapped, "that we could accomplish much more together than we would apart. And really, we're already in close quarters with each other, so why not make the best of it?"
There was a still, thoughtful silence.
...You're not just saying this to avoid the next round of bagpipe music, are you? Lorule Ganon asked suspiciously.
"I would never," Demise gasped. He was utterly insincere about it, but then again he was evil, so nobody cared much. "I am merely pointing out that we have a truly golden opportunity."
There was more silence.
I think he might actually have a point, Onox rumbled.
So do cacti, Veran snapped. Why shouldn't he release us all at once to rip the Hero to shreds instead?
"Because I am the one calling the shots, and I am not going to be releasing anyone," Demise growled. "Either work with me to eliminate the Hero and actually accomplish something for once in your pitiful lives, or don't and remain as you are. Your choice."
Yet more silence.
At this point in my life, Ocean Ganondorf said stiffly, I believe that I value the eradication of the Hero more than I do my own personal welfare. I will... accept your offer.
You can't be serious, Veran stated.
I agree with Ocean Ganondorf, Past Ganon put in. I've been taken out by that spindly little elfling more than once, and by now I'll take any form of victory I can get.
Are you all thinking this!? Veran demanded. There was a muted rustle of agreement. Bellum bubbled loudly.
Not now, Bellum, Malladus hissed.
Veran let out a disbelieving scoff. You're all idiots.
I do not care, Majora's diffident tone broke in. Do what you will, all of you. But if you do decide to chase the elfling Hero- the mask's tone sharpened into something disturbing -then I will be burning him to ashes and I will not be hesitating for anyone who gets in my way.
There was a weak shuffle, then Twilight Ganondorf let out a broken whimper. From the sound of things, Majora had just used him as a demonstrative reminder of what happened when people got in range.
Well, Hyrule Ganondorf said after a moment, that aside, the general consensus seems to be a yes. What do you have in mind?
Demise, for the first time in a long time, cracked a smile. "First, we're going to have a little lesson in stealth."
"...and that's how we got here," Wind said, finishing up the latest storytelling session in what was turning into a very long line. "And then we met you guys, and you know the rest."
"...Wow," Mask said, taking a moment to solidify everything in his head. "I never knew there were so many ways that life could kick you in the face."
"Umm..."
"For a while I really thought that time travel had to be the be-all to end-all," Mask continued. "There's a whole lotta retconning that goes into messing with time, you know? It's nice to know that I'm not alone in my position as the universe's favorite target."
"That does not make me feel reassured," Ocarina muttered.
"Don't worry, you get used to it."
"And that makes me feel even less so."
Mask just shook his head in a tolerant sort of fashion. "Seriously though. We've got one Link who's a werewolf, another who's made of paint, four of us used to be one person, one with a weather-controlling stick, another who can literally see spirits and fancy crap, plus one who's got enough magic stuff to probably manipulate reality if he really tried, and the one guy who would probably be completely normal if it weren't for the fact that he can get lost within five steps of where he started. Amidst all that, do you really think that random time travel and age manipulation sounds all that out-of-place?"
"...He's got a point," Wind offered.
"I'm not actually a werewolf, you know," Dusk pointed out quietly.
"Pretty darn close though," Mask replied. "But, that aside, I feel like there's something we should be doing?"
"I could probably go for a nap," Lore said.
"We just woke up."
"Yeah, but telling stories is tiring," Lore explained. "You gotta get into the emotion of the moment, or else nobody appreciates the point."
"I was wondering why you included dramatic reenactments this time around," Steam muttered. Lore grinned.
"It's all part of the cāsnmīleełebar yūtpōmeah," he said knowingly.
Everyone stared at him.
"...Run that by me again?" Sketch said.
"What?"
"The... caasnmeeleebar yootpohmeeyah," Sketch said, badly mangling the pronunciation and wincing.
Lore tilted his head. "Oh, did I...? Sorry, I usually keep better track of which language I'm in than that. But, uh, there's actually no exact translation, Hyrulean doesn't have a word for it. Basically it's the feeling you get when you connect emotionally with a character in a story and suddenly feel like you understand exactly what they're going through. Like when you both like the color mauve and suddenly their entire worldview makes perfect sense."
"...Right," Sketch frowned, sincerely doubting that mauve was actually that important of a color.
"Technically speaking, if you wanted an exact translation it'd be something along the lines of 'empathy resemblance,'" Lore continued. "Er... kinda."
"That's actually really interesting," Vio said.
"Wow you're a nerd," Blue muttered.
"Because liking other language and culture isn't cool enough for you, I suppose?"
"More like it makes no sense."
"It makes perfect sense if you actually put the time and effort into it," Vio snapped.
"Hey, I totally put effort into-"
"What in Nayru's Name am I going to have to do to get you two to shut up once in a while!?" Green exploded. "Every time, guys! Every single time! Do we look like we can just sit around and wait while you two argue for an hour!?" He gestured sharply at the hole in emphasis of this.
Both Blue and Vio wilted under the Disappointed Leader assault. "Sorry," they muttered together. Green let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Just please, please pick better times for your arguments," he requested. "I know better than to try and stop you outright, but this is getting ridiculous..."
"I should probably go ahead of you through the hole then," Vio told Blue in a somewhat subdued fashion. "Because of the whole landing-on-your-leg thing..."
"Probably a good idea, yeah," Blue agreed, equally subdued.
Lore looked back and forth between the three of them. "...I want lessons," he decided.
"On what?" Red wanted to know.
"Green's Leader-Voice."
Green blinked, because he didn't particularly think his leadership skills were anything special and was becoming rather confused as to why Lore would want lessons on such a thing. He quickly came to an executive decision – stall for time – and promptly did so by saying, "Not right now, but maybe after we stop the world from disintegrating?"
"That is a good point," Realm put in.
Lore promptly slung an arm around an unsuspecting Dusk's neck and declared, "An excellent idea. On we go!" and dragged the taller Hero behind him through the hole, with Dusk giving everyone a long-suffering eye-roll right before he vanished.
"I feel like he should concern me more," Ocarina mused. "But for some reason he doesn't, and now I'm concerned about why I'm not more concerned."
"That would be your 'Crap to Give' meter filling up," Mask informed him. "Give it a couple more years and eventually you won't really care at all."
"...That doesn't make me feel better."
Mask just winked at him.
When the void spat out two entirely unexpected and completely random teenagers dressed in green, the Four decided that this day officially capped their list of Weird Crap That Happens To Us and blew the rest of the competition clear out of the water to boot. This decision was immediately followed by the Four taking absolutely no chances whatsoever and chucking as many bombs as physically possible at the two newcomers, just in case they were about to launch an assault or something. Because really, with the way things had been going lately, it wouldn't surprise them in the slightest if the hole turned out to be a portal used by alternate-world invaders.
Unfortunately, this didn't quite go as they'd planned.
"Ejsy y'jr jr'vl!?" one of the teenagers yelled, abandoning his friend and stalking over to shove a blackened and smoking finger in the Four's faces. " S'kᾳk O-n y'tuomh yᾳp fᾳp od ds'br y'jr imobᾳrt'dr! Ejy f'p orpok'r l'rᾳro y'tuomh yᾳp nk'pe nᾳr io!?
The Four stared blankly. "...What?"
"Lore," the other teenager said quietly, putting out the fire on his hat as he did. "Hyrulean, please."
"Ejsy?" the first newcomer responded, his tone indicating confusion. Then he seemed to realize what it was that he'd actually just said and grinned sheepishly. "Oh. My bad."
"What language even was that?" The Four asked cautiously, having never heard it before in their lives.
"Holodese. But never mind that, I've just been insulted according to the Proper Laws of Bomb Usage as Ordained by the Subrosian Circle of Incendiary Materials. Cover your ears."
" Wait, why-"
"I HAVE BEEN INSULTED!" Lore bellowed at the top of his lungs, and proceeded to go off on a wildly confusing tangent, made all the more impressive by the fact that the Four hadn't known that they could be any more confused. The other teen grimaced apologetically.
"Sorry about... him," he said. "He'll stop in a few minutes, I'm pretty sure. He's Lore, by the way, in case you guys didn't catch it earlier. I'm Dusk. You?"
The Four suddenly remembered that people didn't usually take their unified speech/movement/thing very well and cursed the fact that it was too late to think of a cover story. "We're the Four," they muttered.
Dusk didn't even blink. "Nice to meet you. Do you have individual names as well or should I just address you guys by your collective?"
The Four stared for moment before rallying. "Our collective is fine."
Dusk nodded. "So, I'm guessing you all are a Four Sword set?"
The Four started. "How do you know about that?"
"I know some people in a very similar situation," Dusk replied, and pointed at the void, which was now expelling several more people. They all gave Lore confused and resigned looks before making their way around the still-ranting teen to join Dusk instead.
"Whoa," a short boy wearing all blue said, examining the Four closely. "You guys look just like me. Like, more than the usual 'we're-all-Link-here' type of thing."
"You mean they look like us," Vio corrected.
"Same thing, really."
Vio tilted his head in acknowledgement. "I'm more interested in the fact that they seem to have their own Four Swords."
"Cool," Red breathed.
"Huh," Green said. "Maybe we're related?"
Vio frowned in thought. "I... don't think so? I suppose anything's possible, if highly unlikely. To me it looks more like these are the guys from the Four Sword legend we grew up with."
"So cool," Red repeated. "We get to meet legends!"
"What?" Lore said, pausing mid-rant and looking over to where everyone else was. "Someone say my title?"
"Nah, Red's just excited," Blue replied, waving a hand.
"So is Blue, he just doesn't want to admit it," Red teased.
"...Shut up."
The Four, who for the past few minutes had been staring open-mouthed at Blue, Green, Vio, and Red in what looked like significant surprise, quickly took advantage of the lull in the conversation and said, "How are you guys doing that?"
"Holy-!" Blue yelped, while Vio's eyes widened in surprise and Green and Red both jumped a little because of how loud Blue's voice was. "Forget that, how are you guys doing that!?"
The Four shrank a little. "It just kinda happened..."
"When?" Vio questioned, his eyes locked on the Four's faces.
" When we drew the Four Sword."
Vio exchanged a look with his other three siblings, then glanced back at his own version of the Four Sword over his shoulder. "That's... huh. That is honestly unexpected."
"Seriously though," the Four said. "How are you doing that?"
"Doing what?" Red asked curiously.
" Being... individual."
Green blinked. "Er... isn't that just normal? I'm personally a lot more interested in how you guys are being so coordinated."
" We drew the Four Sword. So did you. So why aren't you like us?"
"Why aren't you like us?"
"This is going nowhere," Vio sighed. "Look, maybe the Four Sword lost some power over the years? They came way before we did, so I'm willing to bet that the magic was more powerful at the time of the forging. Or at least, that's my best guess."
"So... what, you guys have a hive mind or something?" Blue asked, frowning.
" Uhh..."
"Close enough?" Green guessed.
The Four tilted their heads, considering it. "...Yeah, let's go with that. Seems pretty accurate."
"Actually, if you think about it, we do that too," Vio said to his siblings. "Just not quite to that level. It usually happens when we're all thinking about the same thing, and then we swap speaking privileges with each other when we try to say it out loud."
"Like that time you told your story!" Steam exclaimed, startling all eight of the Four Sword carriers since they'd entirely forgotten other people were there. "We had to make you guys give visual cues for when you were going to switch speakers so we could actually follow what was going on!"
"Sorry about that," Red apologized sheepishly, and a bit belatedly since by this point that conversation had happened over a week ago.
Things just rolled from there, with very little issue. The Four introduced themselves to the group, and the group returned the favor. Lore made his usual impression and left the Four with the usual opinion of his sanity, and Dusk stepped in as he usually did to make sure that Lore didn't traumatize anyone too badly. All in all, it was a perfectly normal example of the group absorbing a new Link into the fold.
Well, as normal as something like that could even be.
"So," Dusk began once everyone was acquainted. "It's a bit of a tradition at this point that we all sit down and share our adventures with the new Links so that everybody knows everybody else-"
Lore promptly dropped to the ground, pulled his hat over his eyes, and said, "Wake me when it's my turn," before immediately starting to snore. Dusk raised a marvelously incredulous eyebrow.
"First of all," he said, reaching over and confiscating Lore's hat so that the sun shone directly into his fellow Hero's face, "you interrupted me, which is rude and I'll be expecting an apology later. Second of all, the Four are going first, and you are going to be awake until they're done. Clear?"
Lore eyed Dusk, then the hand which held his hat. "...Veah-Ai neeb yūteedbar..." he muttered with a mournful expression on his face. Dusk's incredulous eyebrow went even higher.
"I only speak Hyrulean," he reminded Lore.
"Right, sorry. We're clear."
Dusk nodded, and handed that hat back. "We're good to go," he informed the Four, who had been watching the interaction with fascination.
"Oh. Okay." The Four took a deep breath. "So, it all really started when Princess Zelda discovered that the seal on Vaati had been weakening over time. But he ended up breaking free before anybody could do anything about it, and he kidnapped Zelda because..."
The Four paused.
"Because...?" Wind prompted.
" Er... well, because she was pretty."
There was a moment of confused silence.
"...Wait," Sketch said. "Your villain's entire reason for doing what he did was because he had a crush on a good-looking girl?"
"Apparently," the Four said, looking simultaneously bewildered and embarrassed. "Vaati, uh... he didn't have much of a plan, as far as we can tell. We really just think he wanted to get married."
"...I can't decide whether that's hysterically funny or not," Mask muttered, looking very conflicted. Ocarina, meanwhile, just had a blank look on his face. He was trying to find what his older self found funny about a Princess being kidnapped and was failing utterly, which was actually more concerning to him than the kidnapping because it did not bode well for the continuity of his personal time stream.
Everyone else just frowned.
" Anyways, we drew the Four Sword so that we could combat Vaati and get Zelda back, but before we could get started the Great Fairies showed up. They said we couldn't go after Zelda right away because we had to prove ourselves 'courageous enough'."
Realm tilted his head, frowning. "But... wouldn't volunteering be enough proof of that?"
The Four shrugged, looking uncertain. "Ah... maybe? But the Great Fairies really didn't see it that way and we got sent on a lot of fetch-quests instead."
Mask immediately laid a commiserating hand on the green member of the Four's shoulder. "I am so sorry," he said. "If you need any counseling for that, I know a guy."
The Four blinked at him. "Uhh... thanks...?"
"He's not joking," Ocarina inserted. "The emotional aftermath from fetch-quests can be... severe."
"We'll... keep that in mind," the Four responded slowly. "Um, but anyway, after that we went to the Sea of Trees to get started on the first task..."
If there was one perk to godhood, it was that one god could piggyback off of another god's power, whether it was mutually beneficial or not. In this case, it was most decidedly not. Demise had no doubt that if the Three Goddesses knew he was hijacking their reality window to gather intel on the Hero, they would be miffed at the very least and absolutely murderous at the very most.
Hence, why he was hijacking their reality window instead of bursting in, temporarily slaughtering them all (that was the annoying thing about fellow deities, they were so difficult to permanently kill), and taking the thing for himself. The last thing he needed right now was to have three very ticked off goddesses on his tail in addition to the voices in his head and his impending plans to wipe the elfling Hero from existence, because the scope of his abilities unfortunately did not include omnipotence and Demise wasn't nearly foolish enough to believe that he could juggle it all and not forget at least something.
Well that's interesting, Malladus commented, evidently looking through Demise's eyes to see the scene in the reality window.
"I appear to have caused far more chaos in the universe than I was initially aware of," Demise muttered in unintentional agreement. He narrowed his eyes at the window, which was currently showing a substantially-sized group of green-clothed Heroes and a few more colorful ones mixed on. The ginger one was talking dramatically and appeared to be making coordinated shadow puppets, much to the other Heroes' confused resignation.
I've changed my mind, Veran said suddenly and viciously. I'm in.
Onox snorted. Fickle.
There was a moment of silence. Then Veran said, sickly sweet, Onox, I will throw you into magma and melt your armor into your skin with excruciating detail if you keep opening your mouth. Understood?
I will help, Majora offered in a silky purr.
"All of you shut up, I'm trying to hear myself think," Demise snapped. "Veran, elaborate on your first statement."
If I'd known that we would be personally eradicating our specific Heroes, I would have been a bit more understanding in the first place.
"Yes, you all have fought them personally, haven't you," Demise mused. "Excellent. We're going to have a little planning session, everyone."
Notes:
I'm probably overstating fetch-quest irritation by... a lot, but seriously, when I have to trade a rock for a scarf for a bug for a feather for a seedling for a dog for a mirror for an axe for a bucket, I get a little bit annoyed. Besides, they're infamous for a reason, right?
In other news, the Four are what happens when I have two sets of Four Sword Hero(es) and need to differentiate between them. My 'Bold' key is gonna get so much mileage.
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian
cāsnmīleełebar yūtpōmeah (exactly what Lore said, although strictly speaking the more compact translation would be 'you feel what they feel')
Veah-Ai neeb yūteedbar (I've been betrayed)
Holodese Translations
-Ejsy y'jr jr'vl!? S'kᾳk O-n y'tuomh yᾳp fᾳp od ds'br y'jr imobᾳrt'dr! Ejy f'p orpok'r l'rᾳro y'tuomh yᾳp nk'pe nᾳr io!? (What the heck!? All I'm trying to do is save the universe! Why do people keep trying to blow me up!?)
-Ejsy? (What?)
Thanks to Guest #50, Guest #51, OneBecomesTwo, Guest #52, ForestFreak, Zelda_Moore, Guest #53, ToodleOfDeeth, Guest #54, Guest #55, Guest #56, linapenguin2326, Guest #57, schrodingers__cat, speakdontweep, Guest #58, and rosalia_gurkenstein for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 15: The One Who Shrinks
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of the Minish?
Notes:
(If it weren't for the fact that I really don't want to get sued, I would have given up on this whole Disclaimer thing by now.)
I do not own Silver the Hedgehog.
(I mean, I suppose I could just let it be and see what happens... Everyone should know I don't actually own the LoZ franchise, so why not? Let's see where this goes.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The telling-of-everyone's-stories had by now reached the point of lasting for several hours, and really the only people who actively paid attention to it anymore were whoever was actively talking at the time and whichever Link was new. Thus, while the Four listened (and occasionally, as well as simultaneously, yawned) to Blue, Vio, Green, and Red tell their adventure, everyone else had wandered off somewhere else.
Lore, predictably, had gone to sleep and was somehow snoring in what sounded like aggressive snarling. Wind, who had spent just enough time around Valoo the Dragon to know what the language sounded like, had informed everyone that Lore apparently snored in Firetongue. The statement had been met by confused blinking and the unanimous decision to not ask how Lore had even managed such a thing in the first place, because they probably didn't want to know.
Steam, meanwhile, had accosted Sketch again regarding his various mechanical ideas, and had looped Dusk and Wind into it through proximity and the fact that both Links came from a hometown where, if something broke, you fixed it yourself. They were all in the process of drawing up the self-sustaining lantern schematics and occasionally arguing about where such-and-such mechanism should go. Well, Steam and Sketch argued about it; Wind and Dusk just sort of waited them out when that happened.
Ocarina was, as usual, gravitating to wherever Mask was, and Mask was talking with Realm about maybe, just maybe looking into a compass to help with his directional issues. Realm promptly informed him that he'd had a compass, at some point, but he'd lost it months ago and had no idea where it was.
So really, nothing unusual was happening at all, at least from the group's perspective.
"...weird," the Four decided upon hearing the completed tale from the other Four Sword wielders. "Not that you guys are odd or anything, it's just..."
"Freaky to hear about people who could literally be you with a few small tweaks?" Blue supplied matter-of-factly. The Four nodded in agreement.
" Yeah... but, um, especially hearing about you guys specifically... sorry."
"Honestly? Same," Vio replied. "I have so many questions now. I'm gonna be doing experiments on our Four Swords for weeks."
" Our?"
"Well, yeah," Vio said. "How am I supposed to figure out what makes the effects different if I can't compare the two?"
" Umm..."
"Also, if you don't mind, can I do some tests on you Four as well? Like, reflex responses and things?"
"Uhh..." the Four looked at the other three Four Sword Heroes. From their synchronized expressions, they were either asking 'Help?' or 'What do we do?'
"You might as well go along with it," Green sighed. "Vio can get a little obsessed if something interests him."
"I do not!"
"But," Red piped up, "what about that time with the Moon Gate and the Chuchu and the delayed-release slingshot with the-?"
"Redpleasestoptalking."
"Oh yeah, I remember that," Blue snickered, then shuddered. "Please never do that again."
"I said I was sorry!"
"We don't mind a few tests," the Four interrupted, correctly interpreting that the conversation would go to a very awkward place in a few moments. Vio lit up.
"Excellent! Blue, get your hammer, I'm gonna need it."
The Four silently wondered if they'd made a mistake and dearly hoped that whatever was coming wasn't about to backfire on them.
"...Should we wake him?" Realm wondered, gingerly poking Lore with his foot. "I mean, we're kinda done telling stories now, and I feel like we ought to be on the move or something."
"I think we can let him be a little bit longer," Dusk replied. "I think that the Four and Vio and them are having some quality time or something."
Everyone looked over to where the two sets of Four Sword Heroes were milling around. Vio had what looked like Blue's hammer in his hands and was apparently doing a reflex test on the green member of the Four's kneecap. Abruptly, all four members' knees jerked.
Vio looked like his birthday had come early.
"They seem to be integrating well," Dusk continued, as Vio began tapping the knees of the other members of the Four and becoming progressively more excited with each reflex response. The Four, on the other hand, looked vaguely overwhelmed.
"...I'm sure they're fine."
"So then... what should we do in the meantime?" Ocarina asked.
Dusk hummed thoughtfully. "...I'm going to take a headcount," he decided.
"There's thirteen of us," Mask said promptly.
"Er... about that," Steam said. "Aren't you and Ocarina the same person? Like, literally the same person?"
"Yeah..."
"And," Steam continued, "aren't the Four the same person? And didn't Green and Vio and them used to be one person?"
"That was my understanding, yes," Wind contributed.
"So, shouldn't all of you only count as one person each, then?"
Everyone, especially Mask and Ocarina, frowned in consideration.
"...That is a good question," Ocarina admitted. "Mask?"
Mask shrugged. "Not really my area of expertise."
Dusk tilted his head, thinking. "I did say 'headcount'... I suppose I'll just count whatever heads I see."
"That is ridiculously literal."
"Saves me a headache though."
Lore chose that moment to let out another snore, causing a few people to jump and everyone else to be a little bit more annoyed than they'd been a few moments ago.
"Are we sure that waking him up isn't an option?" Sketch said. "Because this whole 'snoring in Dragon-speech' thing is getting a bit grating."
"Ooh, idea," Mask announced, perking up considerably. "I'm gonna prank him."
"Is that a good idea?" Ocarina asked doubtfully, eyeing his older self with a fair amount of reservation. "I mean, he is kinda our Leader-in-Training."
Mask blinked at him for a moment. "...Oh, you haven't developed my healthy disdain for authority yet, that's right," he realized. "Alright, watch and learn then. Dusk, I'm gonna need your Curse Stone."
Dusk gave him a flat look. "Two questions. One, why do you think that turning him into a pink rabbit while he sleeps is a good idea; and two, do you have a contingency plan for if he freaks out about it?"
"One, because he clearly didn't like it and that makes it excellent blackmail material," Mask replied, ticking it off on his fingers. "And two, of course I've got a contingency plan, what kind of heartless monster do you take me for?"
"You're using a clear aversion against him," Wind pointed out. "You can see where we might be concerned."
Mask sighed. "Look, guys. I know we've only known each other for, like, six hours or something. But trust me on this, I know my pranks. This one's pretty harmless."
Dusk considered that for a long moment, then looped the small pouch off his neck and dropped it into Mask's palm. "Take pictures."
"Already on it," Mask winked, then turned to Wind and announced, "I require your pictograph!"
"Let me find it first," Wind replied, already plunging an arm into his bag and rummaging around. He handed the item over a few seconds later, which Mask balanced on one arm while he used his hands to ease the Curse Stone out of the pouch without actually letting it touch his skin. Whatever side effect would come from that, he didn't want to deal with it at the moment.
Well, he didn't want to deal with it personally.
"So if you sneeze," Vio wondered, "do you do it simultaneously?"
"Yes."
"What about snoring?"
"Uhh... maybe? We're not exactly conscious for that."
"Darn," Vio muttered, scribbling something down on one of his many spare fragments of parchment (he had a habit of carrying at least ten things to write on just in case something caught his attention or he got an epiphany or there was an irritatingly complicated riddle to solve – it happened more than one might think). "Okay then, what about swallowing? Like, if one of you gets thirsty, do you all get thirsty? And do you all have individual water canteens or is it just one and then three of you make the motions while one of you actually drinks? Does the same apply to food? And what about breathing, does that happen in synchronization too? Do you think in unison? Do you dream in unison? You know what, can I just follow you guys around for like the next three months? This is absolutely fascinating."
The Four blinked, looking very blindsided. "Um. We swallow at the same time, we get thirsty at the same time, of course we have individual canteens, food follows the same logic, we're not really sure but probably, no we have individual trains of thought but it's more like mental communication, we have no idea, and we'd really rather you not but we don't think we have a choice in the matter at this point."
Vio paused, then visibly checked himself and winced. "Oh, Din. I'm so sorry, I just went full Science! mode on you guys, didn't I?"
"Just a little bit."
"I'll reign it in," Vio promised. "I'm not normally this inconsiderate, I-"
There was an abrupt and startled yelp from where the rest of the group was gathered, making both Vio and the Four jump.
"What was that?"
Vio frowned and pushed himself up on his toes, trying to get a better look. "No idea. We should probably go check, it kinda sounded like Lore."
"The ginger one with the concerning personality?"
"That's the one."
"Now," Demise said authoritatively, "you all will inform me of your powers and various abilities, and I will implement them as I see fit. I will then use our combined might to utterly eradicate the Heroes once and for all, finally destroy existence like I've wanted from the beginning, and as a result evict you all from my head so I can actually get some mental solitude for once."
...This seems like a foolproof and completely viable plan with absolutely no hidden agendas or possible backlash for me! Zant stated happily. I'm in!
Oh, for the love of – someone slap him for me, Twilight Ganondorf requested.
There were several loud smacks, clearly indicating that more than one person had followed the suggestion. Almost immediately following that came the now telltale fwomp of Majora setting something on fire.
I have no hands to slap with, the mask explained in a bored tone. In the background, Zant shrieked (and somehow managed to make it sound like opera).
I categorically disagree with everything Zant said, Picori Vaati declared, ignoring the Majora-caused chaos with the ease of growing experience. This sounds more like a deal that gives us all the short ends of the sticks.
"Well, suck it up," Demise growled. "Because that's the only deal you're getting. Be thankful I haven't just cast you all out instead."
Yes, why haven't you done that?
"Because – much as it infuriates me – you imbeciles have the potential to be useful."
Oh, that makes me so much more inclined to help you, Malladus said sarcastically.
"Then it's a good thing I don't require much of your help," Demise replied.
How, exactly, does that make it any different from what happens currently?
"This time you're doing it agreeably."
...I feel slightly cheated, Hyrule Ganondorf rumbled. And why didn't we make inquiries about this sort of thing before we agreed to help?
Veran snorted. Because you're all morons.
And you're not? You agreed just like the rest of us.
Yes, but I did it with full awareness of what I was getting myself into. And my bloodlust outweighed my logic at the time.
And you couldn't have enlightened the rest of us? Lorule Ganon asked pointedly.
It was more amusing this way.
Why you-!
"SHUT UP!" Demise snarled. "I am trying to accomplish something here!"
Which is?
"The best way to remove the Heroes' heads from their bodies," Demise reiterated through gritted teeth. "And I would like to know exactly what is at my disposal before attacking so as not to blindly charge in like an unprepared moron."
...Alright, Past Ganon said. I can get behind indiscriminate murder. What do you need to know?
"Start with everything," Demise grinned.
"Din, switch me."
Din frowned. "Why? I thought you wanted to watch the group with the largest Courage concentration."
"That is true," Farore replied, nodding. "But right now they're being particularly oblivious to my persuasions. So I'm moving on to the Minish Hero so I can actually make some progress for a while."
"Good luck," Din said, getting up and dutifully swapping places with her sibling. "He shrank down about two minutes ago and I lost him in a patch of clover. He is really hard to keep track of."
Farore waved a hand, already scrutinizing the reality window. "I'll manage. He's my Attribute, if I can't find him then there's something horribly wrong with the universe."
"Aside from what's already wrong with it?"
"You know what I mean."
Link pushed a clover stalk out of the way for the tenth time in the past two minutes and finally let himself come to the conclusion that he was in the wrong clover patch.
"Well that's just great then," he sighed, turning around and beginning the long trek back to the nearest Portal so he could grow to his normal size and get his bearings. On his head, his hat did a very un-hat-like thing and lifted itself up to stare at him.
"It's about time!" his hat squawked. "I told you this was the wrong patch, but no, why would you listen to Ezlo? He clearly knows nothing about the Picori, his advice isn't important at all!"
Link paused with one foot in the air before bringing it back down and continuing on his way. "Ezlo, you just told me to head back to the woods. You never said anything about this being the wrong patch. Are you sure you didn't forget to say it out loud again?"
This was actually a fairly common problem with Ezlo. He was a certified genius, for sure, and definitely wiser than Link could ever hope to be, but the problem was that he sometimes got so caught up in his own thoughts that he forgot other people couldn't hear them unless he physically verbalized them. Link had had more than one confusing conversation with his partner before he'd realized this little quirk and straightened out all the misunderstandings.
"I am quite sure that I know when I have said something, boy," Ezlo sniffed, which was blatantly untrue, but something that Link didn't feel like arguing with him about at the moment.
"Sure, Ezlo."
On top of his head, Ezlo sniffed suspiciously and craned his neck down to look Link in the eye. "Was that sarcasm?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. Link kept his face carefully blank as he shook his head.
As far as companions went, Ezlo really wasn't bad. He was actually more like the crotchety-but-actually-loves-you-anyway grandpa that everyone secretly wished they had if their own grandfather didn't already fit the bill. He always made sure that Link had plenty of healing potions on him, kept track of when somebody had a Kinstone match for one of their own, acted more like Link's map than his actual map at times, and knew more about the various monsters, towns, and people that Link ran into than anyone Link had ever met.
It was just that, the way he went about dispensing these reminders and informative tidbits... left something to be desired.
"You are going the wrong way, my boy," Ezlo said, as if to prove the point. "The Trunk Portal is to the east, not the north."
"I am going east," Link said, pointing up at the sun in emphasis. "And I'm following your directions from last time, remember? 'Right at the second acorn and straight past the toadstools'."
"It's 'right at the third acorn'," Ezlo squawked. "Don't you remember anything correctly?"
Link sighed, went to run his hand through his hair, then remembered that Ezlo was on top of his hair, aborted the motion halfway through and ended up tugging on his ear instead. "Sorry," he apologized in the interest of avoiding conflict. He turned around and began backtracking to the second acorn so he could go find the third acorn and resume his original backtracking to the Portal.
Ezlo did an energetic shuffle on Link's head as the boy got back on track. "There we go, now we're getting somewhere," the hat said, pleased.
As a point of interest, Ezlo wasn't actually a hat – but, Link supposed that was rather obvious, given that he sat up and talked and did several other things that hats normally did not do. From a distance, he did look like a hat. But the closer one got, the more one noticed that he had eyes, and a feathered crest, and a beak. Really, he looked more like a bird that just didn't have a lower body more than anything else, and happened to be built to sit perfectly upon someone's head. If course, it actually got more complicated from there with the fact that Ezlo wasn't originally a bird-shaped hat at all, but was actually a Picori who'd been transformed into a hat.
That, naturally, required an explanation of what Picori were, which actually got into a whole mess of Hyrule's myths and legends and was very complicated and time-consuming as a result. But the whole of it was that Picori were a diminutive race of mouse-elf hybrid people who lived just out of sight of the rest of Hyrule's population and were actually responsible for the creation of one of the country's most famous weapons.
They were also, after a fashion, the reason that Link was on his whole adventure in the first place. Not even inherently magical mouse-elf hybrid people were immune to the occasional bad seed, and this particular bad seed was named Vaati and had enough magic to make himself Hylian-sized and proceed to take over Hyrule on a whim.
Which was where Link came in, currently on a quest to find the such-and-such magical thing to fix this other, previously-broken thing, which would then allow him to defeat Vaati and put everything back to rights.
He wasn't actually actively on that quest at the current moment, because the Forest Picori population had contacted him through the Town Library Picori population and asked him to visit. It had sounded pretty important, for all that the message had been somewhat short (to be easier to remember and pass along). Something about wondering if he could assist in a relocation – which naturally made Link a bit concerned, because the Picori valued secrecy and safety above almost everything else and there were very few things that could make them leave a place that already fit that criteria.
Which brought him right back to his hike, the not-quite-argument he was having with his not-quite-hat, and the directions he was supposed to be following. He found the second acorn easily enough and corrected himself from there to find the third acorn, which he took the instructed right at and began keeping an eye out for the toadstools he needed to pass. It was a lot more difficult than most people might think; everything looked incredibly different from a height of two inches flat. Link had a bad habit of accidentally mistaking mushroom stalks for tree trunks and flower seeds for rocks, which had led to at least one Incident which he would rather not talk about. Still, if nothing else, it had taught him to pay close and careful attention to his surroundings, if only to avoid another Incident.
And he had Ezlo, who was even less keen on a repeat of an Incident than Link was, and as a result made it utterly impossible for Link to make a mistake like that again by loudly correcting him before he could. The point of it all being that Link located and passed the specified toadstools without any issue whatsoever.
"Ah, there it is," Ezlo announced in a satisfied sort of tone as the Trunk Portal came into view. "Hurry up Link, we've dallied enough already. You know I can't stand wasting time."
Link very nearly snorted at the irony, but caught himself just in time and made a noncommittal noise of generic agreement instead. He then made a running start at the line of progressively taller mushrooms that inhabited the Trunk Portal's interior and used his momentum to bounce up to the top. As he did, Ezlo performed his usual spellwork, and Link landed on the surface of the Portal at full size.
He still wasn't entirely sure how that all worked. The way Ezlo described it to him was that the Portals acted as natural amplifiers to certain spells, which was why it was only possible to change size at the Portals (it was apparently a very high-cost spell). But it was only some tree trunk stumps that could be Portals, just like it was only some pieces of pottery that could be Portals and only some rocks could be Portals. There was a very specific criteria for it all, but Link had no idea what that criteria actually was.
Ezlo probably knew, but Link just didn't feel like condemning himself to the several-hour-long lecture that would inevitably result from Ezlo's explanation.
"Link!" Ezlo squawked irritably, effectively dismantling any further thoughts Link might have had. "Stop standing around! We have important tasks to accomplish!"
"Right, sorry," Link said, and hopped down off the Portal to get his bearings. "So, the clover patch?"
"Yes, yes," Ezlo agreed, twisting up to see over Link's head once more. "Ah, of course. Link, make a left, I know exactly where we need to go."
"Sure thing," Link replied, doing just that.
There was one certain thing about being Picori size that Link just could never wrap his head around, and that was the distance differential. More to the point, it annoyed him like almost nothing else. Case in point, the clover patch that he'd been looking for was only about fifty feet away from the one he'd actually been in, and it took Ezlo all of ten seconds to direct him to it.
It would have taken him several hours otherwise, if he'd continued to look for it without using the Trunk Portal again. He always forgot that it was going to take him longer to get places when he was small as opposed to when he was big. It was why he'd shrunk down to enter the Picori Village with the full intent of arriving within a minute – completely forgetting that it would now take more like ten.
Of course, the fact that he'd been in the wrong clover patch entirely might have also had something to do with it.
Abruptly, Ezlo tightened his grip on Link's head and barked, "Don't take another step!" effectively startling the boy out of his thoughts and making him freeze midway through his stride. He glanced down at where his foot would have landed and winced – the Village was right underneath it. He could also, now that he was paying attention, hear several small and high-pitched shrieks of probably terror, and one lone excited voice shouting something that sounded like "Greenzilla!"
Vaguely, Link wondered if the effects of the Jabber Nut he'd eaten could wear off, because he really didn't think that he was getting the right translation. The rest of him panicked.
"Oh goddesses, I am so sorry!" he sputtered, and immediately retracted his foot. "Just, uh... give me two minutes to come down and see what the damage is."
He ended up taking a minute and ten, because he sprinted, but in his defense he was worried and worry made him move faster. He burst through the Village entrance at the top speed he could manage and shouted, "Sorry about that!" again, just to reiterate the point.
The Picori multitude blinked at him, managing to do it in baffling unison. Equally baffling was the fact that apparently, that many eyelids closing at the same time could produce a sound that was actually audible, and also sounded a lot like a plinking piano.
"Why are you sorry?" one of the Picori asked. "We just got to experience all the terror of a Greenzilla attack with almost none of the collateral damage!" She grinned wildly.
"Er... 'Greenzilla'?" Link repeated.
"It's a local Picori legend, never you mind, Link," Ezlo inserted, raising himself up to have a good look around.
"But what is it?"
"It's an old myth or story passed down through generations that typically deals with religion or the cause of natural phenomena," Ezlo rattled off. "But that's not important right now!"
"No, I meant-," Link started, then thought better of it and gave up. "Uh... any injuries?"
"I stubbed my toe while running in terror," a voice called from the masses.
Link tilted his head in confusion. "Okay... anything more severe than that?"
"We're good!"
Link let out a sigh of relief. "Thank the goddesses, I really thought I'd accidentally crushed something."
"Nah, there's just a few misshapen chimneys now," a different Picori said, waving a hand. "And honestly, the local chimney sweep faction was getting bored, so thanks for giving them some work!" He grinned at the thought, then frowned. "Although, given the reason we asked you here I guess they're out of work now... but I'm sure they were all very excited for at least two seconds."
Link tilted his head. "Do you... do you guys make a point of always finding the bright side?"
"Doesn't everyone?" the Picori answered, frowning as though the very idea was confusing.
Before Link could reply, Ezlo pecked sharply at his head and said pointedly, "Link, aren't we here for a reason?"
"Oh, right," Link agreed. "You guys wanted help moving out, or something?"
The Picori group all nodded vigorously. "Yes," one of the elder women said emphatically. "You're the only Hylian we know who can see us, is nice enough to not mistake us for bugs and step on us, and is willing to be used as a pack mule."
"Okay," Link said, processing that. "But, uh, can I ask why?"
"Oh, yes. Vaati stopped by to gloat his impending future victory over his former culture but suffered a magical backfire instead and now there's a large hole in the world that ate the southern half of the village and hasn't decided to stop yet."
Ezlo all but leapt off of Link's head in his shock; as it was, Link had to fumble to catch his companion before he got too far. He carefully replaced the hat on his head, waited to make sure that Ezlo had a good grip again, and then allowed himself to actually process what he'd just been told.
"He did WHAT!?"
"Well, we're guessing that it was a magical backfire," the elderly Picori woman continued matter-of-factly. "It seemed like the most probable explanation. Most people don't just up and vanish in the middle of derisive taunting without cause, after all."
"So," Link began slowly, "so – your entire town is being erased. By a hole. In the world."
"Yes."
Link took a breath. "Okay," he said again. "Two questions. First, what does that mean?"
"Well," a different Picori began, in the tones of someone who is about to launch into a long and complicated explanation without any real idea of what it is that they're explaining. "It's a hole, and it's been growing, and everything it touches just sorta... stops being a thing. Like, the hole is just black and there's nothing in it, and if anything gets inside the hole then it just isn't there anymore."
"Calling it a hole in the world just made sense," another Picori agreed.
"Okay," Link repeated. "Okay. That's... mildly terrifying, but okay. But, second question, why are you so calm about this!?"
"How else should we react?"
"I feel like literally anything but calm would be appropriate."
The Picori tilted his head. "But that wouldn't help anything. That would just make even more of a mess to deal with. Not to mention that panic is never helpful."
"That is... refreshingly practical."
"We try," the Picori replied modestly. "Now, about that pack mule assistance?"
Link snapped his fingers. "Right. I'll go resize myself. Give me like two minutes, okay?"
"You got it," the Picori agreed.
Link turned and sprinted out the Village entrance again, beelining for the Trunk Portal. He could hear one of the Picori shouting packing instructions behind him as he left: "Alright everybody, you heard the pack mule! Two minutes to ETD, and for Din's sake let's try and keep the travel snacks to a minimum this time!"
"Out of curiosity," Link said two minutes later as he obligingly crouched to let the Picori multitude load their (adorably tiny) belongings onto his shoulders, "do you have to keep calling me your 'pack mule'?"
"No," the closest Picori admitted, being right next to Link's ear and thus not having to shout like the rest of his fellow tiny people would normally need to when Link was at his full size. "But we've just been forcibly removed from our home and will eventually be forced to watch it be erased from the world as we know it. Don't judge us for our coping mechanisms."
Link paused. "...Fair," he replied. "And I'm going to move on to a brighter topic now. Need any help loading your stuff?"
"That," said the Picori, glancing down at the vast pile of stuff that the Village inhabitants were accumulating on Link's shoulders, "is probably a very bad idea. If you so much as shrug, I think it's all going to go tumbling down."
"So I should definitely not move my arms in an attempt to offer assistance," Link concluded. "Alright then."
"It's the thought that counts," the Picori consoled brightly.
It took about twenty minutes, more or less, for the line of stuff and tiny people climbing Link's arms to trickle off (Link was a bit stiff by then, but he endured the discomfort admirably); then Link carefully rose back to his feet and set off through the trees, heading for the Town Library in a vaguely north-ish fashion.
Then he glanced back over his shoulder briefly; sure enough, from his Hylian-sized vantage point, he could see that part of the Village was being swallowed by a black and utterly unnatural void, with the rest of the settlement looking like it was next. It was growing, Link noted, as he watched the hole slowly creep outward and swallow a few more tiny houses. And that was concerning.
He shuddered slightly, not allowing himself to move beyond what wouldn't dislodge his passengers. Vaati, he knew how to deal with, more or less. Vaati was something physical; he could at least hit Vaati. This... this was something else entirely.
This might actually be a Problem.
Farore blinked, then dropped her head into her dominant hand and left it there. Nayru peeked over her sister's shoulder at the Reality Window just to see what could have caused that kind of reaction, and hurriedly stifled a smile. Din, on the other hand, had no such reservations and broke down into snickers.
"...He went the other way," Farore said, in the monotone of someone who is just very done with it all. "He completely ignored the prompting and went in the exact opposite direction. Is he actually serious."
Din's snickers turned into strangled snorts.
"On the bright side," Nayru offered, valiantly ignoring Din's mirth, "the Courage group should be on their way soon, and they're much more likely to follow promptings. You could just steer them instead'?"
"Well, yes, but this would have been so much more convenient. Now I'm going to have to deal with a herd instead of just the one."
"Condolences," Din managed between giggles, which of course made her sound far less sincere than she actually was. Still, it was the thought that counted.
There was a pink rabbit giving everyone within range the best equivalent of a Death Glare that he could manage. Unfortunately, the pink rabbit happened to be Lore, and Lore did not have a great deal of experience in delivering Death Glares. There was also the factor that he was, again, pink, as well as covered in soft fur, with a pair of large ears and a nose that twitched practically every twenty seconds.
Basically, he just looked adorable instead of what he was actually going for, which was mildly murderous. And everybody else thought it was hysterical.
Mask was actually on the ground with laughter, having leaned over clutching his stomach just a little too much and gone all the way down as a result. Wind was hiding quiet giggles behind his hand, while Steam and Sketch had no such manners and were laughing outright. Realm was grinning, Ocarina was taking notes when he could hold the quill steadily enough, and Dusk was somehow managing to combine 'tastefully amused' with 'resigned involvement'.
And then there was Red, who was too distracted by Lore's lapin cuteness to be feeling anything else, and who was in fact making mental memos to himself about how to incorporate some of it into his own Adorable Puppy Look. It was potent, yes, but Red had the nagging suspicion that it could also be better.
Plus, it gave him the excuse to squee at the cute things, and really, that was the important bit.
Lore, at this point, gave up on trying to Glare them all unto submission and stuck his paws into his bag instead, clearly looking for his Moon Pearl himself since none of his companions seemed inclined to give him a hand this time. He spent several seconds rummaging around as best he could before sticking his entire front half in, making a lot of metallic clang noises, and pulling his head back out to resume his Death Glare.
His whiskers were now in disarray. Half the group went into hysterics.
Lore ignored this with the skill born of being a person who simply does not care, and fixed Mask with an expectantly demanding expression, correctly assuming that the whole thing had been his idea. Unfortunately for him, Mask was one of the afore-mentioned Links who was in hysterics, and thus completely ignored it.
Dusk, on the other hand, had a much better grip on his emotions and also a healthy sense of when someone has had Quite Enough Of This, Thank You Very Much, and quietly leaned down to extract the Moon Pearl from Mask's pocket. Lore accepted the item with a grateful chittering noise and a bit of fumbling, as he currently had paws and paws were not particularly made to hold things.
But then the Moon Pearl lit up with a bright flash and Lore abruptly had hands again instead, and that made everything much easier.
"So," Lore said, pocketing the Moon Pearl and giving himself a quick brush-off, "who's idea was it to prank me? Also, why was I pranked? I get that I was asleep and all, and maybe that wasn't my best idea, but I was awake for all the important bits and nobody can argue otherwise!"
"Story time was done, we all more-or-less wanted to get moving again, and I think Mask was bored," Dusk answered. "But the main motivation was that you snore in Dragontongue and this was the idea with the most votes to make you stop."
Lore considered that. "...Well, that makes complete sense then. Ignore everything I just said that wasn't optimistic, I didn't have the full context at the time and made unfortunately illogical conclusions."
"Told you all," Mask announced from the ground, in a wheezing sort of voice in between the strangled giggles he was fighting down. "I know my pranks."
"It was a good one," Lore agreed. "I would know, I was the punchline."
"I feel like that's not how that usually works," Wind observed.
Lore just shrugged. "It makes perfect sense to me. But, you do all realize, that this means a Prank War."
"Er... why?"
"Because I have to retaliate somehow," Lore explained. "That's how it works. Or did you all think that the Rules didn't apply to you?"
"The... rules of what?" Steam asked tentatively.
"Oh, you know," Lore replied, which clarified exactly nothing. "Now then! You can all look forward to my revenge at a later date, but wasn't there something we were going to be doing?"
"We're moving on," Dusk said firmly, and in a tone that brooked no argument. "Everybody good to go?"
There was a general assortment of nods and vaguely muttered affirmations, until Blue spoke up with, "Hey, has anyone seen Realm within the past ten minutes?"
Silence. A breeze kicked up and ruffled everyone's hair; somewhere in the distance, a cricket chirped.
"Oh, for Din's sake," Dusk sighed. "Alright, new plan. Find Realm, then move on."
"How did he even get lost?" Sketch agonized. "We weren't moving! We were standing still! How could he have possibly gotten lost by standing still!?"
Nobody had an answer for that, but that was probably a good thing. Odds were, if anybody else understood it, they probably would have gotten lost too.
"Are. They. Kidding. Me," Farore said blankly. "How – how!?"
"On the bright side," Nayru offered for a second time, "he was trying to follow your prompting. He just... went in the wrong direction."
Din didn't say anything. She was too busy rolling on the floor and wheezing.
"The one Attribute who's particularly sensitive to promptings and he's the most directionally challenged of the whole lot!" Farore ranted, ignoring both her siblings in the process. Her voice was rapidly climbing into the range of a shriek. "Why do I even bother!?"
"Because-" Naryu started, before being cut off by Farore's snapped, "It was a rhetorical question!"
Nayru paused for a moment and took in her sister's face. "Maybe you should take a breather, Farore. You've been at this nonstop ever since we discovered the problem. I know we're goddesses, but we're not infallible."
Farore squeezed her eyes shut. "I know that. I know that. But I can't, I really can't. Reality is going to end if we don't fix this, and the only way we can fix this is by directing our Aspects around, but mine is running around on tangents and random sidequests and I just..." She trailed off. "I just..."
"Okay," Nayru decided firmly. "Break time. Go take a nap or something. I'll watch Courage for a while."
"This isn't the first time he's taken a while, you know," Farore said faintly. "Remember, that one time when the Twilight was invading and he decided to spend three weeks tracking down shiny insects to trade for a bigger wallet?"
"I remember," Nayru replied, which was mostly true. She did remember that, but the thing she actually had the most vivid memories of was Farore screeching at her Attribute to get on with saving the country already.
...Courage had never been the most prompt of saviors. Oh, he always got where he was going eventually, but it was the adventures in between that had always driven Farore just a little bit crazy.
For once, Realm actually hadn't gotten very far – at least, by his standards. By everyone else's standards, he should not have been able to get down from Vaati's Palace, across the lake that it was currently floating above, and over to the Chambers of Insight in only five minutes.
"I thought you said you couldn't swim!" Sketch complained as the group frog-marched their wayward member back up to Vaati's Palace (and the hole).
"Oh, I can't," Realm agreed cheerfully.
"Then how did you get across the lake!?"
Realm blinked. "There was a lake?"
Sketch gaped for a moment, then visibly decided to just stop trying.
Thankfully, nothing else happened on the way back up. Realm's misdirectional field apparently only kicked in at the Most Inconvenient Time, and then possibly needed a recharge afterwards. So aside from Sketch's impending headache, the hike back up was normal.
It took a lot longer than five minutes, though.
"Okay," Dusk said once they'd all gotten back to where they were supposed to be. "Now are we good to go?"
Realm flashed an enthusiastic thumbs-up; everyone else just tried to catch their breath, because it had been a long climb back up.
"I'm pretty sure that's a yes," Realm offered on behalf of everyone else after a moment.
"Alright then. Let's see where we end up next."
Realm was the first through, being the only one who was actually capable of moving without wheezing. But at the very least, because everyone else was so tired, none of the usual pile-up shenanigans happened.
For the first two steps, that is. Immediately after taking said first two steps, Realm froze mid-step, everyone else ran into him, and they all ended up in a heap on the ground again.
"Alright, question," Sketch said, sounding slightly squished. "Why did we stop?"
"Well," Realm replied, sounding even more squished since he was on the bottom, "I was about to put my foot down, but then I looked at where my foot was going, and it turns out that there's a tiny little village right where my foot was about to be. And I was pretty sure that stepping on it was a bad idea, because that would probably involve accidentally killing all the tiny little people who are probably living in the tiny little village, so I opted to stop moving instead. I'm slowly realizing that action may also have been a bad idea, but for completely different reasons."
"...Sorry," Sketch replied after a minute, "But did you just say 'tiny little village'?"
Everyone took a moment to squirm out of this latest pile-up, then carefully gathered around the diminutive settlement that Realm was pointing out with his foot. There was just something fascinating about seeing a house several dozen times smaller than what everyone was used to, and they all took a good five minutes to just stare and marvel at it all.
Eventually though, Red said, "Uh, shouldn't the people who live in the tiny little houses have noticed the giants staring at their Village by now?"
"Oh!" the Four exclaimed suddenly. "We know what this is! There's this legend – about the Hero before us – everyone says he worked with these little people called... Picori, or something."
"I've always seen it as 'Minish'," Vio said. "But maybe I just read different books."
"Wait, you know what they're talking about?" Blue asked in surprise.
"Don't you?"
"Clearly not."
Vio frowned. "But... hang on a sec. When did I read that book...?"
He trailed off into vague, under-the-breath mutterings.
"Uh, anyways," the Four continued, "Everyone where I'm from considers the Picori to be... well, basically an exaggeration of the past. Like, something the storyteller threw in to make it more interesting."
"I don't think the storytellers were exaggerating," Lore told them.
"Well we can see that now..."
"Oh!" Vio exclaimed abruptly, startling everyone. "I thought I'd read it when we were Link, that's why I was confused. Sorry Blue, it's my bad this time."
"S'fine."
"Hey, guys?" Wind said, from his position at the back of the crowd. "Doesn't this mean that the hole we came from – which is right behind us, by the way – was about to swallow an entire civilization?"
"Do we know that it didn't?" Steam asked somberly.
Everyone considered that. Nobody liked it. Red let out a small noise of denial.
"Actually," Lore spoke up, "I don't think it did." He was staring at the ground, eyes darting back and forth. "See all these tracks? I think all the Picori – or Minish, or whatever – I think they left already. And it looks like..." He crouched down to get a better look. "Yeah, they hitched a ride on someone."
"I vote we follow the mystery person," Green said. "Because if you all haven't noticed, we're in a forest, and we have no idea which way civilization is. Odds are, the local does."
"How do we know the mystery person wasn't just helping the Picori relocate to a new clover patch?"
"We don't," Green said slowly, "but if that's the case, then at least we'll be finding someone we can ask for directions from."
"...Fair point."
"Alright!" Lore announced. "Dusk, take it away."
Dusk blinked. "Sorry, what? Why? I thought you could track them?"
"Well yes, if they hadn't gone right that way over the very thick moss which completely absorbed their footsteps and erased their trail. You, on the other hand, can turn into what basically qualifies as a bloodhound, and I'm ninety percent sure that moss doesn't effect a scent trail." He paused, then said, "Okay, eighty percent sure. Maybe seventy five."
"What...?"
"I've seen some weird moss."
"...Okay," Dusk said, visibly deciding that he didn't want to know, and promptly handed his weapon off to the nearest Link (a slightly caught-off-guard Wind) so he could transform himself. He spent a second to shake himself and settle in, then lowered his head and took a deep breath in.
...Huh. That was convenient. Judging by the scent, their mystery person was actually the local Link. Dusk had several reasons as to why he knew this, most of which were subtle nuances, but the main one was that for some reason, scents had a tendency to manifest as 'color' in his head, and this particular scent was coming up as the exact same shade of green that all the other Links in the group gave off.
"Got it," he announced, vaguely forgetting that he couldn't be understood in his focus. "He went this way."
With that, he trotted off, being careful to keep his pace to something that the rest of the group could keep up with, and focused on the delicate balance following the scent trail while also making sure he didn't run into trees.
Midna still hadn't gotten over her mirth about the last time.
Twenty minutes later, a fully grown wolf ran headlong into Hyrule Town (having forgotten about keeping his pace to something Hylians could keep up with) and scared the living daylights out of the locals. The locals, naturally, responded to having the living daylights scared out of them by fleeing for their lives in the opposite direction.
But then, about twelve (nearly identical) boys of varying age and coloration also ran headlong into Hyrule Town, in the opposite direction of the opposite direction that the locals were running in, which confused all of the locals greatly because this meant that the boys were running after the wolf, and that just seemed a little bit suicidal.
One of them could be heard bellowing, "SLOW DOWN!" as he blew past.
The thing which tipped the balance from terror to full-on confusion, though, was the fact that the wolf (and the group of boys following it) made a beeline to the Library. Because what in Hyrule did a wolf want with a Library? It wasn't like the animal could read... right?
Perhaps, the locals decided, it would be best to just... avoid the Library. By several hundred feet. For at least three weeks.
Just to make sure.
Notes:
There's an Airplane! reference in this chapter. Did anyone catch it?
Also, Ezlo. Who is the walking dictionary definition of a cranky grandpa and is far too much fun to write dialogue for.
Thanks to plop150, 1eragon33, Guest #59, Filthy_Lobsters, Guest #60, TrashForever, Guest #61, Guest #62, Kat151820, Farsong, Guest #63, Kuroki8, and Guest #64 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 16: Hey, Is That The Plot?
Summary:
May I introduce the Chosen Hero?
Notes:
(Okay... here's my disclaimer. All alone. Vulnerable. Open to editing.)
I do not own the Legend of Zelda.
(...You're kidding me. The one time I invite somebody/something to come in and mess with me and nothing happens?
(…
(Alright then. Since something is clearly doing all this on purpose, I accept the challenge. This means war.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Dusk slid to a stop right outside the doors of the library (he knew it was a library because he could smell the ink and parchment wafting from the interior) and came to the somewhat embarrassing realization that he'd forgotten to pace himself so that everyone else could keep up. Unsurprisingly, Realm was the first one to catch up with him – though how he'd managed to do that without getting lost on the way was beyond Dusk. Everyone else straggled up in varying stages of catching their breath.
"He's in here?" Blue asked, once they'd all stopped wheezing. Dusk nodded in reply, since he hadn't reclaimed his weapon from Wind yet and was thus still a wolf and unable to talk.
"Hey, it's a library," Sketch said, reading the sign posted to the immediate right of the door. "Wonder what a guy presumably carrying a village's worth of small Picori/Minish creatures would be doing here?"
"One way to find out," Wind replied. Dusk flicked an ear, then pushed his way through the group until he reached Wind's side, where he nudged at his own Master Sword with his nose. The Curse Stone solidified and fell to the ground, and Wind handed the sword back to Dusk, who slid it into it's scabbard.
"Just a heads-up," Dusk said, "this is the local Link. He smells just like us."
"...Why do you know that?" Sketch asked.
"Because I am literally half-canine and I notice these sorts of things," Dusk told him. "And before you ask: no I can't smell your fear, yes I can smell when you're lying, and no I won't use my nose to help you cheat in whatever chance game you're thinking of."
Sketch blinked, and closed his mouth slowly.
"Can I ask what we smell like?" Vio requested.
"Green things, mostly," Dusk replied, after a moment of thought. "It's like – um – life? Or something. I'm not sure how to put it into words. But we do all have different undertones – Wind, for example, smells a little bit salty, and Steam kinda has this metallic sorta edge."
"Cool," Vio breathed.
"Wait, so I've got the ocean in my scent?" Wind repeated. Dusk shrugged.
"Kinda? I don't – I really don't know how to fully communicate it to you guys. It's just... not something a normal person has a reference for."
"Can we go through the door now?" Lore interjected. "I love a good rambling sidetrack conversation just as much as the next guy, but I also don't have a whole lot of self-restraint. And I really wanna meet the new guy."
With that, he pushed the doors open and strutted inside as though making a Grand Entrance, leaving the rest of the group to exchange bewildered looks with one another before following him through. There was... a lot about Lore that needed time to get used to, and it was fairly safe to say that nobody had gotten enough time yet.
The interior of the library was covered in books, to a rather astonishing degree. Shelves were crammed into every inch of wall space and spanned the entire vertical stretch to the ceiling. Books were similarly crammed onto the shelves. Interestingly enough though, the lack of empty space in no way meant that the building was messy. All the tomes were religiously organized by what looked like genre, then author, then by series by the author, and then alphabetically if there happened to be more than one series. There was also a profound lack of dust.
It was, without a doubt, the nicest library any of the Links had ever been in.
"I may need to live here," Vio decided quietly.
"No," Green vetoed firmly.
"...Dangit."
Several book-crammed shelves were also scattered around the floorspace, which turned the building into a little mini-maze of literature. The group scattered out to search, though both Blue and Green stalked after Vio to make sure that their brother didn't get himself too 'distracted'. Still, it was a fairly small building, and so it only took a couple minutes before Dusk (who'd been tracking by scent; he wasn't as good in human form, but he still had plenty of wolf characteristics that bled over) found their target in the back.
He was short, probably only ten or eleven years old at the most, with bright blond hair poking messily out from under his green hat. The typical sword-and-shield combo hung off his back, along with a pouch strapped to his waist that probably carried all his other stuff. He had wide, expressive eyes and a very round face, which only cemented how young he probably actually was. And of course, he was effectively identical to every single other person in the group.
He was also talking to a book.
"Oh, tōcxūnlleełe!" Lore declared, which made everybody flinch and startled the newest Link a good six inches into the air. "Finally, someone who can understand my weirdness!"
The new Link spun around, gaped at them all, and not-very-subtly hid the book behind his back. "Don't scare me like that!" he gasped.
"Yeah, sorry," Dusk replied, wincing. "I apologize for..." he glanced at Lore, who was now going off on an eloquent tangent about curio shops, "...him."
Much to absolutely everyone's surprise, the hat on the newest Link's head was the one to reply. "Well, I should think so!" the hat squawked, lifting itself up to pin them all with a disapproving glare. "How very rude of you all! Young folks these days have absolutely no concept of manners!"
Lore broke off his tangent to gape at the hat. So did everyone else.
"...What?" Sketch said.
"Vio, his hat just talked," Red said.
Vio blinked in response. "I.. was not expecting that."
"I want one," Lore declared.
The new Link, meanwhile, slipped the book discreetly-ish back onto the shelf. "Ah, sorry, but Ezlo is one of a kind," he said, with a confused and sheepish smile. "Also, Ezlo?"
"What is it?" the hat – Ezlo – answered imperiously.
"Could you maybe not scold the library patrons? I'm pretty sure I'm just in the way of whatever books they're interested in."
"Well there's more polite ways of doing it!" Ezlo sniffed. "Honestly, the decline of common decency in the youth is appalling."
Link made a carefully noncommittal noise, which sounded very well practiced. "If you say so, Ezlo."
"I do say so," Ezlo replied. "Now, onward Link! We have a job to do!"
"Sure," Link agreed, then turned his attention to the group. "Hey, sorry about being in your way. And, uh, nice to meet you all, I think? But I kinda need to leave now, so..."
He trailed off suddenly, fixating on everyone's faces in a way which the Links were becoming more and more familiar with the more people they collected. His eyes grew very large.
"That's my face?" Link said. "Why – why are there other people with my face?"
"That's a bit complicated," Wind said, smiling apologetically. "Just to be sure, though – your name is Link?"
"Uh – yeah..."
"Ditto," Wind told him. "For all of us, actually."
Link's jaw dropped.
"Why did you need to check?" Steam asked. "He literally could be your twin. He could also stand next to the Four Sword group and make them a quintet instead. He looks almost exactly like them, it was blatantly obvious who he was."
"I was just making sure," Wind defended himself. "Better safe than sorry, right?"
"I look like who now?" Link said, sounding very much like he was only asking questions on autopilot.
"Over here," Green said, raising an arm. Link followed the voice, saw Green and the rest of the Four Sword sets clustered around him, and blinked. Hard.
"I am having the strangest day," Link said faintly.
"We hear that," the Four agreed, which only made Link blink even harder. He was also beginning to resemble a fish. Dusk took that as his cue to reign everyone in.
"Okay, let's all take about three steps back," he said. "We can introduce ourselves properly and give Link some breathing room." He thought for a moment, then said, "Ah... anybody want to take this round?"
"I can give it a shot," Ocarina said. "So, uh... hi there!" He waved, a bit awkwardly, and Link waved back in a blank sort of fashion. "I'm Ocarina, and this is my older-but-younger self, Mask."
"'Sup," Mask said with a how-you-doin' nod. Dusk closed his eyes resignedly.
"That's not helping..."
Ocarina twitched a little, but valiantly moved on. "We're the Hero of Time – and before you ask, yes we're the same person, yes it's very confusing, and yes, it's perfectly normal to have a headache right now."
"...Okay," Link said.
"Anyways, that's Dusk, our Temporary Leader," Ocarina continued, pointing. "Next to him is Lore, our Leader in Training-"
"I'm LiT!" Lore interjected.
"...what he said," Ocarina agreed, confusedly. "Um. Next to Lore is Steam, that's the Four, over there is Wind, there's Realm, Sketch is behind them, and then Green, Vio, Blue, and Red are on the other side."
Everyone waved when their name was called, and Link, who was beginning to get over his surprise, waved back and mouthed all the names to himself in what was probably an attempt to memorize them.
"We're all Link – or, versions of Link – from different times and possibly dimensions across Hyrule's history. Except that now there's all these holes that are somehow erasing actual reality, and we all kinda got involved in trying to figure out how to stop them. And on the way we kept meeting ourself. Which is where you come in," Ocarina concluded. "Nice to meet you!"
Link took a moment to absorb all that. Then he blinked, smiled shyly, and said, "Nice to meet you all too."
Ocarina, not entirely sure what to do now, smiled back, and in doing so made the mistake of letting a short silence drift into the conversation. Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem. However, normally, Red wouldn't have been waiting for the opportunity to pounce with a nickname ready to be assigned.
"Do you have any nicknames I should be aware of?" Red asked, thus illustrating the above point perfectly. Link, not expecting the sudden topic change, blinked again before answering, "Um... no?"
"Finally!" Red squealed. "Ocarina and Mask and the Four named themselves before I could get to it and I was really bummed about that, but now I can use my ideas! What's your Hero title?"
"Hero of-," Link started, then stopped, looked briefly worried, then changed whatever he'd been about to say to, "...size. Hero of Size."
"No, you're not," Vio said suddenly.
Link looked incredibly uncomfortably. "Um, I'm pretty sure I am...?"
"No, you're not," Vio repeated. "I've read about you, in the history books back home. You're the one who forged the Four Sword in the first place, you – you're the Hero of the Minish, right?"
"Minish aren't real," Link said, very quickly.
"Really?" Lore asked. "Well dang. Now I'm really confused about who was living in that little tiny village in that clover patch in the woods."
"...Um," Link said, looking very much like he'd rather be having any other conversation but this one. He floundered for a minute, but then got cut off by Ezlo lifting himself up again.
"There's no use trying to hide it anymore, Link," he sighed.
"But-" Link started, before Ezlo swung himself down to glare Link in the eye. "...Um. I mean. Okay."
He took a deep breath. "Sorry. Um. Yes, I'm the Hero of the Minish. But they're not the most... brave? Of people? And they really prefer not to be seen, so I'm kinda not supposed to reveal they exist to regular people, so. Sorry for lying."
"You're kinda crap at it," Blue said bluntly.
Link wilted. "Yeah, I know."
"I resent being called a 'regular people'," Lore declared irately.
"That's actually a fair point, we're technically you," Wind agreed.
"Which is why I decided to rescue Link from his floundering," Ezlo agreed archly. "Now! Link, aren't you going to introduce yourselves to the Picori population?"
Link shrugged. "If they want to," he said, then turned back to the bookshelf and said, "Do you guys feel okay with coming out? I can vouch for the other people."
There was a very high-pitched squeak, and then a diminutive humanoid creature opened a door in the spine of one of the books and walked out. Everyone stared.
"...It's like a mouse decided to wear clothes," Blue muttered.
The Picori bowed to Link and chattered something in the same high-pitched voice.
"No problem, glad I could help," Link said. "Will you be okay here?"
Another chattered reply.
"Oh, they did? That was nice of them."
The Picori nodded, then chittered something else.
"I will. See you later."
The Picori made another little bow, then waved goodbye and went back into the book, closing the tiny door behind it. It was so well-fitted that, once the opening was gone, it was honestly impossible to tell where it had been.
"That is some really impressive engineering," Steam noted, leaning in to try and find the door again.
"Are they supposed to be translucent?" Lore asked.
"He looked solid to me," Green said. Then he frowned, and asked, "He was a he, right?"
"He was a he," Link agreed. "And, Picori become harder to see the older you get. How old are you?"
"Sixteen," Lore said.
"Yeah, so you're kinda halfway through aging out. That's probably why he was see-through for you."
"Neat," Lore decided. "Also, what language was he speaking?"
"Um..." Link frowned, thinking. "I think they call it Jabber? Ezlo, is that right?"
"It is," Ezlo said.
"Yeah, Jabber," Link said.
"I request lessons," Lore informed him.
Link winced. "Oh. Um. That... might not be possible, actually. I only understand them because I ate this Nut that let me speak their language. I don't... actually know how to do it, there's just this sorta translating magic floating around in my brain."
Lore gaped and looked terrible scandalized. "That's cheating! Cāna-uyo ton utjēs od tōtah, ti si tōcpomlee cāsleegiar to nīleedar-yūvoneełer owūh teh darh yūwa!"
Link blinked. "...what?"
"I will learn Jabber one way or another," Lore vowed, seemingly oblivious. "First, I'm gonna need your hat."
"He's not mine!" Link protested. "And I really don't think you'd get along!"
"I am right here," Ezlo squawked.
"Second," Lore continued, ignoring this, "I'm gonna need another one of those Nuts."
"I ate the last one," Link said.
"Third-" Lore started, then stopped as Link's reply made it through his brain. "What do you mean, you ate the last one!?"
"I mean that I ate the last one," Link repeated, confused.
Lore blinked.
"...Okay, scratch numbers two through six," he said. "I'm just gonna need your hat."
"OR," Ezlo broke in archly, "you leave me on Link's head, where I belong, and we schedule daily lessons instead."
"That works too!" Lore declared. "Pleasure doing business with you."
"What just happened?" Link asked faintly.
"You met Lore," Dusk told him apologetically. "If it helps, he does that to everyone."
"That doesn't really make me feel less blindsided, but thanks," Link said. "Why-"
"Ohmigosh, I forgot about your nickname!" Red burst out, which effectively cut off anything else Link was going to say. "Your title is the Hero of the Minish, right?"
"Yeah..." Link said, looking vaguely apologetic.
"Okay, do you want to be called Minish?"
"Er... no, not really," Link replied. "Because I'm... well, not."
"Okay, well... do you have anything special?"
"I have a cranky talking hat, does that count?" Link asked.
"I forbid you to name yourself after me!" Ezlo squawked. "And who are you calling cranky!?"
Link blanched, apparently having not thought that through.
"That answers that then," Red muttered, with a sympathetic wince. "Oh, can you do anything special?"
"Define 'special'?"
"Anything that a normal person wouldn't be able to do," Red clarified.
"Well..." Link thought for a moment. "I can shrink to Picori size with the portals, does that work?"
"Absolutely!" Red decided. "So... shrinking, small, tiny... Vio!"
"Yeah, yeah," Vio grumbled good naturedly. "Lets see... mite, nano, micro, speck, patch, shrimp, tiny, pint... I can't think of any more. Can you use one of those?"
"Speck," Red said, nodding decisively.
"You're naming me Speck?" Link asked, slightly incredulous. He was promptly hit with the surprisingly accurate image of an adorable puppy at full power. How were Red's eyes even getting that big? Link internally cursed his weakness to adorable puppies.
"...I can get used to it," he said feebly.
"Yay!" Red cheered. Steam draped an arm over the newly named Speck's shoulder.
"If it makes you feel any better," he said, "we've all got a weakness for adorable puppies. Red, unfortunately, happens to have a really good adorable puppy impersonation."
"Makes it really hard to stay mad at him," Blue grumbled.
"I concur with that," Speck said ruefully. On his head, Ezlo made a 'Hmph!' noise.
"Link, take notes," he declared. "This seems like a most effective reformation tactic to use on my wayward student."
"If you think Vaati will let us, Ezlo," Speck replied neutrally.
"Just bring Red," Blue told them. "Knowing him, he'll have your Vaati reformed and begging forgiveness in five minutes flat."
Speck raised his eyebrows in slight disbelief.
"It is scary what he can do with that face when he wants to use it," Blue defended himself, shivering.
"Why are so many of your powers utterly redundant?" Demise growled, as Hyrule Ganon finished explaining the extent of his abilities. Unfortunately for him, he was the third – and last – Ganon to go, and thus because his power set was more or less identical to the two other Ganons before, him, Demise had tuned out the subsequent explanation after the first two sentences.
They are not! Hyrule Ganon cried indignantly. My Trident performs a boomerang pattern!
So does mine, Lorule Ganon pointed out. And mine can do it in 2-D, so ha!
Why, you-!
A loud CRASH indicated that Hyrule Ganon had apparently tackled his more purple counterpart, and ensuing snarls gave Demise the vague impression of a brawl. He ignored this with the skill born of not having any other choice but to learn to ignore it.
"Is there anyone else?" the Demon King asked over the cacophony. "Or are we finally done?"
We are done, Majora informed him, in a dangerously bored tone of voice. Will there be burning now?
"Eventually," Demise promised. "No victory comes without a strategy, first. Go set someone on fire if you need a distraction."
Mmm. Perhaps later.
Demise pretended not to hear the almost-silent sigh of relief that the rest of the villains in his head released.
Wait, so are we actually going to do something now? Picori Vaati asked eagerly.
"We are indeed," Demise answered. "And we shall start with the battleground. I think... I know a place."
So saying, Demise casually ripped a hole through to the side of reality and stepped out of the nether. In its place was a cheerfully green woods, with whimsically-growing trees and occasionally carnivorous flowers. Personally, Demise could have done with a few more carnivorous flowers, and a few less whimsical trees, but he hadn't paid attention to the creation of the world until it was over – at which point, he'd decided he hated it, and had dedicated his existence to getting rid of it. Which, granted, wasn't going all that well, but – that was what the Plan was for.
...Your battleground choice is abysmal, Veran commented, knocking Demise out of his musings.
"This is not the place I had in mind," Demise snapped. "But I cannot transport to the actual location because there is a Goddess Servant guarding it, and because of her there is a sacred barrier that I cannot breach without physical form. This is the closest I can manifest; from here, we take the long way."
Better start walking, then, Veran said haughtily. Demise, with difficulty, refrained from replying, and instead strode forwards-
-only for the bushes he was about to push through explode in a chorus of frantic squeaking, as several Kikwi abandoned their hiding spots and scurried off as fast as they could manage. Demise squeezed his eyes shut in irritation.
"Killing them... will only... delay my goal," he told himself, with effort, and forced himself to move on.
Five minutes later, he stepped on another one. Eight minutes after that, he tripped over a different one. Pushing through some undergrowth resulted in his boot colliding with yet another one two minutes after that, sending the terrified creature soaring into the middle distance. And then, a fourth one somehow fell out of a tree right onto Demise's head.
"Killing them... is a waste... of magic," Demise recited, struggling very much to keep his temper and only barely succeeding. The Kikwi on his head squeaked in terror, went limp, and then slowly fell off and hit the grass with a muted thump. As if on a reflex, the bushy tail of the creature popped open on impact, though since the thing had actually passed out from stress and was more-or-less upside down, the effectiveness of this was somewhat suspect.
"Waste of time..." Demise growled, gritting his teeth and moving on. "Waste of magic... waste of space..."
Kikwis had definitely moved up a few spaces on his list of What To Kill First. Still underneath the Hero, the Goddesses, and such, but now in front of the Gorons.
And considering how much Demise despised Gorons, that was really saying something.
Still, the Kikwis were not actually his most pressing problem, at the moment. Demise knew where he was going – he'd spend a couple millennia sealed in it, so he felt that he knew the place pretty well – but as to how it connected with the rest of the world...
Well.
Demise really only paid attention to something if he was about to eradicate it. As such, he'd never particularly noticed the areas surrounding the Sealed Grounds, just that they existed, and he hated them.
Navigating said surrounding areas... was a bit of a different story.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is a Dungeon Temple, Veran noted offhandedly. Not, I presume, what we are looking for?
"Shut up,"Demise snarled, whipping around and stalking away from the structure that was most definitely not the sacred building he'd been seeking. "It's around here somewhere!"
How are you this bad at directions? Twilight Ganondorf asked.
"You try being sealed for a couple thousand years, see how well you remember the surrounding geography," Demise snapped.
Actually, Twilight Ganondorf began, sounding very smug-
Don't you start, your imprisonment only lasted a couple hundred years, at best, Ocean Ganondorf cut in.
It counts!
It does not!
Twilight Ganondorf bellowed something incoherent. This was immediately followed by a hollow BOOM, and the subsequent (and increasingly familiar) sounds of a one-on-one war.
Demise sighed, tuned them out with the ease of practice, and got back to trying to remember what the way to the Sealed Grounds looked like.
Meanwhile, the Chosen Hero was... confused.
He'd been under the impression that there was supposed to be a Final Showdown. Ghirahim had certainly made it seem that way, what with the kidnapping, and magic-stealing, and seal breaking and whatnot. The Demon Lord had even gone out of his way to put up what Link had to admit was the best fight he'd received from the villain. Heck, there had even been a 'Tremble before my Final Form!' moment.
Not that Link had trembled. He'd been too busy wondering why Ghirahim's obvious weak spot was squarely in the center of his chest and glowing bright orange to stand out from the otherwise-blackened skin armor.
("It's for the aesthetics!" Ghirahim had howled, terribly affronted at the perceived insult to his fashion. The fight had gotten rather more difficult after that.)
The point was, Ghirahim had gone through a lot of trouble to build up anticipation. The only problem was that... well, the demon's Master hadn't seemed to have gotten the memo.
There had been an uncomfortable amount of flamboyant gesturing, posturing, and very sparkly diamonds in the ensuing rant that Ghirahim had gone off on once he realized that his Master didn't seem to be coming. Still, at the very least, he'd been distracted enough for Link to knock Ghirahim out. He was currently wrapped up in Impa's sealing magic in a dark and thoroughly ignored corner of the Sealed Temple, which was because he hadn't once shut up about the apparently-tangled-mess that was his hair ever since he'd woken back up from being knocked out.
But, because everyone else was doing their utmost best to ignore him, his complaints were going unheeded. In fact, because everyone else had more important things to worry about, they weren't even paying attention anyways.
Link was, of course, confused, but also apprehensive. Demise – as Ghirahim declared his Master's name to be – hadn't shown, which was... worrying. Because if Demise wasn't in the Seal that Ghirahim had just broken open, then where was he? Link had gone through entirely too much overcomplicated crap on this quest already, and had no illusions about what kind of overcomplicated crap he was probably going to have to deal with in order to answer that question. Optimism was... not necessarily Link's cup of tea.
Fi was also confused – but that was it. However, she did keep on saying, "This does not compute," at random, muttered intervals. All her projections about the situation indicated that Demise ought to be where Ghirahim had said. She wasn't taking the outlier very well.
Zelda was only partly conscious, because Ghirahim had just stolen her magic and such, but she was lucid enough to be worried. Hylia's memories pretty clearly indicated that Demise would not pass up an opportunity to raze the world to the ground, and so when Link had explained the situation to her, the discrepancy between her expectation and what was actually happening was noticeably large. Demise, Zelda had assumed, would leap at the opportunity... except for the part where he hadn't. And possibly wasn't even in the area. Which was almost more terrifying than knowing exactly where he was.
Groose, on the other hand, was ecstatic. But then again, he was Groose. Somehow, that explained just about everything Groose did. He tended to take things at face value, anyway.
And Impa was just rolling with it. Maybe it was because she was a Servant of the Goddess, and was used to things happening for no apparent reason because they would eventually mean something important in the future. Whatever the reason, Link had yet to find something that really, truly fazed her, and this seemed to be no exception.
Still. The god of destruction was MIA, and until Link could manage to find him, he was going on full alert. And the first thing to do, he decided, would be to make sure he was fully stocked on healing items for whenever the actual Face-Off with the Demon King happened. With that in mind, Link left the Sealed Temple (with strict instructions to alert him if Demise showed up), mounted his Loftwing, and made a beeline for the Skyloft Bazaar.
He wondered how much Red Potion he could buy before the vendor sold out.
It had, admittedly, taken quite a few minutes, but Speck had finally gotten his head wrapped around the situation. It was still weird, obviously, and it was probably going to take him a few days before looking at his face on someone else's body stopped freaking him out, but for the most part, he'd adjusted to the idea fairly well.
Which meant, of course, that now he was curious.
"So, uh, can I ask exactly how all of this happened?" Speck asked, gesturing to... everyone. "I know you gave me the two-minute version earlier, but I don't think I processed it very well, and I also get the feeling that you left a lot of stuff out?"
"That's not how this works," Lore told him, frowning. "See, there's a pattern. You tell your story first, and then we tell you ours. But I go first, so I can get a nap in during the rest of it, because it takes a while."
"What he means," Dusk corrected resignedly, "is that we're curious too, and your turn is going to take a lot less time so it makes more sense for you to go first."
"Oh," Speck said. "Okay. Uh... Okay. So, everything kinda started off the day of the Picori Festival, which is basically a celebration of this old legend we've got about how the Picori race forged the Royal Family a sacred sword to help keep evil at bay." He reached around his back and tapped the pommel of the weapon he was carrying and continued, "That's what this is, actually, modifications notwithstanding. Anyways, during the festival there's this tournament, and Vaati – he's my villain-"
"Same," Blue sighed. "Sorry, continue."
"Oh, okay. Uh – so Vaati entered the tournament and won, which gave him the honor of viewing the Picori Sword in person. And then he kinda snapped it in half."
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that's bad," Ocarina said.
"Very bad," Speck agreed. "See, the Sword was holding this thing called the Bound Chest shut, and inside the Chest was a whole bunch of demons and monsters and things. When Vaati broke the Sword, he let all that stuff out."
"Okay yeah, that's bad," Ocarina decided.
"Then in the confusion," Speck went on, "he turned Princess Zelda to stone, and used that as leverage combined with all the monsters he'd just let loose to try and force the King to tell him the location of the Light Force."
"Light Force?" Lore repeated. "And that would be...?"
"...That triangle-shaped magic power-up stuff that monsters and grass and stuff drops when you kill it?" Speck replied, tilting his voice up in confusion. "It's kind of everywhere?"
"It's triangle-shaped?" Dusk clarified. "Does it look like this?"
He held up his hand, Triforce glowing faintly on the back as it tended to do nowadays. After a moment, Realm put his own hand up too. Since he'd really only gotten his about a week or so ago, he tended to forget it was there.
Speck examined the marks, frowning. "Um... not really. Force is just triangles. It doesn't do that... stacking thing."
Dusk frowned. "...Weird. Why – wait, no continue your story, I'll ask questions later. Location of the Light Force, you said?"
"Yeah, Vaati wanted the Light Force," Speck agreed. "Except that literally nobody knew where it actually was, because it was a legend and the legend didn't say where the Light Force ended up. So Vaati gave us an ultimatum instead, which is how I ended up getting send off with the broken Blade to get it fixed by the Picori. Since only children could see them, and for some reason I was the only child available at the time..."
"Makes perfect sense," Lore said, nodding in agreement.
"Basically, the King wasn't about to hand over something like the Light Force to the villain who'd just petrified his daughter," Speck summarized. "The Picori Blade is a sealing weapon, so if we fixed it we would be able to fight and seal away Vaati with it, hence me getting sent off with it. I ended up in the woods looking for the Picori population, and that's where I met Ezlo."
"And a good thing he did," Ezlo sniffed proudly from his perch on Speck's head. "Link would have been lost for a week if it hadn't been for me."
"Only a week? That must be nice," Realm commented. Speck gave him an odd look before frowning up at Ezlo.
"Er... Ezlo, I saved you."
"Nonsense."
"You were surrounded by monsters. They were going to rip your seams apart."
"I was lulling them into a false sense of security," Ezlo informed Speck haughtily.
"...If you say so."
"I do say so," Ezlo sniffed. "And anyways, it isn't important. Get on with your story, boy!"
"Right, okay," Speck sighed. "So, I met Ezlo, and he helped me find the Picori by using his magic to let me shrink. There's these Portals, sort of, that have a natural magic that Ezlo can allow me to harness to change my size." Randomly, he pulled out a jar and held it out to everyone. "This is my Jar Portal, which I kinda just carry around for whenever I need to change size without a convenient natural Portal around. See the star-shaped crack?"
Everyone leaned in and examined the Jar, murmuring appropriately.
"So once I was Minish-sized, I was able to actually find the Picori Village, but then I ran into that language barrier, so I had to run around looking for the Jabber Nut because it had been so long since they'd had any visitors that almost nobody remembered where they'd put it, and I kinda couldn't understand them anyways. It took me forever to find it."
"I demand lessons," Lore reminded him.
"I know," Speck sighed. "You keep bringing it up every five minutes."
"Would you look at this," Farore said proudly, surveying her handiwork. "Almost all of Courage in one place and without practically any undesirable results. I am good."
"We're still herding them towards the source of the voids, right?" Din checked.
"We are," Nayru confirmed. "But... we may have a problem, there."
Her two sisters clustered in to see what Nayru was looking at. Farore let out a harsh breath, while Din clenched her hands into fists with enough force to turn them white.
"Demise," she hissed.
"Should have seen that coming," Farore muttered. "This is all he ever wanted, of course he'd be there to keep anything from stopping him."
"I... think it will be okay," Nayru hedged hesitantly. "Demise is only one deity, after all, and Courage is seventeen strong by this point. The numbers are in our favor."
"He's the Demon King," Din emphasized, gesturing vehemently to get her point across. "His sphere of influence is destruction. His hair is made of fire."
"All of which are valid points," Farore muttered.
"So..." Nayru bit at her lower lip for a moment. "Make a Plan B?"
"Just to be safe, let's make Plans through the rest of the alphabet as well," Farore decided. "Given that the consequences of failing is reality ceasing to exist, I feel as though 'overkill' may the the only appropriate reaction."
Notes:
The interactions between Speck and Ezlo amuse me. He practically went on his adventure with his cranky grandfather, which, when compared to guides like Midna, Navi, Tatl, Ciela, Fi, etc., is disproportionately hilarious in my head.
And I do believe I see the plot on the horizon.
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian
tōcxūnlleełe (an exclamation, most closely translating to excellent)
Cāna-uyo ton utjēs od tōtah, ti si tōcpomlee cāsleegiar to nīleedar-yūvoneełer owūh teh darh yūwa! (You can't just do that, it's complete sacrilege to everyone who learned the hard way!)
Thanks to Guest #65, jeanlucbaggins, Guest #66, Guest #67, Guest #68, Guest #69, fireleaf52, HaniB2003, Guest #70, Lindseybot, Guest #71, Guest #72, and Efadd for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 17: Yeah, That's Definitely the Plot
Summary:
Bringing all the threads together, now.
Notes:
(Okay. I have now set my disclaimer to cycle through just about every fandom that isn't Zelda. Let's see how this unknown force takes it!)
I do not own the Legend of Zelda.
(...And that was supposed to be about Star Wars. Stupid unknown force.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"-and so after all of that, I finally had everything I needed to take Vaati down. Of course, that got a little bit postponed because of the hole in the Forest Picori Village, and then that turned out to be Vaati's fault and he apparently kinda got eaten by it? And that was making everyone else in the Village a bit nervous because it was growing and nobody else felt like getting eaten by a hole, so they called me to be their pack mule while they moved into the Library. And… that's where you guys came in, so… yeah."
Speck finished with an awkward little shrug which gave off the impression that he hadn't quite known how to end his story, but thankfully everyone else had heard so many variations of the 'Time To Save Hyrule Adventure' by this point that no one really cared.
Instead, they were questioning the World Logic.
"Why, exactly, do the Town Picori live in the library books?" Vio asked. "I mean, what happens if a normal-sized person wants to read one of the books that a Picori is living in? Won't they just open up the book to find hollowed-out pages and a bunch of tiny furniture? And what about the Picori living in the book? Are they just trapped or what?"
Speck blinked, and frowned. "Uh… I don't know? I never asked?"
"The Minish have their ways," Ezlo sniffed dismissively from the top of Speck's head. "Most of which you needn't concern yourselves with - but in this case, I believe there's a running agreement with the current librarian involving a barter system, a universal translation spell, and approximately seventeen variously placed magnifying glasses."
Vio visibly took a few moments to process all the ways that explanation didn't exactly make sense, and Lore took the opportunity to change the subject to something that was (in his opinion) far more interesting.
"My turn!" he declared. "So, it all started when I had this dream-"
"Wait, what?" Speck interrupted, confused. "Your turn for what?"
"Well, you just spent like three hours telling us everything that happened on your adventure," Lore explained, "so now we tell you ours. It's good bonding, or some sort of junk like that, but more importantly I get to take a nap after I'm done talking because I've heard everybody else's already. Now where was I?"
"You had a dream," Dusk prompted, because he was quickly learning that the best way to get Lore's eccentricities over and done with was to let him run himself out.
"Oh yeah! So, I had this dream, see, and in it Princess Zelda was telling me…"
Speck glanced around at the rest of the group, most of which had divided into various smaller groups and were pulling out different hobbies to pass the time, then shrugged and let Lore talk. If nothing else, it was sure to be interesting.
It was with a great deal of irritation and an even greater deal of cursing that Demise came to the conclusion that he had no idea where the Sealed Temple was, and that he was maybe, slightly, possibly, probably, lost. He knew this because this was the fifth time he had walked past that one specific grouping of mushrooms, and mushrooms were on the List of Things He Hated, for reasons such as sparkles, healing properties, and an infuriatingly cheerful boing noise.
(The boing noise hadn't actually been part of the List until about two minutes ago, when Demise had lost his temper and taken it out on said fungi. Unfortunately for his temper, none of his actions had any lasting effect on the mushrooms aside from dispersing the aforementioned healing sparkles. Demise hated mushrooms.)
Feel any better? Veran asked snidely.
"No," Demise growled, abandoning that one specific grouping of mushrooms and stomping on down the path. Of course, since the whole path was lined with mushrooms, it didn't really help.
You should eat one! Zant exclaimed suddenly. I heard from a friend of a cousin of a brother of a plumber once that eating mushrooms makes you grow giant! Then you can use it to defeat the spiky fire-breathing dinosaur who kidnapped your Princess!
Silence.
One of Demise's eyebrows twitched, sending off embers. Somewhere in his head, a cricket - which really should not have been there, why was there a cricket in his head? - chirped awkwardly.
"...Zant," Demise said slowly. "I had honestly thought I had experienced the limit of your stupidity. I am horrified to realize that I was wrong. What did any of what you just said have to do with our goal right now?"
Well, there's mushrooms.
"And?" Demise growled irritably.
Aren't we looking for the Princess? She's in another castle, right?
"That… makes… no… sense," Demise hissed just barely holding on to his temper and really only managing to do so because he had better things to use his magic on than a placeholder for one of the many idiots living in his head. "None of those words made sense in the order you put them in, and half of them didn't even sound real! What even is a 'plumber' anyways!?"
He's Italian? Zant offered, as though that explained everything even though it explained absolutely nothing.
Demise breathed in harshly through his nose and rubbed two fingers over his eyes. "Someone, do me a favor and shut him up."
With pleasure, Majora said, and immediately followed that statement with the telltale fwomp of something being violently set on fire. Demise tuned out the subsequent screaming with the ease of growing practice and glared at the landscape again, which still stubbornly refused to be the Sealed Grounds or the Temple within them.
Maybe if you got a vantage point, Picori Vaati suggested. Back in my home village, we did that all the time. It was practically wayfinding one-oh-one.
"Was this before or after you tried to destroy them all?" Demise asked absently, as he turned and evaluated the absolutely massive tree at the center of the forest as a possible scouting position.
Before, obviously .
Demise snorted, then gauged the distance to the top of the tree before deciding that he was above such things as climbing, and just willed himself there instead. He materialized in the canopy, received a branch to the face, promptly incinterated said branch and all the surrounding foliage within three feet for good measure, then looked out over the treetops to get his bearings.
"Finally," he grumbled, seeing the top of the Sealed Temple in the distance.
Took you long enough.
"Shut up or I'll set Majora on you."
Majora is still busy. Zant is its favorite target, after all.
"Shut up or I'll set Veran on you," Demise corrected.
I will decline that offer, thank you, Veran cut in.
Demise snarled. "For once can you people cooperate with me!?"
No.
Demise took a large breath, intending to let it out in the form of a lot of vehement cursing - but before he even got the first word out, he was interrupted by a sudden and rhythmic wheezing noise.
Slowly, Demise lifted his head, and found a Kikwi sound asleep in the branches right above his head. The creature was grey and unkempt-looking, and was snoring. Incredibly obnoxiously, and right in Demise's face.
Demise nearly killed the thing right then and there.
"What," he said, slowly and concisely through tightly gritted teeth, "is this creature even doing in a tree!?"
Several of the voices in his head began laughing at his misery. Demise did his best to ignore both them and the snoring Kikwi in the tree.
"Killing it," he told himself furiously, as he teleported himself back down to the ground and stalked off towards the Sealed Grounds, "is a waste of magic. And time. And I have better things to do right now with both."
He'd told himself this enough times in the past few hours that he'd lost count. At this point, though, it was probably in the low hundreds.
"Demise Check," Farore ordered. Din, because it was her turn this time, leaned over to the side-reality-window they had opened on Demise's position and appraised the scene.
"...I think he finally figured out where he's going," she announced. "So that gives us about… I'd say thirty minutes to finish our Plans?"
"Thirty-six minutes, twelve seconds," Nayru specified absently. "Give or take a few nanoseconds or so."
Farore fiddled with her jewelry, thinking. "That… that should be enough. Right? We've Planned enough for this, haven't we?"
"With the amount of warning we had and the influence available to us?" Din said. "I think we've done impressively well."
"And now we have thirty-five minutes, forty seconds to do the rest," Nayru put in.
Farore narrowed her eyes. "Alright. Din, put the Chosen Aspect of Courage on fast-track. Nayru, damage control on whatever Demise… well, damages. And I'll work on influencing the main group to where they need to be. Any questions?"
"Given the track record of the main group following your influencings," Din said, "do you really have the time to be asking if there's any questions?"
Farore paused, raised a finger, then lowered it again. "In my defense," she said eventually, "I'm a bit stressed."
Several hours after Lore kicked off the most recent round of storytime, Dusk finished explaining his own adventure (plus everything the group had done since meeting one another) and patiently waited for Speck to finish processing it all. He had, after all, just listened to about ten or so different versions of the Quest To Save Hyrule, and compiling all that took some doing.
"...Somehow, changing size doesn't seem so strange anymore," Speck decided once he was done. "It actually seems almost normal in comparison."
"It's entirely normal if you ask me," Ezlo squawked.
"...Ezlo, you're a sorcerer. You literally do that sort of thing every day."
"Your point?"
"I'm not. So it seems a lot crazier to me."
"Well, we've all got something weird," Steam told him. "But now that you say it out loud, I guess there are some things that are more odd than others."
"Wolves," Speck agreed, in a vaguely bewildered sort of tone. "I can safely say I wasn't expecting lycanthropy."
"Not actually a werewolf," Dusk coughed discreetly.
"Well, no," Speck acknowledged, "but still. The fact that it's an actual thing is just… blowing my mind a little bit. This is a whole lot to take in all in one go."
"Why is Dusk the person you're getting hung up on?" Wind asked curiously.
"Oh, no, it's not just him," Speck clarified. "He's just one of the most… drastic, I guess? I'm also coping with living artwork, one soul in four bodies, weather manipulation, time manipulation, transformation, inaccurate aging, and trains - it's just that I'm dealing with one epiphany at a time."
"Are you good at coping and walking at the same time, though?" Lore put in. "Because I'm done with my nap and I'm kinda bored now, and generally things happen when I get bored. We've been here a while, you know."
"We do try to avoid things happening," Steam agreed. "And Lore's right, we have been here a while - dawdling more than we already do probably isn't the best idea when the actual universe is ending."
"Back out the door then," Dusk said, and immediately went to round up everyone else, who were scattered around the Library doing various things.
"Er… am I coming with you all, or…?" Speck asked hesitantly.
"Silly question," Lore declared. "Of course you are! Red gave you a nickname, that means you're stuck with us."
"I thought it was more of a choice than that?"
"While that makes more sense, it really doesn't seem to work that way," Wind put in, shrugging. "It's more like… if you meet the group, then you're part of the group. Or at least, that's more or less what happened to Sketch and me."
"What happened to you and me?" Sketch asked, coming into the conversation a bit late alongside the rest of the group that Dusk had gone to collect.
"We sort of just got absorbed into the Link Collective without noticing until it was too late," Wind said.
"...Yeah, that sounds about right."
Dusk, meanwhile, was doing a head count, as was becoming his habit. He got to the end, frowned, counted again, then frowned more. After counting a third time, he let out a heavy sigh, then let out a quick whistle to get everyone's attention.
"So, we appear to be missing Realm," he began, and everybody who knew what that meant groaned loudly. There were a few exasperated facepalms. "I'm not entirely sure when we lost him, but by this point we could be looking at anywhere from ten minutes to five hours ago."
"Oh dear Goddesses, he's probably halfway across the country by now," Mask muttered, horrified.
"The good news is that I did not find any of his weapons, or his shield," Dusk continued, which garnered more than a few sighs of relative relief. "So this is probably only going to take the rest of the day." He paused, then added, "Unless he's just lost his items a bit belatedly this time. But let's think positive thoughts."
"Tracks lead this way," Lore said, examining the ground and pointing in a random direction. Speck, standing a few feet off to the side (not feeling necessarily like part of the group yet and also not exactly knowing entirely what was going on,) stared at them all, wide eyed.
"Wait, so," he said, slowly. "You mean that Realm was being serious about getting lost all those times?"
Blue put a comforting arm around Speck's shoulder. "It's okay," he soothed. "Realm gives the rest of us headaches too."
Speck just blinked in a bewildered sort of way.
Several more hours, and a whole lot of confusing and previously-thought-impossible events later, Speck hauled himself over the edge of the crater of the only volcano in Hyrule, registered the fact that Realm was there too, and collapsed in sheer exhaustion, along with everybody else following right behind him. (Because Speck knew the way to all the most improbable places in the country, he'd been put in front once Lore had pinpointed a direction.). Realm, noticing the sound of several people hitting the ground, stopped frowning at the surrounding landscape in confusion and turned around to see the whole group sprawled on the rock-strewn ground a few feet away.
"Hey guys," Realm said cheerfully, waving. "So, I dunno if you've noticed, but I may have gotten lost again."
"We noticed," Steam gasped, wheezing from the climb up. "How… did you even… get up here?"
"Oh, there's this maze right through the middle of the mountain, did you know? This is where it dropped me."
"Wait," Speck said suddenly. "Are you talking about the Cave of Flames?"
Realm shrugged. "I mean, I have no idea what it's called, but…"
Speck stared at him blankly. "The Cave of Flames is impassable."
Realm tilted his head. "Seemed pretty passable to me."
"No, I'm serious, it's literally impassable," Speck insisted. "The only reason I was ever able to get through was because I had Ezlo changing my size for me so I could fit through all the little cracks and things in order to keep going. How did you get here?"
Realm just shrugged.
"We were in the library!" Speck continued, flabbergasted. "We were literally on the other side of the country! How did you get from a library to a volcano?"
"Well," Realm said, "I think I may have taken a left when I was supposed to take a right?"
"...the library only has five rows of shelving units," Speck said slowly. "You can literally see the other end of the building from any given point inside. How did you… just… how?"
"In my defense, I thought I was going in a straight line at the time."
Speck made a sputtering noise. Realm looked at him for a moment, then gave a sheepish smile.
"Sorry. I… have a bit of a condition."
"Understatement," Blue snorted.
"You get used to it?" Realm offered.
"Oh, okay," Speck said faintly. "I'll just get used to the blatant disregard for physics and universal laws. That makes sense."
"That's the spirit," Blue said. "Now come on, we've got a long way to walk to get back to where we need to be. You can cope on the way."
Link walked out of the Skyloft Bazaar with what was probably far more Red Potion than he was ever going to need, and a respect bordering on concern for the Potion Woman's cauldron capacity. Either that thing was bottomless, or it was deceptively large, because with the amount of stuff Link had just bought from her that pot should have been pretty depleted.
Possible ramifications of an unending Potion supply aside, Link had also topped off his stock of arrows, bombs, and slingshot ammo, gotten all the upgrades he'd been missing from Gonzo at the Scrap Shop, dropped off anything he probably wasn't going to need with Peatrice at the Item Check (and had a fairly awkward conversation because she still didn't seem to be over the fact that he'd never been into her), and as a just-to-be-sure preemptive measure, checked with Sparrot the Fortune Teller before he'd finally left for the Surface. Unfortunately, Sparrot hadn't been much help this time - for some reason the only thing he could tell Link was that he was going to be seeing a lot of mirrors in the very near future.
(Okay, technically what Sparrot had actually said was, "You will look at your reflection and your reflection will look back… and your reflection will say, 'Aw, why'd you have to go and be taller than me?' ...I'm terribly sorry, give me a moment." He'd paused, blinked at something only he could see, then said, rather doubtfully, "Oh, no, I seem to have been correct the first time. How odd. Oh, there will also be a great deal of running, so do prepare for that.")
While interesting (and confusing), Link had to admit to himself that it wasn't a very helpful fortune considering what he was intending to do. All things considered, he really doubted that Demise would be vulnerable to mirrors. It would be nice, and probably way too convenient for the Demon King to have such an easily exploitable weakness, which was why Link was absolutely positive that mirrors were not the answer to his problems.
With that firmly decided, Link moved on to the next item on his Prepare For Demise list. With all his gear, Health options, ammunition, etc. stocked up (and with several backups), he really only had one more thing he wanted to do.
Link was going to take a nap.
...What? He hadn't had a good night's sleep in two weeks or more, don't judge him for wanting to be well-rested for the fight that was going to determine whether or not the world got to live. Link was going to take any advantage he could get, thank you very much.
Besides, if worse came to worst and Demise showed up while he was asleep, he had Fi to wake him up. For all that she insisted that her purpose was not to be an alarm clock, she did a very good job.
The walk back to the void eating the vacated Picori Village was long, boring, and tedious, and this was because the group essentially had to cross the entirety of the country to get to where they wanted to be from where Realm had gotten them all lost. As such, once Speck was properly processing the world again and the Links as a whole desperately needed a distraction, they began ranking each other.
"I just think I've got the high score in stealth," Sketch said. "Trust me, nobody notices the art on the wall until it stabs them."
"I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that," Vio objected. "Not necessarily on the point about art, because it's sadly mostly true - but have you ever seen a wolf go hunting? Dusk, back me up here."
Dusk paused mid-step, then let out a small sigh before resuming motion. "I… admittedly, there hasn't been something I can't sneak up on yet. But that probably just means all of my targets so far have been oblivious."
Vio raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you saying that because it's true or are you saying that because you'd like to stop being the topic of conversation now?"
Dusk shrugged. "Not a big spotlight guy, I'll admit that, but I'm still pretty sure that there's plenty of places and circumstances where Sketch's version of stealth would be a lot better than mine."
"He's got a point there," Blue chipped in, having been listening. "Sketch would be perfect for infiltrating a big fancy house, or the Castle, or literally anywhere with a lot of people in it, while Dusk's brand of stealth is a lot better for fieldwork and the places where seeing a wolf wouldn't be nearly as out of place as seeing one in the middle of town."
"I can say from experience that does tend to draw attention," Dusk agreed.
"What about Speck?" Wind suggested, joining in as well. "I mean, I can barely imagine a place where being mouse-sized wouldn't be effective."
"What?" Speck said, having heard his name.
"Isn't being able to shrink down and hide really convenient for stealth?"
Speck considered that. "Well, it sure works for the Minish, I know that much."
"You mean you've never tried?" Blue asked disbelievingly.
"Er… I can try now?"
At Blue's vehement nodding, Speck pulled out his Jar and vanished into it. For a minute or two, everyone watched the piece of pottery on the ground, waiting for Speck to walk out of it.
"...Is he coming or what?" Blue wondered.
Green, followed by Vio, knelt down and carefully picked up the Jar. There was nobody underneath it.
"Okay, when did he do that?" Sketch demanded. "Did anybody see him leave?"
There was a general impressed muttering in the negative.
"So then where did he go?"
Something tugged on Sketch's hair next to his ear, and Sketch paused before carefully turning his head. On his shoulder, a thumb-sized Speck was waving cheerfully at him.
"How did you get there without me feeling it?"
Speck shrugged, then said something that went entirely unheard by literally everyone around him because his voice was small like the rest of him.
"Er… what?"
"Your tunic has a lot of really good handholds!" Speck shouted, at what was clearly the top of his lungs, but was only coming out to everyone else as slightly-quieter than normal talking volume.
"I think Speck wins," Red voted.
Sketch sighed. "Yeah, okay, that's hard to beat. But I still say I've got one of the cooler abilities."
"Again, Dusk," Vio countered.
"Why is everyone so hung up on the fact that I shapeshift?" Dusk wondered.
"Because it's cool," Blue told him firmly. "And most of us don't see something like that everyday."
Dusk raised an eyebrow. "Really. From my perspective, splitting into four people or controlling the weather or travelling through time is much more interesting. More… fantastical."
"You literally turn into something else, how is that not fantastical?"
Dusk shrugged. "I mean, I suppose it is, I just… I think what you guys can do is cooler."
"Agree to disagree," Blue muttered. "But my point is - actually, what was my point? I can't remember what this conversation started as."
"Sketch thinks he has the coolest ability," Red said helpfully.
Blue snorted. "He does not."
"I so do," Sketch argued.
"Ooh, arguments!" Lore exclaimed, suddenly popping up right there between them. "I love arguing! What are we debating about and which side is losing?"
"Which of us has the coolest ability," Green sighed, having been keeping a careful eye on the whole thing in case he needed to rein Blue in. "And I'm not going to tell you who's losing, partly because I don't think this is that kind of argument, but mostly because I think you're going to immediately join the winning side after I tell you who they are."
"I can neither confirm nor deny that thought," Lore said, making sure to look as innocent as possible. "But ignoring your heinous accusations, I would like to submit that my own abilities of time travel, seasonal change, and general awesomeness put me at the top of the list."
"That all comes from an item though," Sketch argued. "Does that count?"
Wind coughed discreetly and tapped the bracelet around Sketch's wrist.
"...That's different."
"Not really!" Speck shouted from his perch on Sketch's shoulder, before turning around and beginning his downward descent. Sketch absently knelt down to give him an easier time, which stalled the walking for a minute. There was an odd group mentality beginning to develop in which everyone wanted to be in the same general area as everyone else, and that included walking speed. Sure, it meant that they got where they were going a little bit slower, but they all got there at the same time, and somehow that was the more important thing.
"I can fuse with a wall just fine though," Sketch said, standing back up once Speck was off and resized, and continuing his argument. "It's getting back off the wall where I need extra help."
"Still an item, still counts," Vio told him. "Sorry."
"I'm going to point out that my shapeshifting is entirely dependent upon a small rock," Dusk said. "So I'd like to withdraw from the competition now."
"Nope," Lore retorted. "We're officially counting items as abilities now, you're not getting out of it this easily. Tricky tricky, almost got away with it too."
Dusk just let out a resigned sigh.
"Wait, if items are included now, I'd like to submit my transformation masks to the jury," Mask put in, because literally everyone was listening in now. "Also, my ocarina."
"Ditto," added Ocarina.
Mask turned and stared at him. "Since when do you have transformation masks?"
"I don't," Ocarina said slowly, confused. "I was talking about my ocarina."
"...Oh, this is gonna get confusing," Mask muttered. "Okay, my bad."
"Submitting my Wind Waker for evaluation," Wind offered.
"I have a Train?" Steam asked. Everyone considered that.
"...I don't think that counts, it's not like you have it here," Vio said.
"He has special sight," Red reminded everyone.
Steam shrugged. "Yeah, okay, I submit my special eyesight."
"Submission received," Vio replied. "And I submit myself and my immediate siblings for being split by four. Anyone else want in for consideration?"
"We submit a copy of your submission," the Four told him.
"Noted. So we have Sketch with being art, Dusk with shapeshifting, Wind with weather control, Mask and Ocarina with time manipulation and timeline-specific shapeshifting, Lore with time and elemental manipulation in addition to… everything, Steam with special eyesight, the Four being split, me and mine being split, Speck with size manipulation, and Realm with… oh wait-"
"Yeah, I don't necessarily have anything," Realm said. "Unless my ability to get literally anywhere regardless of landscaping and laws of physics counts?"
"Can you do it on purpose?" Red asked curiously, as this was a thought that hadn't really occurred to any of them before.
Realm turned a bit pink. "Er… no."
"Submission denied," Vio sighed. "Anything else?"
Realm thought for a moment. "Uh… stamina?"
Vio thought about that, then shrugged. "Accepted."
"He's the only brunet," Blue offered, grinning. Vio blinked at him for a moment.
"...Also accepted," he decided, with a decided smirk. Realm gaped at them both, scandalized. Green dropped his face into his hand.
"Din help me, they're cooperating," he groaned. Red patted his shoulder in a comforting sort of way.
Dusk cleared his throat. "I think Lore wins."
"Oh, come on!" Sketch protested.
"Look, between time, the seasons and everything that goes with that, plus whatever he picked up on all those adventures that he didn't think was important to mention, combined with his personality, I just don't think there's much contest."
"But-"
"He's the most likely to figure out some insane way to combine every ability he's got and possibly break the world with it," Dusk said bluntly.
"It's true!" Lore beamed.
Sketch wilted. "...Point."
"Lore's victory aside, does anyone else feel slightly concerned by the fact that so many of us have abilities that should normally probably not be a thing?" Wind asked.
Everyone considered that for a moment.
"...Not really, no," Steam said.
Demise stared intently at the closed gate leading to the Sealed Temple, feeling an odd mix of vindication at the fact that he'd finally gotten there, and irritation at the fact that there was yet another obstacle in his way. Normally, a simple gate in his way wouldn't have even registered to him before he'd have blown it to pieces, but this particular gate happened to be blessed, and a bit holy, and backed by a barrier enchantment carved into the stone, and altogether painful to the touch and currently keeping Demise out.
Under other circumstances, it might have even been successful. Unfortunately for the gate, Demise was not only at his full power, but also at the full power of the dozen-odd villains inside his head.
So really, all he had to do was punch the thing.
The blessing on the gate was only so strong, after all, and Demise was far more evil than the gate could hope to repel. It did try, though, and Demise received a nasty jolt of holy energy before the poor gate couldn't take it anymore and exploded from the sheer stress.
That seemed a bit anticlimactic, Twilight Ganondorf noted, sounding bored. Truly, I thought there would be more precautions against the Demon King than one measly gate.
"Hylia became soft in my absence," Demise grunted, stalking through the smoking and shattered remains of the gate and making his way to the Temple itself. "One good thing that came from my centuries of imprisonment is that the memories of my enemies faded, and much of what I was capable of was lost to their pathetic minds."
Or, Veran put in snidely, that gate was always enough to keep him out before, and it's only because of our added strength that he could move forward.
"I am not in the mood for your comments, woman!"
You will treat me with respect or I will raze you molecule by molecule.
Demise said nothing for several long moments. Then he changed the subject.
"The entrance from the Temple into the Grounds should be right around here somewhere," he muttered, and studiously ignored the smug victory emanating from Veran. He'd never had the best track record winning against women anyways-
"You," an aged voice interrupted his thoughts, "are not welcome here."
Demise blinked, looked around, then down. There was an extremely elderly woman standing in front of him. She barely came to his waist, had thick white hair wound into a braid that hung from one side of her face and swayed with her every movement, and was wearing something that rather resembled a large red teepee. A tattooed teardrop on her cheek indicated she was a Sheikah warrior of the goddess, and Demise let out a furious snarl.
"Get out of my way or I will remove you."
The Sheikah woman raised one thin, wrinkled hand and displayed it to him, palm out. A shield bloomed between them.
"You may try."
With difficulty, Demise did not scream his frustration to the heavens, and instead began doing his level best to incinerate the Sheikah woman right then and there.
"So, we just… jump in?" Speck asked doubtfully, eyeing the void with understandable trepidation. After all, it didn't really look like the sort of thing that would act as a transport.
"Pretty much, yeah," Realm told him. "If you need proof, then you should find whatever sacred thing you're carrying and see if it glows."
"Probably your Sword, since you don't have a Triforce piece of your own," Vio put in. Speck scrunched up his face, then pulled his weapon from his back and held it forwards towards the hole. The red stone in the pommel immediately lit up.
"...Huh," Speck said, and re-sheathed it after a moment of careful examination. "Okay then. Just… we're gonna fix this, right?"
"You had darn well better be!" Ezlo contributed.
"That's the plan," Wind agreed.
"Okay, because - I mean, this was their home," Speck continued, gesturing to the hole, which by now was large enough to have swallowed the entirety of the Picori Village and a good bit of the surrounding forest foliage too. "And look at it. It's just… gone. And if I've got this all correct, this is what's going to happen to all of existence eventually?"
"All evidence so far points to that, yes," Vio confirmed.
"I know we seem to be immune, but…" Speck played with his equipment straps nervously, "how much is that really going to matter if everything is gone in the end?"
"Well, that's why we're fixing it," Lore told him. "Also, that's why I'm going to pick you up and throw you bodily through the hole now. We have the worst stall times, I swear."
"Wait, what!?" Speck sputtered, but doing so entirely too late as Lore had already picked him up and thrown him through the air. Speck vanished into the hole with a startled yelp cut short and a lot of furious screeching from Ezlo, and Lore nodded to himself before following suit.
"...Are we sure it was a good idea to let him be LiT?" Green asked.
"Not even remotely," Dusk sighed.
The void deposited them all in a hilly, wooded environment, with dappled sunlight streaming through vibrant treetops and the faint sound of unseen water. Lore looked around at it, frowning.
"Well this place looks boring," he said. "Where are we?"
"I can ask Ezlo," Speck volunteered. "I mean, I know this is a different time or dimension or whatever, but there hasn't been something he hasn't known about yet. Hey, Ezlo?"
In blatant contradiction of everything the group had learned about Ezlo so far, the bird-hat said absolutely nothing. In fact, he didn't even acknowledge that his name had been called. He just hung from Speck's head exactly like a normal hat, if a normal hat had a bird head and more sass than was strictly appreciated.
"Ezlo?" Speck repeated, straining his eyes up to try and see his companion and listening intently. "Are you okay?"
When there was still no response, Speck reached up and carefully lifted Ezlo off his head. The bird-hat hung limply from Speck's supportive grasp, eyes closed and breathing deep and even. Speck stared at his companion and blinked a couple times.
"I… is he asleep?"
Dusk leaned around and gently prodded at Ezlo's fabric, then delicately pushed back an eyelid. Ezlo did not seem to notice.
"He's deeply asleep," Dusk replied, frowning, and began prodding much less gently. "Very deeply asleep." The prodding turned into something more like rough shaking. "How is he not noticing this?"
"He's usually a really light sleeper," Speck said worriedly. "This isn't normal for him at all."
Dusk gave Ezlo one more shake, then leaned back and frowned. "I… I don't think we can wake him up."
Speck turned pale. "What?"
"But," Dusk continued, "I think I know what this is. My own partner, Midna, she mentioned something like this. She said I was safe because I was protected, whereas everything else was being erased. So, if somebody isn't protected, but still manages to make it through the void anyways…"
"You think this is what happens?" Speck asked, tilting his head.
"Well, I'm guessing that this is what happens," Dusk admitted.
"It's a fairly solid guess," Vio contributed. "Going off of that, I'd say that Ezlo's in some sort of stasis, and will probably stay that way until he's put back in his proper time."
"I guess, because he was on your head, the protection from your weapon extended to him," Dusk added. "Or at least, that's how I've been assuming our clothes have been surviving the trips."
"So… he's gonna be okay," Speck summarized. "But he won't actually wake up until I go home."
"Eh… probably?"
"Okay," Speck said, and took a deep breath, then put Ezlo back on his head. The bird-hat, despite being unconscious, tightened his grip on Speck's hair just like he always did to hang securely, and Speck smiled a little at that. "I can work with this. But I'm gonna request a minute to go make sure my size manipulation still works when the guy who controls most of the magic is asleep."
"That's-" Dusk started, only to be cut of by Ocarina's sudden yelp of, "Oh, CRAP!"
"-fine," Dusk finished, glancing over at the sudden commotion. "I don't think we're going anywhere for a while."
Ocarina, meanwhile, had snatched his hat off his head, upended it on his hands, and was staring with a wide-eyed and panicked expression at the soundly-asleep fairy that had slid out.
"Oh my Din, I'm so dead," he whimpered.
"She's going to kill you," Mask agreed, looking like he was struggling not to laugh. "How long have you had Navi under your hat?"
"She was taking a nap, and then you showed up, and then the holes happened, and then…"
Mask stared at him. "So she's been asleep on top of your head for a week, and you only just now remembered she was there?"
"We are never telling her I forgot she was there," Ocarina threatened. "Whatever she does to me, she'll have done to you, remember?"
"Yeah…" Mask said, sounding rather conflicted. "But…"
"There are no 'buts' in this situation!" Ocarina snapped.
"I'm trying to decide whether or not it'll be worth it."
"It won't!"
"Ehh…"
"MASK!"
"Okay, okay… probably."
Ocarina fisted both hands in his hair, clearly struggling. "You know what? I have time. She's not going to wake up until I get back to my own Hyrule-"
"Probably," Vio amended.
"Probably," Ocarina agreed quickly, "so I have some time to think of an excuse."
"Keep telling yourself that," Mask snickered.
"You're not helping."
"I'm not really trying to, but thanks for noticing."
Ocarina took a deep breath, then slipped Navi back into his hat and jammed the hat back onto his head. "I still can't believe I grow into you."
"Give it time, it'll sink in eventually," Mask said. "Now, weren't we figuring out where we are?"
"We're in an extremely boring forest," Lore said decisively. "And there's no other Us's in sight." He kicked a bush in frustration.
The bush, however, did not like being kicked, as it let out a startled squeal, folded up, and turned into a little black-and-white… bird… looking… thing. Maybe. The little creature sprang to its feet, took one look at the large group of Heroes surrounding it, and proceeded to shriek in absolute terror. It then tried flee in said terror, but forgot to look where it was going, ran headlong into a tree, then just threw itself to the ground and pretended to be a bush again.
The shrubbery trembled. Everyone stared at it.
"...Okay then, this place is weird," Steam decided, and everyone muttered in agreement.
Notes:
Did you guys know that the fortune teller in SS was named Sparrot? I sure didn't.
Anyways, lots of dialogue and not a lot of progression. It's necessary, sometimes, but on the bright side the Links got to have bonding time.
Thanks to iLovemyRobins, Guest #73, Guest #74, DeltaSilver64, milifilou, Guest #75, Yzafre, ribbonsofreilin, Guest #76, Guest #77, and Guest #78 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 18: The One Who Was Chosen
Summary:
Wouldja lookit that? All eighteen Links in one place. It's a party up in here.
Notes:
(Okay… let's try this again.)
I do not own the Legend of Zelda.
(Oh, for-! That one was meant to be Star Trek. Why is this a thing? Why is this a thing that's happening?)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The bush… bird… thing turned out to be something called a Kikwi, and he was an incredibly timid creature. His name was Lopsa - or at least, that's what the Links thought his name was. He'd stuttered so much and said it so quietly that nobody was really sure what he'd actually said. Still, Lopsa hadn't corrected them on it yet, so…
Then again, maybe he was just too nervous to do so. Case in point, he'd just thrown himself face-first onto the ground again and was pretending to be a bush for about the seventeenth time since the group had met him, despite the fact that it wasn't even an effective disguise any more because everyone knew he was under it.
Dusk, who'd been nominated as the one to talk to the Kikwi because his mild nature made him one of the least threatening of the group, let out a heavy sigh and picked Lopsa up to set him on his feet. "Could you maybe stop doing that?" he asked calmly. "We've been over this: we're not monsters, we don't want to eat you, we're not going to hurt you, and we really just want to get directions and never interact with you again."
"Promise?" Lopsa squeaked, quivering.
"Yes," Dusk said fervently. "Now, can you help us?"
Lopsa twitched a couple times before straightening up into an almost confident posture. "You're looking for the green creature with the talking sword, right?"
"He should look almost exactly like us," Dusk agreed, ignoring the bit about the talking sword because honestly? Even if that actually was true, he'd still fit right in with all the shapeshifters and temporal manipulators and weather controllers in the group. "Have you seen anyone like that?"
"Oh yes, he comes down here a lot," Lopsa replied. "He's always busy looking for something though. Last time he was here about a song, but before that he was looking for a dragon, and before that he was here about a girl. Most of the time when he shows up now, he fights a big monster with a spike in it's head over by the Temple."
"What kind of monster?" Ocarina asked curiously. This proved to be a mistake, as Lopsa immediately cowered at the thought of the monster and promptly tried to disguise himself again. Dusk, however, having caught onto the tactic by now, caught him halfway down and put him back on his feet.
"Let's not go there," he said to the group pointedly. Then he looked back at Lopsa and asked, "Has the green creature been here recently?"
Lopsa thought about that, nervously shaking. "No," he decided eventually. "He hasn't been back since the last time he beat up the monster."
"Guys, I know what we need to do," Lore said abruptly. "We're going to need feathers, adhesive, about sixteen tree branches, some rope, two really pointy rocks, and somebody with a really good dragon impression."
"...Why?" Realm asked cautiously.
"To make our own monster, duh."
"Monster?" Lopsa squeaked, and immediately threw himself facedown again. Dusk dropped his head into his palm, left it there for a moment, then decided that prying any more information out of the Kikwi was probably going to be more hassle than it was worth.
"We should stop traumatizing him," he said, and herded the group away from the trembling bush. "Besides, we know enough. I think we just need to wait a little bit."
"Or-" Lore started.
"We are not going to dress anyone up as a monster to lure in the native Link," Dusk sighed. "Have you seen the locals here?" He gestured pointedly back at the Lopsa-bush, still shaking at the thought of a monster. "We do that, we're going to kill everyone through sheer terror alone."
Lore deflated. "Yeah, okay. Point."
"We could go and find the actual monster?" Wind offered.
Everyone thought about that. Nobody responded. It was true that, as Heroes, the group did tend to get into a lot of questionably safe situations, but very rarely did they go actively looking for said situations, and even then it was always for a very good reason. That said, however, boredom was not one of those very good reasons. The group may have been a bit thrill-happy, but they weren't stupid.
"...Let's not and say we did," Dusk decided. "Any other ideas?"
"I'm going to take a nap," Lore declared.
"Why are you always taking naps?" the Four asked.
"Because I saved three real countries, one imaginary one, swam an entire ocean and then walked the length of a country in immediate succession, then got caught up with you lot and it's been one large whirlwind ever since. I'm sleepy."
"But you literally took a nap less than twelve hours ago," the Four pointed out. "When we all told Speck our stories, you went first and then slept through the whole thing."
"There's an excellent reason for that," Lore informed them, and then dropped fast asleep to the ground below and began snoring softly.
Everyone stared at him.
"...Did he just fall asleep on command?" Steam checked.
"I think he did," Sketch agreed. Dusk let out another sigh and knelt down to arrange Lore's splayed limbs in a more comfortable position.
"Free time, I guess," he said. "Just don't terrify the locals any more than we already have, please."
Mask immediately grinned, pulled open the mouth of his bag, and poked Ocarina in the ribcage.
"Ow," Ocarina grumbled, pushing the offending hand away. "What?"
Mask winked at him. "Wanna help me prank a sleeping guy?"
Ocarina debated that for a moment, then shrugged. "What do you have in mind?"
Demise was in a bad mood, which wasn't anything new by any means. But this bad mood had the distinction of being on a higher level of irritated than his normal range of bad moods, and this was because that despite his best efforts, he hadn't been able to kill the Sheikah warrior. In fact, despite demolishing the entire Sealed Temple and doing his level best to raze the whole of it to the ground, the woman was nowhere to be found. It was like she'd simply vanished into thin air when Demise gained the upper hand.
And it annoyed him, because he'd really been looking forward to actually being able to kill something.
He stepped through the smouldering rubble and turned his glare to the landscape of the Sealed Grounds. It wasn't a bit like how he remembered it. In fact, for some reason, the entire spiraled chasm that he'd been trapped in for so long was now filled, and replaced with a giant statue of the goddess Hylia.
(Those statues had never actually been very accurate, which was the only thing Demise had ever liked about them. There were few things more amusing than being able to rub a terrible likeness in Hylia's face in the middle of an otherwise serious fight.)
Demise's glare evolved into a furious glower, and he narrowed his eyes at the statue. He'd been expecting the descending spiral to use as a battleground. When had this happened? Was this that botched timeline Ghirahim had mentioned right before Demise had fought the Hero (and lost, and been sealed into his accursed blade, but that wasn't the important part of that memory, shut up Veran)? Demise had thought this version had been overwritten. No wonder it had been so easy to rip holes in Hyrule's history, it was already a mess.
But then, perhaps his presence here, bringing along all his intent to change it, was influencing which reality had more of a grip. Or, maybe he'd just missed.
Time really wasn't his area, he was usually just content to destroy it and be done. And besides, Demise didn't really feel like removing himself from the universe again and seeing if he couldn't land in the right timeline this time.
Therefore, Demise began charging up his power to obliterate the Goddess Statue right then and there. Sadly, it was just a bit too big for casual destruction, which meant that Demise was going to have to concentrate, but it would be well worth it in the end, he thought. Every confrontation needed the proper battleground - slow and dramatic approaches full of monster attacks were a staple of Villainy 101.
After all, it was only polite to give a Hero the full treatment before he was violently dismembered.
Link woke up with a full-body jerk and the distinct suspicion that something had just exploded. He had a very finely-honed sense for this sort of thing, due to finicky bombs, an extremely active volcano, and Ghirahim's sense of humor, and consequently there was a little voice in his head informing him that somewhere, there was a pile of rubble where a building had used to be.
And, like the idiot with a Hero complex that he was, Link was going to end up investigating it.
"One of these days," he grumbled to himself as he dragged his body up from the (sinfully comfortable) bed he'd crashed on, "I'm going to learn from my past actions and not go to investigate everything that goes bump when I'm not looking." Then he adjusted his gear, sighed, muttered, "But today is not that day," and marched determinedly out of the door.
He was grateful that he'd stocked up on everything he might need the day before, because it allowed him now to run straight off the edge of Skyloft and call his bird. Once he was safely flying away, he tapped on the scabbard of the Master Sword and said, "Hey, Fi?"
Fi was either the spirit who lived in the Sword or the actual Sword herself (it was one of those two but Link had never quite figured out which), and she functioned as Link's… companion? It was hard to find a word that described everything Fi did for him; she was his guide, his advisor, his clock, his weapon, and about a dozen other things besides. She wasn't the most emotive of people, but she'd definitely loosened up a lot since Link first met her. Every now and then she would let loose with the driest sarcasm Link had ever heard.
At his call, she came spiraling out of the Master Sword and stationed herself just above the head of Link's bird, flying backwards at exactly the speed they were moving to keep her position. Her blank blue eyes were quirked in a subtle expression of curiosity, and the metallic fabric of her cloak fluttered wildly in the wind.
"Master?" Fi answered.
"Can you do a search of the Surface?" Link asked. "I think something's gone wrong."
Fi inclined her head, then flipped herself over and slid out to the right, flying in formation now instead of right in front of Link's face. She stayed that way for a few moments, staring down at the cloud barrier, before sliding back over and flipping herself around again to face Link. "Eldin and Lanayru read as normal, Master. However, I am picking up disturbances in the region of Faron. Would you like to descend?"
"As fast as possible," Link replied, and urged his bird towards the green light that signified the opening in the clouds to Faron below. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't Demise, but -
Well, it wasn't very likely to be anyone else.
Mask was kneeling on the ground next to Lore's snoring head, with two carved faces in his hands and several more scattered on the leaves in front of him. He frowned at them contemplatively, then turned his head towards Ocarina sitting a few feet away.
"What do you think?" he asked. "Deku Scrub or Goron?"
Ocarina shrugged, looking a bit lost. "I mean, you know them better than me. You've only ever told me about them, I've never seen them in action before."
"Good point, good point," Mask agreed, then went back to frowning at the items in his hands. "I think… Deku Scrub, for this."
"Deku Scrub for what, now?" Steam asked, overhearing the last bit and coming over to investigate. "Mask, are you going to…" He trailed off, and stared.
"I'm going to prank Lore, yes," Mask agreed, stuffing all his things except for the Deku mask back into his bag.
Steam nodded absently, still staring, then asked, "So who is that, then?" He pointed at the face of the Deku Scrub in Mask's hand, and Mask glanced down at it.
"This is my Deku Scrub mask," he said slowly. "I told you all about them? Remember?"
"Not the mask, I know what that is," Steam said, waving a hand impatiently. "And I didn't ask 'what is that', I asked 'who is that'."
Mask exchanged a glance with Ocarina, who shrugged. "There's nobody else here?"
"Oh, for-" Steam cut himself off exasperatedly. "The little Deku Scrub kid tied to the Deku mask! Who is he?"
Mask went utterly still. "What… what does he look like?"
Steam gave him an odd glance. "What do you mean, 'what does he look like', he's right - oh."
He blinked a couple times, switching his gaze between Mask and a blank space of air, then said, "He's… little. Like, 'little kid' little. He doesn't have the full bush head like an adult Scrub would, he's just got these three little leaves. He has these big yellow eyes and he keeps staring at you with them." Steam paused, scrunched his eyebrows together apprehensively, then continued "Not like, creepy, or whatever, more like… devotion, or loyalty. He says…"
Steam paused. "Oh, that seems a bit personal. Are you okay with me knowing that?"
"Knowing what?" Mask asked.
"No, not you," Steam said quickly, before looking at empty air. "Are you sure? ...Oh. ...Yeah. ...No, it's not a problem. I just wanted to make sure."
"What's he saying?" Mask questioned.
Steam took a breath. "He says, thank you for letting him play tag with his dad one last time."
Mask could have been punched in the stomach and looked better afterwards than he did right then. He drew in a ragged breath and tried to say something, but failed. He tried again, but failed that time too. Eventually what came out of his mouth was, "What do you mean, he's tied to my mask?"
"There's like, string on his wrists?" Steam replied hesitantly. "And the threads lead to the Deku Scrub mask. They're only a couple feet long."
"Oh goddesses, am I trapping him?" Mask demanded. "Ask him if I'm trapping him!"
"He can hear you," Steam said, amused despite the situation. "It's just on your end. And he says… no, you're not trapping him. He feels like he owes you. He… apparently made the strings himself, because he lost you at one point and he doesn't want that to happen again, so he tied himself to you. He can leave anytime if he wants to, he just doesn't want to."
Mask let out a sigh of relief. "And he's… okay?"
Steam shrugged helplessly. "I mean, given the fact that I can see him and you can't, I'm pretty sure he's a ghost possessing your item, so I'm really not sure. But… he says he's fine. He likes being useful to you."
"What on earth did I do to earn his loyalty?" Mask asked, bewildered and a bit dazed at this sudden turn of events.
"Ah… he's laughing," Steam informed him. "He thinks it's obvious, and that it's funny that you don't know."
"Well that's great," Mask muttered. "But… he's okay? He's really okay and stuff?"
"He says he is," Steam replied. "I'm inclined to believe him, he seems pretty happy."
Mask let out a heavy breath. "That's… that's amazing, actually. Wow. He's okay."
"Are you okay?" Ocarina asked, who'd been following exactly none of what had just happened and was extremely confused, but also packing away his questions until later.
"Not really, but I will be," Mask sighed. "Hey, Steam?"
"Hm?"
"What's his name?"
Steam was silent for a moment, listening. Then he said, "Well, he just rustled his top leaves together and then made a creak noise. So I'm guessing that whatever his name is, we can't pronounce it because we don't have leaves to rustle or wood to creak with."
"Somehow that makes sense," Mask muttered. "Is it alright if I just call him 'Creak' then?"
Steam glanced to his left, and nodded. "He says that's acceptable."
"Okay," Mask breathed, glancing down at the face of a Deku Scrub in his hands and tightening his grip on it. "That's… okay."
"He is a bit curious, though," Steam continued. "He wants to know what you needed him for? He says that you usually use him for getting to hard-to-reach places, and since he doesn't see any he's kinda confused."
"Oh, um," Mask said, and turned a bit red. "I was… gonna use his mask to prank Lore."
Steam paused, then let out a snicker. "Creak says he is absolutely okay with that plan. Apparently you do a great job taking care of his mask, but he's really curious about what a different host body would feel like. He thinks you're a bit on the short side."
Mask sputtered. "It's his body, why am I the height factor all of a sudden!?"
"He's laughing at you," Steam said, trying not to laugh himself.
"I'm going to drop you on Lore's face now," Mask informed the air to his left, lifting the Deku Scrub face in his hands to hold it above Lore's head threateningly.
"He's actually on your other side," Steam wheezed.
Mask twitched, then announced, "You know what, he heard me just fine anyways!" and brought the mask down on Lore's snoring face.
There was a flash, the sound of creaking wood, and for the briefest moment there was a small Deku Scrub child overlaid with Lore's sleeping form. Then there was a twist, and suddenly-
The Deku Scrub that was now Lore startled awake, yelped, tried to shoot to his feet and immediately fell over. He lay there for a moment, processing.
"Huh," Mask commented. "So that's what that looks like from the outside."
"I have several complaints," Lore said from the ground, and then spat out a Deku seed entirely by accident. "I know for a fact that-" he spat another seed, "-I wasn't snoring this time, because-" another seed came shooting out "-I only do that on my stomach, and I was-" another seed "-on my back this time, so-" yet another seed "-why do I keep shooting these things!?"
Several Deku seeds happened in rapid succession as Lore tried to figure out how to stop, and the absurdity of it all sent several of the surrounding Links into hysterics. This lasted for about twenty-three seconds until Lore started aiming his uncontrolled seeds at the laughers, at which point the amusement turned into running instead.
Link touched down just on the edge of Faron Woods and was immediately alerted to the fact that he wasn't alone by the sounds of running, screeching laughter, and something that sounded like high-velocity impacts in rapid-fire. And while that sort of thing wasn't exactly the explosion that he was still fairly sure had gone off, it was still extremely unusual. For one, he'd never heard the local Kikwi population get above anything louder than a soft mutter (screams of fright being the only exceptions), and all the racket coming from farther in the forest was not within the accepted Kikwi volume levels. For another, there were no other people on the Surface except for Groose and Impa. Groose had a very distinctive voice and none of the noise that Link was hearing matched him, and Impa was… well, ancient. Link kind of doubted she could run even if she wanted to.
Basically, there was nobody Link could think of who would be running and laughing and screaming like this.
"Okay, choices," Link muttered. "Whatever exploded, or whatever's going on here?"
From the distance, there was a THWACK, a yelp, and a "Sorry! Wasn't aiming for you!"
"REVENGE!" A different voice declared, followed by a loud whoosh and an exponential increase in the screaming laughter.
"Whatever's going on here," Link decided quickly, then drew the Master Sword for good measure. He flattened his back to a tree, took a bracing breath, then leaned out around the trunk to gauge what the situation was.
And then he proceeded to entirely forget what he'd been about to be doing, because running around and making an extreme racket were a dozen or so boys that looked almost exactly like Link. And that was a bit concerning - okay, it was completely concerning, and also confusing, and just a little terrifying, and Link had absolutely no idea how to process it. Vaguely, the memory of Sparrot's prediction drifted through his mind, and he grimaced. 'Reflection' his foot. 'Clones' would have been a muchbetter word.
Except that… looking at them all, they weren't exactly clones. The pair that had just run past Link's hiding tree were had brown and auburn hair, respectively. Several others were bright blond, in a way that Link himself had never been. And while all of them did look an awful lot like him, there were subtle differences in the way their faces were shaped and how they moved that set them apart from Link himself.
There was also a Deku Scrub in the middle of it all, but Link couldn't find very much resemblance to that one. Even if it was wearing a green tunic with a long floppy hat - hang on though, since when did Deku Scrubs wear clothes?
"I've changed my mind!" the Deku Scrub declared suddenly. "I like this trend!" The Scrub machine-gunned several Deku Seeds from his mouth, most of which were met with return fire of various kinds from the laughing group of boys running around him. "I'm my own ammunition!"
"You're not keeping him!" a shorter boy called from where he was bunkered behind a large rock. He had an arrow nocked to a ornate bow in his hands, with fire flickering on the arrowhead. As Link watched, the boy shot several incoming Deku Seeds from the air before continuing, "I just learned his name and I call dibs!"
The Deku Scrub pouted, shooting more seeds. "Can I borrow it sometimes, at least?"
"You'll have to ask him, and only if he's okay with it!"
The Scrub paused mid-seed. "Okay, am I missing something here? I'm getting the feeling that I'm missing something. Is there a reason why you keep applying a gender to what I thought was a genderless item?"
"It's a transformation mask," the shorter boy replied, shooting the remaining seeds from the air and poking his head above the rock. "There's a soul inside powering the change. Where do you think the Deku form comes from?"
The Deku Scrub blinked, several times, then held his arms away from his sides gingerly and looked down at himself. "Aaaaand now I'm mildly uncomfortable with this. How do I, uh…?"
"Promise not to shoot me with seeds?"
"Hero's honor," the Scrub reassured.
The shorter boy took that at face value and abandoned his bunker behind the rock to approach the Scrub and crouch down. "Hold still," he warned, then put his hands on either side of the Deku Scrub's head and pulled the face off what the actual crap.
Except that, instead of the screaming that Link was expecting, there was a bright flash and the vaguest impression of something snapping back into shape, and suddenly instead of a Deku Scrub there was a hylian teenager standing in the Scrub's place. He flexed his fingers and patted himself down, while the shorter boy put what looked like a mask into one of his many pouch pockets.
"Right, that was weird," the teenager announced. "Excellent prank, but please never do that again. I've sworn off all soul merging ever since the Cuckoo Incident."
The shorter boy looked up at him warily. "Do I want to know?"
"Probably not."
At this point, Link decided that he would very much like to know what was going on, thanks, and stepped out from his vantage point into the open landscape. He marched firmly up to the large grouping of his lookalikes, planted his feet on the ground and his hands on his belt and said, "There had better be a really good explanation for why there's about sixteen siblings I didn't know I had running around in Faron Woods."
There was silence for a moment, in which all of Link's lookalikes blinked at him. Then one of the taller ones said, "Well, that was easy. We didn't even have to go looking this time."
"It's always nice when convenience decides to be a thing that exists," agreed the shorter boy who apparently owned the Deku Scrub mask, who was standing right next to the taller one. "Who wants to give the introductions this time?"
"My turn!" declared the teen who had previously been a Deku Scrub. "And even if it isn't, I still call it!"
He stepped up to Link's face and stuck out his hand. "Hi there! I'm Lore, and-"
He broke off suddenly, and narrowed his eyes at Link. Then he leaned in until their noses were almost touching, at which point Link leaned backwards because awkward. Lore - Link was assuming that was his name, since he'd just introduced himself with it - straightened back up with a frown, stepped around to Link's other side, then turned so that they were back-to-back. A moment later, there was a hand on Link's head.
"What are you doing?" Link asked incredulously.
The hand vanished, then Lore stepped back into Link's view and pouted at him.
"Aw, you're taller than me. Why'd you have to go and be taller than me?"
Link stared at him blankly. Briefly, his mind drew a parallel to Sparrot's prediction again, but then got right back to being incredulous. "What does that have to do with anything!?"
"Well, Ocarina is short," Lore explained in a spectacularly non-explanatory fashion, because Link had no idea who Ocarina was. "Impressively short, actually, so I've got at least an inch on him, and he's only just barely taller than Realm, so naturally I've got him too. Dusk is short too, and I'm taller than him by about half an inch or so. I've been the tallest one in the group for ages, and now you come along and it's not fair, you know that?"
"No," Link said bluntly. "Because I have only just met you people five minutes ago and I have no idea what is going on."
"We'll fix that," Lore said, patting his shoulder. "Starting from the top! My name is Lore, and-"
An absolutely massive explosion went off in the distance, shaking the ground and sending everyone stumbling, and also cutting off whatever Lore had been about to say next. Link immediately threw all the strangeness of his sudden doppelgangers to the back of his mind in favor of the much more pressing issue, and took off sprinting towards the now-towering plume of smoke over the treetops.
Much to his surprise, though, all his lookalikes came with him.
"Oh, come on!" Lore complained, keeping pace right on Link's left. "I didn't get to finish my speech!" He paused to take a breath, then continued, "That is so not fair!"
"Talk fast then," Link snapped.
"No, I can't do it now," Lore said, between deep breaths. "I'm running, and it's really hard to give expositional dialogue while running. Hey, Realm!"
"On it," replied the only brunet in the group, and slid over to take Lore's place next to Link. "Hi there, sorry about him. I promise you'll get used to it though."
"I doubt that," Link replied dryly. "But go ahead, get it over with."
"Well, I'm Realm," Realm said, "and I'm guessing you're Link?"
"I don't remember telling you my name, but yes," Link panted warily.
"We didn't need to ask. We're all Link too."
Link promptly tripped over his own feet and was only saved from a painful faceplant by Realm grabbing his arm on the way down. "You're what!?" Link sputtered. He'd been coping fairly well under the theory of 'random doppelgangers, but unrelated to me', and this was an entirely unexpected revelation.
"I promise it'll make sense eventually," Realm told him apologetically.
"He just blew up Hylia's statue!" Farore screeched indignantly.
"Oh, he's gonna pay for that," Din muttered.
"Actually, we're going to pay for that," Nayru lamented. "Hylia left us in charge of her stuff when she reincarnated, remember? We're not doing a very good job."
"Hylia's statue!" Farore repeated. "He blew it up!"
"I still think that's was a bit unfair," Din complained. "I mean, saying 'Hey girls, I'm gonna go be reincarnated for who knows how many cycles, watch my stuff until I get back' right before she poofed off to reality really didn't give the rest of us a lot of time to plan for it."
"...it's been a couple millennia since that happened," Nayru said slowly. "We have had plenty of time."
"Right, because this whole adventure hasn't been one big ball of stress and occasional panic so far."
"Her followers worked so hard on that!" Farore ranted. "It was a terrible likeness, but still! It was the thought that counted!"
"We can add that to the list of things we're taking revenge on Demise for," Nayru sighed. "Now, since we have an actual physical location on Demise now, I say we start the Plan. Din?"
Din nodded and pulled a sheet of parchment from midair, then flicked it open and began reading. "Step one, send Courage."
"Been there, done that," Farore replied. "Next?"
"Step two, damage control until Courage gets here."
"Doing that now," Nayru answered. "Evacuated the Sheikah Servant Impa and Skyloft resident Groose a while ago." She paused, then added, "Should we have maybe done something about the building too?"
Farore shrugged. "The Sealed Temple was just generically holy. If it'd been dedicated to one of us, then I'd be more upset."
"Like Hylia's statue?"
"That was just straight-up disrespectful."
"He's Demise, what do you expect?"
Din, meanwhile, muttered, "I'll take that as a yes," checked something off and kept going. "Step three, make… snacks?"
Nayru frowned. "Is that right?"
"That was a joke," Farore admitted. "Never lose your temper with the Interference Laws halfway through a bullet point."
"Actually, I could go for snacks," Din said. "We're just going to be sitting on our butts and watching anyways, we might as well have crunchy treats in the meantime. Who wants popcorn?"
There was silence for a moment as her two sisters blinked at her. Then Farore said, "Can you make mine cheddar-flavored?"
"You got it."
"Sweet Hylia, that's Demise," Link whispered, peering out from behind the tree he was hiding behind and gaping openly at the massive, literally fiery-headed man carving the last few chunks of ground from a spiral chasm that Link was pretty positive was supposed to have had a Goddess Statue in it instead. "Crap. Okay."
"...Who?" Sketch asked. Everyone had introduced themselves during the sprint, and Link was doing his best to remember all of them. Learning a dozen new names all at once wasn't the easiest thing, but he thought he was doing pretty well given the circumstances.
"Him," Link replied, nodding towards Demise just in case anybody could have missed him. Nobody had, since he was a hard man to not notice, but Sketch had asked…
"No, I gathered that much," Sketch replied. "I mean, who is he?"
"The god of destruction," Link clarified. "Also known as the Demon King. He sort of wants to wipe everything from existence, including existence." He closed his eyes and let out a weakly hysterical half-laugh. "And it's my job to stop him."
"So… you could say, he's your villain?" Vio asked, frowning at some thought.
"I guess?"
Vio frowned even more. "That's… weird."
"Excuse me?" Link said, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, Realm gave you the five-minute version, right?"
"Yeah…" Link said, remembering the all-but-impossible story Realm had given him about them all being versions of himself from different time periods of Hyrule (and while Link had several questions about what Hyrule was, he was assuming it would be the word for the Surface eventually) and jumping from era to era via the use of reality-eating void portals.
"So, everybody else's villain has been missing," Vio continued, "and there's been a hole in their place. So why isn't yours?"
Everyone thought about that for a moment. Then Dusk ventured, "You said he's the god of destruction?"
"A full-blown deity," Link confirmed.
"So… it wouldn't be too difficult for him to spawn reality-eating holes across all of time and space?"
Link stared at him. "You're not serious."
Dusk shrugged helplessly. "I would rather be wrong, trust me. The idea of having to take down a god is… mildly terrifying."
"Assuming that beating up the cause of the holes would even be a valid fix to the issue," Mask muttered.
Link let out a controlled sigh. "Look, can we talk about this… whatever it is, later? I've got a world to save and a deity to take down and that's the sort of thing that can't really wait."
"Oh, we'll help then," Realm said.
"You'll what."
"Well, we're here, aren't we?" Realm asked rhetorically. "And Demise is a god. So you'd want all the help you can get."
"Also," Lore added, "this is the perfect opportunity to induct you into the group. Life-threatening battles for the fate of the world are always the best places for bonding."
"I doubt that severely," Link said.
Lore ignored him. "Alright, Red? Do your thing!"
"Yay!" Red cheered. "Okay, you said you were the Chosen Hero, so… wanna use it?"
Link stared at him. "For what?"
"Your nickname," Red replied distractedly. "We can't all be Link, it just doesn't work. Is that a yes?"
"No," Link said. "I refuse to be called Chosen. It's pretentious. Also, why are you the one picking my nickname and not me?"
"Because that's just the way this works and Changeling didn't think of that sort of stuff until after the fact, now shush," Blue retorted, right before Green and Vio tackled him for breaking things. Link squinted in confusion at the tangled pile of boys on the ground and asked, "Is this normal?"
"Yes, ignore them," Steam reassured.
Red tugged on Link's sleeve to get his attention again. "Hey, so, if you don't like Chosen, is there anything else unique about you that I can use?"
Link looked down at the smaller boy, who was producing a surprisingly accurate image of an adorable puppy. Link silently cursed his weakness of adorable puppies.
"...As far as Heroes go," he said after some thought, "I think I might be the first. Skyloft - that's where I live - we don't have any legends of any of you guys, which leads me to think you haven't happened yet. Also, Hyrule? That doesn't exist, but I think it will because I'm going to make it exist. Ah… I think."
"No, that makes sense," Ocarina said, with Mask nodding in agreement. They were the only ones who seemed to think that, because they were the only ones who really understood time travel, but everyone else was willing to believe them about it
"So, first then!" Red exclaimed "Vio!"
"Yep," Vio replied, still on top of Blue. "Prime, native, prior, fore, genesis, premier, ante-"
"Genesis," Red declared brightly.
"Genesis?" Link repeated. "That's such a mouthful."
"Which is why we'd shorten it to Gen," Red informed him decisively, apparently having thought the entire thing through in just a few short moments. "It'd be a nickname for your nickname, which is cool."
"Nicknames are cool," Lore agreed. From the bottom of the pile that Green and Vio were still atop of, Blue muttered something mildly concussed that sounded vaguely like, "Stop quoting the Doctor." Green smacked him in response.
"Gen," Link said, trying it out. "Jehn. Jeehhhhhhnnnnn."
"I like it," Wind opined.
"You like everything, though," Sketch told him.
"Not everything, just… most things."
"But the important thing is, do you like it?" Red asked, staring at Link with wide, puppy-like eyes.
"...I'll get used to it, I guess," Gen agreed.
"Yay!"
"But now we're extremely off-topic," Gen continued, "because there's still Demise to deal with and you guys just promised me assistance."
"How hard can it be?" Lore asked cheerfully.
Gen stared at him, then visibly decided to ignore him and all the thought that had clearly not gone into that statement. "You all should know, I have no idea what he's capable of, so be prepared for anything."
"Like that?" Speck said tremulously, pointing.
Everyone turned to follow his finger and collectively squinted at what looked like an incoming magic missile of death. As soon as this registered in their heads, the whole group scrambled out of the way and the blast cannoned into bare dirt instead. Three feet of topsoil vaporized away instantly.
"If you're all done gossiping about me," Demise snarled from the bottom of the spiral chasm he'd been carving, and looking exceedingly murderous. "Do me a favor and hold still so I don't have to waste my time aiming at you."
The group processed that for a moment, incorporating both the close call they'd just dodged and the fact that Demise seemed even more intent of killing them than their normal opponents had ever been. Then Lore got to his feet, peered over the edge of the spiral, and said, "Have you noticed your hair is on fire?"
"What." Demise said flatly.
"Is he insane?!" Gen sputtered frantically.
"Maybe," the Four muttered back. "We're still trying to figure it out."
Lore, meanwhile, kept talking. "Is that a yes or a no? Because I'm a little bit concerned here, that is a lot of fire."
"I am perfectly aware of what is on my head!" Demise spat.
"Oh, okay," Lore said. "Just checking." He leaned back, turned his head to the rest of the group, and stage-whispered, "I don't think he likes me."
Gen's hand met his face with a loud slap. From the chasm, Demise roared, "WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE?!" then snapped both his hands together and slammed them to the ground. Red light streaked chaotically through the earth until it had completely encircled the chasm and the Links standing on the edge of it, then shot up from the created cracks to form into an impassable barrier in the span of a second. It took about five more seconds after that for the group to realize that Demise had just trapped them in with him.
"...is anyone else getting the feeling that Demise is a bit more prepared for this confrontation than we are?" Mask asked slowly. "Like, he seems to know exactly who we are and why we're here?"
"Of course I do," Demise snapped. "You think I would just stand by and let those meddling goddesses undo everything I've managed to finally do? I have all of existence right where I want it, and I will not let a group of halting elf boys be the thing that stops me."
There was a moment of startled silence. Then Gen squeaked, "Goddesses? As in, there's more than one?"
"Wait, I was right?!" Dusk gasped.
"We have to take down a god to fix the universe?!" Ocarina sputtered.
"Oh my Din, we're going to die," Sketch decided.
Demise grinned. "You see?" He said, to nobody in particular. "They at least know to show respect for their betters." He paused, scowled, then snapped, "Yes I am! ...Then please do explain your reasoning to me. ...No. That is not a valid reason. ...Someone please shut him up so I can concentrate."
"What?" Realm asked, having followed exactly none of that speech just like everyone else around him.
"Irrelevant," Demise waved a hand dismissively. "Now, I believe you are here to try and stop me, yes?" He slid into a stance, feet planted on the uncovered stone of the carved-out chasm and one hand extended towards the group on the edge above, fingers splayed open with a spell crackling to life. "Please, do try."
"We're so dead," Sketch repeated as the group began running to avoid the incoming attack. Of course, due to the barrier keeping them all in, the only place to run was the descending spiral path that had Demise at the bottom of it. And while the Links really would have gone in literally any other direction, even they had to admit that slow and dramatic approaches full of attacks and near-death experiences were traditional in the long history of monster fights.
Notes:
Fun Fact: According to Nintendo canon, the tallest any Link has managed to get is five-foot-four. Ocarina is about five-foot-three and so is Dusk, whereas Gen comes in at about five-foot-four. Unfortunately, those three are the only ones who seem to have any sort of established height, so I've just made up headcanons for everyone else. In this case, I've decided Lore is about five-foot-three and a half, Realm is five-foot-one, and everyone else is varying stages of five-foot and under which I'm not going to list because that's going to take up a lot of page space.
The scene with Creak is entirely based off popular fan theory that Link's Deku Scrub form is the Deku Butler's son, and the Butler's son is the sad little twisted tree we see in the first part of Majora's Mask. Also, the Deku Scrubs don't have names, which is really irritating. So I made one up (Technically, his name is Rustle-Of-Leaves-and-Creak-of-Branch-In-Wind, but… eh, Creak for short).
Thanks to MoralAshes, Twinkletalon, Guest #79, buterflypuss, Solanace, Guest #80, TheWorldEndsWithNu, Guest #81, Guest #82, and Guest #83 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 19: Lightning, Which Is Also On Fire
Summary:
Demise is called the god of destruction for a reason, and that reason is very painful and involves a lot of dodging and screaming.
Notes:
(Alright, how about now.)
I do not own the Legend of Zelda.
(Welp, there goes the one about Stargate too. I think I'm just going to give up now and let the Universe or whatever this is take care of the disclaimers now, since it seems so keen on it.)
No.
(Wait, what!?)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The first ten steps or so down the spiral path were smooth, uneventful, and actually relatively boring.
Then Demise shot lightning at them, and all of that went out a window. It wasn't even normal lightning, like the kind that other villains might call from the sky. No, this lightning was coming straight out of Demise's hands, and it also happened to be on fire. How lightning could be on fire was something that at least a few of the Links - most specifically Vio - would really like to investigate, but since this lightning was being aimed with the intent to kill, that was going to have to wait.
Most of the Links had never had lightning thrown at them before, after all. This resulted in a lot of startled screeching, followed by dodging, followed by Lore saying something in Firetongue that was probably a curse word, but nobody was really sure.
However, there wasn't time to debate that either.
"WHY IS THERE LIGHTNING!?" Steam shrieked as he ran for his life. "WHY IS LIGHTNING HAPPENING!?"
"Because I can!" Demise snarled, then paused, and snapped, "I will not, now stop shouting at me! ...Will you let me focus!?"
"Who are you talking to?" Lore asked curiously, and somewhat suicidally.
"NOT YOU!" Demise roared, blasting more lightning.
"Oh my Din," Sketch muttered in a frantic rush, the sort of statement that just came out without any real thought behind it. "Oh my Din, oh my Din, oh my Din. We're going to die."
"Stop saying that," Mask snapped.
"DOWN!" Dusk bellowed, and everyone flattened themselves to the ground as more lightning streaked overhead.
"We're going to die!"
"Your panic is not helping!"
"DODGE!" Gen screamed, just before yet more lightning crashed in. The group scattered, albeit not very much because of the barrier keeping them all in, which resulted in them all regrouping just a few moments later.
"Does anybody have anything that can possibly be used as storm defense?" Realm asked. "Could the Wind Waker redirect this?"
"Wouldn't work, that stuff's not exactly natural," Wind replied, scowling. "There's a big difference between magic lightning and regular lightning that's being fueled by a magical source."
"Dang. Okay, anybody got other ideas?"
"Mirror Shield?" Ocarina suggested.
"Made of metal and highly conductive. Terrible idea," Mask informed him.
"...You say that like you've got personal experience."
"Spoilers."
"INCOMING!" Green screeched, and everybody ducked again as Demise fired off another attack.
"Okay, that's it!" Lore declared from his position on the dirt. He shot back up to his feet and planted himself in place, then jammed his arm into his Bag just as Demise fired off another round of electricity.
Now, normal physics dictated that Lore could not outdraw a lightning bolt. However, Lore did not care about normal physics, and somehow this apparently made him immune to said physics. As a result, Lore not only was able to take his hand out of his Bag before the lightning got to him, but he was also able to brandish the item he'd drawn from his Bag.
Which was how, in a staggering display of complete disregard for how the Universe worked, Lore hit the incoming lightning right back to where it came from… with his Bug Net.
"What," Gen sputtered.
"That's how we do it!" Lore declared, satisfied.
"How."
"Well you see-"
"Later," Dusk interrupted. "Small problem, that didn't seem to do much."
Sure enough, Demise had a small black scorch march on the left side of his abdomen, but it didn't seem like he'd noticed. He looked more irritated than anything else.
"Nothing you can do," he growled, "can compare to the bagpipes."
"...I don't know what that means," Lore admitted, wide eyed at the very idea.
"This is acceptable," Demise replied coolly. And followed up his statement with yet more lightning, and also some dark-smoky magic blasts interspersed with odd yellow flashes. Everyone immediately dodged; and the unfortunate pieces of foliage that got hit instead shriveled into limpness, or froze into stone respectively. There was a collective "Meep" noise from the group.
"Hang on, I know that stuff," Dusk said suddenly, staring intently at the formerly vibrant grasses which were now lying limply on the ground, yellowed and sickly and with floating black squares hovering around them, for some reason. "That's Twilight."
"The stuff that invaded your Hyrule?" Wind clarified.
"It's identical," Dusk confirmed, leaning in close. "Which doesn't make sense, because I don't think the Twilight exists yet?"
"No idea, but that's probably a fair assumption," Gen agreed.
"So why can Demise summon it?"
"Let's ask him," Lore said, either entirely ignorant or just entirely ignoring how bad of an idea that was. It was probably both, actually, though he was cautious enough to just creep forwards and poke his head over the edge to stare down at Demise, rather than his whole body. But then he made the whole thing pointless by screaming, "HEY! WHY CAN YOU DO THE TWILIGHT THING WHEN THE TWILIGHT THING MIGHT NOT EXIST YET?!"
"That is for me to know, and for you to die wondering about," Demise snapped. Then he used the fact that Lore had given away their position to launch another round of attacks. Everyone scattered again, which also had the effect of herding them all farther down the spiral, and consequently closer to Demise.
"He's got more than just the Twilight," Wind gasped, a few minutes later as everyone crouched out of sight and took a quick breather. "I recognize that petrification magic. That's what Bellum uses. Used. You know what I mean."
"And have you guys noticed that he keeps arguing with someone?" Vio put in. "It's like there's some conversation happening that only he can hear."
"...Wait," Mask said. "Wait. He said he was the one who made the holes, right?"
Everyone gave a general agreement that, yes, Demise had said that.
"All the holes correspond to a villain," Mask breathed. "You don't think…?"
"None of them are actually gone," Vio muttered slowly, and with great realization. "They didn't get erased, they got removed… and if Demise is the one who removed them, then…"
"They're all in his head," Wind finished. "They're in his head, and he's got their powers. Farore."
Several of the Links looked like they really wished this thought hadn't occurred to them. Several more of the Links were having the sudden realization that their own personal adversary was in the fight with them. A few of the Links did some quick mental math and came to the unfortunate conclusion that they were actually fighting sixteen superpowered supervillains, rather than just one.
"We're going to die," Sketch whimpered, and nobody bothered to tell him off for it this time. This was because Demise had gotten bored waiting for the group to give themselves away again and had started slamming out radial pulses of whatever power he felt like using. Everyone scattered again, but now doing so with randomly interspersed jumping.
"We feel like we could have been more prepared for this," the Four panted in a spare moment between dodges. "Like, a lot more prepared. This just seems to be a lot of panic and screaming."
"When you say 'we'," Sketch asked, "are you talking about you Four, or the whole group?"
"The whole group," the Four decided. "Lore is doing more of the screaming than we are, anyway."
This was true, but not necessarily for the reasons that would normally be associated with a terrifying and life-threatening battle. Lore was indeed doing most of the screaming, but very few of them were panicked. A lot of it was just because he thought it was more interesting to run while screaming at the top of his lungs as opposed to just running. Whether or not this was actually helping anything was up for debate, but Lore seemed to enjoy it.
Although, it did give away exactly how far down the spiral he was, which meant that he was the most often targeted, which meant that more and more of his screaming was actually because of terror.
"True enough," Sketch agreed, watching this.
On the other side of the group, which was spaced out rather a lot by this point due to sporadic dodging and the general difference in running speeds between the different Links, Dusk was eyeing all the variously incoming magic attacks (between dodges, that was) and calculating. Specifically, whether or not it would be worth the immunity to the Twilight if he transformed himself right now. On one hand, it would most certainly make staying alive a little bit easier. But on the other hand, it would create a communication barrier, and Dusk wasn't quite sure the benefits of having to dodge less outweighed the risk of being unable to be understood.
He would have debated this more, but then he had to run for his life again. This, ironically, made up his mind for him, because not only was there more running and evading than there was conversation at the moment, but with all the screaming that was happening Dusk rather doubted he would manage to make himself heard anyways.
That decided, Dusk immediately yanked the pouch around his neck out from beneath his tunic, flattened himself to the ground to avoid the incoming lightning, then quickly shucked off the Master Sword and corresponding gear in a pile next to him and proceeded to upend the contents of the pouch into his palm. It only occurred to him that he probably should have handed off his weapon while he still had hands after he no longer had hands.
"Din dangit," he sighed, before snatching the leather straps of his sword in his teeth and taking off sprinting. He dropped the whole contraption in a hasty pile at Realm's feet as he shot past - probably not his best idea, but he was in a rush. Realm let out a startled squawk, followed by a sputtered, "Why are you doing that?" as he hurriedly scooped up the equipment into his arms. Dusk answered this by imposing himself in between Realm and an incoming blast of Twilight magic, which splashed against his fur and dissipated harmlessly.
"Oh," Realm said. "That's a convenient immunity. Got any others?"
Dusk shook his head in a negative.
"Eh, oh well," Realm sighed, then shouldered Dusk's weaponry on his unoccupied side. "I hope you know, I'm probably going to lose these."
"Don't you dare," Dusk growled. Realm, of course, understood exactly none of that, but the growling got the message across well enough.
"I mean, I'll try not to, but… well, we both know me."
That was exactly the reason why Dusk was almost entirely sure that leaving his means of changing back with Realm was a terrible idea, but there also just wasn't enough time to do anything else. So, instead of doing the smart thing, Dusk instead let out a heavy sigh, gave Realm a pointed stare to reinforce his expectation of coming back to his weapons once all this was over, and resumed his sprinting.
Theoretically, the sooner he got to Demise and threw off the god's concentration, the sooner he would stop spamming so many magical projectiles at the rest of the group. As a wolf, Dusk moved at least forty percent faster.
That was his reasoning, anyway.
Meanwhile, everyone else was trying to figure out a better way of dodging than actually dodging, because it was getting to the point that they were spending more time throwing themselves out of the way of various attacks then they were actually making any progress down the spiral. It wasn't going very well, mostly because Demise was throwing so much stuff at them that it was hard to tell what might be safe to block, especially when it was mixed in with so much stuff that wasn't.
Therefore, Gen immediately snagged Lore on one of his merrily-screaming pass-by's and said, "Lore, shut up a minute."
Lore duly shut up, but only so he could screech, "DUCK!" right before dragging Gen to the ground as a lightning strike soared directly through the spot where their heads had been.
"See, that's exactly what I'm talking about," Gen said, pointing at Lore smugly.
"Nice!" Lore beamed. Then he paused, and asked, "Wait, what were you talking about?"
"Well, I haven't gotten to say it out loud yet," Gen admitted. "But! Lore, can you be the lookout?"
"What am I looking out for?"
"In the short time I've known you," Gen began, "I've come to the conclusion that you are, without question, the loudest person here. So do you think you could yell loud enough that everyone could hear you?"
"Dunno," Lore said thoughtfully. "Please hold."
Gen realized his mistake just in time to clamp his hands over his ears, right before Lore took a massive inhale and let out the largest, top-of-his-lungs, most ear-bleeding shriek that Gen had ever heard in his life. He was blocking the sound out and it still made him want earplugs. Even more impressively, when he took his hands down, he could hear faint echoes of Lore's voice bounding off into the distance.
"Yes," Lore decided.
"That was unnecessary," Gen muttered, sticking a finger into his ear and trying to get rid of the cotton-filled sensation.
"PLEASE TELL ME NOBODY DIED!" Wind yelled from somewhere farther down the spiral.
"WE'RE GOOD!" Gen called back. Then he said to Lore, "Would it be possible for you to watch what Demise is shooting and call for the relevant blocking tactic in response?"
"An excellent idea," Lore declared. "Cāxlee-Ai ta nīgebi uold. Leave it to me!" He began squinting at Demise and muttering to himself about counters to the various magic being thrown around. Gen decided to leave him to it.
But then he had to drag Lore out of the way of an incoming petrification blast because Lore was too busy squinting to notice it, promptly decided that Lore should in no way be left to his own devices, and started towing him by the shirt instead. Lore was unbothered by this.
"That looks reflectable," he muttered to himself.
"Great work, keep it up," Gen wheezed in reply.
There were approximately two types of input that Demise was receiving from his head prisoners. The first kind was mainly composed of various volumes of screaming.
BURN! Majora cried ecstatically. Demise ignored it.
CRUSH THEIR INSIGNIFICANT HEADS! Veran shrieked. Demise ignored her.
LAUNCH THE CABBAGE CANNONS! Zant screeched. Demise, with somewhat more difficulty, ignored him too.
He was doing his best to ignore everything about the screaming; but it was more difficult than he wanted it to be. For one, the screaming was all much louder than anything else happening in his head, which was actually quite irritating. This was because of the other type of input the villains were giving, which was more-or-less advice, and would have actually been quite helpful is Demise could ever manage to hear it.
Concentrate the Twilight into focused pulses, Twilight Ganondorf suggested, or at least that's what Demise thought he'd said. He might also have been talking about palpitating the highlight into a concussed mulch, but… that one didn't make quite as much sense.
"Someone, please shut them up," he growled, rapidly approaching the level of being entirely fed up with the unwanted screaming.
On it. Hey, Majora! Try setting Bellum on fire!
Majora didn't make any verbal reply, aside from a sudden lack of chanting about burning things; but Bellum abruptly joined in on the screaming. Demise snarled. "That is not helping!"
Hey, it got Majora to quiet down, didn't it? Malladus replied. Also, try firing a petrification blast now.
Demise begrudgingly did so, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Bellum's power was now also on fire. Consequently, everything he hit with it turned into flaming statues.
"...This may be worth the noise," Demise decided.
"Oh, come on!" Lore complained. "Now I have to reclassify that!"
"Then do it quickly!" Gen gasped.
Lore squinted again. "Okay… Uh-huh… aha! Got it. Attack Avoidance is officially up and ready for use!"
"Great," Gen panted. "Please scream the appropriate tactic to whatever Demise is doing as loudly as you can and at least five seconds in advance."
"Sure thing," Lore said, then winked, and promptly screeched, "SHIELD!" at the top of his lungs right before a barrage of energy projectiles came barreling in. Several shields were produced from various angles and equipment straps, and the incoming attack was reflected off in other, more harmless directions.
"THANK YOU!" Steam yelled back.
"DUCK!" Lore shrieked in reply, and everyone flattened themselves.
"Stop dodging," Demise snapped.
"HOW ABOUT NO!" one of the Heroes called back, while a different one screamed out avoidance strategies in the background. Demise glared at them all balefully, then growled, "Which of you incompetents has the most unstoppable attack?" to the villains in his head.
Naturally, the first replies Demise received consisted of a great deal of offended snarling, which more or less amounted to a general dislike of being called incompetent. The replies beyond that, though, were rather disappointing.
"Does anyone have an unstoppable attack that does not involve turning into a reason-addled swine?" Demise clarified darkly.
...I might have something, Malladus volunteered.
Meanwhile the group, who had thrown themselves to the ground in order to dodge the latest round of lightning, were cautiously climbing to their feet again and advancing warily down the spiral path once more. The reason for their caution, rather than the frantic sprinting rush that they had been using up until this point, was that Demise had stopped shooting at them and was instead standing with his head tilted slightly to the side, appearing to be listening intently to absolutely nothing that anyone else could hear.
"...This is gonna be bad, isn't it," Red said.
"Probably," Green agreed, sighing.
Abruptly, Demise snapped back to attention. He raised a hand suffused with icy blue energy, which smoked and dripped from his skin like liquid nitrogen, and snapped his fingers together.
With a bellowing whistle that sounded more like a foghorn but still hurt everyone's ears all the same, the Demon Train spawned both itself and a set of tracks from the middle of absolutely nothing and plowed straight into the group, scattering them every which way. Steam let out an indignant screech as he threw himself into a dodge, and glared daggers at the Train as it blew by.
"How is that fair!?" he demanded. "I left that thing in a smoking deconstructed heap being devoured by a void!"
"The fact that it can be summoned and materialized with just a snap would imply that the Demon Train is not, as previously believed, an actual Train," Vio informed him. "In light of this, it would make more sense for the Demon Train to actually be a construct of evil and malice, which just so happens to be taking on the form of a Train in response to the summoner's wishes."
Steam blinked at him. "...And what does that mean in ten words or less?"
Vio sighed. "It's evil corruption that looks like a Train."
"That's cheating!"
"So then summon the Spirit Train," Blue put in. "It's the counter to the Demon Train, right? So it should be made of, like, pure goddess-blessed goodness, or something, and it's just looking like a Train because you want it to or because a Train is the best counter for another Train."
"You say that like I ought to know how to summon it!"
"Snap?"
Steam hastily clicked his fingers against each other a couple times. Nothing happened. Demise, meanwhile, took the opportunity of their distraction to launch more lightning – on fire this time, and conversation got put on hold for a moment while everyone dodged.
"This isn't working!" Steam called, snapping again to the same nonexistent result.
"Maybe you aren't trying hard enough!" Blue yelled back.
"I am snapping as hard as I can!" Steam retorted.
"Well, maybe you just don't have a good enough connection!"
"I drove the Spirit Train across Hyrule more times than I can count!" Steam cried. "For months! I know that thing inside and out, how could I not have a good enough connection!?"
"You say that, but your results aren't agreeing with you," Sketch called. "Are you sure you have enough affinity built up? Affinity is pretty important for summonings!"
Feeling somewhat ignored, Demise snapped his fingers again and launched the Demon Train at the group again. Everyone sprinted out of the way, and without anything to hit the Train went straight up the wall in a marvelous disregard for physics, before arcing around and coming back in for another go.
"YES, I have enough affinity!" Steam shouted, throwing his hands up in exasperation as he began scrambling out of the way again. "Maybe you guys haven't noticed, but I'll have you know that I like trains!"
Farore tilted her head thoughtfully, then smiled.
"Shall we?" she asked her sisters.
"We shall," Din replied, grinning evilly.
"This is going to be the most undignified summons," Nayru sighed, before smirking. "And it will be hilarious."
No sooner had the words, 'I like trains' left Steam's mouth than a high, trilling whistle pierced through the otherwise chaotic battleground noise. The Spirit Train materialized in a flash of gold, spawned a set of tracks right over the top of the ones the Demon Train was using, and smashed headlong into the opposing Train before it got anywhere close to the group. Both machines vanished, presumably to be re-summoned at a later date.
Everyone stared.
"What," Steam said.
"Did you just perform a summons with the words, 'I like trains,'?" Wind asked incredulously.
"I don't know," Steam said blankly.
"Well, try it again and see!"
"I like trains?" Steam tried tentatively. Immediately, the Spirit Train announced itself with a gold flare and a loud whistle, proceeded to spawn a set of tracks from absolutely nowhere, and plowed straight off the edge of the descending spiral, heading directly to where Demise was standing in the center of the chasm. A deafeningly loud CRASH accompanied this action, followed by a fireball explosion, and then a bright gold flash as what was now the wreckage of the Spirit Train disappeared back to wherever it had been summoned from.
"...WHAT!?" Steam sputtered.
"I think you just crashed the Spirit Train on top of Demise's head," Lore observed. "D'you think it did anything?"
"I'll check," Realm volunteered, and crept forwards to poke his head over the edge of the spiral. Then he yelped and yanked himself back to safety, as flaming lightning shot through the spot where he'd been not a moment later.
"Unfortunately, he's fine," Realm reported, looking a bit singed but otherwise okay. "He does seem to be a bit more irritated now, though."
More lightning confirmed this statement, which caused everyone to scatter again. Unfortunately for the group, the lightning was followed by Twilight blasts – most of which a still-wolf Dusk intercepted, but enough that he missed a few and the Links had to dodge anyways – which was followed by petrification shots, and then those were followed by magic seeker spheres, followed by fire, and at that point everyone sort of lost track of what was being thrown at them because there was so much being thrown at them. At some point Lore couldn't keep up with his shouted instructions because the incoming attacks started overlapping, and then everything just went to the Dark World.
Basically, nobody made it out unscathed.
When Demise finally stopped throwing attacks, it quickly became apparent that the descending spiral was... no longer a spiral. Or descending. In fact, Demise had basically obliterated the entire path down, and now the chasm was literally just a chasm. This also resulted in the Links being sprawled on the floor in various and pain-filled groaning clusters, because not only had almost everybody gotten hit by something, but they'd also fallen about twenty feet or so when the spiral path gave out and collapsed beneath them.
There was also quite a lot of rubble everywhere now, as a result.
"Hello," Demise said archly.
Gen blearily lifted his head and froze.
"Guys!" he hissed. "Guys, Demise is right in front of us."
"Well now," Demise said, his voice unnaturally loud in the ringing silence. After the lightning, and the explosions, and the screaming, and especially the Trains, the lack of noise was almost a physical entity. "Which one of you wants to die first?"
"How about no," Lore coughed.
"I'm so sorry," Demise replied, not sounding sorry in the slightest. "That is not an acceptable answer. Please do try again."
"How about you?" Sketch offered roughly.
"Also not an acceptable answer," Demise said, a bit more annoyed now. "You know what, I'm just going to pick the closest victim and work from there."
Speck, who was the closest victim, turned pale and began inching himself away. Demise frowned at him. "Hold still, it'll be easier that way," he snapped. Then he paused.
"No, easier for me," he said.
"What?" Gen asked.
"Not you," Demise retorted, then scowled. "No, not you!"
"I know that he's actually talking to someone," Realm said quietly, "but this still doesn't make him seem any less insane."
"It's easier for me to kill him if he holds still!" Demise growled to a person that nobody else could hear. "That was I can aim for his heart with minimal fuss and move on to the next victim!"
"I say we attack him while he's distracted," Lore opined.
"I say we regroup and heal up first," Gen countered. "If you haven't noticed, we just lived through a rockslide and have all the appropriate injuries. We're going to get a lot farther with this if we do it at full health."
"I would very much like to torture them all to death!" Demise snarled. "But that would be unnecessarily time-consuming, and allow for possible escapes and subsequent thwartings! Now stop shouting at me about it!"
The Links all winced.
"...I agree with Gen," Wind voted softly, and that seemed to decide it as everybody clustered themselves into one large mass and began passing out Red Potions amongst themselves. Actually, it was mostly Gen. He had a lot more health items on hand than what seemed to be strictly necessary for one person.
"If I burn their corpses, will that make you happy!?" Demise seethed.
"Hello Majora," Mask muttered unhappily, and downed a bottle of Potion.
"How do you know?" Red asked curiously.
"Majora has a... disturbingly unhealthy obsession with setting things on fire," Mask replied, shivering. "The more things burning, the better."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'MY THREATS ARE STUPID'!?" Demise roared.
"...I'm actually kinda curious about the other half of that conversation," Lore mused.
"Of course you are," Gen sighed. "Now drink this and don't complain about it." He shoved a bottle into Lore's hands and raised an eyebrow pointedly. Lore rolled his eyes in response.
"And you think you could do better," Demise said, extremely skeptically. The group glanced at him; he was standing in a loose stance with his arms crossed, frowning furiously at the scorched and blackened wall in a way that said he wasn't actually seeing the wall at all. "Really. Will you deign to shut up if I do so?"
"He's either foolishly arrogant or rightfully confident for ignoring us as we heal, and I can't decide which one it is," Realm whispered to Dusk, who had made his way over to get his weapon gear back. Realm tapped him on the head with it, waited patiently through the ten or so seconds it took for Dusk to change back to hylian again, then handed the whole contraption over so Dusk could strap it back into place.
"Considering what he did to the spiral, I'm going to assume the latter," Dusk murmured back.
"FINE," Demise snapped. Abruptly, he switched his focus back to the world around him and leveled a baleful glare at the huddling Links; then, with a completely blank expression and an even blanker voice, Demise cleared his throat and recited, "'Majora's current lack of a physical presence will only be a minor impediment in his ability to torture you all to within inches of your lives. However, he is not likely to stop there, and is much more likely to go all the way.' Happy now?"
"...What?" Lore said.
"I DELIVERED IT PERFECTLY!" Demise bellowed, once again staring furiously at the middle distance. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers for a moment, listening to something, began to spit out a string of insults, then cut himself off halfway through the rant and instead said, "You know what, I'm ignoring you all."
He began building up the energy for another attack in his hands, only to immediately be interrupted again. This time though, the interruption came from a source that did not only exist in Demise's head.
A blur of white and red shot into the chasm and resolved at Demise's feet into the form of an impressively sparkly and excessively pale man. He stared up at the Demon King with utter adoration and declared, "My Master!" with loud exuberance.
Demise stared at him with all the derision that a normal hylian might bestow upon a skulltula. "And where have you been?"
"My most humble and sincere apologies, my King," the man said. "Please, allow me to make it up to you!"
"...Accepted," Demise stated, right before plunging his hand straight through the crimson cloak the pale man was wearing and deep into his chest. Contrary to what the Links would have considered to be a normal reaction, the pale man started laughing.
"Gen," Dusk whispered, poking their newest member in the shoulder. "Gen, who is that?"
"Ghirahim," Gen hissed back. "He's Demise's most devoted follower, I've fought him like three times. But I have no idea what's happening right now."
As if on cue, Demise's arm clenched, Ghirahim's laugh choked to a halt, and the Demise ripped his arm out of Ghirahim's chest and dragged an absolutely massive black jagged-edged sword along with it. Ghirahim seemed to almost fold in on himself as the sword emerged; by the time the whole blade came free, Ghirahim was nowhere to be seen. The sword, however, trembled and pulsed as though it had a heartbeat.
Everyone spent a stunned moment just staring; Gen, meanwhile, let out a low and emphatic string of curses. Something seemed to have occurred to him, and he was decidedly unhappy about it.
And unfortunately, that moment spent staring was the exact time that Demise brandished the sword in his hand and sent them all flying with it.
Gen came to a rolling stop against the far rock wall, then lifted his head and blearily squinted to see what had hit him. It took him a moment to resolve the black-and-orange blob into the shape of Demise, but once he did he rather wished he hadn't, because Demise holding his sword meant that everything had just gotten that much more difficult when it really hadn't needed to be.
"Goddess' Grace," Gen cursed to himself, then frantically tapped at the Master Sword's hilt behind his shoulder and hissed, "Fi, Fi, Fi," in rapid-fire until the sword spirit materialized herself, looking ever-so-slightly irritated.
"Yes, Master-" She began, then stopped and looked down. One silver-blue eyebrow inched minisculely upwards. "Master, why are you on the ground?"
"Not important right now," Gen whisper-snapped. "Fi, did you know Ghirahim is a sword spirit?"
Fi blinked. "All great swords are imbued with a spirit."
"Did you not think to mention this!?"
"Ghirahim was without his Master and unable to manifest. It was unimportant."
"Well it's important now!" Gen sputtered, and pointed a frantic finger at the slowly approaching Demise, sword held loosely in one hand. Fi observed this, looking once at Demise and then back at Gen.
"Master, I have identified the Demon King Demise."
"I KNOW THAT ALREADY!" Gen screeched, abandoning his attempts to be subtle. "Analyze him before he kills us, please and thank you!"
"Analyzing," Fi stated, going silent for several moments while she calculated.
"Quick question," Lore said, having been alerted by Gen's shout and pointing at Fi. "Who is she and why does she live in your weapon?"
"If I take the time to explain that story to you then Demise is going to kill us before I get through the first paragraph," Gen breathed. "We are in so much trouble, I can't even begin to find a metaphor accurate enough."
"Analysis complete," Fi announced abruptly. "Demise, the Demon King. He wields the Demon Sword Ghirahim with unparalleled skill and ruthless ferocity. This eternal being has conquered time itself and is the source of all evil in the world. I am detecting energy sources of an unknown multitude within Demise's form, making his already substantial power nigh immeasurable. I predict a ninety-eight percent chance that confronting the Demon King now will result in your death, Master."
"Tell me something I don't know," Gen griped.
"Yes, Master. Compilation and analysis of your previous actions when in similar circumstances leads me to the conclusion that you will be facing Demise regardless of the odds, and as such I have taken the liberty of examining the Demon King's most probable combat style."
"Ooh, she's sassy," Lore observed. "I like her."
"Lore, not now," Gen snapped.
"Observation indicates that frontal assault of any kind will be blocked and retaliated against, likely with severe and painful prejudice," Fi continued. "Stealth and misdirection is advised; however, my projections indicate that such tactics only have a five percent chance of succeeding. Additionally, in his current state, it is highly unlikely that Demise will accrue any damage at all."
Gen squeezed his eyes shut and let out a resigned sigh. "Is there any good news?"
Fi contemplated that for a moment.
"Ghirahim is no longer able to molest you with his tongue, Master."
"What!?" Lore demanded.
"Molest is the wrong word, but that is a perk," Gen agreed quickly. "Not a very big one in the grand scheme of things, but thanks for trying to cheer me up, Fi."
"It is my pleasure, Master."
Lore flapped his hands around aimlessly. "See, this is why we tell stories first! The blue girl who lives in your sword and this tongue-molester guy seem like things I ought to know about!"
"I don't know what that means," Gen informed him. "Also, I - OHCRAPGETDOWN!"
He lunged forwards and Fi went with him, flashing into the blade of Gen's Master Sword right as he brought it up to lock with Demise's own sword with a sharp metallic ring. The power difference was immediately evident. Gen crumpled to his knees like wet paper, and Demise bore down on him with unrelenting force.
"I'm regretting this so much," Gen wheezed. Behind him, Lore scrambled to a somewhat safer location and dragged several other Links along for the ride - which, while a good idea, was not done with the most stealth. Then again, Demise was barely paying attention to Lore as it was; he was, after all, only one Link in the greater group of a dozen or more.
"Are you going to move, or am I going to have to make you?" Demise asked threateningly.
"Well, considering how you're going to try and kill everyone behind me if I give you anything even closely resembling an advantage," Gen croaked, valiantly attempting suave confidence when all he was really achieving was pathetic resistance, "you're gonna have to make me."
"Deal," Demise replied, and Gen had just enough time to decide he'd made a horrible mistake before Demise sent him flying. He hit the far wall of the chasm all the way on the other side with enough force to knock him breathless, and he slid limply to the wreckage-strewn ground with all the grace of a boneless fish. Given that he was pretty sure he'd just broken a few, he felt this was an apt choice of movement.
"...Ow," Gen decided weakly, and then promptly passed out. Wind, who was the closest, sprinted over and shook him a little bit.
"Oh, that doesn't bode well," he muttered when Gen didn't respond. "Guys, Gen's out cold!"
"On it!" Lore declared. He moved to Gen's other side and began prying off the newest Link's boot, ignoring the confused stare Wind was giving him. "I got this, he'll be back with the conscious in just a couple minutes," Lore continued firmly. "Go and hit the jerk who did it."
Wind made a half-grin half-grimace, the kind of expression composed of attempted courage but mostly actually severe insecurity. But he pulled out his Skull Hammer anyways and sprinted off, most likely to attempt to beam Demise in the head with it. Lore wished him luck, then turned back to wrestling Gen's boot off his foot.
"I learned this trick on one of my adventures," he explained to a nearby, perplexed-looking Steam. "I forget which, though."
With that, Gen's boot came off and Lore brandished a Roc's Feather with an evil grin. Steam promptly took a few steps back.
Dusk, meanwhile, was discovering that his Inner Wolf Instinct had - and he had no idea when this had happened - absorbed the dozen-odd Links he'd met over the course of the past week or so and firmly cemented them into his mental Pack Designation. As a result, Demise had been elevated from 'Possible Danger' to 'Pack Threat', and now Dusk was having to keep a very strong mental grip on what Midna liked to call his 'Papa Wolf' reaction.
...Due to the fact that he was currently charging Demise while whipping a Ball-and-Chain through the air that was heavier than he himself was, Dusk suspected he was failing in that regard. This was why he was now bringing down his weapon on Demise's head.
Except that Demise caught the attack, one-handedly, and without any visible strain whatsoever. Dusk, who had to work to lift the Ball-and-Chain off the ground with both hands, much less heft the thing above his head, found this to be distinctly unfair and he glared at his opponent accordingly.
Demise let out a smug chuckle, then jerked the Ball-and-Chain towards him to drag Dusk forwards. At the same time, he brought his sword around in his other hand-
Wind picked that exact moment to arrive with his Hammer, jumping up and aiming for the side of Demise's face. He'd been hoping to come in while Demise was distracted with Dusk - but then Demise proved that he could multitask. The Ball-and-Chain, which he was still holding with one hand above his head, came down and around and collided with Wind in midair, effectively knocking both him and his Hammer off course and sending all three into the far wall, landing just a few feet away from where Lore was waking up Gen. Wind understandably, was unconscious before he ever hit the floor.
Dusk snarled. Which, may not have been his best move, because it reminded Demise that he still had another target, and the god immediately capitalized on that fact. His massive blade flashed around with intent to impale, and Dusk realized this just in time to lurch backwards out of the way. Almost. The sword was longer than he was, and Dusk just wasn't fast enough to cover that much distance in just a couple seconds. The very tip of the blade caught in his shoulder before continuing on, and Dusk made the executive decision to keep lurching backwards. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, the shoulder joint completely dislocated and with a deep gash to boot. Dusk, being left handed, could recognize a need for a retreat when he saw one - despite what the wolf in his head was insisting. He compromised with his head-wolf by making a beeline towards the now-awake but incredibly groggy Gen and the newly-unconscious Wind instead.
In his wake, Red, Vio, Blue, and Green began launching their own assault to keep Demise occupied, and Dusk just hoped they would have better luck than he'd had. He gripped his left shoulder with his right hand in an attempt to hold the uselessly flopping limb steady and scurried over to Wind, who in his mind had fared much worse. Dusk grimaced. Pulling his Ball-and-Chain off the smaller Link with only one working arm was gonna take a couple minutes, and he struggled accordingly.
In the background, Demise let out an irritated bellow, which was followed by a pair of loud SLAP sounds as Red and Vio both went flying into the wall above Dusk's head, then fell limply into a heap just a few feet to Wind's left. Dusk, having at last managed to haul his weapon off Wind, nearly startled into dropping the thing right back down. It took a few moments of frantic, one-armed fumbling for Dusk to force the Ball-and-Chain into his bag instead. On the ground, Wind was still out cold and Red and Vio a few feet away were equally so; a few more feet away, Lore had finally managed to get a conscious response out of Gen. Dusk debated with himself for a split second before beelining for the pair of Links who could actually answer him.
"Status?" Dusk demanded, as Demise roared something in the background and Blue shouted back several rage-filled insults. Gen blinked at him blearily and attempted to reply, but only managed a slurred mumble.
"He says he's fine, the liar," Lore translated. "I can most definitely tell you that he is not fine."
"Red Potion," Dusk said, and went to grab in his bag for a bottle. Unfortunately he made the mistake of trying to do this with his bad arm, and the entire attempt ended with a distinct lack of Red Potion and a great deal of pain.
"Ahhhaffshunm," Gen garbled.
"...What?"
"He says he's got some," Lore clarified. "But I think he's delusional." Behind them, Blue led a screaming charge against Demise, having at some point recruited Speck and the Four to the effort. Demise seemed unconcerned by this.
"We used all his stock already, I'm pretty sure," Lore muttered, looking up and doing a quick headcount with a deep frown on his face. "Dusk, how much have you got?"
"Only two of my Bottles actually have Red Potion right now," Dusk grumbled. "How about you?"
"Oh, I have plenty of Bottles," Lore sighed. "But only one of them has Red Potion in it. The others are all full of… well, not Red Potion."
"Okay then," Dusk said. "We'll just have to ration. With any luck we'll only have to split the Bottles between-"
Realm, Steam, Mask, and Ocarina went charging past with weapons drawn and a great deal of off-key screeching, which cut off whatever Dusk had been about to say. This was followed by an alarmingly loud explosion, and then Realm and Mask came rocketing back through, thoroughly unconscious and trailing more smoke than was probably healthy before hitting the rock wall and landing right on top of Red and Vio.
"...the five of us," Dusk finished, inaccurately. "Or seven. I'm sure we can stretch-"
He was cut off again by Ocarina slamming into the wall and joining his older self in unconscious, shortly followed by Speck sprinting to join the chaos with the Four and Sketch right on his heels. This mainly resulted in Demise backhanding Sketch into a cliff right along with all the other previously victimized Links.
"...I'm just gonna stop," Dusk muttered, and yanked the cork off a Bottle with his teeth and taking three measured swallows. Then he knelt down and began maneuvering the others into positions to drink without without drowning, while Lore held another Bottle up for Gen. The effectiveness of this on mostly unconscious people was debatable.
Meanwhile, Blue was doing his best impression of a raging Cucco swarm - which unfortunately for him wasn't actually getting him anywhere, because Green was maintaining a Death Grip on the back of Blue's tunic and wasn't planning on letting go under any circumstances. Blue felt this was highly unfair, because Demise had backhanded Vio and Red into a cliff wall and needed to be duly punished for that. Green, on the other hand, felt it was entirely fair. Being more level-headed than Blue was, Green possessed the fundamental understanding that charging Demise in the manner that Blue wanted would only result in they themselves being backhanded into a clif wall. In the interest of avoiding this, as Green rightly suspected it would hurt, he was very firmly keeping Blue from going any closer than twenty feet to Demise.
Blue, naturally, did not appreciate this, but Green didn't particularly have the time nor the interest in what Blue appreciated right now. He had more important things to worry about, like keeping Blue alive to be unappreciative.
Speck, who was next to them, eyed the furious Blue with apprehension before asking Green in a concerned voice, "Is this a common issue?"
"Demise pushed the Red Button," Green explained shortly, and redoubled his grip as Blue attempted to lunge forwards again. "Blue likes to pretend he doesn't care, but he really doesn't like it when Red gets hurt." He paused, then added, "Well, none of us do, really. Personally, if I didn't have to hold Blue back and if Demise wasn't so absolutely terrifyingly out of my league, I'd probably be charging him myself, if not for Red then for Vio."
"Oh," Speck said, not having anything else to say.
"As it is," Green continued, "I know Red and Vio aren't dead, and I also know they're out of Demise's mind for now because he's occupied with the rest of us. So, for now, they're about as safe as they're going to get. Which means that my job right now is to keep Blue from doing something stupid, and that's exactly what I'm doing."
"Keep doing it then," Speck replied, with a look on his face that indicated he'd just been hit with an idea. He pulled a pot from his Bag - not the Jar he'd shown everyone earlier that let him change size, which was round and patterned like water and with a very prominent crack in the bottom, but one with handles and a pair of wings on either side of the mouth and wind swirls painted across the widest part. The pottery warped and inhaled, sucking a great deal of flaming rubble into itself, and then Speck pointed the opening at Demise's face and all the debris shot back out, now with even more fire.
The sad part was, it probably would have worked brilliantly if Demise hadn't been able to spawn a Twilight shield, which he immediately did. All the fiery projectiles Speck had just thrown got sent right back at him, and unlike Demise, Speck's only available blocking strategy was a relatively small metal square, which was in no way large enough to handle the entire cloud of rubble coming at him.
In other words, Speck went down like the rocks that had just clocked him in the head.
"That's not good," the Four muttered. Then they all did a collective double-take as Blue charged past them, screeching insults at the top of his lungs. The Four turned their heads to look at Green, who was staring after Blue with a dead expression. "Weren't you holding him?"
"He got away," Green said redundantly, releasing a heavy, why-me sigh. "Come on, if we don't follow him in he's gonna get his butt handed to him. Blue doesn't remember that strategy is a thing that exists when he's angry." He took off sprinting after his sibling, grumbling irritated complaints with every step.
"That's reassuring," the Four mumbled, not reassured in the slightest, and broke into a run on Green's heels. This was admittedly harder than they were making it look, because the battlefield was a mess and their synchronization tended to work the best when there wasn't any rubble to trip over. Green outran them easily, because he didn't have that problem - and also because he was a leader going to prevent his teammate from doing something stupid, and those sorts of situations required top speeds.
Steam, on the other hand, opted to hang back because he was pretty sure that charging in was just going to get him backhanded into a cliff wall like everyone else. Instead, he cleared his throat and hesitantly said, "Er… I like trains?"
The Spirit Train announced itself with a whistle and a shower of gold, then immediately took off towards Demise. Steam stared after it, mouth hanging slightly open. He couldn't decide how he felt about this new development. On one hand, being able to launch an entire locomotive at people was definitely a power move; but on the other hand, this opened him up to a lot of bad Train puns. Steam was not particularly a fan of puns, but he wasn't sure that his dislike outweighed the usefulness of a battle finisher.
It was honestly debatable.
Demise stared at everything approaching him and rolled his eyes, then slammed his sword into the ground point-first. The air around him exploded into a radial cone of fire, which then rushed outwards to meet all the incoming attacks and opponents. Blue took a full head-to-toe blast, which knocked him out right then and there. Green, just a few steps behind him, flattened himself beneath his shield just in time to let the fire pass right over him. The Four, farther back, got hit with more of the concussive blast than the actual fire and were sent flying backwards into a wall, where the green member passed out and the other three received various levels of head injury. And the Spirit Train charged straight into the blaze, emerging on the other side as a melted mess and dissolving back into golden light long before it ever reached its target.
From his safe distance, Steam shrieked, "Oh, COME ON!"
Green took the opportunity to pop out from under his shield and take revenge for his fallen teammates, which culminated in him doing his level best to bury his sword in Demise's knee. Unfortunately Demise kicked him into a cliff wall before the Hero could try, and Green was summarily knocked unconscious.
Steam suddenly found himself as one of the only two Links who was both still conscious and still in fighting condition, and let out a tiny whimper in spite of himself. Then, coming to the entirely accurate conclusion that he was so very out of his league with this, Steam grabbed the burnt and passed-out Blue (because Green would kill him if he found out Steam had left Blue behind) and made a Strategic Retreat.
It didn't quite work, because he was the only target, had nowhere to really retreat to, and was dragging a fellow Hero of equal size on his back. Demise, however, seemed content to let Steam scramble away to the other side of the chasm and follow with slow, stalking steps while his prey panicked.
"Please tell me we have backup Potion," Steam begged, depositing Blue next to his other three counterparts, who were at varying stages of awareness by this point.
"Not nearly enough," Lore replied, who for the interested was the other Link in fighting condition since he'd stayed back to try and wake Gen back up. "Also, we split it between people already and don't have anymore left. Anybody who's unconscious right now is gonna be staying that way."
Steam looked around, counting. Speck was down, as were Blue and Green. The Four were having hive-mind issues and were out of commission. Sketch was still out, as well as Realm and Mask, and everyone else was… well, conscious might be a strong word, but their eyes were open, so Steam supposed that counted.
Even if they did all look a bit… groggy. To be honest, only a few Links were really actually fit to be Demise's opponent right now. Steam and Lore, obviously, but also Dusk as long as he didn't use one of his arms. Wind could fight too, as long as he didn't move too fast. His dilated pupils pretty clearly showed that he had a concussion, but he was awake, and alert, which was more than could be said about most of the rest of the group. Gen also seemed pretty alert, aside from the fact that he was facing the wrong direction… and that kinda put some suspicion on his alertness to be honest.
Everyone else who wasn't already passed out was just kind of… there, and blearily blinking far too rapidly and showing far too little comprehension of what was happening to be of any help.
"Steam," Lore said suddenly, eyes focused behind the Hero of Trains' back. "Demise is still coming."
Steam lurched around and found Demise to be a frightening twenty feet away, with a smirk on his mouth that cracked his face like a jagged chasm. The Hero let out a yelp, along with a frantically rushed "ILIKETRAINS!"
The Spirit Train plowed headlong into Demise - and was then deflected off into an adjacent cliff wall, where it vanished in a shower of gold and mangled machinery. Demise kept coming.
"Oh my Din, oh my Din, oh my Din, oh my Din," Steam babbled in a rush, then yanked his sword out of its sheath and charged. Somewhat predictably, this ended with Steam impacting the cliff wall and joining the already unconscious.
Lore, who was now definitively the last Link left uninjured, told Demise something extremely rude in a language that none of the awake Heroes recognized. Then he turned his head and said, "I'm just gonna throw this out here right now. I am not going to win this fight."
"I know," Dusk said.
"We are probably going to fail," Lore continued bluntly.
"I know," Dusk said.
"So I just wanna say," Lore concluded, watching as Demise took the last step to loom over them all, "that it's been a real honor meeting all you guys. Even the ones who are too out cold to hear me admit it."
"...We know," Dusk said, and reached to his side to turn Gen around, because Gen was nodding in agreement but not quite doing it in the correct direction.
"Kinda sucks though," Lore sighed. "Reality was sort of a nice place to live. I think I'm gonna miss it."
"Yeah," Dusk agreed. "We know."
"Oh," Lore said, noticing that Demise had brandished his sword in the air and was coating it in all sorts of nasty-looking energies. "Excuse me, I gotta try and block this incoming strike one last time."
He put up his shield right as Demise's sword came down, and to his mild surprise Dusk and Gen launched themselves and their own shields up to join him. It was quite a nice sentiment, the three of them putting up one last stand against the deity trying to destroy them all.
It was just also a little bit awkward, because it was going to fail.
"NOT THIS TIME!" Farore snarled, her hands already lighting up green.
"But the Interference Laws-" Nayru began.
"Screw the Interference Laws!" Fafore snapped. "I will not let this be the end. Not on my watch."
The whole chasm flashed, light the color of new spring growth blasting into every crevice and making the whole world vanish for a split second. Then, slowly, the brightness faded away, and Demise found himself blinking at a patch of empty ground, where approximately none of his victims were lying dead.
In fact, there was no sign of the Heroes at all.
Demise, very calmly, lowered his sword. Then he, very calmly, walked into the center of the chasm. Then, very calmly, he tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and very not calmly screamed at the top of his lungs.
This went on for several minutes. At least one tree in the Faron Woods fell over from the projected force. Several ledges crumbled into rubble. Every single crystal in the Skyview Temple shattered.
"Those worms," Demise seethed, once he had finished with his several minutes of screaming. "When I get my hands on them…"
Wait, what just happened? Malladus asked.
Divine interference, Veran hummed. Someone spirited the little Heroes away before we could kill them.
"They are going to pay," Demise promised darkly. "Clearly, it's not going to be enough to just get rid of reality anymore. If I really want to achieve my goals, I'm going to have to get rid of the goddesses too."
Whoa, uh, Onox said. I'm all for revenge on the Heroes, but going after deities seems a bit… out of my ability.
I agree with Onox, Twilight Ganondorf said. I may be evil, but I'm at least sensible. I know when I'm outmatched.
"I am a deity," Demise snarled.
Yes, but you're… Hyrule Ganon paused for a moment. You're not very intimidating.
Now, Demise had some anger issues. And most of the time, he could work around these. Every now and then, though, his anger got the best of him. When this happened, Demise tended to make declarations of destruction and revenge that he had too much pride to not follow up on once he'd calmed down - for the interested, this was how he'd ended up on a quest to destroy the universe in the first place.
However, Demise at this moment was livid.
"Alright then," he said, calm and controlled and very, very cold. "Here's what we're going to do. You all will be sent after the Heroes. You will go after them. You will confront them. And you will defeat them. You will not have a choice in this matter. And if you fail…" Demise let his words trail ominously. "Well. See to it that you don't fail."
Several of the voices in his head could clearly hear the fine print in between the words Demise was actually saying, and began loudly protesting this new plan, but Demise ignored them all. One by one, the villains were dragged screaming from his head and cast out into the timeline - still very much attached to Demise, but forced out as an extension of his will, this time.
Demise sort of wished he'd thought of that sooner.
Now. His head was finally silent, and Demise had some goddesses to find. And torture. And kill. And… well, he'd make the rest of the list as he went.
He vanished with a single snap of his fingers.
"I know what you're going to say," Farore told her sisters stiffly. "And I don't care. I'd do it again, given the chance."
"I'm… not sure I blame you," Din began carefully. "But now Demise knows we've involved ourselves. He'll be coming after us."
"Let him," Farore growled. "He's not the only one with tricks up his sleeves."
"He outmatches us right now," Nayru said. "All that power he's taken from his Hatred Incarnations? We won't stand a chance."
"Believe me, I know."
"...You have a plan?" Din asked.
"This is my plan," Farore said, spreading her arms. "I'm stalling."
Her sisters stared at her.
"That's a terrible plan," Nayru said slowly.
"Look, we'd only have a chance at combating Demise if we got a similar power boost to what he has," Farore sighed. "And we don't. The next best thing is our Attributes, with our backing. And if you hadn't noticed, we almost lost every single one of mine just now. They're our best hope. I'm just making sure that hope stays alive."
More silence.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Din said quietly.
"Honestly?" Farore let out another sigh. "Me too." Then she shook herself and said, "Now, I've got damage control for Courage to do. Want to join me?"
"Yes," Din said firmly, while Nayru simply nodded. "And hey, I've still got some popcorn. Any takers?"
"Caramel, please," Farore requested.
Lore lifted his head, blinked blearily for a couple minutes, and slowly registered the fact that he was not, in fact, dead. Glances to his right and left informed him that his fellow Heroes were also not, in fact, dead, and more to the point didn't seem to have any of their previous injuries either.
Also, they seemed to be on a mountaintop. Lore blinked again, then decided that he was confused.
Everyone else seemed to be asleep, though, and after the experience they'd all just had, Lore didn't feel like he should wake them. Come to think of it, why was Lore even awake? He was exhausted.
That was about the point where Lore passed out.
Down below at the base of the mountain, a large purple bat and an equally large blue boar materialized from thin air. In a Castle, Princess Zelda set out with an entourage to investigate why the mountain had lit up with such a bright green flash. In a cave, a dark figure blinked glowing red eyes and turned his head in the direction of the newly-arrived Heroes, a fanged smirk growing on his face.
But for now, the Heroes were asleep, because Farore had said so and she was their patron goddess and, really, they just didn't have a choice in the matter because she was more important than they were, and subsequently knew better.
The adventure was only just beginning.
Notes:
I dunno if you can tell, but I had a lot of fun with this one. The idea of a Spirit Train summons (and the subsequent reference) was just WAY too good to pass up.
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian
Cāxlee-Ai ta nīgebi uold (I excel at being loud)
Thanks to RogueMind, Guest #84, Guest #85, Guest #86, Agent3Novi, GreekgeekSingsUndertale, Xelia, PuppyLover912, Guest #87, UbiquitousSpontaneities, Guest #88, Shyer, GhostingIcarus, Guest #89, Guest #90, manic_no, Guest #91, Guest #92, EternityKitten, Guest #93, Tynamomaniac, Guest #94, Guest #95, HylianLoth_Kat, Guest #96, Guest #97, HavenWitchworks, AelinDragneel400, Guest #98, quadjot, carmencita2901, Guest #99, florita2901, Agent_Fabulous, ShadowMyst, Guest #100, WhatDoesntKillYa, Guest #101, MelonLordOfMelon, Guest #102, Kytigami, and Guest #103 for the Kudos!
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(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these blogs. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 20: Damage Control
Summary:
The main side effect of having one's butt handed to you, is that there's a whole lot of mess to clean up afterwards.
Notes:
(I am beginning to suspect… that the Universe may be sentient.)
Changeling does not own the Legend of Zelda. The ownership of Link is also questionable. Really, the only thing Changeling probably owns here is the nicknames.
(Also, that it has both a unique sense of humor, and enough spite to brine a cucumber into a pickle in ten minutes flat.)
Who told you about my pickling hobby?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Consciousness was a slow and gradual battle. It was also entirely unappreciated, because the Links had just been in a battle, had in fact lost that battle, and were not pleased by being put through another one just to wake up. However, consciousness did not care about that sort of thing, and thus enforced itself upon the group regardless of how utterly unwanted it happened to be.
“Whatever we just did,” Mask groaned with half-shut eyes and an arm slung over his face, “let’s agree to never do it again .”
“Seconded,” Steam muttered.
“Farore, I feel like the Spirit Train ran me over,” Mask continued, grimacing. “ Repeatedly .”
“You leave my train out of this.”
“As some of the leadership, I can confirm that the Spirit Train did not actually run any of us over,” Lore piped up.
“Thank you,” Steam said.
“However,” Lore continued, “we do seem to have spontaneously teleported to a mountaintop, and I have no idea when or how this happened. We also do not seem to be dead, and I was like ninety-nine percent sure I was gonna wake up dead. I am open to theories on this.”
“Let’s say ‘Divine Intervention’ and leave it at that,” Vio muttered. “My head…”
“About that,” Gen began, heaving himself into a semi-upright sitting position. “I have Questions. Like, several Questions. And I’d really like to actually get to ask them, so I’m taking this opportunity where nothing seems to be trying to actively kill us to ask, WHAT THE ACTUAL CRAP IS GOING ON!?”
Everyone blinked at him for a moment. Then Sketch poked Realm in the side and said, “I thought you were in charge of explaining it to him?”
“We were charging into a Boss Battle!” Realm protested. “I literally only had like thirty seconds, I had to be selective!”
“Wait, so what do you know?” Wind asked Gen curiously.
“The Universe is breaking, you’re all me, and I think I got recruited to help you all fix it,” Gen summarized levelly. “None of which explained to me why Demise was apparently responsible, or why he’s apparently the host body for a bunch of other villains, or how this even happened in the first place, or how you all even got to my home at all. Also, there’s three goddesses now? And time travel is actively a thing rather than just being passive, and there’s other dimensions involved too?”
He threw his hands up in complete bewilderment. “I’m not even going to get started on all the utterly insane stuff I just watched you all do, because that seems like a whole other bag of worms, but Train Summons? And lycanthropy ?” Gen let out a small, baffled scoff. “Yeah, I’m not moving another inch until I get an actual, proper explanation for all this.”
A moment of silence passed.
“...Fair enough,” Dusk sighed.
“Wait, no,” Lore protested. “Gen goes first! That’s how storytime works!”
Dusk leveled a Look at him. “We are making an exception due to extenuating circumstances,” he said, enunciating each syllable with a frightening level of conciseness.
“Oh,” said Lore, and wilted slightly in the face of such clear pronunciation. This was because exaggerated phrasing was a precursor to the Leader Voice, and Lore disliked being on the receiving end of the Leader Voice. Under normal circumstances he would have pointed out that Dusk was adamant about not being the Leader, and thus his impending use of the Voice was a contradictory nutshell. However, Lore was also an excellent judge of when people were Not In The Mood, and bringing up the Leader issue would definitely be toeing that line.
So all he actually ended up saying was, “I might as well go first then, since I’ve got the longest story to tell.”
“Please do,” Gen said, watching this interaction with wide and interested eyes.
“Right, well. It all started when I had this dream…”
Of all the powers that the Three Golden Goddesses possessed, omnipotence was (irritatingly) not one of them. Because of this, Farore was currently alternating between crippling anxiety and frantic productivity as she tried - futilely - to find the inevitable consequences for violating the Interference Laws.
It should be noted that the Interference Laws were not, actually, Laws devised by the deities who abided by them. Rather, the Laws were based off observances of consequences that a god or goddess’ actions might have. In the words of ordinary mortals, the best equivalent would be ‘karma’.
Well, either that, or ‘Murphy’s Law’.
Basically, Farore had meddled, and according to the Universe, she shouldn’t have done that. Everything she knew about the Interference Laws said that, because she’d gone and stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, there were going to be Consequences.
The only problem was that she couldn’t find the Consequences . And it was driving her just a little bit insane with stress. Nothing in any of her domains was out of place or doing something it shouldn’t - which was actually a bit odd, now that she thought about it, because Courage was always up to some nonsense or another - but whenever she checked, all Courage was doing was sitting around telling stories between Aspects. More to the point, none of Farore’s other creations were doing anything truly out of the ordinary either. And given that Farore was responsible for literally every life form existing - Nayru and Din’s Attributes notwithstanding, Wisdom and Power had always been the exception - she had a very wide net to look through.
The Consequences just didn’t seem to be in Farore’s sphere of awareness. And this made her nervous. Very nervous.
“Girls,” she said, after the tenth fruitless scrutiny of everything she had influence over. “Do me a favor and check your Spheres of Influence for Consequences?”
Both her sisters stared at her.
“... Please tell me you’re joking,” Din said at length. “You - you have to be joking.”
“I am not joking,” Farore replied miserably. Nayru closed her eyes, looking very much as though she was trying to think happy thoughts.
“How can you not know where the Consequences are!?” Din shrieked. “You actively interfered, there are always Consequences! Usually very severe ones!”
“I know!” Farore wailed. “It’s why I’m asking you if you can find any! Because I’ve looked everywhere and I don’t know where they are!”
Din took a deep breath, visibly calming herself down. “Okay. Maybe this is good. Maybe the Universe is making an exception.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Nayru said tonelessly, bringing her fingers to massage at her temples. Her eyes were still closed.
Din wilted. “I was trying to be optimistic…”
“Please just check?” Farore pleaded. “Because I’m beginning to freak out a little bit, if we’re being honest.”
“I’ll be a few minutes,” Nayru warned, her eyes still shut but now bringing her hands together in a pose of concentration.
“If I end up with Consequential feedback,” Din sighed, doing the same, “I’m blaming you.”
“Fine, yes, whatever you say,” Farore said. “Seriously though, thank you both.”
“Mmm,” Nayru hummed absently, clearly only paying the bare minimum amount of attention to what was around her at the moment.
For a few moments, everything was silent as Din and Nayru concentrated, and Farore waited not-quite-patiently for the results.
Then Nayru stiffened, gasped, and dropped like a sack of rocks.
It should also be noted that Nayru, in an attempt to get any semblance of relief from her temporal senses (which had not stopped screeching about the rifts in space-time since Demise had first ripped them open) had basically put that part of her brain on mute. This had involved a great deal of stubborn denial, concentrated ignorance, and godly painkiller, and the end result had been that Nayru was receiving absolutely no input from her domain of time whatsoever.
However, Nayru had just gone searching, deliberately, through everything she was in charge of. Consequently, whatever barrier she’d been keeping between her temporal senses and the rest of her brain was dismantled, and everything flooded through all at once.
Now, given that Nayru was already familiar with the state of the timeline, this should, at most, have given her a raging migraine, but not much else. The timeline was a mess, true, but it was still relatively stable.
Yeah, about that, said Nayru’s temporal senses, and slapped their goddess in the face with the knowledge that, oh hey, time is literally fracturing at the seams, Hyrule is falling apart, reality is literally going to wither away, and those holes in space-time you were concerned about? Yeah, those would be the reason for all of the above. That threshold for fixing things kiiiinda just expired.
All of this hit Nayru like the Spirit Train, and came with a complimentary screaming panic of chaos, paradoxes, and splintered timelines as all her temporal senses went haywire all at once because their goddess was finally paying attention to them and wow did they have some important stuff to point out. Naturally, it all had to be pointed out at the exact same time and at the loudest volume possible.
In theory, this was all actually perfectly justified, given that reality was no longer tentatively stable and was now actively imploding. The only problem with it all was that Nayru, being on the receiving end of all this, was thoroughly incapacitated and entirely unable to pass on the message for a solid thirty minutes while her sisters revived her.
“Godly jumper cables,” Din said authoritatively, after the mentioned thirty minutes had passed with entirely fruitless efforts at getting Nayru to wake back up. Because poking, prodding, shaking, shouting, a flashlight in the eyeball, and a bucket of water had all failed, Din was moving on to the Drastic Measures.
For the interested, ‘godly jumper cables’ was actually just the very scientific term for Din and Farore sandwiching their unconscious sister in a group hug.
...Also it was easiest to donate spiritual power through skin-on-skin contact. There was also that factor. But it was probably mostly the group-hug thing. Group hugs are nice.
Whatever the reason, Nayru jolted back to awareness within seconds, and promptly let her sisters know by screeching, “FARORE I AM GOING TO STRANGLE YOU!” at the top of her lungs.
“What did I do!?” Farore yelped, immediately putting a safe distance of about thirty feet between herself and her murderous sibling.
“You invoked Consequences,” Nayru hissed, cradling her head in her hands.
“Oh,” Farore said redundantly, and retreated an extra twenty feet away. She was having to shout a little bit by this point. “You found them.”
“I found them,” Nayru agreed murderously. “And do you know what? Reality as we know it is falling apart at the seams as we speak . The space-time continuum can’t seem to find a volume loud enough to express to me how much of a mangled mess it’s in.” She paused, grimaced in what looked to be an awful lot of pain, then continued, “I sincerely hope that I’m saying all of this out loud, because I can’t actually hear myself think .”
She folded over into a little ball and clamped her hands to her temples, where they began to glow a faint blue. Din, after a moment of deliberation, decided to leave Nayru to whatever damage control she was doing, and went to Farore instead.
“So,” she started, false-conversationally, “that sounds bad.”
“It’ll be worse once Nayru gets the mental capacity for large vocabulary back,” Farore muttered hopelessly. “Why is this - I only intervened because Demise was going to win, and that would be the end of the Universe as we know it. Why are the Consequences that the Universe is still ending?”
“Kinda seems like the world was doomed if we did, but doomed if we didn’t too,” Din agreed.
“That’s not fair,” Farore said, and her voice broke a little bit on the word ‘fair’. “How could we have done all this, and come this far… just to watch it all fall apart anyway?”
Din was quiet for a moment.
“Well,” she offered, “if we’ve already invoked Consequences, we might as well keep Interfering.”
Farore looked up and stared at her fellow goddess.
“...are you serious,” she said.
“The Universe isn’t going to fix itself,” Din replied, shrugging. “Look. You went up against Demise, about as close as face-to-face as you could get, and that caused some problems. Let’s just be realistic about that. But reality isn’t dead yet, just dying - and that means we have time to fix it.”
“Please,” Nayru groaned, alerting both her sisters to the fact that she was up and semi-active again. Farore promptly retreated fifteen more feet, and would have kept going except that Nayru waved her back. “I’m not going to murder you anymore,” she sighed. “I’ve calmed down, I’m just generally furious now.”
“Ah,” Farore said. “Okay.” She kept noticeably closer to Din, though.
“So, to paraphrase,” Nayru began, “Courage didn’t necessarily fail , but they also didn’t stop Demise. So the holes went unfixed, and are now large enough and destabilizing enough that they are literally ripping Hyrule apart at the seams in every way possible. If we want to fix this, we’re gonna need to do a few things.”
“Which would be?” Din prompted.
“Well, we still need Demise taken down. He’s the one powering the holes, and as long as he’s still active, the holes are going to be a problem. Also, Hyrule is pretty fractured right now as it is. We all know it was never great , not since that Hero of Time fiasco with the splitting timelines and such-”
“You passed out for three days,” Farore remembered.
“-but ,” Nayru continued pointedly, “it was stable...ish. That’s not the case anymore. We’re going to need to stitch Hyrule back together.”
“That’s gonna be an all-three-of-us job,” Din winced.
“I mean it,” Nayru warned. “We’re going to have to literally stitch Hyrule and its history back together. We’re talking about resolving all those Hero of Time timelines, aligning the consequent possibilities, piecing it all back together into one coherent story.”
That got a wince from both her sisters this time.
“All this because I didn’t let Demise destroy the world?” Farore asked disbelievingly. “I’m starting to think it might have been kinder to let him.”
“NO,” Nayru said emphatically. “Don’t you see? This is bad, yes, but we can fix it .”
“We can fix it and make it better than it was in the first place,” Din agreed, in a slow voice of realization. “Girls.”
“Oh, ” Farore breathed, catching on. Then she frowned. “...Did the Consequences make a mistake?”
“Somehow,” Nayru said, “I think they knew exactly what they were doing.”
It was several hours later that Gen finally sat back on his heels and said, “That is the most complicated series of events I think I’ve ever heard.”
Speck, who’d gone last, frowned in mild offense. “Hey…”
“No, not you specifically,” Gen said, waving an absent-minded hand in Speck's general direction. “The whole thing seems ridiculously convoluted. I can definitely see why we all have nicknames now, otherwise I don’t think this group would have ever gotten past the Introduction stage.”
Lore opened his mouth-
“That is probably unfortunately accurate,” Dusk said, giving Lore a Look. Lore subsided with a head tilt and an agreeable shrug, which Gen openly stared at before continuing.
“I’m just struggling, a bit, to wrap my brain around the concept that we’re the people who are apparently supposed to prevent the Universe from imminent disintegration,” he admitted. “I mean, we’re just a group of kids and teenagers who got handed some pointy weapons and told to go Fix Things. Personally, I was barely handling my own Thing, and now I gotta handle a Universe Thing too? I’m gonna need a minute for that one.”
“Can you take that minute and tell your story at the same time?” Lore asked. “Because I still need to hear about the blue girl who apparently lives in the Master Sword and also how you apparently met a sex molester who likes to use tongue?”
“The Master Sword is a girl?” Sketch repeated.
“You WHAT?!” screeched everyone else, having heard the words ‘sex’ and ‘molester’ right next to each other and becoming understandably alarmed by it. Or, rather, everyone who was old enough to know what sex was did. The younger Links, being Speck, the Four, Red, Blue, Green (but not Vio because he’d read a book by accident and had yet to get over his embarrassment to tell his siblings about it), Sketch, and Steam all just looked confused, and Ocarina-
“What’s sex?” Ocarina asked, looking just as confused as the smaller Links were.
There was a moment of silence as everyone blinked at him and awkwardly remembered, oh yeah he’s actually only nine or something in mental years. Then there was another moment of silence as everyone looked over to Mask, who very clearly did know what sex was, and even more awkwardly remembered, oh yeah he’s actually like seventeen or something in mental years. And then there was about twelve more consecutive moments of silence as everyone watched Mask come to these realizations too, and turn a very interesting shade of purple.
“Oh my Din,” he said meekly, and buried his face into his hands. “Am I gonna have to give The Talk to myself? ”
“Um,” Ocarina said, picking up on the atmosphere but having no idea where it was coming from.
“This is the most bizarre trainwreck I’ve ever seen,” Steam commented, wide-eyed.
“Okay, new plan,” Dusk decided. “Gen, tell your story. Lore, please keep your mouth shut. Mask, if you’re gonna have The Talk then you might as well take the other younger Links with you, and Ocarina?”
Ocarina tilted his head.
“Brace yourself,” Dusk advised.
“Okay…?”
“Later ,” Mask said fervently. “Please.”
Gen watched all this with a growing expression of disbelief on his face, as it suddenly occurred to him that every single outrageously impossible thing that his lookalikes had claimed had happened to them, probably actually happened . Which meant that now, on top of the Train Summons and the lycanthropy, he had size change, temporal manipulation, body mixups, seasonal manipulation, watercolors, weather manipulation, world-hopping, and who even knew what else to cope with. Then he thought about his own adventure, which also included things like time manipulation and world-hopping, as well as Dragons and demons and a floating island in the sky. Maybe, he decided, he should disregard his suspension of disbelief for a while.
“How about I be a distraction then,” he said, both to get his mind off the insanity and to rescue his new groupies from their impending embarrassment. “You wanted to hear my story, right?”
“That would be nice, yes,” Mask muttered, still quite red.
“Right, so,” Gen began. “Everything kinda kicked off on the day of the Wind Ceremony, when I had this nightmare involving a gigantic teeth-monster and a floating blue metal girl. Which is important, but not right this minute, more on that later. The point is, it startled me badly enough that I fell out of bed.”
“Ouch,” Sketch sympathised.
“Well, I needed to get up anyways, because I was gonna be late to the Wing Ceremony otherwise - do you guys still have Wing Ceremonies?”
“I have no idea what that is, please explain it,” Realm told him, and everyone else nodded agreement. Gen blinked around at them all.
“What, really? I understand how you might not use Loftwings much anymore, living on the Surface and all, but it’s an important part of Hylian culture…”
“Loftwings?” Wind repeated, head tilted to one side. Gen stared at him.
“You know, giant birds? The ones we partner with and ride on? Kinda the entirety of our traveling method?”
He was met with utterly blank looks from everyone around him. Gen looked blankly back, then let out a heavy sigh and ran his hand down his face.
“This is karma for me having all those questions about what trains were, I know it,” he muttered. “Okay, so Loftwings. They’re big birds, like really big, pushing eight feet at least. They can be all sorts of colors - if you can imagine it, there’s probably a Loftwing colored it. Everybody meets their Loftwing during a Bonding Ceremony when we’re ten or something, and it’s your partner for life from there. Honestly I could gush about my Loftwing for hours, but I’m not gonna do that because then we’d be here all day.”
“Can you just describe him real quick then?” Red asked, clearly already adoring the concept of a giant friendly dragon bird.
“Her,” Gen corrected smiling. “She’s bright red, she loves neck scritches, and she’s not afraid to wark at me when she thinks I’m piloting like an idiot. When she was a hatchling and could still fit in my room, she liked to use me as a pillow, but now that she’s bigger than me she thinks she needs to return the favor and now I have to spend the night in her perch at least once a week or else she gets snippy with me.” He grinned wider. “I love her to bits.”
Red let out a happy little sigh. “What else?”
“You’ll have to ask me later,” Gen said apologetically. “Hylia knows I could talk about my Loftwing for a week straight, but I don’t think we have time for that and I’m trying to quit while I’m ahead.”
“Understandable,” Dusk agreed, because he’d had to tone back his own gushing about his horse (and goats). It was just one of those things.
“But anyways, you can train with your Loftwing to become a Knight, right? And the graduation is called the Wing Ceremony, where you fly a gauntlet with your bird to show that you’re skilled enough to hold the title. So on the day of mine, I was gonna go meet with Zelda and get in some last-minute practice after she scolded me into it…”
In spite of everything that he represented, Demise, on occasion, tried not to be completely murderous. Rarely - very rarely - something could only be gotten through another person, and it tended to help if said person was still alive to do-slash-retrieve-slash-make the thing. As a result, Demise would sometimes set aside his all-consuming quest for utter annihilation in order to achieve a separate, smaller goal on the say to said annihilation, because ironically enough, annihilating everything sometimes got in the way of… well, annihilating everything.
But, he was also absolutely furious, and that tended to make him completely murderous.
This was the problem that Demise was arguing with himself about.
On one hand, he was angry. Very angry. Furious. Livid. A lot of other, stronger words meaning anger that Demise was too angry to properly think of. It was rather difficult to think around the sheer scale of emotion Demise was feeling right now, which was admittedly part of the problem, but not something that Demise felt like acknowledging because of how angry he was.
But on the other hand, the target of his fury wasn’t something he could just obliterate. Well - he could , but that would invoke Consequences, and while Demise normally didn’t care about Consequences, the ones for outright killing a fellow deity were…
There was nothing in the natural world that Demise would admit to fearing, but Consequences weren’t of the natural world. And if the Consequences for killing one fellow deity made him apprehensive, then the Consequences for killing three made him outright intimidated.
The question was: was Demise angry enough to disregard the Consequences of hunting down and murdering the three goddesses to make them pay for ruining his perfect victory?
It was a very valid question, and one that Demise was sure he would give proper thought to once he stopped being quite so murderously furious. But past experience had taught him that he really shouldn’t make important decisions when he was this livid, so for now he tabled that thought and poured his feelings into something more productive, like stretching his voids a bit wider to hurry up the death of reality and tightening the stranglehold he was keeping on his Hatred Incarnations.
He would probably calm down… eventually. Or at least, get used to his new level of fury and learn to work with it. It wasn’t like being angry was anything new to him, after all.
‘Absolutely furious’ might as well be a default state for him by this point.
“So, here’s the New Plan,” Nayru said, in a very ‘let’s sum this up’ tone of voice. It was a bit redundant, because the only people she was explaining it to were her sisters and they’d been there the entire time, but there was also the fact that they’d been plotting their way through at least a dozen different Hyrules and patching together no less than three different versions of Time (and sometimes more than that, depending on which incident they were dealing with at the moment). Honestly, a summary was probably a really good idea.
“Farore, you dumped Courage in the farthest timeline point from Demise at the time, right?” Nayru continued.
“That was because I panicked and didn’t have the time to think it through,” Farore reminded her sisters pointedly, “but yes, that’s what I did. As long as that Hyrule is still relatively intact, they should still be there.” She paused, then clarified, “It’s the Heroes of Light aspect of Courage’s home time, with Vaati and the Four Sword and Ganon behind it all.”
“Which means we can point them towards the closest problems and let them hack at it for a while,” Nayru said. “And that gives us time to do some damage control. How’s threading Hyrule’s history back together going?”
“Fine, until I try to patch in the Great Sea timeline,” Din grumbled. “Actually, it all falls apart the instant I try to add anything past the Hero of Time fiasco. Which is totally fine. Not like most of Hyrule’s history takes place after that point, or anything.” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Why am I even doing this job anyways? I’m not the one with Time Senses.”
Nayru blinked. “Ah… right. I do forget that point, sometimes. Have you just been working by trial and error this whole time?”
“More error than trial, I’d say,” Din muttered. “At least ninety percent error to about ten percent trial.”
Nayru winced. “How about I take over that job instead, yeah? You can work on slotting in all those new landmasses that need to exist now.”
Din visibly brightened; the land was, after all, her domain. “Does that mean I get to play with islands?”
“Within reason ,” Farore admonished quickly, because the last time Din had made islands, she’d gotten so excited that she forgot to anchor them within the usual plane of reality. (As a result, none of the goddesses had noticed when one of Demise’s Hatred Incarnations took them over and one of Courage’s Aspects got abducted into it all. If there was one good thing that had come out of all this holes-in-the-Universe problem, it was that it’d knocked loose the Hero of Wind from whatever alternate version of the world that he’d been stuck in.) There were a rather lot of loose islands to clean up now because of that. “Please just put the already-existing ones in the right places this time.”
“But if there was this spot where an island would look really good…” Din trailed off, pleadingly.
Farore shared a look with Nayru, then sighed. “Run it by us first, and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
Din gave herself a little fist-pump.
“But seriously, there’s an entire New Hyrule that’s a completely different landmass from the original one that needs to get incorporated somehow,” Farore continued. “Not to mention that one timeline where the whole thing ended up at the bottom of the ocean, and the entire heaping mess that is now the Dark World/Twilight Realm/Lorule. Get on that.”
“You got it,” Din said, already frowning in concentration.
“Meanwhile,” Farore continued, wincing, “I’ll start trying to figure out how to sort the Rito and the Zora into separate species, and how to differentiate between the different Zora species when there only used to be one, and how to align the discrepancies of the Kokiri genealogy, and how to transition the Mogma tribes into the Subrosians, and how to connect all the different forms that the native people of the Dark World/Twilight Realm/Lorule take, and how to resolve Skyloft into what becomes the Ooccoo City…” She looked as though she was getting a headache just thinking about it.
“And I’ll work on getting my temporal sense to shut up long enough to actually start patching it all together again,” Nayru muttered. “Oh my Me, I’m going to have to account for Trains. How am I supposed to account for Trains when literally no other version of Hyrule has ever gotten that far?”
There was silence for a moment, as the sisters all contemplated the sheer scale of the job they had ahead of them.
“I swear, this was a much easier job back when we were just creating,” Din sighed. “What is this ‘revision and editing’ crap anyway? It’s like there’s somehow twice as much work to do just because we can’t tear the old framework down and start from scratch.”
“That would defeat the purpose,” Farore replied determinedly, as she reached for the first of the many species that needed her attention and began to work.
“-when Fi told me there’d been a disturbance in Faron, I thought it had to be Demise,” Gen concluded. “So I came down to investigate, but I found you all instead, and… well, you know what happened after that.”
“...Wow,” Sketch said slowly. “So… you kinda made the Master Sword?”
“I guess?”
“And the Sword is a girl.”
“I do not understand why that’s a hard concept to grasp,” Gen muttered.
“No, not like that,” Sketch said. “It’s just, the way you talk about her makes me feel like I should have met her, too? But I’ve had the Master Sword for months now and it - she - hasn’t ever said anything to me, much less actually physically manifested.”
“Oh,” Gen said, frowning. “That’s… huh. That’s actually a good point. Let me ask. Hey, Fi?”
At that point, something rather odd happened. The Master Sword on Gen’s back vibrated and emitted a singing-chime noise, then stopped. There was a short pause; then, quite unexpectedly, the Master Sword on Ocarina’s back began to do the same thing. After a moment, this stopped too. There was another moment of silence.
“Is this supposed to be happening?” A rather bewildered Ocarina asked Gen, who was following the descending Master Sword pattern with an open mouth.
“I have never seen her do this before in my life,” Gen said.
Abruptly, the Master Sword attached to Sketch joined the show. It pulsed briefly, then went dormant again. There was another long pause. Then, the one that Dusk was carrying began to chime; and after a few moments, it started glowing too. As glowing was a new development, everyone immediately looked at Dusk’s weapon expectantly.
“My apologies, Master,” said the Master Sword in a distinctly feminine voice. Those Links who had been close enough to see and hear Fi during the fight with Demise immediately recognized the sound. “ I appear to be unable to speak with you directly. Will this method of communication suffice?”
“Whoa, wait,” Blue said, launching to his tiptoes and peering at the talking Sword. “I thought we were the only people who could hop timelines. How is she doing that?”
“It’s the same Sword,” Vio theorized. “All this time, all these different Hyrules… it’s always been the same Master Sword. She’s not affected because technically, she’s already here .”
“Also,” Green noted, “I’m pretty sure she’s Sacred. And imbued with the power of the goddesses. Which, I’m pretty sure has already been established as being immune.” He pointed at the Triforce mark on Realm’s left hand, since he happened to be the closest example.
“I estimate that theory has a ninety-percent chance of being correct, Master,” Fi agreed.
“...I’m not Gen, though?” Green replied, confused.
The Master Sword emitted a chiming sound. “Master Link is Master Link. I do not differentiate.”
“Oh, okay,” Green said, looking blindsided.
“But if Fi’s immune,” Realm said, tilting his head, “shouldn’t she be talking from Gen’s Master Sword? Why’s she doing it from Dusk’s?”
Fi let out another chime. “Temporal misalignment makes manifestation difficult. I have optimized for my current situation.”
Blue jabbed Vio in the ribs. “Hey look, she’s related to you. Translate your fellow walking dictionary for me?”
Vio gave him a Look. “There’s something wonky about time that’s preventing her from actually coming out of the Sword,” he said, “and so she improvised a jury-rig solution. Which you would know , if you actually read a dictionary for once in your life.”
“I don’t need to,” Blue snorted. “Sooner or later, you tell me everything that’s in it.”
“That’s no excuse!”
“Hey, it’s been working for me so far. Besides, you’re the one that actually thinks that sort of stuff is interesting.”
“Maybe if you weren’t such an uncultured plebeian, you’d -”
“KNOCK. IT. OFF,” Green interrupted, and pegged them both with a Leader’s Stare. They immediately withered under the assault. “I swear to you both I will put you on opposite sides of the group if you can’t focus on what’s actually important . Clear?”
“Clear,” Vio and Blue muttered, and shuffled a bit closer together. Ironically, despite the fact that their personalities were about as different as could be, the fact of that matter was that they were still two parts of the same whole Link and separation was just sort of inherently terrifying. Not to the level that the Four had it, of course, but… still.
Also, the fact that Green was making that sort of threat meant that he really wasn’t in the mood, which was also sort of inherently terrifying. All things considered, Blue and Vio simultaneously decided it would be best if they stopped talking now.
“...So,” Gen said awkwardly, breaking into the silence in a valiant attempt to pull everyone back on track. “Fi? What’s the status?”
“I am requesting confirmation that this communication method is acceptable,” Fi repeated patiently.
“Oh, yeah, this is fine,” Gen said, flapping an absent hand in the general direction of Dusk’s Master Sword. “We can all hear you.”
“Acknowledged,” Fi replied. “ What is your request, Master?”
“Oh,” Gen said again, finally remembering that he’d called Fi for a reason. “Uh, we were kinda wondering why you don’t do… this , from anybody else’s Master Sword in their time.”
Fi was silent for a long moment. “I am afraid that I misunderstand your query, Master. I am doing ‘this’ right now.”
“Okay, yes,” Gen agreed, “but you didn’t do it before. Like, when Dusk drew the Master Sword for the first time, you didn’t appear to him.”
Fi emitted a long hum. “Calculations would indicate that my purpose was fulfilled and I entered a dormant state; however, this would make it impossible for me to speak from this current vessel. As this is clearly not the case, evidence suggests that time is in flux, and several events that have or will have happened, have not.”
“...What?” Blue said.
“The holes-in-the-world problem is making a loophole for her to exploit because it lets her be both dormant and active at the same time, which is why she can talk from a version of herself that’s supposed to be asleep,” Vio translated.
“Oh.”
“I predict a ninety-nine-point-nine percent chance that these temporal paradoxes will cause a Universal Collapse if not dealt with, Master, ” Fi finished, in the exact same tone of voice she’d used to request confirmation not a minute earlier. It was really hard to tell if she was hiding her emotions, just didn’t care, or just didn’t have the capacity.
“Thanks, we know,” Gen groaned. “Options?”
Dusk’s Master Sword let off a two-tone ring. “I would suggest a second attempt at subduing the Source, Master.”
“Because he didn’t hand out butts to us enough already,” Gen sighed. “Okay, anything else?”
“Activating dowsing, ” Fi announced. “ Uploading Demise’s aura signature. Installing parameters. Scanning.”
Gen, upon hearing the word dowsing , unceremoniously snatched Dusk’s weapon from the scabbard and began waving it wildly through the air in all sorts of directions. In tandem with this, Fi began making beep noises.
“I know he mentioned this,” Sketch commented, watching, “but I didn’t think it made him look like a flailing Like-Like.”
“Shut up, I do not,” Gen retorted, despite having never met a Like-Like but guessing by the analogy that it was an unflattering comparison. He waved Dusk’s Master Sword through the air again, then abruptly stopped when it let out a much more rapid and high-pitched beep than before.
“Signature located,” Fi said. “Demise’s aura is emanating from two separate sources approximately half a mile down and two miles southwest. I would surmise that this is not Demise himself, but rather a pair of trusted accomplices.”
“ Or,” Mask said, having poked his head over the side of the mountaintop they were on and looking in the direction Fi had indicated, “they could be a really big blue pig wearing a cape, and a weird one-eyed pudgy bat with six wings. Does that ring bells for anyone?”
Red, Blue, Green, and Vio, the Four, and Speck immediately raised their hands, followed closely by Lore (who was laughing hysterically and repeating the words ‘Pudgy Bat’ with increasing enthusiasm), and Realm. Gen, meanwhile, quietly thanked Fi for her help and slid Dusk’s Master Sword back into the scabbard on Dusk’s back, albeit a bit awkwardly because it was just now occurring to him that he’d swiped another Link’s weapon. Dusk just let off a small sigh and shrugged his shoulders in an absent motion of understanding commiseration which translated vaguely to, ‘Sometimes you gotta do weird stuff to save the world’. Fi, for her part, simply went back to her original casing with no further fuss - her job was done, as far as she was concerned.
Unaware of this, Mask blinked at all the raised hands and clarified, “Okay, do those two together ring bells for anyone?”
All hands went down except for Green and his crew. Vio poked his head over the edge too and winced. “Well, shoot,” he said. “That’s definitely our Hyrule, and those are definitely our villains.”
His three immediate siblings clustered around him to see for themselves. “I… thought they were in Demise’s head?” Green asked, frowning.
“Apparently, not anymore,” Blue growled. “Let’s go punch them in the face until they tell us why.”
“No,” Green vetoed immediately.
“...Later?”
“Maybe.”
Blue made a little fist-pump where Green couldn’t see it.
“Hey, there’s people climbing up,” Red said, pointing down to where a blonde dot and several more metallic shiny dots were making their way along the path that led to the peak. “Is that Princess Zelda?”
The entire group of Links perked up at this.
“Oh my Din, it is ,” Green said, disbelievingly. “Why is she climbing the mountain with Vaati and Ganon on the loose!?”
“Ooh, do we get to meet your Zelda?” Lore asked brightly, having slightly calmed down from the apparent hilarity that was ‘Pudgy Bat’.
“Forgive me when I say I really hope not,” Vio groaned.
“Oh, she just teleported,” Red relayed, from his vantage point looking down. “I guess it’s only her soldiers that are doing the climbing, she’s just kinda jumping ahead and then waiting for them.”
“Classy,” Mask remarked.
“Hey,” Blue said warningly. “She’s a Princess, you know.”
“He’s right, I am,” said a completely unexpected voice from behind them, which made everyone startle a solid half-inch into the air. All the Links looking over the edge of the mountain whipped around in surprise. Princess Zelda in all her Royal splendor was not who they’d been expecting to speak next. “Link, I’m glad you brought reinforcements. You’ve seen Vaati and that Blue Beast, I assume?”
“Hard to miss them, to be honest,” Blue said, entirely ignoring the fact that, until Fi had pointed it out, the whole group had been completely oblivious. “Also, his name is Ganon.”
“Perfect, ” Zelda said, somehow managing to twist it into a curse word through sheer sarcasm. “Of course Vaati would find a way to team up with the most famous Evil that Hyrule has ever faced.”
“Yeah, we’re working on that,” Vio told her. “Turns out this is kinda related to that hole-in-the-world issue. Hence the reinforcements.”
“Which I would love to ask you about,” Zelda said, very pointedly eyeing everyone’s faces, “but unfortunately I don’t think we have the time. Last I heard, Vaati was threatening to literally blow the Castle down.”
In the back of the group, Wind snorted something that sounded suspiciously like the word ‘amateur’. When everyone looked at him though, he was only absentmindedly twirling the Wind Waker through his fingers and staring vaguely off into the middle distance.
“What?” he asked, upon noticing the attention.
“I know you just got back,” Zelda said, reclaiming the focus of the conversation, “or at least, that’s what I’m assuming that bright light was yesterday. Given that you four stopped sending me Void Reports a solid two weeks ago and they were supposed to be coming every other day…”
All four of the boys winced. “Sorry,” Red murmured.
Zelda promptly gave them all a tight hug. “I thought the hole had gotten you,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be very angry once the relief has worn off, but right now I’m just glad that you’re not gone the way I thought you were.”
“Awwwwwww,” Lore cooed. Gen promptly stepped on his foot for interrupting the moment.
Zelda let go and stepped back. “My point is, Hyrule needs you again. Will you be our Four Sword Heroes once more?”
“Like you even gotta ask ,” Blue snorted.
Palpable relief sagged off the Princess’ shoulders. “Oh, thank the goddesses, because I can see Vaati from here and he just started using small vortexes to launch boulders.”
Off to the side, Wind let out a dejected sort of sound and slipped the baton he’d been fiddling with behind his left ear. When everyone glanced at him (and he actually noticed this time), he said, “That’s a total rookie move. I was kinda hoping he might put up a good fight, but he’d just try and brute-force it. Not worth the effort.”
“...Right,” Green said, and made a mental note to ask about what that actually meant later. “That aside, you guys up for a fight?”
“One that we actually have a chance of winning this time?” Steam asked. “Sign me up .”
“Don’t we gotta get down first?” Ocarina asked, eyeing the substantial mountain slope between them and the flat ground below. “And in, like, actually decent time? Because I don’t know about you guys, but the last time I climbed a mountain it took forever.”
“Remind me to teach you how to get around that,” Mask said. “But since we don’t have time for that, just use your fastest option and jump a lot .”
“Race you!” Lore immediately declared, and it was a testament to how much of a hurry they were now in that nobody bothered to object to this.
Which was how, approximately thirty seconds later, the entire group of Links all went rocketing down the mountainside at various speeds and with various volumes of adrenaline-fueled screeching.
Notes:
It took me WAY too long to figure out how to use Fi outside of her native time period. But, I'm very pleased that I did.
In other news: as I’m sure some of you fantastically observant readers have noticed, that thing the Three Goddesses are up to might sound a little bit familiar. The BotW Problem, as I like to call it, is basically that when I first started/wrote this story, it didn't exist. I've planned almost the entire plot line without BotW being a thing. Except that then, BotW went and became fantastically popular, and it was basically a given that BotW Link had to show up at some point. Thus, my solution: I am actively planning a spin-off/sequel, covering the aftermath of this whole Demise Incident, and THAT'S where BotW Link will be showing up. But there's nothing that says I can't world-build in the meantime :)
Thanks to ACrowByTheNameOfRamen, TheMultiverseTraveler, Just_A_Random_Fangirll, Guest #104, Guest #105, and Guest #106 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 21: A Blue Pig and a Pudgy Bat
Summary:
In which some Hatred Incarnations do their very best, but just aren't on the same level as the deity holding their leashes.
Notes:
(...The Universe is inarguably sentient, likes to mess with my disclaimers, and has a pickling hobby.
(…
(I’m going to go have an existential crisis now.)
No you are not, you still haven’t done the disclaimer yet.
...Changeling?
Ah, due to some ‘technical difficulties’, the author is currently huddled in a corner muttering about quantum theory and the nature of reality. So, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go fold myself into a concept understandable to the human mind and retrieve a physics book or two while I’m at it.
Oh, and, Changeling does not own the Legend of Zelda.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
About halfway down the mountain, Green had an abrupt thought about a rather pressing problem.
With the exception of himself and his immediate siblings, none of the Links knew basically anything about the Hyrule they were in. And while this would be a bit of a problem in any circumstance, it was the fact that Realm knew nothing about the Hyrule they were in that was worth considering.
More to the point, had this occurred to anybody else?
Green looked around. Most of the group had on Pegasus Boots or some other speed-boosting item, the exceptions to this being Dusk, who had shifted into his wolf form; Gen, who was using a pair of Hookshots to propel himself through the treeline; Wind, who had taken his baton back out from behind his ear and was using it to maintain a self-propelling tornado; Sketch, who had a Tornado Rod and was using it in much the same way that Wind was; and Steam, who was using a small green fan-like thing that Green remembered being described as his ‘Whirlwind’ and blowing himself around by aiming it down and back. Miraculously, Realm was still in sight - for now - but because he was literally just jogging, he was rapidly being left behind. And way up front was Mask, who had slapped on another one of his soul-powered items and promptly transformed into a Goron - and to be honest, Green hadn’t even considered that Gorons could move that fast, but seeing it now, it made a whole lot of sense.
“Is he using Rollout?” Blue panted. “That is so not fair.”
In the interest of time management, and also because they were sprinting down a mountainside, Green opted to rapidly thump Blue upside the head as opposed to flat-out tackling him for breaking things, because they had places to be and better things to do than minding walls right now. “Red’s in charge,” he announced quickly, then added upon seeing both Blue and Vio gear up to protest this, “because I don’t trust either of you to not immediately pick a fight with the other for perceived favoritism.”
“Okay, point,” Blue muttered, while Vio made a deliberate effort to look at anything but Green.
“I’m going to go make sure Realm doesn’t end up in a volcano again,” the Four Sword leader continued. “Meet you all back at the foot of the mountain, unless Realm gets us both lost, in which case Red is still in charge. Actually, just assume Red is in charge until whenever I get back.”
Red beamed; his two siblings sulked. Green rolled his eyes at all three of them, then dropped back and made a beeline for Realm.
“Oh, hi,” Realm said as Green joined him. “Is there a change of plan?”
“No, we’re still charging Vaati and Ganon,” Green replied, although by this point he was starting to breathe a little heavier and so his sentence came out significantly choppier than Realm’s did. “I just realized that you’ve never been here before.”
“Oohhhh,” Realm said, and scrunched up his face a little. Clearly, he was fully aware of what Green was indicating. “That might be a problem, yeah…”
“Just follow me, and hopefully, it’ll be fine,” Green told him, turning and making eye contact as they both ran to make sure Realm got the point. “It’s literally just a straight line-of-sight shot from here.”
Realm shrugged agreeably, and Green turned his head back to the direction he was heading in.
Which was no longer the direction he’d been heading in.
Green jerked to a startled stop, causing Realm to immediately overshoot him and double back to see what the problem was, and stared confusedly at the surrounding landscape. It was, most definitively, not the mountainside anymore.
Somehow, they were standing on a beach instead.
“When did we get here!?” Green sputtered. Realm blinked, then surveyed the sandy dunes with interest.
“...Huh,” he said knowledgeably.
“More to the point,” Green continued spastically, “how did you drag me along!?”
“That’s a very good question,” Realm said. He didn’t bother continuing that sentence, mostly because he didn’t have a good answer. Instead, he asked, “Do you know where we are?”
“We’re on the other side of Hyrule,” Green groaned, dropping his face into his hands. This quickly turned into a stranglehold on the bridge of his nose. “It is going to take us literal days to hike back to where we’re supposed to be. It should have taken us literal days to get here in the first place!”
“Oh, okay then,” Realm said, not sounding at all concerned about that. “Let’s get started.”
Green dropped his hand and gave Realm a tired stare. He looked as though he was imagining all the walking he was going to have to do and feeling the effects already. “Why does your misdirectional field always kick in at the worst possible times?”
“Comedic design, probably,” Realm replied, shrugging. He kicked off into a jog again, heading off the beach as Green fell in beside him.
“Yeah, well, you can tell ‘comedic design’ that I don’t appreciate being taken along for the ride,” Green muttered. Realm glanced down at him, then back up, and upon doing so realized that they were now in a snowy pine forest. Which, quite obviously, looked nothing like the blatantly tropical foliage that they’d been pushing through a few moments before.
“About that,” Realm said awkwardly, at which point Green noticed the wintry trees too and let out a small shriek of baffled frustration.
Needless to say, that didn’t really bode well.
“Should we be worried about that?” Blue asked as he sprinted, pointing back to where Realm and Green should have been but clearly no longer were. He’d looked away for two seconds, he swore, that had been all . This was not his fault.
“Probably yes,” Vio admitted, “but I think we have bigger problems.” As if in emphasis of this, Ganon bellowed something made incoherent by distance at the bottom of the mountain and promptly smashed through two different buildings and a water fountain.
“Well, yeah, but…” Blue trailed off. “Green’s kinda important.”
They ran in silence for a moment; then Blue and Vio twisted in unison to look at Red, who quite suddenly remembered that Green had put him in charge. To be fair, Red was not normally in charge, and thus could be forgiven for momentarily forgetting this fact. It had never happened before, after all.
“Green said he was coming back,” Red decided, in the most simplistic logic possible, “so he’s coming back. It just… might take him a bit longer than he planned, is all.”
Both Blue and Vio considered that.
“...why does that make sense?” Vio asked.
“Let’s wonder about that after we take care of the villain issue,” Blue muttered.
Meanwhile, Vaati was in a terrible mood. Not quite as bad of a mood as the one Demise was still nursing a couple timelines over, but by Vaati’s standards it was pretty high up there. If it weren’t for the fact that Hyrule Ganon was right next to him, and in an equally terrible mood, it could have been said that Vaati was the most upset person on the planet right then.
Now, under normal circumstances, Vaati would have been in an excellent mood. He was finally free of Demise’s headspace, he was in the middle of one of his favorite activities - that being pillaging - and the screams of the villagers as they ran in terror could have been put to a snappy drumbeat and played at a party with very little tonal correction needed, if Vaati’d had a recording device on him.
These were not, however, normal circumstances.
In lieu of a lot of very complicated godly terminology (and even more complicated (and also very vulgar) cursing) and in the simplest terms possible, the crux of the matter was that Vaati and Hyrule Ganon were on a leash. Some might think that this leash is metaphorical, and those some would be… wrong. Ish. There was no physical leash, as far as physicality and the laws of matter were concerned. The laws of magic, on the other hand, had always thought that the laws of matter were a stuck-up prissy group of laws who wouldn’t notice a soul-bond if it stared them in the face.
The leash, of course, was not a soul-bond, nor anything close to it, but the point still stood and the laws of magic were going to honor it. Therefore, while Vaati and Hyrule Ganon were no longer trapped in Demise’s head… they were basically still trapped. And the Rules of this trap went thusly:
They could do whatever they wanted, so long as it fell neatly within the confines of Demise’s wills, desires, whims, and/or goals. Anything not within those restrictions resulted in painful (and oddly hilarious, to anyone not on the receiving end) loss of function.
In even simpler terms, if Vaati did anything Demise would disapprove of, his body stopped working and he dropped like a sack of rocks.
Experimentation had revealed that, until Vaati tried to move with the intent to follow Demise’s will again, his attempts would be entirely unsuccessful. And some would think that, given that Demise was Evil, and Vaati was only slightly less so, that their desires would align fairly well and there would be very little issue. These some would be entirely correct.
It was the principle of the thing, though, that Vaati was hung up on. If he was going to destroy the lives of petty background civilians, he was going to do it on his own whims , thank you very much!
Of course, that resulted in immediate paralysis, which resulted in an even worse mood, which resulted in what Vaati was doing now: throwing what essentially amounted to a carefully-within-Demise’s-will tantrum.
This was also, coincidentally, what Hyrule Ganon was doing. And conveniently, there were a lot of very breakable, very tantrum-friendly buildings in the immediate vicinity.
It was a bad day to be an Item Shop.
By the time the Links made it to the bottom of the mountain, there was a significant gap between those in front and… well, basically everybody else. This was because the speed of a traveling Link was either ‘average’ or ‘ridiculously quick’ and there was no in-between.
Mask was first, due to currently being a Goron and the inherent nature of round things on steep surfaces. There was absolutely no hope of anyone catching up with him.
In a cluster a good few minutes after him were Dusk, who was currently a wolf and sprinting for all he was worth, followed closely by Lore, the Four, Speck, Red, Blue, and Vio all with various models of Pegasus Boots. About a minute behind them was Ocarina, wearing a Bunny Hood that he’d borrowed from Mask, accompanied by Wind, Steam, and Sketch, who had somehow all had the same idea of using a wind-powered item to propel themselves. It was a bit breezy because of this, but they managed.
Gen, meanwhile, was propelling himself through the somewhat distant treeline, because the fastest thing he had was technically a pair of Clawshots. He was also technically in last, because in order to use the Clawshots, he’d had to go get within the range of the trees. The only reason he wasn’t definitely in last was because Realm, who had opted to just jog on account of literally not having any better options, was nowhere to be seen and that was probably not a good thing.
Now that Gen thought about it, letting Realm go alone had probably been a mistake, if his story had been anything to judge by. But then again, Gen was the new guy, so what did he know? Maybe Realm was an unusually fast runner, and was waiting at the bottom with everyone else in front of him.
About ten seconds after having that thought, Gen arrived at the bottom of the mountain and was met with a distinct lack of Realm. And also Green, for some reason, which was a bit odd because Gen specifically remembered Green being present at the beginning. This seemed to be enough of a discrepancy that Gen decided to bring it up to the rest of the group, who were busy putting away their various speed-strategies.
“Should I be concerned that we seem to be missing both Realm and Green, or is this just a normal occurrence?”
There was a distinct pause in the equipment shuffle.
“Aww, crud,” Sketch muttered. “We shoulda thought of that.”
“Green did,” Red piped up. “He’s helping Realm find the way back.”
“...you sure about that?”
Red nodded firmly. “Green said he was coming back, so he’s coming back. He just never said how long it was gonna take him.”
“Why does that still make sense?” Vio muttered helplessly.
Gen frowned heavily. “Exactly how important is Green to your dynamic?” He pointed at the remaining three Four Sword Links just to make it absolutely clear who he was talking to. Red, Blue, and Vio all exchanged loaded looks.
“Very,” Blue summarized shortly.
“Alright, and how important is it that Realm be here with us instead of wandering aimlessly across the country somewhere?”
“VERY, ” the entire sixteen-odd group of Links chorused. Gen leaned back from the noise, squinting.
“So, what I’m getting here, is that we’re going to have to pause this whole mission to go and find our stray members?”
“No need,” Green groaned, all but dragging himself into the loosely-formed circle and beelining for his immediate siblings, where he promptly collapsed onto Blue. This almost caused a pile-up, because Blue was somewhat unprepared to support the entire weight of his fellow Link, but then Red dragged them both back upright in a frantic rush. The end result was that Green ended up piggybacking on Blue, and he immediately buried his face in Blue’s shirt.
“I am so Din-danged tired,” he mumbled through the fabric.
“I said I was sorry!” Realm protested, having arrived immediately after Green.
“Not nearly enough.”
“I may regret asking this,” Gen interrupted, “but, what just happened?”
“Well,” Realm said, and took a deep breath. “First we were on a beach, but when we tried to get off of that we ended up in a taiga forest. When we tried to get out of that , we ran into a Chu-Chu horde. They were all the Ice kind-”
Everyone shivered reflexively.
“-and they kept freezing us when we tried to run, so understandably that took a couple minutes. Then we ended up back on top of the mountain, except that there were Like-Likes there now, and in trying to get away from them I fell off the opposite side of the slope and it all went downhill from there-”
Green made a strangled noise that sounded an awful lot like the words, “That’s not funny!”
“-and when we landed I realized I’d lost my shield, except that when we stabbed the Like-Likes that had fallen down the mountain with us, it turned out they didn’t have it. So then we backtracked back to the taiga biome, except that we ended up going through a volcano, the beach, a desert, some grasslands, the beach again, and then a glacier before we finally found the Ice Chus. Of course, then it turned out that ice plus metal equals a really sticky problem , and to get my shield back we actually ended up having to drag the Ice Chu back to the volcano-
“We weren’t even trying to get to the volcano that time,” Green hissed, actually lifting his face enough to be understood.
“-but it melted no problem once we were there. Then we backtracked here, except that we went through the beach, the desert, and the beach again on the way.” Realm frowned a moment, thinking. “Or maybe it was the beach once and the desert twice. There was a lot of sand, I don’t exactly remember where it all came from.”
Green emitted a sound that was somewhere between absolute exhaustion, utter bafflement, and a complete loss of the ability to care, and dropped his head back onto Blue’s shoulder blades. “So. Din. Danged. Tired ,” he enunciated.
“...It’s barely been ten minutes,” Gen said slowly. “How did you cram all of that traveling into ten minutes?”
“I have a condition,” Realm told him.
“And this is… normal. For you.”
“Yes.”
Very slowly, Gen sat himself on the ground. He was going to need a minute. It was one thing to listen to Realm describe all his directional mishaps, and somehow quite another thing to actually have them happen. He hadn’t realized exactly how boggling it was until he was staring it in the face.
“This is my life now,” Gen muttered. “Okay. Cool. Okay.”
“Oh good, you’re coping already,” Realm said, somewhat missing the sarcasm that Gen was oozing. “Because we still need to deal with the bat and the pig, right? Ideas?”
“An excellent suggestion. Native Links!” Lore declared forcefully. “Tell us what you know about the Pudgy Bat and the Blue Pig, please and thank you.”
With effort, Blue shifted Green onto the ground (and his own feet), which Green accepted with only a small amount of bleary grumbling and a minor slouch. “Sorry, team leader,” Blue said apologetically, “but we need you awake for this.”
Green absorbed that, grumbled a bit more, then hauled himself into a proper posture and peeled his eyes back open. “Right, yeah, okay.” He inhaled deeply. “What’s the problem?”
“Them,” Vio reminded, pointing across the plains-at-the-base-of-the-mountain to where the now-ruins of the Town were, and the largely visible figures of Vaati and Ganon rampaging through it. “We need to tell everyone how to beat them.”
“Right,” Green repeated, a bit more awake this time. “Small problem, we never actually did that.”
“I would qualify that as a bit larger of a problem,” Mask said.
“We did research though!” Red offered.
“I did research,” Vio corrected. “Both Vaati and Ganon have appeared in Hyrule before, from our perspective in time at least. There’s plenty of legends and stuff on how they fight.”
“And that sounds like a bad paradox just waiting to happen,” Mask winced. “But… it’s probably impossible for the state of reality to get much worse, so…”
“I mean, you’re right, one of the accounts comes directly from who I’m pretty sure is Ocarina,” Vio agreed. Then he frowned, and corrected, “Or, I guess… you? However it is that works?”
“Yes,” Mask told him, which shouldn’t have made any sense but somehow did. Vio visibly decided not to question it.
“Okay so, according to historical accounts, Vaati likes tornados,” he said. “He also likes to pick up things in his tornados and throw those things at people.”
“Oh my Din, he’s a disgrace to weather magic,” Wind mourned quietly.
“Conveniently, he has a glaring weak spot in the middle of his face in the form of his absolutely massive eyeball,” Vio continued, “so we can probably just shoot arrows at him from a distance and not bother with the tornados at all.”
“Those are really low quality tornados,” Wind agreed, and actually sounded upset about it. There was a short, confused pause. Sketch reached out and awkwardly patted Wind’s shoulder in a vague attempt at comfort. Granted, he had no idea what he was providing comfort for, but Wind seemed to appreciate it, so Sketch counted that as a win.
“Ganon, Vio said in a pointed attempt to move on, “was a bit harder to find stuff on. The most I could gather was that he used to be a man from the desert who got corrupted by greed. The reason he looks like a pig is because he hunted down a Triforce piece, and for some reason the Sacred Power tends to pull this ‘appearance reflects your nature’ thing.”
“That does tend to happen, yeah,” Lore agreed thoughtfully, while Dusk nodded along.
“I did try and look into the fighting strategies of the desert people,” Vio continued, “but watching Ganon now, I think what I read was a bit out of date…”
“How so?” Speck asked curiously.
“Tridents are fairly pointless in a biome without water,” Vio said bluntly, and pointed at the massive fork that Ganon was swinging around with wild abandon. “I have no idea why he’s using that, it doesn’t match any of his people’s traditional weaponry-” He went off on a small rant about historical inaccuracies, seemingly oblivious to the awkward stares he was receiving. After about ten solid seconds of this, Blue began wondering why Green hadn’t headed Vio off yet, then realized that Green was actually nodding off on his own feet. A jab to the ribs quickly corrected this problem.
Green, now once again firmly awake, grasped the situation impressively fast. “Back to the trident?” he inserted smoothly in between Vio’s complaints about proper source material. Vio blinked, visibly rerouting his thought processes.
“Oh. Honestly, I had no idea he was going to use a trident, I didn’t research for that.”
“...Whoops?” Red offered.
“Yeah, whoops,” Vio agreed ruefully, and sent an irritated glare off towards the distant Ganon. “That being said, from what I can see from here, he hits like a train and seems to be inordinately fond of magic lightning. We should probably avoid that.”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure my Train can hit harder than that,” Steam said, eyeing one of the far-off, half-standing buildings.
“It’s a comparison,” Vio retorted. “It got the point across, didn’t it? My point is, that’s all I’ve got.”
“Let me try, then,” Gen said. “Hey, Fi?”
There was a moment’s pause, as all the versions of the Master Sword lit up sequentially and Fi hopped around identifying which vessel was closest to the time period she was in. Then Dusk’s sword once again settled into a low thrum, and Fi’s voice echoed, “Yes, Master?”
“Can you analyze those two?” Gen asked, pointing. Helpfully, Ganon picked that moment to slam his trident straight through a library, making him rather difficult to miss.
Dusk’s weapon emitted a wavering chime. “Of course, Master. My apologies for not taking initiative the first time I scanned them.”
“...Did she just subtly mock you for not asking when you had her out thirty minutes ago?” Ocarina ventured confusedly.
“Probably,” Gen sighed. “She does that sometimes. Speaking of, Fi?”
“Targeting,” Fi announced. “ Vaati, the Wind Mage. This Demonic Wind Spirit takes the form of his own deepest desires; his own magic has twisted him beyond all recognition. He controls the wind itself, but very little else, using weather manipulation primarily to literally gain higher ground. He attacks with magic projectiles, most prominently featuring either basic untyped or shadow energy. His only means of locomotion are the wings upon his back; I would advise taking them out so as to inhibit his ability to escape. Further analysis suggests that he is susceptible to combustible materials.”
“How d’you figure that?” Blue asked, interested.
“Magic users tend to focus all their effort on their spells and neglect their body in the process, ” Fi said. “ Therefore, Vaati has an eighty-five percent chance of being soft and squishy in a way that would not mix well with violent exothermic reactions.”
“...What?”
“Kaboom,” Gen offered dryly, having plenty of experience translating Fi’s jargon by this point.
“Ohhhhhh.”
“That’s actually really helpful,” Vio mused thoughtfully. “Do you have anything on Ganon?”
“Retargeting,” Fi replied. “Ganon, the Evil Beast. Once a human of the Gerudo tribe, he was transformed by his own greed for the Sacred Power into the form you see now. He is also in the remaining fifteen percent of magic users who do not neglect their physical bodies, so I advise avoiding close-range combat unless absolutely necessary. Analysis of his power signature indicates a seventy-five percent chance of teleportation being in his repertoire, along with calling down lightning and the basic untyped energy projectile. Given the corrupted state of his being, there is a ninety-percent chance that he is weak to light energy and any weapons imbued with it, such as myself. I suggest watching for an opening before moving into his range in that case.”
“Got it,” Gen said. “Anything else?”
“As previously stated, both foes utilize untyped energy projectiles,” Fi said. “Lack of an elemental affiliation makes these attacks vulnerable to deflection and volleying.”
The look on Gen’s face indicated that he was very pleased with that analysis. The look on Lore’s face indicated… well, there wasn’t really a good enough word for what the look on Lore’s face indicated. The way he was brandishing a Bug Net like a tennis racquet allowed for a few conclusions, though. “Thanks, Fi.”
“It is my pleasure, Master,” chimed Dusk’s Master Sword neutrally, before falling silent.
“Okay, she is super useful,” Mask said. “How come she didn’t stick around for me? I would have liked a companion that can’t get knocked out by barrier magic.”
Gen shrugged at him. “No idea. But in any case, Fi’s said all she can.”
“Well between her and Vio, I’m satisfied,” Lore said, nodding authoritatively. “Now, based on that info, who wants to fight whom?”
“Dibs on Vaati,” Wind volunteered. “ Someone needs to clean up his mess.”
Dusk snapped his fingers. “That’s actually a good idea. If Wind cancels the tornadoes, that would give the rest of us a clear shot.”
Wind shrugged. “I mean, you’d have a pretty clear shot anyways because Vaati’s quality control is terrible , but I can totally do that if you want.”
“Please,” Dusk told him, then went back to addressing the whole group. “Also, anyone who’s got a Clawshot or some variation on one would be helpful. It’s really easy to foul up an enemy’s wings and bring them down with one of those.” He held up his own pair of Clawshots as demonstration.
There was a moment of shuffling, as the group slowly separated into two, smaller clusters. Dusk became the center of the Clawshot cluster, while everyone not meeting that requirement concentrated off to the left. There was a brief moment of awkwardness when it turned out that the group without Clawshots or Clawshot variants was a whole lot larger.
“I’ve got some spares?” Lore offered, in a clear attempt to even out the numbers.
“Same,” Mask agreed, while Dusk just held his extra up demonstratively.
After a moment of two of inter-group debate, Green said, “Yeah, sure. Red?”
“This is gonna be fun,” Red announced, bouncing a little in his excitement. The two of them crossed the distance to the Clawshot group and immediately got absorbed into a teaching session as Dusk quietly explained to them exactly how a Clawshot actually worked.
“Yeah, this is better distribution,” Vio said, sweeping his eyes over the group in a quick headcount. Himself and Blue, along with Steam, the Four, Realm, and Speck were making up the Normal group aiming to fight Ganon. Meanwhile, Lore, Gen, Dusk, Green, Red, Ocarina, Mask, and Sketch were making up the Vaati team.
“Can I, uh,” Steam said, raising a hand. “I’m not the most… athletic guy? Like, Ganon seems like he’s going to involve a lot of running and screaming, and I spent most of my adventure standing still, driving a Train. Can I swap?”
“Sure, I’ll trade you,” Gen said easily. Or, well more easily than he would have during the Demise fight. It’d barely been a day since then, he was still adjusting. Personally he thought he was doing really well, given the circumstances. But, because he was still adjusting, he followed that up with, “Just, please don’t break my stuff, okay? This is my only pair.”
“Sure thing,” Steam said, carefully taking Gen’s Double Hookshots with something vaguely resembling reverence, and promptly proceeded to get completely lost in the inner mechanics. “How do these even work?” He muttered.
“Well don’t check now,” Gen said exasperatedly, prying Steam’s curious fingers off of the gear interlock that he was somehow already fiddling with. “You need to use them before you break them.”
“I’m not gonna break them,” Steam protested. The hand caught in Gen’s grip twitched longingly. “I’m just gonna… dissemble them. To see how they work.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t fire them at Vaati if they’re in pieces,” Gen sighed. “Look, you can fiddle with them if we live, but please put them back together at the end.”
“You are my new favorite person,” Steam told him in complete and utter sincerity.
“Aww, man,” Sketch muttered in mock offense. “Does this mean our self-sustaining lantern idea is cancelled?”
Steam paused. “Well, crap. Can I have two favorite people?”
“How about I respectfully decline your affections, take a consolatory position as your second favorite person, and we actually finally get to the massive Boss Battle problem?” Gen broke in, slightly fed up by this point.
“Yeah, that works.”
“Okay then!” Lore declared. “We have tentative battle plans, designated opponents, and most importantly, the appropriate pointy things! Any other questions, comments, concerns, or cries of anguish I should know about?”
There was silence for a moment as everyone processed that.
“...Cries of anguish?” Gen asked disbelievingly.
“Well, you never know,” Lore said, waving a hand nonchalantly. “Now, as the LiT, I do believe it’s my job to start this party.”
“We appear to have very different definitions of the word party.”
“Eh, details,” Lore dismissed, then grinned sharply. “I’ve always wanted to do this. Everyone, BREAK!”
While not the most explanatory sentence, the whole group took that for the signal it was. Everyone scattered.
Vaati, still in a terrible mood but now slightly less terrible because taking out his frustrations on buildings was a marvelous stress-reliever, had just finished throwing a tornado through the remains of an inn. It looked better than way, in his opinion. Granted, it was a rather unpopular opinion, but this was because most of Vaati’s fellow villains thought that the world looked best when it was on fire, rather than in rubble. Which, Vaati could admit, burning things had perks, but rubble was much more… refined.
(Approximately none of these opinions were to be said out loud, though. Even less so in the presence of Majora. Majora tended to express their opinions about burning through… very hands-on demonstration.)
Vaati’s briefly boosted mood plummeted right back down again. Stupid Majora. Stupid fellow villains. Stupid Demise, except he couldn’t actually express that one without loss of bodily function.
“Oi! Mr. Pudgy Bat!”
Vaati paused. Turned. Came eyeball-to-face with a somewhat short, violently ginger Hero who seemed much less intimidated than he ought to have been. Processed this. Blinked.
“Excuse me?” Vaati said, thoroughly caught off-guard. Because, it seemed to him, that this green person was talking to him as though there wasn’t a town lying in ruins around them that was most certainly Vaati’s fault. Also, he felt like he’d been insulted. There was definitely a vague feeling of offense.
“Oh, did you not hear me?” the Hero asked. “I’m so sorry, I totally should have made sure I had your attention first. I said, ‘Oi! Mr. Pudgy Bat!’ Did you get it this time?”
“Pudgy… Bat,” Vaati said slowly, as the vague feeling of being insulted morphed into a definite feeling of being insulted. He was not pudgy.
“Yes, that’s you,” said the Hero, looking very much as though he was trying not to devolve into giggles if the way his face was twitching was anything to judge by. Oh yes, Vaati was very insulted now. “I’m hoping we could have a chat?”
Vaati, however, wasn’t done feeling insulted. He also had absolutely no idea which Hero this was. “Exactly who are you?”
“Well, I’m the Hero,” said the Hero patiently.
“Not mine, you aren’t,” Vaati said brusquely. “Mine is smaller, wears significantly more colorful clothing, and has three more bodies to run around in. You’re just… ginger.”
“...This feels like Hero prejudice,” said ginger observed suspiciously.
Vaati squinted at him. “Look, I’m just gonna kill you real quick and get on with my job, okay?”
“What, without even a proper fight?” the Hero asked incredulously. “I knew you were trying to oppress me! This is unfair treatment! This is unequal distribution! This is-!”
“By Demise, I don’t have time for this,” Vaati snarled over the loudly complaining teenager.
“I demand the proper amount of hatred and villainous one-liners!” the ginger Hero shouted.
Vaati, in what was one of his more practical decisions, concluded that this new Hero was insane and made to end his pathetic life right then and there by dropping a boulder on him. Unfortunately, he missed.
“Oh, are we fighting now?” the Hero asked brightly, suddenly no longer nearly as upset and also right there in front of Vaati’s face.
And then he stabbed his sword right into Vaati’s singular massive eyeball. Which, given the positioning of this, Vaati really should have seen it coming.
“...What just happened?” Dusk asked, somewhat blankly while Vaati flailed and spewed violent curses in the background. All six of the Wind Mage’s wings were folded around his newly-stabbed eye, and Vaati appeared to be appropriately upset by this.
“I distracted him,” Lore said. “It works practically every time. All you have to do is completely defy expectations, and nine times out of ten everyone will be too surprised to stop you before you get what you want out of the situation.”
“...You’ve used this tactic on the group already, haven’t you,” Dusk concluded tonelessly.
Lore wobbled a hand. “ Well , I mean, maybe a little…? Just in the beginning when I was trying to invite myself along. Also maybe when I wanted to be LiT. Also a bit during the Demise fight, but Demise turned out to be immune so maybe that one doesn’t count.”
“Can you do it again?” Dusk asked pointedly, to bring Lore back around from the tangent he was gearing up on.
“Not on Vaati,” Lore sighed regretfully. “I stabbed him in the eyeball, he’ll be way too suspicious now.”
Vaati punctuated this with a particularly aggressive insinuation about Lore’s mother, followed by an awful lot of predictions of very painful death. Assuming Vaati was in fact an accurate Seer, Lore was going to end up the victim of a very convoluted homicide.
“It’d totally work on the Ganon over there, though,” Lore finished, somehow utterly unconcerned about the blatant threats to his life.
“I can’t believe you found a way to weaponize your personality,” Dusk muttered. “Actually - no, I can believe it. I can absolutely believe it.”
“Aww, you’re gonna make me blush.”
At that moment, Vaati decided that his insults weren’t getting his displeasure across well enough, and graduated to flinging spheres of dark, shadowy magic in every which direction. The Hookshot Group, who’d been hiding behind the rubble while Lore did his thing and were now taking advantage of Vaati’s distraction and collectively shuffling closer, immediately scattered again.
“We might have to try distance strategies first!” Mask yelled.
Over on the Ganon side of things, the Four had just been volunteered as the Distraction and were appropriately worried by it. This was mostly because they themselves had not been doing the volunteering, and had no idea how it had happened.
“Why, exactly, are we the Distraction?” the Four asked with said appropriate worry.
“Because you guys naturally cluster and will automatically be the largest target regardless, so it makes sense to take advantage of that,” Vio told them.
“...Okay, and what’s the actual reason?”
“That’s totally the actual reason.”
“What’s the other actual reason?”
Vio deigned to look a bit sheepish. “...You guys weren’t paying attention when we voted on it.”
“Gee, ” the Four said dryly. “Thanks.”
“Look, just… holler if you need to swap out, okay?”
The Four bestowed Vio with exactly the sort of Look that comment deserved, then turned to face the still-rampaging Ganon and marched determinedly out from behind the house ruins they’d been hiding behind.
‘This is not one of our smarter decisions,’ the red member commented solemnly as they approached.
‘Shut up and don’t trip this time,’ the purple member replied.
‘When are you gonna let that go, it was not my fault the path was unstable!’
‘Can we focus please?’ the blue member groaned. ‘This is not a single-pilot hive mind.’
‘Right, sorry.’
They had the advantage of making their approach while Ganon was preoccupied with trampling through the remains of what looked like a Game Shop, the prizes of which were rolling in every which direction. The Four took a collective deep breath.
Then they drew their swords, broke into a sprint, and proceeded to stab Ganon right through the top of his left foot. Ganon took this about as well as he could be expected to take it, and by that it can be understood that Ganon immediately tried to wipe the Four from existence via impaling by trident. The Four, naturally, took that about as well as could be expected.
And by that, it can be understood that they shrieked at the top of their lungs, frantically dodged, and sprinted away screeching, “THIS WAS A BAD IDEA! THIS WAS A VERY BAD IDEA!” while being pursued by several crackling spheres of violently green magic, courtesy of Ganon because he’d just been stabbed in the foot and couldn’t chase the Four the way he wanted to, was angry by that, and was using that anger to fuel a lot of painful magical projectiles instead.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Ganon group was busy taking advantage of the fact that the giant pig in question was very distracted. This meant that instead of taking shelter from behind bits of rubble and sniping down their opponents health with arrows bit by bit, they were instead creeping up behind with the intent to stab. Halfway there, Blue squinted at the green magic spheres Ganon was throwing and frowned. “...That looks like Energy Ball,” he muttered to himself. “Did we hop franchises?”
Vio immediately smacked him upside the head, hissing, “Stop breaking things, now is not the time. ”
“But did we? Because if we did, and I can get a Gyarados, we need to make a side trip.”
“If you don’t focus right now, I’m telling Green on you.”
“Okay, okay!” Blue yelped. “Point taken!”
“Shut up!” Realm whispered frantically, because they were in the middle of trying to perform a sneak attack and Blue had just shattered whatever silence they’d been maintaining. Unfortunately, he was already too late. Ganon paused, snorted, and slowly turned around to glare at the group of Heroes attempting to stab his backside.
“...Oops?” Blue offered.
“Slash and run and we’ll talk about this later!” Gen yelled. And since this seemed like an excellent suggestion, everyone listened to him. Consequently, Ganon ended up with six sword-shaped holes in his other foot, and six more Links ended up running for their lives when Ganon decided that he was done playing around and spammed green magic everywhere.
“This probably could be going better,” Speck panted as they sprinted.
“I’m sorry , okay!?” Blue retorted.
On the other side of the rubble, Vaati had gotten over being stabbed in the eyeball just enough to actually see again. ...Maybe. Given that his eye was red enough to be a tomato and he had to keep blinking water out of the way, his actual vision seemed a bit suspect.
Not that the Links cared about that, because Vaati was a jerk, but it was still sorta concerning to look at.
At the moment, everyone was hiding behind rubble again, because Vaati was flinging magic at anything that moved regardless of whether or not he could see what it was. In between this, though, Wind was making a careful approach - he and Vaati needed to have a Discussion .
“Excuse me,” he said politely, because his Grandma had drilled manners into him even if his conversation partner was an evil demon bat. “But you’re using weather magic, right? Can I ask what your certification level is?”
Vaati blinked at him, though whether this was because he was confused or because he had to get more water out of the way was unclear. “Why would I bother with certification?”
“Aaaaand that’s exactly what I thought you’d say,” Wind sighed. “Did you just lift your spells straight from a book or something?”
“Excuse you, I am self taught,” Vaati informed him haughtily.
“...okay, you should never become a teacher.”
Vaati shrieked something incoherent, wildly offended - but not because he’d ever wanted to be a teacher. It was an issue of the implications. He sent a tornado full of his bruised ego at Wind’s head, probably in an attempt to prove him wrong.
Wind, though, just flicked his baton and dissipated the whole thing.
“Yeah, okay,” he sighed, and got into a ready stance as Vaati let out several more insulted screeches and launched more weather patterns at him. He didn’t know why he’d gotten his hopes up again, it wasn’t like the view from the mountaintop had made Vaati’s skill level look any better.
Still hiding behind rubble, Lore poked his head out and observed the chaos.
“Wow,” he said. “Whatever Wind said to him, that worked amazingly . You think he’d give me lessons?”
“I… think it might have been a situation-specific conversation,” Dusk replied, as Vaati bellowed something about totally being a great teacher if he’d wanted to and Wind just sighed heavily.
“On the bright side,” Sketch offered, “Vaati isn’t paying attention to anything else right now.”
“Good point,” Mask agreed. “Now would probably be a really good time to try out this Clawshot strategy.”
“Aim for his wings,” Dusk advised.
They had to wait a bit, because there was actively a tornado happening, but then the weather cleared and six chains lanced out and latched onto various parts of Vaati’s body. A seventh chain, however, went wildly sideways and hit the remains of a tree instead, which was unexpected enough that everyone paused to blink at it.
“So I may have forgotten to mention,” Lore said casually, “that my long-distance aim really sucks.”
“Are you serious.” Ocarina said.
“Why are you only telling us this in the middle of a fight!?” Mask sputtered, somewhat more vehemently than his younger self.
“More to the point, why are you on the team that specifically requires us to be aiming at far away targets?” Green demanded.
“Well, normally I can just bluff my way around it.”
Vaati picked that moment to lunge, which cut off the conversation for a few moments. In between struggling to bring him back down, Dusk panted, “How’s that working out for you?”
“I’ve had more successful attempts,” Lore replied. He was by now climbing the tree, because the chain had gotten tangled in the small branches. This was made more difficult by the fact that Vaati was throwing himself in every which direction in an attempt to stay in the air and out of reach of the group’s swords, and more often than not he was coordinating his lunges with endeavors to bodily knock Lore unconscious.
“PULL!” Dusk shouted, seeing this and deciding it was probably best to prevent it, and because Dusk had a very good Authority Voice when he decided to use it, everyone listened. Vaati, strong though he was, couldn’t out-pull six people at once, especially not since Wind was twisting the weather around and pushing down on him with it. He still out up a good fight, though, and ended up going down like a cluster of stubborn helium balloons rather than any normal, gravity-abiding person, but the point was he was now within range of being stabbed.
Of course, Vaati had a vested interest in not being stabbed, and the instant he hit the ground he threw magic projectiles in every direction possible. Blocking and dodging instantly became a higher priority than stabbing could ever manage to be, and in the end only Steam actually managed to land a hit before Vaati tore himself free from the Hook and Clawshots and launched back into the sky. The weather battle immediately kicked back into gear again; Wind parried it with an almost apathetic effort.
“Let’s try that again,” Green sighed, watching what had been the beginnings of an impressive whirlwind dissipate long before it ever reached the ground while Vaati screamed his frustrations. “Only this time, let’s not have Lore be on the Hookshot squad.”
“I agree with this alteration to the plan!” Lore called from where he was still in the tree. “I’m just gonna stick to stabbing things once I get down!”
“That’ll work,” Dusk nodded. “We bring him down, Lore hits him, we bring backup if there’s time.”
“BREAK!” Lore hollered from the tree.
“Wind!” Dusk called. “Bring him back down!”
“Sure,” Wind said. He flicked his baton through a quick sequence, then jabbed the tip at the ground.
The downdraft hit Vaati like a brick wall, and Vaati hit the ground like a sack of rocks. There was a moment of surprised silence.
“...I’ll be honest, I thought he was going to counter that,” Wind admitted.
“Perhaps,” Gen mused, from the safe distance he and the rest of the group had retreated to as he watched the Four sprint screaming across the battlefield, “we should have approached this differently.”
As if to punctuate that statement, Ganon bellowed something incoherently loud, proceeded to set his trident on fire, and then threw the thing like a boomerang. Somehow, it actually worked despite having absolutely no grounds to do so.
“Hey,” Speck said suddenly. “D’you think that’s what Fi meant about choosing our approach carefully? He just threw his weapon away, he’s literally wide open.”
“Worth a shot,” Gen decided. “Vio, Blue, go with Speck and test that theory. Realm, you’re with me, we’re gonna swap out with the Four.”
Realm tilted his head. “But they’ve only been running for fifteen minutes?”
“...I keep forgetting you have absolutely no frame of reference for what exertion for normal people is,” Gen muttered. “Okay, uh…” He dug around in his (admittedly limited) memories pertaining to Realm. In his defense, he’d only just hit the twenty-four hour mark in his relationship with these people. “It’s like when you’ve been running for five days straight,” he concluded eventually.
“Ohhhhh,” Realm said, with a tone of great realization. “Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I’ll swap them, no problem.” And with that, he promptly sprinted onto the battlefield with absolutely zero regard for the fact that this now made him a perfect target. But since Realm was already well-used to being a target, sometimes for several consecutive hours (and normally at the mercy of a dragon), this thought didn’t occur to him with the same level of urgency as it would to almost anyone else.
Conveniently though, the exact moment Realm made his entrance was also when Vio, Blue, and Speck tested their hypothesis on Ganon’s vulnerability. The results seemed a bit inconclusive; on one hand, they’d definitely stabbed him. On the other hand-
“I think we just made it worse!” Blue screeched, almost inaudibly beneath Ganon’s furious ‘May your sword strike a Cucco’ roaring. THe giant pig punctuated this by snagging his still-boomeranging weapon as it made a fly-by and shooting magic lightning with it, which backed up Blue’s words pretty well.
“No, hang on,” Vio replied, turning around as he ran and squinting. “I think he’s favoring his right arm.”
“That’s progress, right?” Speck panted optimistically.
He didn’t get an answer, but that was mostly because of the incoming lightning. It was understandably hard to hold a conversation and dodge for one’s life at the same time.
The one good thing about Ganon being so intently focused on them, though, was that it allowed Realm to slip past his notice and make a beeline for the Four. They had perched their hands on their knees, taking advantage of the brief lapse in Ganon’s attention to try and get their breath back. Judging by the way their backs were heaving in exhaustion synchronization, they weren’t having very good luck with it.
“Swap me,” Realm declared.
“Gladly, ” the Four wheezed. “We would love to stop being bait now. It’s exhausting.”
Realm made an ‘If-you-say-so’ expression, but chose not to express that thought out loud. “Do you guys need a distraction while you make your escape?”
“Sure, ” the Four said, and pulled themselves upright through sheer force of will and the promise of a break. “Tell us when.”
“When,” Realm echoed.
The Four didn’t move. Realm raised his eyebrows pointedly. “When,” he emphasized.
“Oh!” the Four said, and then immediately took off sprinting.
“Honestly, I used their codeword and everything,” Realm muttered to himself in amusement. Then he took a deep breath, braced himself, and performed what was probably one of the stupidest actions in the fight to date.
“HEY MR. BLUE PIG!!” He shrieked across the battlefield. Ganon, halfway through the motion of throwing his impossibly boomeranging trident again, froze.
“... W h a t ?”
“Oh Farore,” Realm squeaked, finding himself pinned under the full force of Ganon’s fury and being appropriately intimidated. This was a lot more of Ganon’s attention than he’d been bargaining for when he’d borrowed Mask’s earlier mountaintop observation for a quick nickname, which was apparently not at all within Ganon’s allowed forms of address. This observation was quickly proved true when Ganon switched the trajectory of his trident and threw it directly at Realm instead.
Once again, it was also on fire. Realm took one look at it and the fact that it was going to clock him in the head, and promptly put his stamina to good use.
Between Wind completely and utterly curb-stomping any weather pattern Vaati tried to use, Lore’s ridiculously varied sword skill repertoire, and everyone else hounding Vaati with Hookshots… there really wasn’t a whole lot Vaati could actually do to put up resistance. It was actually a bit weird. Less than twenty-four hours ago the Links had very nearly gotten themselves killed by Demise, and in some part of their brains, all their survival instincts were still very much on high alert.
The thing was that Vaati, for all that he was trying to be, just wasn’t on the same level as the literal god of destruction fueled by all the powers of every threat to Hyrule. He was still putting up a good fight, for sure, but it just… wasn’t as good as he thought it was.
Case in point, despite all of Vaati’s best efforts, he was singularly unable to dismantle the vacuum tunnel that Wind was fueling right into his face, which was also coincidentally carrying an awful lot of explosives with it.
“N’pmm, ns’nu!" Lore crowed, proudly watching as the bombs went off with a sound that was an awful lot like thunder. “You gotta love a good explosion.”
“I BEG TO DIFFER!” Vaati bellowed, now burnt and somewhat smoking and looking none too happy about it.
“Nope, you gotta. It’s in the Laws set by the Subrosian Circle of Incendiary Materials.”
“Do I look,” Vaati snarled, “like I care what any of that is?” This may or may not have been a trick question, because it was blatantly obvious that he didn’t; Lore decided to take him at face value.
“...Wow,” he said , and then capitalized on the brief moment of distraction to chuck about sixteen more bombs into the still-present vacuum tunnel. Vaati let out an enraged howl as they blew up in his face. “That’s a travesty. Now I’m gonna have to get loud about it.” He took a deep breath, threw a few more bombs, and then hollered, “THE SUBROSIANS HAVE BEEN INSULTED !” and immediately went off on a wildly confusing tangent about cloaks. Somehow this didn’t detract from his ability to fight in the slightest.
“I don’t understand how he does that,” Ocarina said blankly, because his own ability to fight was usually tied to how much focus he was putting into it. Talking generally wasn’t something he tried to pair with avoiding swords and magic attacks aimed at his head.
“It’s a learned skill,” Mask told him. He left out the part where he knew how to do it, because he was still compiling his mental list of what he could and could not tell his younger self without causing a paradox when they were literally living through a separate, unrelated paradox. It was a very long and complicated list, and Mask had been a bit busy. Don’t judge him. “Now help me foul up Vaati’s wings again, we can’t rely on bombs alone to beat him.”
“Why not?” Red asked. “It seems like it’s working pretty well so far.”
“Because sooner or later he’s going to figure out how to defend against that,” Green told him, “and we should mix it up before he realizes.”
“That makes sense!”
The difference between Vaati and Demise was once again made abundantly clear when Vaati, too focused on Lore’s continued tirade about cloaks and accompanied bomb-throwing, completely missed the fact that the rest of the group had fired their Hookshots again until all six chains latched onto his body and slammed him to the ground again. Lore immediately took advantage of this and pulled out his sword to target Vaati’s eyeball.
It was a very good target. Vaati had a very prominent eyeball. Really, it made up his entire face. He had no mouth.
...How did he eat?
Halfway through this onslaught, though, Vaati apparently remembered that he was a Wind Mage. He spawned an updraft directly beneath his body with enough force that he knocked all the Hookshots loose, and enough spontaneity that Wind didn’t counter it in time to prevent the demon bat from rising up into the air above their heads again.
“I was already having a bad day before you little molds showed up!” he shrieked. “I DO NOT NEED THESE KINDS OF COMPLICATIONS!”
“We should start running,” Dusk opined quietly. His opinion was immediately proven correct by Vaati spamming as much magic as he could physically fit into the airspace around him, and for a few minutes everyone lost track of what was going on because they were too busy running for their lives.
“So” Gen said conversationally, as Realm sprinted across the middle distance behind him and Ganon released dozens of magic spheres in pursuit, “does anyone know how to use that light energy Fi was talking about?”
“Not without Zelda,” Steam said ruefully. Everyone else shook their heads in similar negatives. Magic masters, the Links typically were not, and even then it was usually combat magic. Light-based energy was usually used in more passive ways like blessings, sealings, and general healing ability. And while it was dead useful, especially since it happened to be the direct counter to the much more destructive and almost unanimously antagonistic shadow magic, getting light power in itself to be a weapon was easier said than done. There was a reason that all light-based attack strategies revolved around a weapon pre-imbued with said light energy, and that reason was that light magic was stubbornly purist and profoundly refused to be shaped into a projectile laser. The next best thing was blessing a sheave of arrows with the stuff and firing away.
Of course, there was also the small issue where light magic really liked to be hereditary, and the only known family with light magic in their bloodline was the royal one. Not to say that light magic couldn’t be learned, because it could. Light magic was a practice just like everything else, but it did happen to be significantly easier to master if one was born with it. Among the eight energy types that magic could be organized into, light energy was by far the most difficult to master. As a result, ninety-eight percent of sorcerers said “Screw this” and went on to specialize in something a lot more manageable, like fire-based magic.
Long story short, this meant that if Princess Zelda in some way or form was not around to help a Hero out, there was almost literally nobody else who could cast light magic.
It was a very irritating problem
“I guess it’s a good thing that Fi is already imbued with the stuff,” Gen sighed. “Does anybody else know if their weapon comes pre-blessed?”
There was a moment where everyone unsheathed their swords and examined them with frowns and contemplative poking.
“...We think our specific blessings are aimed at other benefits,” the Four said at length, and gestured to… themselves. To be fair, it was a pretty noticeable blessing. Identical quadruplets, no matter what anybody said, were a rare sight under even the most normal of circumstances. The synchronicity just made the preternatural aspect of it even more obvious.
“So it’s literally just the Master Sword then,” Gen summarized. “And all the other people with a Master Sword are in the other group.”
“This probably could have been planned better,” Blue noted bluntly.
“We were in a rush !” Gen pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Okay, altering the plan. I have the most effective weapon, so I’m in charge of Damage. Realm looks like he’s going great with Distraction, so he can keep doing that.”
“Also, I don’t think we could flag him down to tell him a new plan if we tried,” Vio noted, watching as Realm blurred across the battlefield in the opposite direction from before, now trailing an entire flock of Keese behind him that he’d apparently picked up from… somewhere. Following closely behind the Keese was Ganon’s trident, once again on fire and leaving an alarming amount of residual lightning in its wake, and bringing up the rear was Ganon himself, lurching heavily across the ground due to the sword holes in both feet and covered in… stone dust?
“...Also it looks like he sidetracked through a cave at some point when we weren’t looking and dragged Ganon along for the ride? Even though he really shouldn’t have been able to do that, because there’s no caves around this part of Hyrule.”
“That surprises me less than it should,” Gen groaned. “And somehow that part that’s more surprising is that he managed to find his way back here within five minutes. Regardless, he’s doing a great job and I’m just gonna let him keep doing it.”
“THANK YOU!” Realm hollered as he blew past once again, having apparently caught just enough of the conversation in passing. Everyone ducked as the confused Keese flock flapped past in pursuit, then scrambled out of the way in a panic as the trident boomeranged through and Ganon followed close behind. They reconvened behind a larger, more secure piece of rubble than the last chunk had been.
“Everyone who’s not Realm or me, play tennis,” Gen said, resuming his outline of the new plan. “We’re both gonna be too busy to dodge forever, and if Fi says untyped energy is deflectable then that’s exactly what will happen. We’re gonna take this guy down one way or another. Clear?”
Blue saluted him. Everyone else nodded. Then Gen, not being one for unnecessarily flashy declarations the way Lore was, unsheathed his Master Sword without another word and sprinted off after Ganon, presumably with the intent to stab him in whatever location presented itself.
“...Alright,” Vio said, taking over the conversation since the Link in charge had left. “Who here has a good forehand?”
The Four collectively raised their hands.
“Perfect, you’re on point.”
“Can I ask,” Lore said conversationally, in blatant disregard for the atmosphere, “exactly which part of ‘Pudgy Bat’ are you taking offense to?”
“ALL OF IT,” Vaati bellowed. He was not pudgy, nor was he a bat! It was completely inaccurate! He launched a few tornados in his irritation, all except one of which got immediately dissolved. The one remaining twister was so pathetically impotent that it only managed to ruffle everyone’s hair. Vaati compensated for this by launching shadow magic projectiles at everyone instead.
Lore ducked, Wind sidestepped, and everyone else threw themselves into rolls, which had the convenient side effect of putting all six of the Hookshot-wielding Links into the perfect starting stances to fire said Hookshots. It took approximately two-point-seven seconds for them all to realize this, and about three more seconds after that to capitalize on it.
Magic though Vaati was, he still needed workings wings to stay in the air just like the rest of the normal, physics-obeying people. When he tried to counter this with a personal tornado between him and the ground, Wind twisted the vortex into reverse and turned it into a suction instead, and Vaati once again hit the ground hard enough to make it shake.
Lore darted in and promptly planted his weapon in Vaati’s eyeball, then backpedaled as Wind dropped a hailstone the size of a small dog on Vaati’s back. With Vaati firmly pinned, Lore darted back in to deliver more sword strikes, and a couple of the Hookshot Links shot forwards to lend their weapons to the assault.
Everyone else chose to stay at their designated stations and throw bombs from a distance. Multiple Links were actively carrying several dozen explosives, even with taking into account all the bombs that had already been tossed.
Vaati may have been a demonic sorcerer, with powers most people might consider unnatural and an unusual resemblance to a fuzzy nocturnal mammal (no matter how much he denied it). But there were some things in life that simply outranked him, and absurd quantities of TNT were one of those things.
(For the interested, the other things were Demise, Majora, the very-recently added Wind (not that Vaati was acknowledging that), and one really stubborn owl that just couldn’t seem to take the hint that Vaati was, in fact, not a bat. The fact that Vaati was also far too large for this owl to eat in one sitting hadn’t seemed to occur to the creature either. To his dying day Vaati would deny being frightened of one small (in comparison to him, anyway) bird, but it wouldn’t stop swooping at his head and it had really sharp talons. There was a reason Vaati made his palace on top of a mountain above the flight path of owls.)
The bombs, combined with the swords and the hailstone and everything else that had hit him in the fight previously, cracked the last notion of defense Vaati had. Dark wisping magic began leaking from Vaati’s eye, which was also coincidentally where all his stab wound were. Then again, maybe it wasn’t that much of a coincidence. Lore’s long-range aim may have been crap, but his hand-eye coordination was anything but and he’d hit his target every time he’d swung his weapon. What this added up to, effectively, was Vaati letting out a shriek of pure, incandescent rage before dissolving into a mass of roiling shadows, which hung for a moment before coalescing into a tiny flicker of black. The flicker then darted away, streaming straight towards the mountain in the distance and the still-growing black void at the peak.
“...We’re going to have to climb that again, aren’t we,” Green said flatly.
“At least we’ll have a pretty view once we get there,” Red offered brightly.
“...Red, I am trying so hard to be cheerful for you right now, but I’m literally about to pass out at the thought of more physical exertion. Please point your optimism at someone else.”
“Okay!” Red chirped, accepting this reasoning effortlessly and promptly turning his sunshine smile onto Sketch instead.
“That was a lot easier than Demise,” Steam said slowly. “Like, nobody had a near-death experience that time. Is that good?”
“Well, I can say for sure that it means Demise is on a whole other level,” Dusk decided. “Granted, I have no reference for what he might have been like before the Universe broke and he absorbed all our villains. I’m glad we can take out his smaller pieces at least, but…”
“He’s the deep end and we got thrown back to the shallow part of the pond,” Wind concluded.
“I’m not so sure that could be qualified as the shallow part,” Sketch said dryly, pushing up his sleeves to show off his new collection of magic-induced bruises. It was important to note that they were the magic kind, because the magic kind showed up immediately darkened to the most painful colors, and then stayed that way for far longer than anyone wanted them to. His skin looked a lot like the paint he sometimes turned into. Seeing that, everyone else suddenly became aware of their own collections of minor injuries, which were actually somewhat bordering on being major injuries due to how many of them there were.
“...Okay, maybe this is the part in the pond where we stand on our tiptoes,” Wind revised, pulling down the neckline of his tunic to grimace at his collarbone. “Anyone got a Health Potion?”
“I donated all mine during the Demise fight,” Dusk murmured, a sentiment that was quickly echoed by everyone else.
“Same, that’s why I was asking,” Wind sighed. “Maybe someone in the Ganon group still has a bit?”
“Actually, where is the Ganon group?” Ocarina wondered. Possibly because of the amount of wind being thrown around, the battle with Vaati had ended up well outside the borders of the previously-standing Castle Town, which meant that all the Links that had been fighting him were now just sort of standing around in the middle of nowhere. It also meant that they’d lost track of the other half of their squad a long time ago.
“Well,” Lore said. “Taking into account the wind speed, the location of the sun, the number of active cicadas, and the fact that something just set that distant tree on fire,” he pointed towards said distant tree, which was indeed newly ablaze, “I think they might be that way.”
Mask squinted at the tree, then at Lore. “Why didn’t you just point out the tree in the first place…?”
“There’s a very good reason for that,” Lore said, then winked, and walked off in the direction of the tree without another word.
“...I don’t know why I was expecting anything else,” Mask said blankly, resigning himself to following.
There was one major problem with having Realm be the bait, and that was because Realm just never seemed to stop . For Realm, of course, this wasn’t a huge issue, and for Ganon, who had apparently left his human endurance behind along with his humanity and was still chasing Realm, it didn’t seem to be much of a problem either.
For Gen, however, who was doing his darnedest to catch up, it was exhausting . The one bright spot he had right now was that the lost Keese flock Realm had picked up from who-knew-where had lost interest and fluttered off to sleep in the ruins of the town until the moon came up, and he was perfectly fine with that development. It gave him the time to concentrate and get his breathing under control before throwing his head down and sprinting as hard as he could.
If there was one thing Gen could do well, it was run. Not for any extended amount of time, really, but he was a fantastic burst runner. If Realm was the machine that never stopped, Gen was the cheetah who could outrun the machine for about twenty seconds before dropping flat from exhaustion.
But really, if he used those twenty seconds of flat-out sprinting to actually get somewhere, then it all worked out, didn’t it?
For Ganon, it was a rather unexpected development. One moment, there was nobody behind him, and the next there was a second Hero, moving so quickly that he passed Ganon entirely. Then, gasping with every movement, the new arrival twisted himself around, drew his sword in one quick snap, and made a torso-wide strike across Ganon’s entire abdomen.
This, understandably, brought Ganon to a resounding halt.
“...I’m going to kill you for that, you know,” Ganon said conversationally. The Hero, having apparently spent all his energy in just catching up, made a faint wheezing noise.
“Raincheck,” he rasped, and then all but fell over trying to get his breath back.
“I’m evil,” Ganon emphasized. “What makes you think I’m going to honor it?”
“We’re going-” wheeze “-to make you.”
This was a very disputable claim, and Ganon fully intended to do so, but quite suddenly Realm came careening through the conversation, having apparently never stopped running. He’d also apparently noticed the situation and decided to do something about it, because he used the force of his momentum to literally run Ganon over.
Ganon slowly picked himself back up, straightened his armor, and calmly informed Gen, “Raincheck,” and launched his trident - once again on fire - directly at the fleeing Realm’s head.
Gen dragged in a breath that was just big enough to let him screech, “REALM, DOWN!” just in time for Realm to jerk out of the way and for the trident to hit a nearby tree instead, which immediately went up in flames. Gen used the distraction to get out of Ganon’s line of sight. Ganon himself, meanwhile, roared in frustration, spawned enough magic spheres that they were actually uncountable, and threw them all after Realm, who had somewhat wisely still not stopped running.
This was about when the rest of the Ganon group put their ‘tennis’ designation into practice. Speck, not being very physically built, returned one sphere, though not for lack of trying. All the others just went over his head. Vio returned three, while Blue returned four. There was in no way an unspoken competition between the two of them to see who could volley the most. Absolutely not. What a completely ridiculous notion.
(Blue totally reserved bragging rights, though.)
The Four, however, managed to return a whopping thirteen spheres. While theoretically each individual member had only swung four times, their inherent clustering meant that they automatically covered a larger surface area and as a result, a larger number of incoming projectiles.
And of course, none of it would have worked nearly as well as it did if Ganon hadn’t made every single one of the spheres in his attack out of untyped magic energy. As Fi had said, untyped magic was the easiest kind to reflect, on account of it having no inherent trait to interfere with the surrounding area. Fire magic, for example, was really hard to bounce back, because it was more likely to just burn a hole straight through whatever was being used to deflect it. Untyped magic came with no such issues.
As such, Ganon received a face-full of his own magic, right at the same time that Gen finally got his breath back and used the opportunity to plant his Master Sword straight through Ganon’s armor.
Fi had previously stated that she was imbued with light magic. She had also previously stated that Ganon was weak to light magic. Ganon had previously taken damage from several stab wounds, and a whole lot of volleyed magic. And Ganon now had Fi’s host body buried up to the hilt in his ribcage.
He could take a lot of hits, but not quite that many. With a furious bellow, Ganon dissolved into clouds of black, then condensed into a small tendril of utter darkness, and shot off back towards the mountain everyone had just climbed down not two hours ago.
“...huh,” Gen said, watching it go before sitting down heavily.
“I think that went pretty well, all things considered,” Realm contributed.
“You have five different burn scars that I can see on your legs alone,” Vio told him.
“Well, yes, but they’re all pretty mild.”
“How many do you have where I can’t see?”
“Erm,” Realm said. “A few more… like, ten or so…”
Vio narrowed his eyes pointedly. “After a certain point, the quantity becomes more of an issue than the severity.” Then he raised his voice, “And that goes for everyone!”
“Who’s injured?” Gen asked, looking up from where he sat on the ground.
“It’s just mild burns and a couple blunt-magic-impacts,” Realm assured.
“Are bruises supposed to be this dark so soon?” the Four asked, pulling their tunic hems away from their collective right shoulders.
It was almost like watching a landslide in slow motion. The Links could see the building outburst, rising closer and closer to Gen’s tolerance point until the whole thing spilled over in a spectacular display of mother-henning. At some point, it had registered in Gen’s brain that, with the exception of Dusk (and maybe Lore, depending on how old he was because Gen couldn’t actually tell), he was the oldest Link in the group. And while Gen was an only child, this did nothing to the fact that he had a very healthy set of older-brother instincts.
Basically, his subconscious had just finished absorbing the entire group into the Protect portion of his personality and Gen was running full force with it. He had a bottle of Red Potion in his hand in ten seconds flat.
Or rather, he would have had a bottle of Red Potion, if the bottle hadn’t been empty due to the fact that all his stock had gotten used up on Demise.
He processed this new development for a second, then asked, “Does anyone have a Potion on them?”
Nobody did; either they hadn’t been carrying one in the first place, or the Demise fight had used it all up. Gen was not pleased with this.
“We just threw ourselves into a boss battle - a damaging boss battle - without any healing items,” he said slowly. “Unacceptable. We’re meeting up with the rest of the guys, taking a tally of all the injuries, and then I’m going shopping. This crap is not happening again, not on my watch.”
With that, he stormed off, irritated enough that there might actually have been a rumbling raincloud above his head. Everyone else stared after him.
“What just happened?” Speck asked.
“I think Gen just appointed himself to be the group medic,” Vio answered.
“...Huh.”
It took a few minutes to find everyone again, and much to each group’s dismay, the other was just as roughed up as they were. If possible, the figmentary mother-hen image that Gen was producing puffed up even more, and he immediately dragged the entire gaggle of Links through the rubble of the town to where the Item Shop merchant was emerging from the chaos and pulling his stock back together.
“Hello,” Gen said, and slammed a ludicrous amount of Rupees down on the somewhat cracked piece of drywall that was now functioning as the countertop. “I am buying your entire stock of Red Potion with the highest energy boost possible. I don’t care how much it will cost.”
The merchant looked at the Rupee pile, then up at Gen’s face, and turned a distinctly paler shade than what his natural skin tone was at the expression he found there. Unbeknownst to Gen, there was a local suburban cryptid legend in the form of a sleep-deprived, cranky, and uncaring-about-the-cost customer, who was rumored to show up in Potion Shops at odd business hours and order the largest and most potent brew in the store regardless of whether the item was theoretically available to the public or not. The owner of the Milk Bar, who the Item Shopkeeper happened to be very good friends with, told a horror story about the customer who came in, ordered Premium Milk, then filled an entire gallon bucket with the stuff and proceeded to spike the milk with sixteen shots of Green Potion and a terrifying twenty of Red. (“I have never ,” the Shopkeeper’s friend said, trembling, “ never in my life seen someone so sleep-deprived and calcium-tolerant. That wasn’t a customer - that was a demon.”)
Faced with the appearance of this sleep-deprived customer demon in his own Shop - disregarding the rubble his Shop was currently - the merchant did the only thing he could.
“Y-yes, sir,” he said, and was proud that his voice only shook a little bit. He shuffled away to retrieve the Potions who’s containers had miraculously survived the damage, and as he did, the demon customer behind him said, “Bottles, guys. Now.”
By Nayru’s Name, the demon had accomplices.
It took a bit of rearranging, but Gen somehow managed to both requisition and fit the Empty Bottles of the entire group into his own Bag. How he was fitting them all and still leaving room for everything else he was carrying was a mystery, but given that Gen was blowing through the normal workings of physics with the determination of a man on a mission, the Links thought it best not to question it.
Gen was also now basically broke, but as he watched his counterparts drink their Potion (under his eagle-eyed gaze, which was so intimidating that nobody even thought of trying to get out of it) he considered the disappearing burns and bruises to be well worth it.
“Going into this right after Demise, what were we thinking,” he grumbled, stalking around and making sure everyone drank the whole thing.
Zelda showed up right as Gen finished putting the Bottles away in his Bag again, and while she wasn’t necessarily pleased about the level of destruction that her country was now in, she eventually decided the benefits outweighed the costs.
“It’s a shame about the historic architecture,” she sighed, “but we needed to rebuild anyway. And I’m really just relieved Vaati is gone.”
Red promptly gave her a hug. Kidnapping was just one of those traumatic experiences.
“Anyways,” she continued, “has there been any progress on that void on the mountain?”
“We… found the source?” Vio offered.
“The source kinda kicked our butts though,” Blue muttered.
“We’re working on it,” Green assured her. “It’s just… a bigger issue than we thought.”
Zelda eyed her local Heroes, then the cluster of extremely similar Heroes behind them. “...Multiverse theory?” she asked.
“More like a timeline theory, but close enough,” Vio told her. “Long story short, our Hyrule isn’t the only one having this problem. It’s turning into a universal thing, and to fix one we gotta fix them all.”
“And the more Links on the problem, the better,” Zelda finished, and then grinned at the stupefied faces she received. “Oh really, you thought I wouldn’t pick up on that? If I didn’t know better I’d say the Four Sword glitched. It’s uncanny how alike you all are.”
“Oh, I like her,” Lore announced.
“But back to the void problem,” Zelda continued. “The one on the mountain is still there, and very quickly becoming larger. We’re actively losing the mountaintop.”
“ Farore ,” Green muttered. “I was kinda hoping that beating up these people would solve that problem.”
“Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case,” Zelda sighed. “I’m not sure why that would have been the case, though?”
Blue cleared his throat. “Okay, so it turns out that there’s this literal god of destruction trying to destroy reality and he’s the reason the holes are here because he absorbed all of Hyrule’s villains for a power boost but didn’t bother patching reality behind them. It kinda seemed like since the villains showed up again that beating them might fix the issue, but that turned out to not be true because the hole is still here, so the destruction god is probably still behind it all and that means we gotta go beat him up too.”
“...Oh dear,” Zelda said, hearing the words ‘god of destruction’ and becoming appropriately concerned.
“Right!” Lore broke in. “So, we’re gonna take a nap, because we’ve just had one near-death experience and then a whole lot of running afterwards, and then we’re gonna get on this issue, because if we don’t then there won’t be any places to take more naps.”
Zelda stared at him. “...I shall pretend that I understand your reasoning,” she said slowly. “But I do agree that rest is important and you did just take down both Vaati and Ganon at once. You’re all welcome here for as long as you need to stay.” She smoothed down her dress, set her shoulders, and continued, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to start overseeing the rebuild process,” and swept off, somehow managing to look graceful even as she clambered over a rubble pile the size of herself.
“...We can’t rest here,” Dusk said, watching her go. More specifically, watching her pick her way through the utter destruction of former buildings. “It’s a mess.”
“The void is on the mountain,” Gen agreed. “And the void is our ride, from what you’ve all told me. It seems like a good idea to head there, then rest, so we can pick up where we left off once we’re done.”
Lore squinted at the two of them. “...Am I still the LiT?”
“Yes,” Dusk said instantly, while Gen frowned.
“Was there any reason why you wouldn’t be…?”
Lore squinted some more, then counted on his fingers a couple times. Slowly, he grinned.
“Ooh, I see what’s happening. Looks like I get to be a LiTT!”
“Where did the extra ‘T’ come from?”
“Like you don’t know,” Lore said, flapping an errant hand. Then he declared, “To the mountaintop!” and marched off.
Gen blinked for a moment, then said, “So, it seems to me that you know how to reign him in.”
Dusk shrugged. “Not really? Mostly I just let him do his thing, and then occasionally remind him when he needs to put his empathy back in charge.”
“But he listens to you,” Gen emphasized. “He doesn’t do that with any of the other Links. I need to you teach me.”
Dusk raised an eyebrow at him.
“Look, for some reason, you all put him in charge,” Gen said. “I’m not gonna question it, because I’m the new guy, and I’m sure there was good reasoning at the time-”
“Not especially, he just wanted to be in charge and nobody else was interested.”
“...That doesn’t help, but okay. Look, he’s the kind of person that needs an anchor, and if you’re not doing it…?”
“You’re volunteering,” Dusk realized.
“ Someone has to.”
“And you think Lore listens to me.”
“I don’t know why you haven’t realized, but yes. You teach me how to anchor him, and I’ll… I dunno, take over whatever leadership position you’re holding since you clearly don’t like it.”
“I’m not in a leadership position,” Dusk said. Gen paused.
“What, really?”
“Really,” Dusk said firmly.
“Huh. Could’ve fooled me,” Gen muttered. “Alright, teach me how to anchor Lore and I’ll co-leader with him so you won’t have to. Deal?”
“I’m really not sure what I’ll be teaching you,” Dusk said doubtfully, “but sure. Deal.”
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Gen said, shaking Dusk’s hand. “Now, we should probably go catch up with Lore before he does something problematic.”
“You’re learning already,” Dusk joked.
Unfortunately, climbing up mountains takes much longer than sprinting down them, and by the time the group made it back to the top, the sun was going down. Also, Red Potions were not energy potions, and did approximately nothing to the level of stamina that everyone did not have after going through Demise, the hike down, Vaati, Ganon, and then the hike back up.
The end result was that everybody was really tired once they finally got to their destination, and since there was really nothing stopping them from crashing right then and there, that was exactly what they did.
There was just the matter of the unexpected visitor in the gray hours before the sun rose, who planted his foot on Blue’s stomach and bellowed, “RISE AND SHINE, IDIOTS!” at the top of his lungs.
An exact copy of Green and his crew stood smirking at them, ash-gray skin contrasting with black clothes and even blacker hair. Bright red eyes glowed through the gloom of pre-dawn lightning with an intensity that made everyone feel like a target despite the fact that the newcomer was only about four-foot-one.
“S’up, losers?” Shadow Link chuckled.
Notes:
Linguistic Translations:
Holodese
-N’pmm, ns’nu! (Boom, baby!)
I... meant for this to be a shorter chapter than it turned out to be. Whoops.
In other news, for some reason, I kept forgetting that I’d swapped Steam for Gen. I think I got all the mistakes, but if anybody found a discrepancy, please do let me know.
A quick note on how the voids now work: They exist constantly. Demise yanked his Incarnations out of spacetime where they were supposed to be, but never put them back. When the villains appear now, it’s as (albeit unwilling) extensions of Demise’s will. They’re still attached to their Master, and as such have not been ‘put back’ per se, in their proper place in the Universe. Thus, the holes are still there, and in fact are actively getting worse because now not only is their missing piece still missing, but the missing piece is now gallivanting around where it should not be and pushing all the rest of reality out of the way to make room. Beating up the villains slows the problem down, but doesn’t fix it. Demise is still the source and still the endgame to solve the issue.
Does that make sense? No idea. But it seems to work pretty well as a plot device, so I’m gonna keep it.
(Also, any guesses as to what the LiTT stands for? Hint: one of the T’s stands for triad. Lore knows what’s up, even if his co-leaders might take thirty more chapters to figure it out.)
Thanks to Guest #107, Icereamrulz, Guest #108, Guest #109, Guest #110, and Guest #111 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 22: The One Who - Wait, Does He Even Count?
Summary:
May I introduce the Hero of... actually, does he even have a title?
Notes:
(So apparently, I understand just enough of quantum theory to realize that I understand absolutely nothing about quantum theory, which makes me the perfect candidate to be messed with by the Universe.)
To be fair, you never were all that good at math.
(Look, I can’t exactly help the fact that anything past Advanced Algebra doesn’t make sense to me.)
And that’s why you’re perfect. Now, shall we?
(Yeah, let’s get this compromise rolling.)
Changeling does not own the Legend of Zelda. This is for a multitude of reasons, but a more prominent one is that the idea of being in charge of a multi-million dollar franchise is an inherently terrifying amount of responsibility.
(This feels like a very one-sided compromise.)
Nonsense. You need a disclaimer, and I want a scapegoat to mock for all of humanity’s flaws. It works out splendidly.
(...Right. Thanks?)
Oh, it’s my pleasure.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There was a niggling sense of ‘Huh’ in the back of Farore’s mind that had been there for a solid hour, and by this point it was becoming distracting enough that she was having trouble concentrating on the issue at hand, this being the transition of Great Deku Trees. It took several more minutes before she actually acknowledged it. When she almost misplaced the species marker as Great Fairy instead instead of Great Deku, that was when Farore let out a frustrated huff and legitimately turned her attention to whatever was so important that her Sphere of Influence was poking her about it.
Then she paused, and stared for a long, long time.
“...Huh,” she said. “That’s… not necessarily supposed to be there.”
“What?” Din asked.
“You remember all those times that I swore something was pulling on Courage’s element, and how I thought I had two Aspects in one moment and may or may not have panicked over conflicting signals?”
“Yes…” Din said slowly.
“So it turns out,” Farore explained, somewhat bewilderedly, “that I wasn’t crazy. Courage has a dark-magic duplicate.” She pointed through the reality window, where a spot of black stood out in an otherwise solid green patch.
“...Huh,” Din said. There was really nothing else to say about that sort of thing. “Where did that come from?”
“I don’t actually know,” Farore admitted. She screwed her face up in fierce concentration, then blinked several times. “ Oh. It’s - He’s - mine. He’s Courage , just… darker. Oh .”
Din evaluated her sister’s face for approximately two seconds before darting off to get Nayru.
“Oh my Me, he’s a baby Courage ,” Farore cooed, and practically melted on the spot. “Oh, look at him! He’s so new! Oh, he must have just gained a conscience! I get to have a baby , this is so exciting!” She did her happy dance for a few moments, then paused as a new thought struck her. “Oh, where’s he been? He was that conflicting Courage signal all those times, he must have been, but he wasn’t nearly so bright as he is now…”
Several more new thoughts were occurring to Farore now, and none of them were very happy. “Oh, sweetheart,” Farore said softly, rifling through the new connection that her newest Aspect was establishing with her. “Oh, baby. Oh, I should have noticed you sooner. I’m a terrible Patron goddess…”
“What’s going on?” Nayru asked, inadvertently announcing her presence as she and Din rejoined their sister.
“I have a baby Courage!” Farore exclaimed, whirling to face her siblings. Then she drooped and said, “But… he might not be strong enough to stay.”
“Why not?”
“Demise crafted him,” Farore confided miserably. “Or at least, one of Demise’s Hatred Incarnations did. He’s been put together and then torn apart so many times, over so many eras, and he’s never had the chance to think for himself before. He’s always been under someone else’s control, doing someone else’s will; the darkest reflection of the Hero, designed solely to kill the very person giving him form in the first place.”
“Oh, poor baby,” Nayru breathed. The three goddesses were of very similar minds when it came to their Attributes.
“He’s been trying so hard to break free for so long,” Farore continued. “And then when Demise reabsorbed his Incarnations, Courage had his chance. He’s been hiding in dark places ever since.” The goddess worried at her lower lip. “He’s been exposed to shadow magic for so long, even with his new conscience he’s balancing on the edge. He could go either way, at any time. I could lose him.”
“What a time for this to be a problem,” Din muttered, moving forward to comfort her sister. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about already…”
“He’s just a baby,” Farore emphasized, just in case she hadn’t made that part clear already with her crooning and continued use of endearments. (Farore tended to love very, very quickly. It was impossible to have life without love, after all, though it did get Farore into trouble occasionally when she loved an invasive fern species too much to eradicate it to make room for the equally-loved native fern species. “They’re just trying to live!” She’d sobbed over the growing seed spores of the invasive fern. She’d had a bit of a rough time that day.)
“Alright then,” Din replied, “what are you going to do about it?”
“I,” Farore declared, “am going to love him to pieces.”
“Okay, and what are you going to do about it that doesn’t violate the Interference Laws?”
Farore had to concede the point there. “I’m going to use all the other Courage Aspects to love my new baby to pieces in my place.”
“You’d best get started on that, then,” Nayru called. “Because it looks to me like the rest of Courage isn’t too happy to meet your newest kid.”
Farore flashed to the reality window, which was now displaying a green horde facing off against a solitary black dot. “Noooooo, they were doing so well!” She complained. “Eighteen Aspects without anybody trying to fight each other, but now I have a baby and they all hate him, because of course they do. It just wouldn’t be Courage if he was making things easy for me.”
“Also, Courage probably remembers your new Aspect from all those times he probably tried to kill them while under Demise’s Influence,” Din pointed out.
“Thank you for the reminder, now please stop talking so I can concentrate on keeping Courage from stabbing himself,” Farore requested.
Given the sheer amount of swords that were currently pointed at his heart - or at least, his torso area - Shadow looked remarkably unbothered by the hostility he was receiving. In fact, contrary to all the normal responses of a person in his situation, he widened his lazy grin and stepped forwards into the swords. Or at least, the ones immediately next to him. He also made a point to avoid any version of the Master Sword, not that it was particularly noticeable to anyone but himself. He was a dark magic duplicate, after all, and the last thing he wanted right now was to get discorporated via accidental proximity to a light-magic-imbued blade.
Overall though, he seemed largely unconcerned by the fact that he’d now impaled himself by doing this, and it definitely didn’t help the impression he was making on the rest of the Links. If anything, that made it worse.
“Now that we’ve established that you can’t really hurt me,” Shadow yawned, “can we talk?” He left out the bit about light magic and Master Swords. His enemies didn’t need to know his weaknesses (and quite honestly neither did his friends, if he’d had any. The list of people who knew Shadow’s weaknesses consisted of himself, and the unfortunate inclusions of any of the idiots who’d summoned or formed his body over the centuries. Still a fairly short list, though).
“Talk about what?” Blue asked, with a healthy amount of scathing disbelief. “The last time I saw you, you threw a bomb the size of a house at my head.”
Lore perked up. “Really? Are there blueprints?”
“Are you serious right now,” Gen snapped.
“Look, I’m just trying to keep my status as an Honorary Subrosian of Holodrum. I have to meet a certain amount of explosions for the month or else I’m not doing the country justice.”
“By Din’s Fire, you’re all idiots,” Shadow muttered to himself, which effectively cut off whatever Gen had been about to sputter in reply. “Also, don’t be such a pansy. If I’d actually been trying to hit you, you’d be a soot smear right now.”
Blue nodded calmly. “Green,” he said, “permission to strangle him?”
“No,” Green said.
“Please? ”
“You can’t commit casual murder, Blue,” Green sighed, sounding like he’d had this conversation before. “For one, I don’t think it’d work on him.” The fact that there were several swords still embedded in Shadow’s abdomen was a solid point in that argument. “Also, disregarding numerous other issues, it’s impolite.”
“Don’t be rude, Blue,” Red agreed.
“Yeah, pansy,” Shadow sneered. “Don’t be rude .”
Blue twitched. “ House. Sized. Bombs,” he repeated, with several wide and spastic gestures which vaguely communicated the belief that explosives that large were very rude indeed.
“Come off it,” Shadow snapped, irritated now. “We’re enemies, what else was I going to do with them?”
“Literally anything else.”
Gen cleared his throat loudly. “Can I get an explanation here?”
“Finally, one of you has sense,” Shadow said, regaining his grin. “Call me Shadow. I’m here to join the party.”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Blue shrieked, which was affirmed by all three of his immediate siblings and a couple other Links behind him as well.
“Okay,” Gen said slowly. “But can I ask why not? I’m genuinely not sure who this guy is.”
“Remember when we told our story?” Vio said. “And there was that dark version of us running around and causing all sorts of problems?”
“The magic clone working for Vaati?” Gen clarified.
“I prefer the term ‘dark reflection’,” Shadow informed him. Then he grinned as the realization set in and waggled his fingers tauntingly. “Hi there.”
“...Oh,” Gen said.
“Wait,” Ocarina said suddenly. “Dark reflection? Were you-?”
“The shadow copy in the lake under that one Temple?” Shadow finished. “Yep. That was me.”
“But,” Ocarina tilted his head, visibly confused. “That was a really long time ago…?”
“About five hundred years, give or take a decade,” Vio specified quickly.
Shadow snorted. “Do I look like I follow normal aging patterns?”
Given that he currently looked exactly like Vio, Blue, Green, and Red, and had previously looked exactly like Ocarina, and was also still impaled by at least six different weapons, the Links had to admit that Shadow had a point there.
“Hang on,” Mask said suddenly. “You tried to kill me.”
Shadow looked nostalgic. “Good times,” he sighed wistfully.
“I almost died,” Mask emphasized.
“It was traumatizing,” Ocarina added.
Shadow wobbled a hand back and forth. “Ehhhh… can’t have been that bad. You’re here, aren’t you?”
There was a moment of dumbfounded silence.
“I don’t like you,” Mask informed Shadow sourly. “At all.”
“Good thing I’m not here for your approval then,” Shadow said. “Like I said, I’m here to join the party.”
Wind put his hand up. “About that,” he began. “You don’t seem to like us very much? And have actively tried to kill several people here? So I’m kinda confused as to why you’re trying to tag along?”
Shadow shrugged dismissively. “ Eh, you’re the lesser annoyance. More or less.”
“Sooooo you hate us slightly less than somebody else,” Lore observed. “Lucky us. Hey, who’s the special someone who gets all your dislike?”
“That,” Shadow said, with a grin that wasn’t so much friendly as it was murderous, “is a rather long list, actually. And it just so happens that your little group here is gonna run into every single one of them if you keep flailing around like you’ve been, so I just thought I’d hitch a ride while you morons are in the area.” He paused, then added, “Thanks for taking care of my first target, by the way. Not that I needed it but…” He glared ferociously at the middle distance, which was rather unfair because the middle distance hadn’t done anything wrong. “I don’t do well with sunlight and fighting a weather mage seemed like a really good way to get myself painfully dissipated before I managed to get my revenge.”
“I really wouldn’t have called Vaati a ‘weather mage’ per se,” Wind said automatically. Then there was a short pause, as what he said actually registered to him and lodged in the minds of everyone else.
“Hold up, your grudge is against Vaati?” Vio exclaimed.
“Vaati… Ganon… some Ganondorfs... “ Shadow somehow managed to look bored as he listed off the extremely concerningly evil list of people he had a grudge against. “I was a… popular concept.”
“Wait, then…” Vio was beginning to look a little queasy. “How many times have you been summoned?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Shadow yawned, which was in blatant contradiction to the fact that his fists were clenched so tightly that the gray of his skin was going black with the force. “But I’m sick of it. I’m my own person, and if I have to murder every idiot from here until the end of time who thinks otherwise, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Everyone took a large step back, because Shadow was leaking an alarming amount of undirected malice. This had the added effect of removing the swords from the darker Link’s torso, since everyone was still holding their individual weapon and took it with them when they retreated. The holes left in Shadow’s abdomen immediately closed back up; somehow, so did the ones in his shirt.
“So,” Shadow said cheerfully, ignoring all this, “when do we leave?”
“...Can you excuse us, for just, one second real quick,” Gen requested, and then immediately dragged the entire eighteen-odd group of regular Links into a huddle about twenty feet away.
“No,” Blue said immediately. “Negative, absolutely not, I refuse.”
“Noted, but can I get a better reason than just ‘No’?” Gen said dryly.
“How about the five-plus times he’s tried to kill one of us?”
“About that,” Lore broke in. “I’ve been getting the impression that it may not have entirely been his choice to attempt fratricide.”
“...Fratricide,” Vio repeated doubtfully.
“He looks just like us, I doubt that’s a coincidence,” Lore said, in one of his few shining moments of sensible logic. “And we’re probably all related somehow anyway, ‘brother’ is just a lot less complicated than whatever it actually is - but that’s not my point here. Shadow has some epic authority issues, which is usually because the slave has no free will in doing the master’s bidding.”
There was a pause as everyone absorbed the implications of that.
“Great,” Blue grumbled. “Now I feel bad about wanting to strangle him.”
“He gets sympathy points for that, for sure,” Steam said. “But, uh, the impression I got was that Shadow was more angry at the fact that the attempted fratricide wasn’t his idea, rather than the actual violence itself. He seems like he enjoys… er, carnage.”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” Green sighed. “So then I guess the real question is, would he have still attacked us if he hadn’t been under someone else’s control?”
“He hasn’t attacked us yet,” Red pointed out. “And he’s been here for, like, ten whole minutes.”
“Which is about ten whole minutes longer than it usually took for him to throw a bomb at us,” Vio agreed. “That’s a fair point.”
From his position about twenty feet away, Shadow emitted an amused snort. Given that the rest of the Links had specifically retreated to where Shadow was supposed to be unable to hear them, this was a fairly unexpected response. The group silently and unanimously scooted an extra fifteen feet, just to be safe.
“...The way I see it,” Lore continued, picking up the discussion again, “is Shadow’s carrying enough of a grudge that any murderous tendencies he might have are more often going to be directed at our mutual enemies than us. Also, in the event that he does attack us, we outnumber him a dozen to one.”
“That didn’t seem to help much just now,” Ocarina pointed out. “Given that we sorta stabbed him a lot and I’m not really sure he noticed.”
“About that,” Speck piped up. “If there’s not actually a lot we can do to stop him, then is it really going to matter if we decide he can’t join? Because, I’m pretty sure that he’s coming regardless of whether we’re happy about it or not.”
Everyone thought about that for a moment. More than one Link came to the depressing conclusion that Speck was probably right.
“...So the actually real question here,” Realm said slowly, “is whether or not we’re going to willingly let Shadow come along, or put up with him when he does anyway?”
“Pretty much, yep,” Shadow said, suddenly right there in the group huddle. The Links collectively flinched. “What was the point of this little group conference, again?”
“Oh, we have a fluctuating majority-vote democracy,” Lore said. “We’re still working out the kinks, hence the huddle.”
“Do I get a vote?”
“You’re going on probation until otherwise noted.”
“You don’t trust me,” Shadow accused, grinning. “Smart.”
“Yeah, well,” Lore said. “Attempted fratricide, and all that.”
“Exactly,” Shadow replied. “It was ‘attempted’. Can we go now?”
“If we say ‘no’, are you going to acknowledge it at all?” Dusk asked.
“Not in the slightest.”
Dusk let out a heavy sigh. “Okay then. Rule One, the group is now off limits to murder, maiming, explosions, stabbing, beheading, and any other form of harm, physical or otherwise, that I’ve not just mentioned. Rule Two, no unsolicited murdering of people outside the group - if it’s a villain, or an idiot who’s literally asking for it, you have free game. Rule Three, please try not to cause any national incidents. Follow those, and you’ve got a deal.”
Shadow considered that. “...Define ‘unsolicited’.”
Dusk gave him a pointedly flat stare.
“Yes, yes, fine,” Shadow grumbled. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Blue muttered.
Shadow narrowed his eyes at what was basically his exact duplicate. “I really wish I hadn’t just agreed to not stab you…” He trailed off, and then eyed Blue up and down with an almost lethal intensity. “Hang on, is that what I look like right now?”
“You have a palette swap, but otherwise yes,” the Four said helpfully.
“... Eww,” Shadow declared, and wrinkled his nose up like he was smelling something bad. “You’re so short. How did I not realize how short you were when I mimicked you?”
“Uh,” Blue said.
“This is gonna have to change,” Shadow said decisively. His gaze began ranging over the rest of the group appraisingly. After a few seconds, he stopped on Dusk, contemplated something, and began to smile.
“You’ll do,” he said, nodding to himself. Then, quite abruptly, his body blurred into an unrecognizable mass of dark, which then shot up into a taller mass of dark where details carved themselves efficiently into the featureless cloud. Within ten seconds, Shadow completely reconfigured his entire physical form.
“Ooh, I like this one,” he said approvingly as the last few characteristics settled into place. He gave an experimental stretch, then grinned. “Yep, definitely keeping this.” Then he noticed the whole group staring at him and snapped, “What?”
“That’s… kind of terrifying,” Sketch said, because Shadow now looked exactly like Dusk, right down to the tiny flyaways of his hair. The grin on Shadow’s face was one that would look entirely unnatural on Dusk’s, which only made the similarities more disturbing.
Somehow though, Dusk seemed to be remarkably unbothered by it. He just gave Shadow a skeptical once-over, shrugged, and apparently accepted it just like that. No doubt, he’d probably seen stranger.
“Deal with it,” Shadow responded, giving Sketch a glare. “I’m not changing again.”
“Guys,” Lore broke in, “can we maybe try to stay civil for at least five minutes? Because we’ve still got a void problem to fix.” He marched pointedly towards the hole, tossing, “Come on then,” over his shoulder as he went.
Conveniently, the hole was now large enough to encompass the entire group passing through at once, rather than the single-file or pairs of before. Inconveniently, this also meant that when Shadow stretched out a leg and tripped Sketch, Sketch fell into Wind, who fell onto Gen, who stumbled into Green, landed on top of Vio, who got knocked over and landed on top of Blue's leg, which knocked Blue into the Four, and then the whole thing just fell apart from there.
Shadow, of course, was the only one to escape this fate, and did absolutely nothing to help the situation. He just snickered, and walked right on by.
“Alright, sound off,” Gen said, once they’d gotten the tangle sorted out and could actually take stock of their new surroundings. “Who recognizes the landscape?”
“I do,” Steam said, sounding a bit surprised by this fact. “This is my Hyrule.”
“Oh,” Wind said interestedly. He looked around clear curiosity. “So this is the land that Tetra and I will find eventually to make a new Hyrule on?”
“If you’re asking about coordinates, I have no idea where it is in relation to your ocean,” Steam sighed, having told everyone about the founding of his Hyrule during one of the several storytelling sessions. “You’re probably gonna have to find it the hard way.”
“Worth a shot,” Wind replied, shrugging. “Just so long as it’s still around to find in the end.”
“Right,” Steam winced. “On that point, why is it important that I recognize the landscape?”
“Probably because your native villain is loose again too, and you’d have the best idea of where to find him since he doesn’t seem to be causing any sort of convenient chaos for us to track him with,” Lore put in.
Steam winced again. “Oh yeah… Malladus is probably back.”
“He’s the Demon Train guy, right?” Speck clarified.
“That’s him,” Steam affirmed absently. He was giving his surroundings a thorough look-over now, actively kicking his brain into gear. They were back on the plains that Steam had left the remains of the Demon Train in so long ago, and there really wasn’t a whole lot in sight aside from the mountain range in the way far off distance and the ever-present void they’d just come out of. Steam let out an irritated huff. “Great,” he said. “We are literally miles away from any sort of targetable civilization.”
“Alright then,” Dusk said. “What’s the most likely objective for someone like Malladus to go after?”
Steam was silent for a moment, thinking. Then his eyes went wide.
“Well, crap,” he said. “He’s going to go after the Tower of Spirits again.”
Farore sagged into a newly-conjured chair and let out a breath of intense relief. “He’s going to be okay,” she murmured. “I think they’re all going to get along… eventually.”
“He’s still really dark though,” Din observed, with a hint of worry in her voice. “All that work and he’s still just barely balancing on the edge. Are you sure he’ll be worth it?”
“Yes,” Farore said immediately. “He’s going to be one of the brightest, one day, just you watch.”
“That’ll take a while,” Nayru muttered. “He’s far too intent on stabbing things to let himself be anything but dark right now.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing he’s surrounded by lighter influences,” Farore replied firmly. “But now that my new Courage is taken care of, we should really get back to what we were doing beforehand…?”
Din snapped her fingers. “Right,” she said. “I was working on the Dragon Roost problem.”
“And I was doing family lineage on Great Deku Trees,” Farore groaned. “Suddenly I wish this distraction had lasted a bit longer.”
“The more time we waste, the less chances we have of fitting everything together before it all falls apart,” Nayru reminded her sisters.
“We know,” Farore sighed. She fixed a reality window just to her immediate right, so that she could look over and keep an eye on Courage while she worked, and got back the the Great Deku Tree problem. Then she blinked.
“Whoops,” she muttered, and reached out to nudge the Great Fairy species marker to where it actually belonged. Apparently, she’d been distracted with her new baby enough that she had made that mistake after all, which would have been an interesting result for sure. Probably for the best that she caught it before the sequence hit the physical stage though.
After the disaster that was the original Tingle, Farore wouldn’t be taking any chances.
Demise may or may not have completely eroded away the realm outside of reality in a fifty-foot circumference around his person. By this, it can be understood that this is exactly what Demise did, but given that, at the time, he’d been in an epic rage and not in the mood to bother with his surroundings, he both hadn’t noticed and hadn’t cared until this exact moment.
In the interest of accuracy, Demise had now noticed, but still didn’t care. Then again, he rarely did.
But now that he’d finally calmed down… he realized something.
His head was empty.
This was, of course, reason to celebrate, and Demise was immediately put into a better mood by the sheer, glorious silence that was the absence of any thoughts but his own, but he didn’t quite remember how that had happened.
...No, wait - yes he did, he’d just been so angry at the time that he’d momentarily suppressed it.
Demise examined the decision-making of his past self and narrowed his eyes. It was not… the most elegant plan he’d ever come up with, but then again the plans he made in fury rarely were. By all rights, it was actually one of the more coherent plans he’d made while angry. He could feel the tethers connected to each of his Incarnations, and for all intents and purposes it seemed like they were all falling into line, irrelevant seething at their situations aside.
Now, along with his steadily-growing voids, he had personal agents in each time period to spread chaos in the meantime. How nice.
Yes, Demise could actually see how his previous, anger-fueled plans would be useful. Not to mention that his head was wonderfully still silent.
He could actually hear himself think again. Marvellous. He was going to get so much destruction done now that he had his full mental facilities back.
It took approximately twelve seconds for the Universe to prove him wrong.
They arrived with shouting, rage, and a rather lot of vehement cursing that was so fantastically creative that even Demise didn’t know what all of it meant. Demon Vaati and Hyrule Ganon came crashing back into his head with all the subtlety of the Demon Train and even less of the tact, which was really quite impressive given that the Demon Train was... well, inanimate.
There was a moment of startled, unbroken silence. Demise took the quick opportunity to bid an agonized farewell to his peace of mind.
And then Vaati started screaming at the top of his newly non-corporeal lungs, Ganon started shouting back at an even louder volume, something went THUD, BOOM, and FWOMP, in that order, and then the whole thing devolved into what, judging by the noise, was an all-out one-on-one brawl.
Demise almost - almost - cried right then and there.
He took a deep breath.
He let it out, very, very, slowly.
“Perfect timing,” he said, to nobody in particular and certainly not to the pair of scuffling villains in his head, “I was just about to begin some emotional therapy. Thank you so much for volunteering.”
Emotional therapy, Vaati and Ganon discovered about ten seconds later, was not so much meant to help them feel better, as it was to help Demise feel better by making everyone else feel worse. The only thing ‘therapeutic’ about it was the glee Demise seemed to exude while imagining his tenants into torture devices.
It was just not a good day on the Evil side of things.
Notes:
Baby Courage Shadow, because why not? Given his backstory and typical treatment by villains, I felt he needed a patron goddess to squeal over him and give spiritual cuddles. He’s a soft boi under all that prickly aggression.
...It’s just way deep down in there.
Thanks to AeryanneRF, Tumpadumpling, Guest #112, Guest #113, Guest #114, Guest #115, Guest #116, Z3r0n1us, Guest #117, Guest#118, 3am_updates, and Guest #119 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 23: He Likes Trains
Summary:
Malladus makes his entrance, but unfortunately is not quite as intimidating as his Train is.
Notes:
The Wattpad Mess in a nutshell:
9/17/19 - I was informed I had a copycat, attempted to join Wattpad to talk to them about it, and received a ridiculous amount of support from you guys in the meantime.
9/18/19 - I successfully got a Wattpad account, messaged the person, and while they never responded to me, DL has been removed from their page. I'm glad I didn't choose to flag them without talking first, even if the 'talk' was a bit one-sided on my end.
That said, I now have a Wattpad account. Maybe I should take advantage of this and upload my stuff over there too, just to be the 'original'?
And a MASSIVE thanks to Ganonymous, who tipped me off in the first place. Thank you for looking out for my stories in ways I didn't know I needed to be concerned about.
Alright, Universe. Do your thing.)
Changeling does not own The Legend of Zelda. The expertise required to create an entire video game is not something within the skillset of the average fanfiction writer, after all.
(True. I only just barely know the basics of HTML coding, which I'm also quite sure is not what's used for gaming systems.)
Well, you wouldn't know. It's not like you've ever checked.
(...Also true.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"Dangit," Steam muttered, as the Spirit Train once again materialized without any sort of passenger car to be seen. He'd really been focusing this time, too. The most irritating part of it all was that he knew he had a passenger attachment, because he'd used it. He just couldn't seem to make it answer the call in the same way he could make the engine do it.
And he really needed the passenger car.
The problem with the Tower of Spirits was that it was only accessible via the Spirit Tracks, and the only things allowed on the Spirit Tracks were Trains. Equally problematically, the only Train the Links had access to was the Spirit Train, and the only Link who had access to the Spirit Train was Steam. Therefore, to get to the Tower of Spirits, Steam had to summon the Spirit Train so they could ride the Spirit Tracks to get there in time to stop Malladus from doing… whatever it was that he would be doing.
Aaaand now Steam couldn't think about the word 'Spirit' without it sounding completely nonsensical. Great.
The point was, the Spirit Train without a passenger car could only fit about three people, if they were really squeezed together. It'd never particularly been a problem until now, because Steam had been riding alone with an incorporeal Zelda for all of his time piloting the Spirit Train before this, and she hadn't taken up a whole lot of room without a body. In contrast, everyone had a body right now, which made space a precious commodity, which meant that they needed the passenger car to fit everyone.
Which brought Steam right back to the original problem and his lack of ability to solve it, for some infuriating reason. He glared at the engine until it dissolved, then felt guilty about the glaring. This was a mess.
He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. "Okay," he whispered, and brought his hands up to either side of his head. "Focus."
The engine was going to show up no matter what, so he needed to think about what he wanted to come along with it. He fixed an image of the passenger car in his head: brown and blue, with gold-painted trim and a dark wooden roof. Then he imagined the attachment mechanism sliding into place against the engine with that well-oiled, quiet click. Wherever the engine went, the passenger car should follow.
"I like trains," Steam breathed, and then held that same breath as the Spirit Train shimmered back into existence in response…
...with the passenger car finally attached to it.
"Hah!" Steam crowed, and punched a fist into the air. "Nailed it!"
"Er… after how many tries?" Speck ventured.
"Shut up, those were practice and therefore don't count."
"Oh, okay," Speck agreed easily. "My bad, I mistook the practices for failures."
Steam peered at him suspiciously, because he couldn't quite tell if Speck was being sarcastic or not. Both the face and the tone seemed innocent enough, but that had been an extremely skeptical word choice.
"...What?" Speck asked blankly.
"Oh hey, do we have a ride now?" Lore said, effectively breaking up whatever conversation might have been happening. "Like, one that we're all actually going to fit into?"
"Oh my Din, yes," Steam snapped. "Now quit nagging me about it!"
His previous failed attempts had not gone unnoticed, much to his chagrin. It also didn't help that Shadow, newly included and happily antagonistic, had made increasingly mocking noises with each consecutive unsuccessful effort. Steam may or may not have been taking out his frustrations for this taunting on the first available target, regardless of whether or not this target was actually Shadow.
Luckily, Lore was one of those people who either didn't notice or didn't care. "I'll go get everyone else," he said. "Let's get this party started!"
Everyone else had broken off into little sub-groups to pass the time while Steam got his summons under control. Most of them were just doing things like inventory organization or valiantly trying to get to know Shadow better (it wasn't going very well, Shadow didn't see the point in spewing his whole life-story to a bunch of random idiots, in his words), but Sketch had roped Dusk and Wind back into the self-lighting lantern idea and was busy discussing materials with them. Steam felt vaguely left out of the discussion, since it had been his idea originally, but it wasn't like they were designing blueprints and it was definitely more important to get the Spirit Train in order. At Lore's call though, everyone looked up and crowded around the passenger car to inspect and file inside, but not necessarily in that order.
"Question," Realm said, giving the whole contraption a skeptical once-over. "This is… safe, right?"
"Why wouldn't it be?" Steam replied defensively.
"Well, every time I've seen it, it's crashing something."
Regrettably, Steam couldn't argue with that, mostly because it was true. Every time Realm would have seen the Spirit Train would have been as a direct result of Steam summoning it, and every summon before this had been performed with the express intent of smashing the Train headlong into something - er, someone.
"Okay, so you're not wrong," Steam admitted, "but that was just me pointing and shooting it. This time I'm actually gonna steer."
Realm tilted his head. "What, like… with directions? You actually know which way is north and all that?"
"Yes…" Steam said slowly. "Let me guess, you don't?"
"I mean, I know that 'north' is a thing," Realm hazarded. "But I have no idea which direction it's in."
Steam blinked at him for a moment, then visibly decided that he wasn't going to have this conversation right now. "Well, the point is that I know where I'm going and I can drive my Train with full competency, so it's absolutely safe. We're not going to crash while I'm driving. Okay?"
"Works for me," Realm said, climbing into the passenger car. His voice drifted back out, "Ooh, buttons!"
"Don't press any of them!" Steam immediately yelped, to the surrounding disappointment of the rest of the group.
"Then how am I supposed to steer?"
"..I steer," Steam said slowly.
"Oh, you did say that. Yeah, that makes more sense."
Gen clambered in behind Realm and surveyed the square footage skeptically. "Are we sure there's going to be enough room for all of us in here?"
"Welp, I'm out," Shadow announced. "I require a personal space bubble of at least twelve feet at all times. Who's got a free cast-shadow I can drop into?"
"I'm pretty sure mine is carpeted," Dusk offered.
This earned him the baffled stares that sort of statement deserved. "Your shadow," Sketch repeated extremely doubtfully, "is carpeted?"
"Probably," Dusk specified. "I'm renting it to Midna, remember? She went through a decorating phase during the first few weeks of our partnership and I distinctly remember her asking my opinion on black fringe versus slate-gray plush."
"...Huh," Sketch said.
"Question," Shadow interjected. "Exactly how irritated would this 'Midna' be if I camped in her house?"
Dusk paused. "...I did not actually think of that before suggesting it and I'm pretty sure she'd traumatize somebody. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to withdraw my offer."
Shadow tilted his head and squinted at Dusk for a long moment. Then he grinned, displaying a surprisingly sizeable set of fangs, and declared, "Nope, too late."
It was at that moment that Dusk came to the realization that Shadow had his foot planted directly on top of the silhouette Dusk was casting, and that if he'd wanted to stop Shadow from accessing it he was just a bit too late. Shadow dissolved into the darkness beneath him like water absorbing into the ground, and Dusk received the distinct chill-down-his-neck feeling of a piece of his soul being occupied.
There was a pause, where Dusk contemplated his possible responses.
"...If you break anything, I won't be making excuses for you," he told the ground. "If Midna kills you, it's your fault."
'Duly noted,' Shadow's voice muttered into his head. 'You were right, by the way. It is carpeted in here.' He sounded grudgingly surprised.
"Comfy?"
'...It'll do. By the way, you seem awfully unconcerned that I'm habitating inside your literal essence. This is basically possession, you know, most people would be freaking out.'
"You're not my first hosting," Dusk shrugged mildly. "Besides, if you try anything on me, Midna really will kill you. We have a standing agreement that the only one allowed to mess with my head is her."
'...You realize, that were I to mess with your head, you wouldn't be able to point this 'Midna' in my direction to aim her revenge?'
Dusk allowed himself a small but potently concerning smile. "Sure, you'd have instant gratification, but I get the feeling you're what the Twili would call an amateur. Midna, on the other hand… I'm pretty sure her people invented this sort of stuff. Do you really want to cross her knowing that?"
'Okay, where is your sense of self-preservation?'
"It's back in the Lakebed Temple. I lost it at about the same time I lost my mind. I do still have my sanity though, if that reassures you any."
'I wasn't concerned.'
"Of course you weren't," Dusk agreed easily. "Anyways, do we have an understanding?"
'...yeah, sure. Whatever.'
"Alright then, let me know when you want to come back out," Dusk said, then switched his attention back to the outside world and was met with everyone else staring at him. He raised a quizzical eyebrow and asked, "What?"
"I only heard your half of that conversation," Ocarina began slowly, "but did you just threaten Shadow into submission, successfully?"
"I'm not sure it was a threat," Dusk said thoughtfully. "More of a promise than anything. We did come to an agreement though, if that's what you mean."
"Teach me," Gen demanded. Dusk frowned thoughtfully.
"I mean, I can put it on the list…?"
"Yes please."
"Can we go now?" Steam interrupted pointedly. "Runaway villain, and all that?"
This was an excellent point, and also doubled as excellent incentive for the group to finish piling into the passenger car. Conveniently enough, with Shadow otherwise habitated, there was exactly enough room for the rest of the Links as long as Steam stayed up in the engine room. That wasn't to say that they weren't all packed like sardines, because they were, but it was a tight fit as opposed to an overflowing fit.
Steam, meanwhile, let himself back into the engine room and just stood in it for a minute, relishing in the knowledge that he had his Train back. Sure, he'd aimed it at Demise a couple times, but he hadn't stood in the Spirit Train since his Hyrule's void had popped up weeks ago. There was just something about driving, cleaning, fighting from, maintaining, and saving the country in a specific vehicle that got Steam attached, every single time. As far as he was concerned, the Spirit Train was his, and he'd missed it.
...Don't judge him.
He would have gladly spent several more minutes basking in being reunited with his Train, had Gen not poked his head out the passenger car window and called, "Are we still in a hurry…?" Steam shook himself back into action.
"Make sure you hold onto something and you'll find out," he called back.
In most categories, the Spirit Train didn't appear to compare very favorably to most other locomotives. It was by far one of the smallest engines on the rails, and it somehow managed to be made primarily of wood despite actively needing fire to move. It wasn't very heavy, which meant it got pushed around a lot by other engines, and in comparison to the Demon Train specifically it was one of the most harmless-looking machines in the country.
The perks, however, was that the Spirit Train could out-maneuver literally every single engine that Steam had gone up against. Being lightweight and made of mostly wood meant that the Spirit Train could accelerate, brake, and steer in an uncontested quality, and had a top speed that made all the other engines look like they were standing still.
Put simply, when Steam threw his Train into high gear, the whole thing took off like an arrow from a recurve bow. This was also, coincidentally, why the Spirit Train came with the ability to spawn its own tracks. When one was moving this fast, there were some turns that just shouldn't be executed.
There was possibly some screaming coming from the passenger car, it was a bit hard to tell. Steam, though, just splayed his fingers on the controls and grinned maniacally.
This was the sort of thing that made the whole Royal Certification mess worth it.
Malladus was in a terrible mood, but not necessarily for the reasons that most might think. Specifically, it was occurring to him that he, perhaps, was outclassed.
By his Train.
His reasoning behind this thought was as follows: Upon finding himself free of Demise's head, and not being nearly as upset about the accompanying circumstances as a few certain others might be, Malladus had immediately taken off for the Tower of Spirits with the express intent of razing it to the ground. The rubble would be in pieces when he was done. And, given that the Demon Train was really only ever outpaced by one other engine, this meant that Malladus was putting this vow into practice within just a few short hours.
But, it only took him about twenty seconds after that to realize that he'd forgotten to snatch a host body, and there wasn't a whole lot that a spirit of disembodied evil could do to an established holy structure.
It was at this point that Malladus realized that the only method he had of delivering damage was to ram the Demon Train through the foundations of the Tower, which of course was exactly what he did. It worked fabulously, because even blessed buildings relied on things like load-bearing walls and stable infrastructure, but as Malladus was determinedly plowing through the next nearest wall, he had a sudden thought.
Even if he had remembered to possess a body, the Demon Train was currently doing more damage than he ever would have been able to manage. For all that Malladus could induce supernatural strength in his hosts, and channel his magic and so forth, he was always limited by the natural weakness of the body he was in. There was only so much strength he could push through weak hylian muscles before they shredded, for example, which wouldn't under any circumstances have been enough to bring down the Tower. Additionally, Malladus mostly relied on fire magic, and effective on stone it was not. Inconveniently, this was exactly what the Tower of Spirits happened to be made of, which was understandably irritating.
The Demon Train, on the other hand, had no such issues. Blunt force, when applied heavily enough, was effective on stone, and the Demon Train excelled at blunt force. And, to be fair, the laser cannons were pretty useful too.
Condensed into a succinct sentence, if it hadn't been for the slight issue that the Demon Train needed somebody to steer, Malladus would have been completely obsolete against the Tower.
And that, naturally, put him in a terrible mood. There was one thing that villains everywhere just couldn't stand, and that was being upstaged by their underlings. The Demon Train was only barely properly sentient, for evil's sake! How was Malladus supposed to feel about that?
So, he took out his terrible mood on the Tower. He had a lot of issues to work out, after all, and had a convenient target to boot. Besides, the more damage he did, the less issues he would have in keeping himself firmly anchored here. After all, if he blew up the proverbial lock on his metaphorical prison… well, surely that would put him in a better mood if nothing else had. His actual body was sealed under there somewhere, after all.
But in the meantime, he should maybe look into possessing inanimate objects. Come to think of it, the Demon Train was just an extension of his intent, which had the added effect of almost-but-not-quite free will. If Malladus turned his head sideways and squinted at the situation, the Demon Train could be mistaken for a sentient being. Sentient beings happened to be Malladus' possession specialty.
Also, Malladus realized, if he and the Demon Train became one and the same, then he wouldn't be outclassed by a machine anymore. And that was a thought motivating enough all by itself.
At least, until he broke the Tower seal and got his actual body back. Just watch the Demon Train outclass him then.
After Farore's senses had turned out to have a completely good reason (Shadow) for poking at her last time, all three goddesses were trying to pay more attention to anything that felt more urgent than mild concern.
Therefore, when Nayru's senses decided to bring up the small issue of 'hey, remember that one tower imprisoning that one demon over in the Trains Hyrule? Yeah, it's under attack,' Nayru promptly paused in her efforts to line up Hyrule with Hytopia and yanked over the nearest reality window instead.
"...Hey, Farore?" she said.
"Hmmm?"
"Can I get a Courage Check, real quick?"
Farore stared into the middle distance for a moment, then reported, "They're riding the Spirit Train heading towards the Spirit Tower, why?"
"Oh, good," Nayru sighed, immediately relaxing a little. "It turns out that the Tower's actively under assault right now, and if Courage wasn't already on it then I wanted to redirect them."
"...The Spirit Tower is under attack," Din repeated. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the thing containing that one demon from plaguing New Hyrule in that Flooded version, isn't it?"
"That's it, yes," Nayru said. "Also, it's technically a seal. Hence why the holy redirects through me, sealing is one of my magic specialties."
"Okay, fine, it's a seal," Din relented. "But, isn't that the thing keeping the demon's physical body trapped? I feel like that fact that it's about to crumble to pieces deserves more panic than you're giving it."
Nayru shrugged. "Like I said, I'm responsible for the holy. Now that I'm actually paying attention, I can keep it standing until Courage gets close enough to do something about it."
Farore coughed, which somehow managed to sound a lot like, "Load-bearing walls."
"I can keep it standing within reason," Nayru edited. "Physics and gravity are still things, after all."
"How about I give Courage a little nudge, just to be sure," Farore said.
"I'm sure the architecture would appreciate it."
Demise had been indulging himself in 'emotional therapy' for a solid sixteen hours and was only feeling slightly better about the whole situation. Eventually though, even he had to admit that his head-prisoners would be more useful if they stopped screaming long enough to fill him in on the reasons for their failure.
...Whether or not he was going to need additional 'emotional therapy' afterwards was another thing entirely, but Demise shelved that thought for later. If he needed a pick-me-up, he'd consider it.
The one good thing about villains was that they were, to the very last, exceptionally good at tanking damage. There was also an astoundingly common ability to let their rage carry them through what otherwise would have been life-ending injuries. And of course, everything in Demise's head had at best a tenuous relationship with reality, which meant that once Demise stopped imagining pain and torture, Vaati and Ganon went back to being 'physically' unblemished. (Mentally, of course, was another story, but villains weren't the most psychologically stable people in the first place, so the pain and torture affected them somewhat less than it would average people.)
"Report," Demise demanded.
This idiot didn't bother looking where he threw his tornadoes! Hyrule Ganon accused at the top of his nonexistent lungs. I had to waste my time calculating my throws to compensate for all his wind! If I hadn't had to concentrate so much, I would have had the Heroes at my mercy!
Excuse me!? Demon Vaati sputtered. What about that stupid trident of yours, huh? Do you have any idea how many times I had to reposition myself so you wouldn't hit me? I actually relocated, opponents and all, just to get away from that stupid thing!
And don't I wish you'd done it sooner, Ganon growled. You took your infernal wind with you and I could finally focus. Of course by then it was too late!
I got hit by bombs because I was too busy dodging your attacks! Vaati screeched. BOMBS! Don't you dare pin all this on me!
Well if you'd relocated sooner, that wouldn't have happened.
Vaati went quiet. Then, very calmly, he said, Are you implying that you were purposefully aiming for me? In order to make me take my winds and leave so you could 'aim properly'?
It would have worked too, if you'd actually caught on in a decent amount of time.
There was silence for exactly three seconds.
HOW DARE YOU! Vaati shrieked, and then everything got lost in the screeching howl of what sounded a whole lot like catastrophically strong gale force winds.
Demise squeezed his eyes shut in a futile attempt to combat his newly discovered migraine, then decided he was going to need that 'emotional therapy' after all. After all, Vaati couldn't control the winds if all six of his wings were in a straitjacket.
Then, once the howling had died down, Demise said, "Aside from your predictable incompetence, what happened?"
Vaati threw a temper tantrum, Ganon accused smugly.
Oh, like you weren't doing the exact same thing!
Obviously not. Mine was constructive.
I'll show you constructive-!
There was a thwack, which sounded an awful lot like if Vaati had bodily thrown himself at a target, followed by an outraged yelp and then the sounds of stabbing. Demise let out an aggravated sigh; apparently, Ganon needed a straitjacket too.
Getting anything coherent out of these two was going to require a lot more 'emotional therapy'.
Apparently, Realm's misdirectional field could extend to things that were not, in fact, his. Or anywhere near his immediate vicinity. Steam knew this because Realm had somehow managed to sidetrack the Spirit Train without actually being in the room with the controls, and even Realm himself looked a bit surprised by this.
"This is actually a new one," he admitted, while Wind and Steam pored over a map of the local Hyrule and tried fervently to figure out where they actually were. "Usually my problem is contained to… well, me."
"And anyone within two feet of you," Green grumbled, clearly remembering a certain misadventure in coming down a certain mountain involving a certain amount of Ice Chus. Realm made an apologetic grimace.
"Yes, and that," he agreed. "But that's my point, it's usually got a very predictable radius. I don't know what happened this time."
"Wait," Lore announced. "I might. Were you, by any chance, facing the direction we were moving in and thinking about the destination?"
"...Yes?"
"That'd do it," Lore said, nodding sagely.
"...Huh," Realm said. "Whoops."
"I'm sorry, what?" Gen asked incredulously.
"I know what happened," Realm stated. "I accidentally tried to get somewhere on efficient transport. I'll be sure to face the other way and think about where we came from next time."
"That makes no sense," Gen said. "That shouldn't even be a factor."
Realm just shrugged. Whatever else might have been said was cut off by Wind triumphantly declaring, "Here!" and stabbing a finger onto the map. "This is where we are."
Steam glanced back and forth between the markers for where they were and where they needed to be a couple times, frowning impressively. Then he said, "I'm going to skip over the part where I splutter incredulously about how we've crossed an impossible amount of distance for the time it took us and instead go right into deciding to break all the known speed limits of the railways. Guys, get back on the Train and hold onto something." He narrowed his eyes at the map. "This is gonna get a little bit bumpy."
He left out the part where 'a little bit bumpy' was a massive understatement, but the rest of the group figured that out within a couple minutes or so. 'Hold onto something' also turned out to be a bit of an understatement, because death grips and strangleholds felt more secure at the speed they were currently moving at.
Steam, meanwhile, was finding that, for the first time ever, he had an excuse to push the Spirit Train's accelerator all the way up to the top. That section was painted an alarmingly bright crimson and seemed to radiate bad decisions and grave consequences.
So naturally, Steam shoved the accelerator into the red with enough glee to make the casual observer think that he'd just won a lottery or something.
For an approximate comparison of the results, please take a moment to picture a machine named 'Top Thrill Dragster'. Now, take that, paste the acceleration onto a Train, and then keep on pasting.
Among other massive understatements, it could also be said that Steam was a speed-demon-adrenaline-junkie.
Farore banged her head against the closest available physical surface, which was actually a harder thing to find outside of reality than one might expect. It probably spoke volumes about the kind of mood she was in that she'd been willing to actually manifest one, just to introduce her face to it.
Nayru, meanwhile, was trying to exercise tact, and was alternating between patting Farore's shoulder in sympathy and stifling her own amusement.
Din, on the other hand, had no such intentions, and was actually manifesting her own physical surface, so she could roll on it in hysterical laughter. Farore and Nayru were very pointedly ignoring her.
"Why me?" Farore groaned, and thumped her head against the wall again. "Why is this my Attribute? Why is the one Aspect who's sensitive to my promptings the most directionally challenged one I have?"
Nayru carefully swallowed a new set of giggles and offered, "He did honestly try, though."
"That makes it worse. That literally makes it worse, because the harder he tries to get somewhere, the more lost he becomes along the way."
"Oh dear," Nayru said, and then didn't say anything else because her laughter was becoming dangerously close to being audible. Din, on the other hand, heard that and started branching into hyena territory. Her sisters ignored her even more pointedly.
Nayru got herself back under control and asked, "What if you tried prompting him in the opposite direction?"
Farore paused with her head on the wall and contemplated that for a moment. "That… might actually work," she said slowly, and also incredulously. "And I'll test that theory, next time."
"Why not now?" Din gasped in between cackles. Farore, very, very pointedly, ignored her.
"...Why not now?" Nayru repeated for Din's sake.
Farore shot her an irritated glance, but said, "Because this little stunt put Courage on the opposite side of the country that they need to be on, and since the Spirit Tower is actively being destroyed, we can't exactly afford another delay. I'm giving the Spirit Train a boost as is to make sure Courage gets there in time."
"Wait," Din said, with only a few bursts of laughter between words, "you're Farore's Winding the Spirit Train?"
Farore sniffed. "Yes, and?"
"You're using Farore's Wind," Din repeated, "on the Spirit Train." Another laugh bubbled out of her mouth, followed by a lot more. Her coherence dissolved within seconds.
"It's my Blessing, I'll bestow it how I want to!" Farore snapped.
Despite valiant efforts, Nayru emitted a strangled snort. Farore whipped around and glared.
"Sorry!" Nayru said between escaping giggles. "I'm trying not to laugh, I swear!"
On the conjured floor, Din had tears in her eyes from the sheer force of her mirth.
Farore let out a heavy sigh. "Look, I just want to get Courage to where they need to be, on time, so they can stop a relatively small problem and we have time to keep working on the bigger overarching problem. Can I get some acceptance for that?"
"We understand that, we do," Nayru assured her sister. "It's all the ways that it goes wrong or sideways in the getting there that's so amusing."
"Farore's Train," Din wheezed from the floor.
"...I was stressed, okay?" Farore muttered. "You know I make weird decisions when I'm stressed."
"Right, like when Hyrule flooded and instead of having the Zora transition naturally, you panicked and turned them into bird people," Nayru remembered sagely.
Farore winced. "Yes, that was a stupid idea, stop reminding me. I'm already paying for it with this species streamlining thing!"
"Din didn't stop laughing about it for three days," Nayru continued thoughtfully.
"MY POINT IS," Farore said loudly, "that regardless of my methods, I get the job done. Courage will find the Spirit Tower any minute now, and then we can let them do what they do best while we get back to doing what we do best."
Still on the floor, Din groaned. "Can't we take a break from that? I'm getting tired of trying to anchor Koholint after the Windfish lets it go, it keeps drifting."
"You've been laughing for twenty minutes," Farore said archly. "That sounds like a break to me."
"...Yeah, that's fair," Din sighed.
The consequence of going really outrageously ridiculously fast, was that it took a really outrageously ridiculous long time to slow back down. Therefore, Steam didn't bother, and instead screeched, "BRACE FOR IMPACT!" at the top of his lungs and slammed the Spirit Train headlong into the Demon Train at frankly unreasonable velocity. This had four main results.
One, both the Demon and the Spirit Trains dissolved in showers of light and scrap metal. Two, Malladus - or at least, the glowing blue incorporeal skull that was his current manifestation - went sprawling. Three, so did all the Links. Almost as if by divine intervention ("Farore, the Interference Laws-" "Do I look like I care about those right now!?"), nobody received anything worse than mild disorientation.
And fourth, the resulting shockwave from the collision blasted across the landscape with such force that two out of the three remaining supporting structures that the Spirit Tower was maintaining shaky existence with crumbled into rubble right then and there.
Almost as if by equally divine intervention, the Tower did not immediately fall over. ("Nayru, the Interference Laws-" "If Farore gets to do it then so do I!") This was in blatant disregard of multiple rules of physics, but technically the architecture was holy, so that probably had something to do with it.
This, then, left the Links without their ride and Malladus without his primary mode of attack, standing among pieces of the Spirit Tower and with the looming shadow of the barely-standing building falling across the ground between them.
It was probably very dramatic and picturesque, if any of them had cared about that sort of thing.
"Malladus," Steam greeted, and sounding entirely unhappy about it.
"That's Malladus?" Lore clarified, peering at the little floating head. "For some reason, I thought he would be more… imposing."
"I am plenty imposing!" Malladus protested hotly.
"I've never seen his real body, so I'll have to take his word for it," Steam said, shrugging. "But he caused enough trouble to get himself sealed beneath the Tower, so… yeah, he's probably at least a little bit imposing."
"Thank you," Malladus said archly. Then the words actually registered to him.
As he sputtered about his apparently extremely impressive physical stature, Vio took a good look at the Spirit Tower and announced, "Okay, so we're literally just in time. One more hit and this thing comes crashing down, and I remember there being a long list of reasons as to why that would be bad."
"So, keep him as far away from the Tower as possible," Gen surmised, glaring at Malladus. "Got it."
"I doubt it'll be too hard," Mask opined. "He's a floating skull head, that's not very difficult to beat. He's just a glorified Bubble."
Malladus paused in his (increasingly detailed and subsequently increasingly awkward) description of his true body still trapped beneath the Spirit Tower and glared at him. "You think so, do you?" He said, with a maliciously toothy grin. "Alright then. Let's see if this is still easy for you!"
At this point, it should be reiterated that Malladus had been looking into merging with his Demon Train. It should also be noted that Malladus, somewhere between deciding he should look into it about twenty minutes ago and when the Heroes showed up about thirty seconds ago, had successfully figured out how to do it.
So it came as a surprise to everybody but Malladus when he summoned the Demon Train, promptly possessed it, and did his level best to run all eighteen gaping Heroes over.
"...That's new," Steam admitted, from the ground where he'd thrown himself to get out of the way. "Also, extremely unfair. How come he gets to merge with his Train!?"
"Shut up and summon the artillery!" Sketch snapped at him. In Sketch's defense, this was a wholly unexpected turn of events, and he was feeling a bit stressed. Also, slightly motion-sick from the ride here, but that wasn't something he had the time to focus on right now.
"Oh, right," Steam remembered. "I LIKE TRAINS!"
The Spirit Train arrived with a flash and a whistle, and Steam all but shoved the rest of the group into the still-attached passenger car, with the exception of a surprised Wind who he dragged up to the cannon attachment. "You said you had one on your boat," Steam said quickly. "Aiming is this bit, firing is that button there, bomb refills are in the chest behind you. Take every shot you can and don't miss." Then he sprinted back to the engine room, where he slapped the brakes off and jammed the accelerator all the way up to full throttle.
The Spirit Train proceeded to give a repeat performance of the 'Top Thrill Dragster' impression, which resulted in a repeat performance of the screaming from the passenger car. Steam ignored it, because now he was driving side by side with the Demon Train - er, Malladus - Malladus Train? He was driving side by side with the Malladus Train, and the Malladus Train was grinning at him. Steam had never liked the face on the Demon Train before, and now that Malladus could make it actively leer at him he liked it even less. Not to mention that Steam was very purposefully keeping his own Train between the Malladus Train and the barely-standing Spirit Tower, and Malladus kept ramming him because of it.
"Alright then," Steam growled. "You wanna go?" He narrowed his eyes at the smirking Malladus Train, which was most assuredly taunting him. "Then let's go."
It can be said that adrenaline is a dangerous thing, and that adrenaline combined with a challenge is even worse. Far worse, however, is adrenaline combined with a challenge involving high speeds, destructible environments, and cannons of both the ball and laser variety.
So many things were about to be run over, it wasn't even funny.
Notes:
The word 'spirit' has lost all meaning to me. I have had to use it forty-four times this chapter.
One thing I've seen more than once in fiction is this idea that a person's shadow is actually an extension of their soul - control the shadow, control the person. Neat, right? I have a slight headcanon that this shadow-manipulation ability is part of what got the Twili sealed away in the first place, because everyone freaked out at the idea of possession-puppets. This concept may or may be a recurring theme. (It's a neat concept, okay? Don't judge me for my obsessions.)
Also, please note my numerous Malladus headcanons. If he's a Demon King (and his wiki says he is) then he's probably got a physical form somewhere like all the other demons, right? Personal theory says that's what the Spirit Tracks/Tower are keeping locked away, and the partial breaking of the seal that we see in-game is what lets Malladus squeeze out as a disembodied demon-ghost. Hence, why he's running around in other people's bodies - he's trying to get at his own.
Thanks to NintendoQueen, Sillus, Guest #120, Guest #121, Guest #122, Guest #123, Guest #124, Guest #125, Guest #126, hermione494, Guest #127, CouldtheWorldbeBigEnough, verymerrysioux, Guest #128, Guest #129, Amkgal, Asimi, Sushi_For-Me, LittleLlunaLlama, Guest#130, Guest#131, and pirate123456789 for the Kudos!
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Chapter 24: Mr. Mustache Man
Summary:
Having fixed his intimidation problem, Malladus is now putting up much more of a fight than anyone was expecting him to.
Notes:
Real quick, before we get started: I’ve started a YouTube channel under the name ‘Shalerrin’, in an attempt to be self-employed. Obviously I haven’t been able to post very many things yet, but I’m planning to play Zelda and post some animated storytelling videos in between. I HATE to sound like I’m begging, but if you’re interested, consider popping over and subscribing? I can’t start to monetize until I hit 1000 subscribers and if I can’t monetize then there’s no real income. I’m… a long ways away from that goal at the moment.
Also… I guess it’s sort of a gender reveal? Not that I actually say it, but you get to hear my voice. And that terrifies me more than it should, but I’m gonna be brave here. It’s just another way to geek out with fellow Zelda fans. I’M TRUSTING YOU ALL WITH THIS, OKAY? I’M TRUSTING YOU.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It wasn’t so much a race as it was a really large and complicated game of keep-away.
More specifically, Steam was doing everything he could to keep away Malladus from the barely-upright Spirit Tower, because he was pretty sure that one more hit would end in a lot of Very Bad Results. How bad, he didn’t really know, because he had nothing to base his suspicions off of aside from a few extremely vague historical legends, but he did have enough experience with Malladus in general to conclude that he shouldn’t try to find out. Given the amount of chaos that had happened when Malladus was just a disembodied ghost, Steam really didn’t want to see what happened when Malladus could actually punch things.
Though, whether or not he would bother or just move straight to setting things on fire was another issue entirely.
For all that the Spirit Train was carrying several times the cargo of the Malladus Train, it was a surprisingly even match. It probably helped that Malladus had only possessed his Train about five minutes ago and was likely still figuring out where all the sticking bits were, but in general the Spirit Train really ought to have been weighed down by the seventeen-plus passengers it was carrying.
On a side note, the rest of said passenger Links had stopped screaming in fear and started screaming in excitement. The other thing to be noted about adrenaline is that, once the source has been found, identified, and declared to be (probably) safe, the terror transitions into an emotion most closely described as, “This is gonna be awesome .”
For reference, please take a moment to once again imagine the machine called ‘Top Thrill Dragster’, and then imagine the sheer size of the lines that it would accumulate, consisting of all the people who would want to ride such a thing. Adrenaline at its finest.
All this to say that the Spirit Train was still moving far faster than anyone would think it had the right to move. The inertia on the turns was ridiculous.
Of course, the one problem with moving so fast was that it was really hard to keep track of the passing landscape, mostly because it was whizzing past in an indecipherable blur. Steam was pretty sure that the Spirit Tower was on his left somewhere, because that was the direction that Malladus was trying to go, but it was a bit hard to tell. It was probably a very good thing that the Spirit Train could produce its own tracks, because it was really hard to tell what was and wasn’t a railroad before they blew right on past it.
However, Steam was pretty sure that he’d just plowed through some trees. There was too much wood-colored stuff flying by to be anything else.
...Probably. There was also a pretty good chance that it’d been a house, but Steam was pretty sure there would have been more screaming in that scenario.
The Malladus Train jerked and clashed against the Spirit Train, and Steam had to haul hard on the steering to keep his relative position. His sense of direction informed him that the Tower was still to his left, and assuming that Realm hadn’t accidentally hijacked the destination again it was probably trustworthy. Now Steam just had to do something to get Malladus away , as opposed to just blocking him at every opportunity.
“I really wish Zelda were here to watch the controls,” he hissed, before throwing the accelerator lock into place, then yanking the steering harshly to the right and wedging a stray wrench under it in order to counter the constant pushing-left of the Malladus Train. Then he darted to the cannon room. He skidded across the floor, just barely avoided crashing into Wind, who was still loading the cannon, and said, rapid-fire, “Okay new plan I need you to make Malladus Train angry.”
Wind paused, then gave the ammunition he was struggling with a massive shove. The iron ball fell into the depths of the cannon with a resounding CLANG .
“How, exactly, do I do that?” Wind asked, rather sensibly in his opinion. “It’s not like Trains have pain receptors.”
“No, but he does have laser ports,” Steam replied. He pointed demonstratively. “There and there, and then it’s a mirror image on the far side, see? Take those out, and he’ll get angry. Get him angry, and I doubt he’ll think about the Spirit Tower anymore. I’ll be able to distract him and take this someplace less… breakable.”
Wind nodded thoughtfully. Then something ahead caught his attention and he frowned. “Uh, if you’re back here, then who’s driving?”
“I jury-rigged a temporary autopilot,” Steam said.
“Is the autopilot aware that we’re about to run through Hyrule Castle?”
“WE’RE WHAT!?” Steam screeched, and immediately sprinted back out.
“...I should probably hang on to something” Wind decided.
Steam, meanwhile, shrieked, “EVASIVE MANEUVER WARNING!” in the general direction of the passenger car as he shot past it, then launched himself at the steering and slapped the wrench haphazardly to the floor. Then he threw his entire body weight into forcing the Trains sideways just enough to miss the Castle. This was a lot more effort than it might seem, because Malladus was very pleased to have a new target and was doing his level best to hit the Castle. In this case, Steam had opted to use the Spirit Train to shove the Malladus Train out of the way, which, because the Malladus Train was already grinding up against the Spirit Train, wasn’t nearly as complicated as it sounded.
There was the slight issue of the Malladus Train being twice the size of the Spirit Train, made of much sturdier metal, and overall probably much more likely to win in a comparison of flat toughness, but the Spirit Train a few things the Malladus Train didn’t.
Specifically, a conductor who refused to acknowledge failure as an option, the backing of a very invested goddess, and the uncanny ability to utterly ignore the laws of physics.
The pair of Trains missed the Castle by mere feet and continued headlong into the countryside behind it, which understandably freaked a lot of the civilian bystanders out. That was a problem, but from what Steam could remember there weren’t any buildings in this direction, not really. If he could just kind of corral the Malladus Train into this general area, that would work out so much better. Of course, to do that, it would be really nice for Wind to get on that cannonfire aggravation.
Really, Steam knew it was a bit of a rough ride, but what was taking him so long?
Wind, meanwhile, was having aiming issues. In an ironic twist, the Malladus Train was actually too close for Wind to get a good bead on the laser cannons - it was just smooth metal as far as he could reach.
He frowned contemplatively, then poked his head out into the short hallway leading from the cannon to the engine room and called, “How important is it that I hit the lasers and only the lasers!?”
“It’s pretty important!” Steam shouted back. “The lasers are incredibly painful!”
Okay yes, that made sense, but- “But can I aim for things besides the lasers!?”
“Probably!?”
Wind considered that for a moment, then decided to take it as a ‘Yes’. “Thank you!” he yelled, before ducking back to the cannon. He sighted along the barrel; no matter which way he turned it, all he could see was the unblemished side of the Malladus Train.
“Fine then,” Wind muttered to himself, straightening out the cannon again and wrapping his hands over the firing mechanism. “If there’s no target, I’ll make one.”
He then proceeded to fire about six cannonballs within the same amount of seconds and tore a hole straight through the metal hull of the Malladus Train by the first three. The fourth one smashed through some important-looking tubes, the fifth one put a really impressive dent in a large barrel-looking thing, and the sixth one enlarged the dent to the point where the metal barrel-thing nearly bent in half from the force and began leaking an alarming amount of smoke from all the places where the seams no longer matched up.
“There we go,” Wind said, pleased, and also very pointedly ignoring the pained and furious screeching now coming from the front of the Malladus Train. In his experience, that just meant he was doing his job.
Steam, who was farther up front, had the distinct privilege of watching the Malladus Train’s face contort into discomfort, which did not help the already poor aesthetic of those features. Given that he himself hadn’t done anything, he decided that it was probably safe to assume that Wind was the one responsible.
“Guess he found a target then,” Steam decided, then refocused on the tracks ahead of him. Everything was still moving too fast to tell, but if they were where he thought they were, he was almost positive that there hadn’t been Spirit Tracks in this part of Hyrule before. It was probably a very good thing that the Spirit Train could apparently spawn its own rails, otherwise this ride would be a lot bumpier.
Also, they were now very far away from the Spirit Tower. Steam weighed his options, then the consequences, then began comparing those consequences with the fallout of not risking the consequences, and then decided that calculating all that would take too long. Conveniently this meant that he could skip back to the Options part of that thought and take one, which he promptly did.
If Wind was asking about targets other than the laser ports, it probably meant that he couldn’t reach said laser ports. Therefore, Steam probably needed to reposition the Spirit Train in order to get Wind a better shot, which meant he needed to break off the deadlock that the two machines were in. This in turn meant he needed to back off and give the Malladus Train space, which admittedly came with the distinct risk that Malladus would just turn around and target the Spirit Tower again. However, Steam still had a pretty clear view of the face - which, actually, was probably Malladus’ face now - and judging by how angry the expression was, Steam felt pretty confident that the Spirit Tower wasn’t exactly at the front of Malladus’ mind anymore.
So before he could second-guess himself, Steam tugged the steering away from the Malladus Train, enough so that the whole length of the engine came into view. Already the act of driving was so much easier without an entire second Train shoving up against them.
Then he twisted around and shrieked, “WIND IF YOU DON’T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS I AM GONNA BE SO TICKED!”
“SHOULD I BE INSULTED THAT YOU DON’T TRUST ME!?” Wind yelled back, because of course he was already bringing the cannon around to all the new and shiny targets he’d just been presented with. He sighted down the barrel, nodded to himself, and shoved a cannonball into the loading tunnel.
“WELL IT WOULD REALLY SUCK IF YOU MISSED THE CUE!” Steam’s voice shouted from the engine car.
Wind snorted. “HARD TO MISS A CUE THIS OBVIOUS!” He made a small adjustment on the angle of the cannon, then gripped the firing mechanism and yanked. A cannonball soared through the space between the two Trains and embedded itself in the delicate machinery of a laser port, which immediately fizzled and died. It did have a large metal ball bisecting the power source, so this was an understandable reaction.
“Honestly, it’s like he forgot I sailed with pirates,” Wind sighed, adjusting his aim for the next target.
“I need to remind myself to stop underestimating the alternate versions of myself,” Steam muttered, as a second laser port also got into a fight with a cannonball and lost. Wind was scarily good with a cannon, to the point where Steam wondered what his maybe-ancestor had left out about the ocean he’d traveled on. Hadn’t there been something about reefs with patrolling hostile warships and gigantic angry squids?
...No wonder it looked like Wind was finding this easy, an opponent set on tracks was probably much easier to track and aim for than an opponent with the whole of the ocean to maneuver in.
Wait - he’d just shot the last laser port on this side of the Malladus Train. Steam was gonna have to cross to the other side in order for Wind to be able to reach the other two ports, which would just make the whole confrontation easier. It was, after all, much safer to deal with an opponent who couldn’t shoot you with lasers than one who could. Steam considered this for a minute, wondering whether it would be better to drop behind the Malladus Train and get around that way, or speed up and bring the Spirit Train around the front.
...Actually, given that the Spirit Train was only two cars long, and in contrast the Malladus Train never seemed to end , going around the front was probably the only sane choice.
That decision made, Steam flipped up a panel, slammed in a six-button sequence, and then flicked a switch. All of these things had large, unfriendly warnings on them in capital letters, drawn with even brighter red paint than the red section of the accelerator gauge. The feeling of impending bad decisions in the air multiplied exponentially.
Coincidentally, this happened at the same time that the Spirit Train’s speed multiplied exponentially. This was immediately followed by a hollow BOOM and the belated realization that Steam probably should have given a warning for this, as the Spirit Train proceeded to temporarily stretch the sound barrier.
The force alone almost threw Steam off the controls again, and it was only thanks to the fact that he’d been sort of expecting it that he wasn’t. It did, however, take him several more seconds than he’d wanted to wrangle his Train back under control in order to bring it around in the way he wanted.
He then took advantage of the (comparative) calm and shouted, “SORRY ABOUT THE JOLT!” in the general direction of the passenger car.
In response, he received a lot of incomprehensible complaining and a singular, earsplitting roar of, “VIO GET OFF MY LEG!” He winced, imagining the pile-up. It’d never been a comfortable thing in the first place, but in a cramped metal box? Yeah, Steam was glad he was up in the engine room.
Back with the cannon, Wind picked himself up off the floor, revised his opinion of Steam’s driving skills, and then noticed that the Malladus Train was now on the opposite side of where it had been. Wind frowned a little; he hadn’t bothered to check if the cannon had a rotating track, and if it didn’t then this was going to become a bit of an issue. Just in case, he equipped his Iron Boots before giving the cannon an experimental push. It spun easily, much to his relief, so he took the Boots back off before lining up a shot for the two new laser turrets that were now in his range.
“I wonder what I’m supposed to do when I run out of objectives,” Wind muttered to himself as he pulled the triggers. The targeted laser port was promptly crushed. Almost absently, Wind adjusted his aim to the last turret and autopiloted his way through the reloading process. “Maybe I should just blast another hole in the sheet metal and see what I can break?”
At that point, the Malladus Train abruptly caught on to the fact that he was missing three out of the four laser turrets he’d started with. Malladus immediately decided to blame being in an unfamiliar body and the unexpected presence of pain receptors in a vessel made of metal for his distraction rather than admitting to himself that he’d been too caught up in the race with Steam to notice until just now. He then channeled his denial into the only laser he had left, and proceeded to fire it right into Wind’s face.
Well, he tried. He actually missed, because Wind had seen it coming and ducked in a frantic rush, but he still did a lot of damage to the opposing Train itself. If the upside of the Spirit Train being primarily made of wood was the speed, the downside was the extreme susceptibility to fire and fire-related substances. More specifically, the Malladus Train’s lasers were made of light and heat and also possibly plasma, all of which were excellent at sending things up in flames.
Wind, meanwhile, yelped, and immediately began batting at said flames. Then he thought better of it, and instead pulled out his Deku Leaf. It proved to be much more effective, especially once Wind figured out the difference between accidentally fanning the flames and blowing hard enough to put them out.
Once that was solved, though, Wind shoved the Leaf back into his Bag and dragged the cannon back to aiming position. He had a laser port to take out and a newly acquired realization for why Steam had been so adamant about taking them out before anything else.
Now though, the question was why a Train had even been fitted with lasers in the first place?
Steam spared a brief moment to eye the damage done by the laser and groaned to himself. That was gonna take a while to buff out. Alfonzo was probably going to have a fit, right in between scolding Steam at the top of his lungs and furiously sanding down the scratches… whenever Steam actually got around to bringing the Spirit Train back to Aboda. Given the state of the universe, that might be a good long while.
His thoughts were cut off by the screech of protesting metal, which conveniently doubled as the announcement that Wind had just launched a cannonball into the last laser. That, though, was nothing in comparison that the bellow that the Malladus Train let out in response. Apparently, now that the demon possessing it was paying attention, cannonballs were a lot more painful that previously demonstrated.
Then, quite suddenly, Malladus braked . Steam, unprepared for that, shot past the front of his opponent and ended up staring the face straight in… well, the face. And because of this, he also noticed that the face was building up a fireball in its mouth.
“INCOMING!” he screeched, then threw himself to the ground, but not before locking the controls. He was an engineer, after all, abandoning the helm just wasn’t allowed . Then the fire hit, and all that became a bit less of an issue.
Steam said something that Zelda would have gasped at, and immediately sprinted back to the passenger car.
“OKAYsotheTrain’sonfire, I’mtoobusydrivingtodealwithit, Wind’stoobusybeingartillery, IneedsombodywithawateritemtotakecareofitbeforeweburndownPLEASEANDTHANKYOU!” That said, he darted back up to the engine and hoped someone in the car had understood him. There was no way Malladus would settle for only one fireball, and Steam needed to steer in order to dodge.
Meanwhile, the passenger car group blinked at the space Steam had occupied for a brief and confusingly jumbled few seconds.
“...Does anyone know what it was he just said?” Speck asked.
Sketch frowned, then reached into his bag and brandished an Ice Rod. “Well, I caught the first bit, which was that the Train’s on fire. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that the rest of it was about needing us to take care of it.”
“Ooh!” Red said brightly, and pulled out a Rod of his own. A quick tap sequence swapped the color from crimson to teal, and he shook a couple snowflakes from it before nodding to himself. “I can help with that!”
“Ditto,” Lore declared, doing a similar routine with the much more elaborate Rod of Seasons. The temperature in the passenger car immediately plunged about thirty degrees. Frost began accumulating on the windows.
“Everyone stop demonstrating,” Gen ordered, shivering. “Just, go find whatever’s on fire and take care of it!”
“Can do,” Lore saluted, and proceeded to jam open a window, shimmy out, and vault himself up onto the roof of the car. His footsteps thumped across the top for a few moments.
“Okay wow,” Lore said, sounding surprised in spite of himself. “That is a lot of fire.” He poked his head back down through the open window. “I request backup.”
“Then move so we can fit, silly,” Red told him.
“I can do that.”
Twenty seconds later, Sketch and Red joined Lore on the roof of the Train, along with Mask and Ocarina who had Ice Arrows. There was a brief stretch where they all just stood and processed the sheer amount of fire that the Spirit Train was somehow enduring without having burnt up yet.
“...Okay yeah, that is a lot of fire,” Mask said nonchalantly, already halfway through nocking an arrow. “I can see why Steam might have been a little panicked.”
“Look on the bright side,” Lore grinned. “We don’t have to share targets.”
“This is a wooden Train !” Ocarina shrieked after him as Lore bounced off across the roof, the air temperature already dropping in response to his waving of the Rod of Seasons. “There is no bright side!”
“Chill,” Mask advised. “We got this.”
“We are standing on a pyre on wheels,” Ocarina muttered.
Mask hummed appraisingly and fired an Ice Arrow. “Nah. We’ll be fine.”
“How can you be sure? ...And so calm about being so sure?”
“Practice,” Mask shrugged.
“...Why have you had practice with this situation.”
“Spoilers,” Mask said, and ignored Ocarina’s groan in favor of firing another arrow. “Don’t worry about it, you’ll get there eventually. Now stop flailing and help me shoot this fire into submission.”
“Shoot over here please!” Red called.
On his way back to the controls, Steam skidded into the doorway of the cannon attachment and said, “New plan! I need you to shoot the face in the face because it may or may not be Malladus’ actual face but either way it’s shooting fire and we need it to stop doing that,” just slowly enough that there was actually space between his words this time. Then he shot off again before Wind could make any sort of response.
Wind mouthed ‘Shoot the face in the face?’ to himself before shrugging and deciding that it had probably made more sense in Steam’s head, then pulled himself back to his feet from where he’d dove for cover. Sure enough, now that he could see past the floor, the Malladus Train was indeed breathing fire. The Spirit Train appeared to be far more friendly with the fire than Wind suspected Steam wanted it to be, because now that he was paying attention the entire roof of the passenger car seemed to be ablaze.
...This probably explained why Steam seemed a bit frazzled, actually. Wind should get on that ‘shooting the face in the face’ thing, it would probably help the stress levels tremendously - if only because that would eliminate the fire.
Wind swiveled the cannon onto his new target and began loading the ammunition.
Steam, who by now was rather out of breath, finally latched back on to the controls in the engine room and once again pushed the acceleration to speeds highly unrecommended by the safety manuals. He wanted to make sure Wind had a good shot, and that meant staying ahead of the Malladus Train so the face would be in full view.
This unfortunately also meant Malladus had the Spirit Train in full view, which resulted in more fire. Steam did not need more fire. Steam in fact really wished he’d paid attention to the lessons on water magic in kiddie school. He did not appreciate being put into a literal hot seat.
Right at that moment though, the hollow BOOM of cannonfire reached his ears, and Steam was treated to the wonderful sight of large metal projectiles smashing directly through Malladus’ ugly metal face. It was beautiful. Steam wished he had a pictograph.
Malladus, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction. Wind had good enough aim to all but obliterate both eyes, and now Malladus could really only see a color blur on his left side.
This, understandably, made continuing the Train Battle a bit problematic.
Screw it, Malladus decided, this body had clearly hit the limit of what it could do for him. Time to ditch it - but he might as well ditch it with pizazz.
That decided, Malladus promptly wrenched himself to the side and aimed for the gray-color-blur that was standing out against the green-colored-everything-else-blurs, under the assumption that gray probably meant a building and green probably meant trees, and Malladus was hoping to get some last-minute destruction in before hopping to a new host.
It ended up working out for him more than he’d really ever expected it to.
The Malladus Train unexpectedly crashed, and Steam had to brake fast and hard to avoid completely overshooting the wreck. After all, Malladus had proved time and time again that what happened to his host body didn’t necessarily happen to him. Just because the Train was now a pile of scrap and smoke, that meant nothing for Malladus’ state of being.
It took a couple minutes for Steam to shed enough speed that he could bring the Spirit Train back around, which was why he didn’t actually register the landscape until it was too late. The thing was, Hyrule was only so big. At a certain point, and a certain speed, the country really just turned into a very large racetrack. This meant that Steam and Malladus had, for all intents and purposes, been driving in circles - and circles, above everything else, always came back to the start.
In a dramatic and particularly unfair twist of irony, Malladus had actually managed to unknowingly crash his Train body directly into the barely-standing remains of the Spirit Tower. Divine intervention or not, there was no way that a structure already as weak as the Tower was could survive an impact like that. The Spirit Tower, fighting every descending inch, came inevitably crumbling down.
There was silence in the space outside reality.
“...Well,” Farore said, and then ran out of things to say.
“I have never been so irritated at being forced to align with the laws of physics,” Nayru breathed. She had half a mind to uninvite gravity to the annual Universal Constants meeting. (Nayru had an automatic bid because of her connection with time (and Time).)
“I declare a temporary break from the Stitching-Hyrule-Back-Together project in order to observe this impending confrontation,” Din stated. “And possibly lend assistance if need be.”
Farore squinted at her. “...You have popcorn left over from the Demise fight, don’t you.”
“...Maybe.”
Farore sighed. “Give me the jalapeno ones and we’ll talk about this later.”
Din grumbled. “How’d you know?”
“You used your Fancy Vocabulary. You only do that when you’re trying to distract us by sounding important.”
“Yeah, because it worked .”
“Not really,” Nayru interjected. “I’ll take the buckeye flavor, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah, just give me a moment to dig them out. I may have gone a little overboard.”
Farore tossed a small handful of popcorn into her mouth and pulled over the nearest Reality Window. “I do want to watch this, though. If nothing else, we might need to rebuild the Spirit Tower afterwards.”
“Gravity,” Nayru grumbled. She was definitely retracting that invitation.
There was a moment, while the dust settled and everyone processed the fact that the Spirit Tower just came down , where both sides just stood and stared at each other.
Then a slow grin spread across Malladus’ face, regardless of the fact that he was a small blue skull at the moment, having promptly abandoned the Demon Train upon the crash.
“WaitWAIT WAIT SOMEBODY STOP HIM!” Steam shouted, just a little bit too late. With a cackle, Malladus dove into the ground beneath the rubble of the Spirit Tower and vanished from sight.
“...Okay,” Steam said, rapidly rerouting his thought processes. “Strategic retreat. Now would be good.”
“Did he just get access to his real body?” Sketch asked worriedly. “Did we just lose?”
“Yes, and maybe,” Steam said. “I would prefer to still try and kick his butt anyways, but I have no idea how big his body actually is and in the interest of not being on top of the spot where I assume he’s going to come back out, we should really get on that strategic retreat.”
“I second that,” Realm said, staring down at his feet. “The ground is cracking.”
The Links immediately began scrambling out of the way, as the earth beneath them began to rumble ominously. The remains of the Spirit Tower shuddered, then collapsed, then vanished from sight entirely because a massive hole had just opened up right under it and swallowed it. Massive clouds of smoke began wafting from the new crater.
“That jerk, he’s making a Dramatic Entrance,” Steam muttered, from the safe distance he and the rest of the group had retreated to.
Malladus emerged, slowly, from the smoke, with enough aesthetic intent to make an artist swoon. And unfortunately, he was indeed as physically imposing as he’d been claiming.
About the only similarity he had to his spectral floating-head form was his hair, which was vibrantly blue and pluming like smog from his head. Joining this trend were his eyebrows, and a truly magnificent moustache. His skin was dark , but not the normal kind of dark - it was more like a very dark green, and it was translucent. Beneath his skin were his bones, and those glowed an unsettling yellow, an effect which was matched by his eerie pupiless eyes, and when he grinned, he had fangs. Set between the unsettling eyes was a large red gem. He also didn’t seem to be wearing any clothes, but then again he also didn’t seem to...er, have anything that would require clothes.
And of course, he was about eight feet tall. It just wouldn’t be right if the Links got a fair battle in terms of physical prowess.
“...Alright, I can see why people got freaked out enough to seal him away,” Lore decided. “I did not need to know what the demonic pelvic bone looked like.”
“Not to mention,” Steam said dryly, “the parts where he razed the land, killed several hundred people, and tried to eradicate the country of Hyrule from the maps.”
Lore tilted his head. “Would you believe I forgot those things were a factor?”
Malladus, meanwhile, was being Dramatic™ and very obviously flaunting his newly recovered physique by stretching in one of the most flamboyant and noticeable ways possible, because he was not at all sore about being called unimpressive, nope, not a bit. He was just really stiff from not having used his body in ages, was all. And, gosh, was that a crick in his back? He should limber that up. Obviously the best stretch for his back was the one that would make all his muscles flex, and not at all doubling as an underhanded method to show off.
Malladus, it should be noted, could be just a bit vain.
“Is he… going to do anything?” Mask asked slowly. “Like, anything actually destructive?”
“...Presumably?” Steam hazarded. “I will admit I expected him to do more than just… flex at us.”
“I’m getting to that,” Malladus said, annoyed. “I’m reacquainting myself. It’s been a while.”
“Could you not get to that?”
“No,” Malladus said. “There’s a malformed soul bond that’s going to make me sooner or later, so I might as well make it sooner. Hold still. ”
“Whatever you do, do not hold still!” Steam yelped, and then everyone went scrambling as Malladus, and everything within fifty feet of him, erupted into flames.
There was a convenient boulder that served as a temporary buffer from the inferno, and everyone clustered behind it - it was a very large boulder. While the literal firestorm raged against the rock, Gen pointed in imperious finger at Lore and said, “You. Distract him. We’re gonna make a plan and fill you in once we actually have one, but we need time to make said plan, and you’re the Link with the least amount of common sense and ability to care about things like burn scars. Pretend he insulted Subrosia, or whatever.”
“Oh, I don’t need to pretend,” Lore grumbled. “He’s completely misusing his arson abilities. It’s like he’s never heard of the Incendiary Circle before.”
“Perfect, go enlighten him,” Gen ordered, and proceeded to helpfully push Lore towards his new target in the brief space between fireballs. There was a fizzle, and a pause.
Then Lore said, “Did you just try to explode me?” and immediately went on his now-somewhat-recognizable rant about cloaks, Subrosia, Holodrum, bombs, and the proper use for all of the above for about three sentences before transitioning into one of the many foreign languages he knew and continuing his tirade without even pausing to acknowledge the language switch. Coincidentally, a lot of the fire was promptly redirected towards the new and louder target.
“And while he’s doing that,” Gen sighed, “Steam, ideas?”
Steam grimaced. “I have no idea what he’s capable of and also no idea what his weaknesses might be. I’m almost positive Zelda knew a Song that could make Malladus vulnerable, but she only taught it to me the one time and I really don’t remember all the parts for it. We could try re-sealing his body, if anyone might know how to do that?”
Most of the Links immediately shook their heads; sealing spells were, after all, primarily a light magic technique, and as previously mentioned light magic had not deigned to manifest in any of Hyrule’s Heroes.
Gen, however, frowned contemplatively. “I… might,” he said at length. “Or at least, Fi might. I’ve done sealing before, but I was following her lead the entire time, and also just straight-up using the Master Sword as a conduit. I don’t know if that’s applicable here though.”
“Ask her, it’s better than what I’ve got,” Steam said. He had a solid nothing, for the interested.
Gen poked his head out from behind the boulder and evaluated Lore’s situation for a moment, before deciding that, yeah, he had time to consult his weapon on the situation. “Fi, you listening?”
Briefly, all the versions of the Master Sword lit up sequentially; then Fi seemed to settle on the version Ocarina was carrying and chimed, “I am always listening, Master.”
“Creepy. We’ll come back to that, but right now I need to know if we can perform a sealing like what we did to the Imprisoned?”
“Please indicate the desired target for the sealing.”
“I need to borrow her,” Gen told Ocarina awkwardly, then unsheathed his fellow Hero’s weapon and pointed it at the chaotic fireball that was Malladus.
Fi hummed for several long seconds. Then she recited, “Malladus, the Demon King - or so he likes to call himself. This title is already taken by Demise; comparing power levels puts Malladus on the same tier as Ghirahim, the Demon Lord.”
“Definitely mockable, but not what I’m looking for,” Gen prompted.
“Like most beings made of dark magic, this foe is weak to the opposite element,” Fi said. “In this case, sealing power would be applicable - there are several trace remains of a previous spell that can be used as anchors for a new one. However, I would suggest performing this action with haste, as this opportunity will only last until the spell traces fade.”
“Perfect,” Gen said. “Any advice on how to deal with him until we manage that?”
“Analysis indicates a strong preference for fire magic,” Fi said, as the blatantly obvious arson continued to run rampant. “I predict an eighty-five percent chance of advanced flamecasting. Additionally, there is evidence for enhanced physical prowess; I would advise avoiding close combat, using items and abilities advantageous against fire, and extreme evasive maneuvers until the sealing can be performed, Master.”
“Got it,” Gen said. “Thanks, Fi.”
Ocarina’s Master Sword chirruped once, before falling silent - and presumably, the occupant going back to her usual casing. Gen, for his part, breathed a quiet sigh of relief before smiling. “Alright, looks like we’ve got a Sealing Plan. By any chance, does anyone else know how to do it?”
Head shakes all around. Gen huffed. “Worth a shot.”
“Can I just clarify, real quick,” Sketch began, “we’re basically going to… what, keep Malladus occupied until you and Fi get your sealing juice flowing?”
“Well… yes.”
Wind raised a hand. “Exactly how long is it going to take you to do that?”
“No idea,” Gen admitted awkwardly.
“... Great,” Steam sighed. “At least it’s something. Should I try and distribute the parts of the Song I remember, just in case?”
“Might as well,” Dusk contributed. “Every bit will help.”
“Okay then, who here can sing?”
There was a moment of silence. A few Links shuffled uncomfortably. Nobody seemed very vocally inclined.
Then Dusk sighed and said, “I’m not bad, I suppose.”
He received several surprised looks. “Somehow I wasn’t expecting that,” Blue muttered.
Dusk shrugged, slowly turning a vaguely red color. “Wolves howl. I can sing. It correlates.”
“...Does that mean you can howl because you can sing, or that you can sing because you can howl?”
“...Yes?”
“Can we not do this sidetracking thing right now?” Steam interrupted. “I think even Lore has his limits on being targeted with fire.”
“HE’S RIGHT, I DO!” Lore shouted cheerfully, having chosen that exact moment to sprint frantically past the group’s hiding place. His hat, the strap of his weapon gear, and his left shoe were all merrily ablaze, and Lore seemed largely unconcerned by this. It was actually concerning that he wasn’t concerned.
“Alright then, everyone who’s vaguely musical, get instructions from Steam. Everyone who’s not, distract Malladus and improvise. I’ll be consulting with Fi on getting the seal set up, and then at some point we’ll all actually converge and attempt to set all that in motion!” Gen was valiantly trying to put forward a Confident Leader image despite the fact that his plan had at least six different holes and everyone knew it. They were, however, polite enough not to point it out to him. “So, I guess… scatter?”
Abruptly, Lore skidded up, still on fire and still seemingly unconcerned about it, and said, “Nonononono, you’re doing it wrong. You gotta do it right.”
“And doing it right implies…?”
“This,” Lore grinned. “BREAK!”
“Oh, is that a thing now?” Mask asked.
“It’s totally a thing now. Also, I wasn’t just saying that for the funsies, I taunted Malladus into chasing me and he’s about to run us all over so we should all really do what I just said and BREAK THE GROUP HUDDLE RIGHT NOW.”
So saying, Lore sprinted off again, and this time so did everyone else.
There was fire everywhere . It was making it really hard to find a good place to run, because more often than not someone’s foot was going to come down on scorched earth and that was painful. Several minutes were spent running around like an upturned anthill before Steam managed to corral a few fellow Links off behind the rubble of the Spirit Tower, these being Dusk, Ocarina and Mask, and Wind, and immediately set about briefing them on what he could remember about the Sacred Song. Gen, meanwhile, was hiding in as dignified a manner as he could manage, conferring with his flickering Master Sword as Fi probably schooled him in the art of sealing magic. Lore was still running distraction, and by now had managed to work Malladus into such a frenzy that the surrounding landscape was no longer necessarily fireproof. Whether or not this was a good thing was largely debatable. As for everyone else, they were alternating between trying to put out the fire with whatever items they had, and conversing with each other on what might distract Malladus long enough to let Lore get a break, and also for Gen to get his sealing on.
In other words, it was complete chaos.
“So the first part went like, ~bah, bah, bah~,” Steam said, his face scrunched up in fierce concentration, “and then there was like a counter harmony that went sort of like, ~la la, la, bah bah~, and then I think they might have started overlapping? And there’s like this whole back and forth duet thing going and according to Zelda if we’re doing it right then we start to summon a bunch of other instruments. So if a timpani randomly materializes from thin air and starts an accompaniment, it’s working.”
“Weird tell, but okay,” Mask said. “This sounds like we only need two people though?”
Steam grimaced. “I have sincere doubts that I’m remembering this Song well enough to trigger the magical instruments, but the spell won’t work unless the full orchestra kicks in. So unless we somehow miraculously manage to finagle it, I need you guys to be the supporting harmonies.”
“Er… the ones you can’t remember?” Ocarina asked.
“Those ones exactly,” Steam agreed miserably.
Wind winced sympathetically, but flipped his baton into his fingers nonetheless and said, “I’m gonna need you to describe exactly what you do remember in as much detail as possible. If I can recreate it, you can probably tell me if what you’re hearing matches what you remember.”
“Worth a shot…”
“We should probably practice the parts he already gave us in the meantime,” Dusk decided, pulling Mask and Ocarina a few feet away. “Who wants what bit?”
“I’m good at counter-harmonies,” Mask volunteered, about a half second before Ocarina said, “I’m good at counter - dangit!”
“I’m also good at supporting melody lines?” Mask offered.
Ocarina tilted his head. “Right, yeah, I do forget about that sometimes. It’s just not as common, you know?”
“Duh,” Mask said.
“Oh, shut up, you know what I meant.” Ocarina rolled his eyes, then said, “I can do the supporting melody lines.”
Dusk stared at them for a moment. “...You do know that it can be really confusing to everyone on the outside when you both refer to each other as ‘me’, right?”
Mask and Ocarina looked at each other. “It’s true though,” Ocarina pointed out.
Dusk sighed. “You know what, if I want to continue this conversation I will do so after we’ve taken care of the glowing skeleton man. I guess this makes me the main melody then?”
“Howl away,” Mask agreed.
“...I am starting to regret bringing that up.”
Gen was doing his level best to concentrate on what Fi was telling him about the proper sealing spell for the situation, but it was a little bit hard to do so when everything around him was actively going up in flames. There was also the screaming to consider, and the distant explosions, and also whatever it was that Lore was doing that required quite so much guttural screeching. It sounded like the brief demonstration of Firetongue that Lore had given during the storytelling session, and Gen really had to wonder what had prompted Lore to switch over to the language of dragons.
Probably, some sort of perceived insult to dragons. Gen made a mental note to never, ever let Lore meet the Water Dragon. While Her Ladyship would probably appreciate a mortal going to bat for her, Lore’s personality would get him smote in twelve seconds flat.
...The Thunder Dragon though, Gen was pretty sure Lore would get on with just fine.
He shook his head, then flicked himself in the temples. He had better things to focus on than what Lore may or may not get up to in the future. Specifically, he hadn’t listened to any of what Fi had just told him.
“Can you repeat that?” he asked loudly, to be heard over the chaos of the surrounding fight.
Gen’s Master Sword flickered disapprovingly, and Fi made sure to imbue her tone with her opinion on that matter. “I said, it would be best to use the strongest version of the Imprisoned’s seal, Master.”
“Right. That was the nine-point one made of three triangles, wasn’t it?”
Had Fi been physically manifested, she would probably have been giving off the vague impression of rolling her eyes exasperatedly while somehow not moving her expression in the slightest. “That is what I just said, Master.”
“Oh,” Gen said, and then for the sake of his dignity decided to leave it at that. “Er, what next then?”
“There is a ninety-five percent chance that you will need a Focus to anchor the seal with.”
“That might be a problem,” Gen muttered, glancing around at the rubble which used to be the Spirit Tower, which had quite clearly been the previous Focus for the previous seal. For the first time, Gen wished he’d grabbed the prison spike from the Sealed Grounds when they’d confronted Demise in it. Then again, that probably would have been too convenient.
“...What if I just stack some of the rubble into a small pile?”
There was a long pause, during which something out of sight exploded extremely violently and the faint warbles of an uncertainly-sung song began drifting across the battlefield.
“Analysis indicates that as long as the pile remains intact, the seal will follow suit,” Fi said eventually. “However, I strongly advise against pinning your hopes on a stack of unstable rubble, Master.”
“Well, that might be our only option,” Gen replied, grimacing. “Let’s come back to that.”
“Yes, Master,” said Fi, and even though her tone didn’t change at all, Gen still received the impression that she was humoring him. He was beginning to suspect that he was absolute rubbish at sealing, and Fi just wasn’t telling him about it.
It would have been nice to discover this fact before the ridiculously fire-prone battle with a demon sealing being the only real way to resolve it.
Meanwhile, everyone else was dealing with Malladus himself, and were having a distinctly worse time than any of the other groups. The main reason for this was the fire. There was far, far, far more fire than would ever be necessary for anything, ever, and on top of that Malladus had the nerve to pump his flames to a heat index so high that just being near them caused the spontaneous combustion of lesser materials like clothes. And hair. And basically anything conceivably plant-like. About the only thing good about the situation was when Red or Sketch or somebody else used an Ice Item, the ice immediately melted and they ended up with water to douse the flames instead. Not that they could produce enough water, because again, way too much fire, but they could at least keep a designated patch of earth relatively safe and unscorched.
This was also, coincidentally, the patch of earth that everyone but Malladus (and Lore, but Lore was a bit busy) was standing on.
“I have never before regretted not having a fireproof item so much in my life ,” Sketch complained. He blasted his Ice Rod at a few encroaching flames, the results of which immediately melted.
“Agreed,” Speck said fervently. “This is ridiculous. How come Lore hasn’t caught fire and burnt to a crisp yet?”
As if on cue, Lore sprinted past, bellowing something unpronounceable by anyone but himself, pursued by an irate Malladus and even more fire than what had already been present. He was, somewhat surprisingly, not nearly as scorched as he should have been, but he did look very out of breath.
“...Somehow I suspect the reason might be because he just hasn’t deigned to notice,” Realm speculated.
“Knowing Lore, that might actually be a possibility,” Vio sighed. “But, ignoring the fire-”
“Good luck with that ,” Blue snorted.
“-have we actually got a plan for keeping Malladus busy?” Vio continued forcefully.
“Going by what we learned from Steam… no,” the Four said bluntly.
“Alright then, we disregard what we learned from Steam,” Green decided. “And we replace it with what we’ve learned from Lore instead.”
“That being?”
“Anything goes.”
Everyone nodded and made muttered assenting noises. Sketch took the opportunity to blast more ice at the overly enthusiastic blaze.
Green brought his hands together. “So, Sketch, Red, you’ve got the cold items, you guys are on point. You’re responsible for making the path we’re gonna be walking on. Everyone else, if you’ve got a long-range weapon, load it now, because we’re gonna have to snipe at Malladus from whatever distance he happens to be at. Realm, if Lore needs it be ready to swap with him for Distraction. And please , nobody set themselves on fire. There’s quite enough of that already.”
“Really,” Sketch said dryly. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well then it’s a good thing I’m here to tell you about it,” Green fired back, not missing a beat. Sketch blinked, then grinned wryly and accepted his defeat.
“Okay, I’m on it. Red?”
“Which way do you wanna go?” Red chirped.
“Not sure it matters, but since Lore and Malladus went that way and we’re technically trying to interfere with that…”
“Ooh, yeah, that’s a good point!”
With that, the pair of them began blasting the fire into submission, which made a very large cloud of smoke and several angry hissing noises. While they were doing that, the other Links began pulling out various bow-and-arrow combinations, or whatever else they might be carrying in lieu of that.
“Does anyone remember what Malladus’ weak point might have been?” Speck asked while he rustled around in his Bag.
“Probably the big shiny gem on his forehead,” Blue replied. “Adventuring Rule Number Three is to always shoot anything crystal-shaped, crystal-colored, or conceivably crystal-related.”
Speck blinked. “Huh… um, then what are Rules One and Two?”
“Break every pot you see, and that nine times out of ten the weak spot is probably the eyeball.”
“Ah,” Speck nodded sagely. “Vaati.”
“He was a really good example of Rule Number Two, yeah,” Blue agreed. “This would be that one time out of ten where it’s something else, though. Luckily Rule Number Three covers it.”
“How many Rules do you have?” Realm asked.
“Right now? Like, twenty or so. I keep adding new ones-”
“INCOMING!” Green interrupted, as Lore came charging right through the formation. It took approximately half a second for everyone to remember that Malladus had been right behind Lore, which was further helped by the fact that it took about half a second for Malladus to also charge right through the formation.
Consequently, any form of organization the group might have had was immediately dashed to pieces. Red and Sketch had the good sense to start blasting their Ice items every which way in an attempt to make safe ground to stand on for the now-scattered Links. Lore took the opportunity to circle back around next to the Four and pant, rapid-fire, “I am now out of-” GASP “-breath to taunt Malladus with-” WHEEZE “-and I would really appreciate a swap out-” PUFF “-please and thank you.”
“Realm, you’re up,” the Four called.
“On it!” Realm declared cheerfully, sliding into place next to Lore and clearly tensing himself to take off running at the slightest incentive. The hem of his tunic was slightly ablaze, because he’d had to jump through some fire to get to them, and the Four absently batted it out for him. There was more important (and more painful) fire to be concerned with.
Malladus, now that he was up close and personal again, had upgraded himself. The bones beneath his skin, while still visibly glowing yellow, were now rippling with heat in the same way that coals in the heart of a firestorm did. It was such a simple change, but somehow it made everything about Malladus seem so much worse. Additionally, he now radiated heat like a furnace, or a maybe a particularly cold star.
...He was setting things on fire simply by being near them, basically.
“So, we have a problem,” Vio began, and shot off an arrow at Malladus as an example. It burst into flames and burnt away into charcoal before ever reaching the target. “A big problem.”
“Altering the plan! Green decided. “Red, Sketch! Projectile Ice!”
“Oh, sure!” Red chirped. Sketch tilted his head.
“Projectile…?”
Red promptly answered the unfinished question by waving his Ice Rod and launching what looked like a literal ton of frozen chunks directly at Malladus’ head. Like the arrow, the ice immediately fell victim to the heat and fire.
Unlike the arrow, the ice melted into water that stayed just cold enough to not immediately evaporate, and drenched Malladus from his shoulders up. And somewhat surprisingly, the demon reacted in a way that could only mean pain.
More specifically, he started cursing Red, Red’s father, Red’s father’s father, and Red’s father’s father’s father. Several of the words he was using didn’t make sense in the hylian language. Neither did most of the insinuations.
“Oh,” Sketch said. “Nice.”
“Thanks!”
“I like this plan,” Lore decided, having finally gotten his breath back. He brandished his Rod of Seasons and said, “Mind if I join the party?”
“Not even a little bit,” Sketch grinned. “Let’s give him Winter.”
“Read my mind,” Lore declared, the tip of his item already lighting up blue.
At that point, though, Malladus finished cursing out Red, and noticed the large amount of Cold aimed at him. Of everything that could be said about him, slow reaction times was unfortunately not among them.
He dodged all the attacks with ease, and then set about returning the favor. Everyone scattered.
“Try and bar him in!” Green yelled as he ran. “Containment can only be a good thing right now!”
“Okie dokie!” Red called back.
Steam looked out over the chaos, grimaced, and then called over his shoulder, “Everyone know their parts?”
“To the best of our ability,” Mask said. He tactfully didn’t bring up the bits where half the song was still swimming in obscurity because Steam hadn’t been able to fully remember the tune no matter how much Wind tried to jog his memory.
Steam grimaced again, hearing the unspoken addendum anyways. “Yeah… sorry. Um, Dusk, can you start us off?”
Dusk raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t we be closer first?”
“How would we even begin to do that?”
The firestorm, at this point, had progressed to a heat index where the ground was actually beginning to melt a little in some places. Conveniently, every Link had been through a volcano at some point or another, and so had at least a little immunity built up in some way, but there was really nothing that would ever enable walking on lava. And it was just spotty enough that trying to get across the field would probably result in the loss of a leg or two.
“...Fair point,” Dusk admitted. “But genuinely, doesn’t Malladus have to be within hearing range of the Song in order for it to work?”
“I… hadn’t thought of that,” Steam admitted.
“Hang on, ” Wind said. He waved his baton through the air a couple of times, then continued, “I think I can use the air to amplify our sound. But, uh, only in one direction at a time.”
“That’ll work,” Steam agreed. “Dusk?”
“Yeah, okay,” Dusk said, then took a deep breath and began the song. He was glad that he’d had some practice time with Mask and Ocarina; he wouldn’t have had much to go on otherwise.
Then Wind did something complicated with the Wind Waker, and suddenly Dusk could hear his own voice bellowing across the scorched field. He almost winced. Was that what he sounded like to other people?
Yeah, he was really starting to regret having brought his vocal talents up in conversation.
There was a song in the air, and it sounded just two steps shy of being a complete mess. The melody line was only confident for about two out of every three notes, and the less said about the accompanying harmony the better. For all that was going wrong though, it was somehow going right just enough that, when the tune hit Malladus’ ears, he actually stopped throwing fire for a couple moments to poke a finger into his ear instead.
“What is that?” He demanded. “I can’t decide if it’s pleasant or discordant.”
“I think it’s supposed to reveal your weaknesses,” Lore informed him.
Malladus blinked, which had the very odd effect of flickering the visibility of his bones off and back on again in tandem with his eyes. “That nonsense is supposed to be the Sacred Song? Do you people have any idea what it’s supposed to sound like?”
“Theoretically yes,” Sketch said. “In actuality… that’s very debatable.”
“This is laughable,” Malladus decided. “I am actually going to spend a minute, standing here, laughing at you fools.”
He then proceeded to do just that, going into a range of mirth that was honestly disturbing. Discreetly, Lore whipped out a piece of parchment and began to take notes. Several hundred feet away and through the distortion of a soul dimension, Shadow tilted his head in appreciation. And everyone who actually had an undistorted view of the world was hit with the sudden conviction that they should probably not be standing so close to someone so clearly dangerous.
“Now then,” Malladus said. “I’m going to get back to killing you all. Thank you for the amusing distraction.”
“You’re not welcome!” Blue shouted.
Malladus threw fire at him, and by proxy, the rest of the group Blue was standing in. For a few moments, everyone scrambled to get out of the way and Malladus did his best to hit them in spite of their evasive maneuvers.
And then, quite suddenly, the sound of a cello burst into being, and the song hit a Note. Unlike all the previous notes, which quite frankly had been questionable at the very best, this one came with a capital letter, and when it resonated through the air it smacked into Malladus so hard that it snapped his head backwards.
There was a moment of absolute stillness.
Then, from a good distance away, Steam’s voice yelled, “HAH! I TOLD YOU GUYS I REMEMBERED THE SONG!”
“WELL THEN KEEP DOING IT!” Green shouted back.
The next note was normal, and so was the one after that, but then another Note came echoing above the fire, this one accompanied by the sound of a pipa, and hit Malladus just as hard as the first one had. That seemed to trigger a cascade effect, where even though a few notes were still just normal, most of them were Notes. And with more and more Notes, came the Song.
Malladus, by this point, was having a very bad time of it. The Song was actually physically slamming into his body, and with every impact the glow of his bones became momentarily weaker - and of course, every hit drove him a little closer to falling to his knees.
“I thought Steam was exaggerating a little bit about the whole Sacred Song thing,” Sketch admitted, watching this. “I will admit, I was wrong.”
“Should we be taking advantage of this?” Speck asked.
“We don’t… think so? ” the Four hazarded. “ Wasn’t the whole plan to stall him until Gen got his sealing on?”
“Actually, yes,” Lore said. “Has anyone seen him?”
“Okay,” Gen said. “Fi, chances of success?”
“ With the addition of a working Sacred Song, I predict that Sealing Malladus will have a seventy-five percent chance of a positive result, Master. ”
“Close enough,” Gen declared. “Fi, start channeling, I want as much light magic as possible for this.”
“ Understood. ”
Gen let out a harsh breath. “”Here we go,” he muttered, and then began sprinting across the fiery wasteland. He was pretty sure he knew where to go - the Song, for some reason, was visibly pulsing across the ground towards a central point in the flames, and it only made sense for that to be where Malladus was.
He really hoped he wasn’t late.
Gen skidded onto the scene with his fireshield earrings glowing like little twin candles, because he’d wholesale jumped straight through several patches of almost-lava to get to his destination. There was a very good chance that, had he not had fire protection, his shoes would have melted off, which understandably would not have boded well for his legs either. He had the Master Sword already drawn and raised into a ready position, and it appeared that Fi was awake and ready to go judging by the glow his weapon was giving off. He was also, for some reason, carrying a small collection of rocks under his other arm.
“Hi so I need to set up a focus real quick someone keep Malladus distracted until I do and then I can actually get on with the sealing please and thank you!” Gen rattled off, then immediately dropped the rocks and began forcing them into a stack.
“Distraction?” Lore said. It was almost possible to watch his ears prick up with glee. “I can so do Distraction.”
Malladus, meanwhile, hadn’t been paying attention to any of this, because the Sacred Song was still pounding into his brain and wasn’t letting up. His plan, for the moment, was to ride it out. The Sacred Song only lasted for so many measures, and once it ended, he would be free to wreak havoc again.
Admittedly, he would be about half as strong as he’d been, because there was no escaping the effect of a Sacred Song on a demon like himself, but he would still be able to do some damage.
He just had to grit his teeth and be patient for… about six more stanzas.
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
Come on…
There! The Song finally came to an end and Malladus wasted no time in launching himself to his feet. He had fire to shoot and Heroes to burn and a country to conquer, but not necessarily in that order. He needed to get started. He needed to-
“Oi! Mr. Mustache Man!”
Malladus paused. He turned. And then he said, “That had better be the beginnings of a compliment, whelp, or I am going to have to separate your head from your body.”
Lore, who had indeed been about launch into a moustache insult of epic proportions, skillfully rerouted all his mental processes and promptly declared, “Of course not! I was about to gush profusely at the absolutely fabulous style you’re pulling off. I must say, I adore the decision you made to have all your hair be made of fluffy blue smoke. It clashes fabulously with the rest of your coloring - how do you style that sort of thing?”
Malladus, for a very long minute, did absolutely nothing as he evaluated how much of a trap this might be. Then, slowly, he said, “I feed it cedarwood chips and spray it with an oxygen/hydrogen mix twice a day.”
“Oh. My. Din. I never thought of that!” Lore gasped. “I should totally try that sometime!”
Very doubtfully, Malladus eyed Lore’s hair - which, despite being glaringly orange, was not actually on fire. “I… wonder if you’ll see the same results.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Lore sighed. “Oh well. We’ll have to exchange tips the next time your break your seal.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Malladus said, “I already broke my seal.”
Oh no, not that old one,” Lore said, flapping a hand. “I’m talking about this one. GEN, HIT IT!”
“GLADLY!” Gen bellowed, as Lore hit the deck and Gen whipped a gray blur over everyone’s head, but directly into Malladus’ face. The blur resolved into a small spire of rocks, cobbled together by what looked like sheer stubbornness, and stuck about three inches into Malladus’ head. While Malladus stumbled backwards and tried to process this new development, Gen raised his Master Sword above his head and yelled, “FI, DO THE THING!” Then he brought his weapon down in what the other Links recognized as the Skyward Strike move Gen had described to them, and smacked Malladus - and more specifically, the makeshift spire in his forehead - with enough light magic energy to bleach a moblin’s hide white. Immediately, Malladus froze in place.
Now looking like he was really straining for something, Gen decisively slashed his Sword through the air in a distinct pattern. As he did so, matching rifts in the air around Malladus appeared with every motion Gen made. The self-titled Demon King was now well and truly immobilized - but he was still doing his best to glare daggers at his aggressor.
Gen was visibly panting now, probably from the stress of letting Fi channel light magic through him. He took a deep breath, and then flipped his Master Sword around in an intricately complicated pattern, which he ended by stabbing, point first, at the dirt below.
And in response, the seal he had crafted around Malladus blazed with light, and inexorably sank into the ground, dragging Malladus with it. With one final flash, all that was left was the small makeshift spire, sticking up from the ground - and presumably, still embedded in Malladus’ head somewhere, even if it was probably more in a metaphysical sense by this point.
“Hylia’s Grace ,” Gen gasped, and immediately sat down. “That was so much more tiring than I remember it being.”
“That would be because you were establishing a seal this time, Master, as opposed to re-strengthening an already existing one,” Fi informed him in no uncertain terms. “I recommend rest and a stamina potion.”
“I will get right on that,” Gen wheezed. “Right after I start being able to feel my lungs again. Oh my goddess, I am never going to take Zelda for granted ever again.”
“...Um,” Speck said. “Is it over?”
“I have no idea,” Lore said. “Steam probably would. Does anyone know where he is?”
“Here,” Steam’s voice called, right before he himself came into view amidst the still-enthusiastic fire. “What happened?”
“Gen Sealed Malladus,” Vio said. “We’re wondering if that’s the end of it.”
“Doubt it,” Steam sighed. “Malladus ran around without a body before, remember?”
As if on cue, a small, blue, smoky sphere with a pair of bulbous yellow eyes popped out of the ground, took one look at the spire sticking up, and began throwing a temper tantrum.
“ARE YOU SERIOUS!?” Malladus - or rather, the tiny disembodied spirit of Malladus shrieked. “THIRTY MINUTES! I WAS FREE FOR ALL OF THIRTY MINUTES! WHY!?”
“Nothing personal,” Steam said, at which point Malladus turned around and suddenly realized he wasn’t in the best place. “Just, you know, revenge for destroying a country landmark, invading Hyrule, stealing Zelda’s body, spreading mass panic, making Chancellor Cole a thing , and firing lasers at my Spirit Train.” He paused. “Oh. I guess it is personal. My bad.”
With that, he stabbed the Lokomo Sword directly through the small little ball that Malladus now was, and promptly discorporated him. Malladus dissolved with an indignant shriek and a sucking noise, as a black void materialized out of his vanishing remains and then shot off into the distance.
“Good riddance,” Mask muttered. “Too much fire. Way too much fire.”
“Speaking of which,” Dusk said, “we should probably do something about the fire now that Malladus is no longer fueling it? Before it starts moving beyond this field and into something like a town?”
“Absolutely,” Gen sighed, heaving himself up from the ground, having successfully got his breath back. “Okay. First, everyone is taking a Health Potion, no exceptions, because I absolutely refuse to believe that nobody got burnt in this mess. After that, Red, Sketch, Lore, you guys get started on the fire. The rest of us will come up with our own methods and join you in a couple minutes. Clear?”
“Clear,” the group chorused, because if there was one thing that everyone had learned during the Vaati and Ganon fight, it was that Gen had way too many opinions regarding medicare and it was better to just let him have his way with it.
To be fair though, he was absolutely right.
“Oh Thank Us,” Farore decided, as the Aspects of her Attribute huddled among themselves and passed around small bottles. “That could have been so much worse.”
“Parts of the surrounding countryside are glowing,” Nayru pointed out. “From heat.”
“Oh I am so there,” Din said, grinning fiercely. “I always thought New Hyrule could have done with a few more volcanoes and wow, heeeeeey, look at this perfect opportunity…”
“No.” Without looking at her sister, Nayru reached out an arm and snagged Din’s sleeve as she made her move. It was generally a very unwise idea to leave Din unsupervised during landmass creation. Islands were her first love, but volcanoes were a close second. Din had a frightening tendency to go overboard with volcanoes and not realize it until after the fact when the whole thing erupted and endangered half the country’s population.
“But-!” Din made puppy eyes. She may or may not have been taking notes on the actions of one specific red-dressed Courage Aspect. “Just one? Please?”
Nayru stared at her, hard. “... One,” she allowed.
“Yessssssssss.”
Nayru released Din’s sleeve, and Din immediately dashed off towards the reality window to start crafting. Just one volcano. Exactly one volcano. One volcano that Nayru hadn’t put any size parameters on.
Din almost - almost - cackled, but since doing so would alert Farore and Nayru to her plans, she opted for a giddy smile. Ooooooh, this was gonna be fun!
“Was that the best idea?” Farore said, taking in Din’s expression and feeling rightfully apprehensive about it.
“It was either that or listen to her beg us for the next decade,” Nayru pointed out.
“True,” Farore sighed. She pulled another reality window over and peered through it, evaluating the makeshift sealing spike. It was literally cobblestone - as in, a bunch of random stones cobbled together via what looked like desperation, stubbornness, and enough ambient heat to make the edges melt together. “We’re gonna have to Inspire some people to make that more secure.”
“The Tower of Spirits does need rebuilding,” Nayru offered. “All we’d have to do is incorporate the sealing spike into the design, and it would basically be good as new, original purpose and all.”
“Nice,” Farore nodded approvingly. “That wraps up so well we could almost tie a bow around it.”
“I’ll ping Wisdom,” Nayru said. “She can oversee this while Courage moves on.”
“Warn her about Din while you’re at it, will you?” Farore said. “Or at least, the latent volcano. Pass it off as Malladus’ lingering influence or something, he did make a lot of fire.”
Nayru grimaced. “I’ll tell her to bring heat shielding.”
Notes:
Secondary plug for the people who didn’t read the top: I have a YouTube channel under ‘Shalerrin’, I make animations and play Zelda. Subscribe and support me, please and thank you, in return you get to hear my voice and all that fun stuff.
FREAKING FINALLY.
Behold the Train Battle, which fought me for every single word and still manages to be the most stupidly difficult thing I’ve ever tried to write, yet somehow managed to be one of the longest chapters in the whole story. Honestly, what is it about Trains that’s so absurdly prone to Writer’s Block? Literally nothing has ever made me struggle this much. This chapter and I had a battle of sheer undiluted stubbornness, and I’m proud to say that I won. I think I burnt myself out for the next week or two, but I am VICTORIOUS.
In other news, my Malladus headcanons made several more appearances. I did a LOT of research on what his real, not-possessing-anybody body might look like and irritatingly came up with a solid nothing, upon which I immediately took gratuitous liberties with the description of the Demon Train, his host-less spirit form, and crafted an entire body based solely on the faces of those two things because that was the only material I had to work with.
And then I gave him a moustache, just for joke continuity.
Thanks to purplewhiteandgold, Noxlux013, elegantcollectionkoala, JapaneseDragonrider, Guest #132, DrFreaky, PiTheSpy, Guest#133, Guest#134, Guest#135, I_Likes_This, Guest #136, Heart_of_a_Dragon, Guest #137, InkedMyths, Guest #138, KyokiUzumaki, Chris_Atola, FangirlOfPower, Guest #138, Guest #139, reji8627, Guest # 140, Guest #141, and Guest #142, for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 25: And Then They Got Lost
Summary:
The Links are totally going to take down Ganon...! Just as soon as they figure out where he is, first.
Notes:
(Can I ask, why me?)
Haven’t we established this already?
(Well, er, yes, but still. Did you pick me to make fun of for a reason, or was I just the first sucker to actually acknowledge something weird about the situation?)
Mmm… random roulette, actually. I spun myself in a circle and decided to mock the first creature I saw.
(Lucky me.)
Very. Now, Changeling, does not own the Legend of Zelda beyond several copies of video games, two t-shirts, a hoodie, an ocarina, three books, and a poster. The franchise itself is not one of these things.
(Why do you know my merchandise inventory.)
I’m the Universe. You live in me.
(...Oh yeah.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Princess Zelda had made her arrival about halfway through the efforts to get the temperature of the ground back down to walking-on-it levels, and it was considerably awkward. Not necessarily because of the sixteen extra versions of her native Link, but more because she really wanted to know how the group had managed to reduce the Spirit Tower to a pile of rubble and the surrounding area into a minor magma pit, all within the span of thirty minutes.
“This is two steps shy of being a newborn volcano,” Zelda stressed, gesturing spastically at the landscape. In more than a few places, it was still glowing. “The Spirit Tower is Spirit Rubble.”
“Okay, true, but look at it this way!” Steam bargained. “Free hot springs, and we get to rebuild the Tower for less of that structural instability that Malladus was taking advantage of in the first place!”
“There are Spirit Tracks running straight through the center of Town,” Zelda countered. “And we can’t move them, because they’re sacred.”
“New trade route!” Steam improvised.
“The Rabbitland Rescue Haven got bulldozed by both Trains,” Zelda informed him, rather smugly. “The Rabbitland Man is already petitioning for volunteers again. There are rabbits everywhere.”
“Ah,” Steam said, and utterly failed to find a bright-side rebuttal for that point.
“I leave you alone for five minutes,” Zelda sighed, shaking her head fondly.
“Hey, no, it’s definitely been more than five minutes,” Steam said. “Like, it’s been at least a couple days.”
“And look what you went and got yourself into in the meantime,” Zelda replied, giving a very pointed stare towards the rest of the group, and the fire, and the rubble.
Steam tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace. “Please don’t sign me up for the Rabbitland Volunteer list?”
Zelda, to her credit, did try and give Steam a Stern Princess Face, but she’d never been very good at those. “After what happened the last time? I’m not mean enough to make you go through it again.” She snickered.
“Rabbits should not be so hard to find,” Steam grumbled.
Almost as if on cue, Red let out a top-of-his-lungs squeal. “Ohmigosh you guys it’s a bunny!” He promptly scooped a rabbit into his arms, which was black and impossibly fuzzy and had a softly twitching nose framed by long droopy ears. It was adorable. It also gave Steam traumatizing flashbacks.
“Of course Red can just pick them up,” he muttered. “Of course.”
Zelda made a very un-Princess-like snorting noise. Steam half-heartedly swatted at her. There was a very awkward moment when his hand bounced off her shoulder instead of going straight on through like they’d both been expecting it to.
“...Oh yeah,” Steam said.
“I know, ” Zelda agreed. She moved to bump her arm against Steam’s in the easy sort of camaraderie that people develop when saving the world together, which was made all the more special by the fact that this was the first time Steam could actually feel her doing so. “Look, honestly? Hyrule is a mess right now, but the fact that you re-sealed Malladus for good outweighs all the damage you might have caused. Sure, there’s a lot of it, and I’m totally gonna have you chip in for reimbursement, but we can rebuild and not have to worry about the future anymore. That’s huge.”
“Ah,” Steam said. “About that,” and he gave a quick ten second spiel about the Universe collapsing and how Malladus might not be as permanently defeated as Zelda was probably hoping.
Zelda blinked. “...Huh. But you’re fixing it, then?”
“Well, yes,” Steam said.
“Good enough for me,” Zelda declared. “I mean, I already know you can do impossible things-” she motioned at her own physically solid body for emphasis “-so what’s one more?”
“Zelda,” Steam told her, “you’re awesome.”
“I know,” she replied cheekily. “But seriously, I need you to help pay for the damages. The National Society of Sacred Buildings already sent me a Notice about the Spirit Tower, and they’re really not happy that it’s in pieces now. You’re officially responsible for covering whatever they fine me.”
“Sure thing, Princess,” Steam sighed.
Zelda promptly bopped him on the head. “Nope. Call me Zelda, or Zel, but none of this ‘Princess’ and ‘Your Highness’ nonsense that you keep pulling. You’ve seen me without a body, we’re way past formalities by this point.”
“You make that sound so much creepier than it actually was,” Steam complained, shuddering.
“Then stop thinking about it that way, you weirdo.”
They sat in silence for a moment, until Steam leaned a little more into Zelda and muttered, “Missed you.”
“Missed you too,” Zelda murmured back. Then she gave him a mock-push and said, “Now, seriously, monetary compensation. Get on that.”
“Okay, okay, I’m going!”
Steam took one look at the paper Zelda sent him off with and the number written on the paper, and promptly came to the conclusion that he was not carrying enough Rupees to cover that kind of a fine. He then spent ten minutes cajoling the rest of the group into chipping in.
“How much could they possibly be fining her?” Wind asked.
Steam showed him the paper.
“I stand corrected, they can apparently fine her a whole heck of a lot.”
“Is that many zeroes even legal?” Realm asked curiously, having leaned over Wind’s shoulder.
“That particular problem is not my problem,” Steam told him. “My problem is covering it. Help.”
“Yeah, we got you.”
The resulting pile of money left everyone’s pockets embarrassingly lighter, but Zelda gave them all a grateful smile which of course made it completely worth it.
The rest of the day was spent napping, and occasionally doing something about the still-steaming ground. For some reason, the earth below the surface seemed to be stubbornly set on converting into magma regardless of how much the group tried to cool it down, and while that was definitely a problem and more and a couple hours were spent making sure the area was appropriately closed off, it actually turned out to be fairly self-contained.
Weird.
“Good luck saving the country!” Zelda said, waving. She’d decided to follow the Links to the hole in the world, mostly because she was curious, but also because Steam had given her the slightly-less-condensed version of events over the course of the naps and the magma-quarantining, and Zelda had thought it would be a good idea to see how big of an area she ought to evacuate.
“Thanks, we’re gonna need it,” Steam replied. Behind him, the group started piling into the void in the usual haphazard fashion. It did look as though Green had preemptively separated Blue and Vio though, so that was a point they didn’t normally have going for them. “Oh, by the way, are you gonna need the Spirit Train for anything?”
“I think Anjean was going to put it back in the Tower of Spirits,” Zelda said, then paused and amended, “Er, once we rebuild it.”
“Okay, so just in case,” Steam began, “if the Spirit Train randomly disappears, don’t panic. It does that sometimes now.”
Zelda blinked at him. “I’m sorry, what?”
Steam grinned sheepishly at her. “I like trains?”
With a whistle and a flash, the Spirit Train materialized from thin air, landed on a set of newly-spawned Spirit Tracks, and rolled to a picturesque stop on Steam’s immediate right.
“It kinda ended up as a summons for me,” Steam said. “I have no idea how. But this is a thing that happens now.”
“Ah,” Zelda said, staring. “That’s going to be fun to explain to Anjean. Especially because I know for a fact that we left the Spirit Train back with her before coming here.”
Steam winced. “I did not think of that before summoning it, no. That’s my bad.”
Zelda tilted her head. “Can you un-summon it?”
“I… don’t know,” Steam admitted. “Up until exactly this point the Spirit Train has always taken care of that part on it’s own.” Somewhat wisely, he left out the part that the Spirit Train usually ended up doing so in response to severe structural damage. He didn’t think it was the best idea to tell people that he used what was practically a Holy Relic as a battering ram.
“Maybe there’s another trigger phrase,” Zelda suggested. “Or maybe you just need to think about it really hard.”
“Maybe,” Steam allowed.
“HEY, YOU ALMOST DONE?” Lore bellowed from where he was about to clamber through the void himself. “IF YOU TAKE ANY LONGER WE MIGHT LEAVE WITHOUT YOU!”
“NO YOU WON’T!” Steam yelled back.
“OKAY YES YOU’RE RIGHT BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO ADMIT THAT I GET ANNOYED WHEN WAITING FOR THINGS!”
“I’ll figure that un-summons thing out eventually,” Steam decided wryly. “See you later?”
“Of course,” Zelda said, as if it was obvious.
Demise had another head-mate. Neither he nor Malladus were pleased about it. Vaati and Hyrule Ganon weren’t very pleased either, but they were still in ‘emotional therapy’ and thus didn’t have much of a say.
“Can I ask,” Demise growled, “how you managed to screw up so impressively? You had everything going for you. Literally everything.”
Do you honestly think I would be back in here if I knew? Malladus snapped. I had my body back! My real, true body! I tried very hard to keep my body, believe me!
Demise, who didn’t care and in fact had not deigned to even notice that Malladus’ usual smoky skull form might not be his natural state, rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, I’m very convinced,” in a tone of voice that did not at all sound as though he was convinced.
...Excuse me?
“Don’t start with me, I’m busy,” Demise snarled. “Either shut up so I can concentrate or I’ll make you.”
You’re the one who started this conversation.
“EMOTIONAL THERAPY!” Demise decided, and Malladus quite abruptly stopped talking. This may or may not have been because of the soundproof fishbowl that he was now trapped in.
“Honestly, the things I have to do in order to hear myself think,” Demise muttered, before getting back to planning.
He had Goddesses to violently murder, after all.
“...Did I ever put a size limit on that volcano I let Din make?” Nayru asked suddenly.
“Er,” Farore said, who couldn’t remember if such a restriction had ever happened.
“Oh no,” Nayru whispered, and vanished in a flash of blue.
Farore sighed. “That’s sure to end well,” she decided. But thankfully, it wasn’t her business. Instead, she pulled over the nearest reality window to see what Courage was up to.
“...Oh dear,” she said. “That. That is going to be a problem. That is going to be a very complicated problem.”
These boys were going to give her fits.
Wind met Steam on the other side of the void with a quiet fistbump and a soft, “Female best-friend solidarity,” before moving away, which Steam had to take a moment to puzzle through before deciding Wind had probably drawn parallels to himself and Tetra. Which, quite honestly, was a nice change from the sudden and unappreciated teasing he’d gotten from Alfonzo about being close with a girl. (That conversation had gone something along the lines of, “So, do you ~like~ her?” “I’m thirteen, Alfonzo.” “Why should that stop you from having feelings?” “We are not talking about this right now-”)
Seriously, Zelda was his best friend. Thinking about her like that was… weird. Which, was a perfect excuse to think about something else, and Steam promptly did so. Thankfully there were several candidates.
The most prominent one, though, was probably the fact that Realm looked both incredibly sheepish and incredibly apologetic, which almost always meant that he was about to say something the rest of the group was going to be annoyed about.
“Yeah, so, this is my Hyrule,” Realm began. “And, uh, I have no idea where we are.”
“Are you serious,” Gen said.
“Okay, let me rephrase that: I do know where we are, but I have no idea where this is in relation to anything else.”
“... Are you serious.”
“Yes,” Realm said apologetically. “And before you ask, no, I don’t have a map.”
“Oh Din I forgot about that,” Vio muttered in horror.
“Maybe,” Dusk cut in, “we should start with what you do know and try to work from there. You said you knew where we are?”
“Oh, yeah,” Realm said. “We’re right outside the cave where I got my first Sword. It’s right over there, see?”
There was, in fact, a cave in the mountainside wall that Realm was indicating, with an old man diligently sweeping small rocks away from the entrance. As if on cue, he looked up and waved at Realm.
“IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE!” he shouted.
“I’M NOT, I FOUND SOME PEOPLE!” Realm shouted back.
The old man nodded and went back to his sweeping.
“He worries about me,” Realm said cheerfully. “He should actually be really happy I met up with you guys, he’s been trying to get me a travelling partner for ages . He thinks I need someone to watch my back when I lose track of it.”
“He’s absolutely right,” Gen declared. Everyone else nodded vehemently.
“...So what do we do then? ” The Four asked. “ Just wander around and hope we find something?”
“Nonsense,” Realm said. “I may not know where Ganon’s lair is in relation to me, but I do know how long it took me to get there the last time I tried. If we start now, we should make it there sometime next week!”
“...Are. You. Serious.”
Realm grinned awkwardly. “Yep, sorry.”
“Can I just-” Ocarina rubbed at his eyes. “We don’t have a map. You have no idea where we’re going. And you also have no idea where we are in relation to literally anything else.” He looked completely baffled. “Can we at least ask that guy for directions?”
“He doesn’t have a map either,” Realm informed him. “Kinda nobody does.”
“Oh,” Ocarina said faintly. “Okay then. We can’t even ask for directions. Great.”
“How exactly are we supposed to get where we’re going if we don’t even know where we’re going?” Mask interjected on behalf of his older-but-younger self.
“No, I know where we’re going,” Realm corrected. “I just have absolutely no idea how to get there. So we might as well get started!”
With that, he strode off in an entirely randomly-chosen direction.
“Um...exactly how much should we brace ourselves?” Speck asked.
“A lot,” Blue sighed.
Dusk, on the other hand, opted to determinedly march off after Realm, and that prompted everyone else to follow along behind him.
This was going to be… interesting.
The first mishap came in the form of an island in the middle of a lake, which was apparently the only one of its kind in the whole country. This, however, wasn’t the problem.
“You can’t swim,” Blue stressed.
“No I can not,” Realm agreed cheerfully.
“Then how did we get here?”
“No idea.”
“... What?”
The second mishap came in the form of an archipelago, on the farthest eastern side. It wasn’t so much the getting there that was the issue, so much as how long it had taken the group to get there.
From the island in the lake to the other side of the country, it had taken them about six minutes.
“Okay, how!?” Steam sputtered.
“Well, if I knew,” Realm began.
“You’d do something about it, we know,” Steam groaned.
“I’m beginning to think that everything about him just defies logic,” Vio muttered.
The third mishap was an octorok-infested forest, which of course was nowhere near the archipelago and had somehow taken about three minutes to get to. The octoroks were not friendly. They were not friendly at all. There was also far more of them than there were of the Links.
“Oh, right,” Realm said. “So, side effect of my condition - I kinda tend to attract a lot of hostile mobs.”
“We noticed,” Mask said dryly.
“Perfect, we should start running now.”
The fourth mishap came in the form of a cave, which wouldn’t have been nearly so concerning if it weren’t for the fact that nobody could remember how they’d gotten into it. They’d all been too busy running from the octoroks.
This was further compounded by the fact that the cave was dark, damp, unpleasant, and filled with far more Keese than would be necessary, for anything, ever.
“Yeah, that secondary effect tends to last a while,” Realm said apologetically, right before all the Keese swarmed them.
In the ensuing confusion, Blue shouted something about Zubat caves without Repel, which of course immediately got him smacked by his three immediate siblings. This, combined with the Keese, caused him to pitch off balance, fall into Green, who fell into Vio, who fell into Wind, who stumbled onto Lore, and it all went downhill from there.
Nobody was quite sure how they made it out of the cave either, but it did take them several hours longer than it probably should have.
The cave really should not have deposited the group into a desert, but that was somehow exactly where they ended up. Sand, as it does, immediately invaded everyone’s shoes.
“I think we’re making good progress!” Realm said brightly, ignoring the fact that they were also surrounded by sandpits and that half the group has busy trying to haul Lore out of a particularly deep one.
“Pull harder, I am not being a maiden sacrifice to the Sand Guardians today!” Lore shrieked.
“...You’re a guy, Lore.”
“Which is exactly why I’m not being a maiden sacrifice, weren’t you listening!?”
The desert did not border a mountain range. The desert did not even border hills. The group really should not have been standing on a mountaintop with no desert in sight within five minutes of clambering out of said desert.
“...I give up,” Vio decided. “This is ridiculous. This is absolutely ridiculous.”
“Hey, we’re in the general biome!” Realm said, cheerfully moving right past Vio’s impending worldview crisis. “We might actually be on the right track this time!”
“...Or it might be a little longer,” Realm admitted.
“Realm, this is the same island in a lake from our first attempt,” Gen said.
“Yep,” Realm agreed, then went back to mourning the failure. “I really thought we might have gotten it that time too.”
“Realm, you still can’t swim. How did we manage this twice?”
“Well, if I knew that-”
“-then you’d do something about it,” half the group chorused despairingly.
Vio’s worldview crisis quietly graduated from a headache to migraine status.
The eighth mishap came in the form of a graveyard, which was most certainly not anywhere close to the lake. It probably said something that this wasn’t necessarily surprising anymore.
“Oh hey, this is where I got my second sword,” Realm commented. “It was really convenient, because I’d just lost my first one. A dragon ate it. I never did manage to get that one back.”
“...And do you still have the second one?” Speck asked slowly.
“Actually yes, it’s backup for if I permanently lose my third one,” Realm informed him. “I’ve got it here, see?”
He dug around in his bag for a moment… then two… then several more. Awkwardly, he looked back up and said, “So I may have lost my backup sword.”
“Of course you did,” Sketch sighed.
Abruptly, one of the gravestones slid to the side with a loud rock-on-rock crunch , and an elderly man climbed out from beneath it. He straightened up, stretched, and then turned and came face to face with Realm.
“Oh, for - I already gave you a sword, quit coming back!” He scolded.
“No worries, I’m just lost,” Realm assured him.
“Hmmmph,” the old man grunted, which somehow expressed his opinion on the situation far more eloquently than words ever could, then promptly turned around and vanished beneath the gravestone again. It slid back into place with a grating noise that actually managed to sound disdainful.
“He doesn’t like me very much,” Realm confided. “But that’s a loads better mood than the one he was in when he gave my second sword to me. I think he was just glad to be rid of the responsibility.”
“Why does he live under someone else’s tomb?” Steam asked faintly.
“Not sure. It seemed rude to ask.”
The ninth mishap was the ocean. Which happened to be on the exact other side of Hyrule. And should have taken much longer to get to than the three minutes it actually did.
“Obviously this is nowhere near where we’re trying to go,” Realm said cheerfully, “but I think the beach is nice enough to count as a necessary detour, don’t you?”
“ No,” Sketch rasped, from where he was standing as far away from the ocean as he could feasibly get. At his side, Wind patted Sketch’s shoulder consolingly.
“Well, everything’s relative,” Realm conceded.
The tenth mishap would have been a bridge, except that Sketch outright refused to cross over it. The reasoning for this might have been the fact that the bridge spanned a large and violently active river.
“I respect your phobia and subsequent desire to stay as far from wet as possible,” Realm shouted at Sketch over the roaring of the river, “but I’m like fifty percent sure that we need to cross this bridge! As far as my direction goes that’s practically a guarantee!”
Sketch, who was a solid hundred feet from the bridge and inching further as time passed, did not look encouraged by this. “You said that about the last bridge!” he screeched. “ And it collapsed!”
“And I apologized profusely!”
“I don’t care where you think this leads us, I am not going through another whitewater experience!”
The eleventh mishap found them back at the beach. Sketch by this point was beginning to look traumatized.
“You just had to lose your shield,” he growled.
Realm shrugged, and grinned in the awkward way which meant he didn’t have a better response.
The twelfth mishap was the island in the lake.
Again .
“This is the third time, ” the Four said in amazement. “ How? ”
“Well, if I knew that-”
“ YOU’D DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT,” the entire group groaned.
“To be fair, even I think this is a little bit weird,” Realm replied.
“Oh thank goodness, if this was still normal I think I might have broken something,” Blue gasped.
The thirteenth mishap… was their destination.
“Oh!” Realm said, in tones of pleasant surprise. “This is it, actually!” He peered up at twin mountains, squinting as he evaluated something. “Yeah, this is totally it. Wow, that only took twenty-three hours and nine backtracks!”
“Gah,” said Lore eloquently, as he and everyone else collapsed to the dirt and tried desperately to catch their breath. Realm turned his head at the noise and blinked at them.
“...Why are you all on the ground?”
“Because,” Gen wheezed, “we’re exhausted.”
“But it’s only been twenty-three hours and-”
“Nine backtracks, we know,” Mask interrupted. “ We were there.”
“Most people would have given up by the two or three hour mark,” Wind contributed calmly.
Realm blinked again. “...Huh.”
“All in favor,” Lore panted, “of a nap.”
“Seconded,” Gen gasped.
“Approved,” Dusk contributed quickly, before dragging in another gulp of air.
It took approximately ten seconds for everyone but Realm to pass out.
“Well alright then,” Realm decided. “I’ll take first watch.”
About ten minutes later, Realm was treated to the incredibly odd sight of Shadow poking his head out from between a sleeping Dusk’s feet, and then shoving said feet away in order to clamber the rest of the way out. It looked like he was emerging from a black puddle, and several of Realm’s brain functions went a little sideways as he tried to fit the sight into his accepted idea of physics.
“Are you idiots done flailing yet?” Shadow grumbled.
“We actually finished beating up Malladus yesterday,” Realm informed him.
“I know that, I could hear all the screaming,” Shadow snapped. “I was talking about your hilarious inability to find where you’re going. Finally figured it out or do I need to get back to my nap?”
“Oh, no we figured it out,” Realm told him proudly. He pointed up to the peaks of the twin mountains and said, “See? We made it a full week sooner than I thought we would!”
Shadow peered at him, and his mouth twisted into a grimace. “You are entirely too cheerful to be in my presence right now.”
Realm shrugged, but made no real attempt to apologize for it. He was an optimist, there wasn’t much else he could do outside of rewriting his entire personality, and somewhat understandably he didn’t want to do that.
“Mph,” Shadow grunted, thoroughly irritated. “Should I pay attention to whichever idiot you idiots are going to fight?”
Realm tilted his head. “Well, he is a Ganon,” he mused, “but I’m honestly not sure if he ever made a Shadow or not. If he did, I certainly never met you.”
“Too busy getting lost in a cave somewhere?”
“Ha, er, well… probably, yes,” Realm admitted.
“Uh-huh.” Shadow made a point of actually looking around the landscape, since this was the first opportunity he’d taken to do so. “Yeeeeeah, I’ve never seen this place before in my life. Later.”
He crouched down and put a finger back on Dusk’s shadow, and was halfway through melting into it before Realm yelped, “Wait! I thought, maybe, you could help with this one? Get to know the group dynamics a bit more?”
Shadow, who was little more than a blobby mass of dark with two red slits for eyes at the moment, gave Realm an incredibly flat stare. He barked out a sharp laugh, made all the odder for the fact that he didn’t have a visible mouth.
“No,” he said shortly, and then slithered the rest of the way into the shade and finished the conversation with what was basically the equivalent of slamming a door in Realm’s face.
Well, Realm decided, that could have gone worse! At least, Shadow still seemed to be sticking around, which was… probably better than the alternative. And hey, he hadn’t even tried to murder anyone yet!
With those thoughts, Realm went back to keeping watch. They were right in front of Ganon’s lair, after all, even if all the minions were thoroughly terrified of him for no reason that Realm could remember.
(For the interested, it was because of The Great Lynel Massacre, which Realm was entirely unaware of his part in. Suffice to say, there used to be a lot larger of a Lynel population before Realm had accidentally and unknowingly dragged the entirety of them into his misdirectional field and dropped them into a caldera on his way through. Lynels were resistant to a lot of things, but molten lava was not one of them. From that day forwards, Realm had the unspoken reputation of ‘The Wandering Death’ among the monsters - not that he knew about it, all his opponents were too busy gibbering in terror to say it to his face.)
Meanwhile, Original Ganon sat on his throne in the heart of his lair, and contemplated the news that his (absolutely terrified) Like-like henchmonster. ‘The Wandering Death’ had apparently found his way to their location and was in fact camping just outside the entrance. No doubt he would soon storm their fortress and bring devastation in his wake.
Or at least, that’s how the Like-like had phrased it. Personally, Ganon felt that was a bit overly-dramatic, but in order to keep his minions in a somewhat normal state of mind, it was probably best to take some offensive action.
“Scramble the layout,” Ganon ordered. “And make it as needlessly complicated as possible. It’s taken him two years to find us; let’s see if we can’t take advantage of that bad direction of his.”
The normal layout was a straight line from the entrance to the throne room, with all the secondary chambers being the living quarters for Ganon’s minions and the hidden prison where Zelda was being kept. Ganon’s throne and Zelda’s prison were locked into place within the stronghold - but everything else? It was rearrangeable, and Ganon had done so explicitly upon realizing that the Hero searching for him would have trouble finding his way out of a paper bag. Not because he was dim-witted, because observation had proved that the boy was anything but; rather, because his sense of direction was so poor that it was honestly surprising that he’d only taken two full years to figure out where Ganon’s lair was.
So naturally, Ganon had taken full advantage of this fact, and every one of his minions knew the drill for this scenario. The Like-like squished in agreement and bounced off to relay his orders, leaving Ganon to temple his fingers together and plan.
He would not be going back to Demise, not if he had anything to say about it.
Notes:
I forgot how nice it is to write something that’s not about Trains. This chapter seemed so easy in comparison! Ah, Realm. You and your directional misadventures never fail to feed my inspiration.
Thanks to N_chan, Guest #143, FluffyLew, Sister_Says_Go, Guest #144. Guest #145, itsrainingcuccos, Wisetypewriter, ithil_lome, Guest #146, Guest #147, gakrolin, Guest #148, Roo, Movielover52, Guest #148, Guest #149, Becky313, Guest #150, 2GeometricOwls, Guest #151, Guest #152, and Guest #153 for the Kudos!
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Chapter 26: Who Needs A Map?
Summary:
Realm has a Condition. You'd think this wouldn't matter in the middle of a Boss Battle, but you'd be wrong. You'd be very, VERY wrong.
Notes:
(You know, I think this partnership is gonna work out.)
Of course it will. I know that you don’t own The Legend of Zelda, and that lets you off the Copyright Hook.
(How convenient!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
About twelve hours after crashing on the ground, the Links finally got themselves in gear and were feeling ready to face Ganon’s lair.
...Ish.
Okay, so nobody really felt ready except for Realm. Realm was actually quite optimistic about the whole endeavor. Everyone else was mentally preparing themselves for the trauma.
“This is gonna be so efficient!” Realm said cheerfully. “We might even make it to Ganon by the three-day mark!”
“Please stop,” Steam moaned.
“I did not take a long enough nap for this,” Lore decided.
“No, I really think it’ll be that easy,” Realm insisted. “You guys are managing to improve my efficiency rate by over fifty percent!”
Wind gently laid his hand on Realm’s shoulder. With a truly impressive amount of tact he said, “Realm, that’s not normal. Three days for a dungeon is not normal.”
“You’re right, I should bump it up to four just to be safe,” Realm agreed.
“No,” Wind said, still with an astonishing amount of tact. “The other way, Realm.”
For the first time, Realm looked genuinely confused by the conversation. “As in… less time?”
“Yes,” Wind said, tactfully.
“What, like… two days and twenty-three hours?”
“More like twelve.”
Realm perked up. “Oh, days.”
“No, hours. Maybe a day if it’s bad.”
Realm appeared to be truly baffled by such a concept.
“It took us nearly a full day just to get here , remember? Hours for a dungeon shouldn’t be too bad at all.”
Realm made a face. “I’m actually still wrapping my head around the fact that we got here in less than a day. I was expecting it to take a week if we were lucky.”
“And if we were unlucky?” Wind asked bravely.
“Couple months or so?”
Wind blanched. “Okay, ignoring that. But if a couple months got cut down to a day, it’s reasonable to expect that a few days might be cut down to mere hours, right?”
“Makes sense,” Realm agreed.
Steam cleared his throat, breaking back into the conversation. “I may regret this, but - how long does it normally take you to get through a dungeon?”
“Like a week, if I’m lucky. Two if it’s normal, three if I’m having a bad time of it. And if there’s a dragon, three and a half.”
“I was right, I regretted that,” Steam muttered.
“We all regretted that,” Gen sighed. “Let’s just… go, before we regret it more.”
“Oh, um,” Realm said, “I won’t be much help in there. I’ve only ever been once.”
It should also be noted that Realm had no idea that the layout of the Lair was changeable, and was going off what he remembered from the last time, which was a straight-shot hallway and a door. Presumably his lack of knowledge was better left unsaid, as the fact that he was planning for a solid three days to navigate a hallway probably would not have gone over well.
“Was it on purpose?” Gen asked heavily.
“Er, no” Realm admitted. “I made it to Ganon’s throne by complete accident. Also it didn’t last very long, and I really don’t know how I got there.”
“... Great,” Steam said.
The one problem with barricading himself, the stolen Princess, and all of his lowly minions in the depths of his lair, Ganon mused, was that after a certain point, there really wasn’t anything to do but just… wait.
Ganon, unfortunately, had never been very good at waiting.
“Here’s the question,” he said to the Like-like on duty. This was a calculated move, because Like-likes were terrible conversationalists and thus couldn’t talk back or judge his decisions. “Why didn’t I decide to be proactive with this plan?”
The Like-like, having absolutely no mouth to speak of whatsoever, made a squishing noise. It sounded vaguely terrified; it was a bit hard to tell.
“You do realize that none of his ‘Wandering Death’ reputation was on purpose, don’t you?” Ganon asked dryly. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have absolutely no idea about it.”
This did not seem to reassure the Like-like very much.
“I could have gone after him,” Ganon sighed. “I could have gathered my armies and led the charge, and eliminated him once and for all.”
The Like-like quivered. There was about a fifty percent chance that the quivering was from terror, and not from the normal range of movement. Again, it was a bit hard to tell.
“Yes, I am very great,” Ganon agreed. “Which is why I think you’re giving the Hero too much credit. He wouldn’t stand a chance.”
The Like-like bounced in place a few times. It was a toss-up as to whether this was a nervous tic or not, but gelatin tended to magnify movement anyways.
“You honestly expect the Wandering Death to be capable of staying in place long enough for a deathtrap to activate,” Ganon said dryly. “I think not. I’ll be personally overseeing his demise, thank you.”
A squish sound, followed by wet jiggling.
“Because it would be incredibly impractical and would leave far too much of the outcome up to chance.” Ganon was beginning to be bored with the conversation. “The last time I trusted a deathtrap to take out my opponents, I somehow ended up with three extra opponents and exactly zero filled traps. I’ll not be making the same mistake twice.”
The Like-like emitted a single, solitary SQUISH .
“If you don’t stop questioning me and my methods, I’m going to take my trident and use it to eat you,” Ganon said calmly. “I have always wondered if your kind tastes anything like dessert.”
The Like-like, in an appropriately terrified reaction, froze mid-jiggle.
“That’s what I thought,” Ganon muttered.
The first clue for the group that everything was about to go horribly sideways was the moment Realm walked through the entrance to Ganon’s Lair and said, “Well this doesn’t look familiar at all.”
“I thought you said you’d been here before!” Steam groaned.
“I have,” Realm agreed. “But it didn’t look like this.”
‘This’, for the interested, was a large square room with a door straight ahead, a door on the left, and a very confused elderly man in the middle.
“Who moved my house?” the man asked plaintively.
“Erm,” Realm said. “Ganon?”
The man immediately scowled. “That cheapskate, I paid him rent on time this month.”
“Perfect, we’re the Rental Investigations Committee,” Lore replied, immediately pouncing on what was, in his mind, a fantastic excuse for their inadvertent breaking-and-entering. “Mind pointing us towards your landlord?”
“He’ll be that way,” the old man said, pointing towards the door straight ahead. “And while you’re there, tell him to do something about the locks on the doors, they’re clearly not working if you lot can just waltz on in.”
“We will pass that on,” Lore promised solemnly, as the rest of the group filed through the door.
They were promptly attacked by Like-likes.
“YOU’RE TERRIBLE WITH DIRECTIONS!” Blue shouted back through the door at the elderly man. Just in front of him, Red had already gotten into a tug-of-war trying to save his shield.
“Bad squishy!” he yelped.
The elderly man peered through the doorway, frowning even more than he’d already been. “That’s normally where Ganon’s office is,” he said, bewilderedly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s happening.”
“ Thanks,” Blue said bitingly.
“Well there’s no need to be rude about it,” the man sniffed before pointedly closing the door.
Several minutes of struggle later, when all the Like-likes had been dispersed, a key had been claimed from the remains, and everyone’s gear had been recovered, Dusk took a deep breath and said, “Realm, do you have any idea what’s going on?”
There was silence. Dusk let it stretch for an absurdly hopeful ten whole seconds before dropping his head into his hand. “Oh, no.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mask agreed blankly.
“Did… did he actually get lost without us?” the Four ventured. There was another pause in the conversation as everyone peered around with the vague idea that maybe Realm was just off in the corner somewhere. Unfortunately, the only things in the corners were rocks.
“Okay!” Gen declared bracingly. “New plan. We’re going to traverse this place as efficiently as possible, check every room, and if we don’t find Realm along the way then we’re going to take out his Ganon as best we can and then start checking all the other places he might be. I’m officially putting whoever can swim on the task of reaching that island in the lake that he seems to gravitate towards.”
“Hard pass,” Sketch said, shuddering.
“Whoever can swim excluding Sketch,” Gen immediately amended. “Now, hopefully we can find him before he gets himself somewhere even more ridiculous than his usual.”
The looks that everyone gave him expressed extreme doubt on that subject, but Gen was trying to be optimistic about it.
Realm, meanwhile, had absolutely no idea where he was. This did not concern him nearly as much as it probably should have.
He was , however, rather concerned about the fact that Original Ganon was only fifteen feet away from him.
“How did you get here?” Ganon asked, caught so off-guard by Realm’s frankly impossible appearance that he forgot to be menacing.
“Erm,” Realm said, and then didn’t say anything else, mostly because explaining how he’d gotten there would first require knowing how he’d gotten there.
“Wait,” Ganon pointed an accusing finger. “Did you get lost?”
Realm perked up, since this was a much easier question to answer. “Well, yes.”
“And because you got lost, you somehow managed to bypass every single one of my security strategies?”
“There were security strategies?” Realm asked, because from his point of view he’d walked through a doorway and ended up here. He was ignored.
“The ones specifically designed to take advantage of your lack of topographical comprehension and prevent you from ever setting foot in my lair?” Ganon finished, menacingly. He’d gotten over his surprise by now and was channeling his malice in full force.
“Uh,” said Realm. “Sorry about that?”
Ganon growled at him, then paused as a thought occurred. “Where is the rest of you? All the other little green hat-lings who flounder around behind you.”
Realm blinked, then turned in a circle. He was the only Link in sight.
“...That’s probably not good,” he decided quietly.
A slow grin overtook Ganon’s face. “You know what?” he said conversationally. “I think this little incident might just be a blessing in disguise.”
“We may have different definitions of the word ‘blessing’,” Realm informed him.
“Nonsense,” Ganon replied. “After all… you’re just one little Link separated from his Chain. How much of a fight could you possibly give me?”
Realm would have very much liked to ask what a ‘Chain’ was, but then Ganon lunged at him with every intent to blow a fireball straight through his ribcage, and Realm decided that questions could wait until after he survived this fight.
He drew his sword, attempted to draw his shield but failed because it seemed to be missing, then darted forwards-
And it was at that point that Ganon vanished from the visible spectrum entirely.
“...This feels distinctly unfair,” Realm muttered, and then threw himself into a sprint as fire materialized out of nowhere and Ganon laughed maniacally from somewhere in the room.
The entire lair shook with a distant BOOM , making all the Links pause in what they had been doing (which was, for the interested, fending off Lanmolas) and stare off in the direction of the sound.
“...Twenty Rupees says we just found Realm,” Mask bet.
“No deal, I know better than to wager against you,” Ocarina retorted immediately.
“What’s in here that could make a noise that loud?” the Four wondered.
“Another twenty on it being a dragon,” Mask offered them.
“That is a stupid bet and we are not taking it.”
“Darn,” Mask said cheerfully, or as cheerful as he could be given the circumstances. There was a Lanmola trying to eat him.
“He would get himself into a fight without us,” Gen groaned. “Should I be concerned that I’m really not surprised anymore?”
“No, it makes you more effective in dealing with it,” Dusk advised. “But we should probably get a move on, if we want to assist him.”
“Agreed. Lore, do your Subrosian Incendiary Circle Whatevers allow for blasting a hole straight through the walls to wherever Realm is?”
Lore tilted his head thoughtfully. “Well, that depends on if the Holodese Culture of Blockading Structures has jurisdiction here or not. One moment.”
He pulled out a bomb, lit it, laid it lovingly against the wall closest to where the BOOM had come from, and then promptly sprinted for cover. The bomb exploded; the wall remained unscathed.
“The Subrosian Circle of Incendiary Materials does not allow for me blasting a hole straight through the walls,” Lore reported mournfully. “Stupid blockading structure.”
“We’ll come back to that,” Gen decided quickly, rightfully assuming that whatever conversation would result from asking about this Holodese Blocking Culture Whatever would be far too confusing to be anything close to timely. “Long way around it is, let’s be as quick as we can.”
Unfortunately they got a bit delayed, because the very next room was full of very angry Keese, which immediately descended in a swarm of flapping and unchecked aggression.
“We still don’t have Repel!” Blue yelped, fending off the attack.
“QUIT BREAKING THINGS!” Green shouted at him from across the room. Normally, he would have just given Blue a whack and been done with it, but that was a bad idea in the middle of another fight. Shouting was just the next best thing.
Realm had barricaded himself into a corner, back pressed to the walls in such a way that there was absolutely no chance of Ganon attacking him from behind. This decision was in absolutely no way influenced by the fact that Ganon had already successfully attacked from behind about three times before, of course not, that was a ridiculous idea.
Realm pointed his sword at the seemingly empty room. It was really annoying that Ganon didn’t leave any sort of tell. There was no cast-shadow, no air distortion, there wasn’t even anything on the ground to be disturbed with Ganon’s movements - it was all solid stone, no dirt or dust at all.
And it was really, really annoying.
Abruptly, fire materialized from nowhere and rocketed towards Realm’s head, and Realm had never been more grateful to have kept track of his sword for once. He quickly swatted the fire out with the flat of the blade.
Admittedly, that would have been a lot easier with his shield, but. Uh. Realm didn’t actually know where his shield was at the moment.
In the middle of running from a Patra, the Four tripped, desynchronized, and immediately went sprawling. Half the group promptly switched tactics, changing from evasion to full frontal assault, while the other half of the group went to help the Four pull themselves back together.
“What’d we trip on?” the Four asked confusedly. In the background, Dusk took out three of the little Patra drones in one hit; he may or may not have been growling a little. He got a bit protective sometimes.
“Well,” Speck said slowly, “I, uh, think it’s Realm’s shield.”
There was a moment of silence. Speck hefted the shield off the ground for the group’s contemplation - sure enough, it was Realm’s.
“That probably doesn’t bode well,” Sketch sighed.
Realm should probably be concerned about that. He made a mental note to come back to it, right after he finished getting his butt kicked by an invisible teal pig.
Ganon, from wherever he was in the room, spawned more fire, and Realm whipped his sword around to deflect it - only to freeze halfway through the motion, as a Very Important Thought occurred to him. He did get a little distracted when the fire that he’d failed to deflect exploded on his shirt, but that was barely even a factor to his brain.
He was an idiot, because - Ganon did have a tell . It was the fire. Ganon was invisible, but his attacks weren’t, and if Realm could use the attacks to mark where Ganon was while firing them, then…
This might actually be a fair fight after all. But it did mean that Realm was going to have to leave the safety of his corner, if he wanted to make sure he was right.
He never really liked this part of combat.
Warily, Realm edged himself out of the corner and towards the center of the room. This was, quite honestly, outside of his area of expertise. Realm fought things by running from said things, and then finishing the fight when his opponent collapsed in exhaustion. Most of his contributions to the group fights so far had been him, running on Distraction, and then getting a random few hits in during the final pushes. More to the point, in a fight on his own, he’d never ever finished it in the same place he’d started it.
Really, the fact that he hadn’t somehow dragged both himself and Ganon on a wild adventure through the country by now was just a little bit baffling-
There!
Realm threw himself out of the way of the fire, but he did so by lurching towards the spot where they’d come from, and as he did he threw his sword out in as wide an arc as he could physically manage.
And something caught.
Granted, Realm had no idea how much of his opponent he’d hit, or whether he’d even done damage at all, because GANON WAS STILL INVISIBLE, but he’d landed a hit. He’d landed a hit, and that was more progress than he’d made in the past ten full minutes.
“I’m sorry,” Ganon’s voice echoed around the room. “Did you just stab me?”
Realm frowned. “No? That was a distinctly not-stabby movement? It was more of a slash than anything else.” He subtly inched towards the spot where Ganon’s voice was emanating from.
There was a pause.
“Are you attempting to debate semantics in order to stall me?” Ganon asked, dangerously soft and also from an entirely different direction. “Clever, I’ll admit, but I think you underestimate me.”
“Worth a shot,” Realm grumbled.
“You’ll regret taking it,” Ganon promised.
The air of the dungeon was beginning to smell like smoke. This was universally agreed to be a bad sign.
“What did Realm do?” Steam wondered, in between futilely trying to kill the Bubble that was creeping along the wall behind him. “What could he possibly have gotten himself into that would set the lair on fire?” He paused, in order to stab his sword through the Bubble’s face, to absolutely no effect. “And why is it always fire lately?”
Wind gave the Bubble an apprehensive appraisal. Then he too attempted to stab it, to absolutely no effect. “He’s Realm. What could he possibly have not gotten himself into that would set the lair on fire?”
“Fair point,” Steam admitted. He lit a bomb and launched it at the Bubble, then peered through the aftermath. The Bubble remained stubbornly unaffected and stubbornly murderous. “Man, what does it take to kill this thing?”
“I don’t think we can,” Wind observed. “But at least, it seems to be stuck to the wall?”
“Great, except for the fact that the door out of this room is also on a wall.”
They both looked at the Bubble, which was valiantly patrolling the walls on either side of the door, and also happened to be the reason they were trying so hard to kill it.
“...Maybe we could freeze it,” Wind suggested, and went to grab Red, who had an Ice Rod and was much more likely to be conservative with it than Lore blasting Winter.
Okay. So. It was entirely possible that Realm had made a mistake with this strategy of his, here.
Ganon’s solution to Realm tracking him through attacks was to throw so many attacks that it was impossible to tell where any individual one was coming from, much less being able to stand still long enough to take advantage of it even if Realm could. As a result, Realm was sprinting, and the room was on fire.
Literally, the room was on fire. Realm felt like he’d had quite enough of fire recently, thank you, but that didn’t seem to be stopping Ganon.
This wasn’t working.
Realm began trying to formulate a better strategy as he dodged, and he thought he might have an idea. It was a very bad idea, to be frank, and the only reason Realm was planning on it was because it was inevitable.
Essentially, Ganon was controlling the playing field. He was on his home turf, and he had the battle advantage.
Realm, therefore, was going to do what he did best. He was going to get lost, but this time he was going to do it on purpose .
...Okay, that was a lie, Realm had no idea how to get lost on purpose. But he did know that he was going to get lost at some point during this fight, because that was how his fights went, and when it happened, Realm was going to take advantage of it.
Any minute now. Why had he decided to base his new strategy off a completely random event again? Realm focused fiercely on being anywhere else but here, in the hope that doing so might help his condition along.
The quickest way to get lost, he reminded himself, is to think about where I’m going while facing the direction I’m moving in.
With this thought fixed firmly in his head, Realm sprinted forwards, snatched at the air where he thought Ganon might be based on the most recent flurry of fire, successfully dug his fingers around what felt like the ridge of armor, and then looked up and found himself standing on a very familiar island in the middle of a lake.
“Oh hey,” Realm said. “It worked!”
The air next to Realm made a baffled noise. Ganon slowly faded into view, with Realm’s hand turning out to be gripping an ornamental knuckle-spike.
“I do not understand how you just did that,” Ganon said blankly, apparently too surprised to do anything else. “This is not how magic is supposed to work.”
Realm tilted his head, a bit perplexed. “I mean, I’m pretty sure you shooting fireballs had nothing to do with this? Usually it’s all me.”
“Not my magic,” Ganon snapped. “ Yours.”
“...I have magic?” Realm said.
At this point, it should be noted that Realm indeed had magic, not that he’d ever used it before. In fact, he was so amazingly untrained that, instead of hunkering down and waiting patiently to be discovered like most magic did, Realm’s particular brand of power liked to leap out in randomly frequent bursts. This had several effects, but only one that was particularly noticeable to the people around him.
There is an understood phenomena in which unattached magic likes to float around in the ether, and this blanket of power permeates every corner of the land. In some places, it bunches up; in others, it stretches thin enough to hardly be there at all. Magic is a very unpredictable substance, and it is this specific characteristic that was Realm’s downfall.
He was bad with directions, that much was true and always would be. He really had no idea where he was going, and even less of an idea of how one area was connected to another. The point where magic got involved, though, was when he would actively try to get anywhere.
For most people, the most efficient way to get from Point A to Point B was to think about where they wanted to go, and start going there. In Realm’s case, however, this method had the unintentional side effect of tangling with the atmospheric magic, shooting out a ley-line, connecting with the nearest power concentration, feeding the information back to Realm’s own untapped magic, which would then interpret the input as a desired location and promptly trigger an unwanted and impressively unnoticeable teleport spell.
In shorter, less complicated words, Realm’s magic was just as lost as he was, and the island in the middle of the lake happened to be a very potent tangle of arcane energy. Not that Realm knew any of this, of course. He was still trying to process the fact that Ganon had just accused him of being a sorcerer.
“Well, I certainly didn’t just teleport the two of us out of my lair,” Ganon replied scathingly.
“Um,” said Realm, who was beginning to get the feeling that Ganon somehow knew more about what was going on than he himself did, which was really unfair because this had been Realm’s idea.
He was also realizing that an island in the middle of a lake was not much better of a battlefield than the enclosed lair was. He looked down at his hand, still wrapped around Ganon’s ornamental glove spike, and he could tell the exact moment that Ganon caught on to what Realm was about to do because of the loud and angry screeching.
“Thinking about my destination and moving in a forwards direction!” Realm declared, then doubled his grip on Ganon’s armor and ran as hard as he could for about five steps before running straight into a wall that certainly had not been on the island in the middle of the lake.
“Oh, you found him,” said the old man renting one of Ganon’s side lair rooms. “Perfect timing, I just finished up my letter of lease termination.”
“My office hours are 12am to 2am on every other Wednesday ending in either five or seven,” Ganon recited promptly. “I’m sorry, but I’m not on the clock right now, you’ll have to submit your paperwork some other time.” So saying, he turned and threw several handfuls of fire at Realm, who was sitting a bit dazedly on the ground next to the wall he’d run into. He scrambled out of the way with a yelp.
Not concerned about the blaze in the slightest, the old man huffed irritably. “You are the worst landlord I’ve ever had.”
“OUT!” Ganon roared, and punctuated his statement by throwing even more fire. The old man ran from the room, leaving Realm in much the same position he’d been in at the start of this fight: surrounded by fire with no logical way out. At least Ganon was still visible this time-
No, wait, never mind, he’d just vanished again. Now Realm was right back where he’d started.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group had found another one of Ganon’s lodgers, and were becoming a bit confused as to why a villain would put so much effort into allowing random Hyrule citizens to rent rooms of his lair. It really didn’t seem like an evil sort of thing to do.
“I mean, the rent is horrendously high and Nayru forbid I ever have to get in contact with him about anything,” the man was saying, “but I’m left well enough alone for the most part.” He was equally as elderly as the first of Ganon’s renters that the Links had met, but seemed to be in a considerably better mood. Possibly this was because he was under the impression that the group was the repair crew sent to fix the drafty wall he’d been complaining to Ganon about for the past sixteen months.
“...You live in the stronghold of an Evil Overlord,” Sketch informed him.
The old man blinked. “That would explain the screaming.”
Quite abruptly, another old man burst into the room, took in his surroundings, and threw his hands up in complete exasperation. “I hate living here! Everything moves around, it takes me forever to find the exit again!”
“Oh, hey Manny,” said the first old man. “Trying to lodge a complaint again? I think Ganon’s office in the south corner this week.”
“No, I just got evicted,” Manny complained. “Good riddance too, I’ve been fed up with this place for months, but I can’t leave if I can’t find the way out.”
“What is happening,” Gen muttered in blank bewilderment.
“Oh, really?” said the first old man. “What finally got you?”
“Some fool Hero barged right into my room with Ganon right behind him, and now everything is on fire,” Manny sniffed.
There was a brief moment of surprised silence, right before Dusk cut in and said, “Wait, what?”
“Oh, our landlord is just fighting off invaders again, this happens every couple months,” the first old man waved off. “Locational hazard, I suppose.”
“Did the Hero have brown hair and an alarming lack of weaponry to be launching an invasion with?” Dusk asked insistently.
“Actually yes,” Manny said. “He seemed woefully unprepared, taking on Ganon like that without even anything to block with.”
“Oh my Din,” Dusk muttered.
“Did… did Realm just get into a boss battle without us?” Lore hazarded, sounding baffled at the very concept.
As if on cue, another thunderous BOOM sounded out from somewhere in the mountain, but from a completely different direction than any of the previous.
“I think he did,” Gen said blankly.
“That’s in the exact opposite direction of the one we were moving in,” Wind sighed. “Do we start backtracking…?”
Dusk considered the problem. “Well… it’s Realm,” he said slowly. “How likely is he to stay put long enough for us to backtrack far enough to find him?”
“...That is a point I had not considered,” Wind admitted. “Maybe we should just keep moving forward instead.”
Dusk shrugged. “Gen, Lore?”
“You have the most valid logic,” Gen replied. “Moving forward makes the most sense to me.”
“Drat, I’m outvoted,” Lore muttered.
“By who?” Dusk asked, tilting his head.
“You and Gen.”
“I’m not part of the leadership.”
“Keep telling yourself that, your denial is adorable,” Lore said brightly. “Now! Decision made, direction decided, let’s go already!”
“I’m not part of the leadership,” Dusk repeated insistently, not that anyone really believed him. At this point it was a well-acknowledged fact that, despite what Dusk himself thought, he very much was a part of the leadership. The rest of the group was just trying to do him a favor by Not Bringing It Up since he always protested so much.
(There may or may not have been a bet among the rest of the Links about how long it would take before Dusk would accept his position, with Vio as the bookkeeper. Currently the highest bidder was Mask, with fifty Rupees on it taking six more weeks.)
“Let me know if you find the exit!” Manny yelled after them as the group filed their way out.
“Go to the next room,” his friend suggested. “That’s where it was last week.”
“I tried that, why do you think I’m still here?”
Realm and Ganon were in a bit of a stalemate.
Part of the problem was that Realm’s plan revolved entirely around grabbing Ganon and getting lost, and also that Ganon now knew what Realm’s plan was and had a vested interest in not falling into it. Another part of the problem was that Ganon’s method of not falling into it was staying as far from Realm as possible. This in turn made it a bit difficult to get any damage in, on either of their parts, because Ganon was also staying stubbornly invisible.
Realm couldn’t hit what he couldn’t see, Ganon couldn’t hit Realm from the other side of the room, but Realm also couldn’t get Ganon lost if he didn’t know where Ganon was and Ganon didn’t dare get too close for the exact same reasons.
Which meant that Realm was going to have to get creative. He’d never deliberately triggered his misdirectional field this much in his life before.
Or, maybe it was the magic that he apparently had. Whatever. The point was that Realm knew how to wield it, kind of.
“Thinking about my destination!” he shouted. “And moving in a forwards direction!”
And then he focused very, very hard on not bringing anything with him.
Which, naturally, meant that he brought everything with him.
Realm, a very startled Ganon, and a whole lot of fire suddenly found themselves squarely on a beach, about as conceivably far from Ganon’s Lair that one could get while still being in the same country.
“I was on the other side of the room,” Ganon said blankly, surprised enough that he forgot talking gave away his position. Realm immediately pegged him as being about twelve feet away on his relative… left? South? Er, whichever direction that was.
Proudly, Realm said, “Yeah, I have a Condition,” right before lunging towards the voice and bringing his sword up in as wide an arc as he could manage, in order to cover as much distance as possible. The tip caught halfway through the motion, and Ganon flickered back into visibility with a pained bellow; Realm’s sword was lodged in the villain’s shoulder.
“I,” Ganon said, and brought a hand up to the blade, “am going to have to ask you,” he wrapped his fingers around the metal, “to stop doing that,” and yanked the weapon out in one swift move. Realm thought this to be distinctly unfair.
He also thought that Ganon hadn’t realized that touching Realm’s weapon meant Realm had a clear connection.
“THINKING ABOUT MY DESTINATION!” Realm screeched, and lunged blindly forward.
The next few minutes were spent in a dizzying amount of locations and an equally numerous amount of failed attacks on Realm’s part. Ganon didn’t seem to be able to escape Realm’s field of influence when it came to the directional mishaps, but he was doing an irritatingly good job of staying unseen and throwing fire through the whole of it.
This… wasn’t working the way Realm wanted it to. Ganon clearly wasn’t going to play along with the usual pattern of Realm’s fights, but Realm didn’t have a better way to fight. He outlasted his opponent, that was what he did. Ganon just wasn’t putting in the effort to chase him.
Realm wished he knew where the rest of the Links were.
...Wait.
Realm didn’t know where his group was.
That was exactly his sort of specialty.
“Moving,” Realm said calmly, “in a forwards direction.”
He took a step. A desert.
Another step. Island in the lake.
Another step. Mountaintop.
Step. Ganon’s tenants were having an argument about where the exit was.
Step. Island in the lake.
Step. Beach.
Step. Island in the lake. Realm was getting a little bit tired of the island in the lake.
Step. Princess Zelda? He should maybe come back for that one.
Step. His fellow Links, fending off a Wizzrobe horde.
Step. Island in the - Din-dangit, he’d gone too far! Backstep?
His fellow Links, fending off a Wizzrobe hoard. Perfect! Realm dodged the Ganon-fire, bounced forwards, and said, “Hi so I’m having a small problem and I need you all to come with me real quick please and thank you I’ll try to keep the sidetracking to a minimum on the way back!”
“Where did you come from?” Gen asked bewilderedly, but Realm was already concentrating again.
Thinking about where he was going. Moving in a forwards direction. Trying very hard to not bring anybody or anything with him. Taking a step.
He flashed past a forest, two different caves, the island in the lake about four more times, and a tundra before landing back in the original heart of Ganon’s Lair, and he very nearly blew past that too if it hadn’t been for the fact that Ganon threw fire at his head and broke his concentration. But, aside from that-
“That worked way better than I thought it would!” Realm said brightly.
“What just happened,” Sketch rasped.
“Well, I may have sorta figured out how to harness my misdirectional field,” Realm replied, “because apparently I might be magic and that’s how I’ve been getting to all those different places all this time.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“Oh.” Realm considered that. “In my defense this is the first time I’ve ever tried to get lost on purpose. I don’t think I have the transitions down very smoothly.”
Sketch looked a bit green at the very thought. Green himself looked a bit put-out that someone else was taking his color.
“But,” Realm continued, “that’s not really the issue right now! I may have sort-of accidentally not at all on purpose gotten into a Boss Battle?”
“We figured,” Mask sighed. “What with all the distant explosions.”
“And the fire,” Ocarina added, eyeing said flames with resignation. “Not actually seeing the opponent though?”
“Oh, that’s because Ganon’s invisible,” Realm replied irritatedly, once again remembering that he was miffed about that fact.
“...He’s what.”
“Yeah, he’s being a real jerk about it too,” Realm complained. “He won’t let me see him, he stopped making noise so I could target him ages ago, and he certainly won’t stand still long enough for me to pinpoint where he is based on his attack patterns.”
The (seemingly) empty room emitted a vague, low growling noise at that, but it unfortunately wasn’t loud or long enough to allow for any sort of targeting. Ganon was, apparently, in company… somewhere, and clearly disagreed with Realm’s assessment of the fairness of the fight. The Links knew this because of the flamethrower that immediately followed the growling, and several moments were spent getting out of the way.
Then, once the panic had died a little, the Four said, “And your solution to this was to weaponize your Condition?”
“Well,” Realm said. “I’m not sure if ‘weaponize’ is the right word. ‘Lassoed by the neck and hanging on for dear life while I’m dragged behind it,’ might be a bit more accurate.”
“Should we be concerned?”
“I was in a rush!”
“Less talking,” Gen cut in, “more fighting! We need to handle this!”
“Right, sorry.”
Quietly, Speck handed Realm’s shield back, as he’d been carrying it ever since the Four had tripped over it earlier. Realm slotted it back into place on his arm with a grin, then brandished the sword that he somehow miraculously hadn’t managed to lose yet. He turned to face the room, took a step forwards-
-and completely vanished, without any warning and certainly without anything to have vanished behind.
There was a moment of silence, where everyone stared at the place where Realm had been.
“...Did he just-” Wind began.
“He did,” Steam agreed in horror.
Quite abruptly, Realm found himself on an island in the middle of a lake.
“...Well, crap.”
Somewhere beyond reality, Farore manifested a wall and began knocking her head against it.
“I think,” Vio said slowly, “that Realm’s Condition just went into overdrive.”
“I’m officially classifying him as a Hazard ,” Sketch muttered.
At that point, Ganon decided to take advantage of the situation. This was rather unfortunate for a number of reasons, the first and foremost being that Gen had been about to split the group into ‘Fight Ganon’ and ‘Find Realm’ subsets and now he’d been thoroughly interrupted. But the second, and more immediately obvious reason, was that Ganon now felt confident enough to make a frontal attack.
The Links knew this because something large, extremely painful, and completely invisible suddenly ran them all over.
As the group struggled back to their feet, the falsely empty room chuckled at them. “Do you know, I’ve been planning for your lost friend’s incompetence since the day he set out to defeat me?”
“How’s that going for you then?” Lore wheezed.
“ Marvelously,” the room laughed. “He is worse than I could have ever imagined . True, I was worried for a moment that he had some measure of control over his ability, but now? Now I have nothing to fear.”
“...You’re afraid of Realm’s habit of getting lost,” Steam repeated incredulously, staring intently off into the middle distance.
“If you’d been here when he was actually wielding it competently, you would be too!” Ganon snapped from somewhere, which rather ruined the effect of his earlier words.
“How does someone get lost competently?”
“In terrifying fashion,” the empty room grumbled. “But that is no longer a problem. Let me demonstrate what is.”
“Dang,” Blue mumbled. “That was a really good line.” Vio elbowed him sharply.
And then the floor exploded with fire, and everything got a bit too chaotic to allow for sibling bickering.
Realm was having Issues. With a capital ‘I’, that Realm was designating even in his own thought patterns, which was pretty much a direct indicator of just how much of an Issue this actually was.
“Thinking about my destination?” he said hopefully, and took a single step forward. The scenery around him blurred, flickered, and then resolved into a tree. Specifically, the top of a tree, and most certainly not the middle of Ganon’s Lair that Realm had been aiming for. He worried at his lower lip, then carefully took another step. His surroundings wavered, and then firmed back up in the shape of a mountaintop - but certainly not the correct one, because that would have been convenient.
Realm thought very hard about staying exactly where he was, and took one more step.
The landscape distorted, straightened out, and left him standing on an island in the middle of a lake.
“...well, crap, ” Realm repeated, with quite a bit more feeling this time. If he was guessing at this right (and unfortunately, he was pretty sure that he was), then he’d just thrown his misdirectional field into overdrive.
More to the point, he had no idea how to turn it off . Much less deal with whatever magical teleportation effect was happening.
There was only one thing for it, he decided. He was just going to have to take enough steps that he ended up right back where he needed to be.
And so, Realm took off sprinting, and promptly vanished into thin air. Whether or not he’d actually get anywhere while doing so was a whole other issue.
Albeit unknowingly, the rest of the group was actually holding their own against Ganon rather well, if only because of their numbers. Not that they knew this, because they couldn’t see their enemy and Ganon certainly wasn’t about to broadcast his injuries. But. It had been a lot easier to avoid his opponent when there had been only one.
And also, there seemed to be one specific Hero who was unfairly good at finding Ganon in the room, regardless of visibility. Ganon was rather miffed about this, because he’d put a lot of effort into this invisibility trick and he didn’t appreciate having it pushed past like an open door. Heroes . Inconsiderate, the lot of them.
Steam, meanwhile, wasn’t entirely sure why everyone else was having such a hard time? Okay yeah, Ganon was a bit hard to see, but he just had to focus on the middle-distance distortions and it was pretty easy. He was probably going to come off the other end of this fight with a headache from all the squinting, but it wasn’t bad.
He seemed to be the only one with that opinion, though. It was slowly occurring to Steam that maybe, he was the only one seeing this fight in any sort of clarity… which meant that this was probably another ‘Ghost Zelda’ situation.
But just to be sure, he brandished his sword in the general direction of Ganon’s middle-distance distortions and asked, “So can anyone else actually still sorta see him or is it just me?”
There was a brief pause in the chaos.
“Special sight,” Mask muttered. “Of course. This is my mask spirits all over again.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Steam sighed. “Should I spot-call, then?”
“ PLEASE,” the rest of the group chorused.
“Please do not,” Ganon snapped.
Steam stared flatly into the middle distance on the other side of the room. “Yeah, because I’m totally going to listen to your input.” He pointed a finger and continued, “He’s about five feet to the left of Speck.”
The room erupted, and the chaos resumed. Steam suddenly found himself in the unenviable position of being directly targeted by Ganon, and the whole thing quickly devolved into a complicated game of tag, where Steam sprinted around the room and shouted out positions to the rest of the group while Ganon invisibly chased after him with the express intent of shutting him up.
At some point during this mess, Realm blipped in for a single stride of a sprint before blipping right back out again, but it was such a quick visit that nobody had the time to do anything about it.
Realm skidded to a stop in the middle of a desert, frowned, then took a hopeful step backwards. The desert was promptly replaced by the island in the middle of the lake.
“Oh, for the Love of Nayru!”
“HE’S ON YOUR RIGHT!” Steam yelled in Wind’s general direction, which was a mixed bag of results. On one hand, Wind immediately lashed out to his right - but on the other hand, Ganon also immediately twisted out of range, and Wind only managed the barest of a graze for his efforts.
It was really hard to call positions when your opponent could use your calling to reposition himself.
Screw this, Steam decided, and jerked himself around, glaring at the middle-distance distortion. “I LIKE TRAINS!”
The Spirit Train promptly and cheerfully ran Ganon over. Somewhat disappointingly, this didn’t seem to do nearly as much damage as Steam had been hoping for… but then again, he was basing this observation on a middle-distance distortion. It didn’t give him much to go on.
“Did you get him?” Speck asked cautiously.
“Ehh?” Steam replied, wobbling a hand back and forth in the air.
Randomly, Realm burst into existence for a split-second, startling everyone badly, and then was just as quickly gone again. The faint echo of his voice complaining, “Oh come on!” drifted back to the rest of them.
“...Realm leads an interesting life,” Dusk observed neutrally.
Then the middle-distance distortion that was Ganon burst into action again, and everyone got a bit distracted. Somewhere in the middle of the mess, Steam launched the Spirit Train again, but missed and so the Train went plowing through the wall, and then several more walls beyond that. The Lair was turning into a bit of a mess.
“HE’S NEXT TO THE FOUR!” Steam shrieked, in an attempt to do damage control on his missed shot, and then everything became chaos again as the Four launched an attack and presumably hit.
Or, possibly they missed. Even Steam was beginning to have a hard time telling what landed and what didn’t.
Realm once again burst onto the scene for a split second before vanishing again, his face in a fierce scowl of concentration. Not that it helped much, since he overshot again - but if the lingering shout of, “SERIOUSLY!?” was anything to go by, Realm was fully aware of this.
Somewhere in the area, Ganon laughed.
“RED ON YOUR LEFT,” Steam snapped, and Red lashed out fast enough that he actually definitely landed a hit this time, because Ganon flickered back into view with roaring fury. He appeared to have lost his grip on his invisibility as a result of the pain - that was going to be useful.
But then Ganon vanished again, and Steam had the depressing realization that those moments of clarity literally only lasted a few moments.
Great.
Realm chose that moment to blow through the room again, this time with an inarticulate screech of frustration as he overshot. On the bright side, he definitely seemed to be cutting down on his time in between appearances. Maybe he would actually manage to pin down his timing within the next five to ten tries.
Everything else was still a complete mess, though.
Realm was the optimist, eternally looking on the bright side. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a mood darker than a mild huff.
But right now? Right now he kind of wanted to stab something. Preferably Ganon. If he could just actually GET THERE.
Whatever he’d triggered earlier with his misdirectional field was actually getting worse , and Realm had no idea what to do about that. Even right now, standing completely still on that infuriatingly persistent island in the middle of a lake, his surroundings were wavering indecisively. It was like the world couldn’t quite decide where Realm actually was , so it was putting him in two places at once.
The annoying part was that neither of the two places was the place that he wanted to be.
He was going to have to take this one step at a time, wasn’t he?
With a short sigh, Realm took a single stride forwards and found himself on a beach. The next step put him in a snowstorm. The next landed him in a cave. He was promptly swarmed by Keese. His next step put both him and the Keese flock on an open plain, where the Keese unhappily dispersed in the bright sunlight.
His next step put him back at the island in the middle of the lake.
Realm was really beginning to hate the island in the middle of the lake.
At some point amidst the chaos, Lore had set himself up in a corner of the room with his Bow and a pile of Silver Arrows that he apparently just carried around from one of his earlier adventures. His reasoning for this was, “Well it worked on my Ganon, so it’s probably worth a shot here too!” And nobody could argue with that, mostly because Ganon had launched another fireball assault immediately after this and the moment for arguing had promptly gone out a figurative window.
However, someone probably should have argued with it, because Lore once again proved himself to be a terrible shot. So now Dusk was over in the corner too, helping Lore aim, because Dusk was an excellent shot and between the two of them it balanced out into something average.
Average, unfortunately, still wasn’t good enough to hit something that neither of them could see, and so now Steam was dodging Ganon, aiming the Spirit Train, and calling out archery positions in addition to everyone else’s positions. It was enough to give anybody a headache.
“MIDDLE OF THE ROOM!” Steam screeched, followed quickly by another, “I LIKE TRAINS!” which of course made a mess of absolutely everything. Lore shot off a Silver Arrow and missed, and Gen snatched it out of the wall as he sprinted past, presumably to hand it off for another go. Most of the other Links waved their weapons around haphazardly, hoping to hit something and probably failing. The Spirit Train clipped the middle-distance distortion and rammed a wall instead. And nobody knew where Ganon was.
It was into this particularly chaotic moment that Realm suddenly stepped into, freezing mid-stride as his surroundings registered to him. Very carefully, he put his off foot back down on the ground, only relaxing when it didn’t trigger another relocation.
“FINALLY!” Realm whooped, throwing his hands into the air with relief. Then he threw his hands out to the side instead, as he overbalanced in his exuberance and nearly stumbled forwards again.
“...You can’t take another step, can you,” Gen said dully.
“It’s probably not a good idea.”
“You’re going to end up who-knows-where if you do?”
“Actually there’s about a fifty-percent-chance that I’m going to end up on the island in the middle of the lake, but other than that it’s an open possibility.”
Gen pinched the bridge of his nose. Behind him, something exploded. “Okay. Just. Don’t move. At all - actually, no, hang on.” He reached out and snagged the collar of a passing Sketch’s tunic and used the momentum to swing the smaller Link over. “Can you use your Ice Rod to seal Realm’s feet into place?”
Sketch blinked, then frowned, clearly confused. “Uh… probably?”
“Perfect, do it.”
With that, Gen sprinted off, because he had a Silver Arrow to return and about five more to pick out of the walls, because Lore still hadn’t landed a hit yet. Sketch raised his eyebrows doubtfully as he pulled out his Ice Rod and went to work.
“Preemptive misdirectional preventative measure?” he asked.
“I need it,” Realm confirmed. Sketch fumbled his Ice Rod badly enough that he almost blasted Realm in the face.
“Did you just admit to having a Problem instead of a Condition?”
“I’ve recently been given a whole lot of evidence pointing towards the former,” Realm agreed unashamedly.
“...Well, okay then,” Sketch said, wide-eyed. He finished off the ice trap for Realm’s feet, then said, “I guess, try to duck when Steam says Ganon’s near you?”
“Oh, is his special sight kicking in?”
“It’s been really convenient, actually.”
“Nice,” Realm said. “Also thanks for helping me stay put.”
“No problem. Remember to duck.”
With that, Sketch scurried away to rejoin the rest of the chaos, which mostly entailed Steam shouting things at the top of his lungs while running for his life, and everyone else trying to do something about it. Realm watched this for a few moments, then shrugged to himself and pulled out his Bow. He made eye contact with Dusk on the other side of the room, since Lore was a bit preoccupied with reloading.
Dusk, to his credit, picked up on what Realm wanted immediately, and shouted, “STEAM! CAN YOU CALL ARCHERY FOR REALM TOO?”
“OH, IS HE HERE NOW?” Steam yelled back. “YEAH I CAN DO THAT!”
Realm beamed across the room. Perfect! Now he could contribute without having to run, probably-
“REALM GET DOWN GANON’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!” Steam screeched, and so naturally Realm dropped like a rock. The air above his head made a WHOOSH noise, as though something very large was being swung through it very fast, and then suddenly Blue and Vio were there stabbing at the seemingly empty space. It didn’t seem like they were hitting anything though.
Dusk made an apologetic face from across the room - maybe, yelling out that Realm was in the room hadn’t been the best idea. Realm grimaced right back at him in agreement. To be fair though, it hadn’t occurred to Realm either, so at least they were both in the same boat.
A flash of silver caught his attention; Lore had just finished reloading, and was drawing back on his Bow in preparation to fire. Realm squinted at the projectile. Wasn’t that a Silver Arrow? That seemed like overkill, maybe?
Then again, this was Ganon. The only person who was possibly more worth the overkill was Demise.
Nodding to himself, Realm pulled his own Silver Arrows out of his Bag and nocked one. He’d found the Silver Arrows a long time ago, during one of his several-month-long Misdirectional Incidents before he’d met the rest of the Links. This was also back when his Misdirectional Incidents actually made a little bit of sense, or at least back when it took him slightly more than a single step to end up somewhere new. The point was that, at some point, he’d stumbled through a cave, found a chest, opened the chest, and pulled out a bundle of Silver Arrows, which he’d stuffed into the deepest part of his Bag after using one on an Octorok and discovering just how overpowered it was, on the rightful motive that they were a bit too valuable to lose the way he lost all his other things.
To his credit, he’d only lost the Silver Arrows twice in all that time since then, and both instances had been because Realm had actually lost his entire Bag along with everything in it. But! He’d found it all again, eventually, and now he actually had something to use them on.
...As soon as he knew where to aim, that was.
Also, his ice-trap was melting because of all the fire that Ganon was throwing around, and that really wasn’t good.
“Steam?” Realm called. “Any openings?”
“Not really!” Steam yelled back, and to be fair, he probably had a point. Realm had no idea what was going on anymore. But then Steam yelped, “FALSE ALARM HE’S ON YOUR LEFT!” and Realm jerked his sword arm up just in time to more-or-less stick the blade right into Ganon’s stomach area.
At that moment, several things happened at once. First, Ganon lost his grip on his invisibility and flickered back into view, face twisted in pain. Over in the corner, Dusk was frantically hissing at Lore, who was mostly aiming in Ganon’s direction. Ganon lifted his hand to twist Realm’s sword out. The rest of the Links began scrambling to do something to stop him. And in the middle of all this, the cast-shadow at Dusk’s feet darkened, rippled, and then coalesced into a Very Irritated Shadow Link.
“HOW MUCH NOISE DO YOU IDIOTS NEED TO MAKE TO GET THIS JOB DONE!?” He roared. “I AM TRYING TO TAKE A NAP!”
This was such an unexpected interruption that everyone, even Ganon, paused to blink at him.
“Oh, hi Shadow,” Realm said brightly. “We’re fighting Ganon.”
“ I know,” Shadow growled.
“Wanna join in?”
Shadow spared Original Ganon a cursory glance. “I’ve never seen this imbecile in my life, so no. I could not possibly care less.”
Ganon emitted a low rumble. “I would say much the same to you, except that I have no idea who you are.”
Shadow ignored him. “Just try to kill the pig quietly , yeah? It’s hard enough to ignore all your usual bumbling.”
With that, he vanished again, having never actually fully left Dusk’s shadow to begin with.
And that was when Lore finally managed to make a straight shot, and a Silver Arrow buried itself directly into Ganon’s left shoulder.
“HA!” Lore crowed triumphantly from across the room, but nobody had the time to congratulate him. Ganon was losing the blue color in his skin where the arrow was stuck - an ugly brown color was spreading across his body like a chemical reaction. He seemed solidly unable to move.
And, well, every Link could recognize an opening when they saw one.
It also helped that Lore finished celebrating, coughed a little, and then said, “Yeah, so, if this guy is anything like my Ganon, he’s only gonna stay still for about three more seconds? We might want to get on that whole ‘damage’ thing.”
“I LIKE TRAINS!” Steam yelled, and then everybody else charged, and Ganon got hit by quite a lot of swords and also a Train in the span of about two and a half seconds.
“...Ow,” Ganon said succinctly.
And then he dissolved into a small black void, which promptly shot off through the remains of the Lair, presumably heading back to the original location like the other defeated villains had done.
There was a moment of blessed silence.
“...Well that was a mess and a half,” Gen said bluntly. “Line up. Anybody with more than ten individual burns in front, anybody who has an injury bigger than a quarter of their body size gets ultimate priority, and no, Lore, I don’t care if you think Health Potion tastes bad you’re drinking some anyway.”
“It would taste better if it was kumquat flavored.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because kumquats are delicious, obviously,” Lore said.
Gen visibly decided that he wasn’t going to continue the conversation.
“Actually,” Realm piped up from his ice-trap, “can the medic stuff wait for a minute or two? Because I still need to rescue my local Zelda… and, you know, since she’s been a captive for a couple years, that might be a problem?” He looked appropriately sheepish while saying this. No doubt, had his feet been free, he’d have been shuffling them awkwardly; Red tilted his head, then tugged out his Ice Rod, flipped it back over to Fire, and began gingerly melting away the trap.
“Delay accepted,” Gen sighed. “Any idea where she might be?”
“Ah. Um. No.”
Wind made a quiet coughing noise. “Logically, she’s probably through that way over there.” He pointed to an opening on the far side of the room, tucked away between rock outcroppings in a manner that made it largely unnoticeable, which had also most definitely not been there before. Curse those doors that only appeared via trigger of a victory.
“That makes sense,” Realm agreed. At his feet, Red finished melting the ice away and stood up with a pleased smile. Realm’s boots were only slightly scorched.
Realm also made no attempt to move, even though he now could.
“...Are you not going to go get her?” Mask prompted.
“I’m somewhat afraid to move,” Realm admitted.
“Surely it can’t be that bad?”
Realm cast a doubtful look at his feet, then hesitantly raised one off the ground and moved it tentatively forwards. From his point of view, the landscape immediately began flickering wildly between about ten different possibilities; from everyone else’s point of view, Realm started blinking in and out of existence.
“ Put your foot back,” Dusk ordered hastily, and Realm quickly obeyed. His flickering slowly resolved back into solidity.
“...Okay, you are not allowed to move your legs,” Gen decided. “What did you do?”
“Well, apparently I have magic,” Realm said wryly, “and I don’t think I know how to use it. Or how to control it.”
“We’ll come back to that,” Gen said. “Okay, uh… Four? Can you guys carry him, maybe?”
The Four surveyed Realm appraisingly. “Let’s find out.”
It took quite a bit of finagling, and more than one instance of Realm almost going somewhere else, but then they hit an equilibrium and the Four were giving Realm a quasi-piggyback ride. It didn’t make much sense to look at, but since it was working, nobody questioned it.
Zelda was being held in place with a fire spell, because Ganon was evidently nothing if not dedicated to an aesthetic. Under Realm’s direction, the Four put out the flames and then carefully maneuvered themselves so that Realm was facing his Princess.
“Hi,” Realm said cheerfully. “Sorry that I’m late. It’s nice to meet you in person, finally.”
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Zelda replied softly. She, like Realm, was brunette rather than blonde as so many of her counterparts were, and her hair was voluminously thick. She had a somewhat round face, and it made her look kind. She and Realm stared at each other for a moment, evaluating.
Then Zelda said, “Forgive me for asking, but why are you being carried?”
Realm turned a bit red. “I, uh… I have a Problem. My magic is going haywire and I don’t know how to make it stop and I’m really getting tired of the island in the lake? So, yeah. Carried.”
“Hmm,” said Zelda, which was Princess Code for ‘I’m trying very hard not to laugh’. “Well, I don’t know much about this island, but I might be able to do something about your magic output - but first, if you don’t mind, the Triforce?”
“Oh, yeah,” Realm said, and pulled a necklace out from underneath his tunic. The little golden triangle on the end flashed, then detached itself from the cord and floated over to Zelda. She caught it in her palm and looked it over appraisingly.
“You found every single piece,” She said. “I’m impressed, I hid some of those very well.”
“Well,” Realm said, “there hasn’t been a single hiding place yet that I can’t stumble my way into.”
Zelda raised an eyebrow at him, then had a moment of realization. “You’re Wandering, aren’t you?”
“You say that like it means something, but I have no idea what it is,” Realm admitted freely.
“If your companions set you down and you try to walk, you’re going to magically end up somewhere very far away, aren’t you?” Zelda clarified.
“Oh, that. Yes.” Realm ran a hand through his bangs awkwardly. “Also, um… did you know there’s a third Triforce piece?”
Zelda blinked. “Oh,” she said.
“Yeah, it kinda lives on my hand now.” He extended his dominant left hand and held it up for Zelda to see. The Triforce of Courage pulsed happily, as it tended to do.
“Well,” Zelda recovered, “my father will be pleased to know he was right.”
Realm tilted his head. “...Have I met your father?”
“No, but he had a theory that the Hero who would rise up would be a perfect candidate to hold Courage,” Zelda replied. “Regardless of how long it took you to get here, you did become a successful Hero in the end.”
“About that,” Realm said sheepishly. “Do you have time to talk about our Destroyer and Demon, Demise, and the impending destruction of reality as we know it?”
Zelda, to her credit, just closed her eyes. “There’s always something else,” she muttered. Then she opened them again and said, “How about you tell me while I take care of your Wandering problem, deal?
“That works,” Realm agreed.
Naturally, Gen promptly seized that opportunity for what it was and shoved at least one Potion into everybody’s mouth, and then Lore seized the rest of the opportunity to take a nap, and then everybody else just shrugged and settled in to either join the nap, join the explanation, or just sit. It was nice.
At least, until Ganon’s lodgers poked their heads into the room and started a whole different kind of situation.
Notes:
FIRSTLY: This story now has a Discord. Invite Link Is Here, all are welcome, and please enjoy this informational blurb about what we get up to in there.
“Welcome to the Dimensional Links Discord, where things very rarely make sense but we're determined to have fun anyway! Want to agonize over the unsaid implications of Koholint? There's a channel for that! Have a theory that Dusk might secretly adopt cats in his spare time? There's a channel for that! Or maybe you just really like kumquats. Good news, there's a channel for that! (Don’t ask.)
"Alternatively, if you just want a place to share your fan art or inspired stories, there's channels for those things too. Really, we've got something for everybody.
"Just don't be intimidated by the chaos, and you'll fit right in!”
Now, onto the Chapter Talk!
You know what I’ve never understood? Why there’s Random Old Men apparently living in Ganon’s Evil Lair. Literally, they’re just standing there, for no other discernible reason other than to give you hints. Just, why?
This can also be known as ‘The reason why Nintendo shouldn’t give me open-ended plot devices’ because my brain promptly decided that Ganon was running an apartment complex. 8,000 words later, here we are.
In other news, Lore legit has Silver Arrows as an Item. Not an upgrade, not a temporarily-given gift for the Final Boss, an Item. As in, he’s just casually carrying around Evil’s Weakness at any given point in time, because why not. I didn’t need him to be any more overpowered than he already is, noooooooooo.
Also, please note my new theory about Realm. Shout-out to Era, you know who you are, for getting me started on this idea in the first place. Y’all should brace yourselves for a whole lot of misdirectional shenanigans in the future, because I’m gonna have some fun. Basically I took the fact that he’s extremely magical in his sequel and incorporated it, but in the best possible way. You’re welcome.
LASTLY: As of 3/18/20, DL is officially five years old. Some of the DL Fandom (and can you believe this story has a fandom?) got together behind my back and made a 5th Anniversary Fan Art Video! Never change, you guys.
Thanks to Ana0R, Dark_KannaI, Guest #154, Guest #155, Guest #156, Rainbow_of_sass, Guest #157, Ikana, Guest #158, Guest #159, Guest #160, Guest #161, Guest #162, Gay_bee_keeper1234, loz_fanatic67, Paruu, I_have_no_life_I_am_Karma, KayreLique, Guest #163, Yells_of_the_not_so_danged, Guest #164, Sqish, LeonLeonRevolution, Shekorla, Guest #165, Guest #166, Guest #167, BlueMew, Guest #168, AKAFishAKA, Guest #169, Elmund9, Guest #170, StrayKatgirl, Guest #171, Guest #172, Guest #173, TeaCup24, Guest #174, Guest #175, Guest #176, Guest #177, Guest #178, Chimachanga,CheeseIceCreamSandwitch, Guest #179, Guest #180, ykaraman, Guest #181, Guest #182, Guest #183, Guest #184, Minxiboo, TheCupOfHotTea, B00KW0RM_Nr1, Guest #185, Valonstar_Aldrendaux, Guest #186, Guest #187, Guest #188, Guest #189, Dire1Hart, Guest #190, Guest #191, Guest #192, Guest #193, and Guest #194 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog at ask-the-dimensional-links!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 27: The Perks of Wearing Decorative Earrings
Summary:
Well they've gotta do SOMETHING about Realm's inability to walk without teleporting.
Notes:
Changeling does not own the Legend of Zelda, nor any of the characters within.
(It works out because I’m barely juggling the characters that I do have, and I doubt I’d be able achieve any sort of competency with more.)
I do so enjoy working with a sensible human.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Two years of captivity had done nothing to Zelda’s ability to be a Princess, and while taking care of Ganon’s lodgers did take quite a bit of time, it was still astoundingly efficient. Manny and his fellow roommate, who turned out to be named Guy, were sent off with vouchers for the Kingdom Vault, as compensation for the rent Ganon had charged them, and also with a recommendation for their next rental.
The general bewilderment at two men being named Manny and Guy and how amazingly generically male those names were was politely kept silent.
Zelda then immediately turned her attention back to Realm, who - out of fear of another spontaneous teleport - had sat himself firmly on the ground and not moved an inch, and began making a diagnosis. The fact that Realm would start to flicker slightly if he leaned too far in any which direction definitely helped pin down the issue.
“You are most definitely Wandering,” Zelda concluded after approximately fifteen seconds of diagnosing. “You’re also quite possibly the worst case I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks?” Realm hazarded.
Zelda rolled her eyes and let out a small laugh. “If you’d like to take that as a compliment, you’re welcome to, I suppose.”
“Well, why not?” Realm grinned. “Hey, once you help fix me, does this mean I won’t get lost as much anymore?”
“Your magic should no longer cause random teleportations,” Zelda agreed.
“Nice. What about the regular kind of getting lost?”
“That’s a you problem, not a magic problem,” Zelda said bluntly.
Realm made a face which most accurately translated itself to, Well, would’ve been nice.
“Now,” Zelda continued, “do you want your Wandering solidly taken care of or do you want a more loose fix to the problem?”
“Loose?” Gen interjected, not particularly liking the sound of that.
“Well, I can either mark the binding on his skin, which is permanent, or I can etch the binding into a piece of jewelry and he can wear it. The only difference is that the jewelry can come off, and if he removes the object then his Wandering will become a problem again.”
“Oh, I’d like the loose version,” Realm said brightly.
“Why!?” Gen sputtered.
“Well firstly, because it’s my Wandering and I get final say in how I deal with it,” Realm said. Gen reluctantly conceded that point. “But secondly, because the jewelry option sounds a lot less painful than the skin-marking.”
Gen had to admit, that was also a pretty valid point.
“...also thirdly because it was kinda helpful in beating Ganon and I’d maybe like to be able to handle it on my own someday,” Realm admitted.
Dusk slid up next to Gen. “It’s his ability, it’s his choice,” he murmured. “We’re just here for the moral support for whatever he chooses.”
“Yeah, I know,” Gen sighed. “Can I at least vote for an armband? It’s very hard to lose an armband.”
“I was actually thinking earrings,” Realm said shyly. “Because, you know, if they’re literally attached to me then I can’t possibly lose them.”
“...That’s a much better idea, go with that,” Gen agreed.
“Piercings are painful though?” Dusk questioned, thinking back to the bit Realm had said about jewelry being the less hurtful option.
“A full-body tattoo seems like it would hurt a lot more,” Realm replied succinctly.
“Wandering Earrings then,” Zelda said, successfully claiming the conversation again. “Did you happen to bring a pair or will I need to get creative?”
“Um,” Realm said. “I only figured out I had this problem about two hours ago.”
“Creative it is,” Zelda sighed, smiling. “Sit tight, this is going to take me a bit.”
Realm, who in fact had still not moved an inch from his place seated on the ground, grinned back at her. “Yes your highness.”
“In that case,” Gen said, “while you do that, we’re gonna get Realm prepped.”
“Prepped?”
“You can’t wear earrings without holes to put them through,” Dusk reminded him sympathetically.
Realm blinked. “...forgot about that bit for a minute.”
“I’ll get Red, we’re gonna need his Ice Rod to numb the area,” Gen said. “Dusk, wanna mark out where the holes will be while I do that?”
Dusk made an affirmative noise, kneeling down and pushing Realm’s hair out of the way to get a better look at his ears.
“Erm,” Realm said, leaning away slightly. “Is it too late to request a bracelet?”
Dusk gave him an amused glance, tilting his own head so that his hair fell away and exposed the blue hoops in his own ears. “Gen and I know what we’re doing. You’ll be fine.”
“Excuse me,” Zelda said abruptly, sliding back in. She held up a pale blue stone to Realm’s ear, gauging something, and frowned heavily. “About how many times did your magic act up in the span of your fight with Ganon?”
“I may have lost count,” Realm admitted.
Zelda frowned even more heavily, swapped out the pale blue stone for a much darker blue one, and then veritably scowled. “Excuse me again,” she said, quickly moving away.
Gen came back, Red in tow, and then the three of them spent the next several minutes holding ice to Realm’s ears until he reportedly couldn’t feel much of anything at all. It seemed like a job well done until Zelda leaned back into view and said, “He’s going to need more than one set, can you prep the cartilage area too?”
“...Okay for real this time,” Realm said, “is it too late to request a bracelet?”
Realm did not get a bracelet.
He did, however, get two pairs of hoops in his lobes and a stud in the upper cartilage of his left ear, which was a relatively unexpected development since Realm had only been expecting a single set.
“Well yes, that was the plan,” Zelda sighed. “But that was before I measured exactly how intense your Wandering problem actually is. Just one stone wasn’t going to cut it.”
As a point of interest, Realm’s ears were now decorated with tourmaline for grounding, iolite for direction, and fluorite to boost both of them. The tourmaline and iolite were the hoops; the fluorite was the stud. Conveniently, they were all various shades of blue, because Zelda was nothing if not conscientious of fashion when making her warding choices. Every earring was marked with a set of runes that, according to Zelda, would help to lock Realm’s magic down in tandem with what the stones were already doing. It would take an actual miracle for Realm to have a teleporting incident with this many preventative measures hanging from his ears.
“And yes,” Zelda continued, “you can take them off, if for some Din-forsaken reason you decide that you need to. I’d leave the stud though, it doesn’t really do anything without the hoops but if you lose that one then you’re really quite screwed.”
Realm nodded, then paused, then tossed his head around much more enthusiastically. “I can feel them dangling,” he said gleefully.
Zelda quirked a smile. “You’ll get used to them,” she said. “Now then, shall we leave? I feel quite confident in saying that I never want to see the inside of this mountain ever again.”
“How long has it been since you went outside?” Red asked her.
“I have not been allowed to leave this room in over two years,” Zelda said levelly, staring at the middle distance with a hollow gaze.
“Two years?” Red gasped. “But - but you don’t have any windows!”
“No, I do not,” Zelda agreed, hollowly.
“We gotta get you some sunshine!” Red cried, and all but hauled Zelda out of the room in his haste.
“Alright then,” Dusk said, and extended a hand to pull Realm to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Realm allowed himself to be pulled, then looked down at his feet and took a hesitant step forwards. Absolutely nothing unusual happened.
“It works!” Realm exclaimed, absolutely delighted. “This is awesome.”
“With any luck it’ll carry over to the rest of your directional mishaps too,” Gen said.
“...About that,” Realm said. “I legitimately just appeared here and I have no idea where we actually are or how to actually get out. Help?”
Dusk switched the position of his hand in Realm’s so that it was now more like a prison grip than a friendly offer. “You are not allowed to let go,” he said, beginning to lead the way out.
“Thank you.”
Original Ganon made his presence in Demise’s head known by screaming angrily.
As Demise did not appreciate this, Original Ganon was promptly gagged and dropped into an imaginary corner.
Several hours later, when Original Ganon had stopped screaming through the gag, Demise retrieved him from the imaginary corner and said, “Do you have anything useful to report now that you’ve been rendered obsolete or may I continue to ignore you?”
Were you aware that getting lost was a weaponizable action? Original Ganon spat. Because I, like most other people with common sense, did not .
Demise stared at the middle distance for several moments. “...Explain.”
They’ve definitely begun coordinating since the last time you saw them, Original Ganon grumbled. And also more insane. Really, how is getting lost a weaponizable action?
“Are you going to say anything else? Or barring that, can you at least express your bafflement silently?”
...Is that why Malladus is in a fishbowl?
“ Someone wouldn’t shut up,” Demise growled.
I’d like to avoid that fate, Original Ganon decided. I can baffle in silence.
“Thank you,” Demise muttered.
It probably said something for how utterly done Demise was with everything that he left the conversation at that, which was arguably the most civilly he’d ever interacted with one of his Incarnations.
...Was he going soft in his plot for world domination?
Demise took a moment to check in on his other prisoners. Malladus, still in his fishbowl, was miserable. Vaati and Hyrule Ganon, still in straitjackets, were also miserable. And furious, but that was fairly normal. Demise gauged the level of torture they were enduring and found that it met his standards, which reassured him nicely.
He was just having a soft moment. That was fine. It meant that, whenever he felt like being vicious again, it would be all the more a shock to his victim.
Being evil was all about impressions, after all.
Wind, being in possession of the most effective sense of direction, led the way back out of Ganon’s Lair. Realm spent the entire trip clutching Dusk’s hand and looking confused - it was painfully obvious that he had no idea where he was going.
...Not that he ever did know where he was going, but he seemed to be especially lost now.
“I keep expecting to end up somewhere else,” he confessed when Dusk gave him a concerned look. He touched one of his new earrings and continued, “Plus I think these are really starting to go to work. I feel kinda… weird.”
“Well that’s to be expected,” Zelda told him. “You’re feeling proper magic control for what I’m suspecting is the first time in your life.”
“It’s weird,” Realm repeated, and shook his head a little. “Are we sure we’re not lost?”
“I’m sure,” Wind called back.
“I feel like I should be lost,” Realm muttered.
Lore bounced over and beamed at him. “Congratulations, this is how normal people get around!”
Realm considered this. “...It’s very linear?”
“Straight progression from Point A to Point B,” Lore agreed.
“...Weird.”
Shadow was… annoyed.
Or, well, he was pretty sure he was annoyed. He wasn’t actually familiar with the emotion he was having, but annoyance felt the closest so that was what he was calling it.
Were all his origins going to be this… nice?
First, none of them had actively tried to kill him when he’d showed up, even though he knew that some of them had seriously considered it. Blue had probably come the closest, even if Green had held him back. Shadow honestly would have understood it better if Blue had attacked. Shadow knew how to handle being attacked.
Not being attacked was… new.
Plus there was this whole inhabiting nonsense that Dusk was letting him get away with. Shadow was quite literally squatting in Dusk’s soul . That should have gotten some sort of response, not… whatever kind of agreeable acceptance Dusk had given him. What was wrong with these people?
The normal response to a possession situation was, in Shadow’s experience, screaming, begging, violence, or threats of murder, but usually all of the above. He’d been fully expecting that sort of response - in fact, that was why he’d done it in the first place. Murder threats were a familiar landscape. He knew how to navigate hostility. He’d been aiming for hostility, because meeting all his origins had been unusually friendly and he didn’t know how to handle that.
He had not been aiming for an apartment rental in one of his origins’ souls. It was downright amiable . And Dusk had handled Shadow’s needling with something that Shadow couldn’t even begin to name. It was probably affection , or something equally misplaced.
Ugh.
And now , whenever Shadow popped his head out to see what all the racket was, they kept being nice to him.
Just, what was even with that? Shadow didn’t get people being nice to him. Shadow didn’t comprehend people being nice to him. That just didn’t happen to people like him. But now Realm was offering group interaction, Dusk was freely letting his own soul function as a rental, all of Shadow’s origins were tolerating his presence, and Shadow didn’t know how to handle it.
He was made of the Hero’s darkest emotions, but whenever he focused on what his origins felt when Shadow was on their mind…
...it wasn’t hate. It wasn’t even dislike, mostly. He didn’t know what it was. The closest thing he could equate it to was annoyance, but even that didn’t seem quite right.
It couldn’t possibly be… neutrality, could it?
Because, neutrality would imply that there was a chance for fondness. And Shadow was not a person who was thought of with fondness. He just… wasn’t.
So it definitely wasn’t neutrality. It was annoyance, because that was the only way Shadow could make sense of the situation. The Heroes were annoyed with him, so Shadow was annoyed with the Heroes. That was how it worked. Sooner or later they’d start hating him, and then he could start hating them back, and the whole thing would start being normal again.
It was just annoyance. Nothing friendlier than that.
“I am smothering my baby Courage in affection,” Farore announced happily.
“That’s good?” Din hazarded.
“Yes it is,” Farore said gleefully. “I’m whittling him down with unconditional love and adoration, and sooner or later he’ll break down and accept it. It’s inevitable.”
Din eyed her sister and leaned away slightly. “You… know you can be a bit scary when you fixate, right?”
“He has the self esteem of a snapped Deku Stick,” Farore said. “And also a categorical inability to recognize devotion when it’s pointed anywhere within a half mile of his location. He needs me.”
“And the rest of Courage?”
“I had Nayru ping Wisdom to help with my one Aspect’s Wandering,” Farore replied, “and the rest are in transit. Hence, I have time to smother my baby in affection.”
“As long as you’re sure,” Din sighed.
“Look, it’s been a very stressful set of fights,” Farore said. “Don’t judge me for my de-stressing mechanisms.”
“I would never.”
“Good, because I’m about to indulge again,” Farore declared, grinning. “Should I send my baby compassion or endearment next?”
Din raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were supposed working on figuring out whether the Kikwis evolved into the Kokiri into the Koroks or if they made the transition into Deku Scrubs?”
“Ah,” Farore grimaced. “I’m trying to stave off the inevitable headache by focusing on literally anything else.”
Din nodded sagely, being very well familiar with that sort of problem. The entire adjacent dimension that Bellum had hijacked had been giving her fits for weeks. “Compassion,” she voted. “I think he needs that more.”
“Good point, good point.”
Zelda stood at the base of the mountain, face turned up to the sun and arms held out as wide as possible in an effort to soak up as much natural light as possible. Her eyes were closed. This may or may not have been an attempt to disguise the fact that she was tearing up a little.
The group was kindly pretending not to notice, because Princesses were generally not allowed to have moments of weakness in front of their subjects, and plausible deniability was a great and generous gift in certain circumstances.
“I’m coming to the realization,” Realm said, Kindly Ignoring Zelda as he did, “that I might have been using the magic that I didn’t know I had to make sense of the world.”
“What makes you say that?” Steam asked, also Kindly Ignoring Zelda.
“Well,” Realm said, “mostly because my head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton and I feel like I’m missing something important.”
“That would probably be these,” Speck piped up quietly, and handed Realm an armful of Silver Arrows. “You left them on the floor after you tried to shoot Ganon with them.”
“...Huh,” Realm said, accepting his ammunition back. He was pretty sure he’d packed those away after using them. Then again, that was what he thought about everything he’d ever lost, so it probably wasn’t a very valid thought. “I do appreciate that, but for once that’s not what I meant.”
“Wow. ”
“I know,” Realm agreed. “It’s like… I’m trying to reach for something that’s always been there before, even if I never really knew, and now that it’s not I don’t quite know how to deal with it?”
Speck frowned, then gave Realm a hug.
“Oh - no, not that kind of dealing with it, but thanks,” Realm reassured hurriedly. He returned the hug anyways, because hugs are nice, then continued, “I think I just need to get used to it, is all.”
“Just making sure,” Speck replied. “Oh, uh, is Zelda done having her moment of relief yet?”
Realm discreetly checked; his Princess was now taking several deep breaths and relishing in the fresh air.
“She’s about halfway there,” he reported.
“Ah,” Speck nodded. “She’s being very efficient.”
“She seems like that kind of person,” Realm agreed. Granted, he’d literally only met her mere hours ago and was basing his entire character assessment on those hours, but his Zelda did seem to be competent like that. Anyone who could throw together carved-crystalline earrings with viable sealing runes carved on from scratch in the span of thirty minutes or less deserved at least that much.
As if proving the point, Zelda chose that moment to open her eyes and collect herself, which came in the form of her squaring her shoulders, clearing her throat, and asking, “So what exactly is the sort of mess that we’re dealing with now?”
“Oh right,” Realm said, suddenly remembering that he’d meant to tell Zelda about Demise but had also rather forgotten to do that. “So, turns out there’s an actual god of destruction named Demise and he kinda might have a vested interest in making reality the thing that he destroys?”
Zelda stared at him and visibly spent a minute or two processing that.
“...Well,” she said eventually. “Well then. Link, I know you just finished a task for the Royal Family, but I hope you won’t mind terribly if I give you another one?”
“I think I’m already on it, but go ahead,” Realm agreed.
“I think we can both agree that we’d very much like reality to keep being a thing,” Zelda said vehemently. “Demise needs to be stopped. Can I count on you to do that for all those who can’t?”
“Your Highness, it would be my genuine pleasure,” Realm declared.
Something in Zelda’s posture loosened in relief. “Thank you,” she said fervently. “I know it’s a lot to put on your shoulders, but - thank you.”
“No worries, I’ve got help this time,” Realm assured her. Then he paused. “...Did I ever actually introduce you?”
“No,” Zelda said, “but I have some guesses.” She eyed the next-closest Link, this being Speck still, and made pointed glances between the facial similarities. Realm tugged on his bangs and grinned sheepishly.
“Yeah, so, this is Link,” he said, nodding to Speck. “And then over there is also Link, and Link, and Link, and then that group over there is all Link too.”
The group, hearing a rudimentary introduction, broke off from the discussion they had been having to Politely Ignore Zelda - for the interested, it had been about the conflicting influence of the Subrosian Circle of Incendiary Materials and the Holodese Culture of Blockading Structures - and waved at the Princess in near-complete unison before getting back to their topic. It was a very enthusiastic discussion. Lore was responsible for about ninety percent of said enthusiasm.
“You’re very candid about this,” Zelda observed. “Since I’m assuming that these other versions of you are not necessarily native to our own Hyrule and are more of a byproduct of the impending end of reality? Most people would try to mitigate the potential panic.”
Realm tilted his head. “I guess? I’m pretty sure you’re made of stronger stuff than that, though.”
“Oh,” Zelda said, blinking. She also may have turned the faintest bit pink, but she pushed on through the conversation so quickly that it was almost impossible to tell. “Thank you for trusting me with the information then.”
“Well, if I can’t tell my Princess, then who can I tell?” Realm replied rhetorically. “So, thanks for being a listening ear I can trust, I guess!”
Zelda blinked again, then smiled widely. “I think I’m going to like you,” she declared. “Make sure to come back in one piece from Demise so we can actually get to know each other properly, with more time than a few random hours between catastrophes.”
“You got it, Your Highness,” Realm agreed.
“Go save the world,” Zelda told him. “Meanwhile, I need to get back to Hyrule Castle to make sure you’ll have a world to save. I’m sure my father has been having a terrible time without me.”
Realm winced, since he felt like Zelda’s two-year-long absence was at least a little bit his fault. “Sorry about that.”
Zelda frowned at him. “...You’re the self-deprecating type, aren’t you,” she said.
“Um…”
“Well then,” Zelda sighed. “Let me make this quite clear.”
And then she marched up and gave Realm a firm hug.
“Thank you, Link,” she said into his ear. “You’re the Hero of Hyrule.”
“Oh,” Realm managed in a strangled sounding voice, due to the fact that his brain was short-circuiting because his Princess was hugging him. “You’re welcome.”
“And don’t forget it,” Zelda finished firmly. She released her grip, stepped back to resume the proper amount of distance between royalty and a person she’d just met only hours ago, and gave Realm a surprisingly cheerful wave given the circumstances before making her way off towards Hyrule Castle.
…Probably. Realm assumed that was where she was going, but he really had no idea where Hyrule Castle was. He hoped she got there safely though.
“I like her,” Gen observed, watching the Princess somehow manage to make picking her way across a mountainous terrain look graceful.
“She does seem nice,” Realm agreed. “If I had to spend two years trying to rescue anybody, I’m glad she turned out to be so agreeable about it. I hope I get longer than a couple hours to get to know her next time.”
“Assuming we’ll be able to make sure there is a next time,” Lore interjected. “Void in the world, remember? Maybe we should get on that?”
“You’re just impatient,” Gen accused.
Lore blinked. “You mean you haven’t noticed that about me until just now?”
“No, I pegged you for impatience within ten minutes of meeting you.”
“Oh, well as long as we’re clear,” Lore decided. “But seriously, I’m bored.”
“Then come help me collect everyone else, you may as well do something with all that energy.”
“Yay, busy work!”
The group was collected, Blue and Vio were put on opposite ends to avoid the usual mishap, Realm was triply sure he hadn’t lost any items in the meantime, and the void had been located - this being, conveniently, right between the base of Ganon’s mountain and the base of the twin mountain a few dozen feet away. All that was left to do was go through it.
However, Dusk almost immediately regretted being the first to do so, for two important reasons.
Firstly, because he recognized the scenery, which meant this was his Hyrule, which in turn meant that if previous patterns held, he was either going to need to deal with Zant, Ganondorf, or both.
But secondly - and far more importantly - Midna was there. Midna was staring at him with the intensity of a lethal Beamos laser. And Midna did not look happy.
“...I can explain?” Dusk said weakly.
“Oh you can , can you,” Midna echoed. “What, exactly, can you explain?”
Dusk opened his mouth, paused, frowned, then said, “Well first, I think I’d like to know why you’re glaring at me so I can know whether or not I actually can explain.”
“You. Left. Me. Waiting,” Midna informed him, enunciating her words with a frightening amount of clarity. “It has been. A. Whole. Month. ”
“...It was your idea though?” Dusk frowned slowly. “You… bodily threw us into the void the last time I saw you.”
“WELL YOU COULD’VE DROPPED BY ONCE IN A WHILE!”
It was at this point that Dusk remembered Midna’s favorite method of covering up her mushier emotions was with volume, which meant that she’d probably been actually worried that something had gone wrong. Quite possible, Dusk thought, judging how exactly how loud she was being, there was a decent chance she’d begun to suspect he and his counterparts might have been dead.
...Not that Demise hadn’t given it his best shot but Dusk maybe wasn’t going to mention that right now.
“Oh Din,” Dusk said upon realizing this. “I’m so sorry.”
Midna tilted her head, her one visible eye flashing. Abruptly, Dusk also remembered why he usually didn’t acknowledge Midna’s mushier emotions.
“YOU’D DARN WELL BETTER BE!” Midna shouted. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW BORING IT’S BEEN HERE!?”
(Another one of her favored tactics for covering up mushier emotions was to claim that she’d been feeling something else entirely.)
“Well,” Dusk mused, “how much collateral damage have you caused?”
“That is an extremely un-educated question coming from you,” Midna informed him.
Translation: she’d been very bored (worried) indeed.
“...Hug?” Dusk offered, holding out his arms slightly.
Midna stared at him.
“...If you want one that much, you baby,” she muttered, before casually drifting forwards to return the embrace. If her fingers clutched far too tightly on Dusk’s clothes, neither of them were going to mention it,
There was approximately six seconds of peaceful silence.
“...Erm,” Gen coughed. “Should we… come back later…?”
Oh right, Dusk was traveling with seventeen other versions of himself and they’d probably just seen this entire confrontation.
...That was awkward.
“Absolutely not, you’ve been gone long enough!” Midna snapped, expertly taking the attention off The Moment while also pivoting her body language to perch an elbow on Dusk’s shoulder instead. In a split second she went from emotionally vulnerable to casually about to verbally take someone’s head off.
It would have been impressive if it also hadn’t been so terrifying, although the fact that Dusk was fully used to this tactic and wordlessly shifted his own body to accommodate her took the edge off a little bit.
“Honestly,” Midna continued irately. “Knowing you lot, you went and got into a bunch of near death experiences without me!”
Dusk hummed thoughtfully. “About five or so, I’d say.”
“FIVE?” Midna squawked, turning to give her partner a Glare. “That’s unacceptable. How dare you almost get yourself killed without my knowledge.”
“By all means, come along then,” Dusk sighed.
“Thank you, I think I will,” Midna decided. Dusk blinked, then turned slightly to stare at her. Midna stared back unflinchingly.
“...Should I bother dissuading you?”
“That’s a very stupid question.”
“Right,” Dusk sighed. “But you should know, I’ve been hosting a new lodger in my shadow. You might need to have rent discussions with him.”
“Oh really?” Midna arched an eyebrow. “Should I be worried?”
“No, I already put the fear of you into him,” Dusk assured her. “You’ll probably just need to back it up to establish your dominance.”
“Well, don’t mind if I do,” Midna grinned. “Excuse me, little wolf.”
“Please don’t be too loud, I don’t want a headache today.”
“No promises!” Midna cackled, slipping out of sight with the ease of long partnership and also giving Dusk the very odd sensation of having his soul occupied twice over. If hosting a single possession felt a bit awkward, hosting two possessions almost felt uncomfortable. It was a good thing Dusk had so much experience in this area.
“...Did you just set Midna on Shadow?” Lore asked slowly. “While somehow finagling your way out of being on the receiving end of her displeasure?”
“Honestly the second thing was an added bonus,” Dusk replied, shrugging.
“Teach me.”
“Absolutely not, the last thing you need to be is more manipulative,” Gen sighed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed those stunts you pull with the villains.”
“But that’s why I need lessons!” Lore protested. “Think of how much better I could make those stunts with some tutoring!”
“...I’ll consider it.”
“Yessssssssssss.”
“That aside, it’s pretty obvious that this is your Hyrule,” Gen continued, looking at Dusk. “Any ideas on what we can expect?”
Dusk tilted his head, frowned, then winced a little. “Well... hypothetically speaking, how do you all feel about getting Cursed?”
For once, Shadow had actually been paying attention to what was going on outside Dusk’s soul, on the grounds that surely he’d find some evidence for hatred if he looked hard enough, so hearing that Midna was coming in to meet him wasn’t a terribly sudden surprise.
The dagger of hair at his throat, however, that was a bit unexpected.
“...I take it you’ve heard of me?” Shadow offered, smirking. He took the chance to look this ‘Midna’ over - she was very small, with a blazingly red eye and equally blazing hair (which, incidentally, was twisted into the shape of a dagger and pointed at his jugular). She wore a helmet so comically large that it covered half her face, which Shadow actually found himself grateful for. The look she was giving him with one eye alone made him apprehensive of what she could do with both eyes uncovered.
“Briefly,” Midna returned, flashing a grin of her own. A single fang poked out of her mouth as she did. “How do you like my interior decorating?”
“The carpet was inspired,” Shadow complimented. The hair dagger was still at his throat and was buzzing with enough dark energy that he was fairly certain it would actually do damage to him. Best not to insult the woman who could kill him with a single thought.
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Midna informed him, smirk widening.
“Self-preservation, on the other hand, works almost every time,” Shadow replied.
There was a silent and intense stand-off.
“...Ground rules,” Midna announced suddenly. “The little wolf is mine. Touch him and you’re dead.”
“Understood,” Shadow agreed.
“The little wolf’s counterparts are also mine,” Midna continued. “However, I do care about them slightly less. Hurt them, and you’re dead.”
“Sure.”
“And between the two of us, I’m calling the shots.” The hair dagger pressed threateningly under Shadow’s chin. “Don’t cross my lines, and we won’t have a problem. Clear?”
“Crystal,” Shadow agreed.
Midna beamed. “In that case, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Midna, I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
The dagger withdrew and relaxed into harmless-looking hair at Midna’s back, and Shadow made a point to fold his arms in casual nonchalance. “I was told that if you killed me, it was my fault,” he replied. “I’m finding this to be quite accurate.”
“Awwww, did the little wolf tell you that?” Midna cooed. “He does know how to compliment a girl.”
Shadow, while not having a great deal of experience with girls, had at least met the Princess of Hyrule a couple times and was fairly certain they wouldn’t have considered that a compliment. Then again, Midna did not seem to be anything like the girls he’d previously met.
“It’s a… pleasure, to meet you too Midna,” Shadow returned. “Call me Shadow.”
“I think we’re going to have fun, you and I,” Midna sing-songed. “Also, rent is 20 rupees a week and I do not accept negotiations.”
Quietly, Shadow began to reconsider interacting with the outside world again.
Contrary to popular belief, Zant was not actually an idiot.
He was, however, certifiably off his rocker, and as such was best kept supervised. At all times. Without lapse.
Twilight Ganondorf didn’t quite remember how he’d apparently volunteered himself to be Zant’s keeper, but it was a done deal now and there was no changing it. He knew because he’d tried, and Zant was so firmly convinced that Ganondorf was his personal god that it… well, it hadn’t gone well.
He knew approaching in a cloud of magic and malice was going to give off the wrong impression but he’d been a little pressed for options at the time, okay?
This wasn’t to say that Zant wasn’t useful, because the Twili was anything but. He had the most potent Curse magic that Ganondorf had ever seen and the stamina to layer it over an entire country. Beneath the insanity was a mind that could be wickedly sharp in the moments when Zant chose to apply himself. And while the less said about Zant’s fighting style the better, the effectiveness couldn’t be denied.
It was just that this usefulness had to be harnessed very specifically, or else it couldn’t be harnessed at all. Ganondorf almost suspected that Zant took special pleasure in being difficult, if it weren’t for the fact that Zant put an equal amount of inanities into everything he did.
Such as now. When Ganondorf was attempting to have a coherent strategy session, and Zant was being… anything but coherent.
“We have to send a calling card!” Zant warbled. “That way, our enemies know exactly when and where we’re going to strike and can match us in an epic showdown for the fate of the world!”
“Why,” Ganondorf ground out, “would we ever want our enemies to know our precise location?”
“Because dramatic tension is important,” Zant said, unusually seriously. Then he jerked his head ninety degrees to the left and declared, “We need to plan for clouds!”
“...Clouds.”
“The sky needs to be appropriately cloudy or else our flashy power display won’t stand out properly,” Zant hummed.
“Flashy. Power. Display.”
“Do you think we’ll need Peahats?”
Ganondorf took a deep, bracing breath. “No, Zant. We will not need Peahats.”
Zant drooped, physically drooped, so far over that he almost bent completely in half. The tassels on his sleeves brushed his shoes.
“...We can, however, arrange for dramatic cloud-cover.” It was best to compromise with Zant, Ganondorf had found, because otherwise there was drama . The cloud-cover seemed like the least amount of hassle - or rather, the option that interfered with Ganondorf’s plans the least.
Zant straightened himself so abruptly that he bent backwards into the opposite direction. “Great is my god, that he may plan for clouds!” he cried, somehow managing to hold himself completely parallel to the ground by his knees. His arms stretched up to the sky in a weird subversion of worship.
“Yes, yes, glory to me,” Ganondorf grumbled. “Will you stand up straight?”
Zant wrenched himself into a relatively normal upright position, though the way he did it brought the integrity of his spine into question for anyone watching. “How will we enact our cumulonimbus plan?”
Ganondorf was almost certain that Zant was not using ‘cumulonimbus’ in the way it was meant to be used, but he wasn’t going to focus on that. “I’m very glad you asked,” he purred. “Because you’re going to be the star of the prologue.”
Zant made a high-pitched warbling noise, his eyes wide and shining. Ganondorf was fairly certain that this meant Zant was excited.
Well, either that, or Zant was feeling murderous. Those two seemed to coincide for Zant a lot.
Notes:
Yes, naming the two random old men Manny and Guy is a joke. ‘Manny’ because man, and they’re men, and ‘Guy’, because they’re guys. My humor is very advanced.
Second: I know absolutely nothing about the spiritual qualities of rocks. Everything I just claimed is based entirely on what the internet has told me, and if that’s wrong… well then, my bad, I tried, and if someone could please direct me to a website with correct spirit rock information that would be great and I’ll update the stuff as soon as I can.
In other news, Midna met Shadow and it was hate at first sight. Can you tell I had fun with that? Because I had fun with that.
And lastly… maybe brace for a long wait? From what my planning tells me, the next couple chapters are gonna be doozies, and Doozy Chapters always take me a while. (The Train Battle was a doozy, and we all know how long that was in production.
Thanks to tsukarete, bigyihsuan, Guest #195, htruona, Treki26, OniDoodle, Morocko, Tofutti, DonttellmybrotherIwrotethis, Emblemofthedigi, Guestt #196, Guest #197, Guest #198, Guest #199, Drebom, Norelica, HeyLISTEN, Guest #200, Guest #201, WI3H7ULLY_W4NTED, AlothcatnamedPhil, Guest #202, E2Kiquis, CatFiends, Guest #203, Cheese_is_Grate, IdiotJuicyy, RavenclawBookworm, Guest #204, Guest #205, Softichill, Guest #206, Dinadinu, CoffeepotGiraffe, SemiSolace, Guest #207, Zelda_Legends, ilmkvm, Guest 208, Guest #209, Guest #210, SalviaOfficinalis, SilverSage, DuckTapeDictator, Battler127, Guest #211, living_with_the_night, SafetyCone, CandlelitSky, Guest #212, Guest #213, Bama_Lama_Ding_Dong, angel_rayvn_nightwing, Gamerwolf1123, Guest #214, Guest #215, MoonFire_Arc, shardofeternity, Guest #216, Guest #217, soulsilver_and_earthsongs, Guest #218, Guest #219, CecileDragonWriter, LettaAnnalisa, Guest #220, Color_Me_Curious, Guest #221, Guest #222, Raine_Signs, LizSwordmaid, Guest # 223, Guest #224, Guest #225, SuperPoptart, RelykMasson10, and Guest #226 for the Kudos!
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Chapter 28: Sir, Are You Aware That You're An Animal?
Summary:
Nobody plans for Zant. Not even Zant.
Notes:
(Out of curiosity, do you provide Disclaimer services to anybody else…?)
Nope. You’re the only author who employs this particular gag.
(Hey, I did not start out with this in mind.)
All the more reason why it was a great idea. Besides, you need someone to say that you don’t own The Legend of Zelda, Changeling.
(...But I’m not even sure it was my idea.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The problem that came with saying something as general as ‘how do you all feel about getting Cursed?’ was that the next five to ten minutes of the conversation was spent defining what Dusk meant by ‘Cursed’ rather than getting to the actual point of the question. This was because several Links in the group had their own definition of what a ‘Curse’ was as a result of either seeing one or having one be applied to themselves, and the severity of the response was going to depend on the scale that Dusk was referring to.
When it was finally clarified that Dusk was referring to the ‘forced into a body that isn’t yours’ type of Curse, as opposed to the more common ‘perpetual night/storm/drought’ typically cast on landmasses or the ‘slow creeping illness inevitably resulting in death/madness/amnesia’ typically cast on authority figures, then the conversation finally moved on a little.
...Before promptly stalling again on the kind of body that one was being forced into, because of course there were different subsets of that too. There followed another discussion of vaguely humanoid versus animalistic versus a straight-up object, and then there was the question of whether or not the victim’s intelligence carried over because that was a whole other set of issues if it didn’t.
Upon the clarification that, yes it did, the conversation almost got stalled on the source - but by then, Dusk had reached the impressively long end of his patience rope.
He set his shoulders, narrowed his eyes, and actually growled, “It’s a slow creeping eternal-half-life-torment curse fueled by Dark magic subverted by Light influence into a change-of-shape curse of the animalistic variety in the subset of intelligence retainment. Any other questions?”
“...Curses can be subverted?” Speck asked meekly.
Dusk’s irritation promptly evaporated, because while he was good at pointing his temper at villains and concepts, he was not good at pointing it at his allies. Also, Speck was impossible to be angry with, on the account that he was both endearingly small and endearingly innocent. As the hands-down youngest Link in the group, he had a very wide-eyed way of looking at people that made said people want to snatch him up and hide him from anything that might break his innocence.
It also didn’t help that Dusk had big brother instincts a mile wide and they’d locked onto Speck a long time ago.
“I’m living proof,” Dusk answered fondly.
“Secondary question,” Gen interjected. “I’m assuming you’re bringing it up because it’s something we should be possibly expecting?”
“Yes,” Dusk said.
“Should we be worried about this whole ‘originally a creeping eternal-half-life-of-torment Curse’ thing?”
“I don’t think so,” Dusk replied, tilting his head in thought. “After all, you are me, and if I can subvert it…”
“Then we can, because we’re you,” Gen finished. “I do forget that bit occasionally, we’re very diverse for being essentially the same person.”
“Mmm,” Dusk hummed noncommittally. It would have been more convincing had he not turned to eye Lore at the same moment that Gen did.
“Whatever incident you’re thinking of, I confess to it with pride, ” Lore declared cheerfully.
“...Very diverse,” Gen muttered.
Dusk, very quietly, snickered to himself. Then he said, “Obviously I think we’d all prefer to avoid Curses and all the things that follow-”
“Already got one, don’t need another, thanks,” Sketch called, waving his bracelet around for emphasis.
“-but just in case,” Dusk continued, “I thought I should bring it up.”
“Do you think Curses stack?” Sketch wondered. “Because now I’m imagining myself as a beetle or something scuttling around on painted walls.”
“Ideally we won’t get to find out,” Wind said. “But can I ask, why a beetle?”
“No one pays attention to the artwork, no one pays attention to the small bugs,” Sketch said, shrugging. “I would literally be the fly on the wall.”
“...how long have you been sitting on that pun?”
“Literally ever since I learned that transformative Curses were a thing that could apply to people,” Sketch grinned. “So, about five minutes ago. I work fast.”
Wind politely applauded him.
Dusk, meanwhile, was looking around at the void and the surrounding landscape with a furrowed expression and rather wishing he’d asked Midna if anything new had happened since he’d been gone before sending her in after Shadow. This was because he remembered leaving the void in the Throne Room of his version of Hyrule Castle, and this was not the Throne Room. Rather, this was the hallway outside the Throne Room.
The actual Throne Room didn’t seem to exist anymore, because the void appeared to have swallowed it.
“It got bigger, didn’t it,” Vio observed, catching Dusk’s eye. Between all the Links that the group had picked up over time, it was actually only Steam, Realm, and Vio and his immediate siblings that had seen Dusk’s home Hyrule beforehand, and remembered how small the void had used to be.
The Throne Room had used to be a thing, after all.
“I’m just… surprised,” Dusk murmured. “It’s only been a few weeks. How can it already be so big?”
“Progressive-creeping imminent nonexistence Curse?” Vio speculated. In spite of himself, Dusk’s mouth twitched into a smile.
“Sounds about right.”
“Sounds about depressing,” Lore interjected. “I dislike being depressed, I make a point not to do it for more than five minutes a day. It’s so unproductive.”
“Let me guess, you know exactly what would be productive right now?” Sketch asked.
“Well I should hope so, otherwise I’ve inserted myself into this conversation for absolutely no reason at all. We should probably ask Midna if she’s seen anything odd, since she’s been here the whole time.”
“You just want an excuse to make her acquaintance,” Gen accused.
“Can you blame me? My only exposure up until now has been the stories Dusk’s been telling us and now I’m discovering that he’s been downplaying her awesomeness. I need an excuse to make her acquaintance!”
Dusk tilted his head, eyes going unfocused in the way that meant he was listening to something nobody else could hear. “I think she and Shadow are still getting to know each other, but it sounds like she’ll be done in just a couple minutes. Hey, Midna?”
A pause.
“No, take your time. But when you’re done we were hoping to get filled in on recent events?”
Another pause. Dusk abruptly turned a very bright red color.
“I am not.”
Lore squinted. “...Yes he is.”
“Hmm?” Gen said.
“I’m ninety-eight-point-six-three percent sure that he just got teased about having a crush.”
“Ah.”
Dusk pinched the bridge of his nose, still flushing quite a bit. “No - Midna - Because we’re looking for Zant or Ganondorf or possibly both, that’s why.”
A shorter pause.
“That’s the plan.”
The next pause was filled with the discordant sound of Midna emerging from Dusk’s soul, made all the louder by the fact that she was dragging Shadow behind her. He looked a bit like he’d just been hit by the Spirit Train, but that was a completely normal expression for people who’d just met Midna for the first time so Dusk wasn’t really worried about that.
“Zant,” Midna emphasized, getting up into Dusk’s face in the way that meant she was disguising her worry with antagonism. “We took care of Zant.”
“It didn’t stick,” Dusk sighed. Midna’s eye narrowed.
“Well then we’re gonna have to do it again, won’t we little wolf?”
“That is still the plan,” Dusk affirmed. “Any ideas?”
Midna huffed. “I’d guess that he’s trying for the Twilight Realm again? But honestly who knows with him at this point.” Then she raised an eyebrow and said, “Now what’s this about ‘or Ganondorf or possibly both’?"
“...You may want to sit down,” Dusk told her. “It’s a bit of a long story.”
“We almost died!” Lore interjected.
Midna responded to this in a completely appropriate fashion by manifesting eighteen strands from her hair and whacking the entire group upside the head in a single motion. “STOP HAVING NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES WITHOUT ME!” she shouted.
“I would rather not have them at all , but the universe rarely respects my wishes in that area,” Dusk fired back without missing a beat. “Deal with it.”
Midna laughed. “I’ve missed you, little wolf.”
“You missed your free ride and scapegoat,” Dusk corrected.
“Same difference, really.”
Dusk rolled his eyes at her. Midna cackled and dropped her full weight on his shoulder in retaliation, then perched her elbow on his head. Dusk bore his new cargo with admirable tolerance.
“Now then,” Midna said after she’d made herself comfortable. “Tell me what sort of mess you’ve gotten you and yourselves into this time, hmm?”
“So… it’s like Hide And Seek,” Zant said slowly. “But also like Tag?”
“No, Zant. This is not like either of those things,” Ganondorf said dully.
“Well then what sort of game is it?”
Ganondorf stared blankly into the middle distance, then sighed heavily and surrendered. “You know what? Sure. It’s a Hide And Seek Tag game.”
Zant lit up. “I love both of those things! Ooh, ooh, is it the stabby kind or the boring kind?”
“...The stabby kind.”
“Ooh!” Zant threw his arms into the air and waved them about wildly, which was to make the tassels on his sleeves flap. He liked the noise. “Great is my god, that he may play games!”
“Glory to me,” Ganondorf grumbled, because Zant got upset when Ganondorf didn’t give himself the proper praise and worship. Then, because he still needed to point Zant in the right direction (even within the framework of a Hide And Seek Tag game), he said, “Don’t forget the Special Rules.”
Suddenly, Zant was standing normally, his eyes focused intently on Ganondorf and with a wicked smile playing on his mouth. “If our enemies get Tagged, they get Cursed,” he recited evenly. Then his voice dropped an entire octave. “And I’m ‘It’.”
Ganondorf allowed himself a smirk. While it definitely took a significant amount of effort to get Zant in the proper mood for this sort of thing, the payoff was magnificent.
“Ready or not,” Zant intoned eerily. He threw out his arms, then slowly brought them up - and at the same time, a haze of Twilight crept from around his feet to roll inexorably over the landscape. “Here I come.”
Because Midna had thankfully already gotten the Storytime Crash Course once before, the abbreviated second version took much less time and was mostly comprised of introductions for those Links that she hadn’t met yet and a brief synopsis of who they were. Whether or not this had been a good idea was still up for debate, because it had officially introduced Lore to Midna.
“So…” Lore said, giving Midna an up-and-down appraisal. He tilted his head thoughtfully, then nodded sharply and continued with, “ Dõo oyu aekõps Raidgõlnõk?”
Midna stared at him for a solid twenty uninterrupted seconds, which Lore patiently waited out with the skill born of many ignored awkward moments. Then she said, “Esy Ay dõo. How dõo oyu?”
“Ho, Ay radeelõn iõt hielõw Ay asõw aignsõv het Radõk Rõdlow aõ efõw raesy abkõc,” Lore said. “Hatt reet idõd not antõw ot haecõt em bõtu Ay reow him dõnow in het den!"
Midna stared at him a bit more. Then she snorted out a laugh and said, “Ellõw henõt, Ay hinkõt oyu adõn Ay rae iggon ot egõt agõlno jõstu iefõn. Antõw ot alnõp ranskõp hrigõt in rõfnot fo reeñensov’y aefsõc adõn halgu abeescu hety annocõt raddesõnntu su?”
“Ay hinkõt Ay elov oyu,” Lore said seriously, which was apparently hilarious because Midna burst out laughing.
“Maybe buy me a drink first, little mimic,” she chortled.
(Meanwhile, Sketch made a huh noise. “I didn’t know Lore spoke Lorulian.”
“Is that what that is?” Steam said. “All I knew was that it didn’t sound like Labrynnian or Holodese.”
“I only know it’s Lorulian because Ravio spoke it sometimes,” Sketch admitted. “And I know the word for ‘Lorulian’ in Lorulian. It’s that, uh, Raidgohlnok one.”
“...Midna is Twili,” Dusk interjected. “And she told me that her native language is called ‘Darkling’? And that’s her native language, right there, she ranted in it enough times for me to get the hang of what it sounds like.”
“...Well now I’m just confused,” Sketch said helplessly.)
Whatever they were speaking, it was obvious that Lore and Midna were already getting along like a house on fire and it had literally been less than a minute. Lore was practically glowing with glee - it was almost possible to see all the new ideas popping into existence around his head
Unfortunately (of fortunately, depending on who was asked), he would never get a chance to put any of those new ideas into practice. This was because of two very concerning reasons.
The first reason was that Midna stopped talking mid-sentence and went completely stiff, staring off into the middle distance. She blinked, once, then took a deep breath and said, “Link? We have a Twilight problem.”
The second reason was that Dusk’s version of Princess Zelda manifested herself in a whirl of dazzling light, paused just long enough to register that she had company, and then said, “Forgive my breach in decorum, Twilight Hero, but - thank the goddesses for your timing, you need to come with me right now.”
“You felt it too?” Midna asked.
Zelda shook her head. “That sort of warning would have been greatly appreciated. I can see it.”
“ Where?” Midna demanded, which Zelda answered by urging them all out the doors of the Castle and into the Castle Town proper. She tilted her head to the sky and said, “Unfortunately, it is rather hard to miss.”
For all intents and purposes, it was the middle of the day. Despite this, the light quality was rapidly falling to a level normally associated with either sunrise or sunset. Billowing over the walls of Hyrule Castle Town was a cloud unlike anything the non-native Links had ever seen before, a mix of orange and black that glowed from within like it was lit with a million haunted candles. It was creeping both up and out at a speed that was just fast and slow enough that the victims could watch it coming, and know there was no escape. Naturally that just made the entire spectacle worse. Dusk watched it move with a grim expression.
“Zant?” he said, in a tone that made it clear that he wasn’t actually asking a question.
“Zant,” Midna agreed darkly.
“Farore ,” Dusk cursed, which was a sure sign that he was stressed because he really wasn’t the sort of person that normally cursed. “Okay. We need to move.”
“How urgently do we need to do that?” Wind asked. “Because I think we’ve lost Realm, and leaving without him is probably a bad idea.”
There was a brief pause.
“...What do you mean, we’ve lost him?” Sketch echoed. “Didn’t we literally just get something for him to fix that?”
“Well, yes,” Wind agreed. “But I think that just stops him from getting lost with magic. It does nothing for him getting lost on his own.”
“How d’you know?”
“I can see him up on the ledge of the castle tower on our left.”
There was another brief pause, where everyone craned their heads up and to the left. Sure enough, Realm was halfway through the motions of clambering out the window of the tower to perch on the outcropping that made up a particularly decorative buttress. He brushed off his clothes, frowned, then looked around confusedly before lighting up when he caught sight of the rest of the group on the ground.
“There you guys are!” he yelled delightedly. “I was worried I’d accidentally popped into a different Castle!”
“...All we did was leave the hall and take a left,” Blue said blankly. “How?”
Realm made the face that he always made when he had no idea how to answer. Then he changed the subject by pointing at the oncoming Twilight and calling, “By the way, is that going to be a problem?”
“A very big one, can you please get down here?” Dusk called back up to him.
“Someone toss me a rope!”
“On it,” Mask volunteered, already in motion, while Ocarina followed closely behind, shadowing Mask on apparent instinct alone.
“Realm’s timing is really not great,” Gen observed drily. Dusk let out a heavy sigh of agreement.
The Twilight cloud was looming closer.
“We don’t want to get caught in that,” Dusk said. “That’s the Curse I was talking about earlier, the slow creeping eternal-half-life-torment one? The only one of us who won’t be affected is Midna.”
“A- hem,” Shadow coughed, from where he was still being held semi-captive by Midna’s hair. “Remember what I’m made of, moron?”
“And Shadow, apparently,” Dusk amended because he had sort of forgotten that Shadow was basically an honorary Twili, what with the dark magic and all. “I’m sort-of immune because I have that Light-influence-subversion thing going for me, but it’ll force me into my wolf form and I don’t know how long it’ll be until I can change back. Ideally it’ll do the same thing for you guys, but I think I’d rather not risk it.”
“Because if you’re wrong, then we have even more Problems,” Gen grumbled. “And we really don’t need more Problems, so better be safe than sorry, yeah?”
Dusk’s murmur of assent was overpowered by the triumphant noises of Realm sliding down the rope and explaining that, wow it’s a nice Castle in there but gosh is the layout confusing, why does anyone need four separate kitchens?
“Or possibly,” Speck suggested tactfully, “that was the same kitchen that you ended up in four separate times?”
Realm considered that.
“...Okay yeah that does make a bit more sense,” he agreed.
“Unbelievable,” the Four muttered in bafflement.
Realm just scrunched his face in agreement, before looking out and up over the Castle walls. The Twilight cloud was really getting alarmingly close.
“Should we maybe be doing something about that?”
“Yes,” Dusk said, and promptly began herding everyone in the opposite direction. “We’re going to evacuate and hope that the previous defining boundaries from the first time this happened will still be in effect.”
“Slightly less proactive than I thought it was going to be, but okay,” Steam muttered. Dusk just made shoo-ing motions at him.
Unfortunately, they made it all of five steps out of Castle Town and into Hyrule Field proper before everything went to the Dark World. The Twilight cloud, which had been advancing relatively steadily, came to a billowing pause. Somewhat unwisely, the Links also paused to give this new development a collective distrustful stare.
From the murky heart of the Twilight, a pair of glowing yellow eyes stared back at them. There was a low, unhinged chuckle.
“I found you, ” Zant intoned eerily, looking like every inch of the mad king that he was. Dusk came to the terrifying realization that Zant seemed to be having a moment of unmarred sanity - and while in many ways the sane Zant was often safer to deal with, the insane Zant was at least predictable in his insanity.
Sane Zant was terrifying because Dusk had no idea what he was going to do.
“Tag,” Zant breathed reverently, like it was a prayer, and Dusk admittedly had to take a mental step backwards because that was not necessarily something he’d expected the sane Zant to say. “You’re ‘It’.”
He tilted his head sharply to the side, and that was all Dusk saw as the Twilight cloud roiled violently and shot forwards-
“NAYRU’S LOVE!” someone shrieked.
It took several moments of confusion and shouting for the group to realize that they were not, in fact, Cursed. This was because Mask had a great deal of experience in predicting the actions of insane villains (coughMAJORAcough) , had recognized the attack for what it was, and had thrown up the best magical shield he knew how to cast in response.
Ocarina had hopped on that bandwagon too, but really he was just lending his magic to his younger-but-older self to power the spell. Nayry’s Love was not a very cost-effective protection.
“This is only gonna last for about thirty more seconds or so!” Mask panted. The blue dome of Wisdom’s signature spell was stretched over the Links in what was frankly the largest demonstration that most of them had ever seen. The clouds of Twilight pushed up against the outside of the barrier, tendrils curling up and around greedily, and by the way that absolutely nothing could be seen beyond the Curse it was pretty clear that they were on limited time. “Plan?”
“...Brace yourselves,” Dusk said resignedly.
“Okay, not gonna lie, I was hoping for something better than that,” Blue said bluntly.
“This is probably going to hurt,” Dusk continued quickly, shooting an apologetic glance in Blue’s direction as he did. “Don’t panic, don’t fight it, and I’m about eighty percent sure it’ll turn out okay. Also, Princess?”
“Yes?” said Zelda, who wasn’t necessarily looking thrilled about the whole situation but also seemed resigned to their fate. It probably helped that she was, somehow, just as immune as Midna. Maybe Dusk should look into asking her how she did that one of these days.
“Respectfully requesting a time extension due to unforeseen complications,” Dusk said.
“Granted,” Zelda sighed.
Any more conversation was cut off as Mask and Ocarina lost their grip on Nayru’s Love, and the Twilight came rushing in.
Zant observed his handiwork impassively.
Thick, soup-like fog dispensing his Curse over the entire land of Hyrule? Check.
The Heroes trapped inside the Curse with no way out, absolutely guaranteed to fall victim to it? Check.
Making a dramatic, ominous retreat for no apparent reason, thereby allowing the Heroes to catch their collective breath, adjust to the Curse, regroup, and inevitably formulate a plan to counteract everything Zant had just done to them? Zant hummed a little tune to himself, making sure that it echoed eerily in the Twilight, turned forcefully on one heel so that the tassels on his clothes flared openly with the movement, and then proceeded to glide silently away into the gloom so that he seemed to vanish like a ghost from another world.
Check. He was so good at this.
Now he just needed to report back to his god on a job well done!
It should be noted that Zant’s definition of ‘a job well done’ was very different from Ganondorf’s. Ganondorf would have taken advantage of the Curse and subsequent disorientation to finish off the Heroes right then and there. Zant was not Ganondorf. Zant did not do this. Zant did the exact opposite of this.
The worst part of it all, Ganondorf bemoaned to himself, was that Zant would be a terrifyingly efficient villain if he would only apply some common sense. Then again, if Zant possessed common sense, he probably wouldn’t have accepted Ganondorf as his god - not to mention he likely wouldn’t have even become a villain in the first place.
...Ganondorf felt conflicted.
Farore, calmly, clasped her hands in front of her mouth and took deep, even breaths. She then, very calmly, manifested a thick velvet plush. And then, exceedingly calmly, she buried her face into it and screamed at the top of her lungs.
This went on for several minutes, which she could afford to do because she was outside of reality and could spare the time for stressed screeching. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the sort of problem that could be solved by screeching, and so Farore was eventually forced to dissipate the plush and confront the situation.
“I am a terrible patron goddess,” she muttered. “Why am I never prepared for these things? I should be better prepared for these things. What was I doing that kept me from being prepared for this thing?”
Din, who’d leapt into a corner like a startled cat when Farore had begun screeching, cleared her throat hesitantly. “I think you were trying to reconcile the freshwater and saltwater Zora species?”
“BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE FOR THEIR PHYSIOLOGY TO SUDDENLY INCORPORATE AMPHIBIANS!” Farore shouted, before catching herself. She pinched the bridge of her nose heavily. “Ignoring the fact that I have no idea how that subspecies got away from me, I have more pressing problems. Speaking of which - Nayru, I’m cashing a favor, give me a Time Break!”
Nayru, who was hiding behind Din in the corner like a skittish cat, extricated herself from her sister and closed her eyes in concentration. The world inside the reality window ground to a halt, showing a still-image as opposed to a live feed. Not that it wasn’t still a live feed, but Nayru had just pressed the figurative ‘pause’ button, so to speak. She had Time as a Sphere Of Influence, she could do that sort of thing.
(For the curious: yes, this was normally something that the Interference Laws disapproved of, but the Three Sisters had already smashed the Interference Laws to splinters, so what was one more Consequence on top of everything else?)
“Thank you,” Farore sighed. “Now. I have…” she counted on her fingers for a moment, “sixteen Aspects to inoculate against Dark-Shadow-Twilight magic and the subsequent forms that they’ll take, because I am a distractible idiot who didn’t plan ahead. If anyone needs me, I’ll be plotting and-or panicking, depending on my whim. Check on me if I’m not done within ten reality-seconds.”
So saying, Farore manifested paper, pen, and a clipboard and stalked off towards the reality window, where she immediately sat down and began muttering to herself.
It should be noted that ten reality-seconds, when Nayru was executing a Time Break, could last anywhere from twelve hours to four days, which was really incredibly inconsistent but Nayru had Time Senses so as long as she remembered to honor Farore’s request it wouldn’t be a problem. “Should we… help her?” Din hazarded.
She and Nayru regarded their sister for a moment, who was now scribbling frustratedly on the clipboard and muttering, “No no no, he doesn’t resonate with cats at all,” and both of them winced.
“Let her get the initial rush out of her system first,” Nayru decided. “We can offer our assistance once she stops making the clipboard sprout stress flowers.”
Farore’s clipboard stopped sprouting stress flowers about two hours in, which was more or less equivalent to about .02 milliseconds of reality-time. Her sisters strategically picked that moment to approach and involve themselves in the process, which was how they could be found in their current positions: spread out on the floor, papers and research strewn everywhere. Din was hanging upside down from a couch that she’d conjured, while Nayru was on her back holding a pair of candidates side-by-side above her head. Farore, meanwhile, was facedown on her stomach, mumbling her stream of thought into the ground because if she didn’t muffle it then she broke the concentration of her two helpers and she needed her two helpers.
“...Who’s doing the New Hero of Hyrule right now?” Din asked suddenly.
“Me, after I finish with the Hero of the Sky,” Nayru replied.
“Have you considered a penguin?”
“A penguin,” Nayru echoed, severely doubtful.
“I think he’d fit the aesthetic.”
“Dn’t weepig hmf rakat?” Farore said to the floor.
“What?”
Farore raised her head and repeated, “Didn’t we peg him for a cat?”
“...Oh yeah,” Din remembered awkwardly. “What sort of cat was that, again?”
“I don’t think we made it that far,” Farore muttered, and proceeded to drop her head back down to resume her mumble.
“For the love of Me, please do not make the New Hero a penguin,” Nayru put in. “Please do not make any of them a penguin.”
“Fine, I was having issues accounting for maneuverability anyways,” Din agreed. “Oh, idea - I’m thinking platypuses for the Heroes of Light quartet?”
Nayru blanched, and Farore removed her head from the floor to make exhausted eye contact with her blue sister. ‘This is why I’m the one in charge of the lifeforms,’ her blank-eyed stare said.
“Let’s… write that down with the other ideas and we’ll evaluate it once it’s their turn,” Nayru suggested diplomatically, because Farore was clearly about to have a conniption at the very concept. “But, ah, perhaps explain your thought process behind that? Please?”
Din shrugged. “Dunno, it just seems like it makes sense.”
“No,” Farore interrupted. “Vetoed, rejected, overruled, quashed, banned, put the kibosh on it. Absolutely not.”
Din squinted. “Well then what would your choice be?”
Farore inhaled deeply through her nose, then tossed out, “Foxes,” without a slightest bit of hesitation. Her piece said, she planted her face back against the floor and continued her interrupted mumbling.
“...Yeah okay, that’s better,” Din grumbled. “It’s really unfair how good you are at this.”
“Smijawb,” Farore replied to the floor.
“...What?”
“It’s my job,” the green goddess repeated, to Din instead of the floor. “Don’t worry about it, you know I’d be rubbish at landmasses if we were doing this within your Sphere of Influence.”
“True,” Din agreed, looking much happier now that she’d been reassured of her relative area of expertise.
There was a rustle of papers as Nayru evidently came to a decision about the candidates she’d been considering, and she rolled herself up to a sitting position in order to reach the communal List. She quickly scribbled Falcon down next to the Hero of Sky’s name, small and neat and somewhat squished for room atop the much blockier handwriting of Farore’s Mouse next to the Hero of the Minish’s entry.
“Nice,” Farore approved, before reuniting once again with the floor.
The rest of the List was a haphazard patchwork of Farore’s thought process before Din and Nayru had joined the brainstorming. The Hero of Twilight had Wolf scrawled next to his name, as it was already predetermined. The Hero of Wind had Gull and a scribbled-out Fish written next to his. The Hero of Legend had been labeled with Rabbit , as this was also a predetermined result, with a little note of Fix that coloring issue, rabbits are not pink! in the margins. It was not a very official-looking List, but then again it was not a very official brainstorming session either.
After a moment of thought, Nayru wrote down Fox next to the Heroes of Light’s names too.
“Nine down, nine to go,” she announced. Farore groaned something that sounded like distress - or possibly motivation, it was hard to tell. Regardless it was a very relatable sound, so Din nodded and said, “Same,” in a commiserating tone of voice as though agreeing with an unintelligible noise was a perfectly normal thing to do.
“Next up is…” Nayru ran her finger down the List. “Hmm. Do you want the Hero of Time or are you still working on the New Hero?”
“Oh right, I forgot about him,” Din muttered. “Uh, New Hero, sorry.”
“Keep your brainstorming to felines,” Farore reminded tiredly.
“I will , okay? Stop worrying, the platypuses were a one-time mistake.”
Farore mumbled something unintelligible, yet vaguely doubtful all the same. Then she said, “Nayru, write down jackal next to the Hero of Time’s names for me.”
Nayru made a face. “Are you sure? Technically the Hero of Time is also a wolf, what with that third echo version floating around and giving the Hero of Twilight swordplay lessons.”
Farore paused. For a solid thirty seconds, she laid motionless on the floor.
Then she groaned and muttered, “I knew I was forgetting something about his lifespan,” before heaving herself into a sitting position. “Write down jackal anyways, we need a stopgap measure for the current emergency and I do not have the time to examine whatever mess the Hero of Time got himself into. It’s all canid anyways, species swaps are not that difficult to do if it turns out to really need fixing.”
“Whatever you say,” Nayru agreed, because Farore was clearly stressed and a stressed Farore was a Farore who did not appreciate her decisions being questioned. Undoubtedly the green Goddess would later remember that she hated dealing with species swaps because of all the tiny fiddly details that it involved, but right now Nayru supposed there were bigger headaches to deal with. She dutifully wrote down Jackal - then paused, considered the List, and jotted Deer next to the Heroes of the Four Sword too.
“Herd animals,” she explained when she met Farore’s questioning glance, and the green Goddess nodded tiredly and made no real attempt to voice displeasure with Nayru’s choice - which was basically the same thing as explicit permission, with Farore’s current mindset. “Three Heroes left, you can do this Farore.”
Farore made a sound not unlike a deflating Octorok. “Trains,” she bemoaned. “What was I thinking when I allowed Trains? What sort of animal even associates with Trains?”
“Trains might not be the best factor to choose a form from,” Nayru suggested delicately.
“You could always make the Hero of Trains into a rat, those get onto the railcars all the time,” Din said. This idea was greeted with the level of scorn that it deserved - which was to say, quite a bit.
“How about no,” Farore replied. “My Heroes are not on the same level as pest animals.”
“Well you made the Hero of the Minish into a mouse, so I thought-”
“The Hero of the Minish is a mouse because it fits him. Because they are small and clever and get into places that nobody thinks they can and are also absolutely adorable. The Hero of Trains is not a rat, because rats are sly and sneaky and will actively alter their environment for their needs. The Hero of Trains is stubborn and faces his problems head-on rather than twisting circumstances to his benefit and loyal in a way that rats are usually not and it is not a good match.”
Din blinked. “So then give him a stubborn animal? I’m not sure I see the bit you’re having trouble with.”
Farore stared at her. “...You give me headaches sometimes,” she said, but then made the complaint completely moot by snatching the pen from Nayru’s hand and putting Badger next to the Hero of Trains.
“Yeah, like that,” Din said, in what she probably thought was an encouraging tone of voice. “Not so hard once you think about it!”
“Platypuses,” Farore said flatly.
“Oh my Me , I admit the platypuses weren’t a good idea, let it go.”
“Sixteen down!” Nayru interrupted pointedly. “Two left. Din, if you’ve come up with anything for the New Hero then we can knock it down to one?”
Din made a face, which clearly stated that she still hadn’t come up with anything. Farore made a different face, which clearly stated her extreme regret at letting Din handle anything involving lifeforms.
“Just, think about art,” she instructed tiredly. “Bright colors, flashy displays, ornate patterns, anything.”
“I got it, I got it,” Din said, waving her sister off and sinking into a heavy thought process.
“Who’s left?” Farore asked Nayru.
“The Hero of Hyrule.”
“Ah. Cat.”
“That was fast,” Nayru said carefully. “You’re normally not so… immediately certain?”
Farore gave Nayru a dead stare. “Name me one creature that gets itself into as much trouble as cats do.”
Nayru had to concede that point. “True enough. Any specific cat? Otherwise I’m just going to put him down for house cat and call it a session-”
“Absolutely not.” Farore seized the pen before Nayru could even think about lowering it to the List. “Heroes. Are. Not. Domestic.”
Nayru nodded quickly. Farore set the pen down away from her sister, just to be safe about it.
“Wildcat, then?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, wildcats don’t actually exist.”
“...Ah,” said Nayru, who up until that exact moment had genuinely believed wildcats were a real animal. Farore would normally lecture her about how wildcats are a generic grouping of various felines living in the wild and not an actual species, but that wasn’t the important bit right now.
“But that’s a good body type for this Hero, I’ll keep going with it.” Farore began spinning off a list of cats to herself in a low mutter, and Nayru decided to leave her to it. Now where was that pen? Farore had put it - ah, Din had it.
...Din had it.
“You made a decision?” Nayru hedged, as Din scribbled something down with a triumphant flourish. The angle of Din’s hand and the way Nayru was sitting meant that her view of the List was completely blocked, and Nayru did not find herself reassured by the look on Din’s face.
“I made the best decision,” Din replied. “Arguably the best Cursed Form on this whole List, if I do say so myself.”
And now Nayru was a tiny bit concerned. “That’s what you said about the platypuses.”
“This is better than the platypuses! Why won’t you two let that go!?”
“Because it was platypuses.”
Din huffed. “Well if that’s how you feel, then I just won’t share my genius with you.”
And now Nayru was very concerned. “I’m sure that’s not necessary, you can tell me,” she said, and tried valiantly to crane around her sister to read the List. Din moved to block her.
“Nope! You were rude, and now you have to reap the consequences.”
“Din, we are literally playing with the physical form of lesser beings, I really don’t think this is the time to indulge in a petty squabble.”
Din was unmoved. “It’s not petty if I’m right,” she declared, and slammed the pen down with a sharp RAP . “Farore, I’m done!”
Farore blinked several times, her thought process visibly derailed by Din’s interjection. “...Is it artistic?” she managed.
“Very,” Din replied.
“Great,” Farore said absently. It was fairly obvious that she was only paying attention with half an ear, and more than likely she’d only just barely registered that she was talking to Din instead of Nayru. Otherwise she probably would have done something like damage control, instead of doing what she actually did.
“Let it be," Farore intoned, and there was a bright flash of green on the other side of the Reality Window. Din grinned triumphantly, Nayru came to the conclusion that both her sisters were idiots sometimes, and Farore…
Farore chose that moment to pass out cold.
“...She’s very stressed right now, isn’t she,” Din observed.
Nayru rather thought that she’d be even more stressed once she woke up and saw what animal Din had ended up choosing for the New Hero. She herself was stressed about it, and she hadn’t even seen it, and it wasn’t even her Domain.
...Speaking of her Domain though, the Time Break was getting a little brittle. Nayru eyeballed the sleeping form of her green sister; what were the odds of Farore waking up before Nayru had to let go in urgency?
Farore let out a soft snore.
Nayru quietly resolved to just take some notes.
If any Link had possessed the ability to see outside of Time, or to notice when the fabric of reality slowed down around them, or even just to notice when things moved faster than the speed of being perceivable, they would have seen the bright green flash that briefly overwrote the whole of existence.
But because they didn’t, the observable shift from Hylian to Cursed Form happened with no glitches beyond a single momentary pause, and nobody was the wiser to the multiple hours their patron goddess had just spent making sure they would all be safe.
Such was the life of under-appreciated deities.
It had been a while since Dusk had done his transformation the Cursed way.
Not that the Curse Stone wasn’t also a Curse, because it was, but - well, the intent was just different. The Curse Stone came hand in hand with the knowledge that it was his choice to change - or assuming Midna was doing the changing, that it was with his permission. For all that Midna did like to tease him with his wolf form, she always made sure that he could see it coming, and had on at least one occasion backed off upon realizing that Dusk hadn’t been in the mood.
This sort of transformation, on the other hand, was never his decision, and Dusk had always, always hated having his body ripped away from him like that.
Don’t panic, don’t fight it, he reminded himself as the Twilight cloud lunged for him. It seemed like it was happening in slow motion. If you panic, so will they. Do. Not. Panic.
Because it wasn’t just him in the mess, this time, and for some Din-forsaken reason he seemed to be one of the Links that the other Links looked to for guidance, despite the many times he’d protested against it. Also, he was technically the professional part-time Cursed Animal of the group, so really, he had no choice but to set a good example.
Don’t fight it, he repeated to himself, and then the Twilight was greedily clutching at his skin and he didn’t really have the luxury for any more mental self-encouragement because wow he’d forgotten how much this hurt when it wasn’t his decision. Dusk inhaled sharply through his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as the Curse started to work its way into his body, as his knees began buckling, as he caught himself on his hands and snarled at the invading magic.
Oh wait, crap, he wasn’t supposed to be fighting it. Right, no wonder it hurt, old habits died hard. With another hissed breath, Dusk deliberately relaxed himself and held as still as possible while his joints rearranged themselves and his hair turned into fur.
Thankfully, not fighting it meant that the whole ordeal was over quickly, and Dusk shook himself out to unlock his muscles from the position he’d frozen in. Midna flopped onto his back in her usual tactless manner - which was to say, an actually cleverly disguised jolt of physical input to help him connect his brain to his body again, which Dusk had not actually realized she was doing intentionally until well over two months into their partnership and he should really thank her for that at some point - and Shadow assumed a disgruntled position by Dusk’s left shoulder, as Midna still had a deathgrip on his torso with her hair and presumably he was trying to avoid being discorporated.
“Having fun?” Shadow needled.
“Not really,” Dusk panted. He really did hate having his transformation forced on him.
“Yeah, I don’t actually care, I was just hoping to get a rise out of you,” Shadow said nonchalantly.
Dusk emitted a noncommittal rumble, then froze as his brain caught up with what had just happened. “You can understand me?”
“Duh?” Shadow replied, in a tone which very clearly questioned Dusk’s intelligence. “I’m you, you’re me, we’ve been over this. It’s gonna take more than some dark magic - which I’m made of, in case you forgot - to get in the way of that.”
“...Huh,” Dusk said, grappling with this revelation.
“You can understand him?” Midna asked, unknowingly repeating her partner’s words. She leaned forwards and braced her arms on Dusk’s shoulders interestedly. “How convenient.”
Shadow abruptly looked much more uncomfortable. In a bid to redirect Midna’s attention, he scoffed through his nose and pointedly moved his eyes to the rest of the group. Then he blinked, and actually looked at the rest of the group, and said, “Should you be helping with that?”
He then immediately made to look bored, in an attempt to disguise the fact that he’d just done something that involved having empathy of all things, but luckily for him Dusk had fallen for the bait and was already rushing away to help his fellow Links.
Unluckily, Midna had not fallen for the bait and was grinning at him with a level of glee that made Shadow fear for his future sanity.
He needed to get away from this woman.
Meanwhile, Dusk was attempting to do damage control. Some of the other Links had a bit of experience with being forced into a body that wasn’t theirs, these being Mask, Ocarina (honorarily, because even if it was still his body the difference between child and adult was jarring when unprepared for it), Sketch, Lore, and the Four and the RGBV quartet to an extent. These Links took the sudden transformation with varying degrees of nonchalance, ranging from completely calm (Lore) to unsettled, but holding it together (the Four). The rest of the Links, these being Gen, Speck, Realm, Wind, and Steam, took the sudden transformation with varying degrees of freaking out, ranging from wide-eyed but dealing with it (Wind) to quite possibly on the verge of panicking (Steam).
In other words, complete and entirely unexpected animalian chaos.
Dusk did not at all feel prepared to deal with this, but since it was his Hyrule and therefore most closely his fault that this had happened, he supposed he needed to take responsibility.
“EVERYBODY CALM DOWN!”
The chaos froze. Dusk finally got a good look at the results of the Curse on his fellow Links and promptly felt a headache coming on.
That was… more body types than he had experience in dealing with.
Gen and Wind were both birds, were both having immense difficulty with their wings, and Dusk already knew that he was going to be of approximately no help in that matter. Speck was a mouse, so at least he was probably used to the view? Mask, Ocarina, the RGBV quartet, and Realm were all quadrupedal carnivores - some sort of canine, foxes, and what looked like a lynx, respectively - which Dusk thankfully knew a thing or two about. He mentally assigned their grouping with a marker of ‘easier to give advice for’. The Four seemed to be a type of deer, and they’d already gotten their antlers interlocked with each other. Dusk had no idea how he was going to fix that without opposable thumbs.
Lore was a familiar-looking rabbit, but for some reason he was no longer pink. He was also ecstatic about no longer being pink. But Dusk also wasn’t sure that rabbits commonly came in that specific shade of dark ginger red, so who knew if that problem had actually been fixed or if this was just some temporary side-effect. Sketch appeared to be some sort of lizard? An incredibly colorful lizard, who stood out in the dark Twilight like a black wolfos on Snowpeak, but Dusk at least thought it fit his personality better than his own self-suggested beetle.
Somewhere outside of reality, Nayru gave Din a Stare.
“What happened to ‘stick to felines’?” she asked flatly.
“I decided this was better,” Din said confidently. “Farore told me to be colorful, remember? This lizard changes colors, you can’t get any better than that.”
“She’s going to strangle you,” Nayru sighed. “And I might actually help her.”
For the first time in the conversation, Din looked appropriately concerned.
Steam looked to be a badger. He also looked to be the worst off, mentally speaking. Dusk promptly put him at the top of the List.
Slightly less important but notable nonetheless was the fact that absolutely nobody but Dusk and Lore seemed to know how to stand on their new legs, hence the chaos. After all it wasn’t everyday that a small herd of deer went tumbling head over heels after tripping on their own fetlocks.
“Okay,” Dusk said, slightly more calmly. “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your panic?”
There was a series of mumbled numbers.
“Anyone who’s at five or lower, hobble over to Lore for walking lessons,” Dusk instructed, promptly throwing Lore under the figurative Spirit Train and feeling entirely unapologetic about it. Lore thrived on that sort of thing anyway. “Everyone else is with me for mandatory body dysphoria therapy. And I do mean mandatory.”
Faced with Dusk actually pulling out his usually-unused leadership skills - a rare and intimidating event - the Links obediently shuffled into the instructed groupings. Dusk soon found himself surrounded by two birds, a badger, a lynx, a mouse, and four very entangled deer. They all seemed to be a bit stressed. Dusk surveyed his new responsibilities and pegged the most urgent ones with the skill of an experienced elder sibling (because he’d been the oldest of the kids back in Ordon and if he didn’t keep an eye on Talo and Malo then oh Farore what sort of nonsense would they get into-) and stepped forwards to herd Steam the badger and Gen the falcon off for a healthy coping session.
“Could everyone else please help the Four untangle themselves while these two and I talk?” Dusk requested. “And then I’ll get to everyone else one at a time, okay?”
“Yes please,” the Four said plaintively, which really settled that decision nicely.
Dusk carefully helped Steam and Gen walk enough distance away for privacy, with the sounds of, “No, you need to tilt your heads that way - actually no, you in the back left, tilt the other way - no, just you-” following them away. Synchronization was a hard influence to break, Dusk supposed, but since it was also conveniently doubling as a sneaky way to take the other Links’ minds off their new bodies while they waited for Dusk to parent them he didn’t feel too worried about it.
“Alright,” he said, once he deemed their trio to be an acceptable distance away for privacy. “Go ahead and let it out.”
Steam promptly collapsed onto his stomach and wheezed in barely-controlled panic. Gen, on the other hand, was still doing an excellent impression of catatonia. Mildly concerned, Dusk leaned down to peer at his face (More difficult than it sounded, how did one read emotions in birds? The beak didn’t move at all.) but then realized that Gen was actually muttering a low level stream of disbelief under his breath. Well, better than not reacting at all.
Seemingly realizing this himself, Gen broke off his muttering and said, “Yeah so regardless of how I’m taking this I think Steam is worse than me. I’ll just cope over here, you can catch up with me once you’re done.”
“Thank you,” Dusk said, who had actually just been wondering who to parent first and was now thoroughly relieved to have had the decision made for him.
He turned back to Steam, who had now graduated to mild hyperventilation, and said, “Er... do you want to talk about it now, or is it a better idea to calm you down first?”
Steam's only answer was to inhale faster, which Dusk probably should have expected. Okay then. He stepped forwards and, taking a page out of Midna's book, draped himself over Steam's torso like a living weighted fuzzy blanket.
“Match me,” he instructed, and then began to exaggeratedly breathe in a slow and steady rhythm until Steam's own frantic pace fizzled out. Understandably this took a good few minutes.
“...Sorry,” Steam managed eventually.
“Don't be ridiculous, you had a perfectly normal response,” Dusk told him. “I think the others just have an unhealthily high suspension of disbelief.”
“ You are not the right person to talk about that,” Steam said wryly, referring in no uncertain terms to the many, many times Dusk hadn't realized that something he'd done during his adventure might not be considered normal by other people. Dusk huffed at him.
“In my defense, Midna.”
“...Yeah, that's fair.”
“And don't distract me, we're talking about you and your problems right now,” Dusk continued, scoldingly. “More specifically, is this just related to losing your body or is this a deeper kind of issue?”
Steam was quiet for a minute.
“...I don't think I understand how my Zelda was so strong,” he admitted in a whisper. “It's so – I mean, this is so – I've never been anything other than me before.”
“It's very jarring the first time it happens,” Dusk agreed.
“It felt so invasive .”
“That tends to happen with the Twilight, sorry. Did the warning at least help?”
“I mean, yeah, a little. I just... I have no experience with this, at all, and I didn't realize it was gonna be so...” he trailed off and made a full-body shiver in lieu of words, which since Dusk was still blanketing him felt very odd to be pressed up against. “If I didn't have respect for everyone dealing with a transformation Curse before, then I really do now. And, geez, this is technically still my body, isn’t it?”
“Just shaped very, very differently,” Dusk agreed with a sigh.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need to give my Zelda a hug the next time I see her,” Steam decided. “She took losing her body so much better than I am right now.”
“Important,” Dusk acknowledged, “ but now you’re just avoiding the issue.”
Steam muttered something which sounded vaguely like not a leader don’t make me laugh, which Dusk ignored because he wasn’t . Then Steam said, “Confronting the issue makes me feel like I can’t breathe.”
So Dusk replied, “ Okay then,” and just stopped pushing, opting instead to let Steam confront reality at his own pace.
Steam’s own pace turned out to be about twenty minutes, more or less. He was a Hero, after all, and Heroes specialized in adaptation and compartmentalization. Also the fact that he had a remedial system in the form of an Emotional Support Wolf and about sixteen other siblings helped tremendously. He took a deep breath, or as deep a breath as he could get given that Dusk was still on top of him, and then finally took stock of himself.
He was a stout little creature, apparently. Why were his legs so short? Where had all of this muscle come from? Steam wasn’t out of shape, especially not compared with ordinary civilians, but he most certainly hadn’t had this much body mass as a Hylian. This body felt like it could hunker down to the ground and refuse to be moved on sheer willpower alone.
“...Huh,” Steam said.
“Hmm?” Dusk said.
“What am I?”
Dusk took a long inhale through his nose, just to make sure of his earlier assessment. “Badger,” he reported with that confirmation.
Steam had no real idea what that was. “Is that… good?”
“Well of course it is, it’s you,” Dusk told him. “Feel up to learning how to walk yet?”
“I think so.”
Dusk lifted himself off of Steam and back onto his own feet, then surveyed the badger appraisingly. The odds of Steam managing to get himself over to the Learning-To-Walk group were… rather small.
“...Would you mind if I carried you?”
“Please,” Steam said gratefully.
The actual carrying was a process, because Dusk had no hands and the surrounding Twilight meant that he couldn’t transform to have hands. What ended up happening was Dusk, carrying Steam very very carefully with his teeth by the substantial scruff of the badger’s neck. It was hilarious to anyone watching and unendingly awkward to the two Links who were actually involved in it. There was an unspoken yet universally understood agreement that they would never speak of this moment ever again. There was also an unspoken yet universally understood agreement that Lore would absolutely ignore the first agreement, and it was really only a matter of time until he brought it up.
But that wasn’t the main issue at the moment.
Gen turned out to be relatively self-sufficient with his own panic, after Dusk came back from carrying Steam. Or, rather, he turned out to be highly distractible and had completely forgotten about his own panic in light of the much more important problem of ‘how did he fold his wings’.
“No, I’m pretty good with walking,” Gen said upon being asked. “Still two feet, the joints are just kinda weird and I need to remember to balance differently, but other than that it’s not bad. I just can’t - figure out-” He flapped his wings clumsily and somehow whacked both himself and Dusk in the head. “How do I close these?”
Dusk had absolutely no idea, and neither did anyone else, but Wind seemed to have a bit more of a level head and since he had wings too, Dusk paired the two of them together to sort out their own avian-related problems. Apparently, between Gen’s experience with his Loftwing and Wind’s experience of somehow controlling seagulls through pear-triggered telepathy, they were working something out.
For all the other, non-avian Links, there was the almost universal experience of getting used to having a tail, which was usually coupled with the realization that they had to balance with the tail in order to walk right. This understandably took an hour or two to sort out.
The Four were just having a bad day. Their antlers weren’t very big at all, but they naturally stood close enough to each other on automatic instinct that they kept getting stuck on one another. Within the past hour they’d had to be untangled no less than three times, and since nobody had any hands to help it was a bit of a time-consuming task. Eventually Dusk got just a little fed-up with the whole thing and stuck Realm in the middle of the Four’s formation, which conveniently doubled as anti-Wandering for Realm (because he still got lost, just not with teleportation) and automatic spacing for the Four. They couldn’t get close enough to tangle if there was a lynx in the way, after all. Dusk felt rather proud of himself for that one.
In the midst of it all was Shadow, still held very firmly captive by Midna and trying not to look like he wanted to flee the scene as fast as physically possible (Because he was still very, very bad at social interaction and this was more social interaction than he’d ever wanted); Midna, who was quite frankly having the time of her life (So much chaos! So much more potential chaos! Today was a good day, Zant’s reappearance and her partner’s reapplied Curse notwithstanding); and Princess Zelda, lending her expertise to the situation with all the grace of the Queen she was (Because the Twilight was also a slow creeping eternal-half-life-torment curse, and sometimes people forgot about that bit in favor of the change-of-shape subset alternative and really, what did people think Zelda had been doing this whole time if not figuring out how to counteract it?)
Apparently, getting rid of the looming sense of we’re-all-going-to-die did wonders for any remaining feelings of panic. Who knew?
Under normal circumstances, Farore wouldn’t have woken up for at least a few reality-days. She’d all but burnt herself out with the latest emergency and really, under those previously mentioned normal circumstances, she wouldn’t be allowed back to her post for at least a reality-week.
These were not normal circumstances.
Farore woke up a grand total of three reality-hours after passing out, with the distinct and unrelenting feeling that something had gone just a little bit sideways. Specifically, with the New Hero of Hyrule. More specifically, with the New Hero of Hyrule’s Cursed Form.
She opened up a Reality Window to investigate this feeling.
“WHO MADE THE NEW HERO OF HYRULE INTO A COLLARED LIZARD!?”
Elsewhere outside of Reality, Din was hit with the intense feeling of a target being painted on her back.
“...Why do I suddenly feel like I should run for my life?”
Nayru gave her a flat look. “Maybe because Farore just woke up and saw what you did to her Aspect?”
“No, that was a genius idea. That can’t be it.”
It should be noted that Din sometimes, occasionally, possibly, did not always have the most accurate grasp of the consequences of her actions.
Nayru threw up her hands in defeated exasperation, and then promptly made a strategic retreat outside of the projected blast zone.
OMAKE
For the interested, the other half of Dusk’s mental conversation with Midna went like this:
“Hey, Midna?”
I hope this is important, little wolf. I’m in the middle of putting the fear of me into this wannabe.
“No, take your time. But when you’re done we were hoping to get filled in on recent events?”
Oh? Worried about your Princess, are you? You’re adorable when you let your crush on her influence your actions.
“I am not.”
Yes you are, and the Princess will agree with me-
“No-”
-because I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you are not subtle-
“-Midna-”
-but lucky for you, she thinks it’s endearing, why are you protesting so much?
“Because we’re looking for Zant or Ganondorf or possibly both, that’s why.”
...And you want to know the recent events because of them?
“ That’s the plan.”
The full conversation just didn’t work very well in the flow of the chapter, so it’s at the end in a bonus!
Notes:
Please do go and look up collared lizards, they are cool-looking dudes. And yes, they can blend into their environment, I know what I’m doing with my lizards thank you very much.
I would apologize for the wait on this one, but I did warn you all it was gonna be a doozy. At some points it was worse than me trying to write Trains, and we all know how much I enjoy writing Trains. Oof.
Additionally, there’s been some edits to the Labrynnian language. Previously, there was no cipher or even a set pattern to how the words went, and I kinda just made stuff up based on how I felt about it. There is now an official cipher, and all Labrynnian has been updated accordingly! If you notice any strange letters in the future, that’s why.
And lastly, thank you all for 500 Kudos and counting!
Changeling
Linguistic Translations
Darkling
Dõo oyu aekõps Raidgõlnõk? (Do you speak Darkling?)
Esy Ay dõo. How dõo oyu? (Yes I do. How do you?)
Ho, Ay radeelõn iõt hielõw Ay asõw aignsõv het Radõk Rõdlow aõ efõw raesy abkõc. Hatt reet idõd not antõw ot haecõt em bõtu Ay reow him dõnow in het den! (Oh, I learned it while I was saving the Dark World a few years back. That tree did not want to teach me but I wore him down in the end!)
Ellõw henõt, Ay hinkõt oyu adõn Ay rae iggon ot egõt agõlno jõstu iefõn. Antõw ot alnõp ranskõp hrigõt in rõfnot fo reeñensov’y aefsõc adõn halgu abeescu hety annocõt raddesõnntu su? (Well then, I think you and I are going to get along just fine. Wanna plan pranks right in front of everyone’s faces and laugh because they can’t understand us?)
Ay hinkõt Ay elov oyu. (I think I love you.)
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Chapter 29: Tag Yourself, Everyone's It
Summary:
Ganondorf attempts to plan for Zant. This goes exactly as expected.
Notes:
(Good news, my hair is now blue!)
What? No, that can’t be right.
(Yes it is, I think I know what color I turned my own hair.)
Your favorite color isn’t blue. It’s green. You would have turned your hair green.
(...Shut up, the green was sold out.)
Ahh, all is right with me again. For a moment I was worried I’d miscalculated. I almost went and double-checked to make sure you still didn’t own The Legend of Zelda.
(...Did you just make an ‘All is right with the Universe again’ pun?)
Maybe.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
One of the benefits that came with having a Twili as a traveling partner, was that Midna took care of all of Dusk’s things when he transformed. Wolves didn’t really do things like wield swords or wear green floppy hats, and so the two of them had a longstanding agreement where those sorts of things would automatically be transported into Dusk’s shadow when he wasn’t actively using them. Midna, being Midna, had also managed to configure the whole setup so that equipping and de-quipping all these things happened automatically, which was convenient when Dusk used the Curse Stone without Midna in the vicinity.
But since Midna currently was in the vicinity, this meant that she could reach into the storage space and pull out Dusk’s copy of the Master Sword without having to go through the entire song and dance. Which was nice.
“You wanted this, why?” Midna asked archly, dropping the weapon on the ground unceremoniously.
“I just need to check this, real quick, ” Dusk replied absently, which Shadow then translated. Not that he was doing the translating of his own free will, but because Midna still had yet to let go of him and he wanted to keep his current physical body, thanks.
Gingerly avoiding the sharp bit, Dusk placed his paw on the blade and then braced himself as the always-uncomfortable sensation of a Blessing battling it out with a Curse exploded under his skin. Although, to be fair, Dusk had never had a truly comfortable transformation in his life, so maybe he was being a bit too critical.
His paw morphed into his hand, and the rest of his body followed suit. Dusk shifted his grip on his weapon and carefully sat down, taking care not to break contact.
“Little wolf, what are you doing?”
“Testing a hypothesis,” Dusk answered. He frowned heavily at the point where his hand lay on the metal, then lifted his head and frowned even more heavily at the Twilight looming around him.
He could still feel the Blessing circulating under his skin. That wasn’t what usually happened.
Which implied that there was still an active Curse to counteract, which in turn implied that Dusk couldn’t stop touching the Master Sword without transforming back into a wolf.
In other words, a problem.
“We might have a problem,” he announced.
The lizard that was Sketch made a chitter-hiss noise, which somehow managed to sound sarcastic.
“Yeah, we’re all animals. Kinda thought you noticed,” Shadow interpreted.
“A different problem,” Dusk clarified. “Watch.”
He took his hand off his sword, and the Twilight immediately wrapped around his body. He was a wolf again within seconds.
“...I’m gonna be honest, that still looks like the same problem to me,” Sketch said.
“It’s an… extension of the problem, I suppose?” Dusk agreed. “Normally the Blessing on the Master Sword is enough to counteract the Curse.”
Sketch tilted his head. “Is that not what just happened?”
“It is, but only as long as I’m directly touching it,” Dusk clarified. “The minute I let go, or say, sheath it, I revert.”
“Well that just seems impractical.”
“Which is why it’s a slightly different problem,” Dusk finished with a sigh. “New objective. We need to disperse the Twilight before we do anything else, because until then we won’t be able to do anything else.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Zelda said, upon hearing the Shadow-provided translation. “We’ll need to visit the local Light Spirit to be sure, but what I have in mind should be able to clear the Twilight away since Zant seems to have taken his leave.”
Everyone spared a moment to wonder in baffled unison why Zant had decided to wander off right when he had his victims at his mercy. Not that they were complaining about it.
“Does this mean we have to waste time chasing bugs again?” Midna grumbled, breaking the moment.
“Not at all,” Zelda replied, with a smile that could almost be called a smirk from the right angle, which was attractively un-Princess-like of her much to the dismay of Dusk’s poor heart. It was a good thing his face was currently covered in fur. “In fact, I believe that all we’ll need is a bit of a boost.”
The local Light Spirit was a… snake? Baboon? Scorpion?
...Was a thing living in an out-of-the-way cave at the far edge of Lake Hylia. Dusk was familiar with… him? Her? Them?
...Dusk was familiar with it, and ignored the indeterminable pronoun problems with the ease of someone who was currently a wolf and thus didn’t have a human mouth to stumble over indeterminable pronoun problems with. The rest of the group took a cue from him.
Zelda, on the other hand, opted for addressing Lanayru only by its name, and never structuring her sentences in a way that meant she needed a pronoun. She was clever like that.
Of course, getting to the Light Spring in Lake Hylia meant swimming, which understandably took a good few hours. Only Dusk and Lore really actually knew how to swim in their new bodies, which automatically meant they were on Lesson Duty. The Four and Realm had to figure out how to do it while maintaining their accident-preventive formation, which was a whole other problem in and of itself. Wind was apparently completely waterproof and floating along on the surface like a bobber while everyone else struggled; Gen, on the other hand, was probably the farthest thing from waterproof possible, and he ended up so waterlogged that Dusk had to carry him.
And of course, Sketch spent the entire experience in a state of near-panic and ended up clinging to one of the Four’s antlers as though his life depended on it. His phobia really wasn’t doing him any favors.
They probably made quite a picture when they finally met with Lanayru: sopping wet, thoroughly disheveled, and about fifteen different kinds of distressed.
(Midna, being in possession of the ability to go incorporeal, was entirely immune to the whole mess. Shadow was equally so. Zelda did not possess such an ability, but was somehow managing to make being soaked look graceful anyways. It was entirely unfair.)
“Great Spirit,” Zelda began, inclining her head in a slight bow. A few water-soaked tendrils of her hair fell down around her face and somehow dripped gracefully. Dusk stifled the faint whine his throat wanted to make at the sight, and then pinned Mask with a glare when the smaller canine gave him a pointedly teasing nudge. Yes, he knew he was head-over-heels, he did not need to get teased about it.
“We’ve come with a mutual problem,” Zelda continued, thankfully not having noticed her Hero’s predicament, “and would like to offer our assistance in once more ridding our land of this Twilight Curse. Can we count on your assistance?”
“Yes… of course… Princess,” Lanayru whispered. It took a good thirty seconds for the Light Spirit to get those four words out. “What… would you… have me do…?”
“If you could simply mark the locations of the stolen light on the map I’ve brought for the occasion, that would be greatly appreciated,” Zelda said promptly. She presented the map with a casual motion, which should not have been attractive but somehow was. Why was the Princess doing common human things so appealing. Why was this Dusk’s life.
“I can… provide this for you,” Lanayru agreed, and leaned down to brush the map in Zelda’s hands. Corresponding points of light lit up on the paper. “My siblings and I… are becoming… greatly vexed… by this continued theft,” Lanayru continued. “It would be… equally appreciated… if you and your Hero… would make this… most recent… incident… the last of its kind.”
Translation: this is the fifth time we’ve had to deal with this nonsense, please for the love of the Goddesses make sure it sticks this time around. Dusk had never thought he’d hear a Light Spirit being passive-aggressively sarcastic, but he supposed there was a first time for everything.
“I will do my utmost,” Zelda said, in classic Princess fashion. Rule One, make no promises until absolutely sure of the desired outcome, and possibly not even then either - and maintain control of the conversation until the very last word. Which, again, should not have been attractive but for some reason, watching his Princess engage in verbal sparring with a minor deity and win was probably the best thing he’d seen all day.
Dusk was so screwed.
“Spirit Lanayru,” Zelda said, some minutes of map scrutiny later, “are you quite sure this is correct?”
“Of course… I am,” Lanayru said, somewhat tartly. “It is… my light… that we are… speaking of.”
“You misunderstand,” Zelda reassured efficiently. “I am not doubting you nor your abilities. I am merely concerned that this map may be inaccurate, because it seems to be indicating that all your stolen light is being held in one place.”
Lanayru paused, which was presumably a result of thinking the problem over as opposed to the habitual pauses that the spirit already indulged in. “No… that is… correct,” it reported.
“Hmm,” Zelda said, and then she frowned and didn’t say anything else for a solid thirty seconds. Then, eventually: “Thank you, Spirit Lanayru. You have been most helpful.”
Lanayru took the dismissal for what it was and faded back into the spring waters. Zelda clasped her hands together and smiled cheerfully.
“Two possibilities,” she said brightly. “Zant seems to be holding all of Lanayru’s light in one place. Either he has truly lost his grasp on sanity and has forgotten that we can easily steal back the light in one move, or he has set a rather clever trap.” She smiled wider, at which point Dusk recognized it as the sort of smile that was actually a disguise for internal frustration. He knew this because it was a close precursor to the smile that hid internal screaming, which he himself used to wear very frequently back in the early days of his partnership with Midna. “Given Zant’s history of unpredictability, I am going to plan for the latter, and we shall just have to be pleasantly surprised if it turns out to be the former.”
She turned to Midna and held out the map, using a finger to tap at the leftmost edge. “I understand you use the remnant portals as traveling gateways. Are there any close enough to this point here to use?”
Midna perched her chin in her palm absently. “Don’t worry about me, Princess. You worry about our next move.”
Zelda evidently took that response as the ‘Yes’ she’d hoped to hear, because all she said in reply was, “At your discretion, then.”
Midna grinned. Dusk eyed her grin, then glanced at his fellow Links and said, “So, hypothetically speaking, how do you all feel about mild and temporary travel disintegration?”
“...Is this the sort of question where our answer actually counts for something, or is this literally a hypothetical question?” Steam asked.
“The second one.” Dusk sighed. “Because regardless of your answer, Midna won’t care.”
“...She concerns me.”
“She takes pride in it,” Dusk agreed.
Ganondorf always went into negotiations with Zant with at least three backup ideas and an emergency exit scenario, because apparently, Zant took great joy in dancing on the remains of all his best-laid plans. Case in point, Ganondorf’s previous plan had been to Curse the Heroes, then use the advantage of the resulting disorientation and dysphoria to take them out once and for all. Zant had admittedly followed the plan beautifully, until he got to the ‘taking advantage of the dysphoria’ part.
Which was why Ganondorf was now putting the first of his three backup plans into action and also discreetly downing a Red Potion for the headache that these sorts of situations always gave him. He saw the flaw in his first draft of the plan now, which unfortunately always happened in hindsight and not while he was outlining the plan to Zant, which of course would have been the stage where he could have done something about it.
Note to future Ganondorf: don’t use Tag as a motivator to get Zant to cooperate with the plan. Because now Zant was under the impression that, since he’d ‘tagged’ the Heroes with his Curse, they were now ‘It’, and it was now Zant’s turn to hide and be chased. And Ganondorf knew from experience that he wouldn’t be able to convince Zant otherwise, because that would be violating the rules of Tag.
This then led to the afore-mentioned first backup plan: flaunt his location as blatantly and obviously as possible, so as to lure the Heroes in and actually finish the job. Zant would happily go on the offensive if he thought he was about to be tagged as ‘It’.
Sometimes Ganondorf really questioned how he’d gotten to this point in his life, working around the rules of an otherwise childish game to get his strongest ally to cooperate with him.
Unfortunately that wasn’t something he could fix right now. So instead he concentrated on flaunting his location, which for once didn’t require a massive burst of his own power to light up the sky or something equally wasteful. Instead, Zant had experienced a marvelous moment of sanity and, in the process of Cursing the land, had decided to take the light of the Spirits with him instead of scattering it about.
...Actually, on second thought, that would have been a abysmally stupid decision in literally any other circumstance but this one. Ganondorf retracted his previous assessment of Zant’s moment of sanity and instead decided to just be grateful that Zant’s insanity had aligned with his own wishes, for once.
The point was that Ganondorf had a conveniently large amount of stolen light that made it incredibly easy to execute some flaunting, so he was going to flaunt. Now he just needed to make sure Zant didn’t notice.
Knowing the Twili, he’d probably run away under the notion of continuing the game of Tag, and Ganondorf hadn’t had the time to make a backup plan for that.
Dusk’s idea of ‘mild and temporary travel disintegration’ turned out to be everyone else’s idea of, ‘severe and terrifyingly disorienting molecule-by-molecule dissemination and reassembly’, and also had the added side effect of further cementing in everyone’s minds exactly how much Dusk actually Did Not Care.
Not that he didn’t care , because he did. He definitely did. It was arguable that he cared the most out of the whole group, what with all the low-level parenting he kept doing. But he really only seemed to care about people , and not things or events or otherwise trauma-inducing travel methods.
...It was possible, the Links concluded, that he genuinely wasn’t joking about having misplaced his mind somewhere in the Lakebed Temple.
(It should be noted that, while Dusk was not the only Link who’s method of fast-travel involved disintegration, he was the only Link who’s method of fast travel involved disintegration via magic that had actually gotten its users banned for being a bit too close to an abomination of nature. Appropriate conclusions can be drawn as to the impression such magic might leave on the outside viewer.)
“Never doing that again,” Steam breathed, about twenty minutes after the fact when everyone had gotten their initial reactions back under control.
“I’m not sure it’s really going to be your choice as to whether or not it needs to happen again,” Dusk replied apologetically. “I’m actually a bit surprised that Midna gave you recovery time, because she certainly didn’t give me that luxury back when I first started.”
“Thank Her Royal Highness over here,” Midna grumbled, in response to the Shadow-provided translation. “Something about ‘letting them cope’ and ‘recovery time’ and ‘appropriate recuperation methods’, which is frankly just ridiculous but sure, outrank me I guess.”
“Nonsense, we are of equal societal standing,” Zelda said serenely. “It is simply a matter of relative wisdom.”
“Or weak will, but,” Midna shrugged, “you know, whatever.”
“Don’t be rude,” Dusk told her. Midna ignored him, and then ignored Shadow’s translation too. She was good at that.
“Now then!” she declared, and looked out over the expanse of the Gerudo Desert, which was appropriately hot, barren, and entirely full of too much sand. With a lack of shoes to invade, the sand promptly infested everyone’s fur/feathers/scales instead, which was almost more uncomfortable than the aforementioned shoes. “Where to now, Princess?”
Zelda examined her map again.
“Arbiter’s Grounds,” she said. This of course meant next to nothing to everyone but herself, Dusk, and Midna, as the rest of the group only knew vaguely of the Arbiter’s Grounds through Dusk’s story, and Shadow only got flickers of memory feedback from his Origins at any given moment. Neither of these two things provided truly proper context.
“Is that… bad?” Ocarina hazarded, as both Dusk and Midna made synchronized grimaces.
“Well it’s not great,” Dusk replied, and Shadow began translating in the background. “Arbiter’s Grounds currently holds the only method of getting into Midna’s homeworld. If Zant went there , he’s going to have a huge advantage, especially if he’s intending on holding a fight with us. The Twili aren’t strong in our world, not really; even sunlight is painful.”
“I’m only an exception because someone lent me their life force against my will,” Midna said pointedly.
“Please do let that go,” Zelda sighed. “It was a gift, and more to the point, what was given has now been returned, yes?” She cast a demonstrative look down at her animated, clearly living body.
Midna grumbled something which was probably not fit to be heard by royal ears, but then again since she was royal too it probably didn’t matter too much… or possibly that just made it worse. Then she said, “Alright Link-alikes, we can either portal to the Grounds or we walk the long way-”
“THE LONG WAY,” the nearly entire group chorused immediately, which hardly even needed the following translation to be understood.
Midna pouted. “Spoilsports.”
“In my defense,” Din said, from where she was pocketing herself in a foldaway dimension just slightly to the left of Farore’s reach, “you have to admit that he’s a very artistic lizard.”
“What part of ‘stick to felines’ did you not understand?” Farore hissed back at her.
“You said to make it artistic! There’s no artistic felines!”
There was a moment of dead silence, in which Din slapped a hand over her own mouth and Nayru winced almost involuntarily.
Farore smiled . It was not a nice smile. In fact, it was the sort of smile that made her two sisters suddenly see the family resemblance between the green goddess and her newest, dark-magic Aspect.
“Cheetah,” she said, dangerously calmly. “King cheetah. Leopard. Snow leopard. Clouded leopard. Tiger. White Tiger. OCELOT. JAGUAR. SERVAL-”
“OKAY!” Din shrieked, because Farore was now reaching levels of volume that would genuinely break things in reality. Like rocks. And houses. “I was wrong, there’s plenty of artistic cats!”
“ A lizard,” Farore enunciated. “You’re lucky he’s happy with it.”
“...And if he wasn’t?” Din asked tentatively.
Farore smiled.
In an entirely appropriate reaction, Din made a small eep noise and pulled the foldaway dimension completely closed.
“...You’re going to let her come back out eventually, right?” Nayru hedged. “Because she still needs to finalize the possibility of Termina being illusionary versus real and how to incorporate it if the latter is indeed the case.”
Farore kept smiling . But the severity did lessen, just a little bit, at Nayru’s query. Nayru decided to take that at face value, and also as a ‘Yes’ until otherwise noted… mostly because she was too intimidated to ask again.
Now, some would say that Farore, being the goddess of life and generally seen with all the according personality traits of such a reputation (these being kindness, patience, love, et cetera), would not be capable of any emotion more antagonistic than ‘annoyed’. This is due to a gravely incorrect assumption about life, Life, and Farore in general.
It is often forgotten, until it is too late, that Life comes hand in hand with Death. And as Death is the end of Life, it also falls under Farore’s jurisdiction. There is a reason, after all, that is it Courage who is sent to save Hyrule. While Power may be the cause of an end, and Wisdom may initiate the events that lead to an end, Courage is the end.
For Courage has never needed to make his own resolve in order to do what needs to be done. His is the goddess who determines both the beginning and the end of all living things; all he has to do is borrow some from her.
(In the case of Din and her lizard mishap - yes, Farore would let her feel safe enough to come back out… eventually. But with both the tenacity and the authority of deciding lifetimes at her disposal, it would likely be a very long while indeed.)
Ganondorf was sure that he had everything set up exactly as he wanted it to be. He’d sequestered them both at the top of the Arbiter’s Grounds, where the small circular architecture and the great height would both combine to inhibit the Heroes’ movements. He’d strategically placed Zant at the back of the arena, with the explicit intent to prevent him from fleeing in some misguided effort to continue the game of tag. He’d also, in a secondary effort to prevent this, managed to convince Zant that they were now playing Hide and Seek, and as such Zant seemed to currently be doing his level best to fit into a piece of shadow between a fallen pillar and the far wall.
Ganondorf was… just going to leave him to it.
Back to the important things, the arena itself was also strategically chosen for reasons that weren’t the afore-mentioned cramped spacing and dangerous height. The Arbiter’s Grounds also held the Mirror of Twilight, which was the only known means of passing between realms and which, Ganondorf was certain , the Heroes would feel obligated to prevent damage to, further handicapping their abilities to do things like dodge.
He’d gone over this plan with a fine-tooth comb and, with about sixteen different backup plans in place for whatever Zant would do, Ganondorf could actually say that he felt confident-
His thought process was abruptly cut off by a concussive BOOM that shook the entire tower, followed shortly by the far wall collapsing into so much rubble. A violently ginger rabbit emerged from the dust cloud, posed, and chittered something triumphantly.
“Good news, everyone,” a monotone voice overlapped with the chittering. “The Holodese Culture of Blockading Structures does not, in fact, have jurisdiction over the Labrynnian Circle of Incendiary Materials here.” The rabbit nodded excitedly in tandem with this.
At this point, a few things happened at once.
Firstly, the rabbit was joined by several other animals, the Hylian Princess, a small imp that Ganondorf belatedly recognized as the Twili Princess, and… what seemed to be a dark magic copy of the Hero and Ganondorf was really not sure where that one had come from.
Secondly, the wall that the rabbit had blown up turned out to be the wall that Zant had been hiding between a pillar with, and Zant reacted accordingly to the situation as he saw it.
“TAG YOU’RE IT!” He shrieked, then proceeded to scuttle backwards across the ground like a demented crab, activate the Mirror, and vanish into the Twili Realm all in the span of roughly five seconds. This was met with appropriate confusion from the newly arrived animals, Princesses, and random dark magic copy.
And thirdly, Ganondorf watched his nearly perfect plan crumble into metaphorical dust just like the far wall, as he realized that in planning for Zant’s relative insanity, he forgot to plan for the Heroes’. All his plans had relied on the Heroes using and respecting the presence of the already existing entrances and architecture, because obviously they would, they were the Heroes.
He was coming to the realization that this had been a mistake, and also that any assumptions he had made based on the singular Hero Zant usually dealt with were not in the least to be applied to the rest of the Heroes who were now a part of the package.
Ganondorf permitted himself ten entire seconds to drop his head into his palm and just, leave it there, while he coped.
And then he made an executive decision. He didn’t have time to craft a new plan, so he was just going to need to work with the tatters of the old plan. Unfortunately, the old plan relied heavily on the presence of Zant, and Ganondorf didn’t have a good substitute for Zant.
Which meant Ganondorf needed to go find him.
...which basically meant that he had to throw the tatters of the old plan almost entirely out the figurative window.
“I hate this,” Ganondorf said pleasantly, to nobody in particular. “I hate this very much indeed.”
That established, he calmly walked past the animals, the Princesses, and the dark magic copy, calmly walked up to the Mirror, calmly said, “I’ll just be five minutes, if you’d all wait here until I get back I would greatly appreciate it, and then we can all get back to our previously scheduled showdown,” and then calmly stepped into the still-active portal zone.
However, it should be noted that the only reason Ganondorf was doing things calmly, was that if he did them any other way he was liable to murder something. Like Zant. And, as previously mentioned, he needed Zant, so that really wasn’t the most ideal course of action at the moment.
There was a moment of bewildered silence.
“...Should we… follow them?” Speck ventured slowly.
“He did ask us to wait five minutes,” Wind pointed out. “I think he actually intends to honor that? If he’s anything like my Ganondorf then he’s got this oddly noble streak of keeping his word.”
“Okay, but why should we listen to anything he told us?” Sketch asked bluntly. “He’s evil. And he’s going to do his level best to kill us when he gets back.”
“Indeed, we should follow them,” Zelda concurred, looking up from her map. “Ganondorf took the Spirit’s light with him when he left just now.”
There was another moment of silence as everyone processed that.
“...Fair points,” Wind admitted. “I guess we really should follow them, then.”
“Weird,” Speck whispered.
Almost universally, the group decided that they hated going through the Mirror almost as much as they’d hated getting disintegrated by Midna’s idea of safe fast-travel. The only reason this particular experience was in second place was because a Mirror couldn’t decide to pull a prank halfway through the process and have somebody come out on the other end with their legs transposed where their arms should be.
...not that Midna had ever considered doing something like that, what, nooooooooooo, that was a ridiculous accusation.
The Twilight Realm wasn’t all that different from the Twilight Cloud that Zant had cast a few hours earlier, really. The only difference was that this version actually felt natural, or at least as natural as it could get. The sky was orange and dusky, and the atmosphere had the hazy quality of a mirage. Black squares twirled up into the air like confetti in reverse. It would have been peaceful… if it weren’t for the irate Ganondorf, storming after a scurrying Zant in the distance, and the numerous near-comatose creatures slowly moving around the landscape.
“Welcome,” Blue intoned ominously, “ to the Twilight Zone,” and was promptly thwapped on the head by the tails of his three immediate siblings.
“Stop breaking things,” Green hissed.
The distant figure of Ganondorf caught up with the distant figure of Zant as the last of the group came through the Mirror, and there was a vague bit of shouting before Ganondorf began stalking back, dragging a chastised Zant behind him.
“...some new rules,” the Links heard, as the two villains came back into hearing range. “Everyone’s It, if you tag them more than they tag you, we win.”
Zant stopped in his tracks, which had the somewhat unexpected effect of jerking Ganondorf to a halt too. The larger villain kept pulling for a brief moment before visibly giving up on making Zant move and instead saying, “Understand?”
Zant made a high-pitched warbling noise. Presumably, this was an agreement, because Ganondorf’s response to that was to sigh, “If you must,” and turn to enter the Mirror again.
Then he stopped, because the Links were still standing in front of the Mirror and he clearly hadn’t been expecting them to be there.
“...Of course,” Ganondorf grumbled. “ Of course, why would I ever think that you people would honor verbal agreements, that would have required integrity . I expected better from the royalty at the very least .”
“Well that was your first mistake right there,” Midna replied, idly examining her nails as though the very idea of ‘herself’ and ‘honoring verbal agreements without a proper paper trail’ in the same sentence was laughable.
“Clearly,” Ganondorf said dryly, and then quietly muttered something about a perfectly good plan gone to waste and why did I even bother.
Zant reinserted himself into the conversation with another warbling noise, only now he was staring directly at Midna with a look in his eyes that instantly made everyone uncomfortable. “My Midna,” he crooned, at which point both Midna and Dusk instantly shuddered because oh dear Din he sounded sane.
“...we should start running.” Dusk advised lowly.
Zant punctuated this statement excellently by slamming up a barrier between the group and the Mirror, which very effectively cut off any escape routes they might have taken. The barrier itself glowed with menacing red patterns to match the ones on Zant’s clothes, which was basically barrier code for ‘I’m impenetrable so don’t even bother trying’.
“We should start running now, ” Dusk repeated, more insistently this time.
“You didn’t teach us how to run!” Steam hissed back at him.
“Just… walk but do it faster!”
Steam looked appropriately terrified by this advice.
“Zant,” Ganondorf said.
“My lord,” Zant replied. “Permission to enact the plan, sire?”
Oh dear Din . Zant didn’t just sound sane, he was sane. Of course it was a toss-up as to how long this moment of sanity would last, but while it did Dusk was certain the experience would be scarring.
“Granted,” Ganondorf agreed, and for the first time in the confrontation he actually looked pleased about the turn of events.
At that moment, Zelda abruptly burst into existence in a flare of magic directly behind Ganondorf’s back and proceeded to stab her rapier straight through his armor. While Ganondorf reacted appropriately to this by bellowing in pain, Zelda siphoned out the Lanayru’s light using the sword as a conduit. As she’d explained during the walk through the desert, Light magic attracted Light magic, and as she herself was a skilled caster, it would be very little trouble to call a Spirit’s power to her own person as long as she was in range.
‘In range’ in this case, had been ‘touching’, but this was because Ganondorf was in fact holding the stolen light captive and was unlikely to give it up without a fight, so obviously the best way to go about this problem was to distract him with pain and then overwhelm his natural resistances with proximity. Or, in other words, stabbing him.
And of course, Dusk found this all to be terribly attractive. Since when could his Princess teleport?
...Wait, that wasn’t important right now.
Another flare of magic put Zelda right back in the middle of the Links, holding a glowing mass of energy in one hand and her rapier in the other. “I believe I’ve found the means to even our odds a bit,” she said calmly, as though she hadn’t just ran said rapier through a man’s chest like it wasn’t even difficult. She also looked like she was about to say more-
But at that point, Zant decided that Princess Zelda was his new target. It was possible that attacking his god in front of him, while he was experiencing a moment of sanity, may not have been the best idea… but in Zelda’s defense, she hadn’t really had any better options. On instinct, Dusk snarled and immediately placed himself between them, which lasted for approximately two seconds before Zant tackled him and they both went rolling away across the ground in a flurry of sharp bits and angry growling. Unfortunately nobody had the time to process that, because then Ganondorf got over being stabbed and launched his own attack.
And at that point, the whole confrontation dissolved into chaos.
Notes:
So remember That One Time in Twilight Princess where Zant OHKO’d Midna, the Lanayru Light Spirit, and Dusk all in one go and then left them to recover for some baffling reason? Yeah. Behold, my inspiration for his character.
In other news! I have no idea what the Light Spirits are, so I hope you enjoyed the narrative fumbling. It was fun giving Dusk more of the spotlight for these recent chapters; I feel like certain other characters *coughLOREcough* tend to steal it…
Also, I tried to write some romance this time. I have no idea if it came out well, because I have no idea how romance works. I consulted the Discord and basically said, “Hi I need somebody who's romantically normative to describe attraction for me please and thank” and, well, hopefully I managed to learn something.
For the Chapter Talk: Zant and Ganondorf really ought to have been a duo in TP, and I see absolutely no reason why I can’t take advantage of what could have been in my own stories. Next chapter is gonna be fun. (Grins evilly)
But, uh, it’s probably gonna be another doozy. I’ll try to expedite things, but just in case… sorry in advance.
Thanks to Kae_the_Minish_Bandit, Del_Tango, BluePhoenixRising16, GleamAndDarken, MitsukiKazen, Guest #291, Guest #292, Guest #293, Guest #294, Guest #295, Guest #296, Guest #297, LamSauce, thatsnotmyname32, Guest #298, Guest #299, Guest #300, Guest #301, LoZfan22, Guest #302, PratchettFan03, ReaprSSBU, Guest #303, LadybugLies, Guest #304, klesek, Guest #305, lara_bar, Guest #306, Gamereel, Hiddeninplainview, Guest #307, Guest #308, Guest #309, Guest #310, Artonato, Guest #311, Guest #312, Guest #313, quelastimapero, Guest #314, Drachis917, Jera2212, Maurie_mirin, Amber_gold20, Guest #315, Guest #316, Guest #317, RPGMakerFan, Guest #317, Guest #318, Guest #319, SeafoamTaide, Shadow_Zenith, asinineAbbreviations, Guest #320, LeDerpu, Kazolzen, robinsocean, TheSentientPotato, Guest #321, the_crimson_king, Guest #322, Fletcher_Wulf, Guest #323, hit_that_target, Guest #324, Guest #325, JJY221, Katnissavatar, Guest #326, Guest #327, Kencha, Guest #328, Guest #329, Heart_of_gold_56811, Darkwater_cat, AkakoChiYuki, Guest #330, Elana_Lightstorm, Shayberri789, Guest #330, Guest #331, GameBoyHamazing, mudkid, AvidLeori, Boom33713, Creepzilla, Guest #332, cookie_ace, nightfurious, Guest #333, OrionRedde, and Guest #334, Guest #335, for the Kudos!
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(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 30: No One Expects The Twili Inquisition!
Summary:
Somewhere in all this chaos, there's a fight happening. Probably.
Notes:
Is it an animal?
(No.)
Vegetable?
(No.)
Mineral?
(No.)
Is it a theoretical concept?
(...Yes.)
Is it the fact that you don’t own the Legend of Zelda?
(That took four questions, what the crap. This is why I don’t like playing Twenty Questions with you.)
But am I right?
(...yes.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Several minutes of complete chaos later, the scene resolved itself into the following facsimile of order.
Midna, along with the still-captive Shadow, were sitting on and standing beside the canine Ocarina, respectively. Midna had half of her hair dedicated to being Shadow’s leash, and the other half maintaining a deadlock with the long white sword that Ganondorf had apparently brought to the party. Ocarina, who’d been conscripted during the chaos without any real idea of what was happening, was bracing himself with every bit of strength that he had in an effort to not simply collapse under the force that Midna and Ganondorf were generating.
Mask, not right next to his older-but-younger counterpart the way he normally would have been, was actually tangled in a heap with several other Links. This was because Zant, when he wanted to, was apparently very good at imitating a tornado with knives, and almost none of the Links had experience keeping their feet with four feet to keep track of.
The two Links who did have experience, Lore and Dusk, were currently tussling with Zant. Lore had somehow hooked himself around Zant’s headpiece and was using the leverage to repeatedly kick the Twili in the helmet, while Dusk was performing an odd circular dance where his teeth were fastened in Zant’s right sleeve and Zant did his level best to hit Dusk off his right hand with the sword in his left hand.
It would have looked hilarious if sharp objects hadn’t been involved.
And finally, Princess Zelda was recovering her breath near the pile of tangled Links, having just spent the previous few minutes dodging the murder attempts of both Ganondorf and Zant and being appropriately tired from it.
“Is it always this… exciting?” Zelda asked the Link Tangle, in a tone that heavily implied she was using the word ‘exciting’ as a placeholder for something significantly more insulting. Like disastrous. Or futile.
One of the birds, Wind judging by the white of the visible feathers, let out a long low cooing noise. Out of habit, Zelda waited for the Shadow-provided translation before remembering that he (and more importantly, his handler) were currently otherwise engaged.
Judging by the duration of the coo, though, Zelda surmised that Wind had said something resigned and longsuffering.
No, Zelda thought to herself, this clearly was not going to be in any way efficient. That made her battle strategy significantly less useful.
Oh well, needs must.
In one efficient movement, she gathered the skirt of her dress in one hand and sliced her rapier through the fabric with the other, leaving the remaining material to swing just below her knees. Then she discarded all her jewelry on top of the heap of disheveled fabric, piled her hair up,and used a piece of her sliced skirt to tie it into place. Her rapier went on her hip, because she was going to need both her hands for this, and then for good measure she kicked off her heeled shoes too. She was also going to be doing a lot of running.
And then Princess Zelda summoned the stolen light of the Spirits into her hands, took a deep breath, and pushed.
A ballooning wall of what looked like pure sunlight exploded out from her hands, racing quickly across the landscape and efficiently encompassing the entirety of the current battlefield as well as a good chunk of the Twilight beyond as well. The expansion slowed, then stabilized, and the instant that the new piece of Light locked into place, nearly every piece of the Twilight inside was purged.
The exceptions, of course, were Midna, immune due to Zelda’s own influence, Shadow, presumably due to sheer stubbornness, and Zant, presumably due to Ganondorf’s influence. But everything else was fair game.
And interestingly enough, this included the pieces of Twilight that were currently trapping all the Heroes in the forms of animals.
It should be noted that everyone but Zelda was surprised by this, because this had naturally been Zelda’s plan the entire time. This wasn’t to say that the plan hadn’t undergone some edits here and there, but unlike a certain other planner who’s name shall not be mentioned, Zelda had all the experience of running a country and knew that the first draft of anything never made it past the conception stage. She was well-versed in altering a plan as she went, and this particular facet of her current plan had been in the predicted outcomes ever since she’d noticed that all Lanayru’s stolen Light seemed to be in one place.
Of course, Zelda had hoped that she wouldn’t have to do this. She’d hoped that the confrontation would take place in the Light Realm, like any competent Light-aligned planner would. But alas.
The Link Tangle dissolved into a mass of dark smoke for a brief moment as the Twilight fled, before resolving into a pile of confused and Heroic hylians. A few feet away, Ocarina suddenly found himself on his hands and knees while Midna straddled the junction of his neck. On Zant, Lore was abruptly far too big to be balancing on Zant’s headdress, which when combined with Dusk’s sudden loss of sharp teeth, unbalanced all three of them to the point where they all just toppled over.
There was a moment of brief, stunned silence. Everyone processed the new-old bodies, then slowly looked over to see where the Light surge had come from. Zelda permitted herself a small, barely-there smile when her own native Link turned a blazingly crimson red at the sight of her shorn dress and bound hair. Really, he was too adorable. She needed to remember to visibly reciprocate once there was time. Nobody could complain about the Prince Consort being the Hero who saved the land, and it would finally get her Council of Representatives off her back… at least for a few years, when she was sure they would start pestering her about an heir.
Still. Zelda made a mental note to place that particular plan in her ‘Active’ section before refocusing on the confrontation. She had, after all, just made herself the most attractive target by actively being the source of the Heroes’ biggest advantage, and there was a reason she’d gone out of her way to make her previously formalwear dress into something she could run in.
And as if on cue, Ganondorf used the change in leverage from Ocarina’s shift back to hylian to rip his sword from Midna’s grip and throw it headlong at Zelda’s face. Having expected something of that manner, Zelda handily stepped out of the way, and then just… kept stepping.
The Twilight would only stay back as long as she kept maintaining the Light bubble, and she had to stay alive to keep doing that. So she ran. It was as simple as that, really.
She did hope that the Heroes remembered that the Light bubble would be running with her, though. She was fairly certain that she’d mentioned it as a possibility during the walk through the desert, but then again, Zelda had gone over a great deal of possibilities.
She’d find out soon enough, she supposed.
“You need to ask her out,” Lore informed Dusk casually, in the same voice as another person would use to take note of the weather. Dusk may or may not have turned even redder in response, but given how red he already was, it was a bit hard to tell.
“I’m,” he said, strangled. “I’m, uh, working. On it. Uh. Wow .” The wow turned into a little sigh at the end, and he trailed off to stare, again, at where Zelda was currently sprinting like Realm and making it look very attractive indeed.
Lore coughed into a fist. “You do see Ganondorf chasing after her, right?”
“Hmm? Oh.” Dusk blinked hard, several times, and then visibly shook himself in a very canine manner. “Right. Yeah, I should go do something about that.”
“We, ” Lore corrected, amused. Dusk was normally so calm and collected, it was hilarious to see him this flustered instead. “There’s seventeen other Heroes here too, remember.”
“...yes,” Dusk said belatedly.
“Wow you’ve got it bad.”
Dusk was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed, and said, “Yeah, I know.”
“Just as long as you’re properly aware of it,” Lore said brightly, patting Dusk on the shoulder. “Now seriously, Ganondorf is chasing your lady love with full intent to murder her, go stop him.”
“Right,” Dusk said, and took off sprinting.
“He’d be lost without me,” Lore told the empty air… and also Zant, whom he was currently sitting on.
“MMMMRRRRRRFFFFFFLE!” Zant replied.
“Glad you agree!”
However, it was at this point that Lore suddenly remembered that the only reason he’d been successfully sitting on Zant in the first place had been that Dusk was also sitting on Zant with him, and the combined weight of two Heroes had been more than what Zant could lift. And Dusk had just run off. And now Lore was the only person sitting on Zant.
It was also at this point that Zant came to the exact same realization.
“Welp,” Lore announced, and then promptly ran for his life.
By the time the Link Tangle untangled themselves, which was significantly easier when everyone was in a body they actually knew how to move in, the chaos had completely resumed and possibly even gotten worse. Zelda seemed to have settled into a lap of the area, keeping herself to a circumference small enough that everyone currently in the Light area of influence stayed there. Ganondorf was mere steps behind her, throwing an equal number of both projectiles and profanities as he went. Dusk was a few steps behind Ganondorf, face set in concentration and clearly sprinting for all he was worth to catch up.
In the opposite direction ran Lore, gleefully shouting insulting nickname ideas back to Zant, who was hot on his heels. The current contender seemed to be ‘Stabby Stabby Slice Man’, which was being received by Zant with all the expected fury.
Midna was still riding Ocarina, although she’d moved to his shoulders in surprisingly respectful deference to the current body he was in, and Shadow was still being held captive by Midna’s hair. The three of them seemed to have decided to chase after Zant chasing Lore, presumably because Midna had a grudge to settle.
It was all quite loud.
“Should we… split up for this?” Steam hazarded, blinking at the pandemonium.
“Probably, given that the other option is standing around like useless lumps,” Gen said dryly. “Pick the brand of crazy you want to deal with.”
“...Do I have to?”
“You say that like you somehow have a third choice when I know that you know that you don’t.”
Steam rolled his eyes, goodnaturedly enough that Gen playfully bopped him on the head in exchange. Steam snickered, then sighed and said, “Then I guess I want Ganondorf’s brand of crazy… which is a really weird sentence out of context, wow.”
“Tell me about it,” Gen agreed.
The final grouping looked like this: Steam, Speck, the Four, and Wind had decided to join Dusk with Ganondorf, while Sketch, Mask, Red, Green, Vio, Blue, Realm, and Gen were going to help Lore with Zant. Midna and Shadow were clearly going to keep doing their own thing - or rather, Midna was clearly going to keep doing her own thing while Shadow was going to be dragged along for the ride - and it was basically imperative that Zelda remained as unbothered as possible, so nobody was really going to try and break her concentration by running up to her.
(Not that they hadn’t seriously considered sending Realm her way, because if anyone could keep up with the way she was sprinting it was him, but… well. Degrees of importance and all.)
“Good luck,” the Four said solemnly to the Zant group.
“We get Lore and Midna,” Mask retorted.
“Well, we get Dusk and his Zelda.”
“Both of which are valid points,” Sketch interjected. “How about we compare notes on it after we finish dealing with this?”
There was some muttered assent, which everyone then took as their cue to rush off. Nobody tried to declare a Break; that was Lore’s job, and Lore was a bit busy.
Also, it would have been rude.
The new plan went like nearly every other battle plan the Links had ever made: it functioned properly for about five minutes, and then completely fell apart. Because for some reason, nobody had thought of making a concentrated effort to keep Ganondorf and Zant apart from each other.
In other words, the exact moment that everything went to the Dark World was the moment when Ganondorf snaked out his hand, snatched the passing Zant by the collar, swung the Twili around until they were both running in the same direction (after Zelda) and growled at him, “ Remember the plan? That thing we talked about? Where you are a key player in its success?”
“The Hide And Seek plan or the Tag plan?” Zant asked, cocking his head like a confused bird. His sanity seemed to have fled the room again, and it was becoming an alarmingly difficult thing to keep track of.
Ganondorf visibly took a few strides to reacquaint himself with the language Zant used to communicate. Then he said, “The Tag plan, which I am dearly hoping you remember the details of. Unless I need to remind you, Twilight King?”
“HE IS NOT!” Midna screeched, clearly infuriated, and then she kicked Ocarina in the ribs in the same way one would spur a horse to move faster. The effectiveness of this was largely debatable.
And then Zant laughed, low and rumbling.
“That,” he said, sounding sane again dear Din why, “would be redundant, My Lord.”
In what he would later argue to be a completely appropriate reaction , Dusk slid to a halt and immediately began sprinting in the opposite direction, and as such he was one of the only three Links (and Zelda, who had not once stopped running) who escaped Zant’s next move. It turned out that the Twilight could be weaponized as a radial pulse, and also that regardless of an overhanging Light presence, Cursed forms were still entirely valid consequences.
In shorter words: suddenly, animals!
“Oh, COME ON!” Lore shrieked, once again a rabbit and once again upset about it.
The three Links to escape, meanwhile, were the aforementioned Dusk; Ocarina, still commandeered by Midna; and Mask, who had finally noticed the lack of his older-but-younger self in the immediate vicinity and had been in the process of running to join him. Ganondorf took the opportunity to switch his focus back onto the only remaining humanoid targets, and this resulted in all four hylians - plus dark magic companions - sprinting full speed across the battlefield while Zant emitted a high-pitched cackle behind them, having actually decided to press his advantage for once.
“Swap me, little wolf,” Midna demanded immediately upon seeing Dusk within earshot. “Nobody else here is a competent steed and it’s infuriating .”
“Hey,” Ocarina said in a vague imitation of a protest. Not because he wanted Midna to keep riding him like a horse, certainly not , but more because he felt like he’d just been insulted somehow and ought to defend himself.
“Oh, fine, you can take Shadow then,” Midna told him. “I can’t keep babysitting him in the middle of a fight, I’m gonna need all my hands for this jerk.”
“Hey,” Shadow said, in actual protest, because he objected to being passed around like an inanimate object.
“Shut it, copycat,” Midna retorted immediately. “Look me in the eye and tell me, without laughing, that you won’t immediately make a break for safety if I let you go.”
“That is a heinous accusation and I resent it immensely,” Shadow sniffed. “ Of course I would stick around and help out.”
His delivery of the line would have been a lot more convincing had his face not contorted in a great effort not to smile. A nearly inaudible, strangled snort worked its way from the corner of his mouth.
“Uh-huh,” Midna said, blatantly unconvinced. “Ocarina holds your leash and that’s final.” She ignored the resulting cursing from Shadow that this earned her with the poise of the Princess she was, and instead repeated, “ Swap me,” while actually shearing off a piece of her hair to continue functioning as Shadow’s restraints to emphasize how serious she was. Of course, because it was all magic, her actual hair seemed none the worse for the decision and the ‘rope’ part of the restraints somehow ended up being roughly six feet long.
“This seems like an uneven trade,” Dusk informed her, even as he took the leash and handed it off to Ocarina. Midna settled herself on his left shoulder as he did.
“Little wolf, do we need to have a talk about self esteem again?”
“No, for Shadow ,” Dusk clarified. “I know what I’m worth, I’m just not quite sure he’s meeting the standards.”
Simultaneously, both Mask and Ocarina experienced sudden coughing fits. Shadow paused in his cursing to look grievously offended. Midna cackled .
“Oh, I’ve taught you well,” she sighed, recovering. “Now then, want to do something about the angsty Twili wannabe chasing us?”
“Please and thank you,” Dusk replied, and somehow that was all the agreement that either of them needed. In a single fluid movement, the pair spun their running momentum into a complete one-eighty. Midna catapulted herself off Dusk’s shoulder, while Dusk drew his sword, and then they met the pursuing Ganondorf with enough force to actually bring the man to a complete halt.
“Now that’s just not fair,” Ocarina mumbled quietly. He was remembering his own, somewhat less successful attempts at holding Ganondorf in a deadlock and feeling a bit put out.
Zelda, meanwhile, was feeling mildly irritated, because a counteraction to her field of contained Light influence had not been in the final stage of the plan she’d been enacting. She’d discarded that particular plan on the grounds of it being so incredibly unlikely that the odds of it happening were almost too low to bother calculating.
It seemed, that she’d failed to factor in a Shadow-magic boost to Zant’s already considerable Twili magic. It made sense, in hindsight; Ganondorf did seem the sort of man to bolster his own forces, and naturally he was using the Shadow Branch of magic, as the Gerudo had done for millenia now. Apparently the two magics were more compatible than she’d previously been aware of.
Huffing, both out of annoyance and the continued exertion of her sprinting, Zelda mentally swapped out her current plan for the more relevant, previously discarded earlier draft. Thankfully she’d had the foresight to ask permission from Lanayru, just in case of this exact (implausible) scenario, because it paid to be prepared if nothing else. And because it was far better to ask for permission than to hope that forgiveness would in fact be given, as opposed to vengeance.
Now then, she needed her bow… and a target. Zant would do nicely.
Despite their best efforts, none of the Links were proving to be very good at animalistic combat. Theoretically speaking they all possessed the ability to do some decent damage in one way or another. Practically speaking… none of them knew how to do that.
Look, they were still trying to figure out how to run , okay? Cut them some slack. Attacking was next on the list.
Also, Zant somehow had more sharp things than they did right now, which was really incredibly unfair given the amount of talons and teeth and claws that the group was wielding. Who gave Zant that many knives? Who had thought that was a good idea? Ganondorf, probably, that jerk.
“Nobody is allowed to get hit!” Gen yelled, as Zant made another swipe at them. “Not until I get my hands back and can throw Red Potions at you!”
“I really don’t think it’s our decision!” Steam cried.
“Of course it is, you just dodge!”
“EASY FOR THE BIRD TO SAY!”
The attacking Zant tilted his head and made a chittering noise at the group, which was presumably him imitating what he heard Gen and Steam saying. It somehow, impossibly, translated as, “Toaster strudel with a side of mustard!”
Somewhat unwisely, everyone but Zant paused to process that.
“Toaster strudel?” Vio repeated bewilderedly, and it was at this point that Zant lunged forwards and successfully landed a slice right across Realm’s thigh, Wind’s chest, and two of the Four’s sets of front legs.
Roughly thirty seconds of appropriate panic later, the Chain regrouped a much safer distance away and proceeded to panic even more.
“WHAT DID I JUST SAY!?” Gen screeched, doing his best to hover like the anxious medic he was in spite of not being able to do any medical treatment.
“It really wasn’t our idea!” the Four hissed back at him, which was incredibly odd coming from deer.
And then Lore blinked and said, in a tone of pure offense, “He just pulled a me.”
Everyone stared at him. Then Wind inhaled sharply and said, “Oh my Din he’s right.”
“Zant can’t do Distractions,” Lore continued irately. “ I’m the one who does Distractions. It’s rude otherwise!”
“Distract him back?” Realm offered, wincing as he tested his back leg. Lore stared at it for a moment.
“I don’t think it’d work,” he said, much more slowly. “I don’t think he’s… here , enough, to notice.”
“He’s here enough to fight,” Sketch pointed out.
“Well yeah, but you don’t need to be sane to fight. You do kinda need to be sane to notice what’s not normal about a situation though,” Lore sighed. “And I rely on the expectation of what’s normal in order to throw it off, so if he’s not even going to respond...”
That was an oddly sobering idea.
“Can we hold that thought?” Speck interjected suddenly. “He’s almost in range again, and I don’t want to be in his range again.”
There was another scramble to get to a safer distance, during which they scurried past Dusk and Midna holding off Ganondorf, and Ocarina, Mask, and Shadow on a leash sprinting in some undetermined direction. Presumably, they’d lost Zelda somewhere in the chaos.
Come to think of it, where was Zelda?
And right on cue, a Light Arrow streaked in and buried itself in Zant’s shoulder, where it burst into a shower of sparkles. This had three main effects, the first and most problematic being that it instantly revealed Zelda’s location and caught Ganondorf’s attention all in one go.
The second effect was that Zant took the hit like the dark magic creature he was, which is to say, not well at all; and the third effect was that the release of the arrow also released another pulse of Light energy, which handily counteracted the Twilight wave from earlier.
In shorter, less complicated words: suddenly, hylians!
“I’m starting to get whiplash from all this,” Lore complained, finding himself on two feet once again. “Can we just pick an atmosphere and stick with it? Preferably this one?”
“If you’d like to lend your effort to that endeavor, it would certainly be appreciated,” Zelda informed him, appearing out of nowhere. She’d seemed to have swapped out her rapier for her bow - which, cool , how come the Links didn’t ever get that sort of weapon malleability? - and was in fact still sprinting as she talked. She was gone again before Lore could even come up with a response, so in lieu of actually being able to reply he just shrugged to himself agreeably.
“Alright, new plan!” he declared cheerfully, at which point he yanked his sword from the scabbard and threw it wholly at Zant’s face. He missed, because his aim was terrible, and his decision to throw his weapon in the first place was equally so, but it did have the desired effect of getting the rest of the group into high gear too.
Much easier to fight Zant with opposable thumbs, after all.
Meanwhile, Ganondorf was annoyed, because this was not going according to plan. At all. There should not have even been available Light in the area, because he should have been holding it all. There should not have been Heroes ready and able to fight back in their proper bodies. There really should not have been a Princess sprinting around the battlefield wreaking havoc on all his best-laid schemes
And yet, here he was, dealing with all of the above. He was about to murder something, preferably a Hero. There weren’t many ways this could get more frustrating.
A stray sword sailed past him, completely unattached to anyone who might have been wielding it. As Ganondorf was not currently expending his attention on much of anything important (aside from being currently locked in a standstill with his own local Hero and the Twili Princess but as nobody had the upper hand he felt confident in dividing his focus), he elected to follow the path of the unexpected weapon to where it had come from.
This was a mistake.
Zant, for some reason, seemed to have an impeccable radar for when his god was paying attention to him. He also had an insatiable need to prove himself, which usually ended terribly for Ganondorf and confusingly for Zant, as he wondered where it had all gone sideways.
And in this case, Zant remembered that part of the plan was for him to spam as many Twilight pulses as possible. Naturally, now that his god was actively looking at him, it wouldn’t do to be seen not following the plan. Zant was a good and loyal worshiper! Zant could follow the plan!
Zant proceeded to release a particularly potent pulse of Twilight right in Ganondorf’s face - which had not, in any version, been part of the plan. Ganondorf knew this because he specifically remembered telling Zant to not do the thing he'd just done.
His reasoning had followed thusly: Ganondorf, like all Light Dwellers, was not immune to the effects of Twilight Magic. The reason he was currently standing in the Twilight Realm and not automatically succumbing to the influence was that he wielded Shadow Magic, and the two Magics were very much closely related. As a master, Ganondorf was plenty skilled enough to keep the passive consequences of the Twilight out of his body.
But there was also absolutely nothing he could do, master or otherwise, to keep up the same levels of defenses when he was actively targeted.
Unlike most Light Dwellers, Ganondorf did not immediately take the form of a tormented spirit when exposed to the Twilight. But very much like a certain group of Triforce Holders, he took another form entirely.
Or, in much shorter words: suddenly, a giant pig!
He might need to murder Zant first, Ganondorf thought vaguely to himself as he shook off the discomfort of an unwanted transformation. And then a Hero, afterwards. At this rate it might actually be more beneficial to the plan.
There was a noise not dissimilar to a badly startled cat.
Farore and Nayru glanced at each other. Nayru frowned in confusion, to which Farore shook her head. Then they both peered over at the foldaway pocket dimension that Din still hadn't come back out of.
“Din?” Nayru called slowly. “You alright?”
There was a THUMP , a faint, “Oh,” and then Din herself fell straight out of the foldaway dimension to land squarely on the metaphorical floor.
“...So,” she said, staring up at the metaphorical ceiling, “I might have, possibly , forgotten about Power?”
“You're a terrible Patron Goddess,” Farore responded automatically.
“No, shut up, not like that,” Din said. “I mean that I – maybe – forgot that Power is fighting Courage right now? In the Twilight Realm? And might be drawing from me as a source of protection to keep from being completely absorbed by Twilight?”
“Din. What the You.”
“What the Me,” Din agreed miserably. “Just once, I'd really love it if Power would stop doing this to me.”
“You know it's not his fault,” Nayru said quietly.
“Well then it must be mine, because I've never not had a Power who didn't try to destroy the world. Is there something wrong with the world? I thought I made it pretty well, but if my own Aspect keeps trying to get rid of it...”
“First of all, no, the world is wonderful and you did a great job,” Nayru argued. “Second of all, no , I meant that it's Demise's fault.”
“...come again?”
Nayru tilted her head. “The Curse of Hatred? The one that Demise laid on Courage? The one that Power keeps falling victim to? Remember that?”
“The what of WHAT?” Din and Farore growled simultaneously.
Nayru twisted her head back and forth between them, wide-eyed. “Wait, you didn't know?”
“You DID!?”
“Of course I did, I'm Time! I know almost everything!” Nayru cried. “The first time Courage ever reincarnated, when Hylia chose to join him as mortal, Demise laid a Curse on him! ' An Incarnation of my Hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time!' That's there's always another world-ending crisis that we need to send Courage after and why it's almost always Power causing it!”
There was utter silence for a moment.
And then Din said, “ I am going to flay him limb from limb.”
“Allow me to assist you,” Farore hissed.
“Interference Laws!” Nayru coughed.
“No!” Din snapped. “How dare he? HOW DARE HE!?”
“You can't go after him yourself! You'll only make it worse!”
“It would be worth it,” Din seethed.
“Not like this, okay?” Nayru insisted. “Not like him. ”
“I can't believe you never said anything,” Farore said blankly.
“I thought you both knew! They're your Aspects, I was sure you knew!”
There was another moment of silence.
“We are terrible Patron Goddesses,” Din moaned, her and Farore both standing dejectedly in a metaphorical corner.
“You are not,” Nayru sighed exasperatedly, and dissipated the depressed corner with a wave of her hand. “And neither of you have time for this, your Aspects are both in the middle of fighting each other, remember?”
“Right, right, just-” Din took a deep breath. “He twisted my Aspect away from me. He doesn't get mercy for that. I don't care who does it, or really how long it takes, but we're going to make him pay. ”
“Agreed,” Farore and Nayru chorused.
“Although in hindsight this does explain why you always seemed to hate Demise just a bit more than Farore and I did,” Din admitted awkwardly.
“I just assumed you were practicing self control or something.”
“You thought I was practicing self control?”
“...Fair point, a stupid assumption on my part.”
“Very,” Din snorted, before moving around to peer down at reality apprehensively. Her two sisters flanked her curiously on either side, and for a moment the three of them just stared at the world.
Then Farore pointed at the newly porcine Power and said, “Din, sister dear, I love you, but what is that?”
Din squinted at her Aspect. “I think it's a... pig? Or maybe a lion... er, warthog?”
“I think the word you're looking for is 'abomination',” Farore offered dryly. “What did you do to him?”
“Nothing!” Din protested. “Literally nothing!”
“Wait, literally nothing?”
“Yes!”
“Well that explains it,” Farore said with a twist of her mouth. “So, random question, remember when I had a minor panic about the Cursed forms of my Aspect?”
“Minor panic?” Din echoed, amused.
“Yes, minor, shut up,” Farore snapped. “ Remember?”
“Yeah I remember,” Din agreed. “And?”
“If I hadn't intervened and selected forms suitable for them, they would have assumed the closest physical representation of their souls.”
Din paused. Then she let out a long, drawn-out, “Oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“Congratulations, the soul of your Aspect is an abomination,” Farore reiterated.
There was another pause.
“...I'm a terrible patron Goddess,” Din moaned, the depressed corner re-manifesting around her.
“Please stop doing that,” Nayru waved away the corner with a long-suffering grimace. “Really, if you think about it, it's the Demise-influenced part that's the abomination.”
“Ah yes, because I did so need another reason to hate him,” Din muttered.
“Okay but,” Farore interjected, “that mess aside, what are you going to do about this?”
Din furrowed her brows in thought. “Take a page out of your book, I guess?”
“...Love him to pieces?”
“Well, yes, but later when Power can actually accept it without that Hatred Curse in the way. I was more thinking of obsessive observation and persistent monitoring followed closely by whatever amount of divine intervention I think I can get away with.”
“Hmm,” Farore said, which was clearly a placeholder for something much more loudly sputtered.
“In shorter words,” Din said, gracefully moving the conversation forward, “I think I should probably start by taking the most immediate opportunity to fix Power's, ah... pig problem.”
“In the middle of his fight with Courage? When we're actively backing Courage to win? Are you sure that's the best time to grant the 'enemy' the advantage?”
Din's only response was to grumble something incomprehensible, but since that usually meant agreement, Farore took it as a yes.
Meanwhile, several of the Links would have had a few things to say about calling Ganondorf's new body something as simple as 'a pig', if they'd been privy to the Goddesses' conversations in the first place. For one, pigs were not usually twenty feet tall at the shoulder. For another, they didn't usually possess the ability to force Twilight warps into existence. And they usually didn't then utilize said portals to completely ignore the laws of established physics and attack from entirely unexpected directions at entirely unexpected times.
“I don't understand why this always seems to happen,” Mask commented, from his safe distance with his older-but-younger self and the no-longer-sprinting Princess Zelda, who had paused to reevaluate the situation upon the introduction of new variables. “It's like, here we are, Perfectly Normal Hylians, maybe with a few divine blessings on our side but mostly with just a crap-ton of determination and spite. And there's our opponent, a Ridiculously Overpowered Entity, with equal if not several more divine blessings on his side and also with numerous alternate and increasingly overpowered Final Forms. I don't even know what to call that thing,” he pointed at Ganondorf, “but the fact that this isn't even the first time I've seen a version of him do that makes me think that somehow, somewhere, somebody really hates us.”
Elsewhere, Demise sneezed.
“And I've decided that I'd really like to punch whoever that is in the face,” Mask concluded.
“You mean that is normal?” Ocarina squeaked.
Mask paused and visibly rewound his last couple sentences in his head. “What, no, of course not,” he said, unconvincingly, before adding, “...Spoilers.”
Ocarina made a valiant attempt to slap his younger-but-older self upside the head, but missed because that was when Zelda decided to take off sprinting again and Mask was already darting after her. One day, Ocarina vowed to himself, he was going to corner his future (literally) and demand an answer that wasn't 'Spoilers'.
...Just not right now, because they were both a bit busy.
Meanwhile, Gen had officially decided that he was done dealing with this nonsense, because clearly whatever form of plan they’d gone in with had not survived contact with the enemy. Zelda was who-knew-where, Zant was just a disaster, Ganondorf was apparently a pig-shaped entity of chaos in disguise, and the whole rest of the group was in such a scattered mess that it was amazing that Gen even still had an idea of where everyone was.
“Fi,” he said to the Master Sword in his hands, “help me out a little here?”
There was a brief chime, as his weapon lit up in response… and then died completely back out. Gen took a moment to be incredibly foolish and stare at it instead of his opponent.
“...uh, Fi?” he repeated pointedly.
After a moment, there was a very distant answering jingle. Gen took another moment to continue being foolish and turned his head to follow the sound. All the way across the battlefield at the very other edge of the Light area Zelda was still casting, the stick-figure of Dusk had his sword drawn and ready… and it was glowing.
“...You are kidding me.”
“ You called, Master?” Dusk’s sword asked him, and it was so unexpected that Dusk nearly tripped over his own feet. While Midna cackled at his blunder, Dusk recognized the voice as belonging to Fi and said, “Not me, no, but Gen did maybe?”
There was a pause, during which the newly pig-shaped Ganon made a valiant attempt to disembowel him and Dusk made an equally valiant attempt to avoid being disemboweled. Then Fi said, “My apologies. I appear to have made a miscalculation regarding the current time period.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dusk told her. “Gen’s over there though, if you need to find him.” He waved Fi’s current sword casing in the general indicated direction as he talked.
“Your assistance is appreciated,” Fi said, and then she spun out of the blade and barely spared a moment to touch down before she was darting off across the battlefield. Dusk watched her go with interest, because he’d never actually seen her in person before and had really only ever heard her voice until just now. She matched the Master Sword. He probably should have expected that.
Then Ganondorf made another attempt at disembowelment, and Dusk found himself with a few more important things to concentrate on.
Fi arrived in a cascade of sparkles and an expression on her face that could almost be described as exasperated, if one were to squint. She pulled up at Gen’s side, took an evaluating glance of the situation, then turned her head and asked, “ How may I be of assistance?”
“Well,” Gen replied casually, “if you could analyze the literal embodiment of crazy that I’m pointing your blade at, I’d greatly appreciate that.”
“Scanning,” Fi announced, with a low hum. On the other end of her blade, Zant cackled like a baboon and made a valiant attempt to stab somebody. As the nearest somebody was Gen, this was a bit undesirable, and the next few moments were a flurried whirlwind of dodges.
“Analysis complete,” Fi said serenely, which was in blatant contradiction to the fact that her sword form was currently being used to block a scimitar from taking off her wielder’s head. “Zant, the Usurper King. A Twili hailing from the Twilight Realm, and the current self-proclaimed ruler. His mental stability is questionable, but unfortunately difficult to exploit in battle.”
“Of course not, that would have been convenient,” Gen grunted, then heaved Zant off with effort and threw himself into a roll to dodge the immediate follow-up strike. “Anything else?”
“Power scanning indicates a vast pool of magical energy at his disposal, Master. I advise you to be wary of spellcasting, as it will undoubtedly create adverse effects for you. Additionally there is evidence that Zant favors the scimitars as his chosen weapon. Please be cautious of the dual blades and keep an awareness of his positioning at all times.”
“Believe it or not, I had noticed the sharp thing he’s trying to kill me with,” Gen huffed. “Can you elaborate on that bit about magic though?”
“Twili Magic has no effective Hyrulean equivalent that I can extrapolate for,” Fi informed him.
“Then make an educated guess based on the closest match!” Gen screeched quickly, before ducking out of the way of a scimitar to the head.
“Calculating,” Fi said. There was a short pause. “Recalculating.”
“OH, COME ON!”
There was a somewhat longer pause, during which Gen had roughly four near-death experiences. This was particularly impressive given that it couldn’t have been longer than eight to twelve seconds.
“Calculations complete. Closest equivalent match is Shadow Magic, sharing approximately seventy-six percent similarity. Likely uses for Twili Magic based on these similarities include shadow manipulation, visual and auditory-based illusions, and the ability to warp the spatial distance relationship of predetermined objects or locations. Additional data collected from studying cooperative specimens implies the possibility of manifested weapons.”
In less complicated words, Gen mentally translated, Fi watched Midna make a weapon out of her own hair and rightfully concluded it was an ability to be wary of. “Got it. Anything else?”
“Additional data collected from studying proximally-placed specimens implies the existence of several mental anomalies,” Fi reported, which was essentially her way of noting that Zant was off his certified rocker. “I would advise caution in dealing with this foe due to these instabilities.”
Zant took the opportunity to try and slice off Gen’s head. Since Gen was actively trying to avoid this, the two of them ended up in a brief weapon lock stalemate. “Final recommendations?” Gen hissed out through teeth gritted with effort.
“Continued extrapolation of the similarities between Shadow and Twili Magic indicate a weakness to Light Magic. In addition, observation of cooperative specimens indicate a weakness to light in general. I advise utilizing this flaw to lend more force to your strikes and increase your odds of victory, Master. In lieu of that, scanning indicates this foe possesses a corporeal form. Striking him with your blade should produce approximately equally successful results.”
Easier said than done, but then again if Gen ever let that stop him then he really wouldn’t have become a Hero in the first place. Not that it had been his intention to become a Hero at the time, but… well, the point stood. He briefly disengaged the stalemate, ducked the aggressive swipe that Zant responded with, made his own stab in return and cursed loudly when Zant literally threw himself into an almost impossible backbend to avoid it.
It probably said something about the sorts of situations Gen tended to get himself into that the only thing Fi did in response to any of this was to observe impassively and blink precisely once.
“Thanks Fi,” Gen panted quickly, now exchanging a series of rapid-fire parries. “Hey, do me a favor?”
“I will perform any task that my Master requires of me.”
“Analyze Ganondorf too?”
“Targeting,” Fi announced.
“Wait wait no not for me,” Gen corrected hurriedly. “I’m on Zant duty, I already got what I needed. Go find Dusk and tell him.”
“Retargeting,” Fi amended. Then she sped away in a flurry of sparkles, because she was nothing if not efficient once she had a designated mission.
“Master, I have important information for you,” Fi suddenly said, out of seemingly nowhere, and Dusk gave up on keeping his dignity intact for the day as he once again tripped over his own feet in sheer surprise.
“I thought you were with Gen?”
“My services have been delegated to a secondary target, Master,” Fi informed him. “Target lock: the Dark Beast Ganon A man of Gerudo descent who has steeped himself in Shadow and Twili magics, with the result of the form you see before you. Scanning indicates a possession of sharp horns and considerable physical prowess; it would be wise to maintain your distance from this foe.” She paused just briefly, then continued, “It would also be wise to take this moment to dodge.”
Dusk immediately threw himself to the right, hard , and the massive boar that was Ganon(dorf?) blew past with only a precious few inches to spare. That was… terrifyingly close.
“Excellent form, Master,” Fi complimented, sounding for all the world like she was making a clinical observation instead of giving polite praise, before getting right back to business. “More intensive analysis indicates the presence of a pair of weak points, the first being the gem inlaid in the Beast’s forehead. It is highly reminiscent of a power focus and likely is extremely sensitive to blunt-force impacts”
So, shoot an arrow at it, Dusk translated mentally.
“Secondly, direct your attention to the scar in the Beast’s chest. It is likely that this is a remnant of a former injury, and has structural instability as a result of a poor healing process. Targeted strikes to the area should be highly effective.”
Now that. That was something Dusk could work with.
“Additionally, I took the liberty of scanning all available targets in the moments prior to the moment of conflict engagement. I have information on the Dark Lord Ganondorf compiled for your convenience; do you wish to hear it?”
Dusk felt like that was an exceedingly redundant question, given that he was currently in a fight with the man (beast?). He also felt that Fi should have probably picked literally any other moment to request permission to share information as opposed to this one. But saying that to her face would probably be rude, would also definitely not help the fact that the whole thing was in terrible timing, and really it was just easier to say, “Yes please,” and move on.
“Confirmation acquired. Commencing. The Dark Lord Ganondorf is a relic of times gone by, the villain of a past age sealed away in the Arbiter’s Grounds by the very same sword he chooses to wield. His Gerudo ancestry gives him significant physical abilities - as such, I would advise avoiding confrontation from the front and instead focus on misdirection and approaching from the rear. He possesses the ability to transform into the Dark Beast Ganon, though it is unclear as to whether or not this form is his own decision. He prefers to engage in personal combat rather than utilize a form of magic or long-range weaponry. It would be wise to keep this information in mind in the event of a second change in form, Master.”
“Noted, thank you,” Dusk grunted. At his side, Midna rolled her eyes. Her little wolf was such a stickler for manners, honestly.
“Objective accomplished,” Fi announced, and then promptly dissolved into a flurry of sparkles. Presumably, this put her back in Gen’s sword, but Dusk wasn’t familiar enough with Fi to be sure about that. And also, he didn’t really have the time to worry about it, because Ganon was charging him again and this time the angle was just right and Dusk let himself turn with the momentum of his dodge to bring his sword up and brace-
And Ganon carried himself straight past the blade edge, ripping a gash down the entire side of his left flank in the process.
“Ooh, nice one,” Midna commented approvingly over the earsplitting roar of pain. “But I think you missed a little.”
“No?” Dusk said, and waved a hand at the very-clearly-wounded Ganon. “I didn’t?”
“Yes you did, the blue lady told you to aim for the head or the scar. You appear to have hit neither of those things, little wolf.”
Dusk let out a sigh. “Why are you this way?”
Midna shrugged. “It’s fun.” Then she said, “Also, duck.”
Obediently, Dusk ducked, and narrowly avoided being decapitated by Ganon’s claws. After that there wasn’t really any time for more conversation.
Honestly, Dusk was surprised they’d managed an entire coherent exchange.
At this point, it could safely be stated that Ganon(dorf) was not having a good time.
Therefore, it was also at this point that Zant’s fleeting sanity decided to visit him again and bring back the reminder of the plan that Zant was supposed to be enacting. Nevermind that the plan was irreparably shattered at this point or that continuing to try and follow the plan was only going to make things worse, because the fleeting sanity hadn’t stuck around long enough to remind Zant of those fiddly little details. It had better things to do than to try and wrangle that mess into submission.
And that was why Zant, for no apparent reason, paused in trying to decapitate Gen in order to declare, “Zant is a good worshipper!” and proceeded to immediately stop everything else he was doing in order to cause a fundamental world warp. The landscape blurred, dissolved, reformed, and then sharpened into the shape of what looked like a toxic swamp.
Approximately half the people involved in the warp (this being everyone) promptly fell into said toxic swamp, and because Ganon(dorf) was still not having a good time, he was naturally one of those people. Other, less important people included Dusk - but not Midna because she could levitate - the nearby Mask and Ocarina, Green, Blue, and Red, and Realm. Sketch gave a sharply stilted noise before backpedaling as far as the new landscape would let him, which was - confusingly - not far at all, since the poison swamp was somehow surrounded by steep cliffs on every side. It was very clearly not the Twilight Realm anymore and it was safe to say that absolutely nobody had been expecting that.
Well, except perhaps Gen, who’d had a vague sort of forewarning by Fi, but really, being alerted to the fact that world warping was a potentiality was a completely different thing to having it happen right in front of his face. Also, Gen needed to remember to share Fi’s advice with the rest of the group. That was probably a thing he should do. Just maybe not at this exact moment.
Zelda had narrowly avoided being dropped into the poison swamp by virtue of being just a few steps ahead of Mask and Ocarina, but was now very limited on her running room - which is to say, she had no running room. She was still maintaining the Light sphere, because despite all evidence to the contrary she didn’t trust that it wouldn’t be needed still, and so decided that, in lieu of running, it made the most sense to select the most secure location to barricade in.
In a room without hiding places, the equivalent of this was stepping to the side of the closest Hero, who happened to be the wide-eyed one pressing himself against one of the cliff walls. Zelda followed his gaze to the swamp water and made a little note in her head: hydrophobic, possibly, or potentially just appropriately wary of toxic liquids.
“May I join you?” She asked, because she was nothing if not polite. The question had the added effect of startling the Hero out of his staredown with the swamp water, and he blinked at her a few times before snorting wryly.
“What, join me in my very Heroic cowering against this wall? I didn’t exactly peg you for the fearful type.”
“Nonsense,” Zelda replied crisply. “You were clearly conducting a strategic surveillance of the new and unexpected terrain from a safe distance.”
The Hero snorted again, this time as an attempt to strangle a laugh. “Oh my Din I think that’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. I’m gonna keep that one, thanks.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Zelda returned. “Since you are so observantly inclined, I hope you’ll allow me to stay here in your care?”
“You know, you could just ask.”
“Ah, but where would be the fun in that?” Zelda mused, quirking her mouth ever so slightly.
“I think I understand why Dusk is such a useless tomato when he talks to you,” the Hero snickered. “Also, I can’t remember if we ever had time to introduce ourselves, so you can just call me Sketch. It’s nice to meet you properly, Princess.”
“Yes, I believe there were some extenuating circumstances,” Zelda agreed, amused. Animals didn’t speak, after all. “It is nice to meet you properly as well, Sketch.”
Sketch responded to this by screeching, “LOOK OUT!” and tackling her headlong to the ground. Zant went sailing through the space where Zelda’s head had been not a moment before, and at that point any opportunity for conversation was thrown out a metaphorical window. Sketch launched himself to his feet with a quick, “Sorry!” thrown Zelda’s way, then imposed himself between her and Zant as if it was a completely normal thing to do. Zelda seized the chance to put some distance between herself and the insane Twili, swapping the Light over to her off hand and manifesting her rapier in her dominant one. In close quarters, where mobility was limited, she had no qualms about stabbing her enemies. Zant seemed to be occupied by hissing at Sketch in the same manner that a cat hissed at a canine, which was odd but not necessarily important to the sequence of events.
And then a soaking wet Dusk slammed into Zant, followed in rapid succession by several other Links, Ganon(dorf), and a Train. The next several minutes were comprised of complete chaos, during which Zant shrieked like a banshee, Dusk snarled right back at him, the Train hit the cliff wall and peppered debris everywhere, and Ganon took potshots at anyone in range. He didn’t seem to care that Zant was sometimes the one in range, but at this point in the fight it was pretty clear that Ganon was feeling somewhat frustrated with his battle-partner, and, well, the Links weren’t about to look a gift-boar in the mouth. When the dust settled - via Zant causing another fundamental world warp to a suspended platform in the heart of what appeared to be a volcano and thereby prompting everyone to break up and take stock of their new surroundings - Ganon had pinned Zant down with a paw on the far left, the Links were clustered on the far right, and Zelda had strategically placed herself directly in the middle of said cluster.
Ganon, however, didn’t seem inclined to pay attention to her for the moment, instead leaning down and growling threateningly into Zant’s face.
The Links stared at the pair of them.
“...Did we miss an allegiance change?” the Four asked confusedly.
“No I’m pretty sure this is just generic villainous frustration,” Lore replied. “You know, because evil people have such healthy teamwork and coping mechanisms.”
“This little piggy went to the market,” Zant crooned, seemingly oblivious to Ganon(dorf’s) anger with him and attempting to wiggle the pads of the foot he was pinned beneath.
“...And Zant is just, uh, Like That,” Dusk added.
“This little piggy stayed home...” Zant continued, suddenly ominously. Wide yellow eyes turned to fixate on the group. “ This little piggy had roast Hero.”
Ganon made a satisfied sort of huffing noise, and then he was rearing back on his hind legs and slamming his weight on the platform and the platform was abruptly terrifyingly unstable, and the Links came to the realization that oh dear Din there’s magma down there and we are very rapidly approaching a ninety-degree angle to gravity.
“HOLD ON TO SOMETHING!” Gen screeched.
‘Something’ turned out to be Dusk, who had Iron Boots and also the foreknowledge that the platform was magnetic. ‘Something’ also turned out to be Midna, who had a relationship with gravity that was optional at best and also had hair with the magical grip strength of several dozen hylians. And ‘something’ also turned out to be Shadow, who had a relationship with physics that was tenuous even on the most logical of days and also had the ability to shapeshift into a formless adhesive mass… and who was also still within range of Midna, and therefore felt blackmailed into being helpful. In his defense, Midna had a very large range. Quite possibly it spanned several square miles. It was better to be safe in these sorts of circumstances, and was not to be mistaken as Shadow being… ugh, willingly helpful. He gagged at the thought, which nearly dislodged Speck hanging on around his head-ish area.
“Please stop doing that,” Speck squeaked, which in his opinion was a completely appropriate reaction for the situation he was in - this being, if he lost his grip, he fell to his death. Shadow hissed at him.
“I do what I want.” He would have added something derisive at the end, but then the platform was tilting back to horizontal and this was almost equally as chaotic as the tilt to vertical, and Shadow actually had to concentrate if he didn’t want to be thrown off the surface by inertia.
Okay then. Screw this.
“Ganondorf is the pig, yeah?” He tossed out casually.
“He is, yes,” Dusk confirmed automatically, then squinted at him as the question actually registered. “I wasn’t aware that you cared…?”
“Oh I don’t,” Shadow agreed. “But I care for this whole situation even less. Don’t get in my way if you don’t want to get stabbed.”
And with that segue, Shadow bodily launched himself at Ganon(dorf), shifted into a roiling mass of spikes, and did his level best to impale his opponent at every point of contact.
For the interested, he was actually largely successful. Unfortunately, it only lasted a few moments. If Ganon(dorf) had been alone in the fight, it would arguably have been a game-changing move. Since this was not the case, and since Zant was known to take extreme and oddly personal offense to anything he found to be a threat to his god, what happened next really shouldn't have been a surprise.
“NO ONE EXPECTS THE TWILI INQUISITION!” Zant shrieked, and blasted Shadow full on with what was arguably all the magic at his disposal. Now Shadow, being what he was, went largely unaffected by this, tumbling away with the force of it and only taking a few minor superficial bruises . The rest of the combatants, however, were not Shadow. They were also very affected by Twili magic and were inconveniently within Zant’s range through sheer inability to be anywhere else.
Or, in shorter, less complicated words: suddenly, animals! Again!
“Royu hõremot asõw aõ haremsõt adõn royu hõraefõt elmõst fo ribõrrdeeñeels!” Lore shouted furiously at Zant, which was presumably an insult of some sort based on how Zant dramatically gasped and snapped back, “ Oyu aekõt hatt abkõc!” Which was presumably a retort, of some sort.
There was a brief, almost unnoticeable pause, during which Lore made the discovery that he could in fact still grin like a maniac as a rabbit, and everyone else made the discovery that a rabbit grinning like a manic looked inherently terrifying.
“Ooh, buddy,” Lore chittered smugly. “I know how to Distract you now.”
“Wait,” Midna said, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “What did you say?” She yanked on Shadow’s leash pointedly, then repeated, “What did he say?”
“Ooh, buddy,” Shadow recited in deadpan monotone, “I know how to Distract you now.”
Midna glared at him, and gave the leash a sharp jerk. “ Before that.”
“Royu hõremot asõw aõ haremsõt adõn royu hõraefõt elmõst fo ribõrrdeeñeels,” Shadow gritted out, in a perfect mimicry of Zant’s pronunciation and accent. “Will you please stop using me as translation fodder?”
Midna was too busy laughing hysterically and giving Lore a high-five to deign Shadow with a response to that. Not that she would have honored the request anyways but it was probably the thought that counted. Probably.
“Okay!” Dusk interrupted. “More focus, less tempting fate! Lore, congratulations on whatever just happened and please use it to make sure we all don’t die-”
“Can do!”
“-but we really need to OH DIN EVERYBODY DOWN!”
Obediently, everyone flattened themselves, because at this point it was practically an ingrained response to duck on command. Zant went sailing through the space above their heads, straight over the side of the magnet platform. This was regrettably not nearly as lethal as it should have been, because Zant triggered a minor spatial warp for himself instead of sinking into the magma below - which, rude. The warp deposited him directly in the middle of the group, which everyone else took as their cue to scatter, and then Ganon(dorf) charged in which made everything worse, and then the whole thing went and devolved into chaos. Again . It was somehow even worse in a confined space like this, where the wrong step meant death-by-volcano and even a right step could become a wrong step with enough bad luck.
…Actually no, it made perfect sense that everything would be worse. Just their luck.
The only person who actually seemed to be keeping her head was Zelda, who at some point during the renewed disorder re-cast the borrowed Light over the area - which did nothing to help said disorder, since the sudden return of everyone’s Hylian bodies only contributed to the mess. Speck seemed to have disappeared entirely, which was either bad for the Links or bad for their enemies but also too soon to tell. Ganondorf, for some reason, was benefitting from the same curse-lifting as everyone else and was now once again in possession of opposable thumbs - or in shorter words: suddenly, a male Gerudo!
Zant promptly threw himself on his god and glomped the poor man, which Ganondorf responded to admirably by not immediately smiting him. He did, however, pry Zant off by the collar of his robe and then use him as a throwing projectile. The Four and an unfortunately bystanding Ocarina went down like Bombchu-Bowling Pins, which was shortly followed by Shadow throwing himself at Ganondorf, creating a handy distraction for the rest of the Links to take advantage of. Given that Shadow seemed to have the matter well-in-hand (judging by both the vibe of murder he was giving off and the fact that the Links knew he didn’t take well to having his targets stolen), it was quickly and unanimously decided to target Zant instead.
“So I consulted Fi,” Gen rattled off quickly. “He’s crazy and it’s probably not exploitable, he likes swords, he’s weak to Light and he may or may not cause warps in the fabric of space-time depending on his mood. She recommended distance and never letting our guards down, basically. Any questions?”
“I have an objection ,” Lore announced.
“If it’s about you figuring out how to exploit his crazy, then trust me, we noticed,” Gen told him.
“I withdraw my objection!”
Gen sighed. “Any other questions… or objections?”
“Help,” the Four squeaked, from where they were squished beneath Ocarina who was in turn squished beneath Zant and struggling to keep Zant from stabbing them.
“Crap, sorry!”
The next two minutes consisted of Dusk hauling Zant off, Midna taking a potshot while Zant was being manhandled, the Four valiantly attempting to recover their synchronicity, and Lore shouting over it all in a language that nobody but he, Midna, and Zant understood. Somewhere, unnoticed, a Picori-sized Speck began hiking his way up Shadow’s pants, which would have been a bold move on his part if Shadow was in any position to pay attention. Spoiler: he wasn’t. But in his defense he was busy trying to butcher a pig, so his lack of focus could be forgiven.
Meanwhile the rest of the Links had taken advantage of the beautiful gift that was a distracted Ganondorf and were now squaring off with Zant. It was nineteen to one - seventeen Links, plus Midna, plus Zelda - and they had the Twili surrounded. It would have been an impressively threatening display, if Zant was the sort of person to be impressively threatened. Sadly, that would have required Zant to have a permanent grasp of sanity, and his actual mental state was… not that.
Hence, Zant’s completely logical and absolutely understandable response of triggering another fundamental world warp.
To an underwater cavern.
It was a testament to the reaction time of a Hero that most of the Links immediately swapped out their gear for more waterproofed things, or to latch onto the nearest Link who did if they themselves didn’t. It was also a testament to the reaction time of a sibling that, near-unanimously, everyone in the group twisted around to find Sketch.
…who was currently in the middle of a clear panic attack.
His hands were clamped over his nose and mouth and his shoulders were heaving as though he’d be hyperventilating if he weren’t underwater and therefore trying very hard not to. It was hard to judge his expression, but judging by what the group could see of his white-rimmed eyes over his fingers, it was probably terror. Despite not having discussed anything previously, everyone reacted as though they’d rehearsed it a thousand times.
Ocarina, in a move that only made sense in hindsight, yanked off his now-blue hat and handed it to Mask, who tied it tightly over his face like a bandanna. Obviously, since it was blue, it let him breathe, which was good because the next thing he did was yank out a Zora mask from his pockets and slap it onto Sketch’s face. There was a bright flash and a twisting impression as the magic went to work, and Sketch promptly began to actually hyperventilate as soon as his now-Zora lungs kicked in. In almost perfect sync with this, Gen and Lore materialized on either side, grabbed his arms, and started hauling him up to the water’s surface above, followed quickly by all the Links - and Zelda - who couldn’t breathe underwater. And in almost perfect sync with that, Dusk pivoted, glared , and proceeded to punch Zant in the face with much more speed and force than should really have been possible underwater.
Zant went wildly sprawling, once again in accordance with physics, and Dusk swam swiftly after him, which prompted the rest of the Links who could breathe underwater to follow his lead. The only exceptions to this were Shadow, who wasn’t about to let a stupid thing like being underwater stop him from committing murder, and Speck, who by now had made it up to Shadow’s shirt collar and wasn’t about to let all that progress go to waste. Plus, now he could take advantage of underwater physics, which would make hopping from Shadow’s shoulder over to Ganondorf’s so much easier.
Meanwhile on the surface, Sketch was… not quite panicking anymore? But he was certainly balancing on a fine edge, and the fact that there wasn’t a way to get out of the water was definitely not helping.
…Who was he kidding, he was totally still panicking.
“He’s totally still panicking,” Lore said, as if to confirm this out loud for the rest of the world to hear too. Then he continued to Gen, “I don’t know how to fix that, do you know how to fix that?”
“No, and after this I’m going to fix it so that I do,” Gen grumbled. “What did Dusk do the last time with Steam?”
“I think he sat on him,” Lore supplied. They both looked down at the water they were treading in and frowned.
“Well that won’t work here,” Gen said. “Also, Sketch is barely remembering to breathe as is, I don’t think putting pressure on his lungs will help much.”
“Fair point,” Lore admitted, clearly thinking. “Do you suppose that if we knock Zant unconscious, the world will go back to normal?”
“It’s probably worth a shot, at least,” Gen agreed.
“Perfect, I’m gonna go do that then,” Lore declared. “Sketch, hang tight, I’ll have this fixed in, like, eight minutes. Twelve tops.”
Sketch wheezed. Lore patted him on the head, looped his half of Sketch’s body over Gen’s shoulders, then took a deep breath and dove before Gen could say anything else. Like a protest. Or a complaint. Gen felt like he could fire a lot of complaints right now. At least Sketch was a compliant patient who didn’t struggle and drown the both of them.
…Then again that might be the trauma. Gen twisted his neck to gauge Sketch’s expression and grimaced. Yeah, that was most likely the trauma. Even the fact that Sketch was still wearing Mikau’s face and was currently a Zora didn’t disguise it.
Maybe he should take that off? He’d seen Mask do it before, the seam was under the jawline, right?
“Hold still, I’m gonna fix your species,” Gen said, and Sketch would have rolled his eyes at that if he weren’t still hyperventilating.
Props to the Mermaid Suit, Lore grudgingly admitted, because it got him down to the bottom of the watery pit in ten seconds flat, and that was impressive given how deep this thing was. The Links still at the surface were all just black specks bobbing against a bright backdrop, and Lore could block them out with his finger if he’d had the time to play with optical illusions like that.
Later. He had a Twili to take out right now. Lore took a deep breath - another reason he’d picked the Mermaid suit, despite his numerous other options - and yelled, “ANTÕZ!”
That got Zant’s attention, Lore noted smugly, along with Midna’s attention - which, fair, he had just loudly addressed her mortal enemy in their native language again - and by proxy, also Dusk’s, Ocarina’s, and Mask’s attention, because they’d been whaling on Zant before Lore arrived. Nice, Lore approved. It was great when everybody had the same idea!
Wait, no, be gleeful later. He had a job to do.
“Ah, no, that’s not your name,” Lore continued, tapping his chin mock-thoughtfully. “What was it again?”
Zant attempted to screech something in reply, though it just came out as a lot of bubbles. Lore ignored him.
“Oh right! Stabby Stabby Slice Man!”
Zant bubbled even louder. Sadly, he remained unintelligible.
“Now now, Stabby Stabby Slice Man-” Even louder bubbling “-you have to respect the Rules of the insulting nickname strategy. Everybody knows that insulting nicknames given in the middle of a fight as a method of distraction are valid in a court of law and legally able to be used in any scenario afterwards.” Lore made pointed eye contact with Midna, then flicked his gaze back to the still-loudly-bubbling Zant. How had the Twili not run out of oxygen yet? Maybe he didn’t need to breathe? What was the lung function of the Twilight people anyways? Ooh, wait, how long could a Twili yodel if they didn’t need to inhale? He had to consult Midna, the sheer possibilities-
-needed to wait, he was in the middle of something, focus. Lore pulled his brain back on track with the speed of experience. Where was he? Right, legal jargon, right.
“Now, luckily for you I have just the paperwork you need to sign!” Lore grinned cheerfully, making exactly no moves to produce said paperwork. “Not right now, you understand, being underwater and all. Makes things a bit dicey. But I’ll be happy to give you a full rundown of how many times you’ll need to sign your full legal name and how many copies in triplicate you’ll need to file in order to make your request go through the system as agonizingly slowly as possible! To start, we’ll need to find a red pen. This is so the first copy will be rejected on account of red ink being legally unacceptable in court - and I know what you’re thinking, but trust me, this is the vital first step to getting your paperwork accepted in the longest amount of time. On the second copy, you’re going to need to misspell your own last name, thereby accidentally bestowing all the according rights and legal acquisitions onto a complete stranger! Getting that fixed will take, at minimum, six months.”
By this point, Zant was producing so many bubbles that it was impossible to see his head. Lore tilted his head, then grinned wider. “Oh, not to worry! If we play it right we can drag that particular process out up to eighteen months! The trick is in the deadlines. Sadly, after that we’ll have to submit the third copy correctly, as anything beyond that will flag you to be audited by the IRS. Now you may think that this would actually drag the process out even longer, and you technically would be correct, but in my opinion the IRS is more trouble than it’s worth, so we’re not going to go there.”
Here, Lore paused for dramatic effect. “Oh, why would the IRS get involved in a legal name change? Well you see, it’s because now would probably be ideal.”
And that was when Midna, who had been taking advantage of the Distraction, tapped Zant on the shoulder and proceeded to uppercut him so hard that he broke the surface of the water above. By several dozen feet. Which was, again, deeply in disregard of underwater physics.
Lore watched the little Zant-speck flop back down with a splash and lie motionless, as several other Link-specks surrounded him, and gave Midna a thumbs-up. “ Nice shot!”
Midna inspected her fingernails idly and flashed a fanged smile in return. Then the world distorted itself, reality reasserting as Zant was no longer conscious to control it, and the Twilight Realm finally reappeared… along with all of the side effects.
Or, in shorter, less complicated words - suddenly, animals! Followed almost immediately by Princess Zelda whipping out the Light to fix it, which meant - suddenly, hylians!
“I am going to have such a migraine after all this is done,” Steam moaned, cradling his head in his hands.
“I’ll save a Potion for you,” Gen promised. He took a moment to adjust a pale and shaking Sketch in his arms, then said, “In the meantime, I’m conscripting you to help me guard Sketch until he can actually hold his own weight again. I will also happily accept volunteers.”
The Four cleared their throats. “What if we volunteer to keep Ganondorf away from you and Steam?”
“Strangely specific, but that also works,” Gen said, squinting. “Is there something I should know?”
“No, we’ve got it,” the Four said, and then very abruptly launched themselves over Gen’s head to bodily tackle Ganondorf (and Shadow by proxy).
“How long had he been there!?” Ocarina demanded, as everyone scurried into more battle-ready positions. “How did we not notice he was right there!?”
“In our defense,” Mask said, and then spread his arms wide to indicate everything around them instead of saying it all out loud.
“...Okay that’s a fair point but still!”
Sometime during Shadow getting tackled-by-proxy, Speck had hopped from one shirt collar to another and was now dangling precariously from Ganondorf’s right earring. This was… probably gonna suck, now that he thought about it. He hadn’t actually tried this before, but it had always seemed like a good idea in theory. And, well, when better than a fight to save the world to try it out?
Nevermind that those were the only sorts of fights he seemed to get into nowadays.
Speck adjusted his grip on the earring, then his sword, swung himself up, and slammed the entire blade straight into Ganondorf’s ear.
Ganondorf reacted appropriately. Which is to say, he immediately screamed bloody murder. A large hand shot up and scrabbled at Speck, who held onto his sword for dear life. He was then treated to the incredibly unpleasant experience of being grabbed by fingers larger than he was and being bodily thrown for the equivalent of several hundred feet. Thankfully, he weighed about an ounce and a half, so his landing was more of a gentle drift-to-a-stop than anything else, but still. That had been startling.
Note to self, have an exit plan next time.
“Speck?” said a voice, knocking said Link out of his thoughts, and Speck looked up to see Red peering down at him worriedly. “Was that you just now?”
“.'.. .... ...........,” Speck said, then flapped his hands apologetically when Red blinked in confusion and started shouting instead. “I’ve been contributing!”
“Oh, nice!” Red replied.
“Have you seen my jar!?” Speck yelled. “I lost track of it during one of Zant’s world warps!”
“Well, no,” Red admitted. “But I think we started the fight somewhere over there?” He pointed helpfully. “So that’s my best guess. D’you want help looking?”
“Please!” Speck shouted, and with that the two of them wandered off. Presumably they would remember the rest of the battle… at some point.
Everyone else, meanwhile, was watching Ganondorf curse a blue streak while clutching at his incredibly bloody ear and sort of wondering what had just happened, because Speck hadn’t actually told anyone what he was up to. To those not in the know - i.e., everyone - it really looked as though Ganondorf’s ear had just spontaneously ruptured itself.
Weird. But also, very exploitable , and exploiting weird things happened to be right up a Link’s alley.
“Status update?” Dusk said to Shadow, clearly taking advantage of the moment of (relative) calm.
“He’s not dead yet and I’m going to fix that,” Shadow growled.
Dusk raised his eyebrows, but nodded nonetheless. “So how many times should I assume you’ve stabbed him, then?”
“ Several.”
“You know I’m going to have to veto the killing for now, right?”
Shadow spun on him with a snarl. “And you’re going to stop me? ”
“No,” Dusk said, unruffled. “Midna will.”
Shadow literally stopped mid-growl, held his position for a few moments, then deflated in clear - but angry - defeat. “ Fine, ” he spat. “Just - fine. Whatever. Fine,”
Dusk waited.
“...I’m still going to maim him,” Shadow stated.
“That’s perfectly acceptable,” Dusk agreed.
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t, but since that seems to be a sticking point for you I’ll let it slide,” Dusk said, and then moved on as though he hadn’t just casually destroyed Shadow’s entire worldview with a single sentence. “We need to take him out quickly, we’ve got casualties.”
“Hmm,” Shadow said, strangled.
“Everyone aim for the white scar!” Dusk called, pitching his voice to carry.
“We remember!” Realm shouted back.
Ganondorf turned to stare balefully at them, stalking forward “I can still hear you ,” he rumbled menacingly.
“What a shame,” Mask quipped, which earned him a narrowly-avoided sword to the head. That pretty effectively put an end to the moment of respite.
Meanwhile, Zelda poked a foot at Zant’s unconscious body and watched him flop bonelessly back into place. “Hmm,” she said.
A few feet away, Gen tilted his head. “You got something to say?”
“My status as royalty combined with the expectations of propriety prevent me from indulging in the luxury of speaking my true thoughts aloud,” Zelda replied. “However, I must say that I am feeling a pronounced sense of satisfaction at the moment.”
Gen rolled that around for a moment, then grinned. “You enjoyed watching Zant get what he deserved.”
Next to him, Steam snickered.
“Oh, every moment,” Zelda agreed. “After what he did to my kingdom and my people, I feel that justice has been adequately served. For now. Though I must extend my sympathies for your friend.”
“Brother,” Steam corrected absently.
Zelda nodded, accepting that. “He will recover?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Gen said.
“Excellent,” Zelda said. “Then, if you will excuse me.”
“What for?”
“Ah, you see,” Zelda clarified, “it is the duty of a Queen to protect her people. One cannot let the Hero do all the work.”
“I thought you were the Princess?”
“I gave myself a promotion,” Zelda quipped, which got a second snicker out of Steam and even a shaky smile from Sketch, who up until this point hadn’t responded at all. Zelda returned the smile, then nodded at the other two and took off sprinting at an adjacent angle to the rest of the fight going on with Ganondorf.
“...Strategic archery perch?” Steam asked, watching her go.
“Looks like it,” Gen agreed.
“No, I meant - well, yes, I guess that is what Zelda’s doing, but I was talking about for us?”
“ Oh.” Gen visibly considered that for a moment, looking down at Sketch. “I think… if we’re needed. But right now, given Sketch, I’d rather not.”
“Fair,” Steam agreed, and once again assumed a defensive position. Just in case.
To be fair, there weren’t a lot of quickly-accessible archery perches in this specific section of the Twilight Realm, but Zelda had made do with worse before, and besides, now that Ganondorf was too distracted to target her it was the perfect time to take him out before that could change. She carefully picked her position (up a staircase, taking advantage of a Twilit Fall to obscure her body, out of Ganondorf’s immediate range of vision), shifted her rapier back into her bow, and sighted down along the shaft.
…Acceptable margin of error. Zelda settled into her stance and waited. She would only get one completely unexpected shot, and she would not be throwing that chance away.
Shadow was experiencing an Emotion and he did not like it.
Of course he hated them! Because they hated him! That was how this worked! That was how it had always worked, and would continue to work! He hated them, he did! And they- they-
They-
…didn’t.
But that wasn’t how it worked, because Shadow hated them because they hated him but if they didn’t hate him then that meant that Shadow didn’t… either.
And that was impossible. They had to hate him, because if they didn’t, then that meant that they liked him.
Shadow didn’t know what to do with that.
He… it had to have been a joke. Dusk had been distracted, that was all, he couldn’t have seen , he couldn’t have known . It was just a throwaway comment in the heat of a fight. That was all it was.
Because if it wasn’t, if it was maybe, possibly, potentially real, then Shadow had done something very stupid and had let himself… start to get… attached.
And the very idea of that was stupid and irrational and definitely not anything that Shadow had ever let himself do since the first time he woke up and realized that the man who made him would never think of him as anything more than a puppet, and something that he had sworn to himself that he would never do again, so this couldn’t be fondness or affection or attachment because if it was-!
…if it was.
Oh goddesses it was.
Shadow… liked them. And he hated them for doing this to him but he couldn’t because he liked them but he hated them but he liked them and he-
-shoved it all down where he couldn’t feel anything anymore, fixed a snarl on his mouth, and brought his sword down on Ganondorf’s head with all the strength that he usually held back because he couldn’t be bothered to spare the attention when he had more important things to lock up.
Shadow was not experiencing an Emotion. And that was how it was supposed to be.
That was how it was supposed to be.
In unison, Din and Nayru turned their heads away from reality and stared at Farore.
“He’s fine,” Farore said. “He’s more than fine, actually! I am so proud of him.”
“...are you sure about that,” Din said. “Are you sure about that.”
“Stage One is denial,” Farore replied. “The fact that he’s even hitting Stage One at all right now is amazing progress. He’s so much more receptive to being loved than I had even been hoping for! At this rate I’ll have a mature Courage in less than six months!”
“...Farore, are you using the Five Stages Of Grief to track your baby Aspect’s progress?”
“Of course I am, why?”
“No particular reason,” Nayru said, sharing a glance with Din and making a mental note to stay far away during the Anger stage. Farore did not notice this, because she was too busy making soft maternal noises and staring lovingly at her baby Courage.
“Oh look, he’s going in for a stabbing! He’s adorable when he does that!”
“I think love has made her blind,” Din whispered resignedly.
Ganondorf had a sword sticking out of his chest, just to the right of the scar.
He was also, in blatant defiance of what usually happened when someone got stabbed through the chest, still standing, and still fighting. He hadn’t even bothered to take the sword out, what sort of hax-level nonsense was that?
“Can we have that back?” Vio called, pointing to the sword. “It’s Shadow’s, I think he might be emotionally attached.”
“Not really,” Shadow hissed, flourishing a hand and manifesting another, identical sword into it.
“Oh, okay. Never mind!”
“Wait,” Ocarina said, “have all your weapons been extensions of your magic - body? - this entire time?”
Shadow answered this by whipping the new sword at Ganondorf’s face, and then producing yet another one to charge in with while his opponent was distracted.
“That would be a yes,” Blue guessed. “Geez, it’s like he’s got Unlimited Blade Works in there or something.”
Green quickly whapped him upside the head for breaking things, but didn’t bother with the usual verbal scolding because they were still in the middle of a fight. “Less talking, more combat!”
Ganondorf unintentionally punctuated this by choosing that precise moment to yank the sword from his chest and meet Shadow’s incoming blow with both hands - one holding the white sword he’d started with, and the other holding the black one he’d just extracted. Shadow narrowed his eyes. The black sword in Ganondorf’s grip dissolved into the black sword in Shadow’s, and the change in leverage almost broke the standoff.
“Bold move,” Ganondorf said.
“I will never leave a piece of myself in the hands of someone like you ever again, ” Shadow spat at him.
“I don’t even know who you are.”
Shadow decided that the best response to that was to scream into Ganondorf’s face. He would have followed it up by mauling, but that was when the rest of the Links crashed back into the fight and everything got very confusing for the umpteenth time in a row, which did break the standoff. Chaos ensued. At this point it was pretty much par for the course.
Far in the distance, Zelda sighted down her arrow shaft. Almost…
And…
There.
She released. The arrow went streaking across the sky, trailing a bright golden glow. Light Magic, as insufferably obvious as ever. Sometimes Zelda wished that her family’s spellcasting legacy was something more subtle, or at the very least something that didn’t blatantly advertise when it was being used. This was why her most optimal combat results came when her attacks weren’t being expected.
Still, it was useful in situations like this, where the chaos of the battle distracted from literally everything else.
The arrow pierced straight through the side of Ganondorf’s neck and discharged enough Light to cleanse a Stallord in a single shot - or, to completely incapacitate a Shadow Magic user. Zelda relaxed her stance and nodded to herself.
That should do it.
The Links collectively blinked at the paralyzed Gerudo on his knees. Following the path the arrow had come from revealed the distant figure of Zelda, calmly dispersing her bow and stepping off her chosen perch. Looking back at Ganondorf revealed that he was still completely paralyzed and didn’t seem like he’d be recovering anytime soon, judging by the amount of Light crawling up and down his frame.
“...Did she just win for us?” Realm said slowly.
“Yeah,” Dusk breathed, clearly lovestruck, before shaking his head to clear it. “She does that.”
“ Huh. If you let her get away, we’re all going to be extremely disappointed in you.”
Dusk once again turned bright red, but managed a, “Noted,” all the same.
“Hey, so,” Mask called, breaking the conversation up, “he’s not actually defeated yet, any ideas on how we can fix that?”
Ganondorf made a soft noise of surprise. There was a sword sticking out of his chest again, this time directly though the center of the scar, and also clearly coming from the back. His body crumpled, dissolved into the now-familiar void, and left behind in his place, was Steam.
“What?” he said, when everyone stared at him. “I wanted to get a shot in too.”
Meanwhile, Zant was still unconscious, and somehow also still present. Sketch took a deep breath, pushed himself up off the ground, and shuffled his way over.
He poked Zant in the foot with the point of his sword.
Zant promptly dissolved into a void.
“Jerk,” Sketch gasped, before his knees promptly gave out again. Gen, who was turning into a borderline-psychic medic apparently, was there to catch him before he’d even gone halfway down.
“Feel better?” Gen asked.
“Mmrrmph,” Sketch groaned.
“Yeah, panic attacks suck.”
Regrouping was slow and a bit confusing, because somewhere along the way several people had gotten lost in the chaos. Gen and Sketch weren’t too hard to find, because at least they were stationary, but Vio, Green, and Blue nearly broke their collective sanity trying to figure out where Red had gone, and Shadow’s exceedingly unhelpful description of, “well he was on my shirt collar at some point,” for Speck was almost even more concerning than that . Finding them both together was a profound relief.
And that was Gen’s cue to take control of the situation. “Alright! Everyone line up, it’s time to treat injuries and you all know by now that I don’t take no for an answer.” He pinned Shadow with a glare. “And that means you too.”
“I am literally an eldritch abomination made from negative emotions and magic,” Shadow snapped. “I don’t need medical attention.”
Gen’s face did something very interesting. “I. Don’t. Care.” He suddenly seemed far, far taller than his actual height. “Not all injuries are physical. You participated in this fight, you participate in the aftermath. Get. In. Line.”
Despite Gen not really having any supernatural abilities, the Links could swear that his eyes were glowing. Shadow got in line.
(The box of emotions cracked.)
Zelda made her move once Dusk had been examined and approved by Gen, while the rest were distracted with their own medical issues and there would be a measure of privacy.
“We appear to have a mutual interest in each other,” she said, driving straight to the point of the matter. “I would like to propose a courtship.”
“...okay,” Dusk squeaked.
“Obviously, you are currently otherwise occupied with more important matters,” Zelda waved her hand towards the voids, “so full official documentation of this courting may wait. This will give me time to, ah, break the news, so to speak, to my kingdom.”
“Wait,” Dusk said suddenly. “This doesn’t make me King, does it?”
“Would you like to be?”
“Not… particularly, no.”
“Excellent,” Zelda said, satisfied. “No, this will not make you King. I believe Prince Consort will suit your desires much better?”
“Probably suits the desires of your court better too.”
“Mmm, yes, I daresay they would have fought me greatly had I chosen to make the kingdom’s next ruler a man from a small farming town,” Zelda mused. “They may still fight the decision to court you as my Consort, in all actuality. We shall simply have to introduce you as the Hero Who Fought The Twilight instead.”
Dusk had turned red again. “I’m sorry, you’re courting me?”
Zelda tilted her head. “Of course? It was me who initiated the idea and it was you who accepted. Do you find the idea displeasing?”
“Nope,” Dusk said quickly. “No, not at all, I just. Isn’t it usually the other way around?”
“I should think that we two are well past all that antiquated ideology.”
Dusk thought about that for a moment. “That’s fair.”
“Excellent,” Zelda declared again. “Now, may I provide you with a token of affection to symbolize the beginning of this courtship?”
“Oh, um,” Dusk said, which trailed into a strangled sort of squeak when Zelda took his fingers in her own and gently slipped off his glove. She pressed a kiss to the back of his hand.
Dusk was now an entirely new shade of red. This was well past overripe tomato territory. Meanwhile, Gen slapped a hand over Lore’s mouth just in time to prevent a wolf-whistle.
“Until we meet again,” Zelda said, placing Dusk’s glove into his limp fingers and giving him a soft, genuine smile. Then she spun on the spot and teleported away, presumably back to the Castle to start doing damage control. There was a lot of damage to take control of.
Dusk stared at the spot where Zelda had been. The hand she’d kissed slowly came up to cradle against his chest.
“...I think she likes me too,” he whispered, completely stunned.
“Congratulations,” Midna said dryly. “I’ve only been telling you this for, what, six months now?”
“I’m being courted,” Dusk said, starting to smile now. Midna sighed, rolled her eyes, then smiled too.
“Yeah, you are, little wolf. Don’t screw it up now.”
“...Oh Din I need to get her a courting gift!”
“I think she’s willing to wait on that part until after you fix the void problem,” Midna said. “Speaking of which?”
“Oh,” Dusk said, and looked over at his seventeen excitedly-watching siblings. So much for privacy. “...you all get five minutes to freak out and then we get back to business.”
“That’s fair,” Wind said, at which point they all swarmed him with loud chatter and even louder congratulations.
In a corner of Demise’s head, Twilight Ganondorf was quietly seething. Demise was appreciating this only because he was the first of the returned Incarnations to work through their fury in actual silence. It was probably the first not-terrible experience he’d had with them since this whole mess started.
…although, this was probably due to the fact that Zant seemed to be unconscious. And no, it wasn’t Demise’s doing. He’d just shown up like that.
Demise almost had to wonder what it was that those Heroes were doing, to throw Zant back into his head completely knocked out. Then again, he’d never liked Zant anyways, so he didn’t feel particularly bothered.
Not that he’d ever liked any of them, to be fair.
I have a report , Twilight Ganondorf spoke up suddenly, and Demise very nearly disintegrated something. Then he thought better of it and disintegrated it anyways. What, he had a reputation to uphold.
If you’re still collecting weak points, you will want to hear this.
“Out with it,” he growled.
One of them has a crippling - and exploitable - fear of water.
Demise took a moment to comprehend that.
“Oh?” He prompted gleefully.
He froze up completely. Several of the Heroes abandoned the fight in favor of looking after him instead.
“Exploitable indeed,” Demise murmured. “You clearly didn’t take advantage of this properly, otherwise we wouldn’t need to be having this conversation, but don’t worry. I think I can make good use of this information.”
He mentally blocked out Twilight Ganondorf’s sudden and furious shouting at the insult, and instead reached out to the connections of his power in reality. It was well within his power to influence the network of his voids and how they were linked to another. He hadn’t seen a reason to do it until now, but with this sort of an advantage…
Bellum and Ocean Ganondorf were both well-familiar with the benefits of a sunken battlefield.
Demise would take great pleasure in sending some Heroic playthings their way next.
Notes:
Y’all remember, waaaaaaaaay back in the day of this fic’s first uploads, where I somehow had the time, the Writer’s Blessing, and the reasonable word counts to churn out a chapter roughly every three days?
Hehe… heh.
Man, I miss that.
All self-flagellation aside, behold! Zant! Also Ganondorf was there sometimes, but mostly Zant!
Also featuring Character Development with Shadow, Trauma Time with Sketch, Being OP with Queen Zelda, and several running gags about form changes.
From a player perspective, I do understand why Zant and Ganondorf weren’t paired as a fight in TP. From a storytelling perspective though, I desperately wish it had happened, because can you imagine the chaos? I tried to use most of what I thought would have happened, but genuinely there’s so much potential here that I’m probably still going to think of ideas for this fight months from now and be annoyed that I can’t add them in.
Still, 15k+ words is probably enough.
Linguistic Translations:
Darkling
-Royu hõremot asõw aõ haremsõt adõn royu hõraefõt elmõst fo ribõrrdeeñeels! (Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!)
-Oyu aekõt hatt abkõc! (You take that back!)Thanks to natlysao3, Master_Spoiler, warrior_of_wisdom, Wings_of_Silver, Moonfirekitsune, Guest #336, Seisha, TwilightHour, Guest #337, Guest #338, Guest #339, Guest #340, Guest #341, Guest #342, Guest #343, Bradleys_angel, Guest #344, Guest #345, weeb110, Guest #346, Guest #347, PCRetroGamer, Wolfunicorn, Rachit257, SpecktacularWind, YeetMcDaberson, Guest #348, EJElecFlameTails, Guest #349, Guest #350, FaeKing, Guest #351, ViableSourceMaterial, Guest #352, Guest #353, MsDarinas, Guest #354, Guest #355, Guest #356, Guest #357, Guest #358, Guest #359, Guest #360, Guest #361, VampiresRhot, Guest #362, Guest #363, Guest #364, OkamiHeart, RaspberriesAndLemonJuice, Guest #365, Ranting_pirate, msperfectsheep, Guest #366, Guest #367, Guest #368, Guest #369, Guest #370, Guest #371, ArcaneCougar, Guest #372, YummyYu, Guest #373, Guest #374, Guest #375, TheNotSoFantastique, LittleDemonKing, Guest #376, Guest #377, Guest #378, Guest #379, TacticalFan, Omegathekid, SPPenn,TheRedeemer1995, TheNewWorldFool, RCWAK, Project_Prometheus2020, hssr96, JDH, Guest #380, Guest #381, Guest #382, Endmoon3164, Disathairne, Jaybird314, powerofmettatonneo3, Guest #383, TheLegendOfFrenchFry, Guest #384, HoneyHunny, Pseudonym_Writer, Guest #385, Guest #386, Red5T65, TrashyPanda13, SweetStrawberry, Legion222, Guest #387, watery_melon_baller, IFBench, Guest #388, Guest #389, Osomi_Eithr, Guest #390, Inkpot, Bermellon, Guest #391, Guest #392, Kenandeliza, Guest #393, Guest #394, Guest #395, LuckyHorseshoeCrab, bonedoggle, Coremon8, Guest #396, Guest #397, Guest #398, Guest #399, Guest #400, Guest #401, MrCraven888, dreambelayed, itsageneticpredisposition, Tardirokz, Guest #402, Guest #403, Guest #404, ObsidianMirror, Guest #405, brice51297, Firemists, Guest #406, SardonicMemory, Guest #407, Guest #408, Guest #409, BlueFractalFirebird, Guest #410, Jeru_Skyrider, aSpaceGhost, Guest #411 Guest #412, Guest $413, Guest #414, RookieQuasar, WormWritesThings, Bonuscat, wodniw_a, Gueat #415, Guest #416, Guest #417, AkaruiHeiwa, Guest #418, phantombat, IndigoRose, Rosescarletful, Guest #419, Guest #420, Guest $421, Guest #422, Guest #423, LegendOfSmut, Guest #424, Stov1212, Guest #424, Guest #425, Guest #426, Guest #427, TheChamberlain, Guest #428, SkyFleur384, TheDaylights, Guest #429, godmodebeginswithlesbians, Faranon23, Zeldalina, Guest #430, khaosmaster64, Guest #431, Guest #432, Guest #433, Guest #434, Guest #435, LadyLizabeth78, Guest #436, Guest #437, Lericekrispietreat, Guest #437, niacdoial, Guest #438, Guest #439, Cinna_mon_Swirl, Guest #440, Guest #441, Guest #442, Guest #443, Guest #444, Akieye, Guest #445, Guest #446, Kliktichik, Guest #447, Guest #448, Guest #449, Guest #450, Guest #451, Guest #452, Guest #453, Guest #454, VoidRat13, Guest #455, Guest #456, Guest #457, GamerOtakuSama, PocketChange_and_FallenStars, HoopHop, Guest #458, Clopina, skeletonPaintbrush, thebleedingeffect, Guest #459, Guest #460, JustAnotherFan11037, yeetern, Guest #461, Acorous, Guest #462, Book_lover12, MaybeLyria, and The_Great_Wrennicles_the_IV, for the Kudos!
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(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 31: Sir, That's My Emotional Support Sibling
Summary:
Sketch would like to leave a scathingly-worded single star review with the supplier of his phobia, please and thank you.
Notes:
(I don’t own the Legend of Zelda, may the Universe forgive me for skipping the usual disclaimer shenanigans. But! This is important, so without further ado-)
Trigger Warning: this chapter contains a panic/anxiety attack. Those who need to skip should stop reading at ‘Gen stared at him. Sketch stared back, then leaned away slightly.’ and can resume reading at ‘Sketch inhaled obediently. It was far less shaky than the previous times.’
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“You know,” Mask said, “I think this might be the least amount of collateral damage we’ve ever caused.”
“We collectively wrecked almost the entire Twilight Realm,” Steam said slowly.
“...Let me rephrase that. I think this might be the least amount of collateral damage we’ve ever caused to Hyrule.”
Steam thought about that for a moment. “Yeah okay, I can give you that one.”
Case in point, the Twilight Realm really had been a mess . They’d had to get Midna to heavy-lift an entire building’s worth of debris away from the Mirror just to get back through. It was likely that she was holding a grudge against at least one of them.
But on the bright side, they hadn’t made more work for the local Zelda this time!
Meanwhile, in Hyrule Castle, in the midst of an intense debate with the council about her courtship (and also causing several of the more conserverative members a collective heart attack with the state of her torn dress and tied-up hair), Zelda was hit with the sudden and certain feeling that there were consequences being underestimated. She made an idle mental note to follow up on that, then went back to dancing verbal circles around her advisors.
If she played this just right, the argument would end with her council thinking it had all been their idea in the first place.
“...I think we jinxed something,” Wind muttered to himself.
The rest of the Links were doing the normal post-battle things, such as drinking the Potions that Gen was forcing on them, sitting still for the examinations that Gen wasn’t taking no as an answer for, or going to stand obediently off to the side where Gen said they should be once he was done examining them. There was a certain sort of pattern developing there, if one squinted.
“And you’re sure you’re feeling okay now,” Gen said doubtfully, frowning down at Sketch.
“ Yes , already,” Sketch sighed. “I feel a little shaky, but otherwise fine. Can you please stop looking at me like you think I’m about to keel over?”
Gen muttered something under his breath that was probably uncomplimentary. “You had a full-blown phobia trigger, forgive me for being a little apprehensive still.”
“You’re forgiven, you massively overprotective nerd.”
“I’m the perfect amount of overprotective!”
Sketch snickered. Gen squinted at him, then leaned back with a huff.
“You come find me the moment you feel like something might be wrong still,” he ordered.
“I can do that.”
They don’t care about you , Shadow reminded himself. And you don’t care about them. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
“Hey Shadow!” Speck called, waving cheerfully from across the way. “I wanted to say thank-you for letting me climb your clothes! I know it was probably a little distracting but it was really nice of you not to flick me off.”
“ DON’T TALK TO ME!” Shadow erupted.
Speck blinked. “Okay, I can do that, I just wanted to let you know. Thank you again. Sorry.”
Shadow screamed through his teeth and dissolved into the shade of a nearby tree. Speck blinked again.
“...that’s probably normal behavior?” Speck said to himself doubtfully. Maybe he should ask Midna, just in case.
Meanwhile, Shadow took advantage of being in the half-world of cast-shadows to continue screaming his frustrations where nobody could hear him.
( Crack-crack-crack went the box.)
Elsewhere, Farore indulged herself in her happy dance. Her baby was doing so well!
“I feel like we should be concerned,” Din muttered. “Do you feel like we should be concerned? Because I really think we ought to be concerned.”
“This may just be one of those things where it has to get worse before it can get better,” Nayru said doubtfully.
Farore pointedly ignored them, because what did they know? Nothing, that’s what. She took a few more moments to treat herself before running her usual checkup on the rest of Courage now that the fighting was over.
She paused. Tilted her head to the side. Squinted fiercely at the middle distance. Then she flicked her fingers and pulled up a live feed of the New Hero Of Hyrule and squinted even more.
“…unacceptable,” she declared. “Absolutely not. There will be no emotional repression on my watch, nope, none.”
Nayru leaned over and peered at Farore’s projection. “We’ll be experiencing a delay in the projected travel time, then?”
“As long as it takes,” Farore agreed irately. She made for a surprisingly accurate image of an overprotective mother-cucco. Both her sisters prudently gave her some space.
“You’re what,” Dusk said flatly.
“Coming with you,” Midna informed him sweetly. “Are your ears going bad, little wolf?”
“No, that’s- not the point, stop it,” Dusk frowned at her. “You can’t.”
“Go ahead, try and stop me.”
“No, I mean, you literally can’t. Everything so far that isn’t us gets obliterated, remember? You don’t have divine protection.” He brandished his left hand, Triforce on display, to make his point.
Midna raised an eyebrow, then lifted an imperious finger and pointed directly at the approaching Speck.
“...you’re going to have to use your words for that one,” Dusk told her.
“Um?” Speck interjected. “Sorry, if I’m interrupting, or something, I just, I had a question, but I can come back later-”
“Stop,” Midna cut in. “Breathe. Try again.”
“Question,” Speck said obediently. “Is it normal for… Twili-adjacent people to be moody about, uh, noise?”
“Twili-adjacent?” Midna repeated.
“Uh. I don’t know what Shadow’s ethnicity is. But he seems to be related? So… yeah.”
Midna considered that. “Fair,” she said. “Also, no. Twili ears work just like hylian ears, kiddo.”
“Oh.” Speck chewed that thought over. “Maybe he’s just grumpy then. Thank you for answering my question.”
He turned to leave, and was promptly hoisted up by the back of his tunic. Midna wiggled a finger at him while her hair kept him suspended a couple inches off the ground. “Not so fast, I’ve got a question for you too. Your hat’s alive, yeah?”
Speck took a moment to get over the surprise of being dangled before replying, “His name is Ezlo, but he’s asleep right now, so I can’t introduce you. Sorry.”
“And why is Ezlo asleep?” Midna asked, making pointed eye contact with Dusk.
“Um, well, we think it’s because this isn’t his native time period, so he’s in forced stasis. Because I was wearing him when I went through the voids, and he didn’t get eaten like everything else because - well, we’re also assuming that it was because I was touching him - but he wasn’t protected like the rest of us are, so. Um. Stasis.”
“Thank you,” Midna sing-songed, setting him down and flashing Dusk her trademark fanged smile. “Any other protests, little wolf?”
“You are not a hat, Midna.”
“You’re right, I’m not,” she said, mock-thoughtfully. “If only I had the ability to exist outside this dimension. If only I could just drop into a willing host’s shadow to hide and be protected. If only I had a fully furnished home tucked away in this hypothetical shadow, where I could be comfortable and privy to any action that might be happening while still being safe. Oh dear. If only.”
“...I’m just prolonging the inevitable, aren’t I?”
“Oh, don’t act like you aren’t thrilled I’ve found a loophole. Just admit you’d miss me.”
Dusk sighed, and offered his elbow. Midna twirled through the air to perch on it like it was a bench. “I just worry, is all.”
“I know you do,” Midna teased. “But hey, if you know where I am at all times, how much trouble can I possibly be getting into?”
Dusk gifted her with the flattest stare he was capable of. Midna cackled.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” she snickered, and with that she darted into Dusk’s cast-shadow in much the same way as a fish. This was presumably to make sure that she got the last word in, as was her habit.
“...this is fine,” Dusk muttered, as Midna’s giggle echoed through his head.
Mask still had Ocarina’s hat, looped loosely around his neck. And there was a lump poking at his skin where he knew that a lump should not be, having worn this hat extensively in his past. What was Ocarina keeping in here that Mask didn’t remember?
He tugged the hat off his shoulders, peered inside, and went completely still.
“...huh .”
That was Navi .
Did Ocarina know that he’d handed off their fairy? Surely Ocarina knew about this, Navi had been asleep on his head the entire time. There had been an entire freakout about it. Mask distinctly remembered the freakout, and he also remembered Ocarina putting Navi back under his hat to keep her safe.
Surely he hadn’t forgotten about that when handing off the hat for Mask to breathe, right? Though, in his - Ocarina’s - defense, it had been very chaotic at the time. Also stressful, so…
Maybe Ocarina had forgotten?
“...this bodes well,” Mask decided, closing the hat again and folding it up carefully. He should probably go clue in his older-but-younger self to their fairy companion problem.
Ocarina was talking to Steam, and therefore Mask’s mission was immediately derailed by Steam looking up at his approach and saying, “Oh, I have Mikau for you.”
Mask immediately experienced the jarring realization that he trusted his fellow Links enough to leave his soul masks in their hands and experience so little worry about it that he’d actually forgotten that he’d loaned one out. He made a vow to never let Mikau find out about that particular tidbit.
“Oh, thanks!” Mask said instead. “Were you two having a chat?”
Steam snickered a little. “Well, he was really confused. I had to explain the whole thing to him. He wanted to know, and I quote, ‘if the little trauma dude was feeling chill now’ and I told him that we were working on it but that he was a huge help in making it better.”
Mask scrunched his face up. “Yeah, sorry about that Mikau. In my defense, you were the best person I could think of and I was short on time. And options. And oxygen.”
“He says no worries,” Steam reported, amused. “He also keeps calling you little Hero dude… and he wanted me to say that bit out loud, specifically.”
“ I thought we agreed that you were going to stop calling me that,” Mask said, pretending to be offended and shooting an overexaggerated glare to the air on his left.
“Other side,” Steam coughed. Mask obediently switched his glare to the right. Steam continued, “Also, he’s laughing at you now.”
“Rude,” Mask grinned, and gently tucked Mikau’s mask away into his pack. Then he frowned. “...I came over here for a reason and now I don’t remember what it was.”
“While you think about it, can I have my hat back?” Ocarina asked, pointing to where said hat was still in Mask’s off hand.
“... yes,” Mask said, “And also, I remember now: Navi was in your hat when you gave it to me, was that on purpose?”
Ocarina blinked. Then he blinked again. And then he made a sound that vaguely resembled a whimper.
“I’ll take that as a ‘not in the slightest’,” Mask observed. Ocarina grabbed him by the shoulders, wide-eyed.
“You can’t tell her,” he whisper-screamed. “She cannot know that we forgot about her.”
“We?” Mask repeated, greatly amused.
“ I am not dealing with this alone,” Ocarina hissed.
Mask rocked onto his tiptoes and fixed the hat back onto his past self’s head. “We’ll handle that if it becomes an actual problem, mmkay?”
“It’s an actual problem now!” Ocarina sputtered.
“Should I be concerned about any of this?” Steam asked, watching with wide and confused eyes.
“Nah, we’re fine,” Mask said, which was in direct contradiction to the way that Ocarina was emitting a high-pitched teakettle noise.
“...If you say so,” Steam said doubtfully.
Sketch pressed his fingers into the skin below his collarbone and tried to rub away the weirdly heavy pressure collecting in his chest. That wasn’t exactly normal, but… he took a deep breath to experiment. No, it didn’t hurt, so it was probably fine?
Just kinda uncomfortable.
“We ready to go?” he asked, resolutely deciding to ignore the feeling unless it turned into an actual problem.
“Well we might have lost Realm,” Lore told him. “So I’d give us another thirty to seventy-five minutes… uh. You okay?”
“Did Gen put you up to that?” Sketch asked with a sigh.
“No, you just look kinda… off?”
“I’m fine,” Sketch said, for what was probably the dozenth time that hour alone. “Want help finding Realm?”
“Yes, but not from you, you’re gonna go find Gen,” Lore directed. Sketch bestowed him with the flattest look he could muster.
“I’m fine, ” he insisted.
“And I totally believe you, but I’ll believe you even more once Gen backs you up,” Lore said. “Seriously though. You look really off, please humor me.”
“You’re gonna give Gen a run for his overprotective money,” Sketch grumbled, but obediently backtracked to the makeshift medical station that Gen had set up. He rubbed at his chest again, because the weird heavy feeling was still there and possibly even heavier, now. It still wasn’t painful, so that was good, but maybe he ought to mention it.
Gen looked up at his approach, mouth immediately flattening into an unamused line. “Okay, what injury were you lying to me about when you claimed you were fine?”
“I am fine!” Sketch threw up his hands. “Lore made me come back, he says I look off. Whatever that means.”
“Uh-huh,” Gen said, giving him a close scrutiny. “Any ideas why he might have said that?”
Sketch shrugged. “I mean, my chest feels kinda heavy, but other than that, no idea.”
“Heavy how?”
“Just pressure? Heavy pressure. It doesn’t hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Gen stared at him. Sketch stared back, then leaned away slightly. “Uh, Gen?”
“You’re crying,” Gen said, sounding incredibly alarmed.
“What?” Sketch said, and the pressure in his chest grew impossibly heavier. “No I’m not, I…”
He brought a hand up to his face. It came away wet.
“What?” Sketch repeated, and it came out like a choke. “I don’t - what’s happening?”
Gen launched himself forward, scattering potion bottles everywhere, and wrapped Sketch in as tight a hug as he could manage. Quite abruptly, the smaller Hero began outright sobbing.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Sketch gasped. “I don’t know what’s happening, Gen, I don’t know, I-”
“Breathe, Sketch, you gotta breathe,” Gen chanted. “Talk later, I’ll listen later, just breathe right now-”
Sketch managed a single, massive shuddering inhale before his body forced it back out. It was as though all the fear and emotional stress of confronting his phobia had decided to all pile on at once, and this seemed especially unfair because hadn’t Sketch gone through this during the actual event already? Only now his throat was closing up and that was only making him gasp more and that was only making his chest winch tighter and that was only making him sob more and more raggedly and he didn’t know what was happening.
It seemed vitally important that Gen knew this, that Gen understood that he wasn’t doing it on purpose. Sketch was peripherally aware that his one-third leader was saying something, and that it was also probably important, but it wasn’t quite connecting in the way Sketch thought it should.
He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t understand what this was. He clutched at the closest sturdy thing he could find and screamed all his emotions into it. What was going on ? Why couldn’t he stop!?
Gen, meanwhile, was almost having an attack himself, because he didn’t know what to do, and Sketch was only getting more and more incoherent. On the bright side - the only thing about this situation that could be called a bright side, Gen thought to himself a bit hysterically - it was basically impossible to break down the way that Sketch was and not attract attention. Both Dusk and Lore materialized on either side of Gen as though they’d been summoned via teleport, and the rest of the Links weren’t far behind.
“What happened!?” Lore demanded, panicked.
“I don’t know!” Gen snapped back, equally panicked. “He said he was fine and then he started crying and how he’s doing this!” He made an aborted motion with his arms, due to Sketch still sobbing into them. “How do I help with this!?”
Lore made a helplessly strangled sort of noise. This was, ironically enough, the one sort of thing that he’d always made an effort to avoid in his own travels. He didn’t appreciate it coming back to bite him like this, either.
Dusk, meanwhile, worried at his lower lip. He had experience with dissociation, and plenty of it, but this was… not something he’d dealt with before. All his techniques and ideas were tailored to getting someone to feel their body again, and frankly it seemed as though that was the last thing Sketch needed. Dusk could say with confidence that draping his bodyweight over the smaller Link was not going to help the whole ragged-gasping thing that was happening right now.
After a few moments of universal hesitation, Mask broke the silence. “Alright, move,” he ordered. “Dusk, Lore, back up a bit. Gen, he’s latched onto you, so don’t let go unless he does first. And don’t interrupt me, this is important.”
He crouched down as the other two co-leaders shuffled backwards, reached forwards, and curled his hand carefully around the back of Sketch’s neck. “Sketch,” he said quietly. “I need you to focus for me. I need you to take a really deep breath, can you do that?”
The next shuddering inhale was perhaps a bit longer than the others had been.
“Good. Again.”
Another shaky inhale, this one actually long enough to be noticeable.
“Good,” Mask repeated. “Keep it up. Can you lift your head? Look at me?”
More unsteady breaths, coming gradually slower. Sketch turned his face just enough to watch Mask from the corner of his eye.
“Perfect, you’re doing amazing,” Mask told him, automatically adjusting his arm to keep his hand plastered to the back of Sketch’s neck. “Take another breath, as deep as you can.”
This time, on the exhale, words came with it. “I - don’t know - what’s - happening,” Sketch gasped, broken and shaky.
“You’re having a panic attack,” Mask said. “I’m talking you through it. Deep inhale, big as you can now.”
Sketch did so. Gen watched the entire process with narrow, focused eyes.
“You know exactly what to do,” he observed.
Mask shrugged. “Well, we’re Link, so. I’m just doing for him what works best for me.”
In the background, Ocarina blinked rapidly, then yanked a notebook from his bag and began frantically scribbling. Gen quietly decided not to mention this to Mask for a bit, seeing as he had plenty of things to focus on already.
“Calmer?” Mask checked. Sketch nodded unsteadily, and took another deep irregular breath. “Okay. I’m gonna start unpacking what just happened, alright? Stop me when you need to breathe. Can you tell me what you were doing when your attack triggered?”
“Talking to Gen,” Sketch whispered hoarsely.
“What were you talking about?”
“I was telling him I was fine.” Sketch quirked an ironic smile, which clashed horribly with the tear tracks on his face.
“Yeah, you’re not fine,” Mask agreed, snorting. “But we’re gonna work on that. Can you tell me what happened next?”
“I guess I started crying? I didn’t feel it,” Sketch rubbed a hand under his eyes. “And then everything kinda… happened all at once.”
“Can you tell me what you were feeling?”
“Uh… confusion, lots of confusion… panic? Kinda just overwhelmed in general? Um, fear. It was all really jumbled. I think I…”
He trailed off, staring straight ahead. A new line of tears began making their way down his cheek. Mask promptly doubled down on his grip and used the new leverage to angle Sketch’s face directly at himself. “Deep breath,” he ordered. “Eyes on me, breathe like I do. In…”
An obedient, if uncoordinated inhale.
“...and out, perfect,” Mask finished. “Let’s come back to that later, we’re just gonna keep breathing for now okay?”
Sketch nodded, and then took another ragged breath. Mask used his free hand for an approving thumbs-up.
“Excellent,” he encouraged. “You’re doing fantastic, I would never have guessed this was your first time.”
“Thanks, I think,” Sketch said dryly. “I always wanted to be a professional panicker.”
“If you have the breath to snark with me then you can give me another good inhale to make up for it,” Mask informed him jokingly, but then made it serious by doing dramatic breathing motions until Sketch copied him. “But in all seriousness, you might be having the most well-adjusted anxiety attack I’ve ever seen.”
“Doesn’t feel like that to me,” Sketch muttered, inhaling ferociously.
“Well, sometimes your emotions will literally just nope out of the situation until it’s safe for them to be expressed, at which point they all hit you at once like Steam’s Spirit Train. I’m gonna take an educated guess and say that’s what happened to you just now.”
“Neat, I hate it,” Sketch wheezed.
“Oh, same,” Mask agreed instantly. “Also, deep breath.”
Sketch inhaled obediently. It was far less shaky than the previous times. It was also at this point where he realized exactly who he was clinging to, and released Gen’s shirt with a sheepish expression.
“Sorry I got your tunic wet,” he mumbled, and made a futile attempt to wipe the damp spot away. Gen batted his hand and proceeded to seize him in another, slightly less traumatic embrace.
“If you ever do that to me again,” Gen threatened tremulously, “I will start crying on you in revenge. Don’t think I won’t. I about had my own panic attack watching you have yours.”
Sketch gave a weak chuckle. “I promise that next time my brain forcibly sends me into a delayed trauma reaction that I didn’t know I was going to have and also didn’t know was a thing, I’ll give you advance warning.”
“ Good,” Gen said, and clutched on tighter. “Just so we’re clear.”
Deep breath , Mask mimed over Gen’s shoulder. Sketch mimicked him. Feeling it, Gen took that as his cue to let go, although he almost immediately compensated by snatching a nonplussed Speck instead. Look, Gen was experiencing a lot of emotions, he was allowed to have an emotional support sibling for a few minutes.
“Honestly,” Farore muttered to herself outside reality. “It’s like Courage is trying to give himself the emotional holding capacity of a teaspoon, I have to do everything around here. My Attribute is going to have proper coping methods if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Maybe it would stick more if you didn’t do the metaphorical equivalent of slapping them in the face with it?” Nayru suggested tactfully.
“If they’d do it properly in the first place then this wouldn’t be an issue!” Farore sputtered, with the exasperation of an oh-so-very longsuffering parent. “And it is not slapping.”
“Whacking, then,” Din offered.
Farore inhaled deeply through her nose and made the visible decision to ignore her sisters for the moment. Instead, she pulled up the live feed again and scrutinized it, before nodding to herself.
Still a bit shaky, but as long as nothing else happened, Courage would be just fine.
This was, of course, the cue for something else to happen.
It was after the group had been rounded up again, after Realm had been located and placed firmly in the center of the Four’s formation to avoid further delays, after Sketch had been confirmed functional enough to travel, and after everyone filed through the void to see where they would go next.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be the ocean, as the group materialized a rough two feet above the surface and promptly fell in. Equally unfortunately, Sketch went through an almost immediate relapse.
(Elsewhere, Farore screeched in frustration and protective fury, because this was not where she’d been intending to put her Attribute. She’d designated an island for this! Where was the island!? Why was Courage in the middle of the sea!?)
In a move that actually broke the record from the last time, Wind yanked out his baton, switched to treading water with just his feet, and whipped his hands through the air fast enough that it left afterimages. A corresponding four-note song rang out in response, followed near-instantly by a focused cyclone springing up out of seemingly nowhere. There was roughly ten seconds of confusing spinning as the vortex scooped the group up and carried them off - and then the air cleared and they were standing in the shallows of an island reef.
“Sorry,” Wind said, already hauling one of Sketch’s arms over his shoulders and determinedly splashing to shore. “I was hoping my ocean wouldn’t be this kind of a problem for you.”
Sketch, who was valiantly trying to control his breathing this time despite actively relapsing still, made a staggered wheezing noise. Somewhere in the wheeze was a slurred, “S’fine,” even though it was clearly not, the liar.
“Okay,” Lore said, as the rest of the group joined them on the sand. “Let’s just… not go anywhere, for a bit. I’m declaring a mandatory naptime, for recovery reasons.”
“Seconded,” Dusk agreed.
“Thirded,” Gen said, giving Dusk a confused side-eye as he did. “I thought you didn’t want to be part of the leadership?”
“You’re right, I don’t,” Dusk agreed, and then entirely failed to elaborate. Gen stared at him pointedly.
“So the reason that you’re chiming in on the leadership decisions is…?”
“It seemed like something I ought to be involved in,” Dusk said, shrugging.
Gen stared at him again. Then he leaned into Lore and muttered, “Can he hear himself when he says things like that?”
“I don’t think so,” Lore observed.
Dusk pointed at them. “See, two-person leadership. Why would I need to get involved?”
“Two-person leadership,” Lore repeated, and then dissolved into giggles. “Oh Dusk, never let anyone tell you that you’re not funny.”
Still giggling, he walked off to start enforcing mandatory naptime. Not that anyone was going to argue with him about it, really.
“...sometimes I think he knows something we don’t,” Dusk said.
Gen visibly decided to stop having that particular conversation for the sake of his sanity.
(Meanwhile, Blue grumbled and handed Vio a Blue Rupee. Vio pocketed it smugly. By his calculations, Dusk wasn’t going to catch on for about two more months. Really, Blue ought to know better than to bet against him by now.)
If it was possible to be fed up with a panic attack while still in the middle of having one, Sketch was pretty sure he was doing it.
“Hate this,” he gasped, clinging to an apologetic Wind while Mask once again grounded him by the back of his neck. “Hate - so much-”
“Oh good, you have the breath to complain this time,” Mask said brightly. “That’s progress! Also, inhale.”
Sketch did so, and it was at least coming easier now that he had a bit of an idea of what to do. Plus he was feeling very fed-up with the whole thing by now, and as Lore would say, there was nothing quite so good a motivator as spite.
“I am really sorry,” Wind said, and for a briefly shining moment Sketch forgot he was panicking.
“If you apologize for the ocean, which isn’t even something you can have control over, one more time I swear to you that I will pack up this panic attack and go have it on somebody else, and we all know how bad of an idea that is because I’ll probably only make it for about five steps or so before collapsing. Stoppit.”
Then he wheezed, because his brain ran out of indignation to be distracted with and went right back to freaking out. Had he mentioned how much he hated this? Because he felt like he ought to mention it again, just for posterity’s sake.
“Deep breath,” Mask advised automatically, frowning. “...actually, I’ll be right back.”
He sprinted away, and Sketch had the abrupt realization that the outside input of a hand on his skin? Was actually apparently really important for keeping him attached to reality, and he knew this because of the way his breathing was starting to ratchet into a higher gear and how it was starting to feel like there was a weight on his chest and oh crap.
“Wind,” Sketch choked, and thank the Goddesses because Wind responded instantly. His slightly smaller, rougher hand slid into place at Sketch’s nape, his other hand came up to brace against their shoulders, and then they were face-to-face and Wind was holding fervent eye contact with him.
“Breathe with me, come on,” he said, and it was so much easier to bring himself back down to a slower rhythm with Wind providing a template to synch with.
“Thanks,” Sketch said heavily. “Sorry.”
“If I’m not allowed to apologize for the ocean then you’re not allowed to apologize for your completely reasonable reaction to it,” Wind retorted - but he was smiling, so Sketch wasn’t taking it too seriously.
“Good news, I bring therapy in the form of a fluffy dog,” Mask announced, which handily doubled for announcing his return too. Sketch blinked at him. Wind tilted his head.
“That’s Dusk,” he observed. The Link in question waved a hand, somewhat perplexed.
“I wasn’t actually given an explanation, he just grabbed my arm and pulled,” Dusk explained. “But I think I understand what’s going on now.”
So saying, he handed off his Master Sword to Mask and untied the little pouch around his neck to upend the Curse Stone into his palm.
Or, in shorter words: suddenly, a wolf!
There was some complicated maneuvering, during which Dusk did his level best to splay out like the world’s fluffiest living weighted blanket and Wind valiantly kept his hand plastered to the back of Sketch’s neck and Mask interjected through the confusion every few moments with “Breathe, don’t forget to breathe,” whenever he thought Sketch needed the reminder. But when the end result was fluffy wolf cuddles and sibling comfort, some chaos could be tolerated.
“...I think I dissociated,” Sketch said, from where he was lodged partway beneath Dusk several minutes later.
“Elaborate,” Mask said immediately.
“During the fight,” Sketch clarified. “Underwater? I, uh… I don’t remember it. At all. So I think I dissociated, and then my brain did that thing you said earlier where it slapped me with all the emotions I would have felt in the moment, and that’s why I broke down once everything seemed safe.”
“Yeah,” Mask said with a heavy sigh. “That sounds about right. You feeling okay to talk about it now?”
“The fluffy dog therapy is helping a lot,” Sketch told him, and gave Dusk a grateful scratch behind the ears. Dusk whuffed at him affectionately. “Also… thanks. For helping, and knowing how to help, because I certainly didn’t have any ideas.”
“Conveniently,” Mask made jazz hands, “we all seem to process our trauma in the same way,”
“...I’ll be honest, that sounds like something I need to be concerned about for you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mask deflected.
Sketch made a mental note to worry about it. Also to get Ocarina to worry about it, this seemed like something he ought to be aware of, for future-self reasons if nothing else. The pointed eye contact that Dusk and Wind made with him said that he wasn’t the only one making those mental notes.
Then Lore proclaimed his arrival by flopping down into the pile, which pretty effectively broke off any inter-sibling communication happening. “Why is nobody napping?” He asked pointedly. “I specifically requested it.”
“We were talking about our feelings instead,” Wind informed him.
“...Acceptable,” Lore decided. “Your insubordination has been pardoned.”
Dusk pushed a wet nose into Lore’s face.
“Yes yes, okay,” Lore grumbled, mock-shoving him away. “In all seriousness, I am genuinely enforcing naptime, because this has frankly been at least mildly traumatizing for everyone involved and majorly traumatizing for a few special mentions. Rest and recovery, people!”
Gen materialized to loom behind him in pointed tandem with that last sentence.
It was quietly and unanimously decided that actually, a nap sounded pretty good right then.
Ocean Ganondorf glared at the middle distance. While this was unfair to the middle distance, as it hadn’t done anything wrong, Ganondorf didn’t care about that sort of thing and glared anyway.
“I hate this very much,” he said conversationally.
In the surf about twenty feet away, Bellum bubbled grumpily.
“This cannot possibly have been thought through,” Ganondorf muttered. “You need to swim . I need to be able to breathe . Neither of our fighting styles mesh together. I do not understand how Demise thinks we will make a competent combat duo.”
Bellum continued bubbling, with added sarcasm - though how he was making bubbles sound sarcastic was anyone’s guess.
“No, it’s mutual,” Ocean Ganondorf sighed. “I’d refuse to be your host on principle. Thankfully we can both agree to be mature about this and admit that we outright refuse to associate with each other like that.”
More bubbling. Bellum slapped a tentacle on the surface of the water loudly.
“The villagers have no combat experience whatsoever, they’d make abysmal hosts,” Ganondorf argued. “You can’t honestly expect that to go over well. Surely you have skills of your own.”
Larger bubbles, interspersed with the occasional glorp noise.
“That, yes. Do that,” Ganondorf nodded. “And I’ll take care of things my way. We’ll just divide and conquer, then. Much simpler.”
Bellum bobbed up and down in the water - his method of nodding, since squids had no chins - then made a glorp noise.
“You - no, you cannot call dibs,” Ganondorf said, exasperatedly. “You have claim to the frightened one, because it is sensible for your skillset, but that’s it. All the others are fair game, and you may not target the Hero of Winds simply because you have a grudge. If anyone is calling dibs on account of a grudge here, it will be me.”
Ocean Ganondorf may or may not have still been carrying hard feelings about being stabbed through the forehead. He felt personally invested, one might say.
Bellum splashed him, the largest eye curving smugly in the demonic squid version of laughing at Ganondorf’s expense.
Ganondorf slowly wiped the water from his eyes and shoved his now-dripping hair back out of his face. There was a silent staredown.
“You octopus,” Ganondorf said, which for the interested was actually a significant insult to squids. Bellum was torn between reacting being purposefully mis-identified with the appropriate outrage, or being smug that he’d gotten Ocean Ganondorf to stoop that low.
Then, because he was an overachiever, he decided to do both. The planning session went a little bit sideways from there.
Naptime turned into nighttime, which had probably been Lore’s plan all along, that conniving little sneak, and gee, wow, they couldn’t do much in the dark, nothing for it but to initiate a Group Glomp and cuddle up to each other for the night. What a shame.
(“You’re evil sometimes,” Gen yawned as everyone settled down. Lore grinned, preened, and did absolutely nothing to deny it.)
Morning, when it came, also brought the reminder that they were on an island. Sketch spent the sunrise glaring at the ocean.
“This,” he announced, “is going to suck, probably, but I’m sick and tired of panicking about it so I am going to Hero-Up and deal with it.”
“Good luck!” Red replied, putting on his best serious face and applauding while he was at it. “You can do it!”
Mask fake-coughed into his hand. “You should actually probably not do that until we’re in a better spot, recovery-wise.”
“I am going to Hero-Up and deal with it once I have permission,” Sketch amended. “Which… makes sense, yeah, I still feel kinda shaky. The recuperation time on these panic things are kinda bad, huh?”
“That one might just be the fact that your biggest trigger is roughly fifty feet away,” Mask shrugged. “Sorry.”
Sketch made an irritated sort of growling noise, which vaguely contained the words, “ Definitely doing something about this as soon as possible.” Then he set his jaw and determinedly clambered to his feet, put the closest bit of ocean at his back, and marched off, presumably to see what the ETD was. It was more for the visual effect than anything else, since everyone was still Group Glomping and Sketch only went about five paces before stopping with Wind, but it probably made Sketch feel like he was in control of something, so. Progress!
“Oh,” Wind said upon being asked. “Well, we don’t have a boat. And this isn’t where I left my boat, which is a minor problem, since we’re on an unpopulated island. Give me, uh… thirty minutes? I need to consult my maps and make a call. Or potentially a signal fire.” He considered for a moment. “...Maybe forty-five minutes.”
Then Wind pulled a truly concerning number of papers from his bag - all of which were maps of one region or another - and began comparing them to something in the sky. Presumably this made complete sense to Wind, or at least it seemed as though it did. Sketch quietly decided to leave his fellow Link to it.
Twenty-eight minutes later, Wind had a precise geographical fix on their location, a pickup on the way, and a headache, because he could have sworn that he’d been aiming for Mercay Island and this was not that. This was a tiny little spit of rock in the middle of otherwise empty sea, and more to the point, it was just northeast of his home island, Outset. Mercay, Wind knew for a fact, was nowhere near Outset.
How in the world had he screwed that up? This was on the level of something he expected from Realm, but certainly not himself. Wind rubbed at his temples, which sadly didn’t help with the headache but made him feel like it might, somehow. He would really like to sit down and figure out where he’d gone wrong with his warp… but he didn’t think he had the time.
But seriously. Stone Watcher Island. HOW.
This was gonna bother him for days, he just knew it.
Meanwhile, outside of reality, Din was on the metaphorical floor.
“I don’t know what just happened,” she groaned, holding her head, “but it was extremely painful , and I think Courage somehow managed to give me a landmass migraine.”
“...Oh Me,” Farore muttered nervously.
Notes:
I know someone’s gonna check me on this, so here it is: When you line up the overworld maps from Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, Mercay Island matches up near perfectly with this tiny little piece of nowhere called Stone Watcher Island. Basically, Wind tried to warp to the World of the Ocean King, failed because it’s in a pocket dimension, and ended up in the Wind Waker equivalent instead. Hence, Din’s migraine.
That aside, the main event: Phobia Aftermath. It seemed important to address. It seemed ESPECIALLY important to address given the upcoming ocean. Sketch deserves some spotlight, though I should probably apologize to him for doing it in this particular way. Special thanks to my Discord mutuals, of whom several were willing to read over Sketch’s phobia attack for accuracy and Trigger Warning placement. You guys are awesome.
Thanks to Smokeyrutilequartz, Phoenix821, Stargazing_ZaniTD, EmberArmy, ArtistDragon, ShootinStars_and_CandyBars, 40yhw, Guest #463, Guest #464, Guest #465, Guest #466, Guest #467, Guest #468, Guest #489, Guest #490, Guest #491, SwirlingSea, Awkward_Chocobo_Kat, RavenKnight3035, Rzhenia, Skyward_Arpeggio, ObsessedwithReading, Ballad_of_Hyrule, Guest # 492, Guest #493, Guest #494, Guest #495, Guest #496, Guest #497, MoonSong334, Guest #498, Guest #499, Creatife_Clownderer, Alto_is_a_cloud, Sunset_Songwind, Guest #500, Guest #501, ChaoticCharacter, Squadala, GrandNinjaMasterRen, Celestial_Bear, Starbornshine, m1ndee, HamonMasterDracula, KitsuneChara13, thepandemicwillend, Grieflord_101, lerolero, Guest #502, shadowy_hopper, kyoukaalldey, Guest #503, KazooKol, StrawberryFour, AmboraStalis, Smoll_Satan, and Walc66 for the Kudos!
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(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 32: The Obligatory Beach Chapter
Summary:
Outset Island, here we come.
Notes:
Disclaimer! The following is a nonprofit fan-based parody. The Legend of Zelda is owned by Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, and the company of Nintendo. Please support the official release.
(Did you just verbatim quote the disclaimers that Youtuber parody abridgers use?)
Of course not. I’m the Universe. They are quoting me.
(...right. How silly of me.)
Are you judging the way that I choose to tell people that you, Changeling, do not own The Legend of Zelda?
(Whaaaaaat, nooooooooo, I would never!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The sequence of events went like this:
Wind had some bait in his bag, which he scattered on the water in order to attract a fish. The fish in question turned out to be both sentient and an excellent conversationalist. He was also, in exchange for more bait, willing to fetch the nearest passing ship to see if the captain would be willing to make a detour for some travelers. The captain in question turned out to be a shopkeeper named Beedle, who did turn out to be willing to take a few hitchhikers as long as he was appropriately compensated for the extra weight - Wind accomplished this by promptly purchasing the man’s entire stock of Red Potion.
Said Potions were immediately handed off to a very pleased Gen.
Sketch got first dibs on the boat, for obvious reasons, and the other Links clustered in around the wares and out on the deck. It was a very tight fit, until Mask opted to use Mikau to swim alongside and Lore begrudgingly pulled out his Mermaid Suit to do the same. This made for a slightly less tight fit, but the group was used to close quarters at this point so it didn’t bother anyone much.
Well, it may have bothered Beedle, but the man’s customer service face was impeccable and so nobody could actually tell. It also turned out that Gen, Steam, and Speck knew a Beedle too - who were unexpectedly consistent with the version Wind did business with - and they spent the ride to Outset comparing their experiences.
Gen was the only one with a Beedle who would literally throw a customer from his shop if they didn’t buy anything, it turned out. The rest of the Links weren’t entirely sure what to think about that. Meanwhile Beedle’s impeccable customer service face gained a faint gleam to the eyes, alarmingly indicative of an idea.
Wind decided to… maybe make sure his wallet was always full, when out sailing. Just in case. For future reference.
But all that aside, it was amazing to be on the ocean again. Like yes, Wind knew he had a mission, and he was fully committed to it. But. He was an island boy, born and raised, had spent his entire life on the edge of the sea, and, well. He’d missed this, the sun on his face and the salt in the air and the rocking of a boat under his feet. Out of respect for the fact that he knew Sketch was probably having a terrible time below deck, he wasn’t making a huge deal of it, but. If he turned his face up to the sky and spread his arms, just a little, to feel the breeze rush through his fingers, and if he closed his eyes just a bit - nobody was going to fault him for that.
He was almost disappointed when Beedle gently bumped the dock of Outset Island, which he was never going to let Aryll know about.
…Wait, did he remember to let everyone know that they were about to be tackle-glomped by an excited younger sister?
“Did I remember to tell you guys to brace for an excited younger sister?” Wind asked.
“Not specifically, no,” Speck said. “Aryll, right?”
“Mmhmm,” Wind affirmed, clambering off the Ship Shop. “She loves hugs, I haven’t been home in… at least a few months, and her habitual greeting whenever she sees me is to-”
He was interrupted by a small blonde cannonball. Wind made a wheezing sort of oof as he staggered straight off the dock, followed promptly by a pair of large splashes. Peering over the side revealed a small blonde girl with her arms wrapped around Wind’s shoulders, clearly squeezing with all the might in her body. Wind, meanwhile, was treading water for the both of them, with an efficiency that said he was well used to this sort of thing.
“Hi Aryll,” he said, grinning.
“Swim to the beach so you can hug me back,” Aryll ordered, as imperiously as an eight-year-old could. “I missed you.”
“Can I have my arms to swim?”
“No,” Aryll said, and somehow squeezed tighter. “This is your punishment for being gone so long!”
“Nothing less than what I deserve,” Wind agreed sagely. Luckily, the beach was only about ten feet away, plus the rest of the group was all watching with wide eyes and badly-hidden laughter, so Wind kept pretending like it was a punishment to have his arms trapped in a hug as he put his feet down on the seafloor and waded his way to the beach.
There followed five straight minutes of sibling cuddles. The only reason it wasn’t double that was because Aryll got distracted halfway through by the random collection of Links off to the side.
“Big Brother,” she said, pausing in her mission of clamping onto Wind like a vise, “who are they?” She stared at Steam, who admittedly could have been Wind’s dead-ringer with the right lighting and some heeled shoes. “...do you have a twin now?”
“Um,” Steam said, staring wide-eyed.
“Not quite?” Wind told her. “Siblings, for sure, but I don’t think any of us are twins?” He made questioning eye contact with the group, who all shrugged at him.
“I’m not sure how we’d check,” Realm said bewilderedly.
“More Big Brothers?” Aryll asked.
“More Big Brothers,” Wind agreed.
“But I’m still your favorite sister, right?”
“You’re my only sister.”
“So that means I’m still your favorite, right?”
Wind laughed. “Yes, you’re my favorite.”
“Yay!”
“Aryll,” Steam whispered to himself. “Aryll. Her name is Aryll, oh my Din, oh my Din-”
“You good?” Blue muttered to him.
“I think I’m having a crisis.”
“...Okay?”
Steam shoved his fist into his mouth to avoid making a loud screeching noise and made a muffled screeching noise instead. Blue discreetly shuffled to hide him from Aryll’s view. It was probably fine, but uh… just in case.
Aryll, thankfully none the wiser, began tugging at Wind’s wrist. “Come on, come on!” she insisted. “Grandma’s making soup! You love Grandma’s soup!”
“Do you think she made enough?” Wind asked playfully.
“Duh! Grandma always makes enough, it’s her superpower.”
“Grandmothers are inherently magical creatures,” Lore agreed thoughtfully in the background.
“This might actually be the best soup I’ve ever had in my life,” Gen said, and for some reason he sounded incredibly scandalized. “And I think I literally just watched some of my scar tissue fade away. What’s in this stuff?”
“I… don’t actually know,” Wind replied sheepishly. “It’s her special recipe. I think there’s carrots?”
“Okay but like… what kind of carrots?”
Wind blinked at him, clearly at a loss. “I don’t know how to answer that question.”
Gen huffed. “You know what, I’ll just ask your Grandma. If this stuff does what I think it does, I need to know how to make it.”
“Out of what I suspect is horribly misplaced curiosity,” Wind began apprehensively, “what, exactly, do you think it does?”
“I think that it healed us for all our known damages and a few of the unknowns too,” Gen said sourly. “In a single serving . Do you have any idea how much Red Potion I’ve gone through because it only heals for eight given hits at a time?”
“A lot,” Wind said, and it wasn’t a guess so much as it was a statement of fact. “And also, you’re right. It does exactly what you think it does.”
Gen paused. “First of all, I’m incredibly jealous. Second of all, how???”
“Ask my Grandma.”
“Oh, I will, ” Gen declared, and stuffed an irate spoonful of soup into his mouth with a thunderously focused expression on his face.
Wind decided to leave him to it.
“I need to talk to you,” Steam said in one massive rush. Wind paused where he was helping his Grandma - who had taken seventeen more versions of her grandson showing up with remarkable acceptance - with the dishes and said, “Okay?”
“ Now, ” Steam emphasized, all but vibrating in place with anxious energy. “Like, right now. Immediately. PLEASE.”
“Okay?” Wind repeated. “Just let me-”
“NOPE, NOW,” Steam interrupted, and seized Wind by the collar to drag him away. He tossed a hurried, “Sorry Ms. Wind’s Grandma, ma’am,” over his shoulder as they went but didn’t actually slow down until the pair of them were well away from the house, up a cliff overlooking the ocean.
“Are you okay?” Wind asked, somewhat alarmed now.
“I am having a CRISIS,” Steam exploded. “Okay. Okay. So. Um. Your sister? Aryll? She’s my great-grandmother?”
Wind froze.
Steam nodded frantically.
For about twenty solid seconds, they stared at each other in complete silence.
“She’s what?” Wind sputtered.
“I KNOW!” Steam shrieked. “TRUST ME, I’M FREAKING OUT ABOUT IT TOO!”
“ She’s WHAT?” Wind repeated.
“Your sister! My great-grandmother!”
“Are you sure!?”
“I don’t think I’d be freaking out this badly if I wasn’t!” Steam wailed. “I mean, when you first told us your sister’s name I was like ‘oh that’s neat but probably a coincidence’ but then I found out who you were and then I started having suspicions but it seemed ridiculous so I didn’t think about it but then I met Aryll and I know she’s like ninety years younger than how I know her but if I weren’t sure then I would not be having this conversation!”
“But - then that - that would mean-”
They stared at each other again.
“Am I,” Wind began, and swallowed. “This makes me your…”
“Great, uh,” Steam had to take a moment. “Great-Grand-Uncle?”
More staring.
“...I’ll be honest, I don’t actually know how that works,” Wind admitted. “But it sounds right?”
“No, okay, but here’s the thing,” Steam wheezed out.
“Oh Farore there’s more?”
“Spoilers, but you and Tetra kinda found the New Hyrule, right? And you knew that part, because of me, but - you found the new Royal Family?”
“...Together?” Wind clarified, blinking rapidly.
“Well, I mean. Yes?”
“Oh,” Wind said, and blinked even more. “I should. I should probably get on that, then.”
“Actually according to the history books, Tetra beats you to it,” Steam said, and then trampled straight over Wind’s flustered stuttering to continue, “but yes , because my Zelda? Princess Zelda? Yeah she’s your great-granddaughter.”
Wind froze, again.
Steam nodded frantically, again.
“ She’s what?” Wind wheezed.
“She’s my second cousin,” Steam whispered faintly. “Or maybe my third cousin? Cousin-thrice-removed? Something like that but - she’s family. Through you. And your sister. Who is my great-grandmother. Because we are closely related.”
“...Oh my Din,” Wind breathed.
“I just, I wanted,” Steam waved his hands around with aimless frantic energy, “it seemed like something we should both know?”
There was yet another round of intense staring.
“...I’m not sure how to react to this,” Wind admitted carefully. “Should I… hug you?”
“Do you want to hug me?”
“Kind of? But I also don’t want to make it weird?”
“Oh we are well past that,” Steam informed him.
“What then, should we act like normal?”
Steam flailed his hands again helplessly. “I don’t know.”
Wind considered this.
“...I’m going to hug you,” he decided, and clamped Steam into as tight of a squeeze as he was physically capable of. “Hello there, nephew.”
To his own great embarrassment, Steam nearly teared up on the spot. “Great-grand-nephew,” he croaked.
“Don’t ruin the moment.”
“Mmkay.”
“And you’re going to properly introduce me to my great-granddaughter someday, yeah?”
“I’ll squeeze it into the conversation where I tell her that we’re something-removed cousins,” Steam promised into Wind’s shoulder.
“Out of curiosity, does this mean that you’re technically adjacent royalty in some way?”
There was a short pause.
“...I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say that,” Steam muttered.
“Vengeance,” Wind declared, deadpan. “Vengeance for the Tetra comment.”
“Whatever you say, Oh Future King.”
Wind broke the hug and shoved Steam out to arms length, where he shook him by the shoulders. “New rule. You are never allowed to say that again, Nephew.”
“Never call me adjacent-royalty again and you’ve got a deal, Uncle.”
They shook on it solemnly. There was a moment of emotionally satisfied silence.
“...Actually I think I’m still gonna call you by your name. Nickname. You know what I mean. That felt weird despite the bit where it was technically accurate.”
“No argument from me,” Wind agreed with a faint frown. “Still siblings?”
“Still siblings.”
Wind laughed and ruffled a hand through Steam’s hair, who squawked and lunged for Wind’s head in retaliation. There followed an exciting few minutes of brotherly scuffling, only broken by another voice awkwardly asking, “Am I interrupting something?”
Steam popped his head up from where he was trying and unfortunately failing to fit Wind into a headlock and said, “We’re just settling our generational differences, don’t mind us. Whatcha need?”
Realm, who happened to be the awkward asker, pushed his fingers together in a vague show of embarrassment. “I, uh… I think I lost my Sword. And also my Shield. Also maybe my shoes? And now that I’m thinking about it I’m not sure when the last time I saw my Bag was, either…”
It should be noted that Realm was, in fact, shoeless. It should also be noted that this was a surprising first in the list of things that Realm had a habit of losing. Bizarrely enough, his hat was still fixed firmly on his head, in blatant defiance of all the times it had been lost before.
“I’ll check the extremely improbable cliffsides,” Wind decided, pulling both himself and Steam to their feet.
“I’ll go check the very unlikely other side of the island,” Steam sighed.
“I’ll stay right here and make sure I don’t lose anything else!” Realm said cheerfully.
“Good idea, you do that.”
Red poked at the deepest patch of shade on the island, which bizarrely enough happened to be the shadow cast by an extraordinarily overweight pet pig.
“Hey Shadow, Realm’s lost some of his things and we’re organizing a search party. Can you check underneath the-”
“WHAT PART OF DON’T TALK TO ME ARE YOU IDIOTS NOT UNDERSTANDING!?”
“...well okay, but if you decide to tag along anyways you’re the only one who can fit under the house. Just in case!”
“ GET OUT OF MY FACE! ”
Red obligingly took a few steps back. “Oh, you’re having a cranky day. Sorry about that, hope it gets better!”
He trotted away, off on his own mission to investigate the tall grasses, and was thankfully not in earshot by the time Shadow worked through enough of his tangled emotions to respond. This was because Shadow’s response was… vitriolic, to put it tactfully.
To put it bluntly , he exploded. No literally, he exploded. He actually knocked the overweight pig flat onto its back with the force of it - which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, since Shadow was still in the… shadow, and now the pig was upended atop that. But Shadow was also too busy screaming into the void to notice this.
(Crack-Crack-CRACK went the box.)
Meanwhile:
“...I’m not so sure this is… progress?” Nayru observed doubtfully.
“Well, he does seem to be even angrier,” Din offered. “Full points for the Anger Stage.”
They both took that moment to lean out and check on Farore, who was manically going over a checklist with both hands fisted stressfully in her hair.
“He should be in Denial by now,” she was muttering. “Why hasn’t he moved on to Denial, I plotted for this, I made a flowchart, I did complex mathematical equations . He should be in Denial. Why is he not in Denial? ”
“...That’s probably fine,” Nayru said.
“Maybe he’s compromising with Angry Denial..!”
Din cleared her throat. “Ah, no,” she said, which immediately burst the brief, hope-filled bubble that Farore started living in. “That’s just Anger. I’m intimately familiar with it, Power basically swims in that particular emotion on an hourly basis.”
“Courage why,” Farore whimpered.
Realm’s shoes were floating gently in the surf, roughly two feet off the shore. Sketch was standing nervously on the shore, roughly twenty feet back from the surf.
He was also in the middle of an intense dilemma.
On one hand: the ocean. Sketch didn’t think he needed to elaborate more than that. The ocean was the ocean and the ocean was terrifying.
On the other hand…
The problem with a debilitating phobia was that Sketch was, more or less, completely useless in situations that involved said phobia. And admittedly, he hadn’t thought this would be much of a problem before. What sort of situations could he possibly get into that would have enough water to trigger him? Not all that many, he’d thought at the time, which in hindsight was very stupid of him.
But here was the thing .
On his own adventure, he could take his own precautions. It sucked sometimes, but he could. On his own adventure, it was just him. There was nobody else to protect - well, okay, there was Hyrule as a whole, and Lorule as a whole, and Zelda, Hilda, Ravio, all the people he grew up with and all the people he hadn’t met but felt responsible for defending anyways, but - they weren’t there . They weren’t fighting right alongside him, actively in danger.
Now he did have people fighting alongside him, actively in danger, and to make it all worse, he was actively and emotionally attached to these people. He wanted to protect , which was silly since these people were literally all Link and could protect themselves but - sibling instincts! Were really strong apparently! Sketch really hadn’t been expecting exactly how strong his desire to keep his newly found family safe was but wow . More and more he understood exactly why Gen had a tendency to go overboard with the Health Potions.
And now, Sketch found himself in the position where his phobia had actively prevented him from keeping his family safe.
He’d froze up during the fight with Zant. He’d been completely and absolutely useless. He’d even dragged two other Links from the battle because they’d been worried , about him . When there was a dagger-wielding maniac and a gigantic feral pig to deal with!
It made him a liability.
Now to be fair, Sketch was smart enough to know that one didn’t recover from intense trauma and resulting symptoms in a day… or a year… or maybe even a lifetime… but he couldn’t leave things like this! He had to start getting over himself, or at the very least get some coping mechanisms in place. Just a mental place he could go to, In Case Of Water, that would let him function in the moment until everything was taken care of and it was safe for him to fall apart. That was all he wanted.
It was just… the first step was learning to reign in his reaction to getting wet.
And that required actually getting wet.
Realm’s shoes bobbed tantalizingly just-out-of-reach.
“You can do this you can do this you can do this,” Sketch chanted, making his approach on shaking legs. “It’s just your feet it’s not so bad it’s just a couple steps you can do this-”
His knees locked themselves exactly one step away from landing in the seafoam, exactly one step away from being in reach of Realm’s shoes.
“No no no step forward ,” Sketch snarled at himself. “Come on, come on! It’s one step it’s right there it’s just your toes-”
The ocean twinkled threateningly. Sketch found himself scrambling five steps back on pure reflex, at which point he let out a frustrated screech. This was also the point where he realized he wasn’t breathing right and was in fact borderline hyperventilating - frustrated screeching was probably a mistake.
There was a scuffling noise, and the Four broke through the underbrush with concerned expressions. “Are you okay? ” they panted. “ We heard yelling?”
“I need therapy ,” Sketch snapped, with all the frustration he was feeling clearly audible in his voice.
“...okay?”
“And also I need one of you to ground me by my neck please,” Sketch continued. “I might - and this is only a possibility - but I might have triggered myself. So.”
“What were you doing? ”
“I found Realm’s shoes,” Sketch explained, then shivered a little as the blue member slid their hand into place along his spine. The other three looked a little bit ridiculous holding their hands out around air, but at this point Sketch was long-used to looking past the Four’s specific idiosyncrasies. “They’re in the ocean, but they’re close , so I thought - well I was gonna try, I mean. And it’s a great opportunity for me to start trying to desensitize myself.”
The Four tilted their heads. “Maybe we should get them. You are still kind of recovering from your last episode, self-triggers notwithstanding.”
“First of all,” Sketch said with an air of irritation, “no.”
“...sorry?”
“Wait, not - not like that,” Sketch apologized. “I mean. I mean that this is important to me, to try and figure out how to deal with it. And this seems like a good, safe, controllable First Try? It’s not going to get much less hazardous than this.”
The Four had to admit to themselves that Wind’s ocean did seem rather calm and unthreatening. Or at least, it did in comparison.
“Second of all, at this point it’s just the principle of the thing,” Sketch informed them. “I am going to do this, and I am going to get a handle on my own phobia.” He paused, briefly. “But if you guys would be willing to let me panic on you for the aftermath I’d really appreciate it.”
“This seems distinctly unhealthy,” the Four observed.
“Yeah, well, I haven’t been able to come up with any better ideas,” Sketch muttered. He sent a determined glare towards Realm’s shoes, thankfully still floating just offshore. He was going to do this.
Elsewhere, Gen tilted his head.
“...I feel like I need to go shout at someone for not respecting their recovery time,” he muttered.
“What was that, dear?” asked Wind’s Grandmother.
“Oh, uh, sorry ma’am. You were saying?”
“Oh, yes… it’s important to create the roux first, and you’ll want to achieve a dark blond. Any darker and your soup will taste bitter, but any lighter and your base will be lackluster. If it helps, think of the color of sand after a rainstorm.”
Gen blinked several times. “Okay uh… I’m gonna come back to that color thing, but first of all - explain ‘roo ’?”
Grandma patted him on the arm consolingly. “You’ll get the hang of it eventually dear.”
Time passed into the evening alarmingly easily, with everyone distracted as they were, and it was decided that spending the night was the smart thing to do, rather than trying to make any world-saving progress when nobody could see. Somewhat contributing to this decision were the following incidents:
First, Gen had made the unfortunate and rather alarming discovery that he was allergic to lobsters, evidenced by when he went to pick up a pile of chopped shellfish meat to add to the soup under Grandma’s watchful eye and promptly broke out into hives. He was now nursing angry red palms and trying his best not to itch at them, and also feeling appropriately bitter about the fact that he was probably also allergic to crabs, scallops, shrimps, clams, oysters, and mussels, because those went hand-in-hand with lobsters apparently.
(Partway through the ensuing panic, when Gen had sputtered something about this not happening at lunch, Grandma had said, “Oh there wasn’t any shellfish in the version I served at lunch. I had the feeling I shouldn't add any, so I didn’t,” and that just cemented everything Gen had ever suspected about grandmothers, really.)
Second, Sketch had most definitively triggered his phobia again, this time on purpose - which didn’t make it better at all, actually, the rest of the group all got on board lecturing him for that one. On the bright side, he’d found Realm’s shoes, and had even fetched them from the surf all by himself! Was it worth it? Depended on who was asked. Sketch, in between his recovery wheezing, firmly believed that this was an excellent first step.
Everyone else had… severe doubts.
Third, and tangentially connected to the Second, Realm hadn’t found all his things yet and was missing his Bag still. This was deemed important enough to delay for, though not necessarily urgent. Past experience dictated that it would turn up eventually, as Realm’s missing items always did.
Fourth, Shadow was… having an Emotion, apparently.
…No really, that was it, Shadow was having an Emotion and he clearly had no idea what to do about it, if the continued angry screaming coming from the shadow of that one pet pig was anything to judge by. Best to just leave him to it and come back in the morning, probably.
And Fifth, Aryll had the unexpected ability to make herself look like a small Endearing Kitten, which was terrifyingly similar to Red’s own Adorable Puppy ability. Everyone discovered their previously-unknown weakness to endearing kittens when Aryll looked at Wind with wide eyes and a wobbly mouth and said, “You’re not leaving already, are you?”
(And then, as if the whole thing wasn’t alarming enough, Red started taking notes.)
All put together, it was pretty clear that moving on without proper recuperation time would be a bad idea. Hence, the second Group Glomp of the past twenty-four hours on the living room floor of Wind’s childhood house. Aryll was, of course, included.
Little wolf?
Dusk jerked awake blearly, then hauled himself to his feet and picked his way through the pile of sleepy siblings until he made it to the front door. From there he shuffled his way down to the beach, where he probably wouldn’t be disturbing anyone, yawned enormously, and said, “Midna it is the middle of the night.”
…Yeah, I guess you’re right. Go back to sleep Link, it’s nothing actually important.
Dusk did no such thing, because there were now at least four different alarm bells going off inside his head, the loudest and most concerning one being that Midna never admitted to people other than herself being right about something. He could count on one hand the number of times he could remember it happening, and the number would be one. Because this was the first. Yeah no, something was wrong. Something was actually, genuinely wrong.
“Are you dying?” Dusk blurted. “Oh Din were we wrong about the void travel thing? Do you still have all your fingers!?”
What? No, I - I’m fine, you worrywart! And for your information, I was right about the void travel thing! I’ve never been cozier or more content!
“Liar,” Dusk accused instantly, then winced as his brain caught up with his mouth. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. He could practically feel Midna’s raised eyebrows.
“...tell me what’s wrong?” he requested, quietly apologetic.
More silence. When it stretched for over ten seconds, Dusk pointedly made himself comfortable on the sand and continued waiting.
Finally, Midna sighed sharply and said, I’d thought that - I’d hoped, that defeating Zant would fix me, too. But we beat him, and it didn’t actually fix anything . Hyrule’s still disappearing, and I’m still… this.
Dusk worried at the inside of his cheek for a moment. There didn’t seem to be much he could say in response that wasn’t depressing.
“It’s possible that Demise is the curse-holder now, since he’s kinda usurped all our villains, but you’ve thought of that by now. You’re worried it might be permanent,” he deduced.
He might have lied about it, Midna said bitterly. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just said it to give me hope so he could watch me lose it in the end.
“You’re going to give him the satisfaction?” Dusk asked, all but pouncing on what he saw as a nearly-golden opportunity to snap Midna out of it. Nothing was ever quite as good a motivator for his companion as spite, he’d learned.
Absolutely not, Midna snarled, immediately pulling an emotional one-eighty at the thought of Zant besting her in something. Screw him and his mind games! If he thinks this is all it takes to make me give up then he can catch my fist with his face! I will not be made into a victim by the whim of some half-witted royal wannabe who couldn’t even walk a straight line if you handed him a measure-stick and pointed out the goal!
Spite successfully triggered. Dusk gave himself a mental pat on the back.
And don’t think I didn’t notice what you just did, little wolf.
“I think I’d worry if you didn’t,” Dusk mused idly. “Better now?”
Well, nothing’s actually different, so no, not really, Midna informed him. But… I can keep holding on.
“You’ll get your body back,” Dusk said, with firm conviction. “I believe you will. I’ll punch Zant in the face myself if that’s what it takes. Demise too, if it comes to it.”
Fifty rupees if you do it! Midna bribed immediately. Even if it doesn’t help, I’d still get to watch Zant and Demise be punched in the face, and that alone will be well worth it!
Dusk grinned. “Done deal, then. Not that I wasn’t considering it already but monetary incentive always helps.”
Ha! You, who actually puts money back if you can’t make room in your designated money-holder instead of doing what anybody else would do and stuff it in a pocket, motivated by it? Tell me another joke, little wolf.
“My actual incentive to punch Zant in the face is to get revenge for you,” Dusk said promptly.
…that wasn’t very funny?
Softly, Dusk replied, “Because I wasn’t joking.”
A pause.
…thank you, Midna said, and her voice was startlingly sincere… for about five entire seconds. Now go to bed little wolf, it’s the middle of the night! I know you worry but some of us need our beauty sleep, you know!
Midna deflecting her emotions was Dusk’s cue that everything was right with the world again, and he rolled his eyes good-naturedly before taking the hint and heading back up to Wind’s house to rejoin the nighttime sibling pile. It was a deep testament to how far their relationship had progressed, that Midna was even willing to let him be aware that she was having feelings in the first place - so now, the next best thing Dusk could do was leave her alone so she could process everything herself. At this point he was pretty sure he could classify their interactions as a learned skill - at least on his end.
…Maybe he ought to aim some of his Midna-skills towards Shadow, one of these days, he decided with a yawn, squirming his way back between Gen and Sketch. If nothing else it might help with the screaming.
The next day was a mixed bag of results.
On one hand, absolutely nothing of importance got accomplished, which was entirely Aryll’s fault. How were they supposed to be able to leave when she kept making that face at them??? It was heart-wrenching . They felt like horrible, terrible people. She was going to cry if they tried to leave right now and that was just - it was - it wasn’t allowed, okay? Aryll was not allowed to be made sad.
The Links did not leave Outset Island that morning.
On the other, definitely less important side of things, Gen decided that he wanted flying lessons… from the local seagulls.
“...To clarify,” Dusk said, when Gen accosted him for his assistance, “you want me to Curse you. On purpose.”
“More or less,” Gen agreed, and held out his hand expectantly.
Dusk stared at him.
“You want to be subjected, willingly , to the Twilight Curse,” he reiterated. “The one that forces you painfully into a body that isn’t yours. You want this.”
“That is the long version of what I said, yes,” Gen replied, a little exasperatedly.
“Just,” Dusk held up a hand. “Give me a minute here. You want this, for the express purpose of starting up a conversation with the seagulls, to figure out how to fly in a body that is not yours, that you have to get outside help to access, and that you will very likely never be able to access on your own power, or ever , once this is all over. Is that what’s happening here?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Gen said. “Look, can I have your Curse Rock or not?”
“Curse Stone,” Dusk corrected automatically. Then, “Can you tell me why?”
Gen made a face. “Look, I was a complete disaster of a falcon and I’m well aware of it. But for some reason I feel like… if I can be even a little less hopeless, then that’s me taking control. That’s me taking it and making it my own, the way you’re made the wolf a part of you instead of a Curse on you. Does that make sense?”
“And almost like a healthy coping mechanism,” Dusk said, nodding his agreement.
“Well I am the medic,” Gen grumbled. “If anyone’s going to pursue mental health around here it might as well be me.” He leaned in. “And it’s also just a little bit that I think my Loftwing will judge me forever if she finds out about this.”
“She does know that you don’t normally have wings though, right?” Dusk asked, amused.
“She’d wark at me for not having absorbed the concepts through sheer continuous exposure,” Gen said fondly, but also with a bizarre undercurrent of resignation.
Dusk thought about that for a moment.
Then he said, “Alright,” and tipped his Curse Stone into Gen’s waiting palm in a single smooth movement.
There was a startled yelp, a flurry of Twilight cloud, and a soft thump noise, and then Dusk was peering down, mildly amused, at a falcon lying talons-over-tailfeathers on the beach.
“Remember how to walk?” Dusk questioned, carefully keeping his voice neutral. Gen made a chirrup sort of noise, which somehow managed to sound snarky. He flailed about in the sand for a moment until he found his balance, then jerked upright with an attempted dignity that absolutely did not match the aforementioned flailing. Then he carefully stalked off towards the seagulls, flapping every now and then to maintain his upright position and muttering little trilling noises to himself. Dusk felt it safe to assume Gen was complaining about something.
…Maybe he ought to go and supervise.
“I’d like to preface this interaction by stating that I am not interested in eating you,” Gen informed a surprised seagull.
“I… wasn’t worrying about that at all, but thank you?” the seagull said questioningly. Gen blinked, then remembered that falcons weren’t native to island climates. The seagulls had never met a bird of prey before. He’d only succeeded in making things start off awkward.
“You’re welcome,” he decided, pushing past the unfortunate moment with sheer conversational momentum. “I would like for you to teach me how to fly.”
The seagull tilted her head - and she was definitely a she , even if Gen didn’t want to think about why he knew that right now - and gave Gen a very thorough once-over. “You are a full-grown bird,” she observed, “and you are telling me that you don’t know how to fly? Didn’t your nest-makers teach you when it was time for you to go and make your own nest?”
“...They didn’t know either,” Gen said, lamely. He wasn’t even lying about that, technically. His very Hylian parents would have had no idea how to fly.
“Well then,” the seagull said, and she sounded as though she was using ‘well then’ as a placeholder for something much more strongly judgemental. Gen very nearly bristled in defense of his parents on the sheer principle of the matter before remembering why that would be ridiculous, and also extremely unhelpful.
“Look, that’s not important,” Gen said, because it wasn’t, not really. “I want to learn. I’m sorry I was so abrupt, and I know you weren’t expecting me, but I want to learn. Can you teach me?”
“Of course I can,” the seagull replied firmly. “Flying is a bird’s birthright, and far be it from me to deprive a distant cousin of our greatest gift. Now, have you worked out anything on your own or am I starting from the beginning here?”
Gen shuffled his wings a bit self-consciously. “I can flap. I can get off the ground a little? And, uh, I can crash. That’s about it.”
“More than a fledgling,” the seagull replied, beak slightly open in what Gen suspected was a bird version of a small, reassuring smile. “I’ve worked with less. Roc knows some of my own hatchlings didn’t have a feathers-weight of sense in their heads when I started teaching them. Don’t you worry dear, we’ll sort you out.”
Gen experienced a sudden and vivid, though not necessarily important, flashback to Wind’s grandmother. This was going to be the soup all over again, wasn’t it?
One crash course in taking off, one crash course in flying, one crash course in landing, and an uncountable number of actual crash landings later, Gen could confidently say that he’d been thoroughly educated in the art of being a bird.
Was he good at it? Not particularly, no. But he could fly .
And really, that had been the whole point.
From the depths of the ocean, several eyes tracked a Hero intently across the sand.
Timing was key. Positioning was equally so. There would only be one chance for an unexpected abduction.
…Now.
Bellum called his Mist.
It was time for some revenge.
(Elsewhere, Ocean Ganondorf started screaming in frustrated fury. This may or may not have been related to the fact that his entire planning session had just gone down the figurative drain. He could feel the world warping, as if that squid could get something like this past him! (It should be noted that Bellum was fully aware that Ganondorf would notice. It should also be noted that Bellum did not care. He also did not, in the slightest, experience a smug satisfaction at the thought of this. Not a single bit. Really, no satisfaction at the thought of getting his revenge on the local Hero before Ocean Ganondorf could. At all. …Okay yes he was lying through his beak, what else was new.) Ganondorf promptly threw all his intentions of cooperation out a figurative window, to match the figurative drain his plans had just gone down. This meant war.)
The fog that enveloped Outset was sudden, cloying, and thick enough to give Grandma’s soup a run for its money. You could wave your hand in front of your face and not see any of it.
“Wow,” said Lore, who was waving his hand in front of his face. “I can’t see any of my fingers.”
Case in point.
“...wait,” said Wind. “Say that again?”
“I can’t see anything ,” Lore repeated obligingly. “I’m wiggling my fingers in front of my eyes right now and I know they can’t be more than six inches out, but if I didn’t know they were there then I wouldn’t know they were there! It’s honestly really impressive!”
“Oh no,” Wind whispered, and then flailed frantically in the direction of Lore’s voice.
“ Ow.”
“Sorry!”
“That was my eye.”
“And I’m sorry!” Wind sputtered. “Where’s your hand? ”
There was a moment of confused fumbling.
“Not that I’m complaining,” Lore said, once hand-holding had been achieved, “but why?”
“We might be in the middle of being abducted,” Wind replied, with all the frantic energy that sentence deserved.
“...oh,” Lore said. “Yeah okay. That’s a valid reason for hand-holding.”
In the distance, a cluster of eerie, luminescent yellow eyes materialized from the haze.
“...Wind?”
“Yeah?”
“Would that be our abductor?”
“...Probably, yeah.”
“Alright then,” Lore said, and then there was a metallic shwing noise that Wind recognized as a sword being drawn from a sheath. “I think I’d rather be abducted while fighting for every inch. Much better than being abducted while shipwrecked and unconscious!”
“ Hey,” WInd said, mildly offended.
“No, I was talking about me.”
Anything Wind would have said in response was cut off by the eyes in the mist lunging abruptly forwards, and there wasn’t really time for talking after that.
The fog that enveloped Outset was sudden, cloying, and... bizarrely lasted for precisely ten seconds before clearing away like it had never been there in the first place.
“...What just happened?” Steam said.
“Freak tropical weather event?” Ocarina hazarded.
There was a moment of expectant, but empty, silence, as Ocarina automatically made room in the conversation for someone who… wasn’t actually there?
“Well that’s weird,” Ocarina muttered. “Wasn’t Mask right next to me?”
“Wait,” Steam said slowly. “Wasn’t Wind right next to me?”
“Lore’s gone too,” the Four noticed.
Blue came sprinting into view, impressively only mildly panicking, and sputtered, “Ican’tfindtheothers,” in a very quick rush. He was followed shortly by an only-slightly-more-composed Gen and a wide-eyed Speck, both of whom had apparently watched Dusk and Realm vanish right in front of them.
“...well crap,” Steam summarized.
This was compounded nicely by the shoreline exploding in a fiery cloud of death. Several dozen seagulls immediately fled the island entirely, which was directly juxtaposed by the remaining Links sprinting towards the damage like it was their job.
…Which, really, it sort of was.
On the beach stood a very large, very familiar, and very angry man. Ocean Ganondorf, because he bore a nearly pictograph-perfect resemblance to Twilight Ganondorf and there was really nobody else he could be, was absolutely and incandescently furious, and this was obvious by the amount of enraged yelling that was accompanying his continued destruction of the surrounding waterline.
None of the Links had any idea what he was furious about , but whatever it was had the man truly ticked off. The group came to a stop, a safe distance away, and watched the chaos for a moment.
“...We’re half our numbers down,” Sketch said. “And while normally I’d advocate for fixing that before getting into anything complicated, I don’t think the island has got that kind of time. What do we do?”
It was at this moment that Gen realized that he was the only one in charge, due to being the only member of the leadership who was actually present. Wow, he’d really started relying on the ability to consult with Lore and Dusk on their next move, hadn’t he? It was almost like he was having phantom co-leader pains.
…He didn’t like it, and quite honestly he would have preferred to prioritize getting their missing group members back as soon as possible. But , he was pretty sure that Wind would want to have an island to come back to.
He mentally crammed a Solo Leadership Hat onto his head, grimaced at the feel of it, and made his decision.
“We need to take care of this first,” he said. “We can focus on finding the others once we’re sure that we’ll still have a landmass to stand on.”
This was generally agreed to be a valid point.
“Hang on, ” the Four interjected. “ That guy showed up just as half our group went missing. What are the odds that’s a coincidence?”
There was a moment of silence.
“GIVE THEM BACK!” Blue screamed, and proceeded to bodily launch himself at Ocean Ganondorf.
“Wait Blue no we need a plan!” Gen bellowed after him. “Who was in charge of holding him!?”
“Uh. Usually, one of the other three, ” the Four realized. “ Who are all currently missing. Um. Whoops?”
“Oh my Din,” Gen breathed out, which he’d picked up from the rest of the group, as opposed to his usual Hylia-based emphatics. “I’m going to have an aneurysm. Okay. Four, please grab him. Speck, go find Shadow, I think we’re gonna need him. Everyone else, with me. We’re gonna… I dunno, plan as we go. Break!”
Nobody moved. (Not even Gen.)
“...Yeah that felt weird to me too,” Gen admitted. “But seriously, we gotta move, Blue just tried to take off Ganondorf’s head with a hammer and there’s no way that’s gonna end well.”
This was an excellent point, and everyone took off sprinting.
The fog cleared suddenly, and Wind found himself standing on the shore of - hang on, was this Spirit Island?
What - how?
“Um,” said a small confused voice on his left, and Wind jerked himself sideways to find Realm. “What just happened?”
Wind gave him a helpless little shrug. As far as his mental map was concerned, Spirit Island was nowhere near Outset . He had absolutely no idea how they’d gotten here. First the failure with Mercay, and now this - what was even happening right now?
“I think we’ve been abducted?” he offered lamely.
“Oh,” said Realm. “Okay.” It should be noted that this was not, in any circumstance, the proper reaction to being abducted, but in Realm’s defense he’d been having a long day. He never had managed to figure out where his Bag went.
“We’ve been what?” Mask repeated, having just listened in and also catching the attention of everyone else in the process. Behind him, Dusk, Red, Vio, and Green all looked at Wind with varying expressions of alarm.
“Uh, abducted,” Wind said. “Probably.” Then he frowned, did a quick headcount, and asked, “Where’s Lore?”
Dusk glanced around. “Was he with you?”
“He was right next to me,” Wind confirmed. “We were holding hands and everything.”
“Found him,” said Green, and pointed.
Sure enough, Lore was on the far side of the shoreline. And so was the massive, multi-eyed cephalopod-shaped shadow looming directly behind him.
“...Oh that cannot be good,” Mask observed.
In direct contrast to his usual personality, Lore said absolutely nothing. The battle stance that he was holding, and the sword that he was pointing at them, on the other hand, said quite a lot. The tentacles attached to the back of his head said even more.
“So,” Vio began conversationally, “when were you going to mention that Bellum has possession capabilities?”
“Well, never, because I OBVIOUSLY DIDN'T KNOW!” Wind screeched.
“Semantics later!” Dusk broke in. “Fixing this now!”
Not-Lore began to laugh.
It sounded somewhat like a whale trying to gargle a lemon wedge… or something else equally improbable. The point was that it sounded wholly unnatural and entirely unlike Lore’s usual laugh. Hence, Not-Lore.
“ Farore , I was right,” Mask cursed. “That is absolutely not good.”
Meanwhile, outside of reality, Din was on the metaphorical floor again.
“Landmass migraines,” she moaned into the conceptual surface. “Dear Me why.”
Notes:
Yes, I am evil. No, I am not sorry.
(CACKLES GLEEFULLY)
Feel free to scream at me about it though!
Yes, Demise is the curse-holder now. He absorbed the villains, he also absorbs whatever the villains were keeping active. As a side note, he’s also holding Tetra’s stone-curse, Speck’s Zelda’s stone curse, anything Majora has ever been responsible for, the ice-curse in Zora’s Domain, the block-curse on Ciela’s memory, and several other things that I’ve probably forgotten about. Just so we’re all clear, here.
Oh, and one more thing: when you line up the Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass maps, Outset is very nearly on top of a tiny, hidden spot of an island called Spirit Island. This is actually a very important island, despite being so small and hidden, unlike Stonewatcher, but for my continued continuity of Giving A Crap about my research, I figured I ought to show my work for this bit too.
Guest Appearances by Wind and Steam having Family Bonding, Shadow staking a tent in Stage Two Anger and living in it, Sketch kickstarting emotional therapy, Gen seizing his avian destiny, the Mythical Powers of grandmotherly soup, and Aryll. I do so adore my shenanigans.
Questions, Comments, Concerns, and/or Cries of Anguish? Drop them in a review to let me know!
Thanks to Lecira, Tesla, Wind_and_Sky22, PeachTheWingedDefender, VioShortForViolence, Guest #504, Guest #505, Guest #506, Guest #507, Guest #508, Guest #509, Guest #510, Guest #511, xEverlee, Paulgrobe, Guest #512, Guest #513, Telemna_Hyelle, Guest #514, Guest #515, Gemini_Artboi, Guest #516, FarT00ManyFandoms, Guest #517, Guest #518, Guest #519, LaytonJr, Guest #520, AllyssiaV, Guest #521, Guest #522, toadApothecary, gingerninja88, WallacetheFox, Guest #523, Guest #524, LeopardLass, Guest #525, GhostOfTime, 4thClover, PanWithAPlan, Fight_the_Writers_Block, Guest #526, Raptoria, Guest #527, Guest #528, Unoriginal_and_anxious, NeutralVoice04102016, Guest #529, franzfan23, Guest #530, ClearCobaltSpear, nayyraa, Guardian_de_historias, TheLittleSpartan, Guest #531, Guest #532, Guest #533, Guest #534, Guest #535, Guest #536, Guest #537, Guest #538, Guest#539, Guest #540, crabbunch, Lea_Ag, LadyMonoko, PurpleApples, Guest #541, Mizu_Leaf, Guest #542, Guest #543, Guest #544, Guest #545, Guest #546, MarenWithAnM, Guest #547, LoreShadow, Null_and_V0id, Guest #548, JustSomeOtherRandomGuy, GltichingEla, Guest #549, Guest #550, tieflingwriter, CrazyCoal, Guest #551, Guest #552, Guest #553, Guest #554, Taya_Fox, Guest #555, cntrl_alt_del, Guest #556, Guest #557, AncientPhoenix, Candle_Star, FurryMemeWeirdo, LastAttempt, Robinson420k, DunaDinaurian, JJVader, agentfancypants, AceStarChaser, Guest #558, Guest #559, Guest #560, jimmythebass, Guest #561, Guest #562, ElfinScholar, and 1SixTheMusical6 for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 33: The Average Squid Abducts Eight Heroes A Year
Summary:
Bellum, who lives in the World of the Ocean King and abducted an entire ocean's worth of people, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Notes:
Changeling does not own The Legend of Zelda.
(That was quick. What happened to building up to the punchline?)
I got bored.
(...Fair enough.)
I made an attempt at hovertext. If it doesn't work, I am very sorry, and the linguistic translations are down below as always.
Also, I will be splitting the Kudos Thanks between the Beginning and the End Notes this time. Because there's a 5,000 character limit, apparently. Meh.
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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The fog that enveloped Lore was thick, cloying, and stubbornly refused to dissipate no matter what he tried. He couldn’t see the glowing eyes anymore, although he wasn’t naïve enough to think that was necessarily a good thing. He’d also lost Wind, at some point during the scramble when the glowing eyes had rushed them.
Now it was just Lore.
And absolutely nobody else.
Kinda peaceful, actually. Everything was quiet and still. It’d be a good place for a nap. If he just laid down and closed his eyes for a moment, it’d be so restful. It’d be so easy. He just had to let go of his awareness and drift away…
Lore considered that thought, through the haze of white fog and heavy comfort and oh-so-tempting oblivion of unconsciousness.
And then he slapped himself.
The sense of comfort vanished instantly and was handily replaced by the stinging of his left cheek. The white fog prickled on his skin in a way that felt thoroughly invasive, in direct contradiction to the sleepiness of before. There was something wrong here. There was something very, very wrong here.
Lore brandished his sword, which he’d never put away but had let hang slack at his side for a few terrifying moments, at the blank whiteness of his surroundings. He should be able to see something, or feel something, or hear something. There were no indicators whatsoever that anything else existed in here. Lore wasn’t even sure he was standing on anything, which was ridiculous because the ground had to be a thing, right?
…unless.
“Sleepers wake,” Lore whispered to himself, and then got distracted for a moment when his voice echoed around back as the cry of a seagull and lingered for far longer than was normal . He lifted one foot off the probably-ground, paused to psych himself up, and then lifted his other foot.
Absolutely none of the expected physics ensued. Lore was now… probably-floating? He felt exactly the same as before, except for the bit where he’d technically taken both his feet off the probably-ground and by all rights should have fallen flat on his face.
“This isn’t real,” Lore decided quietly, and proceeded to swing his shield off his back and onto his arm, staring intently into the unchanging fog.
So.
This was either some Koholint-level nonsense and this was all in somebody else’s head, or this was some Beyond-Koholint-Level nonsense and this was all in his own head. If it was the first option, then Lore had a lot of work to do.
But if it was the second option…
“Sleepers wake,” Lore repeated, with intent this time, and watched as the words physically rippled into the atmosphere around him. The blank whiteness of his surroundings briefly flickered into something vividly colorful, chaotic, and somehow instantly recognizable as himself before being smothered again.
…Huh. Beyond-Koholint-Level nonsense it was. Lore raised an eyebrow contemplatively, reflexively put himself on the highest alert he was capable of, and then decided to table the issue of how did he even get into his own mindscape anyways for later, once he’d figured out the more important things.
Thing One: His mindscape was not supposed to be blank, white, and featureless.
Thing Two: It followed, logically, that Something Else was in here with him, keeping his mind that way.
Thing Three: Lore was going to have to do something about that.
Thing Four: At some point he was also going to have to figure out how to wake up.
Thing Five: And then he’d go and deal with whatever had been happening with the rest of the Links while he was stuck in his own head. Presumably a fight? It seemed as though things had been ramping up for a fight before this.
It could be argued that Thing Four ought to have been higher up on the list, as waking up likely doubled as escaping the Something Else in his head, but Lore disliked having other people in his head on the principle of the matter. This was his mind, and it was crowded enough with only him in it even on the best days! He didn’t have the attention span to set up rental space in here!
…and also he was pretty sure that the oppressively suffocating blank whiteness was actually attempted mind control and-slash-or possession, but, eh. Details.
Speck tripped twice on his sprint to get Shadow, once over the sand which was extremely inconvenient for sprinting on, and once over his own feet because of how fast he was going. He skidded to an uncoordinated stop in front of the pen where all the pigs were kept, vaulted the fence, and slapped a hand at the cast-shadow beneath the largest and most overweight one until he got enough of his breath back to wheeze, “Shadow we have a problem and also a convenient target for you to take out your aggression on!”
The dark patch under the pig wavered and growled at him.
“It’s a Ganondorf?” Speck offered. “I dunno if he’s one of yours specifically, but it’ll probably be cathartic?”
Shadow’s head coalesced between the pig’s front legs. He looked, to put it bluntly, completely unhinged.
“Oh my Din are you okay-”
"H̴̹̺̯̰͌͑O̴̲͙͖̓̀̊͌Ṡ̵̲͌̕T̵̛͍̎Ú̷̦͂ ̷͉͙̉͆̐P̸̥̻̥̞̏Ụ̴̩̹͈͗̈́͘!̴̛̖̣"
Speck stopped talking. And stared. There… might have been words in that cacophony somewhere?
“...I’ll take that as a yes?” he ventured. “Um. Ganondorf’s on the beach… if you want a target. You seem like you could use a target.”
Shadow unleashed another burst of chaotic noise , even louder than the one before. Regrettably, the additional volume didn’t help Speck decipher anything in the slightest.
“...It’s that way,” he said, pointing, and resolved to valiantly ignore the way Shadow’s eyes were stabbing bloody murderous knives into his soul.
There was a long, long moment of tense silence before Shadow, wordlessly and somehow also furiously, detached himself from beneath the overweight pig and oozed into the space around Speck’s feet instead. Despite himself, Speck couldn’t contain a shiver - it felt… overly full? Like there suddenly wasn’t enough room in… himself.
Okay no Speck didn’t have the right words for this, but it was actually incredibly uncomfortable and it felt wrong on several different levels and Speck now had a healthy level of respect for Dusk and his ability to host not one but two entire other souls inside his own. But if Dusk could do it, even twice over, then so could Speck, because at the end of it all they were still the same person, sorta, kinda, ish. Speck sucked in a deep breath past the grimace his mouth had set in when he hadn’t been paying attention, and took off sprinting back towards the beach.
Shadow’s unnervingly red eyes stared up at him from the ground as he went.
(Shadow didn’t understand.)
(This was not how people usually reacted to him invading their souls. The normal responses involved screaming, crying, gibbering in mortal terror, and was usually accompanied by an attempt to kill him. And the most that Shadow was getting right now was a very vague sense of discomfort, and it wasn’t even aimed at him. Shadow knew this because he was made of all the negative emotions of his Origins and as such was privy to them whether he wanted to be or not, so he was quite certain about the discomfort.)
(There just… wasn’t anything underneath it? Speck was uncomfortable, but not because of what Shadow had done; rather, because this was his first soul-hosting and he didn’t like how it felt. There was no hatred, or fear, or revulsion, or anything like what Shadow had been expecting. It could even be argued that Shadow had done this on purpose, to finally get a reaction from his Origins that wasn’t fake compassion and actual borderline tolerance.)
(This was so much worse than tolerance. This was acceptance. This was fondness.)
(Except that it couldn’t be. He was interpreting it wrong. That was the only logical explanation, even if he got the same fond result every time he checked again, and again, and again, and-)
(CRACK- CRACK- CRACK went the box.)
Contrary to popular belief, squids did in fact have emotions and irritation was in fact one of the possibilities. Example One: Bellum’s current, and quite intense, irritation at having missed his initial target and having to settle for this… ginger one.
He’d been aiming for the Hero of Winds, the one who’d been poking around in his nice little stolen sea. Just to possess him, use him to destroy everything the boy loved, and then release him just long enough to watch him fall apart at the knowledge of what he’d done before eliminating him permanently. The simple things.
He had not been expecting to need to calibrate this aim.
Then again, he consoled himself, it wasn’t entirely his fault. The ginger one had quite literally thrown himself into Bellum’s path. No real way to get around an obstacle like that, not when a Hero decided to interfere.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t his target , but this Hero had his own perks. Quite a nice repertoire of experience in here, as well as an actual armory of weapons, items both magical and not, outfits of various effects, and… musical instruments? What in the world was this Hero carrying around a conch horn for, that was such a specific niche.
And that, actually, led to the other reason for Bellum’s irritation, which was that this Hero was somehow, bafflingly, actively keeping information from Bellum’s use.
Granted, it was small things. Mostly inconsequential things, such as the reason for the aforementioned conch horn. (And also, for some reason, whether or not the conch horn actually existed? Bellum had no idea why that bit of information was eluding him and he certainly didn’t know why it was important enough to be doing the eluding in the first place, but he had more pressing things to think about.)
The point was, Bellum had jacked directly into this Hero’s mind - was directly connected into the nervous system and the mental storage and the muscle memory , and the Hero shouldn’t have been able to withhold anything at all.
Much less several things.
It was almost as though this Hero knew what was happening.
It should be noted that Bellum’s possession technique, like literally everything else in existence, was not one-hundred-percent infallible. It should also be noted that Bellum liked to pretend that little, ever-present chance of error didn’t exist. Consequently, it entirely failed to occur to him that his victims might be able to put up a resistance. He was just irritated that full access to his current puppet’s mind was taking so long.
In light of this, the following series of events can be taken with a grain of salt on Bellum’s behalf.
“What do we do!?” Realm demanded, brandishing his sword even as he - and all the rest of the group - backed away from Not-Lore’s advances. “I don’t want to- to hurt him!”
“Swords were not made for leaving comparatively harmless bruises,” Mask agreed ruefully.
“Nothing we carry is meant for leaving comparatively harmless bruises,” Vio informed him. “In fact I’m pretty sure we ought to be commended for killing as few things as we do, because we are actually walking arsenals of destruction who happen to prefer using our abilities for nonlethal activities.”
He paused for a moment.
And then he said, “I was expecting Blue to rib me for using nerd vocabulary and now I feel weird about it. Can we fix this quickly please?”
“I am open to ideas on that,” Realm said, “which is why I will now repeat: What do we do!?”
“We have to get Bellum off Lore,” Dusk said decisively. “Admittedly I’m also open to ideas on that, but I do think that ought to be our first step.”
“Great,” Green said. “How?”
“...I did say I was also open to ideas on that.”
“Bellum should still be stab-able,” Mask pointed out. “If we aim for him and only him, we can probably pry him off after doing enough damage?”
Not-Lore took that moment to lunge forward and try to decapitate the closest Link, who happened to be Red. Panicked dodging ensued, followed closely by panicked screeching and a bit of panicked blocking, just to mix it up a little. Not-Lore made valiant attempts at anyone in range, while any Link who happened to be behind him tried to get in a shot at Bellum.
None of this was very successful, which was equal parts relieving and frustrating for everybody involved.
Some minutes later, the Links regrouped a safe distance away and tried to remember what they’d been talking about.
“...jigging strategies?” Wind hazarded.
“What does dancing have to do with this!?”
“Dancing? ” Wind echoed, baffled. “What - no? It’s the word for hunting squid? You go jigging for squid?”
“You are literally the only one of us who’s lived on the ocean enough to know what that even is,” Mask informed him bluntly.
“Then why were we talking about it?”
“We were ?” Red asked, confused. “I thought we were talking about fixing Lore?”
“You know what, that’s the more important bit anyway,” Mask said, which if nothing else managed to progress the conversation through sheer stubbornness. “I know I offered precise stabbing as an option, but was there anything else?”
“We could try and… I don’t know, appeal to Lore somehow?” Vio suggested. “See if we can get him to wake up and fight back?”
“I think,” Dusk said regretfully, “that if Lore were aware of what was happening, he’d have noticed by now. Since his body did just try to kill us, and all.”
Green pulled a dissatisfied face. “So we really do just have to aim for Bellum and try not to get Lore in the crossfire?”
Dusk pulled his own, equally dissatisfied face. “Just… do your best?”
He really wasn’t sure why everyone seemed to be looking at him for the leadership ideas, but he was making an honest attempt at it. Although this really was much easier when Gen was around to throw his opinion into the mix, or when Lore would push decisions into happening through sheer unstoppable momentum. Ugh. The sooner this whole mess got fixed, the better.
It was at that point, though, that Not-Lore finished covering the previously safe distance that the Links had put between them, and the conversation was put on hold in order to avoid being stabbed… again.
Now that Lore was aware that there was a problem, and was actively trying to pay attention to the problem, he could vaguely feel that his body was moving without his permission. He had no idea where his body was going, or what his body was doing, but he was aware that things were happening! Which was progress!
…Not that it was affecting the mindscape any, which was less than progressive, but on the bright side it hadn’t gotten any worse. So… net gain, maybe?
Lore hmmmmmm- ed to himself, frowning. Being aware of the problem was, problematically, not enough to shake himself loose.
How did one go about breaking free of a possessive influence, anyway? Despite Lore’s numerous experiences with both normal and possession-themed adventures, thank you Veran, this was the first time he himself was on the receiving end. He kind of wished he’d asked one of Veran’s victims back in Labrynna for pointers.
Or, well. If he ever found one of Veran’s victims who wasn’t horrendously traumatized by the experience and was actually willing to talk about it, then he’d ask.
In the meantime, with a sincere lack of experienced possession victims to consult, Lore was just gonna have to come up with something on his own. Conveniently, this was one of the things that he did best.
May as well combine it with one of the other things he did best, Lore decided. Being a disruptive influence!
The last thing that Bellum was expecting from the day was the sudden, brain-splittingly-loud mental bellow of I KNOW A SONG THAT GETS ON EVERYBODY’S NERVES that beamed straight into his head through the link he was keeping with his puppet.
But apparently, that was a thing that was happening now.
Consequently, Bellum blew straight past irritation and right on into frustration in the rough span of about four seconds. This! Was not how possession was supposed to work! This was not how it was supposed to work at all!
Somewhere, Veran was laughing, Bellum just knew it.
Speck announced his arrival back at the beach via Shadow.
Or, to be more specific, Shadow announced both of their arrivals at the beach by exploding out into the fight the moment that Speck set foot on the sand and tearing into Ocean Ganondorf with all the fury and wild discoordination of a category-ranked hurricane.
“Oh my Din is he okay?” Ocarina asked, wide-eyed.
“I honestly don’t know,” Speck panted. He’d sprinted all the way back, and was trying to take advantage of Ganondorf’s understandable distraction to catch his breath. “When I found him he seemed a little, uh… angry?”
“I’d qualify that as a bit beyond angry,” Sketch observed.
“Furious?” Steam offered.
“Livid?” the Four suggested
“Apoplectic,” Blue opined, then rolled his eyes when everyone turned to stare at him. The only reason Blue wasn’t also attacking Ganondorf at this exact moment was that the Four had successfully wrangled him into the center of their formation and Blue wasn’t quite upset enough to cause them deliberate trauma by breaking out and disrupting their synch. “What, I pay attention to Vio’s big book-smart words sometimes!”
“Later,” Gen broke in. “We’re kind of in the middle of something still!”
“Honestly though I think we could just let Shadow do his thing and be fine for at least five minutes,” Sketch said. “Maybe even seven.”
“But we’re gonna help him,” Speck said slowly, “right?”
“Well yeah obviously, but like. You see the point I’m trying to make here.”
“I thought we already knew that he’s violent when he’s angry.”
“We are kind of in the middle of something still!” Gen interrupted again, somehow even more pointedly. “Can we please focus?”
“Isn’t keeping the group on track kind of your job, though?” the Four asked him.
“It’s a lot easier when it’s not just me doing the job,” Gen grumbled, and wasted a moment wondering how solo leaders ever got anything done. “Screw it, just come on!”
With that, he took off sprinting, which thankfully - finally - got the group moving again, if only to follow him.
Of course it only lasted for about eight seconds before Ganondorf evidently got fed up with fending off Shadow and decided to summon a massive spider puppet, what in All Hylia’s Blessings - whereupon Shadow and a briefly airborne Ocarina (who had tried to Hookshot his way into having a position advantage) immediately became tangled in the strings, the rest of the Links promptly scattered to avoid being trampled by the legs, and Gen experienced the unfortunate reaction of all those who fall under the category of being afraid of spiders.
To be more specific, he Did Not Scream, but he did emit a noise that he would later deny until his dying day and his forward charge became a bit more of a forward-sideways scuttle.
Gen, it should be noted, did not like spiders. This was because Gen had not met spiders until his first trip down to the surface, about a year and a half ago. His first true, up-close, and deeply unfortunate meeting with a spider had been in the Skyview Temple.
It had been a Skulltula.
It had dropped from the ceiling onto his head.
It had been bigger than he was.
And it had promptly wrapped all its legs around his body to trap his limbs, used its body weight and gravity-fueled momentum to knock him to the floor, and then it had tried to eat him. Alive. And Definitely Not Screaming.
It should be reiterated: Gen did not like spiders.
“Hylia’s Grace, ” he said feebly, in a voice that was definitely Not A Whimper. Then he said another few words, which shall not be repeated but also shall not be condemned, as Gen was experiencing a rather significant mental trauma at the moment.
“You good?” Sketch asked him, having pulled up on the left during Gen’s moment of profane weakness. Being intimately familiar with significant mental traumas, Sketch felt that he recognized the specific facial expression that came with facing down one’s worst fears.
Gen took a forcefully deep breath. “I,” he said, fiercely, “do not like spiders.”
“Understandable, they have far too many legs,” Sketch agreed immediately.
“I hate this,” Gen continued. “ I hate this very much and I’m probably going to die screaming about it and oh Hylia why is this my life.”
“I have never related to anything you’ve said more,” Sketch informed him.
Gen took another, even deeper breath, which then came back out as an off-pitch screeching noise. He screwed his eyes shut, balled his hands into fists and then, still screeching, took off sprinting once again to presumably try and cut either Shadow or Ocarina down from the strings. Because this was the only non-spider-shaped option on the field, at the moment.
Ganondorf had disappeared at some point during the puppet summoning, which was annoying and also unfortunate and also made no sense, because he had to be puppeteering from somewhere but the only thing above the puppet itself was the open sky. Which, again, made no sense whatsoever, but was undoubtedly what was happening. The strings just went… straight up, until they vanished into the upper distance.
How was that fair?
In spite of the fact that Din was nursing one of the most intense landmass migraines she’d ever had, she was still managing enough mental faculties to pay attention to the latest chaos disaster that Courage had gotten into. Even if she… really wasn’t certain this was the correct sort of chaos.
“Farore, beloved sister whom I adore and cherish-”
“What’s wrong now?” Farore interrupted.
“Nothing,” Din hedged, “ per se , but I really have to ask: are you sure that this is the proper response to feeling divine love for the first time?”
She pointed down at the reality window, which was featuring Shadow. Or at least, the vaguely-Shadow-shaped eldritch abomination that Farore’s newest Courage baby was manifesting as. Farore squinted at him.
“...I don’t suppose that could be the Bargaining stage?” she asked hopefully.
“I doubt that sincerely,” Din observed. The landmass migraine took this moment to flare angrily, and she rubbed at her forehead in a soothing attempt. Regrettably, this did nothing but pass the time in the conversational pause.
Farore was silent for a few more moments, then sagged in defeat. “He’s still so angry,” she said. “I don’t… what am I doing wrong? This usually works. This always works.”
“First time for everything?” Nayru chipped in.
“Not when my baby is at stake!” Farore hissed, all but glaring down at reality. “I’m going to get through to him. I am going to love him.”
Nayru patted her sister on the shoulder. If there was anybody who understood that particular sentiment, it was the goddess who was literally Love’s Embodiment.
“You’ll crack him sooner or later,” she reassured.
“My rupees are on later,” Din muttered. She used both hands to rub her head this time; regrettably, it still did nothing.
For all that Oshus was a perfectly nice minor deity and that Din usually approved of what he got up to with his little pocket-realities, she was beginning to seriously dislike this one in particular. At this rate, if it got her migraine to stop, she might actually leave this one unmoored from the timeline, to slowly unravel and dissolve into nothing and stop causing her mental agony.
…no, she didn’t have enough spite for that. Darn.
Lore, by this point, had gone through seventy-two repetitions of The Song That Gets On Everybody’s Nerves, plus all Ninety-Nine Potions Of Health On The Wall with no real results aside from an ever-growing sense of an outside irritation with him, so clearly this meant it was time for him to bring out the big guns.
To be more specific:
“THIS IS THE SOOOOOONG THAT NEEEEEVER EEEEEEEEENDS!” Lore bellowed, at the very top of his lungs that he could manage while still keeping the tune recognizable. Then he reconsidered that, and stopped doing it in favor of belting things out operatic style instead. “IT JUST GOES OOOOON AND OOOOON MY FRIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEENDS!”
As he continued (as loudly as possible, of course), the outside irritation sharpened. It was almost a definitive presence now. Lore was in business.
“SOME PEEEEOOOOOPLE STAAAAARTED SIIIINGIIIIIIIIIIIING IT, NOT KNOOOOOOWING WHAT IT WAAAAAAAAS! AND THEY’LL CONTIIIIINUE SIIIIIINGIIIIIIING IT FOREEEEEEEEEEEEVER, JUST BECAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE!”
He paused to get his breath back, ready to launch into the verse again - and then it happened.
WILL YOU STOP THAT!?!?!?
Lore tilted his head at the words that weren’t his, echoing away through the blankness of the mindscape.
And ever so slowly, Lore grinned .
“Gotcha,” he said.
Hey there, nice place you got, chirped the voice of Bellum’s puppet, and Bellum promptly missed the target he’d been aiming to decapitate. After a quick moment of internal debate, he put the puppet on the automatic setting and turned most of his attention to the mental landscape connecting himself and his victim.
There was a Hero standing in it.
Bellum stared .
“How - you’re not supposed to be aware of this!” he sputtered.
It should be remembered at this point, that mindscapes are not bound by the laws of physicality. If Bellum wanted to be understood as speaking plain Hylian, he would be, and so he was. It was quite handy for situations like this.
Well you see , the Hero said, clearly ignoring the bit where Bellum plainly did not see, I was minding my own business when you moved into my head, and you didn’t even offer so much as a hello! So I thought I’d mosey on over and pay my own pleasantries.
“You are supposed to be unconscious under the weight of my conscious,” Bellum hissed at him.
Mmm, yeah, about that, the Hero said. I don’t remember inviting you in. And I’m a tad bit offended that you were trying to erase my entire sense of identity? And also the part where I’m pretty sure you’re using my body to attack my family. Not feeling real pleased about that one either.
“Feel all you like,” Bellum snapped. “But there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
The Hero tilted his head. No?
“No,” Bellum affirmed, smugly.
Oh gee, that’s too bad, the Hero said. Almost makes me feel guilty about what I’m gonna do next.
There was a SNAP, and a twisting, and suddenly the Hero was right in front of Bellum’s beak with riotous color spreading out from his feet and Bellum had the dawning realization that somewhere along the line, he might have messed up.
“Rule Number One of possessing someone,” said the Hero, as clear and unimpeded as though he wasn’t even speaking through a mindscape link at all and oh Bellum had definitely screwed up somewhere. “Never let your victim realize what’s going on.” He flashed a sharp smile. “Because you’re trespassing in their headspace. And all they need to take it back from you is a one… simple… mistake.”
The color was flowing into the space surrounding them. Bellum watched it progress with a vague sense of dread.
“You wanted my mind, right?” said the Hero, spreading out his arms as the mindscape inexorably shifted. “Well good news! You’ve got it! And everything that comes with it!”
The flow of colors turned into a wave, then into a tide, then just kept going , and as Bellum watched it crest far above his head he contemplated his life choices.
…There were some regrets, he decided.
The crest tipped over.
Bellum no longer had time to contemplate his life choices.
Unknown to both Lore and Bellum now that both of their attentions were unavoidably occupied by the mindscape, the outside world was…
…well, to put it politely, things were a bit of a mess.
When Bellum had put Lore’s body on the automatic response mode, what he’d actually done was put all of Lore’s base instincts in charge until some entity with higher brain functions got behind the steering again. What this meant under normal circumstances would be that Lore’s body would have stared blankly into the middle distance and not moved.
What this meant in a combat circumstance was that all Lore’s battle instincts took over.
And Lore, despite all his efforts to usually appear otherwise, had incredible battle instincts. The group forgot, sometimes, that Lore was actually the most experienced Link of them all, with an entire four-ish adventures under his belt and all the presumable near-death experiences that came with that.
Wind tried to take advantage of what had looked like an easy opening, because Not-Lore had stopped moving. (This being the moment when Bellum had gotten a mental tsunami thrown at him, which had outwardly resulted in Lore’s body doing the Hylian equivalent of a bluescreen.) Bellum, still firmly affixed to Lore’s back and head, had also stopped moving and in fact had closed all his eyes entirely. This was a relief in more ways than one, because Bellum had been leering uncomfortably at them all the entire time so far. It looked as though something else had taken up enough of Bellum’s attention that the Links could get a free shot in, and Wind had made an attempt to slice the squid off of his fellow Link while the opportunity existed.
Unfortunately, Lore’s body and battle instincts had taken this as a sword coming for the head. And had reacted accordingly.
Wind was currently about two inches away from losing his own head. He was also rapidly losing ground on those two inches, because Lore’s body was bearing down on him where their two swords were locked together and Farore , had Lore always been this strong?
“DOWN!” someone shouted, and Wind obeyed without hesitation, because that was just how things worked nowadays. Dusk came barreling into the confrontation, which effectively earned him the attention of Lore’s battle instincts instead of Wind - and then Dusk was about two inches away from losing his head.
“ Oh dear Din,” he wheezed out through gritted teeth as he shoved back against Lore’s sword. Lore hadn’t been wearing that Bracelet a minute ago, had equipped it in the infinitesimal moment before he and Dusk had locked weapons, and Dusk could feel the strength enhancement in the way that Lore’s opposition was entirely unyielding. He was also entirely certain that any divide in his attention would result in his own very painful death, but… at the very least, he wasn’t losing ground?
…That was really the only positive spin he could put on this.
Wind took that moment to pop back up and add himself back into the equation, trying to help Dusk throw Lore off and back.
This failed when Lore equipped another Bracelet and proceeded to hold both their swords at a standstill.
“...Now that’s just not fair,” Wind whined.
Realm and Mask squeezed their way in on Dusk’s other side, though it was only when the fourth and final sword met Lore’s that the confrontation finally started to inch back the opposite direction. Briefly, the Links began to believe that they might now have the advantage.
And then Lore’s battle instincts decided to re-equip.
Medallions on his belt, another Bracelet on his wrists, Canes and Rods strapped to his back, Instruments tethered to his left hip and a Bomb Bag on his right, Boots on his feet, Gloves on his hands, and seemingly to top it all off, a Cape. Possibly two Capes.
“Oh,” Mask said wearily. “That can’t be good.”
Lore’s hand reached for the Quake Medallion.
And it was at that point, when everyone had a brief but terrifying flashback to Lore’s enthusiastic description of what, exactly, the Quake Medallion did, that the group collectively decided to make a strategic retreat.
“I hate it when I’m right!” Mask screeched.
The Puppet-Spider had been demolished through a series of chaotic events that started with Gen blind-climbing his way up one of the legs and ended with Shadow literally exploding.
He reassembled, of course, but everything around him, which had also exploded, was down for the count. As he’d been on top of the Puppet-Spider at the time, this was understandable.
The Puppet-Spider had since been replaced by a Puppet-Snake, which was not particularly better in any way aside from not triggering Gen’s past traumas. On one hand, there were no legs to deal with. On the other hand, the Puppet-Snake was unfairly fast in a way that made getting at the weak point a near-impossibility. Also, Ocean Ganondorf was still nowhere to be found, and because of that now Shadow and Blue were getting twitchy. Blue, at least, had the decency to be unable to shapeshift in response to his emotions, but Shadow was quickly approaching a physical status that refused to be described in commonly understood words. ‘Conglomerate Mass Of Madness’ was about halfway accurate, and so were ‘Mentally Painful To Observe’ and ‘Declines To Align With Accepted Physics’, but somehow when all those descriptions were put together the end result was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what was actually happening.
“Are we sure he’s okay?” Sketch asked, watching as the literally-indescribable horde of Shadow glommed onto a passing segment of the Puppet-Snake and began to disassemble it right then and there. “Because I’m going to be honest here: I know he’s an angry person, and I know that he’s especially angry at things named Ganondorf specifically, but this seems like… I don’t know, more?”
“More… what, anger than he usually aims at this sort of thing?” Steam clarified.
Sketch pointed at him. “Kinda, yeah? This just feels like he’s angry at more things than this Ganondorf and his unfairly creepy puppets.”
“Maybe we should ask about it, once we get the time, ” the Four suggested. “ If nothing else, he might scream at us about it, and at least that will be venting therapy.”
“Oh yeah, that’s a good idea,” the rest of the Links muttered to each other.
Meanwhile, Shadow got hit with a sudden but infuriatingly clear resolution of compassion and understanding from his Origins, which only compounded on all the emotional problems he was already having. If they didn’t STOP DOING THAT , then Shadow might actually start believing that they cared about him.
WHICH. THEY. DIDN’T.
(CRACK-CRACK-C̷͎͋R̵͓͙͘A̴̼̬̿C̸̬̥̿̍K̴̺͑)
If he hadn’t been in the middle of a fight for the literal continued ownership of his body, Lore was absolutely convinced that he would be having the time of his life.
He could do anything in here. And it made sense, because he had already seen that gravity didn’t apply, and neither really did physics, and also he was pretty sure that he’d caught a glimpse of the narrative of his own life about five minutes ago, but he felt like it ought to be repeated. Just for the sake of emphasis.
He could do anything in here!
…And also, so could Bellum, but that wasn’t nearly as fun to think about.
In spite of Lore’‘s home turf advantage, Bellum was putting up a rather good fight. Lore assumed that this was because Bellum was still jacked in directly to Lore’s brain and was, for all intents and purposes, still maintaining an active possession.
That didn’t mean Lore couldn’t kick him out though. It was just going to take some effort.
It was hard to describe what, exactly, was happening at the moment, because the vocabulary needed didn’t quite seem logical. For example, Lore was currently launching a mental squad of attacking kumquats in a formation shaped like a seagull, while Bellum was defending with a thought-construct around himself shaped exactly like an anatomically-correct squid… that was also a skeleton. The kumquats, upon contact, turned out to be glitter bombs that meowed when detonated; meanwhile the skeleton-squid construct retaliated by sprouting purple mushrooms.
It is important to note that this all made complete sense to the people participating.
On the other side of things, the chaotic color vortex that Lore instinctively understood as his control over his own mindscape was still spreading and had never actually stopped, although it had slowed down quite a bit. Lore took this as a good sign, in between sending off six copies of Moosh, twelve copies of Dimitri, eight copies of Ricky, and a Spirit Train for good measure (because if Steam could make it work then why couldn’t Lore?).
Bellum countered this by materializing a Bug Net in each of his anatomically-correct-squid’s tentacles. The next few minutes vaguely resembled a furious game of tennis, if the ball were sometimes shaped like a kangaroo and the court was a formless mental ether and one of the participants was a sentient cephalopod.
Meanwhile, the color spread just a little more. Lore, between volleys, frowned at it - shouldn’t it be moving faster? He felt like he was putting up a pretty good fight, all things considered!
The inexplicable chaos of color abjectly refused to honor this feeling, and continued to creep exactly as slowly as it had been.
Alright, fine then. Lore apparently just had to buy himself some time while his subconscious did the hard part. Sheesh. Remind him to do some subconscious speed-training once all this was over. He ducked the next incoming copy of Ricky (poor Ricky), launched off another copy of the Spirit Train in retaliation, and then took the moment of Bellum’s distraction to think really really hard about what he wanted from his mindscape…
“Wūtah veah we tōtoneg usolfer toni tōsih tōmei?” asked a second, Labrynnian version of himself, half-exasperated and half-amused.
“Ap’plᾳd aol’r sa zom’fᾳdvᾳsqr n’syyar,” a third Holodese version observed.
“Fom-y day ŷ’jsŷ ail’r eᶍe-be fome ŷ’jid negote,” a fourth Subrosian version scolded. “Uᶍou l’moe eᶍe jabem-ŷ.”
“Retu, bõtu haev ot aidmõt it dõdenosu relooc hatõt awy,”a fifth Darkling version said.
“RAAAAAARGH, RHHHHHAAAAAAWR,” contributed a sixth Dragontongue version.
“U dykket lfëwew,” said a seventh Koholish version. “Kewrya juxej gun ub regew rewebrelexkewsa!”
“Ah,” Lore interjected, before he could catch himself. He paused, rubbed at his face with a hand, and regretted his life choices. Specifically, the one he’d made where he’d decided to push down his feelings on Koholint rather than confronting and working through them.
“Sorry, continue,” Lore said to his alternate version. “I gotta rip the bandage off someday.”
Seven quirked a sad smile. “Qew gelcew ri kewer iyëawked gewelk wecwebrylekket,” he agreed.
“...I hate that I’m right,” Lore conceded.
Version Eight (who spoke Divinet, which Lore had stealthily picked up from the Oracles Din and Nayru but had a sneaking suspicion that the Oracles may have been conduits for the actual goddesses Din and Nayru, which directly tied in to his subsequent suspicion that he really should not know how to speak Divinet and was therefore pretending not to know it),Version Nine (who spoke Archaic, but not very well, because the only access Lore had to Archaic was through archeological manuscripts and he was certain that he was mispronouncing at least one vowel), Version Ten (who spoke Jabber, but brokenly, because all he had to go on were the snippets that he'd picked up from Ezlo and the Picori, and Speck couldn't teach him), and Version Eleven (who just was fluent in Facial Expressions), all stayed silent, but contributed by glaring at Bellum. This made sense.
Version Twelve flashed his hands through a series of gestures, which translated literally into [EAT-SQUID], but was more practically interpreted as a threat to turn Bellum into calamari. This too, made sense.
And finally, Version Thirteen held up a wooden sign with the words AND YOU’LL BE POORLY COOKED TOO scribbled on it in dark permanent ink. A quick flip of the sign revealed a secondary message of WE CERTAINLY WON’T PUT IN - flip - THE EFFORT OF DEEP-FRYING YOU.
At no point had Thirteen taken the time to write any of these messages.
Lore loved how efficient Hylian Sign, and Sign, was for threatening people. He also loved how being in a mindscape made it instantly possible for Bellum to know that he was being threatened. It was a truly beautiful series of events that led to this moment, he reflected happily, as Bellum sputtered in baffled outrage and consequently failed to block the next copy of Dimitri.
Or, well. It would be a beautiful series of events once he got this whole possession thing sorted. Focus!
“Two, Three, and Eight, you’re on Distraction,” Lore began. “Four, take Seven and Twelve and see if you guys can figure out a way to undermine Bellum’s control from the indirectly-confrontational angle. Five, Eleven, Thirteen, try and figure out what’s going on in the real world, and then if you’re successful in that, see if you guys can do anything about it. Six, Nine, and Ten, with me. We’re gonna stab Bellum in the face.”
“RHHHAGH?” Six asked contemplatively.
“...Okay, we’re gonna stab him in the weird mouth-eyeball,” Lore corrected.
“Poco rico ri,” said Ten, and then grimaced, because he’d clearly meant to contribute to the conversation but had instead, quite on accident, said, ‘I suggest a cheese.’
Nine patted him on the shoulder in consolation but - wisely - stayed completely silent.
“Plan make sense?” Lore checked, opting to move past the unfortunate dairy byproduct moment. All twelve other versions of himself nodded back.
“BREAK!”
Meanwhile, the Abducted Group was having a genuinely frightening experience trying not to die at the hands of one of their own. Because whoever was driving Lore’s body right now was terrifying.
Though on the bright side, they could probably discount Bellum from the list of potential pilots? The squid was still attached to Lore, but the eye was closed and the tentacles weren’t moving - he seemed, for all intents and purposes, completely unconscious.
And also, this new entity was far more coordinated with Lore’s limbs than Bellum had ever managed to be. For whatever that was worth.
Lore’s body was currently invisible. Or possibly so high in the air that he couldn’t be seen. Or , an alarming third option presented itself, both , which would explain the two Capes. He’d just finished wreaking absolute havoc through a combination of the Quake Medallion, an incomprehensible amount of explosives, the Ice Rod, a Bottle, and a Slingshot, and now he seemed to be building up to something even more destructive.
The rest of the Links were sort-of afraid to see what could possibly be more destructive.
Instinct-Lore took that moment to demonstrate.
There was a concussive SLAM as he hit the ground, hard enough to leave a crater and also hard enough to send everyone within a ten-foot radius of the impact staggering. He twirled the Cane of Byrna - the reason why he could hit the ground hard enough to leave a crater without taking any injury from it - back into place between his shoulders and swapped it for the Rod of Seasons. Summer arrived with a whumpf of displaced air, followed immediately by another weapons-swap for the Fire Rod.
At this point it should be noted that the Fire Branch of Magic is known for being able to stack. Fire plus Fire equals Even More Fire, which makes it very appealing to the average teenage male who is interested in blowing stuff up. But in this circumstance, the effects are a bit different.
The Rod of Seasons is a unique magical artifact for containing, at minimum, four Branches of Magic, and arguments can be made for six depending on who is asked. The Season of Summer is primarily fueled by the Fire Branch. The Season of Summer is also a pervasive sphere of influence, which more-or-less affects anything that it touches. And since a Season is more of a concept than anything else, the list of what it touches can be roughly simplified to: everything.
In a natural, non-magically-fueled Season of Summer, Fire Mages are advised to practice their craft carefully.
In a magically-induced Season of Summer, where the influence of the Fire Branch is quite literally hanging in the air, Fire Mages are advised to just, not do anything. Maybe go home and wait it out? The kingdom doesn’t need any more raging wildfires this week, thanks.
Magical Artifacts imbued with the Fire Branch are no exception to this phenomenon. Three guesses as to which Branch fuels the Fire Rod, and the first two do not count.
As for the results?
Well for one, the air was now on fire. For another, so was the ocean. For ease of convenience, paste the concept of a firestorm over the whole island, and this will produce a fairly accurate representation of how things were going.
It was rather unlikely that anything would have been left surviving.
And then one of the boulders slowly uncurled, to reveal a Goron - specifically, Mask , in his Goron form, the only thing he’d had available that was completely fireproof that would have also let him protect the rest of the group. In the hastily-dug hole underneath him, all the other Links who were notably less fireproof were clumped together with wide eyes and, miraculously, only a few mild burns.
“Farore,” Green breathed, in a voice just shy of horrified. “He… would have actually killed us, doing that.”
“Two thoughts,” Mask declared from his position over them. “Thought One, Lore has clearly been holding back during every fight we’ve ever had so far, although I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt given the sheer level of damage he just caused and assume that he’s been trying to avoid doing that until now.”
“That seems logical,” Realm agreed.
“Thought Two,” Mask continued, “we’re gonna need to get really good at dodging, because if he wakes up and sees that he’s hurt us…”
Everyone collectively winced.
“I approve this addition to the plan,” Dusk endorsed. “Also, EVERYBODY MOVE!”
And that was the point where a massive ethereal block of magic, courtesy of the Cane of Somaria, came crashing down on top of them. Sprinting ensued. Chaos reigned. It would have been a fantastic moment for somebody to let out an evil cackle, but Lore’s Instincts weren’t about to waste breath on cackling.
The Puppet-Snake had been, for lack of a better word, dissolved. Although, nobody quite understood how that had happened. And they’d watched it happen.
The shortest, easiest answer probably contained Shadow somewhere in the explanation. The longer, accurate answer required vocabulary to describe how Shadow had probably been involved that none of the current Links knew how to use. Regardless, the Puppet-Snake was no longer on the battlefield.
It had, however, been handily replaced by a giant Puppet-Pig.
The Links were beginning to get the sense that Ganondorf was maybe, possibly, probably, definitely stalling for time.
“Just blow it up,” Gen grumbled, pointing at the Puppet-Pig. “I am done with this nonsense. Sooner or later he has to run out of puppets, right?”
“That would make sense?” Ocarina agreed hesitantly. “From a physical standpoint of where he’s keeping them, at least?”
“Hylia , I hope so.”
Lore slingshotted himself across the chaos of the mindscape fight - courtesy of the oversized slingshot he’d manifested specifically for this purpose - with the express intent of screaming in Bellum’s face. This was to distract the squid from the presence of Six and Ten lurking in the relative mindspace above his head, and also to prep the way for Nine, who was slingshotting in Lore’s wake with the express intent of slamming a guitar into Bellum’s face. The guitar produced a chord that exactly matched the pitch of the screaming that Lore was doing, which was a nice bonus!
And then a waterfall of pond-kittens cascaded down to join the chaos, which was Six and Ten’s current contribution. It was very wet. Kittens made from ponds, or possibly ponds made from kittens, are not very good at staying within their own shorelines. Bellum went down in a deluge of meowing water, or possibly watery meowing.
His counter to this was a grassland made of rulers. How a seemingly endless plains of thin wooden yardsticks was a counter to pond-kittens made about as much sense as the pond-kittens themselves did - which was to say, not at all. But then again, it didn’t need to make sense. It just needed to work.
Meanwhile, Five, Eleven and Thirteen were staring contemplatively at a patch of white fog. This admittedly did not look any different from the rest of the blank mass of white fog (which despite all the progress of their own mindscape colors was still taking up a vast majority of the headspace), but they were fairly certain that this was, under normal circumstances, the vision portion of their brain.
Five reached out and poked at… something. “Ai iwõll aidmõt, ai awõs higõnop rõfo higemnõsot ah iellõtt remo… ibsoovu.”
Eleven quirked a corner of his mouth and raised an eyebrow precisely two centimeters. This meant something along the lines of ‘If it were that easy, we wouldn’t still be in this mess.’
Five made a commiserating noise of agreement. Thirteen, on the other hand, held up his sign with the words AMEN TO THAT written on it. Then he stowed the sign behind his back (although where it went, nobody knew) and crouched down to get a better look at whatever Five was poking at.
Eleven leaned in over the tops of both their heads. All three of them stared contemplatively, again.
“...abemy if we idelkõct it?” Five hazarded.
Both Eleven and Thirteen swung around to stare at him instead.
WHAT WOULD TICKLING , Thirteen’s sign asked, before he flipped it around to finish with, OUR OWN BRAIN DO?
‘What, like the metaphor?’ the twist of Eleven’s upper lip communicated. ‘Tickled by an idea?’
“XINUBEF REGIYEFEG!” hollered Seven, mere moments before he, Four, and Twelve barreled through the impromptu huddle. All three of them were holding what looked like paint buckets and sloshing the contents onto every surface they saw, which probably meant that the paint buckets were actually the metaphorical manifestation of something-something-free-will, or whatnot. Twelve flashed a quick one-handed [HELLO] as they blew by, and then followed that up with a [SORRY] when the free-will-whatnot splattered onto his fellow linguistic constructs.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, Thirteen’s sign reassured, as the free-will-whatnot trio continued their mad dash through the mindscape and rapidly vanished from sight.
‘They seem like they’re having fun,’ Eleven’s amused dimple said.
“At aelõst eno rõgopu is,” Five sighed. “Wõno - ho hey!”
Thirteen and Eleven squeezed in over either of his shoulders to see what the excitement was about. What had previously been blank white fog was now coated in the colors of their own mindscape, courtesy of the free-will-whatnot trio - and that meant that it was now clear exactly where Five needed to tap in to figure out what was happening outside. The vision input was once again labeled in precisely the way that made the most sense to Lore.
I KNOW THEY DIDN’T, Thirteen’s sign started, before flipping to, DO THIS ON PURPOSE. Another flip. The previous message, in complete defiance of physics, had now been replaced with, BUT IT IS REALLY - flip - CONVENIENT THAT THEY DID .
‘Well,’ said the curve of Eleven’s smirk and the lift of his left eyebrow, ‘if we can’t contrive plot convenience in the dominion of our own mindscape, then what are we even doing with ourselves?’
“Raif inopt, raif inopt,” Five agreed.
Then he shoved his head straight into the vision input, because this was not the time to show restraint about things. His body went stiff; then his hands shot out, grabbed Eleven and Thirteen by their shirts, and dragged their own heads in next to his.
“...we amy haev ay rõbelmop,” Five said, which was immediately decided to be an understatement. Because according to the visual input, the body was trying to murder their siblings, and that was not okay.
Back at the main mindscape fight, insomuch as a mindscape allowed for things like ‘being elsewhere’ or ‘other locations’, Bellum was having a terrible time and a large group of Lore was having a great time continuing to make sure that Bellum was having a terrible time. Two, Three, and Eight were all harassing their target to the very best of their abilities, although none of them were doing it in coordination. This resulted in a cacophonous jumble of volumes, languages, and insults that Bellum was having to work very hard to concentrate through. On the other end of the spectrum was Lore (the original), Six, Nine, and Ten all pelting their target with the most damaging attacks they could think of.
Unfortunately for Bellum, he was the target in question for all facets of Lore involved. And for some reason, which he found incomprehensible even by mindscape standards, all of the attacks being launched were comprised entirely of ducks and potatoes.
One such duck went sailing past Bellum’s eye, and he corrected himself; the ducks were in fact made of potatoes. And - another attack landed squarely on the sensitive point of his main left tentacle - potato-ducks were surprisingly painful. Also, quite loud. It also didn’t help that the pond-kittens were still in existence and some of the potato-ducks were happily swimming in them. Which was… only a little bit mind-breaking to watch.
Being on the receiving end of so much chaos was making it very difficult for Bellum to maintain his hold in the mindscape, which he did suspect was rather the point. Which was fine, totally fine, everything was fine and Bellum would have this entirely under control just as soon as he got a moment to assume said control! THIS. WAS. FINE.
Inconveniently, this was the precise moment that Four, Seven, and Twelve blew through and added to the chaos by throwing paint. On everything .
A brief reminder: ‘paint’ is actually a metaphorical synonym for ‘Lore’s control of his own mindscape’, and not actually representative of art supplies in any way except for descriptively. Mindscapes are incomprehensible and indescribable, and only partially consent to being transcribed by the narrative experience at any given moment. Some artistic liberties are, regrettably, mandatory. But for the sake of convenience and understanding, all uses of ‘paint’ will now be replaced by the previously established phrase ‘free-will-whatnot’.
“TOMERŌH-UYOR SWA AŁ TŌSMEARŌH NĪDA TŌFEARŌH-UYOR TŌSMĪLE OŁF SLEEŁEEDBIRRŌR!” Two screeched straight into Bellum’s face over the quacking cacophony of the potato-ducks, taking advantage of the momentary pause caused by the free-will-whatnot, which was the cue for all the rest of his fellow Lores to relaunch their own attacks. The free-will whatnot, liberally coating almost every bit of mindscape in sight, rose up in a second tidal wave of color in almost perfect coordination. (Bellum’s continued presence and subsequent interference accounting for the slight delay between Lore’s wishes and his mindscape’s immediate obedience.)
Bellum looked up at the Lore multitude bearing down on him, the tidal wave coming to the threatening crest behind them, and the potato-ducks riding the wave, and came to a new decision in the split second before it all came crashing over him.
This was, in fact, not fine.
On the outside, things were going equally poorly, albeit somehow in the opposite direction. Lore's body was currently pinned facedown by Dusk, Mask, Green, Vio, and Realm – one for each limb, and then one more to hold down the head to keep Lore's body from trying to bite them – while Wind and Red did their level best to pry Bellum's tentacles off. It... wasn't exactly working. However it was that Bellum was holding on, he was doing it way too well. His eye was still closed, and all tentacles in question were limp, but his apparent unconsciousness didn't seem to matter.
Bellum wasn't budging.
“New plan?” Red asked, in the rapid-fire way that meant he wasn't actually asking, and drew his Fire Rod with speed to match. The Links had been trying to avoid using their weapons again up until now, since the last time had nearly resulted in Wind being beheaded... but Red felt like this was necessary.
He was pretty sure that even Bellum wouldn't be able to ignore being scorched, after all. Red threw his weight on top of the pile, leveraged the Rod sideways, and used the momentum of it all to sink the channeling orb straight into the squishy bit of Bellum's main body.
And then he set the whole thing on fire.
He couldn't be sure how much damage that actually did, because he'd unfortunately not had a good angle on the eyeball and that would have done the most , but! The important thing was that Bellum had flames crawling aaaallllll the way over his body.
And if that didn't get his attention, then Red didn't really know what would!
By this point, Lore's body had caught on to the fact that there was a weapon being used and was engaging in defensive maneuvering – by which it can be understood that he began thrashing strategically. A Power Bracelet may or may not have been involved. Mask may or may not have taken a hit to the face from the arm that this Power Bracelet was being worn on. The nose that may or may not have been hit in this situation might have started bleeding.
Things may or may not have devolved into chaos.
But, prompted by the feeling of third degree burns covering his entire side, Bellum's eye cracked painfully open.
Meanwhile, the mindscape chaos reflected this development rather… interestingly. One moment, Bellum was doing an (unfortunately) good job of holding off the tidal wave of free-will-whatnot and all the chaos that multiple versions of Lore could conjure; the next moment, he froze, got clobbered by a few dozen miscellaneous mindscape constructions, and then…
For lack of a better word, he shrank . Except that it was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike shrinking. He… diminished? Became less? Faded?
Clearly, more words were necessary. The… sum of his presence in Lore’s head became wholly less than it had been before. Almost like his attention was divided, or that there was just too much to focus on now. Or some third thing, but none of that was important because this was the opening Lore needed!
In unison, as the same thought flashed through all of his other facets, the ten of them that were present turned their heads to stare at a now much-more-vulnerable Bellum.
With an uncharacteristically serious look on his face, Lore declared, “Sic ‘im.”
The Puppet-Pig had taken several more explosives that anybody really thought it should have, but it too had been turned into a pile of scrap wood and splinters.
Ocean Ganondorf, on the other hand, was still nowhere to be seen. That cheater.
On the other hand, now there were a lot of thin, vaguely silk-like strings floating in the sea breeze. More than there should be, actually, which was kinda weird since there had only been three puppets and – oh great, there was a fourth one now too.
“Oh, great,” Blue muttered, as the strings pulled a not-quite-right Ganondorf into a standing position on the beach. “There's a fourth one now, too.”
There was a beat of silence. Blue waited, then fidgeted uncomfortably. Then he leaned over to Steam and said, “Do me a favor and tell me to stop breaking things?”
Steam blinked at him, blankly. “...Okay? Stop breaking things?”
“...No, it's just not the same,” Blue sighed. “Thanks though.”
“You're welcome?”
The strings tensed; the Puppet-Ganondorf raised its arms. Also coincidentally the two long swords it was holding, but the strings weren't attached to those, so. Semantics.
Four whole puppets was officially too many puppets, Blue decided. One would have been quite enough. This was getting ridiculous and Blue needed to punch something. He’d have loved for that something to have been the Puppet-Ganondorf, but… Shadow seemed to already have that covered, insomuch as a currently-conglomerate-mass-of-void-and-rage could.
This was just the worst day.
WHICH ONE OF THESE - flip - IS THE MOTOR CONTROL!? Thirteen’s sign demanded frantically, as the visual feed to the outside world continued to show highly alarming images of the other Links running for their lives.
“Rõwee not in rõmoot rõlnoñoct, rõwee in het eensõss!” Five shot back, equally frantically. “Adõ hist is inõptu, not optõtuu, rõwee in het rõgwõno aelpõc ot do haignõnty aawõnsyñy!”
Eleven darted wide eyes between them both. ‘Well, where’s output then!?’
PROBABLY NOT BACK - flip - IN OUR CONTROL YET, said Thirteen, morosely. BUT WE SHOULD BE ABLE - flip - TO FIND IT IF WE - flip - LOOK HARD ENOUGH.
Logically speaking, it followed that, since this was Lore’s mindscape, Lore should know exactly where all his controls were, so to speak. And this was… sort of true. Five, Eleven, and Thirteen did all have the practical knowledge of where the motor output control was.
The problem was that, as it was currently covered in Bellum’s blank white nothing, and the free-will-whatnot was still a few feet away and making progress at about six inches per minute, they couldn’t actually find it.
Now, Lore (and his facets) were not actually untalented in math, and could calculate that the free-will-whatnot would reach the output controls in approximately six minutes and therefore solve the problem. Unfortunately, a lot can happen on a battlefield in the span of an entire six minutes.
The three Lore facets stared at the situation for a moment, contemplating.
‘...Think they can hold out that long?’ the furrow of Eleven’s eyebrows and worried fidgeting with the hem of his tunic communicated.
“Ai haet hist revy hõmcu.” Five announced, to nobody in particular.
And as the information transmitted across the rest of the Lore collective, all thirteen facets made the exact same disgruntled face at once. Not with any amount of surprise, to be clear; it was expected by now, that their version of ‘normal’ was anybody else’s version of ‘utter chaos’. But it would have made a nice change.
Okay, so now Bellum had two fights to focus on, and both of said fights, ideally, demanded his full attention to deal with. Triage, Bellum decided quickly, he had to salvage this somehow.
The mindscape was the more pressing problem; if Bellum could wrestle that back under control, then everything else should fall into order. Which meant that the physical world needed to be put on hold.
…ah. He had an idea.
The rest of the Links, suddenly, were in a four-way standoff with Lore’s body, the half-awake Bellum on the back of Lore’s body, and the sword in Lore’s body’s hands. This was for several complicated reasons, the first of which being that, at the exact moment that Bellum had opened up his eye, the previously smooth and deadly movements that Lore’s body had been enacting morphed into a stuttering, jerky, and altogether uncoordinated attempt at fighting. This, the Links felt, was fairly undeniable proof that Bellum was once again driving, albeit with… inconsistent attention.
The second reason was that Bellum, back in charge of the body, was holding the sword in Lore’s body’s hand to Lore’s body’s neck. And that was unacceptable on several levels, but first and foremostly because Bellum was leering at them all with the infuriating smugness that came with having a hostage. That needed fixing, immediately .
Dusk and Realm, who had been making an approach to pry Bellum off, had gone still in their positions. Mask, farther away, was also unmoving in an archery stance, with an arrow trained on Bellum’s eye that he wasn’t quite willing to release with the situation as it was.
The third, even thornier reason, was that in Lore’s body’s other hand, was the Rod of Seasons, set to Winter, glowing ominously, and precisely two inches from Green’s face. Green, for understandable reasons, was also not moving. Red and Vio, on the other hand, had their swords out and pointed at Lore’s body - not necessarily because it was going to do anything, but more because it was what their instincts said they should be doing, pointing their weapons at the threat to their leader.
And the fourth and final reason was that Wind, miraculously at the exact perfect angle that neither Lore’s body or Bellum could see him, was slowly, carefully, and as quietly as he could, reaching up a hand from below the frozen chaos.
He paused.
There was a very long, very tense minute, where absolutely nobody moved.
Bellum had thrown up a shield of tomato lasers, which was annoying and normal. But then the squid closed his eye and stopped actively attacking, which was annoying and not normal. He was focusing on something, he had to be, but if Bellum wasn’t focusing on the mindscape then he was focusing on something in the real world, and that couldn’t be good. The input Lore had from Five, Eleven, and Thirteen indicated a threat to the rest of the Links, according to the visual feed, and if the threat was Bellum…
That was unacceptable.
Therefore:
“Oh freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me, as plurdled gabbleblotchits, in midsummer morning, on a lurgid bee,” Lore recited - and then failed to get any farther as Bellum went SLAM into his own shield, then through his own shield, then into the conveniently-manifested-for-this-exact-purpose ground. By several inches.
“Es’d y’jᾳsy-?” Three started.
“Poetry slam,” Lore said rapturously. “It’s beautiful.”
In rapid succession-
Bellum flinched, a full-bodied thing that jerked at the tentacles attached to Lore’s arms. The sword at Lore’s body’s neck dipped down and away just enough and Wind used all the coiled fury in his body to launch himself up, because Bellum had stolen so many things from him and the people he loved and he’d had enough.
Wind drove his fist straight into Bellum’s eyeball with every ounce of force he was capable of mustering.
Which, unfortunately for Bellum, was actually quite a lot.
BAD IDEA. VERY BAD IDEA. TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO-GOOD, VERY-BAD IDEA.
Why did Bellum even consider that idea!?
Both in the mindscape and the outside world (though not that the Lore Collective was aware of that second bit), Bellum recoiled. The Collective, already being in full ‘Sic ‘im Mode’, took full advantage of this, as they should. The chaos, already at ridiculous heights, soared to the approximate range of immeasurable.
And with Bellum’s loss of control came the assertion of Lore’s, as the mindscape all but exploded with the colors of free-will-whatnot. It had only been five and a half minutes! Amazing what a little extra insanity could do to a deadline!
Five, Eleven, and Thirteen, still over by the bodily inputs and outputs, immediately jacked in the moment they could see where the specific bits were. This had the added side effect of jacking the rest of the Collective in too, and Lore winced - that was just a bit too much feedback.
Hõwsoop, rõrsoy, came the mental reply of Five, followed by the sensation of a pressure release as those three facets reinserted themselves into Lore’s psyche.
Which… yeah, actually. Lore had the driving controls back, so to speak, and that was what he’d needed help from his facets to find, while he himself kept Bellum too busy to notice. Call that plan a success! Now though, with that accomplished, the only things his facets were doing was… distracting him, really.
“Ëysew,” Seven informed him, but since the Collective were all grinning and Lore could literally tell that Seven was joking because they were all the same person, it didn’t quite come off as the offended reply that it would have in any other situation.
“Takes one to know one!” Lore quipped back, which everyone naturally found just as hilarious as he himself did. The rest of the Collective dissolved into the mindscape mid-laugh, which was effectively the exact same thing as re-joining Lore’s will.
In case it has not already been stated enough, mindscapes are hard to describe. Especially when trying to describe thirteen facets of one boy who are at the same time still just one boy who is not split into thirteen facets.
“Say that five times fast,” Lore muttered to himself, and made a mental note to try it later once he’d finally kicked Bellum out of his head once and for all.
Speaking of. Bellum. What to do about Bellum, really. For all that the squid had little to no hold on Lore’s mindscape anymore, he was still here . So, Lore felt it was perfectly reasonable to get rid of him by any means necessary.
Which meant… he could be unhinged about it.
“You know,” Lore cracked his neck, left-then-right. “I bet it’s a beautiful day outside.”
He cracked his knuckles, one at a time, then all-at-once in the opposite direction. “The sun is probably shining, the birds are probably singing…”
Hands above his head, arch back. His spine made a series of pops. “On days like, these, squids like you…”
Lore straightened back up and suddenly, Bellum found himself in an uncharacteristic state of fear. Because the way that this Hero was looking at him, was - it was-
Empty eyes and a vicious grin and something in the way he was holding himself that screamed THREAT. The unfinished sentence hung in the air in the same way that a bomb did - hurtling rapidly and unswervingly towards detonation.
“... should be b u r n i n g i n t h e D a r k W o r l d.”
Lore spread his arms, and his mindscape answered.
Meanwhile, in a very confusing development, Bellum’s freshly-punched eye rolled back so far in his own head that only the white could be seen before closing completely, and Lore’s body collapsed like a puppet with the strings cut off. For a long moment, everyone stared. Nothing happened.
Realm tiptoed closer, reached out a finger, and tentatively prodded Lore’s body’s foot. Nothing continued to happen.
“...We’re taking full advantage of this,” Dusk decided immediately.
And that was how seven Links and an unconscious squid ended up in a tug-of-war with Lore’s body in the middle.
If it has not been made clear by now, Lore’s head was usually a mess. But, importantly, it was the sort of mess that the owner knows exactly how to navigate through.
For example, Lore remembered almost everything. His brain latched on to information like a kitten discovering catmint for the first time, which at the very least explained his proficiency with languages. This also, however, meant that he had a little bit of everything tucked away in his memory, and it was a toss-up as to whether or not the given relevant information to a situation would be… actually relevant to the situation. But on the other hand again, Lore was consequently an expert at sorting through what was and was not useful information.
As previously stated: a mess. Lore had never been one for those ‘mental organization’ strategies - quite the opposite in fact, any attempt at corralling his own chaos made him suddenly, irrationally, and vehemently reject the concept, no matter how helpful it might have been. His natural mindscape was therefore a mass of clutter and color, topics and thoughts and moods scattered about in exactly the same way that glitter invaded everything it touched and a few things that it never had.
And Lore’s brain moved fast. The speed of his mouth was some indicator to the speed of his thoughts, but if he was being honest, his mouth was never able to catch up. He invented, considered, and discarded twelve-to-fifteen ideas, on average, in the same span of time that it took him to say one of them out loud. This usually manifested in his normal mindscape in the form of a speed blur, for lack of a better descriptor. Each idea zooming around, heading in a random direction and occasionally ricocheting off one another.
To invoke creative liberties once again: imagine fireworks, but if fireworks were alive, and also never-ending, and also exploding at a nearly incomprehensible speed, and also nothing like fireworks at all. Simple.
But, there was a single loophole in Lore’s own chaos, and Lore both knew what it was and how to use it. And he was about to use it ruthlessly .
See, Lore wanted Bellum gone. And Lore wanted it badly enough that everything else seemed very forgettable. All the randomly fizzing color of his mind abruptly paused in whatever momentum was happening and re-oriented to point directly at Bellum, reshaping into something quite sharp. Millions upon millions of suddenly deadly thought constructs hovered ominously, an entire mindscape literally weaponized. It was beautiful, in the same way that broken glass refracting into a rainbow was beautiful. Or maybe the better word was ‘insidious’.
Lore stretched his grin wider across his face, all teeth and no humor and one-hundred-percent malicious and felt a vicious sort of satisfaction when Bellum flinched away from him. Good . In most other circumstances, Lore would show a bit more mercy, but not when the sanctity of his own mind was at stake. And on that note-
“Get. Out. OF. MY. HEAD.”
He let his arms fall. The stained-glass daggers of his thoughts descended.
Or, in other words: Lore used Hyperfocus! It’s super-effective!
For the interested, the sound of millions of blades embedding into a squid is a soft shnk.
The following sound of a squid discorporating from a mindscape is bizarrely and remarkably similar to the sizzle of seafood in a hot pan.
Lore absently waved away the scent of calamari, watching as his mindscape began to fall back into what he could instinctively tell was the equivalent of ‘ business as usual’. The sharp thoughts were relaxing back into softer shapes, and the previously focused directionality was rapidly turning back into aimless zooming. Well, nearly aimless. Now that the Hyperfocus was gone, Lore’s thoughts were whirling around in a circular, very storm-like rotation, with Lore himself standing in a calm center of untouched, protected space. It was quite large, and a bit indistinct in a way that meant the mindscape was still recovering, but within seconds things were resolving into shape and that shape was…
“Oh,” Lore said quietly, as a perfect copy of Koholint Island slowly built around him. “Of course I did. Of course.”
Because really, where was a safer place to carry the memory of people long gone than at the center of his self?
He was so, so glad that he’d kicked Bellum out before any serious damage could be done, Lore decided.
There was no Egg on the mountain, which made sense because this Koholint didn’t need to be dreamed by a whale, and none of the monsters. That was Mabe Village materializing, and a lot more people than Lore remembered living in Mabe Village, actually? But then the figures solidified with detail and Lore very quickly found that this Mabe Village was the home of every person he’d ever considered important. This, to be fair, was a rigidly curated group of people; but there was Zelda, and that was Ralph, over there were the Oracle sisters Din and Nayru, that was his Uncle to the left, Dusk and Gen were moving through the crowd, Rosa the Subrosian was over on the right-
Wait. Back up. Dusk and Gen?
And sure enough, there were mental constructs of his official co-leader and unofficial co-leader, moving through the Village and steadily collecting other members of the group that Lore was now noticing. With his attention fully on them, Lore could see a faint yellow line running between each of his fellow Links, and - oddly - he knew what it was before he even had the time to wonder what it was, because mindscape time was weird. Every Link in Lore’s mindscape was connected by a thin, golden chain.
Lore blinked as the pun hit him, and then doubled over laughing.
A Chain is made of Links, after all. Lore was completely in love with the way his head worked, but how had he never thought to make this pun out loud before? He was officially adopting this as his name for them all, it was perfect.
He brought a hand to his chest, taking a deep breath to settle himself, then straightened back up and caught a flash of gold as he dropped his hand. Which was normal, because Lore was a Triforce Holder, and he would have dismissed it as exactly that… except that his Triforce was on his other hand. Naturally, Lore looked, and found a thin golden chain wrapped around his wrist with a tangle of other lines leading out into the Village, each connecting with another member of the Chain (as Lore was now dedicated to calling them).
All seventeen of them. Even Shadow .
“Oh, ” Lore said again, a bit wetly this time. “Okay.”
What a chaotic way to figure out that he loved these people.
Oh, he knew he liked them well enough, Lore had known that for ages. But this? He looked up at the hurricane of his thoughts, which was now moving at tremendous speeds and was probably actively dangerous to anything on the outside and was very clearly protecting , with everything that he was, the bubble of safety at the center.
Randomly, Lore had the thought that Bellum actually was skilled at mindscape infiltration, given that he’d successfully gotten past and fully suppressed the defensive storm in Lore’s head. But that felt like giving Bellum a compliment, and Lore didn’t want to give one, so he tossed that thought into the mindscape color-storm where it belonged. It made a delighted whistling noise as it picked up speed and vanished into the raging spiral.
So, back from that tangent. According to his mindscape - the truth of who he was - Lore would happily raze countries to the ground to keep his precious people safe.
…He should maybe not say that out loud.
It was odd though, to watch Koholint natives mingling with the people that Lore’s brain had deemed important enough to protect from an emotional standpoint. There went Madame MeowMeow with her BowWow to have a chat with Impa. What an impossible, wonderful thing. Lore wanted to see what they were talking about - would have loved to see what they were talking about - but he didn’t have the time. If he was in his own head, that meant the rest of the Chain was awake, without him .
Which was unacceptable, really. Lore was gonna have to wake up and fix that.
…Any minute now.
…How exactly did he do that, again?
“Sleepers wake?” Lore tried. The words caused a ripple effect around his feet, but not much else, which was a drastic difference from the previous two times Lore had used them. Although to be fair, he’d been a lot more urgent about it then.
What, was he not wanting it badly enough now?
“This is my mindscape , not my dreamworld,” Lore told himself. “It’s not going anywhere if I wake up. Everyone here is safe.”
Why did he have to internalize Koholint so hard?
“Sleepers wake!” Lore ordered, which rippled strongly enough through the mindscape that it echoed back - as the cry of a seagull, exactly like before. Only this time, the sound was followed by an actual seagull coasting down from the circle of clear sky to land in front of him.
“…oh,” Lore said, for a third time. “Okay.”
He wasn’t tearing up. He wasn’t.
The seagull - Marin - ruffled her wings and tilted her head up at him. Birds didn’t speak, but that wasn’t a problem because this wasn’t where that sort of logic applied.
Lore squinted down at her. “Are you… real?”
Marin squinted back up at him. Are you?
“…good point.”
Just because the dream ends when you wake up doesn’t mean that it wasn’t real while it was happening, Marin said. So why can’t the dream stay real afterwards too?
Another excellent point.
You kept us safe, Marin continued. You keep us safe. You carry us with you, and we can’t be left behind. She clicked her beak a few times, satisfied. Now go and keep the rest of them safe too.
“Trying to,” Lore said, “but just - real quick, you guys are okay in here? You’re happy?”
You are such a Hero, Marin sighed. Yes, you worrywort. We’re okay. You make sure of that, even though you didn’t know for a while. Now go , okay? We’re safe. They’re not. They need you.
“Yes,” Lore agreed, slightly exasperatedly. “I’m trying to!”
Marin flicked her tail feathers. But - don’t you already know how? You’ve Dreamed before.
“I didn’t exactly know it was happening, at the time,” Lore pointed out. “Or what I was doing.”
Marin started laughing at him.
“What!?”
It’s funny, she said, that you’re a better Dreamer for us than the Windfish ever was, but you don’t even know that you’re doing it.
“Uh,” Lore said, thrown. “Thank you, and you’re welcome? But also, help me?”
Just this once! Marin agreed, still giggling. But next time, you have to learn to do it yourself! Now try again, okay?
Lore wasn’t sure how trying the only thing he knew to do again was going to make a difference, but Marin seemed certain. And almost definitely like she knew more than he did.
So.
“Sleepers wake,” Lore began, hesitantly. When Marin bobbed her head encouragingly, he took another breath and kept going. “Dreams will fade… although we cling fast…”
Marin added her voice to the song, and something was different about the way she sang it. Lore couldn’t put his finger on why hers sounded like that and his sounded like not that , but it was undoubtedly there. Something about how Marin shaped the words, or maybe it was how she was holding the notes? Lore could feel his focus narrowing in, reflected in the mindscape by several smaller thought-constructs detaching from the surrounding maelstrom and coming down to form… was that a kumquat?
Wait, no, that was a conch horn. Easy mistake.
And just like that, Lore knew what to do.
With a thought, the conch horn picked up the song, and was rapidly joined by constructs of the other seven Instruments from Koholint. The melody was a physical thing twisting through the air, and around Lore’s feet, and lifting him off the ground, and wow, even for mindscape shenanigans this was kinda trippy, Lore thought to himself.
The world of his mind faded as he went higher. Not ceasing to exist, just… going out of focus. Blurrier and blurrier until there was only a haze of color, and then until the colors were muted and dark.
Hold my hand… think of me… and you’ll fly… warbled the last, faint vestiges of the final verse.
His awareness went fully dark.
The Puppet-Ganondorf had… not been destroyed? Which was baffling, because this meant that it had outlived all the other three puppets combined. Maybe it was because this puppet had swords. Swords made everything better. Worse?
…Worse. In this scenario, the answer was definitely worse.
The strings of the puppet lashed out, contradictory to the shorewind, and pulled another Puppet-Ganondorf into existence.
“How is that fair!?” Steam sputtered, gesturing wildly at the pair of puppets in an attempt to convey just how unfair he found this development. They’d been having enough issue with the first one!
“Well, if you think about it, we do outnumber them eleven-to-two,” Sketch observed. “By the usual standards…”
“The usual standards have never applied to us and I’m not about to let them start now,” Steam muttered.
The Puppet-Ganondorfs lunged forward in eerie unison, with the slight exception that the one on the left moved slightly more smoothly than the one on the right. Which was certainly not an indicator of anything important.
The way Gen narrowed his eyes at it said otherwise.
…But he was also trying to avoid being stabbed, so investigating that would have to wait, probably.
The tug-of-war had been stretching fruitlessly for quite a while now, and it very much seemed the group was going to need to physically cut Bellum off of Lore’s body, because Bellum - even oddly unconscious as he was - just wouldn’t let go.
Then Lore’s body twitched.
The eyes slowly opened.
The eyebrows furrowed.
And then the mouth said, “Oh my Din he’s still attached to me, isn’t he?”
“... Lore?” Vio said disbelievingly.
“Who else?” Lore replied cheerfully, then immediately added, “Don’t answer that. I came out to have a good time and I am honestly feeling so attacked right now. And violated. Possibly even victimized. And also extremely grossed out , please get him off me.”
“We’ve been trying ,” Mask complained.
“Oh! How’s that been going?” Lore asked. He twisted his head around to get a better understanding of this situation, which was actually entirely ridiculous to the outside observer. Lore was currently suspended, more or less, by Realm holding his legs and Wind holding his arms; and on the other side, by Dusk and Mask gripping Bellum’s main body where it was attached to Lore’s back. Red, Green, and Vio were all paused in mid-motion, which looked to be an attempt at prying a tentacle off the back of Lore’s left hand, and Lore himself was just sort of…dangling there.
“…well this seems fun,” Lore commented.
“It very much wasn’t,” Wind informed him. “Also, it’s been going terribly. Thanks for asking.”
“You’re welcome!” Lore chirped. “You can put me down now, by the way.”
“Oh! Right, sorry.”
Lore wavered unsteadily as he was helped to his feet, the extra dead-weight of an unconscious Bellum throwing his balance entirely off. He pulled at one of the tentacles that was plastered to his forearms curiously, and made a face when this did nothing to dislodge it.
“Not gonna lie, I was hoping that would work,” he said.
“If it had, we would have been extremely jealous,” said Green, who had basically been trying the same thing with Red and Vio with no results for several minutes now.
Lore frowned down at the problem. His first instinct was to use mindscape logic, which - definitely would not work outside his own Dream. Where would he even get the inflorescent scissor snails at this hour, anyways?
So this was probably a brute-force problem instead. Darn.
“Dusk,” Lore said, “do me a favor and use those muscles of yours to pry Bellum’s eye open?”
Dusk, for lack of a better word, sputtered . “Wh- me? Why?”
“Because of the multiple times that you, and I quote, ‘stopped a charging goat-slash-Goron with your bare hands’. I could be wrong, but I think this means you’re qualified.”
“I - I used Iron Boots for the Gorons-”
“Do I have to provide the math on how much force a charging goat carries?” Lore interrupted. “Because I can. And it’s a lot. Don’t make me provide the math, Dusk.”
“...I think you’re exaggerating my abilities,” Dusk murmured, but obligingly adjusted his stance and placed his hands on either side of Bellum’s eyelid-teeth. He dug his fingers in until he was satisfied with the grip, then set his shoulders and heaved-
- and much to his surprise (but precisely nobody else’s), Bellum’s eye slid open as smoothly as a hot knife going through butter. Not that Dusk wasn’t putting effort into it, because he was, anyone with eyes could see him flexing against the eyelid trying to close shut again. But it was also very clear as to which of the two was winning that particular battle.
“...oh,” Dusk said, in a baffled sort of voice.
Lore patted him on a (very defined) shoulder pityingly. “Just so you know, I was lying about being able to provide the math. I’d need at least ten minutes, a sheet of paper, and the variable measurements. But I knew you could do it!”
Over said shoulder, Dusk shot the driest deadpan look he was capable of. “ Thanks.”
“You’re welcome!” Lore chirped. “Now if everybody else would stab Bellum in the eyeball please, I think that will solve all our problems nicely.”
“You’ve been unconscious and possessed, how do you know Bellum’s weakness is his eyeball?” Wind wanted to know.
“When is the weakness not the eyeball?”
“...Fair point,” said Wind, and promptly took advantage of said weakness, along with every other Link who wasn’t Dusk.
There will now be a short list of everything that Bellum has had happen to his physical body within the past thirty minutes or so, which includes but is not limited to: a roundhouse punch, a lot of fire, multiple failed attempts at dismemberment by way of tug-of-war, and a great deal of secondhand blunt force trauma by way of Lore’s-body-on-autopilot having little to no concern for impact damage. And now, six swords impaled straight through the eyeball. As the saying goes, this was the wound that broke the squid’s adhesion seal.
It’s a very common saying, in places that do not yet have giant lightning-fueled machinery camels.
Bellum sluiced off Lore and onto the ground in about the same way as mud would, which meant that it was altogether a bit disgusting to watch and definitely made Lore feel as though he needed to take a bath, right now, immediately, please. He stepped away from the puddle of squid on the ground as quickly as he could manage, and then kept stepping until he had the entire group of abducted Links between them.
“Someone else can do the honors,” he said, with a look on his face that could only be described with the word ‘ ick’. “I am… very done with this entire situation.”
The puddle of Bellum made a pathetic blurble noise. Quietly, Vio reached over and re-stabbed his sword into the eyeball-colored bit, which… didn’t do nearly as much as it should have. It really only resulted in a second, equally pathetic blurble.
Next to Vio, Green frowned and added his own sword to the re-stabbing. This too, produced a blurble, albeit at a notably higher pitch.
It did not, however, produce the intended result.
“…hypothetically speaking, shouldn’t he be a void by now?” Mask observed, having been watching the attempts with an increasingly raised eyebrow. “His weakness was the eyeball, right?”
“It’s supposed to be,” Wind replied, monotone in a way that implied how much he wished that were true.
That was a depressing concept.
“Hey, random question,” Lore interjected from his place on the other side of the group. He spread his arms to indicate the world around them, which was admittedly… a bit charred. “Where are we?”
“Spirit Island,” Wind answered, “in the Southwestern Sea of the Ocean King. Though I’m still not sure how we got here.”
Lore squinted at him, then at the island, then at Wind again.
“...I’m about eighty percent certain that this place isn’t real,” Lore said.
“Come again?”
“Well, okay, seventy-five percent,” Lore amended, which wasn’t the part Wind was concerned about but Lore kept going before he could say anything. “And ‘real’ is a subjective term anyways! Point is, this isn’t the reality we came from. Probably.”
“Probably!?” Wind sputtered.
“It’s only my first theory, I have a backup in case I’m wrong,” Lore reassured, and blatantly ignored the part where nobody found it reassuring. “But if Bellum should be a void by now, and we’ve done everything to make that happen by our reality’s standards, then it stands to reason that we’re in a world with another set of standards.”
“... How did you even make that connection with the information available right now?” Vio asked.
“It was obvious!”
“It was not.”
Lore made a face that was best likened to ‘If you say so’. “Anyways, if we are in fact in another world, then we need to figure out who’s world we’re in, because they’re going to be the one setting the aforementioned standards. Does that ring any bells for you?” He directed this last sentence at Wind again.
“...The Ocean King,” Wind said.
“You know, that makes sense,” Lore agreed. “But If I could clarify something real quick - who is the Ocean King?”
Wind paused for an ominously long time. “...You’re not going to like it,” he said.
“What, is it Bellum? I admit that I wasn’t expecting that, I personally figured that he’d be more in the role of the usurper trying to take control of the world, but I can be wrong, I guess?”
“You’re not wrong-”
“Vindication!”
“-but you’re still not gonna like it,” Wind continued. “See, the Ocean King… may or may not be a giant whale god. And if you’re right about his world not being real, then… this may or may not be a Windfish situation?”
Lore stared.
“...Sorry?” Wind added.
“Awkwaaaaaaaaaaard,” Mask whispered from the corner of his mouth.
A moment of silence.
“Well,” Lore said, resignedly. “You were right. I was not going to like it. Where was this epiphany during storytime?”
“I glossed over it,” Wind admitted. “Because you kept going on Windfish rants every time it was your turn, so I just… didn’t mention this specific detail? I was trying to save you some ranting breath?”
“You didn’t mention an entire second dream-world created by a whale god and thought it was a ‘specific detail’?” Dusk said, incredulously.
“What? Farore , no, I had no idea the Seas of the Ocean King were a dream-world,” Wind sputtered. “That’s news to me too! No, the bit I left out was where the Ocean King was a whale.”
“If this does turn out to be a Windfish situation, I reserve the right to punch this Ocean King in the face,” Lore announced, which earned even louder sputtering from Wind. “Anyways! Previous experience tells me that we need to end the dream to get back to the world we came from, which usually means we need to wake the Dreamer. Or the Ocean King, in this case, probably. We can bring Bellum too, for ease of explaining ourselves-”
“I’m just,” Wind interrupted, “I’m gonna, I’m gonna stop you now, because if you’re about to suggest that we head to the nearest mountaintop to see if there’s an Egg on it, then you should probably know that I already know where the Ocean King is. And he’s not asleep in an Egg on a mountaintop.”
Another moment of silence.
Then Lore threw up his hands in exasperation. “I continue to not like this! But lead on, I guess. We’re still bringing Bellum though, because anything else is a bad idea. Dusk, carry him.”
“Is this another pointed commentary about my lifting capacity?” Dusk asked resignedly, already crouching down to collect the puddle of Bellum into a carrying hold.
“Actually no, I’m disappointed in myself for missing that opportunity,” Lore said. “I’m just still very done with this entire situation and I don’t want him touching me again. For several, several reasons.”
“Fair enough.”
“Hey, just to clarify something,” Mask cut in. “If I’m understanding all this correctly, we’re… what, stuck here?”
Wind opened his mouth, clearly about to say No , then stopped and visibly considered the situation they were in.
“...Hold that thought,” he said, then twirled the Wind Waker between his fingers and vanished with the notes of a Warp Song.
Of course, when he reappeared not two seconds later, this was much less impressive than it was probably supposed to be.
“Oh, for the Love of Nayru, this isn’t where I was aiming for at all,” Wind groaned.
“Tried to go somewhere outside the Ocean King’s domain?” Lore asked, in a tone of voice which said he already knew the answer.
“Tried to go somewhere outside the Ocean King’s domain,” Wind confirmed ruefully. “But this does explain why my aim kept being off earlier, so I’m at least grateful to figure that out. I’d been starting to think my maps were wrong.”
Vio held up a finger. “Places within the Ocean King’s domain are still accessible by Warp though, correct?”
Wind shrugged. “Based on my adventures here before I joined up with you guys the answer should be yes. Lore?”
“My experiences would agree with yours,” Lore said.
“So we can Warp to wherever the Ocean King is,” Vio concluded. “I vote for that, personally. We just did a truly staggering amount of running and I would rather save what energy I have left for whatever shenanigans we’re going to have to pull off to get back to our world.”
“That’s fair,” Wind agreed. That had honestly been his plan anyways, but he could respect that sort of motivation. Especially since it was statistically… very likely.
He flicked his baton between his fingers again, then paused, and frowned. He’d… never actually used the Wind Waker to warp within the World of the Ocean King, aside from the failure two minutes ago, and now that he was considering it he wasn’t entirely sure it would work. See: the failure two minutes ago. Did Cyclos even have jurisdiction here, or did Cylos overwrite him? Cyclones happened on every sea, no matter what plane of reality the sea happened to be in, but now Wind was wondering if cyclones were a shared domain.
Ugh, he didn’t want to dig out the Cyclone Slate from the bottom of his bag, it was such a clunky warp method. Maybe if he aimed with his baton at the place where he knew the Slate would drop him, it would work?
“...Hold that thought too,” Wind added, belatedly, then flicked the Wind Waker through the down-right-left-up sequence and sent a prayer up to Farore for good measure.
“MY SON IS TALKING TO ME!” Farore screeched. “EVERYONE SHUT UP I NEED TO LISTEN TO WHAT HE WANTS!”
“ You shut up,” Din hissed, as her migraine spiked at the volume.
“Just let her have this,” Nayru whispered. “I think she’s stressed.”
The fact that Farore tended to grow flowers in her hair when stressed, and the following fact that she’d had red columbine blooms in a crown around her head for the past few reality-hours had absolutely no influence on Nayru’s conclusion about this, nope, not at all.
Farore, who was too busy hanging off every word of the prayer being offered to her, did not notice the exchange. This was probably for the better.
“My blessing on their travel?” she muttered aloud. “Oh, that’s easy! My Signature Spell is literally transportation!”
She snapped her fingers; the world flashed green in response.
“...How much magic did you just put into that?” Nayru asked warily.
“Enough!”
Nayru looked at Din. Din shook her head.
…Fine. She’d let this one go. But only because Farore was growing another layer of stress flowers.
With a vivid green flare of magic that nobody actually saw, due to said magic being on another level of divinity entirely, Wind found himself standing on the shores of Mercay Island.
Which… was not actually where he’d been aiming for?
“…What just happened?” Realm asked in the background, which was another thing because Wind had not actually meant to bring anyone else with him for this trip?
Why was this sort of nonsense still happening??? The warp point he knew was near Mercay, sure, but it was also very definitely off the coast, by a lot . Mercay should have been an island in the distance - swimming distance, to be fair - but definitely still a bit of a ways out.
“I give up,” he announced exasperatedly. “I don’t understand warp magic anymore. Someone else can do the teleporting from now on.”
Realm raised his hand-
“Someone else other than Realm.”
Realm lowered his hand.
“On the bright side,” Wind continued, “this is at least where I wanted to go. So. We can all go meet the Ocean King now and never talk about this again for my own sanity.”
“Does he have an official title?” Red wondered, as they all started following Wind up the beach. “Like, ‘Your Splashiness’, or something? I guess there’s always ‘Mr. Ocean King, Sir’, or maybe ‘Great Lord Whale’, unless whale is offensive and he’d rather use fish…”
“Mostly he goes by Grandpa,” Wind replied absently.
There was a strangled snort from Lore, followed by strangled wheezing as he buried his face in the back of Dusk’s collar to muffle his ensuing hysterics. Dusk managed to look only mildly put out by this.
“Mr. Grandpa, Sir?” Red tested.
“Does he have any other names,” Green interjected, over Lore’s continued laughing fit.
“Oshus.”
“I feel like you should have led with that.”
Wind leaned in, conspiratorially. “I could have, yeah. But Lore needed the laugh.”
Green looked back over his shoulder, where Lore was pulling back up into a standing position. The grin on his face was the first genuine one to be seen since he’d gotten body control back.
“Nice,” Green acknowledged, giving Wind a quick approving nod. Wind nodded back, the motion nearly identical, before leaning back out and walking on like normal.
He led them to a small, nondescript house up on the shoreline, painted white with a simple wooden roof and fencing to match. The door was equally plain, and Wind marched up to knock on it like this wasn’t apparently the home of a borderline deity.
“Oshus?” he called. “Ciela? Anyone home right now?”
In the split moment before the door slammed open, the Links heard the telltale ringing noise of an emotionally distraught fairy - and then Wind was being physically toppled over by the actual fairy, and it was very impressive given the sheer size difference between them.
“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?” she shrieked, and presumably this was Ciela, the fairy partner that Wind had told them all about during storytime. “Do you have ANY idea of how worried we were?! Linebeck told us you went off on your own for a bit and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, Link’s a skilled sailor, he’ll be fine!’ but then you NEVER CAME BACK and IT HAS BEEN DAYS, LINK, DAYS. We thought you were dead! Or a stone statue at the bottom of the ocean! OR BOTH! But apparently you’re fine?!? You couldn't have bothered to, I don't know, SEND A MESSAGE!? You just thought, 'Oh, I'll just pop off to WHO-KNOWS-WHERE for WHO-KNOWS-HOW-LONG, and not say ANYTHING to ANYBODY’ and you believed that was OKAY SOMEHOW? WHAT! WERE! YOU! THINKING?!?!?!?”
She punctuated each of those last four words with a bonk to Wind’s chest, and Wind let out a little wheezing noise.
“Hi Ciela,” he said, strangled.
The fairy - now confirmed as Ciela - darted up to his face and rang herself loudly next to his left ear. “You! Are going to give me stress ulcers! AND I’M A FAIRY!”
“Missed you too,” Wind croaked.
Ciela fluttered down to his hands, which Wind opened for her accommodatingly. She sat herself in his palms with as much dignity as a little ball of light could.
“You will never be doing this to me again,” she informed him sweetly.
“I’ll try not to,” Wind said. “But this situation specifically is a special case, because it sort of fell on my head. Literally.”
“No, we fell on the beach next to you,” Dusk said, tilting his head thoughtfully.
“...Okay, yes, but then after that.”
“Oh, yes, definitely after that.”
“Link.” Ciela interrupted, her tone shifted in a complete one-eighty into gravely serious. The way her wings were oriented suggested that she was looking straight at Dusk, and by proxy the puddle of squid in Dusk’s arms. “Is that Bellum?”
“Um. Yes. So, uh, that situation that I said specifically was a special case? This would be some of it.”
“Oh,” Ciela said, in that same tone of voice. “Okay. Is that an older you holding Bellum?”
“Um,” Wind said again, and made confused eye contact with Dusk. What are we in relationship to each other, specifically?
Dusk made an equally confused face back. Distant relatives over a possible alternate timeline outcome?
Lore leaned into their line of sight and executed an eloquent mix of eyebrows and mouth positions. You know that you two look ridiculous making faces at each other, right?
He received two blankly clueless looks in response, which basically meant that the only person who’d gotten any meaning out of that whole interaction was Lore. Fluency in Facial Expressions was tough sometimes.
“We’re the Chain,” Lore announced, deciding to step in. “Yes, we’re all Link, but no, we’re not all your Link. Most of us are from another timeline entirely. This has not stopped us from adopting each other and joining forces to save literal reality from being consumed by nothing-voids, and right now we’re here because Bellum is part of that particular problem.”
“We’re the what?” Mask interjected.
“Specifically,” Lore plowed on, “he won’t die, and we kinda need him to.”
“No seriously, we’re the what?” Mask repeated, more demandingly this time.
“The Chain,” Lore said, flipping around to face him. “Did I not enunciate it enough the first time?”
“Since when did we have a group name?”
“Since I invented it about twenty minutes ago! Keep up!”
“But why?” Mask insisted.
“Because a collection of Links makes a Chain. It’s punny.”
“True,” Mask allowed.
“And also because-” Lore visibly swallowed back his next words. “Actually, no, I’m not gonna be mushy in front of a strange fairy and a Windfish wannabe. Ask me later, because I will forget.”
“I will hold you to that.”
“...Oh,” Ciela repeated, still in that same tone of voice, which effectively drew all the attention back onto her - and the reason the Chain was at the house, by proxy. “Okay.”
“Is Oshus home?” Wind asked, apologetically.
Still in that same tone, “Uh-huh. He was coming behind me.”
Right on cue, with absolutely flawless timing, an elderly man appeared in the doorway. He was very small, shorter than Wind even, which was impressive because none of the Links were particularly tall people. He leaned on a cane as he surveyed the Heroes on his doorstep, and his face was almost completely overtaken by the most fantastically bushy pair of eyebrows that any of them had ever seen.
He was, notably, not a giant whale.
Vio, attempting discretion, leaned in to whisper, “Is this the right person?” into Wind’s ear. Unfortunately it was the left ear, which was still recovering from Ciela ringing herself straight into it, and therefore Wind entirely failed to respond.
“Oshus, hi,” he said instead, which did sorta answer Vio’s question, at the very least. “So, I’ve got good news and bad news? Good news, we found Bellum.”
Dusk helpfully raised his arms, showing off the squid puddle draped over them.
“Bad news, he’s kinda refusing to be permanently defeated,” Wind continued. “And, uh… we have a theory on that? But. Um.”
“Just spit it out,” Mask advised.
Wind heaved a sigh, ran both his hands through his hair, and then point-blank asked, “Is this a Dream?”
There was a long, long, long , moment of silence, during which Oshus did absolutely nothing aside from his mouth falling ever-so-slightly open.
“...I’ll take that as a yes,” Wind concluded, after a solid thirty seconds of no response. “Second question, are you the Dreamer?”
Oshus slowly closed his mouth and did not respond in any other way whatsoever. Another thirty seconds of silence crawled by.
“I will take that as another yes,” Wind decided.
“Called it,” Lore announced from the back.
“Please gloat later,” Wind said, then went back to breaking Oshus. “Okay so, did you know that Bellum has probably been hijacking your Dreamer control and that’s why he’s been able to cause so many problems?”
Oshus blinked. Once.
Wind sighed again. “I’m gonna continue taking this as a yes. Look, I’m almost done, you can have a verbal response ready then. Now since we’ve managed to incapacitate Bellum, but he won’t die in the way that we need him to, but we brought him to you and you’re the one with the original Dreamer control, can you override Bellum to let us out of the Dream? We’ve kinda got some stuff going on back in reality, and we really need to take care of it.”
Another long, long, long moment of silence passed.
“Oshus?” Wind prompted.
“...I am going to have to explain myself, aren’t I?” Oshus said finally, and raised a hand to cover his eyes. He stayed that way for a moment, leaning heavily on his cane for support, then looked back up at the Chain of Links in his doorway. “Come in, please. This will not be a short discussion.”
“Will there be snacks?” Red asked hopefully.
“Sadly, I was not expecting company today,” Oshus said. “Let alone this much of it, nor this dire of a conversation topic. My apologies.”
“That’s very sad,” Red decided.
The inside of Oshus’ house matched the outside, in that it was simple and unassuming and mostly made of wood. Oshus led them to the table, then realized that he didn’t have enough chairs, and then led everyone away from the table to kneel on the floor instead.
“I will start by confirming your theories,” Oshus said resignedly. “Yes, this is a Dream, and yes, I was the Dreamer.”
“HA!” Lore barked triumphantly.
“Please gloat later,” Wind shot back, and elbowed him in the ribcage for good measure.
“Unfortunately this is no longer the case,” Oshus continued. “And at this point, I must tell you - I have no power to end this Dream. Bellum wrested that control from me long ago and it has yet to return.” He made regretful eye contact with Wind. “I cannot send you home.”
“...no, of course not,” Mask muttered in the background. “That would have been easy.”
Notes:
*Shows up a year late with a new chapter and Stalbucks*
Well. I don’t know if this will have been worth the wait, but I sure did try.
Heeeeeeeey guys, it’s been a while? Had a lot happen. Narrowly escaped being unintentionally homeless after a guy ghosted me on a house viewing after I had already told my apartment office I was moving out, which was not-stressful-at-all. Rebalanced my two jobs. Picked up a third, freelance job. Picked up a fourth, also-freelance job. Started learning ASL. Found out that my ADD has a Hyperactive in it. Discovered that I’m allergic to watermelon now, apparently. Discovered that I am no longer allergic to avocado now, apparently. Bought a new fish.
Life’s wack, y’all.
Anyways! Count all the meme references I made this time, because I used a lot. In my defense, I am never going to have a better reason to use them than a setting where literally anything can happen. Although, the mindscape shenanigans were the source of nearly all my writing-related stall time, much to my own chagrin. They’re fantastic fun, but the creativity required to make them as weird as possible takes a lot of time and a lot of scouring the dictionary for good nouns.
I do fully admit that Bellum stole this fight. My original planning document had a side-by-side battle in the style of Demon Vaati and Hyrule Ganon, where the two groups were separated, but paid equal amounts of attention. …and then the mindscape shenanigans started happening. At one point I think I started channeling the Warner siblings from Animaniacs? So really, I shouldn’t be surprised that this got away from me as bad as it did.
Also, a note on the red columbine bit, because I ended up in a full research-deep-dive-binge for that. According to flower language, red columbine means “anxious, trembling.” Seemed accurate.
Next up, the Ocean Ganondorf fight that was supposed to be covered in this fight. Also the Abducted Group trying to fix the bit where they’ve been abducted, but mostly Ganondorf!
Fear not. I have a plan.
-Changeling
Linguistic Translations:
Labrynnian: Wūtah veah we tōtoneg usolfer toni tōsih tōmei? (What have we gotten ourself into this time?) / TOMERŌH-UYOR SWA AŁ TŌSMEARŌH NĪDA TŌFEARŌH-UYOR TŌSMĪLE OŁF SLEEŁEEDBIRRŌR! (YOUR MOTHER WAS A HAMSTER AND YOUR FATHER SMELT OF ELDERBERRIES!)
Holodese: Ap’plᾳd aol’r sa zom’fᾳdvᾳsqr n’syyar. (Looks like a mindscape battle.) / Es’d y’jᾳsy-? (Was that…?)
Subrosian: Fom-y day ŷ’jsŷ ail’r eᶍe-be fome ŷ’jid negote. Uᶍou l’moe eᶍe jabem-ŷ. (Don't say that like we've done this before. You know we haven't.)
Darkling: Retu, bõtu haev ot aidmõt it dõdenosu relooc hatõt awy. (True, but you have to admit it sounded cooler that way.) / Ai iwõll aidmõt, ai awõs higõnop rõfo higemnõsot ah iellõtt remo… ibsoovu. (I’ll admit, I was hoping for something a little more… obvious.) / ...abemy if we idelkõct it? (...maybe if we tickled it?) / At aelõst eno rõgopu is. Wõno - ho hey! (At least one group is. Now - oh hey!) / Raif inopt, raif inopt. (Fair point, fair point.) / ...we amy haev ay rõbelmop. (...we may have a problem.) / Rõwee not in rõmoot rõlnoñoct, rõwee in het eensõss! Adõ hist is inõptu, not optõtuu, rõwee in het rõgwõno aelpõc ot do haignõnty aawõnsyñy! (We’re not in motor control, we’re in the senses! And this is input, not output, we’re in the wrong place to do anything anyways!) / Ai haet hist revy hõmcu. (I hate this very much.) / Hõwsoop, rõrsoy. (Whoops, sorry.)
Dragontongue: RAAAAAARGH, RHHHHHAAAAAAWR. (Therein lies our foe. Let us engage him in combat posthaste.) / RHHHAGH? (One wonders if our foe is in possession of a face?)
Koholish: U dykket lfëwew. Kewrya juxej gun ub regew rewebrelexkewsa! (I fully agree. Let's kick him in the tentacles!) / Qew gelcew ri kewer iyëawked gewelk wecwebrylekket. (We have to let ourself heal eventually.) / XINUBEF REGIYEFEG! (COMING THROUGH!) / Ëysew. (Rude.)
Continued Thanks to Guest #711, Guest #712, Guest #713, Guest #714, Guest #715, Guest #716, Guest #717, Guest #718, Guest #719, Guest #720, Guest #721, Guest #722, Iceberger2006, Guest #723, Guest #724, Guest #725, Guest #726, Guest #727, Guest #728, Guest #729, MusicalAnima, Lilyflower1412, CrystalizedFall, pill_ciphore, Azcii, Guest #730, Guest #731, Guest #732, Guest #733, feralis, and Andy_MRH for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
Chapter 34: The Problem With String Theory
Summary:
One problem has been solved, and yet several more arise. Whoops.
Notes:
(Hey, can we cut the bit short this time? I need to ask the readers a favor.)
...Fine. Changeling does not own the Legend of Zelda. I guess I'll just save the accordions for next chapter.
(And now I'm mildly terrified. Thank you, though.)
Meh. Ask your favor before I change my mind.
(Okay! Folks, there's been some interest in having the OG copy of Dimensional Links be available, and I have no issue with providing this... mostly. See, the laptop that I started DL on fried itself, badly, to the point where I lost several files before I could save them or transfer them to an archive. Some of these files were the original DL chapters of 1-16. I cannot recover these, and believe me I have tried. But this is where you guys come in! If any of you, for whatever reason, happen to have a copy of those early chapters, I would be thrilled if you would DM them to me. The Internet is forever and somebody out there is skilled enough to dig up a decade-old copy of an FF-net story! That somebody is not me. But! If that somebody is you then you will have my eternal gratitude!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
To say that Ganondorf was in a bad mood would be… an understatement. He had no idea where Bellum had gone, he was actively running out of puppets, he couldn’t seem to get a second to make a plan no matter how hard he tried, and to top it all off, HE HAD SAND IN HIS SHOES.
It was coarse, it was rough, and it was getting everywhere. He had half a mind to petition Demise to put sand first on the list of things that would be destroyed, for the sole reason of making himself feel better. He’d never liked sand, not even back before Hyrule had been submerged beneath the seas, and he didn’t foresee that changing anytime soon. If at all.
The point was - the point, was that Ocean Ganondorf was having a terrible time, and his opponents weren’t even allowing the basic decency of being hit. Really, bad manners all around.
Speaking of which, here came the blue one again, still screaming about thievery and something that Ganondorf apparently needed to ‘give back’. Delusional, obviously, but persistent, and annoying in that persistence. Ganondorf sighed and pulled on his strings. In the blink of an eye - less time than that, even - his Puppet swapped places with him and parried the attack in his place. This wasn’t worth handling personally, not when so many things were still going wrong with still no real way to fix them.
Such as Bellum. Who had vanished with no warning and apparently taken half the Heroes with him and thereby made it impossible for Ocean Ganondorf to get rid of them in one fell swoop. It was nothing less than a childish overreaction! He’d called Bellum an octopus one time in the heat of an argument, and look how that fool handled it.
Honestly. He was surrounded by incompetence. if he could just get a minute to think of a way around that, everything would be fine. On that note, Ganondorf threw up a sword to block, twitched his strings again and traded places with his Puppet, then pulled up another Puppet for good measure, and then went back to his attempts at salvaging a plan.
Now, this sort of behavior is frequently mistaken as brooding by the uneducated, but Ocean Ganondorf did not brood. He merely… ruminated. Heavily. With a deep-set scowl and a distant gaze and a tendency towards pensive mutterings when he was in deep enough thought. Which was totally different from brooding.
(It should be noted: this was exactly the same as brooding.)
Bellum would rue the day he’d chosen to cross Ocean Ganondorf, and it would be glorious. Revenge would be swift and justified and oh-so-satisfying.
He just… needed to take care of these pesky Heroes first. And figure out where Bellum was. And actually plot out that aforementioned revenge. And a few other things, which weren’t worth listing, but were vaguely important enough to be mentioned as part of a general collective.
…Perhaps he ought to look into time management skills.
On the opposing side, Gen was stressed. What was this ‘solo leadership’ nonsense and how did he make it stop? How dare his co-leaders get themselves abducted and leave him alone with this. Of all the irresponsible nonsense they could have gotten themselves into - Gen was going to give them both a piece of his mind when they got back.
Because they would get back. Gen was refusing to even think about the other options-that-did-not-exist, because he had quite enough things to think about at the moment, thanks very much. There was a third Ganondorf now and that was entirely unnecessary and also far too many to be correct, in Gen’s opinion. The correct amount of Ganondorf was none. But no, Gen was dealing with three of them.
So yes. He was stressed and not hiding it terribly well, and unfortunately it seemed like everything was going wrong in the exact way to create more stress, because now Fi was chiming across the battlefield in the way that meant she was trying to find the sword casing that was closest to the current natural timeline.
…And then her presence vanished entirely.
“Fi, this is not the time!” Gen hissed to the sword in his hands irately. There was, of course, no response, because Fi was clearly somewhere else, but it made Gen feel like he was contributing something to the situation.
Then a Puppet-Ganondorf locked blades with him and everything got impossibly more stressful very quickly.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the ocean, Fi coalesced from a Master Sword buried point-first in the seafloor and chose to take a moment to observe her surroundings. She impassively surveyed the sunken hall of Hyrule Castle, blankly regarded the impressively large void that was slowly devouring the water around it, and concluded that her calculations for this era… required a larger margin for error. She had, at least, successfully predicted that any version of her would be divine enough to be immune to the voids, as evidenced by the way that this particular casing of hers was pressed right up against the nothing and clearly being pushed out as it expanded.
However… she was also, clearly, not in a location that would be useful to her Master.
“There is a ninety-five-percent chance that this will be the cause of significant irritation,” Fi announced to no one in particular. Then she loaded Master Link’s dowsing signal, locked it, and took off for the surface as fast as she was able to fly.
Her calculations for the next era were going to need to be heavily revised in light of this most recent data point.
“...So,” Wind said, after a long moment of silence. “Lore. You’re the resident dream-expert here.”
“That is a thing that I could be qualified as,” Lore agreed, resignedly. “I am going to point out that all my dream-ending experience is based around things wanting to kill me? So I’m not entirely sure what to do with… this whole situation.” He gestured widely, indicating the distinct lack of things trying to kill him. “Also, the first time I had permission, and the second time was me, so. Uh.” He trailed off into a wordless, sort of baffled frustration noise.
On an unspoken cue, everyone turned to look at Bellum, who was still a puddle of unconscious squid draped over Dusk’s forearms.
“...I don’t think he’ll be filling that role anytime soon,” Mask observed. “But, you said permission? If Oshus gives us permission to end the dream, do you think that would count?”
“It was his dream to begin with,” Realm remembered.
“Would that work?” Wind said to Oshus, who was in fact still sitting right there and looked a bit baffled at being discussed as though he wasn’t.
“...Quite possibly,” Oshus said, after a long moment of deliberation. “The odds are… not improbable.”
“I’ll take that action,” Lore declared. “Hit me with it.”
Oshus sighed, possibly mourning the complete lack of decorum. “I give you my permission to end this dream.”
There was a moment of expectant silence.
There was another moment of expectant silence.
…There was another, additional moment of expectant silence.
“So did that work, or…?” Mask trailed off.
“I have no idea, I was kind of expecting to feel something,” Lore said.
“Perhaps with some stronger terminology,” Oshus muttered to himself, and Vio began quietly consulting with him for better synonyms.
“How is this worse than the invisible Ganon?” Steam demanded. “Why did I have an easier time finding the invisible Ganon!?”
“Kinda sucks when there’s no illusions to see through, huh,” Sketch commented.
“This is the most irritating thing!”
The Four made a running jump, collectively vaulted off Ocarina’s shoulders in a move that was impossibly more complicated than they were making it look (forced hive-mind movement made choreography hard sometimes) and with the added height that this gave them, successfully managed to cut the strings holding one of the Ganondorf puppets up. This unfortunately lasted for all of a few seconds before new strings lashed out from somewhere and reattached. The Ganondorf lurched back to its feet with all the horrific jerky coordination that makes puppets a common theme in the horror genre.
“Well that’s going to feature in my nightmares probably,” Ocarina muttered.
“Can we get Shadow over here?” the Four asked, circling the puppet-Ganondorf again in the hopes of another opening. “He would be really useful in getting rid of this thing!”
“I think Shadow is a little… occupied,” Sketch observed, and pointed to where the second puppet-Ganondorf was occasionally visible through a thick cloud of black smog. Gen, Speck, and Blue were all darting around the edges of this and taking potshots at the puppet whenever it was visible with whatever they happened to be holding. Gen and Speck had their bow-and-arrows out, which made sense, but Blue for some reason was going at it with a hammer? Which didn’t seem like it should be very effective on a wooden puppet, but he was making it work, somehow.
The black smog cloud gave off the unfocused but very overwhelming aura of rage, which effectively identified it as Shadow even though there hadn’t really been any doubt in the first place. Nobody else in the group was capable of that sort of thing, after all.
“…we see your point,” the Four admitted. “But also, that was our last good idea.”
“Alright,” Steam said slowly. “I’m gonna regret this, but - what was your first bad idea?”
“Set it on fire,” the Four said promptly.
“That sounds like it would be very effective though?”
“Well yes, it would burn, but then we would have an on-fire puppet trying to kill us,” the Four explained. “As opposed to the not-on-fire puppet currently trying to kill us. You get the point.”
“That’s fair,” Steam admitted. “Okay then, what was your second bad idea?”
“Explosives. Same problem applies,” the Four said apologetically.
“...alright, fine, your third bad idea.”
“We take a page out of Speck’s book, put on our Gnat Hats, and have somebody shoot us at the strings so we can keep taking out the strings.”
Collectively, the other Links within earshot turned and stared.
“...I completely forgot you guys can do that,” Sketch admitted.
“We don’t like to, it’s inconvenient to synchronization,” the Four said. “That’s why it was one of the bad ideas.”
“So… thirty seconds?” Ocarina asked, with an arrow already nocked and ready.
“We can go in fifteen.”
Precisely fifteen seconds later, a small clump held onto a flying arrowhead for dear life. If one were to listen closely enough, four tiny voices could be heard screaming, “Why does Speck do this on purpose?!” as the projectile sped by.
Meanwhile, Shadow seemed to have hit a new level of rage and was tearing at the puppet with such, ah, enthusiasm, that the other three Links had collectively decided to stand back for the moment and let him take care of things.
After a moment, without taking his eyes off the carnage, Speck leaned over, rocked onto his tiptoes, and quietly said, “I know he’ll hate this, but I’m starting to worry about him,” into Gen’s ear.
“...you and me both,” Gen admitted.
The enraged shriek that Shadow let loose immediately after he said that was… probably just coincidental timing.
Fi did not experience frustration. But when she finally burst through the surface of the ocean, several minutes after setting Master Link as her target, she spared a moment to give some serious consideration to the possibility.
Then the moment passed, and Fi concluded that Master Link experienced enough frustration to share, and if she ever found that she needed to express some then she would simply make a request.
With that decided, Fi double-checked her prior orientation with the new variables of her elevation positioning and took off again, this time at a much faster speed. She had, of course, been utilizing her top velocity the entire time, but the friction resistance of air was significantly less than that of water, and as such her top airborne speed was distinctly more impressive.
This did not stop a very opportunistic Gyorg from leaping straight out of the sea in an attempt to eat her, however. Fi was forced to waste several unpredicted seconds on dispatching the creature, and then adjusted her altitude accordingly once she was finally free to continue.
…She was going to have to reassess her capacity to experience frustration, wasn’t she.
“I, Oshus, Dreamer of the Seas of the Ocean King, hereby bestow upon the Hero of Legend the permission and ability to awaken this world and end this Dream.”
There was a moment of expectant silence.
There was another moment of expectant silence.
…There was another-
“Okay!” Lore brought his hands together with a loud crack. “I think we can safely say that’s not working. Good attempts though, you were really starting to break into the fancy vocabulary on those last few tries there.”
“Yes, well,” Oshus said, pursing his mouth in clear dissatisfaction. “I confess that I would have much preferred the successful outcome.”
“Ain’t that relatable,” Mask muttered.
“I don’t think we’re out of ideas yet,” Lore said. “For example, do the laws of physics apply normally here?”
“Of course!” Ciela put in, having had time to mentally recover by now.
“You’re a product of the Dream and are therefore incredibly biased,” Lore informed her. “But Wind isn’t. So?”
Wind frowned, thinking it over. “They’re normal… I think.”
“You think?”
“Well, there’s… uh. It - you know what, nevermind.”
Unfortunately, Wind was saying this to the worst possible person. “Ooooh, that sounds like you know something~” Lore sing-songed. “Spill. C’mon. Tell me. I wanna know. Hey. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me-” He poked Wind in the shoulder with each repetition “-Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. C’mon. Hey. Tell me. Tell me-”
“Please tell him,” Vio interrupted.
“-Tell me. Tell me. Spill. I’m curious. C’mon. Hey. Tell me. I wanna know. Tell me. Hey. Hey. Hey. Tell me. Tell-”
“You are an only child how are you this persistent?” Wind exploded, grabbing Lore’s finger to prevent yet another poking.
“It’s a gift! Tell me.”
“Fine! Just - stop doing that.”
“Success!” Lore crowed.
In the background, Ciela fluttered over to Dusk and asked, “Are things always this… uh, chaotic?”
Dusk blinked at her. “...What do you mean?”
“...Right,” Ciela said, and very obviously went to go hover by Oshus instead. Dusk shrugged to himself, readjusted Bellum, and went back to paying attention to the main conversation.
“-one weird thing but it was only ever the one. And it was kind of an accident.”
“And the accident was…?” Lore prompted.
Wind made a face which expressed a great deal of emotions all at once. “...Look, I caught this fish-”
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Mask called.
Without missing a beat, Wind reached into his bag and proceeded to unceremoniously throw his pictograph at Mask’s face, which resulted in Mask going down head over heels. Then he turned back to Lore and continued, “-and I still don’t think I should have been able to do that.”
“Dreams don’t have to follow logic,” Lore told him, “or physics. That this one does is basically an indicator of how well-built it is. But, you’ve just told me that you found one of the loopholes.”
As if on cue, Mask announced, “Okay, either Wind gave me a concussion, or this fish is too big to be caught.”
Lore leaned over and raised an eyebrow at the displayed image, which did in fact feature Wind bracing his weight next to a fish that was roughly five times his size, at least. “Huh. Hand-crank or mechanical reel?”
“Hand-crank,” Wind said miserably.
Lore gave a long, impressed whistle. “And if I said I didn’t know you were that strong?”
“I’m not,” Wind confirmed in the deadest voice he’d ever used.
“Like I said,” Lore continued smugly, as the other Links crowded around Mask to get a look of their own, “loophole. This tells me that the Dream has cracks. We just need to figure out how to exploit them.”
“I did not think the Neptoona would end up being this important,” Wind muttered to himself.
“...I’m sorry, it’s called the what?” Realm asked, already fighting back a snicker.
“Don’t start with me, I am not the one who named it that!”
Unfortunately for the Four, their Speck-inspired strategy hadn’t worked. Nobody had figured out where it was coming from, but for every string that got cut, another would immediately whip out to take its place. So now they had a synchronization feedback headache, no results to show for their efforts, and were rightfully cranky about it.
“We take it back,” the Four decided. “Let’s set it on fire. At least that will accomplish something.”
“Ohhhhhhhhh say no more,” Sketch declared, somehow already brandishing his Fire Rod, and immediately sent the whole thing up in flames.
“So, how long have you been wanting to do that,” Steam said conversationally.
“Since the start.”
“Yeah, I can tell. Especially because you didn’t give any of us the chance to get out of the range of the flaming puppet.”
“...oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” Steam echoed pointedly, and then threw himself to the ground to avoid being burnt by the flaming puppet in question.
“Sorry!”
“Apologize by getting rid of it!”
“What do you think I was trying to do?!”
“We see now that we shouldn’t have taken it back,” the Four contributed solemnly.
“MOVE!” Ocarina bellowed, and on pure reflex the other Links immediately dodged as ordered, right as the younger Hero of Time ripped out what seemed like a good chunk of the cliffside and slammed it down directly on top of the puppet in question.
There was a moment of silence, as the sand spray from the impact rained back onto the beach. Ocarina braced his Golden-Gauntlet-covered hands on his knees and took several deep breaths.
“...Did that do it?” Steam asked cautiously.
“Hope so,” Ocarina panted.
“Oh my Din, you defiled Wind’s beach,” Sketch said, wide-eyed. “There is a cavern in that cliffside. He’s going to lose his mind.”
“Nobody else was contributing better ideas!”
“The fire was a bad call,” the Four admitted.
Steam reached out and pushed at the, admittedly, massive chunk of rock that now decorated the shoreline, to no results at all. “Think it’s done for, under there?”
Ocarina took one more breath, then pushed himself back upright and trudged over. “Let me,” he said, and Steam obligingly scooted over to let his fellow Link work. Ocarina had to put a little bit more work in this time, having lost the initial adrenaline rush, but the piece of cliffside slowly lifted and the rest of the group peered curiously underneath.
“...Ah, yep, it’s done for,” Steam concluded. “That is a nice pile of kindling you made.”
The Four put their hands on their chins contemplatively. “Do you think you can bring the rock for the other Ganondorf?”
“Rock is a polite term for this monstrosity,” Sketch opined.
“Fine, do you think you can bring the small mountain for the other Ganondorf?”
Ocarina attempted to shift the piece of cliffside into a carrying position, then immediately let it crash down again when his legs threatened to give out.
“Not particularly, no,” he said, sounding strained.
“Worth a shot.”
“But,” Steam interjected, “on the note of the other Ganondorf - puppet? - we should probably go help with that? Since we no longer have our own Ganondorf to run screaming from?”
“I kinda thought Shadow was handling that one?” Sketch asked, tilting his head.
“...Okay, we go help with watching Shadow, then.”
“Seems logical,” the Four said.
Ocarina made a thoughtful noise. “Do you think if Shadow creates an opening, I could get in close and punch the puppet in half?”
The other Links made similar thoughtful noises.
“Also worth a shot,” the Four voted. “But, uh, can you punch it in half?”
“I don’t see why I can’t,” Ocarina said, tilting his head and lacing the fingers of the Golden Gauntlets together to crack his knuckles. The metal amplified the noise of it horrendously.
Sketch grinned. “Oh, this should be good. That’s exactly the sort of logic that tricks reality into letting impossible things happen.”
“And if all else fails, I’m hitting it with a train,” Steam grumbled.
“...Why didn’t you do that to this one?”
“Because shut up, that’s why.”
He’d lost another puppet. He’d lost another puppet. Ganondorf was about to murder something, like a Hero. He’d lost another puppet, and now he only had one left and at the rate things were going with that dark-shadow-abomination, soon he wasn’t going to have any puppets left at all.
What had he done to deserve this? What, specifically, had he done? He didn’t think he’d been irredeemable, in the grand scheme of things, but he was starting to suspect that somewhere out in the cosmos, a deity had it out for him.
Elsewhere, Demise sneezed.
But anyways. Ocean Ganondorf didn’t deserve this sort of nonsense, and in the time he’d bought himself by sacrificing his puppets (his poor, poor puppets), he’d put together a plan that - while rudimentary at best - would allow him some order in the chaos. Or at least, the ability to insert some of his own, intentional chaos into the disaster that was already happening to him.
Bellum, as it turned out, was a messy spellcaster, and the squid left traces of himself everywhere. So Ganondorf was going to follow those traces, pry open whatever pocket dimension that idiot had sequestered himself in, and drag him back out flailing and bubbling if he had to. Let the Heroes deal with that whole situation, and more importantly, let Ganondorf have some room to breathe.
With regret and a great deal of spite, he resigned himself to losing his last puppet in the name of chasing Bellum down. He’d started animating his creations with his magic a while ago, as opposed to manipulating the strings himself, when he’d caught on to what Bellum had left him with, so it wouldn’t be difficult at all to let the puppet wear itself out on the Heroes.
Now then. Finding Bellum. The traces of the squid’s presence, easily found since Ocean Ganondorf was looking, were… floating about aimlessly. That. That was extraordinarily useless.
Surely there was some hint to be found, here. Bellum didn’t have the subtlety for anything else. There had to be a concentration, or a trail, or something. Ganondorf scowled at the thought that he was being outwitted by marine life and redoubled his efforts.
…There. In the faint wisps of the ocean spray, more of a mist than anything else, Bellum was more strongly present than anywhere else in Ganondorf’s range. This was, to be fair, still not a very strong presence. The most accurate description would be if someone stood a bit of a ways down the beach and thought really hard about calamari.
Still. It was better than nothing. With the sounds of his last puppet fighting in the background, Ocean Ganondorf set his stance in the sand and began prying at the slightly-magical mist, bit by bit.
He had the power of spite and denial on his side. Failure was not an option.
Shadow was sane because all his Origins were sane and he was really ticked that he couldn’t go insane because that would have been a blessing right now.
The shattered remains of the puppet made another feeble, futile attempt at moving and Shadow took the opportunity to eviscerate the pieces into kindling. He… felt. He didn’t know what he was feeling, exactly, but he knew something was there and he hated it (because he’d locked feelings away into a box but the box was B̴͔̜̽ ̴̞̾̓͊Ŗ̴̼͎̿͊͘ ̴̫̳͂̓E̸̬͋̏̐ ̷̧̤̋Ạ̴̏̃ ̴̳̳̒͝Ǩ̸͇̀ ̶̲̉I̴̧͌̓ ̶̦̙̞̆̐̆N̴̤̈͒ ̵̤̆G̴͈͖̈́ and he couldn’t stop it) because that was the natural order of things. Except that it didn’t feel natural, not anymore, and Shadow didn’t know what to do with that. What was he, if not a Hero’s darkest potential? What happened when emotions entered that mix?
(What happened when the things he’d been told that he would never feel, could never feel, started rising up in him? What happened when he locked all those things away on an instinctive, disgusted reaction? What happened when that lock B̷̝̾ ̴̨̿R̸̝͌ ̸̲͠Ỏ̶̰ ̶͚͑K̴̛̤ ̵͚͛E̶̛̬ ?)
The kindling under him moved again. Shadow took the opportunity to obliterate the kindling into splinters.
He felt… unstable. Like something inside him was about to shatter wide open, with no hope of recovery. Like a threshold was about to be crossed that could never be returned to. Like a lid losing the fight to stay sealed shut. (̵͔̅L̶͕̑ ̶͈͑I̴̺̋ ̵͈͘K̷̬͐ ̷̞͆Ę̸͗ ̶̞̃ ̵̮̑ ̸̫̊A̵͚͆ ̷͕̽ ̸̽ͅ ̵̀ͅB̴̤͘ ̸͔̚O̶̻̔ ̴̤͝X̸̤̊ ̸̥͠ ̵͠ͅ ̶̩̐Ȧ̴̘ ̴͓̂B̷̫͂ ̵̹̓O̴̮̾ ̴̲͊U̵̜͛ ̷͇̉Ṫ̵͎ ̸̡̓ ̶̩͝ ̷̦́T̴̠́ ̶̠̈́O̶̥͑ ̸̪̀ ̴̳̿ ̵̼͘B̵͚̄ ̴̯͝R̸̗͋ ̴̫̈́Ë̴͕́ ̵̢̄A̴̹͠ ̴̘͗K̷͓̋)
“...um,” a voice said from behind him, and Shadow startled so badly that he had a tendril-dagger at the throat of the person speaking before he actually realized who was speaking.
One of his smaller Origins, who’s name - nickname - wasn’t categorized as important in Shadow’s mind right now. (Speck, whispered the part of him that felt.) The little Hero had the audacity to remain completely relaxed as though Shadow wasn’t holding an indefensible weapon at his weak points, and in fact had the further audacity to look worried for Shadow, instead.
“Can we help?” his smaller Origin asked.
C̴R̷A̸C̷K̵ C̸͎͓̓̏R̷̰͊Ǎ̷͉Ċ̷̾͜K̸͇̩͂ C̶̡̗̻͊̉͐̎͐R̷͇̲͇̀̚Ą̵͉̹̞̖̽͝C̵͓̹͎̙̍K̷̠̎̋
Shadow screamed. It seemed like the safest option.
Meanwhile, Ocarina stared mournfully at the remains of the puppet that Shadow was slithering on.
“...I can’t punch that,” he said.
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think it’s getting back up anytime soon?” Blue offered.
“I was going to do it, though,” Ocarina said, disappointedly. “I was looking forward to it.”
“Okay, but. Consider that you may have had to get between Shadow and his target to do that.”
Ocarina paused, and took another look at the mass of screaming eldritch impossibility that was currently Shadow.
“...Fair point,” he said, in a much fainter voice.
A sudden chime echoed in from the water, and all the Links turned to look. On the horizon was a nearly imperceptible purplish dot, rapidly getting larger at a quite frankly alarming pace.
“...By Hylia’s Grace,” Gen said suddenly. “That’s Fi. Where has she - is that why she never showed up earlier!?”
The chiming rolled in again, much louder. The dot was now a distant humanoid figure with limbs and detailing and that was, in fact, Fi, but she was moving right for the group and getting really close and also moving way too fast-
Fi rocketed up onto the beach with the sort of momentum that carried a great deal of sea-spray in her wake. The problem was that Fi was really only beholden to the laws of momentum on a vague sort of surface level, and so when she wanted to stop, she did. She went from a full charge to a stationary hover in the split-second it would take to blink.
The sea-spray, bits of sand, various strands of kelp, and the single stray man-map-fish that she’d been unintentionally bringing along with her by sheer force of air movement, however, did not, and kept right on moving as things that obey the laws of momentum tend to do. The water landed on everyone present; the sand only made it to the first few Links in front, these being Gen, Speck, and Shadow (though in Shadow’s case it made absolutely no difference at all); but the kelp and the man-map-fish, being much heavier than both the sea-spray and the bits of sand, only made it as far as Fi. The kelp ended up plastered to her back. The man-map-fish, however, landed directly on her head.
“Master Link, I apologize for the delay in my service,” Fi said, entirely indifferent to the series of events that had just occurred. The man-map-fish on her head slid slowly to the side until he landed with a plop on her left shoulder. He had the sort of look on his face that clearly said he had no idea what was happening.
Gen wiped the sand off his eyes with very deliberate motions. “...We’re gonna have to have a talk about this,” he muttered. “Fi, would I be right in assuming that you manifested from Wind’s Master Sword? At the bottom of the ocean?”
“You are correct.”
“Right. Remind me to not do this again, specifically.”
“I have already made a note of it in my databanks, Master.”
“You know me so well,” Gen said, cracking a smile despite how this enabled a bit of sand to fall into his mouth. He grimaced and spat it back out before continuing, “Anyways, I was gonna have you run analysis, but… I don’t think we have a target anymore. Sorry.”
Shadow made conveniently-timed eldritch monstrosity noises in the background.
“Scanning,” Fi announced.
“No, Fi, you - you don’t need to do that-”
“Target locked. Ganondorf, the Puppeteer. This Gerudo warrior has trained extensively to wield wooden puppets of massive proportions in battle, often using them as a distraction to create openings for a sudden strike, or to keep his opponent busy while his machinations play out behind the scenes. Calculations indicate that there is a ninety-five percent chance of the latter scenario being the strategy in play at this moment in time.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
Then-
“TARGET LOCKED!?” Gen shrieked, in such a departure from his normal vocal range that he managed to get Shadow’s attention too.
“Affirmative,” Fi said, in direct calm contradiction to Gen’s volume.
“I’m just a co-leader! I am too single for this!” Gen hissed. “Okay. Okay. Where?”
“Dowsing enabled,” Fi responded, and Gen switched gears with the speed of experience, unsheathing his sword into a ready position.
A few uneventful seconds crawled by.
“...Fi. By any chance. Did the dowsing rebound back to Wind’s Master Sword at the bottom of the ocean?”
“Reconfiguring,” Fi said, and if the Links didn’t know any better, they would have said that she sounded irritated. “Parameters adjusted. Loading sequence. Dowsing re-enabled.”
Gen’s Master Sword promptly lit up with a chiming noise.
“I am adding an additional note to my databanks regarding these events, Master,” Fi continued. “Alternative solutions have been formulated and implemented.”
“I think this is the most emotional I have ever seen you,” Gen commented, as he waved his sword around to various pitches of chiming.
“...There are certain factors of the situation that could be described as inconvenient,” Fi allowed.
Gen snorted, amused.
“Could someone put me back in the ocean, please?” the man-map-fish interrupted plaintively, from where he was still flopped on Fi’s left shoulder, and somehow managed to startle everyone but Fi despite the fact that he’d literally been there the entire time.
“Right, yes, sorry,” Gen said. “Can someone-”
“I’ve got him,” Speck said, reaching up to tug the poor creature off Fi’s shoulder as gently as he could manage. Man-map-fish in hand, he then trudged off down the shoreline with a surprising amount of dignity for the given situation.
As he was covered in sand, trying not to trip, and carrying what could be nicely described as a really weird fish, it wasn’t all that much, but he was trying.
And of course, this was the exact moment when Gen’s Master Sword borderline shrieked a dowsing proximity alarm.
“Target acquired,” Fi reported, redundantly.
“EVERYBODY DOWN!” Steam screeched, seemingly in response to this but also with his eyes riveted to a seemingly empty patch of beach, alarmingly close to the returning Speck.
Gen sprinted forwards-
Speck threw himself out of the way-
Shadow lunged-
And Ocean Ganondorf seemingly burst into existence, almost unfolding out of midair in a manner alarmingly similar to the puppets of before. However, the puppets had been entirely emotionless - this Ganondorf was distinctly ticked off.
…However, he was also immediately bowled over by a swarming mass of furious Shadow. So. Points for the attempt at intimidation, at any rate. There was a brief and very visually confusing scuffle before Ganondorf’s head broke out of the mass of blackness, and now he looked ticked off and confused.
“I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING!” he bellowed, grappling with the incorporeal ooze that was Shadow and somehow managing a halfway decent job of it.
“TOO BAD, SUCKS TO SUCK!” Gen screeched back.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Ganondorf did not respond well to that.
After a great deal of uneventful discussion that was mostly just Wind rehashing his adventure in the Realm of the Ocean King again, the abducted Links had cobbled together a plan that they were pretty sure would stay mostly intact. Which was as good as their plans ever got, nowadays.
According to Wind, the Phantom Hourglass was the key to defeating Bellum. Or at least, it was going to have been, before this whole Demise situation happened. So technically speaking, it might also be the key to freeing the Dream from Bellum’s control, at which point Oshus could end the whole thing once he had the authority back.
It was a decent plan in theory. It just fell apart a little bit in practicality, because while it sounded nice to say that the Phantom Hourglass could solve the problem, that still left the issue of… how?
“It’s fully powered up,” Wind said, tilting the Phantom Sword and the Hourglass in the pommel from side to side to showcase the sand within the glass. “But just flipping it and using it doesn’t… seem to be enough.”
“I propose that we whack Bellum with it and see what happens,” Mask said.
“I propose that we don’t do that,” Dusk vetoed. “What if we break it?”
“Nah, it’d take more than that to break something like this,” Lore observed offhandedly. “Wind said that Oshus made it himself, right? I’d bet almost anything that the Phantom Hourglass is the strongest thing in this whole Dream, just in terms of sheer durability, especially considering that literally almost everything else is just a manifestation.”
There was a moment of vaguely baffled silence, as everyone else processed that.
“...I retract my counter-proposal?” Dusk said, slowly, and bent over to let Bellum sluice out onto the ground, which looked about how a spoonful of jam would behave. Wind shrugged and handed his sword off to Mask, who unwisely grabbed it by the blade and immediately and gleefully went about pummeling Bellum’s unconscious body with the hilt, and the Phantom Hourglass in said hilt by proxy.
“The odds of this being the thing that works is rather low,” Vio said.
“Well yeah, but look how happy he is,” Lore replied.
“I mean, fair point, but still. Plan B?”
“I figured we could try hitting Bellum with a very large hammer next and see if that was any better.”
“But Bellum is already knocked out.”
“True, but consider: it would be very funny.”
“I can provide the hammer,” Wind contributed.
Vio glared at him. “You are not helping.”
“It’s a very large hammer,” Wind said, who was clearly indulging himself in a rare moment of snark and enjoying every word of it. “And if that fails, we can get Dusk to lend us his Ball-and-Chain instead.”
“Please don’t bring me into this,” Dusk said. “Even when we’re trying to stay on topic, we’re off topic. Farore, where’s Gen when I need him?”
“Not getting abducted, like the absurdly responsible Hero he is,” Lore said. “And also probably losing his mind about having lost half the group, actually, so… ugh.”
“Ugh?” Green repeated.
“Don’t panic,” Lore said, “but I am going to… and I can’t believe I’m about to say this… be serious about the situation.”
“...Oh my Din we’re going to die,” Realm said, staring at him wide-eyed.
“Don’t panic! Don’t! I literally just said not to!”
“The last time we saw you be serious was Demise,” Mask informed him bluntly, having come to a pause in his squid assault.
“False, I was serious about Bellum in my head for a solid three minutes.”
“...Good to know, but we weren’t in your head and therefore, didn’t see it.”
“Well,” Lore started, then paused, then decided he didn’t want to get into that whole explanation right now, because he was trying to be serious. “No, still not the time to be mushy, ask me about the inside of my head later-”
“Was already gonna hold you to that but I’m sticking an exclamation point on it now too,” Mask said.
“-but, if I need to be serious to get out of here then that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“Responsible,” Dusk nodded. “Gen is never going to believe us.”
“Gotta keep ‘em guessing!” Lore winked, then sobered. “Okay. Stow the hammer plan for backup if all else fails. Mask, did the Phantom Hourglass pummeling do anything?”
“Well, he’d be nicely tenderized for the fryer by now,” Mask said, “but aside from being extremely cathartic, no.”
“Hmm,” Lore said. “...Wind, you said the Hourglass was fully powered up?”
“Yeah, sunlight charges it. It should be good to go.”
Lore motioned to hold the Phantom Sword, which Mask handed over without complaint now that he’d gotten some frustration out of his system. The Phantom Hourglass in the pommel was in pristine condition despite having just been used as a blunt force weapon, and was glowing faintly in the manner of all magical items ready to be used. But there was something about it…
“You said you were collecting Sand for this thing during your storytime, right? Is this all the Sand?”
“...Actually no,” Wind said slowly. “Bellum has some of it. I was hoping to defeat him and claim it back for Oshus, before this whole situation with the voids started happening.”
“...A theory,” Dusk proposed hesitantly. “Now that Demise is involved, and Bellum is backed by his power… is it possible that the Phantom Hourglass as it is right now wouldn’t be strong enough?”
Everyone, including Oshus and Cia, turned to look at Bellum.
“I want to say no,” Vio said. “But with our luck… I think that’s exactly what’s happening.”
“So, we need an uncorrupted Dream Anchor to take out the current Ruler of the Dream, but the only one we have is hopelessly underpowered because the current Ruler corrupted it,” Lore summarized.
“...That is alarmingly accurate terminology,” Oshus said.
“You’re not my first whale god.”
Ganondorf was not fighting back as much as he should have been, and Gen did not like it. In contrast to the puppets from before, which had been acrobatic and all but impossible to pin down, their current opponent was planting himself in the surf-line and refusing to move. With a sword in one hand he was fending off Shadow - and occasionally, whoever could get a hit in around Shadow - and with the other hand, he was seemingly grasping at thin air.
Except that he could apparently get a grasp on thin air, because it was resisting him, and it was one of the most baffling things Gen had ever seen. More to the point, it was also one of the most alarming things Gen had ever seen. The man was actively in the middle of a fight, and for some reason he deemed it more important to keep one hand occupied, prying at nothing and somehow, seemingly, being successful at it.
What was so important to Ocean Ganondorf that he was choosing not to put his full attention into defending himself?
Not that it was working out for him, necessarily. Shadow was a force to be reckoned with even when he wasn’t a roiling cloud of anger and murder, and he was definitely gaining the advantage. But again, Ganondorf was more or less holding him off with one hand. Because the other hand was occupied doing… something.
Gen was quite sure that whatever it was, needed to be stopped. He just… wasn’t quite sure how to stop something that he wasn’t quite sure made sense. He wished he’d asked Fi, before she’d gone back into her casing as was her habit during intense combat situations. He wished the others were here. Lore would have an idea. It would be impossible and ridiculous and it would somehow work, and then Dusk would step in to make sure that Lore didn’t go overboard with it, and then Gen would fuss at them both and remind them that the idea needed to work for normal people too, because Lore was not normal and Dusk’s tolerance for nonsense was so high that he forgot where the limits were, and…
…and maybe Gen needed to evaluate himself for codependency, wow. Or alternatively, he was stressed out of his mind. He thought about that for a second, as Ganondorf managed to heave Shadow off entirely, stabbed his sword into the sand, and used both hands to grapple literally nothing and yet somehow there was clearly something.
Yeah, no, Gen decided, as Ganondorf’s fingers ripped a glowing white hairline fracture out of absolutely nowhere. It was definitely the stress.
Now the thing about Ocean Ganondorf ripping a hole by force into another world born from Dreams was that usually, the Dreamer would have noticed.
Unfortunately, Oshus wasn’t at that power level anymore - and the Dream Thief who was happened to be unconscious beyond all hope of recovery. This meant that both of the individuals who could have done something about it had absolutely no chance of doing anything about it.
This also meant that it was a bit odd for Lore to experience a full-body twitch in response to, seemingly, nothing at all. Not that he knew why, to be fair. That would be a lesson to figure out much later in life. For now, all it did was give him an undefined sense of sudden urgency… and a really weird idea.
“I might have a really weird idea,” he announced, which had the side effect of cutting through the worried brainstorming of everyone else, who had been trying to come up with a way to get around the new problem with the Phantom Hourglass.
“Will it help?” Red asked.
“Maybe?”
“Can we help?”
“...Uh,” Lore said. “I genuinely do not know. If I get past step one, we’ll go from there.”
He marched over to the Phantom Sword, driven into the sand now to keep the Hourglass in plain view, and stared at it contemplatively. If he was right, and he had a gut feeling that he was, then the Phantom Hourglass was the same sort of thing that the Instruments of Koholint were. Had been. Whichever - the point was that Lore had very recently discovered that he was, in fact, still carrying said Instruments, albeit in his own mindscape.
He stepped over a few feet to the lumpy pile that was Bellum and continued his contemplative staring. They needed a Dream Anchor to make Bellum release control of the Dream. Lore, technically, had a Dream Anchor. Had eight of them, if he wanted to be specific. But they were all in his head, and he needed one to be in his hand. Was that possible? Could he do that, bring out something from his Dream? Marin had said that he was the new Dreamer for Koholint, and surely that meant something, something more than the island just being his to protect.
Why can’t the dream stay real afterwards too? Marin had asked, and at the time Lore had agreed, because it was a good point and it had made sense. So if the Dream stayed real, and Lore was the one Dreaming it, why couldn’t he manifest it?
There was something in his hand.
His head was beginning to ache.
Lore squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated, hard. He knew what he needed, he could visualize it clearly. There was something in his hand and he squeezed his fingers around it tightly, until it started to feel like it had mass, like it was real, like it belonged here.
His head was throbbing, the pain spiking up into something sharp and targeted.
But there was something in his hand and Lore needed it to stay there for just a little bit longer until he had it completed, until he could use it. There was something in his hand, and Lore grasped the handle of it even as he grasped the concept of it and pulled it all the way out-!
The way his head hurt as he brandished the Sea Lily Bell was beyond any level of pain he’d ever experienced before, on a level of agony that he didn’t have the vocabulary to describe. This was probably, Lore decided numbly, the consequence for manifesting something from his Dream. The empty space in his head where the Bell used to be was protesting, loudly. It was taking everything Lore had to not immediately lose his grip on the manifestation and let the Bell go back to where it belonged.
Not yet. He had something to do with it, first.
“What is that?” Green asked, wide eyed.
“Sea Lily Bell,” Lore choked out, and the pain raged even higher. “Knew I had - had it in my inventory.”
“Wait,” Vio said suddenly. “Wait, is that from Koholint? Lore, is that one of Koholint’s Dream Anchors? Why do you have that? Where did you get that!?”
“What’s an Anchor from Koholint going to help with here?” Mask wanted to know.
All good questions. Unfortunately Lore was rapidly losing his ability to answer them. “It’s going - it’s - going to - going-” he dragged an inhale through his teeth. He couldn’t think, the words weren’t cooperating, “-to - going to - to do - THIS.”
Despite the pain not really letting him see straight anymore, Lore still managed to bring the Sea Lily Bell slamming down directly onto Bellum’s face. This really should not have produced a sound that was in any way musical - but somehow, the Bell rang out clearly and pleasantly in direct contradiction to the fact that Lore had just used it as a blunt impact weapon. In continued direct contradiction to the situation, the note that the Bell produced hung in the air for far longer than was normal. Actually, it was… getting louder?
And right as the volume reached the level of being painful, Bellum seemed to shiver.
At that point, several things happened at once. The tone of the Bell dropped off into silence, and a barely-coherent Lore took that as his cue to let go of his mental grip on keeping the Instrument in the real world. Bellum finally dissolved into a now-familiar void, and Oshus jolted upright without the help of his staff, eyes wide and glowing gold around the edges. The entire world around them sort of… stalled, for a moment, as ownership of the Dream changed hands.
Then the stalled moment shattered, literally, as the air itself seemed to crack and break. Ocean Ganondorf crashed into the World of the Ocean King with all the cacophony of tempered glass, creating an entirely new-but-different hole in reality in the process and prompting several more things to happen. The newly arrived Ganondorf took one look at the void that had been Bellum and, for lack of a better word, exploded. Then a black mass of nothing - belatedly identified by the abducted Links as Shadow - also exploded, but literally, and also all over Ganondorf, which rather effectively distracted the man as his focus switched to not being immediately murdered.
Behind that chaos, the jagged edges of the new hole in reality actively defied being understood. It didn’t seem to take up any actual space, except for the part where if someone looked through it from one end, there was a completely different world on the other side; but from the other end, it didn’t seem to be there at all. When Gen poked his head through, it looked absolutely ridiculous from any angle except straight-on.
“OH THANK THE GODDESS,” Gen said, with absolutely no volume control, and came fumbling through the new hole in a beeline for Dusk and Lore. “If you two ever leave me alone with leadership again I swear on All Hylia’s Blessings that I will not be held responsible for my actions.”
“This was not our idea,” Dusk defended.
Immediately behind him came Blue, who managed to grab all three of his counterparts in a single flying tackle. The whole Four Sword set went down in a tangle of confusion (Red), pained shouting (Green and Vio), and relieved sobbing (Blue, although he would later deny the whole thing).
The rest of the Links came tumbling through the new hole in quick succession. Ocarina darted to Mask’s side and both of them noticeably relaxed upon being reunited. Steam scurried over to Wind, followed closely by Sketch. The Four visibly decided that their counterparts probably needed a minute and took up their formation around Realm instead, and Speck followed them since Shadow was… clearly occupied.
Naturally, now that everyone was reunited, that was when Lore finally lost the battle with his Bell-induced migraine and passed out, which caused no small amount of shouting from his fellow co-leaders.
And in the middle of all the ensuing chaos, Realm leaned forwards around the Four, peered through the new hole, and said, “Ooooh, so that’s where my Bag went!”
Calmly, Farore reached up and removed the stress flowers that had started to grow down from her hair into her line of sight. Very calmly, she handed the plants off to Nayru. Exceedingly calmly, she said, “Would you please plant those somewhere nice?”
And then she manifested a pillow and shrieked into it at the top of her lungs.
Din patted her consolingly on the shoulder.
“Two minutes!” Gen was ranting, as he and Dusk dragged an unconscious, ragdolling Lore out of the line of fire. “Not even two minutes we’ve been reunited and he goes and passes out! I’m just a guy with some Red Potion, I don’t actually have medical knowledge!”
“We were worried about you too,” Dusk replied.
Gen spluttered. “Don’t you dare start making me deal with mushy feelings in the middle of a battle zone!”
“We’re glad to see you’re alright too,” Dusk said, in a rare showing of his mischievous side. Gen glared at him, then glared at the comatose Lore, and then evidently gave up on appearing angry and seized them both in a fierce hug.
“Remind me to increase my medical knowledge past Potions,” he muttered,
“Next time we have a quiet moment,” Dusk promised.
“Thank you.”
“...You do realize that Lore is going to be very upset that he wasn’t awake for this hug, right?”
Gen drew back, reluctantly, and rolled his eyes. “If he wanted to enjoy a hug then he shouldn’t have passed out.” Those last four words were directed, pointedly, at Lore’s unconscious body. Lore’s unconscious body did not respond.
Typical.
“How did he manage that, anyway?” Gen asked, after a moment. Dusk made a face. How to condense everything that had just happened into a simple explanation…
“...He tried to manifest Koholint. Successfully.”
“I have so many questions,” Gen breathed.
“Later,” Dusk said ruefully. “After we survive… this whole situation.”
His words were punctuated by a thunderous explosion from the direction they’d come from, followed by incoherent screaming from at least four different people and the ear-piercing alarm ring of a panicking fairy.
“...I’m going to table my questions,” Gen decided.
“Thank you.”
Meanwhile: a boat bobbed in the waves off the shores of Mercay, hesitantly trawling back and forth as the captain agonized over what to do. Linebeck was never going to be described as a courageous man, but now the island looked like it was on fire. Old Man Oshus and that fairy Sparkles were living there, and a faint voice in the back of Linebeck’s head whispered that they might be in danger. That he might be able to save them.
The voice sounded an awful lot like that Link Kid. Ugh. That darn Kid, infecting Linebeck with morals and heroics. The little shrimp wasn’t even here right now! He was off on some personal mission!
But wouldn’t this be a story to tell the Kid, when he came back…
Linebeck chewed on nothing and stared apprehensively at Mercay, now displaying even more fire than before. It would be so dangerous. He should really stay out here, where it was safe.
…Or-
His thoughts were cut off by the door to the engine room SLAMMING open, and a blonde storm of a young Hylian girl stalking her way in.
“You!” She snapped, pointing at a gaping and bewildered Linebeck. “Who are you? Where are we? Where’s Link?”
Far too late to do anything about it, Linebeck abruptly recognized the girl as the statue that the Kid had been keeping in the storage hold. Or, well, former statue? At any rate, the Kid had insisted that the statue girl was his friend. Oh, what was the name he’d used…?
“Well!?” the girl said expectantly.
…No, it wasn’t coming to him. Linebeck resignedly dubbed her ‘the Girl’ in his head and slotted her in alongside the Kid, since they were apparently a matching set or something. Then he said, “Linebeck, offshore Mercay, no idea.”
The Girl scowled. “Well then what use are you?” A pause. “Also, what in the Great Sea is a ‘Mercay’?”
Linebeck jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, where Mercay Island was still merrily ablaze and getting worse all the while. “That,” he said.
The Girl observed the island impassively. “It’s on fire,” she said.
“Yep.”
“How long has it been on fire?”
“About two minutes,” Linebeck estimated.
“Is it supposed to be?”
What kind of question was that? “Nope,” Linebeck said.
The Girl regarded him judgementally for a handful of seconds.
“Well, what are you waiting for, an invitation!?” she bellowed. “Hard to starboard and drop anchor, you moron! There’s houses on that island, those people need help! Move your lazy useless carcass!”
“Alright, alright! You don’t have to shout at me,” Linebeck complained, resigning himself to his fate. Guess he was sailing into the fire after all. What was one more weird blonde child who insisted that he do the right thing?
…Although, it was odd that this had happened twice.
The Girl stood out on the bow of the boat as Linebeck steered them closer, and the line of her shoulders became visibly more tense with the proximity. Linebeck supposed that the fire was pretty concerning, but it wasn’t like any of the houses were near it yet, and plus it looked like there were people on the beach trying to put it out. So really, things seemed like they were under control. Linebeck would happily let the people on the beach continue to handle it, if it weren’t for the Girl sending a glare back at him as though she could hear his thought process. Fine, fine, he’d keep the boat moving, sheesh. It was gonna be hard to dock in all that, though. Maybe the Girl could help, or one of the people already on the beach, or-
-wait a minute, was that the Kid?
The Girl jolted in the same moment that Linebeck did, having apparently come to the same realization. “That’s Link,” she said, then louder, “that’s Link! …and a bunch of doppelgangers I guess, but more power to him? And a couple people I don’t recognize… and-”
She cut off abruptly. Linebeck didn’t quite notice, too busy scanning for the people the Girl didn’t know and breathing a quiet sigh of relief when he spotted the Old Man a safe distance back, with Sparkles bouncing frantically around him.
“Hey, Moron,” the Girl said suddenly, her voice like ice, and it took a few moments for Linebeck to realize that she was referring to him. Which was… better than ‘carcass’, he supposed. “Let go and haul for the lee shore, keep an even keel. Run it aground.”
“You want me to what?”
“Did I stutter?”
“My ship,” Linebeck whimpered, but spun the steering wheel regardless. “My poor, poor ship.”
Now on a direct collision course for the beach, the Girl climbed up to the top of the prow instead of just standing at the front of the deck like she’d been doing before. She caught her balance with an ease that almost made Linebeck jealous, if he were the sort of man to be jealous of weird blonde girls, and did… something with her hands. A golden sparkling bow appeared between her palms, with an equally golden arrow already nocked and ready. She raised the weapon and sighted down the arrow towards the beach, and Linebeck had to wonder who she was aiming at.
“Who are you aiming at?” he asked, because self-control had never been his strongest point.
“Ganondorf,” the Girl said through gritted teeth, and let the arrow fly.
To say that Ocean Ganondorf was expecting to be sniped by a long-distance Light Arrow would be lying. So when that was exactly what happened, he felt that his reaction was well within the range of reasonable.
Or, in shorter, less complicated words: he bellowed bloody murder about it.
“...Wow,” Mask said, and removed his hands from where they had been blocking Ocarina’s ears. He had quite literally hauled his older-but-younger self down by the shirt in order to reach. “I don’t think I knew some of those words existed.”
“Did you seriously try and protect my innocence just now?” Ocarina asked incredulously, and gestured, rather pointedly, with the killing-grade weapon in his hand to the battlefield they were currently standing on.
“Shut up, you’re nine, let me have this.”
“I am two feet taller than you-”
As the Hero(es) of Time devolved into a glorified sibling squabble (which, if anything, was proof that they’d missed each other), Shadow once again took the opportunity to relaunch his assault. Not that he’d ever really stopped, to be fair, but that much screaming would catch anybody off-guard.
Normally, Shadow would be wary of the Light Arrow. Normally he’d pay attention to where such a thing had come from, and whether or not there’d be more. But normally, he wasn’t grappling with a worldview and identity crisis, and as a result he wasn’t… thinking clearly, not really. The most consideration that he gave to the Light Arrow in Ganondorf’s shoulder was that an open wound was a weak point, and a weak point could be exploited. He tore into the injury and imagined it was his existential turmoil instead and almost felt vindicated about the whole situation.
But then the second Light Arrow came.
This one hit Shadow instead.
And Shadow S C R E A M E D.
The good news about Shadow being one step shy of a genuine Eldritch Entity was that he could count Gibdos and Redeads in his magical makeup. His scream quite literally stopped Ocean Ganondorf in his tracks, and not just because his eardrum had probably just shattered.
The bad news about Shadow being one step shy of a genuine Eldritch Entity was that he didn’t actually have lungs. Or need oxygen.
He was still screaming.
Since Ocean Ganondorf was at the epicenter, he had absolutely no chance of escape; his body was locked down like a statue, and it was only the fact that Shadow was quite literally out of his mind with pain and Light corruption that he hadn’t attacked yet. Oshus and Ciela were equally immobilized, despite being distant spectators to the fight at best.
The Links weren’t faring all that well either, ranging from Steam only managing a bit of useless twitching to Mask gritting his teeth and very slowly forcing his hands up to his ears. He was about halfway there. But it seemed very important that they could, in fact, move, especially when compared to everyone else on the island who seemed entirely unable to.
In the midst of this new chaos, a steamboat distantly collided with the beach, with one frozen figure at the front and another at the helm. This was concerning, but immediately and collectively deemed to be ‘not the biggest problem’.
Shadow was still screaming.
Sketch was somewhere in the middle of the mobility range, and was considering something that he normally would not consider, if it weren’t for the fact that he was also desperate. So, with a quick prayer to Farore to please let this work and literally no other options at his disposal, Sketch activated his painting curse… and fused straight to the beach below.
“Oh Thank Farore,” Sketch would have said, if sound had been a thing that translated through paint. But critically, it wasn’t, and this meant that now, Sketch couldn’t hear Shadow’s screaming. He moved across the shoreline carefully, not necessarily used to the way his pigment interacted with several thousand granules of sand and not wanting to accidentally leave a piece of himself behind. Then he was right at Ocean Ganondorf’s feet, and by extension Shadow’s, and debating what to do next.
…Sketch was just going to have to go for it, wasn’t he? He couldn’t stay painted for much longer, he only had so much magic. Preemptively, Sketch clamped one hand over an ear, lunged up off the sand back into the physical world, and then managed to get his other hand about halfway across the gap between him and Shadow before the screaming all-but-immobilized him again.
Shadow was a swirling mass of incorporeal darkness, that almost looked like something familiar but at the same time defied all attempts at recognition. He writhed around Ocean Ganondorf in clear agony, very nearly obscuring the Gerudo man underneath entirely. It was strange, watching Shadow move so violently when everything around him was forcibly still. Sketch thought he could catch glimpses of something gleaming and golden buried in the twisting void, and if he could move his face he would have gritted his teeth. That had to be what Shadow had gotten shot with.
His hand was almost across the gap. He just needed to push it a little more. His arm muscles trembled in protest as he forced the issue, but this was important, and - there!
Sketch’s fingers brushed the edge of the screaming nothingness that Shadow had become.
A pair of distant, blood-red pinpricks snapped into existence and stared him down from the black, oddly fixed in place in comparison to everything else. Despite this, Sketch felt… oddly unafraid.
Shadow wouldn’t hurt him.
“Let… me… help… you,” Sketch desperately ground out, each word taking a supreme amount of effort with Shadow’s screams ringing in his ears. “Show… me…?”
For the briefest moment, the writhing stuttered. The pinprick eyes shifted, as though shocked. Sketch stood his ground and waited. If he wanted to escape, he could re-fuse to the sand below and Shadow knew that… probably. Sketch wouldn’t blame the other if he was beyond coherent thought by now, but he was still going to wait. It seemed important, somehow, to stand in the face of Shadow’s worst moment and not run away.
The darkness lunged forwards. Shadow’s essence rushed past and around and behind him, completely enveloping him and… muffling the screams. Sketch abruptly found himself able to move with much more ease than before, though it definitely still wasn’t uninhibited. He could actually take some steps forward now, halting and unsteady though they were. The void flowed around him and gave off the distinct presence of Shadow, and as it coiled behind him, a golden glow was slowly revealed ahead.
…That was a Light Arrow.
Sketch sucked a sympathetic breath through his teeth. Oh, that had to hurt. Shadow was a creature of darkness through and through, no wonder he’d lost control. Sketch would probably scream too, if the literal bane of his existence that could unravel him at the very seams was shot into his body with no warning.
He stumbled further, until he was face-to-face with the Light Arrow and could place his hands on the shaft. He had absolutely no idea which part of Shadow’s body the Arrow was technically embedded in, because all of Shadow was the void and the void was nothing - screaming notwithstanding. Sketch hoped that it wasn’t anything important, like a limb. Or Shadow’s head.
He took a deep breath, and tightened his grip. He knew, somehow: he was only going to get one shot at this. The pinprick eyes watched him warily, and Sketch met them without flinching.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
He wrenched his arms up.
Shadow S C R E A M E D.
The sound Shadow made after he folded himself around Sketch was like nothing Gen had ever heard before, deafening and broken and agonized. The need to make sure that he was okay was borderline painful. Move, Gen snarled at himself. Move! But his body refused to respond, Shadow’s voice holding him entirely in place-
-until suddenly, it wasn’t.
The absence of sound was almost more disorienting than the way that Gen’s muscles abruptly unlocked and dumped him facedown in the sand, but he was back on his feet almost as soon as he’d fallen. He scrambled frantically across the beach. Ocean Ganondorf had also collapsed (good) but Sketch was miraculously still on his feet and clumsily attempting to support a near-formless shrunken mass of darkness draped over his arms. It kept slipping through his grip in a way that reminded Gen of chu-jelly, and… wait a minute.
“Is that Shadow!?” Gen demanded.
“Yes, help, please,” Sketch panted, with difficulty. “I can’t - hold him-” Shadow was puddling out between his fingers as he spoke, and Gen came to the immediate realization that Shadow was more incorporeal right now than anything else. Which meant-
“DUSK! GET OVER HERE!”
His fellow co-leader somehow managed to cover the distance in two seconds flat, despite having Lore slung over his shoulders like a rug. “He okay?”
“No,” Gen said shortly. “Can Midna take him?”
“Oh,” Dusk said, and then his eyes unfocused for a moment, clearly listening to something only he could hear. “...She says yes. Put him at my feet, she’ll take care of the rest.”
It took a moment to follow those instructions, partly because Dusk had his hands full with Lore’s unconscious body and couldn’t help, and partly because it was taking both Sketch and Gen to carry Shadow’s unconscious ‘body’ with any level of success. But it was worth it to see him dissolve into the sanctuary of Dusk’s soul and to know that, whatever else happened, Shadow would be safe there. Meanwhile, freed from immobility and alerted by Gen’s shout, the rest of the Links slowly formed a worried cluster behind them.
Then Sketch said, “Hey, did anyone make sure Ganondorf wasn’t going to be a problem before they came over here?”
“...Oh crap,” Gen said, and then the closest Links flattened themselves to the sand on pure reactionary instinct, just in time for a sword to slice through the space where their heads had been.
Ocean Ganondorf looked, for lack of any better word, unhinged. There was a Light Arrow in his shoulder, both his ears were bleeding, at some point it looked as though Shadow had managed to bend one of the swords to a near ninety-degree angle, and his hair was thoroughly untamed.
Then Sketch popped back up with a second Light Arrow in his hands, the one he’d removed from Shadow, and stabbed it lightning-fast into Ganondorf’s thigh. This, understandably, did not make anything better. Ganondorf bellowed something incoherent and attempted to lunge, only to stagger instead and wind up with a knee in the sand, bracing himself with his unbent sword and glaring at them all.
“Dirty tricks,” he declared, far too loudly and also slowly listing to one side before jerking back upright.
“Oh,” Gen muttered. “He can’t hear anything. I bet his balance is completely shot.”
“That’s a thing?” Steam asked.
“It is a thing,” Gen confirmed. “Ears are… kind of important for knowing which way is up.” He was more familiar with the symptoms as a result of altitude sickness - it was sadly common for new Academy students to go joyriding with their new Loftwings, dive way too far, way too fast, and end up bedridden for a week or so with ruptured eardrums, a nice sense of nausea, and absolutely no ability to walk a straight line - but he recognized the signs regardless.
Ocean Ganondorf lunged to his feet and this time didn’t bother to correct his balance, clearly instead choosing to work with the momentum that carried him towards Dusk with intent to impale - and at that exact moment, was sniped with a third Light Arrow to the chest instead.
“Okay, where are those coming from?” Gen demanded, as Ocean Ganondorf toppled over with a pained bellow.
“Me,” said a completely unfamiliar voice, and Wind visibly startled as a girl marched into view. Blonde hair twisted into a no-nonsense bun and intense blue eyes contrasted sharply with a tan even darker than Wind’s, and was further offset by the expression on her face. Her mouth was set in a thin line and the set of her eyebrows indicated that she wasn’t in the mood for mercy. Sure enough, she was carrying a bow seemingly made of light in her hands with a fourth Light Arrow ready to be drawn and aimed, and she stared at Ocean Ganondorf as though he was the source of all her life problems.
“Tetra!?” Wind sputtered.
…okay, so maybe Ocean Ganondorf was actually the source of all her life problems, if Wind’s turn during storytime was anything to judge by.
“Oh, hey Link,” the newly identified Tetra said casually. “I like your new friends, by the way. You’ve infected them with your fashion sense already?”
“Oh,” Steam said, in tones of great realization. “This is Tetra, huh?”
He elbowed Wind with a side-eye that very specifically communicated that he was thinking about how the two of them were related and by what marriage, specifically, that they were related through.
“No, stop, shut up,” Wind said immediately. Then, “Tetra. How did - Bellum turned you to stone?”
Tetra shrugged. “I got better.”
In the background, Ocean Ganondorf made to get back on his feet. Tetra immediately shot the fourth Light Arrow into his stomach. Ocean Ganondorf did not make it back onto his feet.
“But - how did you get here?” Wind asked, raising his voice slightly to be heard above the renewed fury of Ocean Ganondorf faceplanting into the sand.
“Woke up on a Moron’s boat,” Tetra said, and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I made him bring me to you instead.”
Wind followed her gesture, did another visible doubletake at the sight of Linebeck of all people having a minor meltdown over his now-beached ship, then refocused to continue with, “And then you decided to shoot Ganondorf?”
“Yep,” Tetra said, smugly. “You’re welcome. And you’re welcome for getting that Redead out of the way too.”
Almost as a single unit, the entire group of Links tensed.
“...What? What did I say?”
“That was our friend,” the Four cut in. “Not a Redead. And you might have really hurt him.”
To her credit, Tetra’s only visible reaction to the Four’s synchronized speech was a single raised eyebrow. Then she said, “Huh. Well, sorry that I hit your friend. Call it an unlucky shot.”
“But you’re not sorry for shooting in the first place, because it’s Ganondorf, right?” Wind said, long-suffering.
Tetra winked at him, nocked another arrow, and fired it straight into Ocean Ganondorf’s rear.
“I’m banning you from archery,” Wind decided, deadpan, as Ocean Ganondorf reacted entirely reasonably by screaming some very choice profanities.
“Fine, fine, I’m done, I promise,” Tetra sighed, dismissing her weapons in a shower of gold and glitter. She sent a very pointed smirk towards Ganondorf. “Consider this fair compensation for the kidnapping,” she told him.
“...not the murder?” Wind asked.
“No, that’s a different set of vengeance plans altogether,” Tetra said brightly. “Which I’m going to have to revive from the scrap pile, actually, since Ganondorf is so conveniently alive again.”
“About that. His current existence is kind of tied to a higher deity who personally wants us dead? So we have a vested interest in not letting that happen. Which means that we’re probably going to quote-unquote ‘kill’ Ganondorf again so he can’t kill us first. Sorry.”
Tetra considered this for a long moment.
“...some people get to have all the fun,” she decided.
“That’s a weird way to pronounce ‘panicking while running for our lives’,” Sketch muttered.
“Like I said: fun,” Tetra repeated.
“Everything about my family makes so much more sense now,” Steam whispered, and then, “Ow, okay, point taken!” when Wind promptly stepped on his foot.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said in response to Tetra’s questioning noise. “More importantly, we still need to actually quote-unquote ‘kill’ Ganondorf. Wanna help?”
“Oh Link,” Tetra sighed. “Sometimes you ask very stupid questions.” She pulled a cutlass from her hip with casual grace, the sort that meant she’d used the sword before, and often.
Unfortunately, that was the moment they all discovered that while they’d been talking, Ocean Ganondorf had been busy.
Of the five Light Arrows that were impaled in Ganondorf’s body, at least two were embedded in a joint and were making it very difficult for him to move under his own power. Coupled with his ruptured eardrums, subsequent loss of balance, and the general collective of injury caused by Shadow’s rampage, he was truly not in any shape to continue to battle.
This would normally be a problem.
However, Ganondorf was experiencing a level of fury that bordered on enlightenment. Normal had no place in his mind anymore. And if he couldn’t move his body on his own imperative, then he would just have to outsource instead.
He’d made a specialty of puppets for a reason, after all.
While the Heroes were talking to the Princess, he summoned his strings. While the Princess was posturing, he attached them. Fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders. Then the head, neck, spine, hips, knees, ankles. Threads tied and double-knotted for assured connection, because Ganondorf was a professional at all times, even the times when he was in an indescribable amount of pain.
Tether his strings to his magic. Tug to make sure of the fastenings. He allowed himself a grim smile when the tension held strong.
He gathered his strings into the mental grip of his magic and he pulled.
Ocean Ganondorf rose off the beach with the sort of halting, jerky movements that inspire nightmares in small children. Lines snapped tight from every joint and limb. It was a paradox of the puppeteer becoming the puppet that he himself was puppeteering, and Ganondorf might have found it amusing to contemplate, in another circumstance.
He let his body go limp. Turned his full concentration to the cords held by his magic. There was no pain of arrows in his skin, no deadened sound from useless ears, no need to fight for balance. There were only his strings, and the marionette attached to them.
The Puppeteer tugged on the threads. The puppet lunged.
This caused a great deal of screaming.
“BY HYLIA’S GRACE WHY IS HE MOVING LIKE THAT!?” Gen screeched, scurrying backwards out of pure self-preservation, because Ocean Ganondorf was using his body in about the same way that spiders did. Not that he suddenly had more limbs, because he didn’t, but more in the sense that his movements triggered every primal instinct in the brain connected to a fear response. Tetra, in a move that she would later argue had made perfect sense in the moment, yanked a pistol off her back with the hand that wasn’t holding her cutlass and promptly shot Ganondorf in the face. It didn’t seem to do much.
“Do you not have bullets!?” Blue demanded.
“It’s calibrated for my elemental affinity!” Tetra snapped back. “So no! It shoots Water Magic, if you want to waste time being specific!”
“I thought you made Light Arrows?” Red asked.
“I have two affinities!” Tetra threw her hands up. “Dual Water and Light! WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW!?”
“We sidetrack when we’re stressed,” Realm informed her, bizarrely calmly in comparison to the volume of everything else.
“You need better coping mechanisms,” Tetra criticised, and then shot Ganondorf in the face again when he lunged just a bit too close for her liking. If nothing else, the impact of a Water Shot was great for forcing him out of her personal space.
“...Oh,” Wind said suddenly. “Tetra. Can you put out the fire with that?”
Tetra squinted at him, fired off another shot to keep Ganondorf at bay, and said, “Are you trying to sideline me?”
“No,” Wind said, because the last person who’d successfully sidelined Tetra had only been successful because she’d also been unconscious at the time. “You’re just kind of, literally, the only person here with a Water item. I don’t have time to call up a rainstorm, the other guys just have Ice stuff and we don’t have time for that to melt either, and I know better than to ask you to lend it to someone else.”
“...Ugh,” Tetra grumbled. “Friendship was a mistake.”
“I missed you too,” Wind replied. “Thank you.”
“Ew, shut up,” Tetra replied without missing a beat. Then she paused and said, “But make sure you stab him for me,” which Wind correctly interpreted as ‘You’re welcome,’ but didn’t draw attention to.
“Will do,” he promised instead.
Tetra gave him a mock-salute with her pistol, proceeded to shoot Ocean Ganondorf in the face one last time for good measure, and then took off sprinting towards the bit of the beach that was on fire. Knowing her, Wind assumed that she would attack the flames with indiscriminate battle intensity and would be back in the fight within two minutes with an island of extinguished fire to show for it. He loved how efficient she was.
…Huh. Wind made a mental note to not say that out loud in front of Steam, who had enough conversational ammunition already.
Ocean Ganondorf made another lunging approach, which actually went somewhere without Tetra immediately shooting him back. Wind jerked backwards to avoid being slashed, and eyed his opponent warily. Judging by the strings flashing in the light, the numerous arrows still sticking out of his body, the twin trickles of blood from his ears, the overall mauling from Shadow’s earlier fury, and the distinct lack of focus on his face - his eyes weren’t even tracking, they were staring fixedly ahead, pupils constricted to dots - Wind was fairly certain that Ganondorf wasn’t the one driving, at least not in a traditional sense. So he really didn’t feel all that guilty for what he did next.
“HEADS UP!” he hollered, planted his feet, adjusted his grip, and nailed Ocean Ganondorf with the Skull Hammer hard enough to send the man flying halfway across the beach.
At this point, the Links were all well-trained in the art of immediately obeying shouted orders in the middle of the fight, so naturally all the Links lifted their heads up to see what the fuss was about. Most of them screeched and immediately ducked back down again to avoid being flattened by an airborne Ganondorf.
Ocarina, on the other hand, saw him coming, and said, “Oh wait, I can punch that!”
So he planted his feet, adjusted his Gauntlets, and nailed Ocean Ganondorf with his fist hard enough to embed the man a solid six inches into the sand at his feet.
“Oh my Din,” Mask said, wide-eyed. “You actually punched him.”
“Yep,” Ocarina agreed, smugly. After missing his chance with the puppets earlier, this felt especially satisfying.
“I’m so proud-”
“Do not start fawning right now-”
“-exactly what I would have done-
“-kidnapped you guys, he was asking for it-”
“-oh Farore, I am a terrible role model,” Mask realized.
“I copy you deliberately,” Ocarina informed him.
“You really shouldn’t.”
“Too bad!”
“No really, you - no, wait, back up, what do you mean he kidnapped us?”
Ocarina paused, visibly rewound the conversation in his head, and said, “Ganondorf showed up right when you guys disappeared, we assumed he took you. Didn’t he?”
“Nope,” Mask said. “It was the squid. There was a whole thing about it, we can fill you in later.”
In direct defiance of all his injuries, Ocean Ganondorf abruptly snapped upright. Ocarina shrieked on reflex and punched him down again, right back into the same six-inch indent.
“...I’m still proud,” Mask decided. Almost simultaneously, Ganondorf lurched up out of the indent with a truly impressive disregard for all the blunt-impact damage he’d just received - and was frantically punched back by Ocarina for the third consecutive time.
“WHY WON’T HE STAY DOWN!?” he screeched, as Ocean Ganondorf demonstrated exactly that by swaying back onto his feet. His movements were fluidly disjointed in about the same manner that snakes weren’t, which meant that it was horrifying to look at and deeply disturbing to apply to a human body.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Mask said, which Ocarina took as his cue to get away as fast as possible. Anything that his much more experienced younger-but-older self found disturbing was something that he didn’t want to mess with.
“TRADE-OFF!” he yelled, snatched Mask up by the back of his tunic, and sprinted.
“Oh for the Love of Nayru that is SO NOT FAIR!” Sketch shouted after them.
Dusk had shifted Lore into a piggyback carry and made the decision to strategically retreat from the fight overall, because he was now responsible for the wellbeing of two incapacitated Links and he refused to be the reason for further injury to either of them. From what he could tell of Midna’s feedback, Shadow was… alive. Physically existing, even, which was at least two steps up from slipping through their fingers like slime. But Midna also seemed to think that he was in deep enough denial about something to cause himself a mental breakdown.
“How can you tell?” Dusk asked, under his breath so as not to draw Ocean Ganondorf’s attention, even though the man was very clearly occupied with the numerous Boomerangs and also Gen’s Beetle that were now flying around and targeting the strings. Best not to risk it, he thought.
The response he received was made more of impressions than anything else, and consisted solely of the chant NOT-REAL-NOT-REAL-NOT-REAL on a seemingly endless loop. The auditory-impression that came with it certainly sounded like Shadow. The emotional impression of PANIC, on the other hand, was something that Dusk was admittedly struggling to match to the image of the self-confident and overly cocky dark Hero that he’d come to know and feel protective of.
(Bizarrely, the impression of PANIC skipped into DISBELIEF and back, right as Dusk had that thought. That was… probably fine.)
It’s a bit hard to miss, little wolf, Midna informed him dryly. He’s broadcasting rather loudly.
“But he’s doing okay for now?”
Eeehhh… ‘okay’ might be relative, Midna said. But he hasn’t fallen apart any more than he already has, so… oh excuse you, where do you think you’re going? Oyu get abkõc hõree rõbeefo ai aemõk oyu!”
“What?” Dusk said, baffled. “Midna, what?”
Someone’s being an extremely ungrateful guest - oh NO YOU DON’T - Link, I’ll call you back! HADÕWSO DÕNOT OYU RADE-!
Her shouting cut out as if she’d slammed a door shut, which really put the finishing touch on the whole conversation. She’d call him back? She lived in his soul, what did that even mean?
But he didn’t have time to worry about it. He didn’t have time to worry about much of anything, really, except for the well-being of the people he was carrying and protecting. And on that note, he should duck.
Wait. CRAP-
Dusk dropped himself to the ground, bringing Lore along for the ride with thankfully only a bit of difficulty, and Ocean Ganondorf went flying through the space that his head had just occupied not a moment later. Dusk rolled over, sat up, dragged Lore back into a carrying hold, and flashed an incredulous look over at the rest of the group.
“Sorry!” Green shouted. “We cut his strings and there was recoil from that apparently!”
“Beetle supremacy,” Gen contributed, which immediately earned him some quick mocking from the rest of the Links who had Boomerangs. “No, shut up, you’re all just ignorant because you don’t know any better.”
“Sure,” the Four said, looking a little bit silly with only one Boomerang to hold and three extra people holding the pose. “Or maybe you’re jealous because we know how to actually use one and you don’t?”
“Ignorant!” Gen insisted.
In the background of that, Steam muttered something under his breath, and the Spirit Train promptly arrived and ran Ganondorf over. If the strings hadn’t been severed before, they almost certainly were now.
And yet.
Their opponent staggered once more to his feet, except that at this point he really looked as though he shouldn’t be able to be on his feet at all. Between all the damage Shadow had inflicted earlier, plus the eardrums, added together with the multiple Light Arrows, the impacts from Wind’s hammer and Tetra’s pistol, being punched repeatedly in the face by Ocarina, and now the full force of the Spirit Train on top of it all, the Links were fairly certain that most other villains would have dissolved into void by now.
Unfortunately… they weren’t wrong.
Because of the recoil of the strings, Dusk was now the closest Link in proximity to Ocean Ganondorf. Because of the weight of Lore on his back, Dusk wasn’t able to react and move as fast as he normally would. Because of the way Ganondorf had given himself over to the mindset of the Puppeteer, his only goal was to cause as much destruction as possible while he still could.
Several things happened at once.
Ocean Ganondorf lunged, single remaining sword drawn. He was on Dusk within a split second, too fast for the Hero to escape with the added body of an unconscious teenager, but the sword wasn’t aimed at either of them.
Ganondorf had his weapon not pointed at any target but himself.
“If I am to fail,” he said, grimly, swearing it like a promise and seizing the front of Dusk’s shirt in his free hand, “then I will take you to Demise with me.”
He brought the sword back in one swift movement, straight through his own chest, and the void erupted from his body.
Dusk and Lore were directly beneath it, held in place by Ganondorf’s fingers - the sole remaining limb not yet consumed by nothing. Dusk was still hosting Midna and Shadow. All four of them were about to be dragged in, because Ocean Ganondorf was dragging them in, and if Dusk let go of Lore then maybe he would be able to draw his own weapon and cut himself free but that would leave Lore, unconscious and helpless, at the mercy of wherever he would end up and Dusk couldn’t do that-
Lore needed him. Shadow needed him. They were pack and he refused to abandon either of them.
He looked up and met the eyes of his fellow Links, all of them terrified, and he gave them a helpless, defeated shrug.
Gen screamed something incoherent-
-and then-
-Shadow burst out from Dusk’s feet, wild-eyed and just barely recognizable and absolutely furious. For a single stolen moment, everyone stared at each other, and in spite of the situation Dusk felt a flash of relief.
Shadow was awake. He could escape, he could save himself. He’d be okay.
He was also screaming. Not at the level of a Redead, thank the Goddesses, but still loud and raw and painful, and… oh, he might actually be expecting a response this time, what was he saying?
“-AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT YOU CARE!?”
“Of course we do,” Dusk said automatically, even though the rift was almost touching him and he could vaguely hear Midna shrieking at him to move. “You’re one of us.”
You’re one of us.
You’re one of us. (We care.)
One of us. (We accept you.)
One of us. (We want you here.)
One of us. (You’re our family and we love you.)
They… cared? It was… real?
(The box Ŝ̸͖ ̵̪̿H̶͔̫͝ ̷͖͊̎A̶̗͠ ̷͉̋T̸̫̂̔ͅ ̵͓̹͐͒T̶ ̴̙̋̎Ē̴͖̔ ̷̬̀̋R̶͍̓ ̶͐͜Ë̵̝̹ ̴̜̋̄D̶̯͝.)
“...Oh,” Farore whispered. “Oh no.”
In the next moment, Dusk suddenly found himself tumbling uncontrollably over the sand several feet away from the void, Lore sprawled haphazardly at his side. What in the - had Shadow just thrown them?
He jerked upright, head snapping towards the hole of nothing, where sure enough Shadow was sliding out of a throwing stance. The void loomed behind him, too close to escape from now, which meant that Shadow… had chosen to save them instead of himself.
He looked terrible, to be fair. Dusk had never seen him looking less cohesive, looking less like a person. There was also a nasty-looking pale gray discoloration in his side, which Dusk could only assume was from the Light Arrow. But his face was the worst part.
Shadow, for the first time since Dusk had met him, looked heartbroken.
“Don’t come after me,” he said, and his voice trembled. “I mean it. Don’t come looking.”
The void swallowed him up.
Silence fell.
“...What just happened?” Speck asked, in the smallest voice anybody had ever heard him use.
The compromise to immediately charging the void to go after Shadow was to set up temporary camp clustered around the void, at the closest distance that could still be deemed safe.
“We can’t go after him yet!” Gen had yelled at Dusk, after the latter had immediately tried to follow. “I want to, just as much as you do! But we don’t know where he was sent, we don’t know if we’ll come out in the same place, Lore is still unconscious, the rest of us are exhausted, and the island only just stopped being on fire! Plus we still have to sort out whatever pseudo-Windfish nonsense you guys got yourselves into here - Dusk I promise that we will go as soon as we can, but if we want to survive the attempt, we need to recover from this first.”
“...I know,” Dusk had admitted. “I just - Ganondorf threatened to drag us with him to Demise. And I know that he wasn’t holding Shadow, because he’d been holding me, but I just - I’m worried.”
“DEMISE!?” Gen had squawked, and then Dusk had needed to hold Gen back from immediately trying to follow Shadow into the rift.
In all honesty, the ‘compromise’ was really more impatience in disguise than anything else.
Tetra, meanwhile, while singlehandedly responsible for the island no longer being on fire, was extremely irritated that Ocean Ganondorf had landed the final hit on himself, because this meant that she’d been robbed of the opportunity.
“I wanted to shoot him in the face a few more times,” she’d complained. “Just like, fifty or so. You know, a nice small number.”
It was at that moment that all the rest of the Links realized that when Wind had been describing Tetra during the storytimes, he’d actually been underexaggerating.
The actual island itself, Mercay, was a bit crispy, but since nobody could remember who had actually started the fire, the blame was put solely on Ocean Ganondorf. This worked especially well because the alternative was believing that Wind (known locally as a helpful and polite boy) was responsible; Ocean Ganondorf was very easy to believably accuse of arson; and perhaps most importantly, he wasn’t around to defend himself. But on another, equally important note, now that the chaos of everything had died down and Oshus could officially confirm that he had ownership of the Dream back, he could simply will the island to be whole again. It was baffling to blink and see the fire damage vanish like it hadn’t even been there in the first place.
“It’s probably a good thing Lore isn’t awake for this,” Vio commented upon watching it. “I think he would have had a minor meltdown or something.”
“Probably, yeah,” the rest of the group chorused.
“I could wake him,” Oshus offered. “He is currently under my purview as an inhabitant of my World, it would be quite simple.”
“Maybe don’t do that,” Vio said quickly. “We know you mean well, but Lore… uh… believes in natural remedies.”
“Dude, what?” Blue hissed.
“Shut up, I panicked,” Vio hissed back, and the pair of them immediately dissolved into the usual squabbling. For once, Green didn’t bother to break them up - he could see the relieved smile on Blue’s face, and really, weird methods of reassurring himself that his counterparts were still alive were better than no methods.
“Thanks for the offer though!” Red chirped, flawlessly covering the moment in Green’s stead.
Oshus also fixed Linebeck’s ship, which had the man crying at his feet in gratitude. Tetra, to put it politely, disapproved of this.
“Get up, Moron,” she snapped. “It’s unbecoming of a ship Captain.”
To his credit, Linebeck immediately stopped - which, actually, either meant that he could cry on command, or he was exaggerating - and looked up at Tetra with exasperation. “You know I have a name, right?”
“You know I don’t care, right?”
“...Right,” Linebeck muttered, deflating.
“Link!” Ciela cut in. “That was insane! The whole thing! I can’t believe you had to face something like that before!”
“In my defense,” Wind said, “he wasn’t insane like that last time.”
Ciela piping up ended up reminding Oshus that he needed to remind Ciela of who she actually was, which was a bit of a complicated way to say that Bellum had stolen her memories. The point was, with Bellum gone and ownership of the Dream restored to the rightful owner, Oshus had the authority to undo anything Bellum had done. This also explained why Tetra was no longer stone - Bellum had been the one holding that curse, and when he lost ownership, his hold sorta just… unraveled.
It was a very specific, Dream-Ownership loophole, but that wasn’t going to stop the Links from taking full advantage of it.
“...Wow,” Ciela said, upon being reminded that she was actually the Spirit of Time and Courage. “I think I’d like to punch Bellum in the eye, please.”
“Wait, you have hands?” Linebeck asked.
“Don’t be rude, you inconsiderate-”
“If I see him again I’ll punch him for you,” Wind said, cutting off Ciela’s ironically rude retort.
“Thank you Link, this is why you’re my favorite.”
“...Wait,” Vio said slowly. “You’re Time and Courage? That can’t be right, those are two completely separate domains and we’ve already got Goddesses for them.”
“That is true of your world,” Oshus said. “It is the one that the Goddesses created, and so it is the one you find natural. But this is my world, that I created, and I decided to experiment a little.”
“...Sidebar, but when you say created-”
“No, your own world is not also a Dream,” Oshus said, correctly interpreting where Vio was going. “Your Goddesses have the strength to create a reality. I am not so powerful.”
“Right. Okay. Good,” Vio said, clearly relieved. “On that note though. What are your plans for this world?”
If Lore had been conscious, Vio was certain that this topic would have been brought up several hours ago, violently, with a lot of shouting. Since Lore wasn’t conscious, Vio would make sure the conversation still happened - just with a lot less shouting, probably.
“Guide it and nurture it, of course?” Oshus said, frowning.
“And when you wake up?” Vio said, folding his arms. It wasn’t actually a question.
Oshus… paused. “Ah,” he said. “I was unaware that you were aware of that specific detail.”
“If you want to play god, then you are going to be responsible for your creations,” Vio informed him bluntly. “You made these people. Own up to it.”
“...I cannot remain asleep forever,” Oshus said quietly.
Vio threw his hands up. “Then petition the Goddesses for a merger or something, I don’t know! Just - don’t be a murderer, okay, the bar is not that low!”
Oshus was silent for a very long time.
Then, slowly, he let out a deeply lengthy sigh and confessed, “I am… not… the original maker of these seas.”
Vio stared at him. For that matter, so did everybody else. Then Vio said, “I’m sorry, WHAT!?”
“The Lady Din made them, a long time ago. But she was so eager to keep creating that she forgot to anchor the islands in reality, and when she moved on they were left adrift. I knew that, without anything to bind them, the islands and the people on them would dissolve into nothing, and I found myself unable to let that happen. I did not have the power to secure them to reality myself, so…” he shrugged, a little helplessly. “I did the only thing that I could, and I claimed ownership by way of Dreaming. I attached my title as the Ocean King and let everyone simply believe that they were mine, because a collection of Dreamed islands are nowhere near as valuable as a collection of Goddess-borne islands free for the taking.”
“That’s a bit messed-up,” Tetra commented idly.
“And then Bellum came,” Vio said slowly. “You suspect that he knew?”
“Quite honestly, I do not know what he knew,” Oshus said heavily. “But… it is likely.”
“Okay,” Vio said. “Okay. New question. Why in Nayru’s Name didn’t you petition Din to fix these seas sooner?”
Oshus blushed. “I… became emotionally attached.”
“Wow,” Mask said. “Judging you a little bit for that one, not gonna lie. You know there’s not really anything stopping you from continuing to be their guardian deity or whatever even if they’re not relying on you for their very existence, right? If anything the relationship would probably be healthier without that whole situation in the way?”
“I was younger then,” Oshus muttered. “And quite a bit more foolish.”
“Good, now that you’re older and quite a bit less foolish, you can fix your mistakes,” Vio said firmly. “Talk to the Land Goddess.”
Oshus blinked. “Surely you’re not thinking she’ll actually answer?”
“I’m thinking she will,” Vio said, and smiled in a way that said he knew something Oshus didn’t.
In his defense, he was literally a part of the Goddess-sent universal Hero rescue mission. If Din didn’t answer, then Vio was going to demand compensation.
“...Oh my Me,” Din said.
“What now?” Nayru moaned, because Farore was now borderline useless ever since Shadow had… well, ever since Shadow. If Din left her alone to deal with the absolute mess that this had turned into, she’d riot.
“Oshus stole my islands!” Din exclaimed.
“...Din, what does that even mean?”
“The islands that got me banned from playing with islands,” Din said. “The ones I forgot to anchor in reality and then couldn’t find later until the Hero of Winds got lost in them but then there was a Hatred Incarnation claiming ownership so I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Oh,” said Nayru, considering this deeply. “...These are those islands?
“Yes!” Din said fervently. “And the reason I couldn’t find them later is because Oshus claimed them!”
“I see.” Nayru did not think this was worthy of the amount of drama that her sister was giving it. “That was a rather nice thing for him to do, actually.”
“I complimented him on them,” Din complained. “I thought he’d Dreamed up a really nice island chain! Of course they were nice, they were mine the whole time!”
“You realize that this means that Oshus is singlehandedly responsible for keeping these islands from dissolving in the unanchored nether outside of reality, right?” Nayru checked.
Din huffed. “Yes of course I know that. I just need to complain about it before I thank him.”
“I see,” Nayru said again. “And… what prompted this realization?”
“Oh, he and Farore’s Aspects are wanting to know if I’ll take ownership back and reconnect it to reality.”
“Din,” Nayru said.
“I know, I know! I’m doing it right now, see!?”
Oshus had barely closed his mouth around the last word of his request to Din when a bright flash of deep red overwrote absolutely everything. For a split second, not even the ground beneath their feet felt real - but then, just as fast as it happened, it was already over. The new hole that Ganondorf had torn shivered and drew itself back together, presumably due to the space between the two locations no longer existing.
“Oh my,” Oshus said, faintly.
“Did it work?” Steam asked, glancing around. “Nothing looks different - and it’s me saying that.”
“...It worked,” Wind said, and pointed to the completely new island off Mercay’s west shore, which distinctly had not been there previously. “That’s Stonewatcher.”
“That weird little nowhere island we landed on by accident a few days ago?”
“That’s the one.”
“Wow,” Steam said admiringly. “The Goddesses work fast.”
“Why do you boys have a direct line of communication with our pantheon?” Oshus asked unsteadily.
“Don’t worry about it.”
From there it was just a matter of making sure everyone on Mercay had survived the chaos, ‘convincing’ Linebeck to give the Links (and Tetra) a ride to Outset now that both islands were in the same dimensional plane, and explaining to everybody about the whole reality merger thing. That last one was immediately decided to be Oshus’ problem.
To his credit, he managed to make an amazing first impression as the new Local Guardian Deity by taking one look at the twin voids that Bellum and Ocean Ganondorf had left behind and saying, “The people can’t stay here, can they?” Nothing earns a town’s trust quite like revealing oneself as a whale god and organizing an island-wide evacuation plan.
Linebeck was promptly ‘convinced’ to give the rest of the population of Mercay a ride to Outset too. It only took him a couple extra trips, and he ran the route with remarkably minimal complaining. The blatant hero-worship he was receiving for being the man to get the people off the island also wasn’t hurting.
This led to a somewhat awkward conversation between Oshus and the island elders, a brother pair named Orca and Sturgeon, where Oshus attempted to explain what was happening to Mercay without sounding insane and the two brothers attempted to figure out where they were going to house all these people. Eventually it was decided that the fishing boats would be turned upside down and placed on stilts, so that some sails could be strung between them to make temporary tents, and all the Mercay refugees were too grateful at being allowed to stay to complain about it.
The Links for their part, along with Tetra, all trudged back to Wind’s Grandmother’s house, looking decidedly unheroic. Part of this was because Lore was still unconscious, and ragdolling limply on Dusk’s back in a way that was impossible to be mistaken as anything dignified. Part of this was also because they were covered in sand, some burns, several string-thin lacerations, and also in Dusk and Lore’s case, a fair amount of squid ink. And of course, part of this was because none of them were acting like they’d won. It was hard to pretend to be happy, when the more honest emotion was worry.
“We’re going after him, right?” Speck asked, immediately after Grandma and Aryll had left the room after dispensing a truly improbable amount of soup to everyone in the group. “I know he said not to but he was hurt, and I don’t think he’s been okay for a while and we don’t know where he went and-”
“We’re going to try,” Gen said fiercely.
“...try?” Speck echoed, cautiously. Gen paused, exchanged a loaded glance with Dusk (who was somewhat distracted by manhandling Lore into a vague attempt at a recovery position), and sighed.
“First thing tomorrow, we’re making Linebeck take us back to Mercay so we can get going,” he promised. “But… you know that we can’t control where we end up next. And since Lore might not be awake in the morning, we’re going to need to be more careful than usual because he’ll be dead weight. I know that we can handle covering for him, but we might have to make different decisions to ensure he doesn’t get hurt.”
Speck frowned, clearly reading between the lines and not liking it, but also not finding anything wrong with the reasoning.
“We take tonight to rest and heal,” Gen said. “Then we move. And in the meantime… pray to the Goddess that we find him.”
“Goddesses,” Mask said.
Gen blinked, then huffed. “If the triune pantheon wanted me to remember that they’re a thing then they should have introduced themselves sooner. I have a lot more respect for Hylia anyways.”
Next to Wind, Tetra for some reason gave a full-body shiver at the name Hylia. Gen glanced at her, did a quick double-take as he made the connection between Princess Zelda in disguise and Blood of the Goddess and then very deliberately decided that he wasn’t going to open that can of worms right now. Still, it was nice to know that his Goddess was in the room, sort of.
“...You literally have the full Triforce on your hand,” Wind pointed out.
“Yes, and? Again, it’s not like they introduced themselves when they decided to give me pieces of their powers. Also, this is not the point I’m trying to make - the point is, we’ve had success with divine intervention before, and I think this situation calls for it.”
“The Three Sisters are probably getting sick of us,” Sketch muttered.
“Hey, whatever it takes,” Gen said. “Whatever it takes.”
Shadow crashed into the ground below the void with all the grace of a brick, which is to say, none at all, and he immediately regretted it. Everything hurt, in a way that he wasn’t used to but was rapidly getting sick of. The Light Arrow wound was arguably the worst culprit, stinging and burning like sunlight exposure only concentrated, bone-deep, and about a thousand times more painful than any sunlight exposure he’d had before. And it wasn’t healing, because of course it wasn’t, because Light Magic was poison to him. Corruption, even. An infection that he would have to drain out before he’d be able to even begin to heal from it, and he had no idea how long that would be because, surprise, he’d never actually been shot with a Light Arrow before! Because he’d known it would hurt! Oh gee, he was right!
The only reason that the Light Arrow wound was arguably the worst, and not definitively the worst, was because there was a deep ache in his chest that, while not exactly painful, was so incredibly uncomfortable that Shadow was seriously considering the benefits of clawing his ribcage open to figure out where it was coming from and make it stop. It wasn’t even centered! Instead it was concentrated slightly to the left, and was pulsing faintly every few seconds. Shadow would have compared it to a heartbeat, if he had one.
…Wait.
Wait.
No. No, no, no no no nonononononono. He couldn’t - he shouldn’t - it was impossible, he knew it was impossible, he - this didn’t make any sense - creatures of dark magic didn’t - couldn’t - he had to be mistaken. He had to be making it up, or imagining it. It had to be something else, something other than the impossible - had he mentioned it was impossible? - suspicion that was starting to form.
Shadow placed a disbelieving hand on his chest.
A slow heartbeat thumped beneath it.
“Oh my Din,” Shadow breathed, which actually might have been the first time he’d ever called on the Goddesses in his life. “What in Nayru’s Name. Farore. I - I don’t-”
All the feelings that had been building up, that he’d been ignoring and shoving in a metaphorical box - every ounce of care, inclusion, compassion, and (ugh) worry that his Origins had been feeling towards him - he had no idea how but he instinctively knew that their attachment to him was responsible for this. They’d somehow collectively managed to care about him hard enough that they gave him life. Shadow didn’t know what to do with that. All his existence, he’d had the half-life of a dark-magic construct. At times, he’d been little more than a creature, constantly bound to his summoner’s will, which he wasn’t bitter about or using as his personal motivation to punch every Ganon and Ganondorf and Vaati in the face, nope not at all. It had been that way for millennia. He was used to it, he knew what to expect from it.
This?
Setting aside the fact that it really, genuinely shouldn’t be possible, Shadow had no idea how to react to this. In one single act, his Origins had set him free, and he hadn’t even known it was happening. It had to have been happening for a long time, he thought, because a heart didn’t just form in an instant.
Oh. Wait. This was why the Light Arrow hadn’t outright killed him. He hadn’t been a being of pure darkness in a while, had he?
“Farore,” Shadow said again, because it felt like a curse and it seemed appropriate.
And then.
Something responded.
loveyouloveyouloveyoumyCouragemybabyloveyousomuchworriedconcernedloveyoupleasepleasepleaseloveyoualwaysloveyou
And then.
Shadow’s newborn heart gave a sharp pang before all the aching suddenly stopped; and for the first time in his existence, Shadow began to cry. He hated it immediately.
He also couldn’t seem to stop, which he also hated. But everything suddenly felt like too much, overwhelmingly so, and apparently he had to cry about it. It was very stupid. Shadow promptly decided that if he was going to have a breakdown, he was going to have a quiet one, thanks. Sobbing was just excessive.
He sat there, tears sliding silently down his face, for quite a while as new feelings rolled in and the feedback from his Origins sharpened into a spearhead of almost unbearable worry (ugh) and concern (ugh). At some point he managed to move away from the void, on more habit than anything else. It was a wooded area, green and healthy, so Shadow flopped down at the base of the nearest tree. He felt exposed and raw, both of which were new and unwelcome emotions, and also lonely, which was just absolutely unacceptable. Stupid Heroes, going and giving him a heart and then stupidly getting into trouble that Shadow had stupidly decided to save them from. In hindsight it was a thoroughly uncharacteristic act for him, and Shadow was going to blame it on the heart he’d been growing. Stupid feelings, making him do stupid things, like miss the group.
Emotional turmoil sucked.
And then-
Oooooohhhhhh, what do we have here?
Shadow, in a split second of reflex, bludgeoned the source of the new voice in his head with a shapeshifted hammer on the end of his arm. In direct contrast to the voice from before, which had been quiet and warm and so achingly affectionate that it made Shadow’s teeth hurt, this new one was slimy. It invaded his head in a way that made him think of leeches.
Rude, said the voice, in direct defiance of the fact that Shadow had hammered the owner. The hammer lifted, even though Shadow was straining to keep it down. And I came all the way out to greet you.
If scarecrows could walk, Shadow assumed they would look about like this. It was the size of a small child, with patchwork raggedy clothes and curiously wood-like skin. Strapped to the face - and Shadow did mean strapped - by several red tendrils was a large, purple and red heart-shaped mask.
Majora. Even among the dark magic crowd, the mask had a… reputation.
“Gee, you shouldn’t have,” Shadow said, monotone. “Now go away.”
But you’re so interesting.
Oh no. The last thing Shadow wanted was to be found interesting by Majora of all entities. “I promise you I’m not.”
Oh, but you are, Majora purred, hovering the child scarecrow body up to Shadow’s eye level. The body dangled limply, and Shadow couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or not when he saw the chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. Such delicious uncertainty. So many new emotions roiling around. Disorder. Chaos. Ripe for the harvesting. I will take them from you.
Absolutely not. Shadow may not have decided how he felt about his new heart just yet, but it was his and he refused to let anyone else near it on principle. “You will not.”
I was not asking, Majora said, low and dark and dangerous. I was merely informing you of my decision. My current puppet has run dry, you see.
Shadow took an involuntary step backwards. The implications of that were alarming. The rumor had always been that Majora fed on emotions, and this conversation was confirming that rumor handily. But a person had to be aware, or at least awake, to have enough emotions to feed off of, which meant…
“Your host is conscious,” Shadow whispered to himself.
How convenient to find you here, so full of angst, Majora mused. So very burdened with emotion. I will make you empty again.
Please no. Shadow was actually a bit surprised by how badly he did not want to lose his newly gained feelings. “If you touch me, I will end you,” he snarled. “I will tear you apart if that’s what it takes.”
Really now. You think you can.
The red tendrils around the host’s face unwound and the child body dropped unceremoniously to the dirt. Shadow lunged just in time to prevent the head from colliding with the ground.
Huh. A Skull Kid. Usually, Shadow respected their mischievous ways, but the glassy-eyed stare that this one was giving him told him everything he needed to know about who was in charge.
Predictable. I thought you might surprise me.
Shadow snapped his eyes back up from the Skull Kid’s face and realized - it had been a trap. The release of Majora’s host had been bait, and Shadow had taken it like an idiot. The red tendrils were all around them, weaving back and forth and slinking closer and closer. Majora stared with unblinking eyes. Too close, it was too close-
Quite suddenly, Shadow’s free arm was shifted into a spear shape and lodged directly through the wood of Majora’s right eye. Shadow inhaled, startled. He didn’t - when had he moved?
More importantly, had it worked?
Hmm. It seems I’ll have to break you to my will after all. Majora slid off the shifted spear without so much as a splinter left behind. Red tendrils knit the hole together and closed the damage back up. A pity. I had thought you might be amenable to my cause.
“Which is?” Shadow asked, in a vague hope of stalling for time.
Simple. I kill the Heroes, then I kill the villains, then I kill Demise. With all opposition gone, I am free to do as I will. And I will make the universe burn.
…Shadow was about to make the stupidest decision of his entire existence.
“If you want to kill my Origins,” Shadow said, “then you’re going to have to go through me first.”
Majora regarded him implacably.
Your terms are acceptable, it said.
The red tendrils lunged forwards.
It was the last color Shadow saw.
Notes:
A line from my chapter notes: "woe, ANGST be upon the readership!"
Y'all know you love me ^-^
This chapter should not have fought me. It did anyways. How can I have a thing entirely plotted out and yet still struggle to put it into words? I did not mean for this to take another year. I did not want for this to take another year. This is not allowed to keep happening. Next chapter in six months or less or so help me-
Anyways.
Callback to Chapter Twenty and that throwaway line that I put in as a joke about Din making the world of Phantom Hourglass and then being too excited to finish the job. We're bringing it back full circle folks! No one can accuse me of not having continuity! Oshus out here gaslighting folks like it's his job, huh. Don't be like Oshus, folks.
Aside from that! Lore hogged the spotlight last time, so this time I removed him from the spotlight entirely. Poor sucker can't steal the show if he's unconscious. Meanwhile… I'm sure Shadow is gonna be just fine.
Sailing lingo: Tetra tells Linebeck to 'steer the boat downwind to the shore, hold it steady, and beach it.' She also gets to have her Hyrule Warriors weapons, as a treat. Additionally, I have once again lined up the WW and PH maps and gleefully fused them together with no real regard for whether or not it would actually work in practice. Wibbly wobbly handwavey magic, it's fine. Don't worry about it.Next couple chapters will probably be rated M for Majora. I'm only fifty-percent joking. Majora has issues and I'm about to make them so much worse.
-Changeling
Linguistic Translations:
Darkling: Oyu get abkõc hõree rõbeefo ai aemõk oyu! (You get back here before I make you!) / HADÕWSO DÕNOT OYU RADE-! (SHADOW DON'T YOU DARE-!)
Thanks to Ocean_of_the_Moon, Little_Ghoast, I_read_the_book, AnonymousKlutz, UndercoverFly, Glitchy1, SnowySkit, Agent_Jensen, AierieDragonslayer, FieryVelociraptor, SunnyLaurels, PaarSiivOnikaan, Nastya_M_Steel, Guest #734, Guest #735, Guest #736, Guest #737, Guest #738, Guest #739, Guest #740, Guest #741, srirachacha, NeonSugarSorbet, NinjaZombieYoshi, HeroFox12, MasterMagician13, TheChargingRhino, Guest #742, Guest #743, TheForgottenEmpress87465, fandom_wanderer, Guest #744, Guest #745, CloudySkyFlight, Guest #746, Guest #747, DarkenedKnight, crazyshark321, Nova_Blaze, Guest #748, Guest #749, hilli98215, chocolatewatchandwaistcoat, Guest #750, Savantics, Guest #751, sb247, Seriously_N, Guest #752, technicolorrunes, Turtlegirl989, yologuy231, Voissy, AngelofTwilight99, Guest #753, Imforeveraddictedtozeldagames, Guest #754, Guest #755, WriterL, Brilliant_Battler, Lopezuzied, Freerunner4427, Guest #756, MuttDawg, Guest #757, Guest #758, Guest #759, Guest #760, Angel_Fantasy, YewSoup, Emiluka, Guest #761, Guest #762, Guest #763, Guest #764, MurasakiPurple, glmdgrielson, Guest #765, Guest #766, Altavi_Vio, Guest #767, showcontrols, A_Shifting_Mound, and_a_dash_of_Angst, Wynstatic, Guest #768, Guest #768, MintyPeanut, Guest #769, Guest #770, iamthewalrein, InsertCleverNameHere0, Guest #771, Guest #772, Green_Naruto38, TaziyaKoya, Delphi_3, FeebleDerf, NexuxPoint, Guest #773, Guest #774, Dark_focus, Ytilanigir0, pink_psychic_cat, unArchivingEntity. Guest #775, Ilikereasingforfun, Guest #776, Dreysarvu, EternalEngine, Guest #777, mystmoon, theforgotten_hero, Guest #778, Guest #779, Guest #780, Guest #781, BlupeeBlep, M0rpheusleepDrB, Guest #782, GirlWarrior_Lib, Sugar_Coated_Roses, Minish_cap_link, aquirks, Frioio_434, Shrimpkritter, Silver_5674, Guest #783, Thait, Bedrock_Gar, AndromedaJester, Potatobro19, elvake, WrightTaleKenavi, Celestial_Kitsune99, Lingual_Arrow, Lumakid100, Hopeless_Shipper, viper1412, Guest #784, Guest #785, Bad_Kobold, Guest #786, BlastBlixer, Padspi, Champignone, Random_Lee_here, Caracarn, Your_mom_in_my_bed, Guest #787, WhyDoIDoThingsEver, Guest #788, 5kullflow, Guest #789, WhyDoIDoThings, Psycho829, Guest #790, Guest #791, Guest #792, Guest #793, Alvin_Draper_the_art_thief, Guest #794, Guest #795, Guest #796, Guest #797, Ibatomik, theAroAceDoctor, Cekillia, Guest #798, GVtheBookwyrm, Guest #799, Guest #800, Lairen_Hay, Guest #801, DeltaCommander, Guest #802, LeoTheEnchanted, aslitheryprinx, Guest #803, Guest #804, Guest #805, and frostfox for the Kudos!
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Now on TV Tropes!
(Due to the status of DL right now, there are more than likely Spoilers in these websites. If you care about that sort of thing, this is your Spoiler Warning!)
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blingeekingdave on Chapter 1 Sun 08 Jul 2018 03:22AM UTC
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ChangelingRin on Chapter 1 Sun 08 Jul 2018 03:24AM UTC
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Ennelmennelbee (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sun 31 Mar 2019 03:25AM UTC
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ChangelingRin on Chapter 1 Sun 31 Mar 2019 03:44AM UTC
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Ennelmennelbee (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sun 31 Mar 2019 01:32PM UTC
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Naiva_Viva on Chapter 1 Mon 16 Jul 2018 08:33AM UTC
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ChangelingRin on Chapter 1 Mon 16 Jul 2018 02:19PM UTC
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Zotinha456 on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Sep 2018 09:31PM UTC
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ChangelingRin on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Sep 2018 11:20PM UTC
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Ennelmennelbee (Guest) on Chapter 1 Wed 30 Jan 2019 10:45PM UTC
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Softichill on Chapter 1 Thu 02 Apr 2020 05:28PM UTC
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Fyncival on Chapter 1 Tue 26 May 2020 12:05AM UTC
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Sm0lAvidReader on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Nov 2020 11:03PM UTC
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FallenAJ_2475 on Chapter 1 Sun 28 Feb 2021 10:42PM UTC
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InnerGlow11 on Chapter 1 Thu 03 Feb 2022 07:56PM UTC
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Paulgrobe on Chapter 1 Tue 31 May 2022 06:32PM UTC
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Longbob Slobknob (Guest) on Chapter 1 Thu 02 Jun 2022 11:48PM UTC
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ChangelingRin on Chapter 1 Fri 03 Jun 2022 01:41AM UTC
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FarT00ManyFandoms on Chapter 1 Mon 06 Jun 2022 01:41AM UTC
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Stov1212 on Chapter 1 Mon 26 Sep 2022 04:02AM UTC
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EmpressUmbreon on Chapter 1 Fri 10 Feb 2023 08:34PM UTC
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Tesla on Chapter 1 Wed 03 May 2023 05:33AM UTC
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ChangelingRin on Chapter 1 Wed 03 May 2023 11:38PM UTC
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Tesla on Chapter 1 Wed 03 May 2023 11:52PM UTC
Last Edited Wed 03 May 2023 11:53PM UTC
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NickelAndDamned on Chapter 1 Mon 10 Jul 2023 04:45AM UTC
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Organic_Mutiny on Chapter 1 Sun 03 Sep 2023 08:46PM UTC
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Lynx09 on Chapter 1 Fri 16 Feb 2024 07:33AM UTC
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F1tz_R0y on Chapter 1 Thu 16 May 2024 03:30PM UTC
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MugenKagemaru on Chapter 1 Wed 30 Oct 2024 04:57AM UTC
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ChangelingRin on Chapter 1 Wed 30 Oct 2024 08:37PM UTC
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MugenKagemaru on Chapter 1 Wed 30 Oct 2024 08:56PM UTC
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AndromedaJester on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Apr 2025 12:43AM UTC
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