The Hylian Domain Legacy Interlude: Hyrule
Somebody snuck behind a rocky platform. "I'm going to kill him…" the shadowy figure muttered to itself, ready to jump up to the platform.
"Thank you for this great honor," Bcdefg123 said on top of the platform, smiling and showing off a medal to a large group of Gorons. Suddenly the shadowy figure leapt up onto the stage.
"Wha-?" Bcdefg123 was caught off guard.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"
The Gorons were surprised. "Not only Bcdefg123, but Princess Zelda visits Death… er, Super Happy Non-Lethal Mountain on the day of the 10th Festival of the Hylian Domain!"
Zelda replied with clear confusion. "…Super Happy Non-Lethal Mountain? What the…"
"Well, this guy here asked us to change it," the head of the Goron tribe said. The Gorons were mountain-dwellers, humanoid with a shell made of rocks on their backs that enabled them to imitate boulders when curled up. And they were yellow.
"Well, 'Death Mountain' wasn't exactly good for tourism, so I pitched the idea…"
"And we like it! This guy, a good thinker, eh?"
"Never mind that…" Zelda said. "You're supposed to be in the parade down THERE!" She pointed towards the distance, where Hyrule Castle Town could be seen. "The parade, remember?" Indeed, crowds of people could also be seen.
"…Oh… I, uh, did forget…"
"Well, then come on! We can still make it before it starts."
"Bye, brudda!" one of the Gorons said as Bcdefg123 and Zelda ran down the mountain.
-----Hyrule Castle Town-----
"Honestly, you're not one to forget about a parade," Princess Zelda said on their horse-pulled float. Since the portal to the Project Legion headquarters was destroyed, ten Hylian years had passed. Bcdefg123 didn't know that while he had only aged a year, everybody in Hyrule had aged ten. The question was only brought up after Bcdefg123 noticed that Zelda (a.k.a. Hylian Girl) was visibly older then she had been in the Hylian Domain painting that hung in the castle, while he had looked more or less the same. "Seriously, what were you really doing up there?"
"I was mapping that place out. Y'know I'm trying to make a map of Hyrule."
"You sure it wasn't the award that got you?" Zelda asked. They wheeled through the streets of people and waved to the parade-goers.
"Well, that was part of it, but now I think the map's complete. I was saving Death Mountain… sorry, Super Happy Non-Lethal Mountain until last, because of all that climbing. But I really think I have a good map of the continent now. The king'll love this," he added.
As the float rolled on, Bcdefg123 looked out at all the people. He started to raise his hand to wave, but then with a realization that sent a thrilling jolt down his body, he jumped off the float and ran into the crowd.
"What are you-?" Zelda yelled at him.
"I saw Altik!" Bcdefg123 answered. He thought he saw a glimpse of him retreating away from the parade route. Not sparing a thought for anyone else, he headed off towards where he might have gone, off onto a side street. The road he ran down reached an end, and he could go either left or right. He looked down either side, but saw no sign of Altik.
"Dangit…" Bcdefg123 said. "Why?"
-----Hyrule Castle-----
"Ah, this is wonderful, just wonderful!" the King of Hyrule said about the map. "Yes, I'll have this put in the Royal Library right away."
"Thank you sir," Bcdefg123 politely bowed.
"Now, there's been a strange rumor that I've heard lately…" the king started, "The rumor goes that somebody has been looting shops in the Kakariko region. The strange part to this is that eyewitnesses say that the thief looks like Altik."
"I just swore I saw somebody that looked like Altik during the parade! I tried to chase after him, but I lost him…"
"Yet something's amiss," Zelda said. "If Altik really was here, then where's everybody else? Why did he run away? And furthermore, why was he stealing?"
"That's what we need to find out," the King said. "Find and detain the suspect Altik. You are dismissed, Bcdefg123." Bcdefg123 and Zelda started to leave.
"You need to stay," the King said to Zelda.
"He's my friend too," Zelda said.
"Zelda… you are a princess, yet it seems like you are never in the castle, where you belong."
"Ten years in a different world changes people, I guess," she said. "It's not like I hate you, or this place, or anything, but I still don't see myself as a queen, or princess, or whatever I am now. Not yet anyway. And besides, this is important."
The King shifted in his throne and thought quietly. "Well... I suppose it's all right. But come back safely."
"You don't need to worry about us," Bcdefg123 said.
"…Perhaps I don't," he said, ending the conversation.
-----Kakariko Village-----
"So where do we begin?" Zelda asked as they walked into Kakariko Village. Nestled in canyon, one dirt road went through the village, with buildings of varying heights on either side. The first time Bcdefg123 visited the place, it vaguely brought to mind a wild west town.
"Let's ask around the markets, and see who's been robbed," Bcdefg123 said. "Dangit! Why would Altik steal anything?"
"I don't think it's Altik," Zelda said. "There isn't a portal left in this world."
"So we thought before we were brought here. And then those Project Legion folks had one. There could always be another, right?"
"Yeah… sure…" Zelda said. "Excuse me." They arrived at the first shop they saw, which seemed to be a bomb shop.
"Eh? The princess, here? We're terribly sorry, m'lady, but there's nothing here to buy right now," the store owner said.
"So you're saying you were robbed, right?" Bcdefg123 said.
"You knew that?"
"Well, uh, we guessed, but…"
"Terrible, just terrible, the kind of luck I've been having. First my warehouse gets blown up, and just when I manage to collect a decent stock, they're all STOLEN!" The store owner leaned over the counter. "Now I got to tell customers that I can't sell anything, because I don't HAVE anything. Tell me, how am I supposed to manage a bomb shop WITHOUT ANY BOMBS?" Bcdefg123 was pelted with spit from the force of the last few words.
"I don't know," Bcdefg123 said, wiping off his face. "Did you see who did it?"
"That's the weird part. It was Altik I swore I saw, but didn't he go back to that other world?"
"How were you robbed?" Zelda questioned.
"It was yesterday after I locked up the store. I happened to look back as I was leaving and saw Altik leaving with a big bag of my bombs. I couldn't catch him, and he escaped. He could be anywhere."
Why would he need bombs…? Bcdefg123 thought. "All right. I guess we're done here…"
"Tell us if you see anything else," Zelda said. "We might be awhile."
"Or not…" Bcdefg123 said, looking out the doorway. The proprietor and Zelda looked outside.
"Thief!" Altik broke into a full-on sprint outside.
"Altik! ALTIK!" Bcdefg123 shouted. At last, the store manager managed to catch Altik and bring him to a stop.
"Got you! Is this the guy you're talking about?"
"It's…" Bcdefg123 and Zelda finally got a good look at him. Perhaps from the back, the guy looked like Altik, but from the front that was not the case. "It's not Altik," he said dejectedly. "It isn't him."
"Thought so…" Zelda said.
"Hero or not, you're still a thief," the store owner said. "Out with it. Did you steal those bombs?"
"Yes," the fake Altik promptly confessed.
"Why?" Bcdefg123 asked him.
Suddenly Hyrule Castle quite literally blew up. They first saw it in the distance, a violent flash of fire, and then heard a cacophony of individual explosions that sounded almost like fireworks.
"No…" Zelda said weakly.
"C'mon!" Bcdefg123 yelled. "We have to go now. Make sure he doesn't escape."
"Got it," the store owner said. But as soon as he looked down at him again, the fake Altik deliberately bit his tongue, choked on his own blood, and died, rendering the shopkeeper a complete failure in only five seconds.
He thought it would be a good idea to go to the castle instead.
-----Hyrule Castle Town-----
"Man, it looks bad… there's no way anybody who was in the castle could have survived," Bcdefg123 said. Groups of people occupied the town square, chatting about what had just happened
"Anybody seen my father?" Zelda asked around.
"I'm sorry, m'lady, but there seem to be no survivors from what I've heard."
-----
"Well, that was a complete waste of time…" somebody leaning against the wall of a shop said, while looking at Zelda and Bcdefg123 as they ran by. "We missed the princess… and lost our puppet…"
The "somebody" looked like a man in his twenties, whose attire was best described as businesslike. However, he wasn't acting the part fully.
"Oh well…" the man said as he started to leave the town, "We'll have more soon enough."
-----
"Hey, princess," Bcdefg123 said. "If somebody wanted so badly to take down the castle, then they could have had the royal family as a target."
"What are you saying?" Zelda asked.
"I'm saying you should go into hiding for a while, or something. You need to protect yourself until somebody finds out who the target was.
"Actually, that'll be harder now," the shop owner said.
"I told you to stay with the criminal!"
"He killed himself. There was nothing I could do, so I followed you here."
"Crap, are you serious? Then we'll never find out what he intended to do!"
Zelda spoke again. "So… where do we go?" Bcdefg123 did a double take. Hylian Girl was never this submissive. "If I'm really the only person in the Royal Family left, then I need to be safe."
"I have a safe house up on the hillside," the store owner said. "It's pretty secluded, and nobody will find it unless they know exactly where it is. It's on the other side of the mountain from Kakariko."
"Alright… take us there," Bcdefg123 said. And when we've done that, come back to the city and find any guards that might have survived the explosion." And so they departed from the city, the smoldering wreckage in the horizon behind them.
To be continued…