DISCLAIMER: I do not own Zelda. If I did, the latest Nintendo Direct would've been about Zelda Wii U, not Pokemon. I also do not own the Song of Healing, because otherwise, all sad songs in the franchise would just be remixes of it. The only thing I do own are my OC's (oh no this story has non-canon characters we're all gonna die ahh)

If you just came because you're interested, welcome aboard. If you came because I told you to in my other story, welcome aboard. All important info will be at the bottom. Except for one thing: My original characters are in no way self-inserts, and are based on characters from the Zelda series.

Prologue: Welcome to Aboda

His body was glowing with an otherworldly green light – not the kind that one would have seen in a B-list 80's horror movie, but a soft, pleasant kind that reminded one of nature. His left hand burned, filling him with courage, and in that hand he held a gleaming sword, with an elaborately carved hilt with a golden crystal in the center.

Facing him was an absolute beast of a man – and perhaps beast was the best way to describe him, as through the violent red light that shielded the man's body from the eye's gaze, he could swear he saw tusks emanating from his mouth. The man let out a wicked snarl. "You think you can stand up against me, Hero? Perhaps that is why you were not blessed with Wisdom."

He licked his lips, and assumed a fighting stance. "I know I can," he responded in a deep, confident voice that he knew was not his own.

The man uttered a sinister laugh. "Very well, then. Let's see what your Courage can do against a being of ultimate Power!" The man held out his hand, and from it, lightning spouted, traveling across the short distance between the two, and striking directly at his courageous heart.

He screamed in agony, and everything went black.

Link Master awoke with a start, clutching his chest and panting heavily. He looked at the digital clock he kept in his bedroom. It read 3:19. Great. He still had five more hours until school started, and he knew from experience that there was no way he could get back to sleep after a nightmare, especially not that nightmare. And that meant that he had to survive the boredom known as middle school with only five hours of sleep under his belt.

...Today was going to be simply peachy.

He didn't even bother to be quiet as he jumped out of bed, loudly popping several joints in the process. His only guardian, his grandmother, was quite possibly the heaviest sleeper in the known universe, and his evil nine-year-old sister, Aryll, was used to his early-morning outings by now and had begrudgingly accepted them as part of having an almost-teenager living in the household.

The very first thing he did was raid the kitchen for ground coffee beans. According to his friends, nothing started the day better than a steaming cup of coffee to get you awake. Link, however, wouldn't know, as the caffeine had never seemed to affect him. He stubbornly refused to give up, and brewed a fresh cup every morning.

While the coffee machine did its work, he shambled into his bedroom once more, and pulled off his blue lobster pajamas. He then threw on his favorite (and only) outfit – a plain, lime-green, long-sleeved T-shirt, and a pair of faded beige pants that were practically white. He looked in his mirror, even though he knew what he would see – the same boy with the same clothes and the same unruly, bright blonde hair that covered the same strange, pointed ears.

After a while of zoning out and doing absolutely nothing, the easily-recognizable aroma of coffee pierced Link's nose, signaling that the beverage was ready. He took the pot out of the machine, and poured the caffeinated drink into his mug that read, "I Hate Mondays". He took a long sip of the beverage and swallowed. He poured the rest into the kitchen sink. He didn't dislike the taste, but it wasn't exactly his cup of tea (or coffee).

He glanced at his grandma's antiquated clock – the kind that actually made you have to figure out the time, and worked out that it was about 3:45. (Or maybe 9:20, but that wasn't likely.) Either way, he still had at least four hours to kill before he set out for Aboda Middle School.

Link debated his options. On one hand, he could do any last-minute homework that he hadn't done the night before, but he was pretty sure none of his homework was actually due that day. ...Or maybe he was just forgetting. On another hand, he could watch recorded episodes of his guilty pleasure, The Faces of Evil, for the entire time. He decided not to do that either. While he liked it for its... interesting story and above-average score, he had to admit that some of the story arcs seemed a tad contrived and that the acting was atrocious. He knew for a fact that several quotes from characters had been made infamous on the Internet via memes.

Finally, he decided on practicing his instrument, an odd blue ocarina that he had found hidden away in the attic. His grandmother had dismissed it as a "worthless doohickey" (and that was a direct quote) and allowed him to keep it. Upon closer inspection, he had found an odd indentation in it: a triangle, formed by three smaller triangles with one on top and two on the bottom. But that symbol held no meaning to him.

He took the ocarina out of its case, lent to him by his music teacher (who had let him use it in class despite ocarinas not being traditional band instruments), and began to work on his end-of-year project: a musical composition of his own. According to the teacher, whose name he could never really remember, it didn't have to be good, it just had to demonstrate an understanding of the basic concepts of music: notes, time signature, key signature, et cetera. Most students, he knew, just used this to get an easy A, but not Link. He had poured his heart and soul into the piece, and had arranged a soothing yet haunting melody that, despite having been invented by him, felt older than time itself. He called it the Song of Healing. As he played, he ran through the lyrics he'd come up with for it in his head:

Day to night, dark to light,
Fall the sands of time.
Let the years like the gears
Of a clock unwind

In your mind walk through time
Back to better days.
Memories, like a dream,
Wash tears away.

Like a star in the sky,
Darkness can't reach you
Light the night, joy is light,
Till the new dawn.

Cast away your old face
Let go your spite,
With this mask I'll ask
To borrow your light

Of course, nobody would ever actually hear the lyrics of his song, seeing as he couldn't exactly sing them and play the ocarina at the same time, but he still was quite proud of them. He played the song until he lost track of time – so much so that when Aryll woke from her slumber three hours later, he was still contentedly playing the piece.

"Link!" Aryll snapped, wanting his attention.

Link, being, well, Link, spun around wildly with a crazed look in his eyes. "What the-? Huh?" he rambled before coming to his senses. "Aryll? What are you doing up so early? And why's the sun up already?"

At that moment, Aryll realized what was going on. "Oh. My. Gosh," she said, feeling a smile begin to form in the corners of her mouth. "Did you really spend the entire morning playing that song of yours over and over again? Ha! That's so cute, Big Brother!"

"Wait, what time is it!?" Link exclaimed all of a sudden.

"7:03 a.m.," Aryll responded matter-of-factly, struggling to keep a straight face.

Link's face briefly held an expression of shock, but he quickly masked it with an expression of fake smugness. "Oh. Well, I've only been playing for three hours of the morning then."

Aryll, despite being three years younger than Link, knew that he still was surprised at the time. Being the responsible younger sister that she liked to believe she was, she decided to remind him of his other early-morning duties. "Oh, by the way," she said, "it's your turn to make breakfast for Grandma. And you know she won't just settle for a dumb old bowl of cereal."

Link's eyes widened (he didn't even try to hide it that time) as he raced to the kitchen. Aryll just laughed behind him. If he didn't move his butt, Grandma would not be happy with him when she woke up.

Twenty-five minutes later, Grandma Master made her presence known to the entire household – by loudly complaining about her back pains. After that, she slowly hobbled out of her room, surveying the scene that what once was a quiet, peaceful abode. Now, the entire house was a cluttered mess of sheet music, unfinished homework, and boy magazines that she wouldn't have dared to read when she was in high school. ("In my day," she'd say, "We looked at boys with their shirts on.")

Finally, her eyes settled on the table where a plate of bacon and eggs was waiting. Beside it stood her grandson, with a nervous expression plastered across his face. Inwardly, she sighed. She loved her grandchildren dearly, but Link was probably the laziest boy she'd ever met. He was lucky he had his sister to keep him in line, otherwise he would've gotten the scolding of a lifetime. Speaking of which, where was his sister...?

"Link!" she barked as she slowly sat down at the table.

The boy instantly snapped up. "Yes, Grandma?"

"Where's Aryll?"

Link's face morphed into a slightly amused smile. "Oh, she's outside, Grandma. Said she wanted to 'get a good look at the birds before everybody comes out and they fly away.'"

And that was the problem with her other grandchild. While she wasn't lazy like her sibling, she was unbearably energetic – unable to stand still for more than a second at a time. Which, as a result, also meant about five times as much work for her sweet, elderly grandmother.

"Link, get your sister."

As an alternative, it meant five times as much work for her bumbling oaf of a brother.

At this, Link groaned, but said nothing. Instead, he put on his favorite shoes, a pair of brown Vans, and went out the door, secretly reveling in the crisp spring air as he stood on the deck at the front of their house. He then turned his thoughts to finding his sister. He first checked their small backyard, as he wanted to breathe in as much of the air before going back inside, as he knew Aryll wouldn't be there. Seeing as she was, in fact, not there, he went back to the front of the house, and located the ladder that led to a treehouse his sister had dubbed "her lookout."

The interior of the lookout was bare, save for Aryll and the small group of birds she was playing with. It was interesting – his sister was the only person he knew that could not only approach a bird without scaring it away, but be able to touch it; to pet it. Birds seemed to trust her, and when ever she was around, the birds never flew away. As such, Link wasn't even surprised that when he cleared his throat to get his sister's attention, the birds held their ground.

Aryll turned around. "Oh, hey, Big Brother!" she greeted. "Why're you in my lookout?"

Link motioned back towards the house. "Grandma wants you back inside." He noticed something on her sundress. "...And is that bird poop on your dress?"

Aryll gazed at her dress. Sure enough, a dripping white spot was blotting out part of her hibiscus-patterned dress. She didn't seem too fazed by it, however. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Don't worry; it's fine," she reassured. She then turned to one of her birds, this one a seagull. "May I?"

For some reason, Link could have sworn he saw a faint, pale blue glow appear on his sister's pointed ears for a split second.

To Link's amazement, the seagull turned around, and didn't even flinch when Aryll plucked out one of its feathers and used it to wipe off the feces. Seeing his shocked expression, she asked, "What? Carl's molting." She then made to walk out of the lookout.

Link raised an eyebrow. "Carl? Seriously? You named your birds?"

Aryll paused as she went down the ladder, looking confused. "No," she said. "That's his name. He told me when we first met."

Link looked at her oddly, convinced she was crazy, before shrugging it off and following after her.

As they got in and kicked their shoes off, Aryll noticed Grandma staring intently at them. "Good morning, Grandma," she greeted in a conversational tone. Link did the same.

Grandma stared at them even more intently, before saying, "Good morning, dears." Brother and sister glanced at each other, before the old woman continued, "Oh, by the way, Link, you'd better hurry if you don't want to be late for school. I don't know what you and Aryll did up there, but it took even longer than I'd anticipated."

It was then that Link noticed that Grandma had already finished her breakfast.

It was also then that Link remembered that Grandma took at least twenty minutes to eat her breakfast.

"Oh, shoot!" he cried. "You're right!" Without another word, he pulled on his shoes, slapped on his backpack, grabbed his instrument, and raced to the door when-

"Link," Grandma called. Link paused. "I love you. Bye." She then planted a big kiss on his cheek (the slobbery kind that only grandmothers can give).

Link discreetly wiped the spit off of his cheek, and said, "I love you too, Grandma! Bye!" He then sprinted out the door.

The township of Aboda was a small community – so small that it could almost be considered a village. Its population was only about 1,000 people, and even that was stretching it. It was built in a densely forested area somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Northwest, although it was right at the edge of the forest, and the ocean and plains were not far away.

Despite this, Link still knew very few people within his town. It was perhaps because of the fact that despite being in a rural forest town, school was still just school. And that meant all of the cliques and clubs and teams and all that were still very much a part of Aboda Middle School.

Link was just glad he wasn't in high school yet.

But that wasn't to say that he had no friends. Far from it, in fact. If he counted himself and didn't use his thumb, he could count all of his friends on one hand!

...In fact, he could see one of them right now, waiting at a stop sign that really only existed to impress what few visitors Aboda ever got, seeing as the entire town was only about three square miles large.

"Hey, Greenie!" Link called out, running over to greet him.

Of course, Greenie wasn't his actual name, but his real name (Sapiens Preston Forrester IV) was just a mouthful. Indeed, Greenie himself vastly preferred the nickname, which was based on his unhealthy obsession with the color green. Indeed, everything about him was tinted some shade of the color. He had emerald-green eyes, and his long, yet straight hair was an almost unnatural shade of neon yellow-green. His attire only accentuated that, with a forest-green T-shirt, beige pants with neon-green highlights around the pockets, and lime-green shoes with olive-green socks. Once, he had even tried green clip-on earrings for his pointed ears, but that hadn't worked out too well.

But the obsession with the color green was not the oddest part about him. Nor was it his slender, pointed ears. Rather, it was the fact that he had never grown a single inch ever since he was nine years old. In other worlds, he was really short, and really juvenile-looking due to the fact that he also still had the face of a nine-year-old. But that didn't faze him, and sometimes, it seemed as though he even enjoyed being a foot shorter than most of his classmates.

And it certainly didn't affect his friendship with Link.

"Hey, Link!" he greeted cheerfully, showing off a gap left by a baby tooth he'd lost two years ago. "How has your day been?"

As Link caught up with him and they began to walk down the empty street, he responded, "Well, I woke up at three in the morning, played my ocarina for three hours, and then had to make breakfast for Grandma before she woke up. Also, my sister thinks she can talk to birds."

"So basically, a completely average day for you?" Greenie joked.

"Yup," Link replied. "So, how's your song going?"

"Oh, I already finished," Greenie said. Like Link, Greenie played the ocarina. "But you're not allowed to hear it until music class."

"Oh, but Greenie..." Link fake-pouted. Greenie chuckled, and they went on like that for a few minutes, talking about nothing in particular.

That is, until they were interrupted by another buddy of theirs.

"Hello, Link! Hello, Greenie!" came the polite voice of their friend Melody Rooste.

They both turned around to face her. Everything about her could be summed up as being small. Despite being only half an inch shorter than Link, she appeared a lot smaller, due to her petite frame and meek personality. Even her red hair, despite being tied into a flowing ponytail, appeared small. Her skin was extremely pale, giving the impression of a china doll. She wore a simple blue sleeveless dress that extended to her knees. She had large red eyes, and a rather substantial nose, which almost made her look kind of like a bird. In her hand she held a case for her prized lyre, which had been a parting gift from her tutor in her old town of Dragon's Roost. She, too, had pointed ears.

"Hey, Melody," the two responded at the exact same time.

The small girl giggled at that as she fell in line with Link and Greenie. "I'm willing to bet that you two had that planned, didn't you?" Melody asked in between random chortles.

"Yes," the boys replied.

"So, um, anyways..." Melody began, unsure of how she should phrase her sentence. She was a shy girl, and not one to rush into things. That was what her friends were for. "...I-I was wondering if... you would... like to hear my... song?" She ended with a squeak.

"Yeah! Of course we do!" Greenie replied enthusiastically. "I bet it'll be awesome! Maybe even better than mine... Nah!"

Link couldn't help but chuckle at his friend's undying optimism. In a way, his best friend reminded him of his sister, except that Greenie, unlike Aryll, didn't have any weird bird powers, and wasn't evil.

Melody's cheeks turned a deep red hue. "You really think so?"

"Sure!" exclaimed Greenie. "And even if it's terrible, it'd still probably be better than Link's!"

Link nodded empathetically. "I must admit, there is a high probability that that statement is correct," he said in what he perceived to be a British accent. "Probably, like, 60% or something," he stated, reverting back to his normal voice.

"I'd say that there's at least a 75% chance," inserted a new voice. Link couldn't help but let out a yelp at the sight of the final person in his friend group, Leif Greene, walking right beside him.

Leif, following in the tradition of his friends, was short. Granted, he wasn't as short as Greenie, but like Greenie, he hadn't grown one bit in a long time. But instead of nine, he made to the ripe old age of ten and a half before his growth hit a roadblock. Like the others, he had pointed ears, although his were rather stout (like the rest of him), and were mostly hidden by his thick, rounded glasses, which were a dark shade of green. He wore an oversized camouflage-print sweather, which complemented his chocolate-colored skin nicely. He had a single tuft of chocolate-brown hair spouting upwards out of his head; due to its coloration, it was near-impossible to tell where his head ended and his hair began. In his hand he held a case for his violin.

"Oh, hiya, Leif!" Greenie greeted excitedly. "How's your day going?"

"Well, aside from the fact that I'd been walking with you for nearly three minutes before one of you noticed me, I'm doing great," Leif spat dryly.

Link cringed at that. He knew that unlike Melody, who made sure that she wouldn't be offending anyone when she spoke, Leif was more apt to voice whatever thoughts came into his mouth, without thinking of the consequences.

Fortunately, Greenie either didn't notice the clear bitterness or didn't care, as he smiled warmly and said, "Wow, that's great!"

Leif rolled his eyes, but Link could see that he was struggling to hide a smile.

"So," Link addressed his friends, "does anybody have anything they'd like to complain loudly about before we get to school?" He was asking this because it was a ritual between the four of them to talk about their problems before school, instead of during it. After all, Aboda was such a small community that if just one stranger heard what you were talking about, the entire town would know.

…And more importantly, the entire school would know.

At this, Greenie shook his head vigorously, and Melody's cheeks turned at least ten times as red. The only one who actually spoke, however, was Leif.

...Of course it would be Leif.

"I do," he proclaimed loudly. "So, you know how my family is, like, super into gardening? Well, as it turns out, now my brothers have started this project to 'spread the forest' or something."

"That sounds a little... silly," Melody commented. "Don't we live right next to the woods?"

"Exactly!" he cried. "So anyways, I told them that, and they looked at me like I was crazy! And my dad isn't being much help, either. All he ever does is sit there and talk to whoever is closest to him. Who, now that my brothers are doing their weird tree thing, just so happens to be me! I've literally had to hide in my closet to be able to practice my violin without him hearing me and calling me over to talk."

The others nodded, knowing how much of a pain Leif's father, Deku Green, could be. He was a giant of a man with a rather wooden demeanor, in terms of the way he moved. Despite that, he loved to talk for hours on end, usually reminiscing about the past.

Leif probably would have spent the rest of the walk complaining, had it not been for the fact that at that point, they had already reached their destination: a horrifying place filled with torture and misery, one that humankind had dreaded for the past two millennia: Aboda Middle School.

...Link was pretty sure that his school wasn't two thousand years old, but with the amount of cobwebs in that building, he'd never know for sure.

Aboda Middle School was a stylized building, meaning that it was one of the ugliest places Link had ever seen. It was supposed to look like a medieval castle, but it looked more like a prison – what with the colorless bricks, and the guard towers that were actually occupied. Not to mention the imposing, barbed-wire fence that had been put up a few years back.

Link sighed as he and his friends entered the building. On the inside, the school looked cheery enough – it was painted a sickeningly sweet shade of yellow, and there were bulletins everywhere, filled with students' work. Its students, however, were another matter altogether. Like most young people suffering from the horror that is known as puberty, they looked for outlets on which to expend their excess angst and inner turmoil. Unfortunately, one of those outlets just so happened to be Link.

As he passed through the hallway, Link could feel people staring at him already. Or more specifically, his pointed ears. Despite the fact that the doctor had always just insisted that it was an extremely rare genetic deformity, which was what Link had always told those who mocked him for it, nobody believed it – not even Link. After all, if it was extremely rare, why would there be so many unrelated people in Aboda with that same affliction?

Beside him, he could see Melody's cheeks getting redder and redder every second, and he could feel Leif tense up. The only one who seemed oblivious was Greenie, who was ignorantly sauntering down the corridor.

In fact, Greenie was probably the reason that Link wasn't bullied anymore than a few stares and petty insults. Greenie was simply one of those people who brought out someone's soft side simply by being near them, and even the biggest, baddest bully wasn't immune to that effect.

Before Link could think too hard about the implications of that kind of power, however, the bell rang, signaling that the kids had five minutes to get to class, and Link found himself sucked into the tide of students.

A/N: So, like I said, welcome aboard. I'm really excited for this story, and I've had it in my head for the longest time. So, here's a few important notes about the story:

-While I don't know exactly how many chapters this story will have, I do already have at least ten dungeons planned. Maybe more.

-This is going to be the first in a trilogy of stories.

-Updates will be sporadic, so expect chapters... whenever.

-So, important note for my OC's: They're basically just Zelda characters with different names, and humanized. This is due to the fact that the Sages' names in ALBW were different than the ones in OoT, seeing as they're descendants, and not reincarnations. I'm applying the same formula here, so any OC's can and will play a part later on.

-The games I'm using as inspiration for this one are mostly OoT and WW.

-Did I mention that this isn't a High/Middle School AU? BECAUSE IT'S NOT.

So yeah, if you have any comments or suggestions about anything (related to this story) be sure to leave a review!

(By the way, Zelda's appearing next chapter, 'kay?)

~I Am A Toad