Author's Note: Sadly, playing the Song of Storms in-game does not produce this rather hilarious effect. I still do it whenever I play through Ocarina of Time and end up sneaking through that fortress, though.
Disclaimer: If I had my way, Ghiralink. That is all.
/OO/
Sand. Everywhere he looked, there was sand. Along with this sand, there was intense, mind-numbing heat. This heat was certainly nothing rivaling that of the Fire Temple, but it was still strong enough to give one a migraine if endured for too long, and definitely strong enough to make a person uncomfortably sweaty. The air was dry, and carried particles of sand that found its way into the hair, clothes, and sometimes, unfortunately, eyes and mouth of a blonde Hylian by the name of Link riding atop a brown and white mare. Someone of his race was an unusual sight in the Gerudo Valley, as the only living beings populating the area were an all female tribe of powerful warriors called the Gerudo, and various plants and animals accustomed to living in the valley. It was a shame that they were so hostile to outsiders. It was also a shame that Link didn't know they were so hostile to outsiders. "Almost there, girl," he muttered to his mare, Epona. He was eager to get to the next temple, and he'd promised the man at the bridge that he would find out what became of his carpenters. The Hylian figured he may as well kill two Cuccos with one stone.
Time seemed to fly by as Link rode across the land on his faithful horse. Before too long, he saw what looked like a large village that gradually sloped upwards come into view just on his right, and the path he was on began to narrow and curve. At the end of the path, a red headed woman in long puffy pants and a revealing top loosely gripped a scimitar in her right hand as she leaned with her back against a large wooden gate, a bored expression on her face. As Link approached on Epona's back, the mare's hoof beats caught the woman's attention, and she immediately pushed off of the wall, looking towards the Hylian. Her previous boredom had changed to suspicion, a look that surprised Link, but didn't deter him in the slightest. He knew that she had to be a member of the Gerudo tribe, and he knew that she had to have important information he needed, so he made no move to stop his horse. The smile on his face wavered for only a moment in slight doubt before it grew on his face, and he pushed Epona to gallop faster. "Hey!" he called out. "I'm looking for some carpenters around here! Have you seen any sign of them?"
The Gerudo woman's eyes narrowed even further as Link approached, a fierce light burning in them, and she pulled a whistle from a pouch attached to the belt around her waist before bringing it to her lips and blowing a sharp tune. "Halt!" she yelled out in a firm and commanding voice, lowering her body into an attacking position and lifting her weapon, pointing the tip of its blade directly at the Hylian's head.
Link pulled back on the reins in confusion at the sight of the raised weapon, not wanting to put Epona in any danger, and slowed her to a stop with only a slight struggle on her end. "Is something wrong?" he asked, concern evident in his voice. "I'm just-" Suddenly, he heard angry female yells coming from his right, cutting him off as he turned his head to see what the cause of the shouting was. A group of Gerudo women were running at him from the village, all with red hair, tanned skin, weapons drawn, and snarls on their faces. Oh, they did not look happy at all to see him.
Link's eyes widened in shock, and he quickly jerked the reins to his left to turn Epona around in an attempt at escape, but the women were upon them before they could get more than a few feet away. His arm reached to his back to draw his sword, mentally preparing himself for his first fight against other people, but one of the Gerudo pulled him off of Epona's back just before his fingers closed around the hilt. "Hey!" he yelled, struggling to break free of their iron grip. "Let me go! What are you doing?!"
Link thrashed on his horse's back, trying his hardest to stay in the saddle. He knew that if the Gerudo women managed to pull him off of his mare, it would be all over for him. The Hylian tried to keep his feet in the stirrups and his free hand on the reins, but in only seconds there were hands that grabbed at his legs and forced them to move out of the stirrups. More followed, tightly squeezing what must have been a pressure point in his arm that made Link shout in pain and involuntarily loosen his grip on the leather reins he'd held. Before he could make to grab them again, he felt himself dragged off of the saddle, and knew that if he couldn't get away, he at least wanted Epona to go free. "Epona!" he shouted to the mare. "Run girl!"
His poor, loyal horse became panicked by the unfamiliar hands of the Gerudo warriors grabbing at her, whinnying and tossing her head back as she tried to fight their hold. With how many of them there were coming after her, grabbing onto her reins even as her hooves moved her backwards on the sand, they were able to overpower her and pull her back towards them. She was overwhelmed and outnumbered, and let out loud cries of distress as she was dragged away from the rider who'd saved her from Ingo's rule back at the ranch she'd been born on.
"Get back here!" Link yelled, still trying with all his might to break free of the female warriors' grip on him. "Bring her back! Epona!" He watched in frustration, unable to get away from the Gerudo, as his mare was pulled away from him by women that he didn't even know to whatever fate they had in store for her. Worry for her safety grew in his heart, gnawing at him like a tick on a dog's skin. Who knew what was going to happen to her now that the Gerudo had taken her prisoner? Would they hurt her? Would they feed her? Would they treat her kindly, or were they going to yell at her and keep her locked up in a stable for the rest of her life? What if... What if they ate her?
A sharp tug on his arms from behind demanded Link's attention then, and he looked over his shoulder at the women who'd captured him with a glare. He wasn't concerned for his own safety, even now that he was surrounded by multiple armed warriors. He only cared about getting back to his horse and making sure she was okay. After all, Epona couldn't really defend herself, so he needed to be there to do it for her.
All of the Gerudo women looking at Link glared back with twice as much ferocity in their expressions before starting to drag him away as well in the opposite direction of where Epona had been taken. He tried moving his head to see around them, even going so far as standing on tiptoe, but being pulled backwards made that kind of impossible for him to do for more than a fraction of a second. Link made one last effort to escape, throwing his body forward with every bit of strength he had in him, and felt something hard strike the side of his head. Link's eyes widened for a second as his head jerked to one side, then fell closed as his mind temporarily went black.
/OO/
The feeling of hitting a cold stone floor jolted Link out of his temporary unconsciousness, and his eyes snapped open the moment he was aware once more of the world around him. He could hear someone from above, oddly enough, yelling at him, but couldn't quite make out the words they were saying. By the time he pushed himself up into a crouched position, the voice he'd been hearing had vanished, leaving him alone in the stone room he was in. Link glanced at the walls around him, seeing no door of any kind for him to escape from. 'Well... This isn't good,' he thought. He'd never encountered a room before that didn't contain some kind of door. 'Does this mean there's no way out? No, that can't be right... If there was no way out, how could I have gotten in?'
The hero looked down in thought, trying to come up with some kind of solution to his problem. Having just woken up from being knocked out made thinking a very slow process, however. For a minute, he just sat there, only looking at the walls and floor of the room. Then, something about the darkness of his shadow caught his attention, and he stared at it for a few moments before taking in a sharp breath. 'You can't have shadows without light,' he thought, a smile forming on his face. 'And where there's light...' Link lifted his head to the ceiling of the room he was in, seeing a square opening with a wooden overhang high above him. 'There's a way out!'
Now that the way out was known, Link had to deal with another problem: how could he get to the exit he'd found? He started to glance around the room once more, but stopped when he became aware of the familiar weight of his sword and shield on his back. 'I still have my weapons?' he thought, a surprised expression on his face as he glanced over his left shoulder and saw the hilt of his sword. 'Why would they leave me fully armed?' Link thought before he turned his gaze back to the opening near the ceiling, frowning up at it as he came to a realization. 'They probably didn't think I'd be able to get out of here, given how high the only exit is. Well, I'll show them!'
The hero reached for one of the endless pouches at his waist, opening it up with a gloved hand. Link reached inside the now open pouch, rummaging around for a few seconds before pulling out his saving grace. The item he'd obtained after defeating his own dark side at the water temple, which had carried him over quite a few gaps he could never dream of crossing on his own, would be getting him out of the room he was trapped in now. That item was the longshot.
Link held out the longshot towards the opening he'd seen, carefully aiming it at the wooden overhang just above it. Eyes narrowing in focus, he triggered the longshot's release mechanism, watching as the metal hook at the end sailed towards the overhang and pierced it, jarring him slightly. Barely a second later, he was pulled towards the overhang by the longshot he held, and felt a brief rush as he sailed through the air. The moment he reached the ceiling, Link dropped down onto the platform below, grinning as he landed in a crouched position.
Pocketing the item, Link looked down at the land below him, able to see multiple Gerudo guards moving about on the sand. The grin he had fell, and his face took on a more serious look as he focused on their movements. Link wanted to study them for a bit to make sure that he had any possible patterns they might have memorized before he-
"Link!" A bright blue ball of light suddenly flew in front of Link's face, startling him into taking a step back and nearly falling down into the room he'd just escaped. "It's about time you got out of there! We don't have all day to spend here, you know! There's a kingdom that needs saving!"
Link scowled at the ball of light, taking a step forward and trying to snatch it out of the air. "And where were you when I was getting kidnapped and Epona got taken away, Navi?!" he asked. "You could try being helpful for a change, you know!"
"I'm just a fairy!" the ball of light, Navi, said as she dodged Link's attempt to grab her by flying back an inch. "What did you want me to do, fight off all those scary women by rapidly blinking at them?! I've tried that before! It doesn't work!"
"It'd certainly be a nice change of pace if it did," Link muttered under his breath, taking a few steps closer to the edge he'd been standing on before Navi had shown up out of nowhere. "Anyway, I'm almost done getting the Gerudos' movements memorized. I want to make sure I don't accidentally run into one and get captured again while getting through here, so I need to concentrate on this."
"Well, don't let me stop you," Navi responded, lazily flying around Link's head a few times. "I'll just be here. Waiting on you. Slowly growing older, a victim to the inescapable force of time-"
"Is that your idea of not stopping me?" Link asked, a muscle in his forehead twitching in irritation as his eyes attempted to scan the sand below. "Because you're kind of being a distraction right now. A noisy one, at that. That's... sort of stopping me."
"You're such a rude eight year old!" Navi yelled, flying directly in front of Link's face again and causing him to go cross-eyed as he tried to look at her. "Even if you are technically an adult right now! When we get back home, I'm telling the Great Deku Tree that you were mean to me!"
Link stared in silent disbelief at the fairy for a few moments, not sure if she realized what she had just said. "Navi..." he said slowly, hoping that she would remember what had happened to the Great Deku Tree back home on her own. Even if she sometimes annoyed him... He didn't want to be the one to verbally remind her of the old tree's death.
"What?" Navi asked, the blue glow around her brightening for a second in indignation before her light darkened, and her wings slowed their pace just enough so that she hovered a few inches lower. "Oh... oh, that's right..." she said, her voice wavering as she spoke. "I can't tell the Great Deku Tree that. I can't tell him anything anymore. H-he's gone now."
"Navi," Link repeated, this time in a softer, sympathetic tone of voice. Before he could say anything else, his fairy partner zoomed past him, and he turned to watch her go. He could swear that something like a drop of water fell to the ground below her as she flew away from the Gerudo village, quickly shrinking out of sight until she was no more than a glimmering dot on the horizon. "...Poor fairy."
Link sighed quietly, then examined the desert village below him once more. With Navi gone and no longer distracting him, it only took a minute to figure out where he was going to go. 'That building on the left looks like a good bet,' he thought to himself. 'There's no door, and it's the closest thing to me. If I can just get to it from here without being spotted by a guard, I should be able to enter with no trouble.'
Nodding to himself, Link lifted one foot off the board as he prepared himself to jump down, then paused as a thought struck him. He'd just been kidnapped by Gerudo women, taken from his trusted horse, and left in a cell presumably to starve to death with only a fairy for company, all for simply approaching the guard he'd seen and asking a question. Now that he was free... Was it wrong to want revenge?
For a moment, Link felt a vague sense of shame come over him. He had never really been the petty type of person to seek revenge before. Back when Mido would bully him in the forest, he'd been too passive to stand up for himself. It just didn't seem worth it.
Before he could dismiss the thought, he remembered Epona. The cries she had let out and the way she had struggled with all of her strength, only to be led away to an unknown fate flashed before his mind, causing him to scowl in rage at the Gerudo women below. He could overlook being attacked by another person and not hold a grudge towards them, but to involve a sweet animal like Epona? That was something he wasn't going to just let go.
With Link's mind made up, he set to thinking up a way to take revenge on the Gerudo. 'What can I do from right here to get back at all of them at once without risking being seen and recaptured?' he thought before running through a mental list of all the items that he had in his arsenal. For a moment, he had nothing. Then, Link remembered the ocarina he'd been using, as well as one particular song that he had learned a while back, and grinned widely at the thought of what he could do with it. "Oh, this is going to be fun," he said.
Link opened one of the endless pouches he kept attached to a belt on his waist and reached one hand inside to feel around for the smooth surface of the ocarina the princess had left behind for him to use. It was one of the most valuable items he had, allowing him to travel through time, summon sunlight to temporarily stun Redeads, and now, he was going to use it for the ultimate prank on the Gerudo.
Bringing the ocarina up to his mouth, Link curled his fingers around the holes in the instrument, poised to cover them as needed, and played a short, simple song that he'd learned back in Kakariko Village. As soon as the song ended, dark clouds formed overhead, and a roar of thunder was heard before rain began to fall down, pelting everyone below in freezing drops of water.
The Gerudo women, completely taken by surprise at the sudden and unexpected rainfall, all began to panic. They fled their posts as guards in favor of taking shelter in their homes, running across sand that was quickly becoming muddy. A few screamed in disbelief as the water chilled them and made their clothing damp, their minds racing in confusion as they tried to figure out how such a storm could appear without any notice on a hot day in the desert.
"Where did this rain come from?!" the guard by the gate yelled, tripping in her haste to get out of the rain and only just catching herself before she fell.
"My makeup isn't waterproof!" Another wailed as she hurried towards shelter from her spot in the center of camp, her hands rubbing furiously at her cheeks to rid herself of the eye shadow she could feel dripping down her face in trails.
"I'm not dressed for this kind of weather!" A third Gerudo shrieked, her hands covering her head just as she vanished into a house south of the underground area of the camp.
Link could hardly contain his laughter, his hands fully covering his mouth to keep from attracting any attention, though by this point there was no one around to hear him. Their reactions to the rain were exactly what he'd hoped for when he'd played the Song of Storms, and did a lot to lift his spirits. He shook with silent laughs for a few moments until they slowly died down, then let his hands drop to his sides as he turned to face the building on his left. He'd had his fun, and now it was time to get back to business. With a wide grin, he pocketed the ocarina and jumped down from the wooden platform, ready to save the carpenters he'd set out to find. "Don't worry, Epona," he murmured to himself as he landed on the ground below. "I'll save you once I'm done here." With that, he strode into the building, prepared to take on whatever he might face inside.
/OO/
Author's Note: Hey, it's been quite a few months since I've submitted anything on here. I'm honestly pretty unsure about this piece. It just doesn't feel as satisfying somehow as I thought it would be when I started this last year. What do you think? Any suggestions? Let me know in a review, if you want! Until next time.