Recently Link had found himself split into four, and so far it had not been going very well for him, or rather, them. All of them were an aspect of the hero but taken to an extreme that made each of them working separately impossible.
Green was the only to retain the tunic of his original form and was the closest in personality to the undivided hero as well. He possessed courage, but to such an extreme that he was often very reckless. The amount of times that the others had needed to save him from trouble was immeasurable.
Purple, simply called Vio, wore a dark violet tunic with blonde hair several shades darker than his complete form. He possessed an amazing ability to create strategies and he came up quite a few clever plans for each situation. Unfortunately many of these plans were physically impossible, overly complicated and they always relied on his teammates actually listening to what he had to say.
Blue was an aspect that was almost never seen in Link, rage. Possibly because he was so rarely able to show himself once they had become their own beings he had taken every opportunity to scream at, punch, slash and attack in any way he could imagine whatever was making him angry at the moment. This meant that if something distracted him during a battle, such as a smaller monster happening to land a hit, he would spend the next twenty minutes brutally attack the offending creature, even after it stopped twitching.
Now we come to Red. The only physical feature that set him apart was the fact that his tunic was much shorter than the others, more like a shirt than a tunic really. His existence was a pitiable one. He was the manifestation of all the fears that the hero had held. Unfortunately Link had feared quite a few things, most of them the monsters that he had slay in his quest. This along with the fact that he was physically weaker than the others made Red next to useless in combat situations.
After a long and very difficult quest the quartet of Links had finally managed to collect the required keys to enter Vaati's Palace. They were at the gate now celebrating their accomplishment.
"You know what I don't understand," said Vio in his soft voice, "Why did Vaati just leave his keys in random places? If he didn't want anyone to get her why didn't he destroy them?"
"Why does that even matter," Green spoke in a harsh voice, Vio had questioned the actions of everyone during the course of their quest and it had gotten old very fast.
"All that matters now is that we need to go in there and kill that bastard!" This shout had come from Blue who now raised his sword and tried to make charge for the gate, ready to remove the head of any monster he found. Fortunately for the monsters Green and Vio each grabbed one of his arms and held him back for the moment.
Allowing Green to wrestle his Blue counterpart to the ground Vio cleared his throat. "This is going to be dangerous, if we just rush in we're probably going to die." A muffled shout came from under Green's backside, which was now covering Blue's face. It sounded as though he didn't care at all about the risks.
"What we need to do is send someone in to investigate how bad it is in there. We need to send in someone who will just go in and look around, without-", he glared at Blue and Green, "-getting into trouble. Obviously both of you are not fit to do this."
"Well we're sending you in there," said Green shooting an angry look at his Violet counterpart, "You'd take five steps in then sit down and start coming up with stupid plans until you get killed."
Green didn't hear the response this had gotten as he let out an ear-piercing scream, Blue had just bitten him to make his get off. Blue stood dusted himself off and then a grin split his face and with a surprising amount of calm he held up a hand to silence his compatriots.
"Vio, Green, I have an idea." He pulled his two color copies into a huddle. Red, who had not bothered to join in the conversation because of the sheer amount of terror he was feeling was continuing to sit on the ground. His knees were pulled up to his chin and his red hat covered his face. He didn't hear a word that the others were now saying.
After a few minutes the other three broke apart and come over to their red counterpart. "Hey Red, we talked about it and we decided that you're the best one to go into the Palace first. All you need to do is get in and get out again and no one gets hurt. Just go in there," he pointed up the hill that they could see leading to the Wind Mage's Fortress, "then come back out and tell us how many monsters are in there. Can you do that?"
Red muttered something unintelligible in response and got to his feet, his entire body trembling as he did so. This wasn't the first time he'd been sent in ahead of them to see how dangerous it would be. He walked over to Vio, who handed him the keys, and then he trudged to the gate. One by one he slipped the keys into each lock and turned them.
The gate swung open and after he walked through it shut with a loud crash. Red took his time heading inside. He looked up at the sky and couldn't help thinking how beautiful it was, especially when he was just outside the dwelling place of a demonic Wind Mage. He was able to talk with the others because of the small fairy they all kept with them, each fairy matched the color of the Link that held it.
He now found himself at the bottom of the hill and felt a chill run down his spine, which always meant that a monster was close by. He saw several holes in the side of the hill and realized what he would be facing if he went in any further.
He held the bottle containing his fairy up to his mouth and spoke into it, in his terror he was shouting. "I'm at the bottom of the hill, and I think that it's full of Moldorms. What should I do?"
Unfortunately Moldorms are attracted to loud noises, and before a response could come to him one of the long snake-like creatures has burst out of the hill.
Just as he started to run back to the gate the creature began to catch up to him. Blue's voice came from the fairy. "JUST KILL IT YOU WUSS!"
Red drew his sword and held it up, using both hands. He was terrible at swordplay, the only attack he could use with any degree of success was the sword beam. He thought that it should be enough for this however, one zap and the worm would be vaporized.
Green's shout of "Red nooooooo!" came a second too late. The beam of energy had already shot from the blade of the sword and it hit the Moldorm as it was in midair.
Hundreds of Moldorms suddenly erupted from the hill. Blue's voice came through the bottle now.
"You dumbass! Everyone knows using your sword beam of a Moldorm just pisses them off!"
"Thanks for telling me that before I shot a sword beam at it!" Was what Red wanted to scream back, but he was busy running for his life again.
He found himself backed up against the gate with the Moldorms coming towards him.
Red then saw countless visions of himself flashing in his mind. He was in this exact same situation at every other temple they had gone to. They always sent him because he was a coward and when he died he would just reappear back with them and he would then have to go back in, this time with the other three.
It was going to happen again, just like every other time.
'Well fuck that!' he thought. He was going to survive and win by himself.
Red made a run for the Palace, in his heart he knew that he could do this.
Then he tripped and the Moldorms ate his face.
The last thing Red did before he died was look down at his short red tunic, his red shirt.