I'm new to this whole Zelda business, so please spare me if I get anything wrong. Otherwise enjoy!
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Not long after Link suddenly got pushed in the middle of his journey of destiny and adventure, he began to suspect that being the Hero may have more annoyances than perks. During his travels, the newly instated and somewhat inexperienced Hero had managed to discover the many little details that made this complex quest far harder (and stupider) than it really should have been.
000
"Please, help me."
Link woke up, pale and sweaty. He looked around and saw his uncle, who held both a shield and sword in his hands for some unfathomable reason. The man said something to him before leaving the house, but he didn't hear it, too occupied with trying to remember his dream.
Suddenly, like an artist's stroke of inspiration or a philosopher's epiphany, he came to a horrifying realization.
"By the Goddesses..." he muttered under his breath, "I have voices in my head!"
000
With his dying breath, his uncle formed three fateful words.
"Zelda is your..."
Link held him closer, "My what? Uncle? Uncle! Hey, Uncle! Don't do this!" He shook the man by his shoulders, willing him to somehow not be dead. "Uncle!"
But it was to no avail, as the man lay limp in his arms.
"Is she... Are we secretly engaged? Is that what you wanted to tell me? Am I going to marry into royalty? Will I be rich? Is she my waifu? Uncle, I need answers! Uncle!"
000
"Um, Link?"
"Yes, princess?" he answered irritatedly.
"I really think you should use that lantern."
"I don't need it."
"But we're in the sewers! The pitch black sewers."
"I can find my way perfectly fine without it."
"Uh, not to be rude, but I'm pretty sure we've passed that wall at least twice by now."
He froze in is tracks.
"..."
"..."
"Fine! I'll use the lantern."
Zelda sighed tiredly.
000
He'd been looking for that old man, elder Shambala or whatever he was called, for almost fifteen minutes and still hadn't found his hiding place. How hard could it be to find one measly old man?
Very hard, apparently.
Link froze in his tracks, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He had a bad feeling. Someone – or something – was following him. Not daring to turn around, he wondered what it was. It couldn't be the creatures that roamed this place. While they weren't quite welcoming, they weren't exactly sneaky either.
Taking a deep breath he turned around, and came face to face with a statue he could have sworn had been standing several feet away when he had passed by it.
It was moving. Towards him.
"Nope." he turned around and ran. No way was he facing those creepy ass statues.
000
"I wonder what's in this room."
The moment he stepped fully into the room, the door closed behind him with a heavy clunk. Successfully startling him into attention. Link whirled around only to see that the door had neither a handle nor a keyhole. He tried pushing it open.
It didn't budge.
A strange noise made him turn back to the room, filled with legions of different monsters.
"This... is a trap, isn't it?" His question way promptly answered by an enemy lunging for him. Link gritted his teeth.
"Damn my curiosity!"
000
The first thing that caught his eye when he entered the worn hallway was a big, gray tile poking out from the wall rather prominently. Giving in to his inner child, he slowly approached it until he was right in front of it and poked it with a finger.
"Link! It is I. Sahasrahla, the elder. When you touch these tiles, I will be able to speak to you telepathically-"
Link recoiled, snapping his hand back as he sucked in shallow breaths.
"What should I do? The voices in my head are back!"
000
"Here, you can have my bug catching net until I get better."
Link took it carefully from the boy's weakened grasp and nodded gratefully, leaving the house. Once outside, he looked back at the object.
"Why do I keep getting freebies from people I've just met?"
000
At some kind of invisible border, a single sign stood.
[Welcome to Death Mountain]
Link raised an eyebrow, "Wow, how original. What's next? The Forest of Death? Mount Doom?"
He scoffed and started to make his way up the mountain.
000
"So that weird blue square on the ground takes you to completely different world?" he looked around with an impossible grin stretching his lips, "Sweet!"
Suddenly, he was made aware of the missing weight of his sword and shield. Had they disappeared in the transition? He looked down-
Why the hell was his body pink? And... fluffy?
Link lifted his hands to his head, feeling around for anything amiss. And finding it.
His normal ears were gone, replaced by a pair of fluffy, long ears on the top of his head.
Bunny ears.
"Oh, HELL NO."
000
Fighting many opponents at once proved to be a little too much of a challenge for Link as they slowly backed him into a corner, until he lost his footing and suddenly found himself falling.
He cried out in fear, expecting to hit the floor any moment. He fell through a cauldron instead. His scream slowly died out as he fell through another cauldron. By the time he fell through the third, it was already getting old.
Which was why he was totally unprepared when he finally hit the floor. Link cried out, this time in pain, but recovered quickly and stood up.
Taking in his surroundings, he noticed he was in a faery fountain.
"Huh. What a complicated way to enter. Faeries sure like messing with me."
000
"So these shoes can make me sprint faster? That's interesting. Let's try them out, then." He said to himself with an exited grin.
Bending his knees, he tilted forward the slightest bit before breaking into a run – and promptly smacking face first into tree.
"OW! Ow! Ow ow ow ow. Ouch! Shit, that hurt!"
He looked back at the shoes.
Note to self: when sprinting towards objects, land shield first.
000
He entered the cave and found himself mesmerized. "This is the Waterfall of Wishing? Impressive." He walked down the torch lit aisle until he'd almost reached the pond at the end. Then, in an embarrassingly ungraceful display utterly unworthy of the title of Hero of Hyrule, he tripped over a loose tile of the old stone floor.
As he fell, time seemed to slow to a crawl while he watched his precious boomerang slip out of his pack and fall into the pond.
He landed on his chin and spared a minute or two to mourn both his boomerang and his dignity.
"Hello there. Did you drop this?" a melodious voice echoed throughout the cave and prompted him too look up and meet the gaze of the faery. He hastily stood up, lest his dignity be shattered further, and stuttered out a response.
"Uh, uhm, well, n-" he was about to say, but the glint of disapproval in her eyes convinced other wise, "Eh, yes, I did."
She smiled graciously at him, "I like an honest person. I will give you something better in return." At that same moment, a newer, better looking boomerang floated out of the water and found its way into his hands.
He looked at it for a moment, "Uhm, thanks." But when he looked up, she was already gone.
From now on, I think I'll maintain a policy of honesty, he thought as he dazedly left the cave.
000
In the blink of an eye the floating, unconscious princess disappeared, after which Aghanim wasted no time to jeer and taunt him with his ultimate loss, disappearing himself shortly after.
Through all of his desperation and hopelessness, Link managed to raise an eyebrow in disbelief as he slowly approached the closed curtains at the other side of the room.
Pulling them apart, he took in the sight of the most-definitely-not-gone evil wizard, hunched over and seemingly mulling over something. He opened his mouth to make some kind of witty remark, but nothing came to him so he went with the next best thing.
"Uh..."
Startled out of his musings, Aghanim stared at him in complete and utter bewilderment. "Y-you... you found me...?" He coughed into his hand and seemingly pulled himself together, "I mean, good job finding me, Hero. But don't think you've won. Not even the Hero can defeat the clan of evil when it possesses the Golden Power!"
Link stared at him for a moment, then promptly introduced his hand to his face.
000
"So this squiggly sign means power... and this other one with the weird hook... let me look it up..."
He was currently occupied with translating a passage in ancient Hylian, carved on an equally ancient slab of stone, into something remotely understandable.
Using a book.
Needless to say, the process was a long and hard one.
"So the entire sentence means 'Raise up the Master Sword to obtain the power of...'" he blinked, "'...manliness'?"
He opened the book once again realized that he'd confused the weird hook with the strange hook. "Oh, so it's the 'Power of Ether'... somehow that makes even less sense... what does ether even mean?"
He guessed all those times he had skipped school had chosen now to bite him in the ass.
000
"Please, take me out of here." pleaded the maiden he had just rescued, though something was weird. Why wasn't she in a crystal like all the other maidens? He pushed that thought aside. Now wasn't the time.
"I'll get you out. But first I need to check something." She urged him to elaborate with a puzzled look, "I reached the Boss room earlier, but it was empty. I want to know why."
The girl looked like she was about to protest, but was stopped when he swatted the last skeleton away and opened the door at the end of the hallway, pulling her alongside to the center of the room, where a bright light shone upon the floor.
"It's too bright!"
Link watched in horrified amazement as the maiden turned into Blind, the thief. When the transformation was complete, he pointed at the man and yelled the first thing that came into his mind. "You're a freaking cross-dresser!"
Readying his sword, he couldn't help but thank the Triforce for his curiosity.
000
Slash. Duck. Parry. Stab. Slash.
In a blur of motion, Link dispatched all the enemies in his vicinity with the force of a hurricane, only slightly bothered by the chilling cold of the dungeon. With one last lung, he aimed for the penguin's head – only to slip on the ice floor and land harshly on his butt, giving his opponent more than enough of an opening to attack.
It's decided. I officially hate this place.
000
Finishing off the last of the enemies in the room, Link lifted the skull lying right in the middle of the floor, revealing a button, which he excitedly stepped on.
"I'm finally making some progress." he said giddily into the room as the door before him opened. Grin in place, he walked towards it, only for it to close back down. "What? So I have to keep it pressed?"
He looked around for a block or a statue he could use, but the chamber was completely empty except for himself and the button. Was this another puzzle? But there was no solution! Unless...
With some trepidation, he looked up. There was a hole in the ceiling, right above the button. There was probably something at the edge that he could push down.
Although... this place was a maze. Getting up there would probably take far longer than it by any means should. He looked back at the door, the poor lighting making it seem as if it were grinning at him mockingly. He ran a hand through his hair.
"You've got to be kidding me."
000
Link held up the Cane of Somaria to look at it properly. It was red and quite simple in its form. And he had absolutely no idea what it did. Mindful of his magic capacity, he decided to give it a test run, waving it in the air.
Out of nowhere, a strange, reddish block appeared right in front of him. He stared.
"It makes blocks?" he asked in thinly veiled incredulity, "Who creates a powerful magical item that makes blocks out of thin air? How is this even useful-" Link cut himself off when the recent memory of a button in the middle of an empty room crossed his mind.
His eyes widened as he looked at the cane, then at the block, then back at the cane. He scowled. "What absolute idiot thought up the order of these dungeons?!"
000
Link took one look at the Boss monster and turned around.
"Nope."
But the door had already closed behind him. He glared at it, "Do you have something against me?" there was no answer from the seemingly evil door, "Well, screw you too!"
Reluctantly, he turned around to face the... thing. It was a gigantic eyeball surrounded by other smaller yet still quite big eyeballs, all of it lying in a pool of green goo. He shuddered.
Suddenly, the smaller eyeballs attacked and he had no choice but to counter in a desperate attempt to keep them at bay. "Get the hell away from me, you freak!... freaks? Whatever, just don't come any closer!"
000
Link stood off to side, in a corner oddly devoid of roaming monsters. He was searching through his pack for his bombs, but took out the mirror instead.
"Wait. No. I didn't-" The world around him warped and became totally different yet strangely the same. "Jeez, stupid piece of junk. I didn't want to go to the Light... World..." he trailed off as his gaze found something rather eye catching.
Where nothing had once stood, now was a piece of heart.
He looked at the mirror, then back at the piece. "Well, that's... convenient."
000
Having memorized the invisible path over the abyss that had been temporarily in sight, he carefully made his way to the other side of the bridge.
Until a monster suddenly appeared right beside him.
"Whoa!" Link exclaimed as he unsheathed his sword and swung it, hitting it directly and killing it off in one blow. His relief, however, was short-lived as the recoil from the hit had pushed him backwards and over the edge of the invisible pathway.
As he fell down the abyss, his screams were less out of fear and more out of frustration.
000
[Your Shield has been upgraded. It can now deflect laser beams.]
"Well, that's nice. At least now those freaky eyes on the walls can't go all 'Imma firin' mah laser!' on me anymore. Definitely a perk."
000
"Well, that wasn't so hard." he said as he stood a ways away from the defeated Aghanim. "Now I've just got to find..." he trailed off as a shadowy, somewhat translucent figure emerged from the wizard's body, "...Ganondorf...?"
His eyes widened as the figure then turned into a large bat, it's high-pitched screeches snapping him out of his stunned daze.
He lunged with his sword, but the bat was too nimble, "Wait! Come on, stop moving so much. Let. Me. Stab you! No! Wait, don't leave! Dammit."
000
Link was sweating bullets as he swerved left and right trying to avoid all the increasingly hostile guards in his path.
"Out of my way, you idiots! I've got a huge bomb trailing behind me and I really don't feel like becoming a suicide bomber!"
000
"Don't you dare make fun of me! I defeated Ganondorf!"
Zelda giggled, "Yeah." she admitted, "After three tries."
Link's cheeks in turn became an interesting shade of pink, "Well, how was I supposed to know that I needed some silver arrows and a sword upgrade?! You tell me."
She snorted, "Please. Everyone knows that you have to get a last minute power-up before facing the final Boss."
He stared at her as if she was the most mystifying thing he'd ever come into contact with.
"...neither you, nor Ganondorf, nor the Faeries, nor the Triforce, nor anything in this entire world make any sense whatsoever."
000
"Hey, Zelda. Have you seen my sword?"
She tilted her head in confusion, "It should be back at the stone."
He frowned, "At the sto- What? Why would it be there?"
"Well, the world was saved so it isn't needed anymore."
"So, I don't have a sword anymore?"
"No. Unless you want to collect Courage, Wisdom and Power once again. You could do that, technically-"
"Nope."
"Link?"
"Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope."
She raised a slender eyebrow, "Link-"
"Nope. I'm gonna go live a peaceful life now. See you later, Zelda!" With that, he turned and left the room.
Somewhere else, in some remote astral plane of existence, Fate snorted.
Peaceful life? Yeah, right.