Disclaimer: I do not own these characters – I just gave them weird personalities.

The Banging Noise

CRACK! The large ornate doors that led to the grand, high tower of a dark and disturbed castle swung violently open to let a stately, yet sinister man inside. His heavy steel-toed boots did not seem to pose any problem to his hovering a good two or three feet above the ground. He floated across the vast room to a huge pipe organ directly across from the doors that had just nearly been knocked off their hinges, and he gracefully sat down on the hand-carved wooden stool before him. Then this man, the dark king of Hyrule, Ganondorf, dramatically raised his hands above his head, brought them down on the keyboard --

-- and began to play the shop song.

The music carried a few floors down to a set of Stalfo guards, who immediately captured the essence of being startled, looked at each other, shrugged, and then proceeded to dance. The elemental emblems of the sages above the dark doors in the lower part of the castle began to swirl in a spray of light, causing the force-field around the center stairs to take on the pretty hues of a rainbow. Even the Beamos began to put on a laser light show – much to the dismay of each other when one got a little too excited.

Back to Ganondorf, the evil king was bouncing up and down with the song and smiling like a tot.

"Oh, this is fantastic!" he exclaimed rapturously. "I have succeeded in taking over all of Hyrule, captured the elusive Princess Zelda, and the so-called Hero of Time is bringing the last of the Triforce right into my grasp!"

He inhaled sharply, placed the back of his hand against his forehead – as if he were going to faint – and said in a wrenched voice, "It's too beautiful!"

Suddenly, he stopped and cocked an ear. He had just realized that, during his brief monologue, there had been a tapping noise. Now it had been replaced by hysterical laughter and banging.

Ganondorf, needless to say, was knocked from his happy place.

Standing abruptly with a flushed face, he yelled in an indignant voice, "Who's there?! Show yourself!!"

He charged a small orb of energy in his hand. "Your death will be swifter if I don't have to come find you!"

After more laughter, wheezing, and the occasional snort, the answer came,

"Up – mwahah – here! Snorthahaha!"

Ganondorf angrily raised his eyes above the organ at which he was previously sitting. What he saw made him burn with such rage that even the King Dodongo would break into a sweat.

The princess Zelda of Hyrule, prophetess and keeper of the Triforce of Wisdom, was inside her large pink rupee on her hands and knees, banging her fist against the lower side of the gem and laughing so hard that she was having trouble breathing.

Now Ganondorf was livid.

"Grrrr - stop that laughing!!"

She didn't. It didn't help his mood.

"I mean it!" he continued. "Stop or -"

She paused briefly to wipe away a tear that had leaked out from all the laughter, while still lightly chuckling.

"Heheh, or what? Hahaha..."

Ganondorf drew back the arm with the charged orb and let the power fly. Zelda flung herself against the back wall in shock just as the the blast struck the rupee head-on. The power from that attack should have finished her, but Ganondorf had forgotten one thing...

He had made the rupee indestructible - it didn't even shudder.

Zelda looked at the clearing smoke, the rupee walls, and finally Ganondorf. She burst into a greater fit of laughter than before.

Ganondorf was now turning a lovely shade of purple, which only increased the princess's laughter. So much blood has rushed to Ganondorf's head that you could fry a Goron on his forehead gem.

"Raaaaah! Stop now or you'll be sorry!!"

Zelda coughed sarcastically and spoke between breaths.

"Oh - I apologize most - adamantly, oh great - king of evil! HAHAHA!"

She leaned against the wall, clutching her sides from laughing pains, and wiped away tears of mirth.

"Wow, the shop song was one thing, but the happy dancing and the goofy grin? Sooo evil. Haha!"

Ganondorf looked down his nose as best he could at her since she was, in fact, at least fifty feet above him.

"Well, I can't play my theme song all the time - the doctor says it's bad for my blood pressure."

"Explains the purple face."

"No one asked you!!"

Zelda brushed a lock of hair off her shoulder. "So what? I think I have some right to speak if I'm going to be trapped here a while."

Ganondorf grinned slyly. "Trapped is a good word, my dear..."