Zelda knew she was going to have a good time.
The young woman was curled on the couch, a large bag of potato chips to her left, her loyal cat friend Blue to her right and a loading screen of the Legend of Link on the television. Tonight was the night she partied (alone), celebrating her eighteenth birthday (alone) and playing her favourite (and only) video game of all time (alone). Granted, most of the things she was doing on this special night were alone, but it probably helped that she was a bit of an introvert anyway.
"I'm not alone," said Zelda, addressing the sleeping Blue as the game loaded agonisingly slowly. "I've got you here." Which, perhaps, made the whole scene look even lonelier.
Zelda sat up straight as the title screen of the Legend of Link started up. She was beginning to feel excited, and that strange tingling feeling on the back of her left hand had returned. She glanced at the douforce tattoo printed there on a sudden and unexplainable whim earlier that day, two triangles balancing on each other. It was a sign that appeared in the Legend of Link all the time, but unfortunately no one understood it because it was only a rare few that knew of the game. It wasn't a very famous videogame, which was quite sad. It hadn't even appeared on IGN and had no page for itself on Wikipedia, which was perhaps why there had only ever been one Legend of Link game.
The tingling grew stronger as Zelda entered the load game screen. She supposed it must be a post-tattooing reaction or something, nothing to worry about, but killing bad guys would be pretty difficult with this annoying sensation beginning to travel down her body.
Zelda jerked involuntarily as the intensifying feeling rushed through her limbs, all the way from the point of her toes to the top of her head. She tried to scream, but now it was like a cold, wet hand had slapped across her mouth, down her throat, inside her stomach, nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
There was a harsh shattering noise.
And then (for fear of sounding clichéd)…everything went black.