STRIKE INFINITY
by an awesome blossom
Just another failure.
I felt in a creative rut without any idea in my head, so I just forced myself to write in a single sitting to try to remove the stagnancy. Not sure how well that worked out. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is property of Nintendo and co.
Lonely circles permeated his field of vision, and when they reached to a hundred he closed his eyes to retreat into isolation. Instead he parted his chapped lips and drank in the thick fragrance that hung still in that cramped back room like two moldy drapes exercising. The nerve sensors on his tongue stirred in excitement as the saccharine, swirling air met them with a pleasant kiss. Greedily he lapped it up, and the air invaded the oft-neglected space under his tongue where the dark, supporting lines of life hid from the world.
And it was the world, the world he felt. This was the world.
"Do you like it?"
The world? As in the space he occupied now or the space he used to occupy then (which were two separate things, mind you)?
"No, sir," he answered politely with his eyes shut because for the love of the Goddesses those circles drove him mad. "No, I don't like it at all. But please don't let it stop."
The sound tumbled upon itself quixotically, and he relaxed because it was comforting to his hearing; but as he was used to the abhorrent noise of steel cleaving flesh and the pitiful sounds of his own discomfort, everything was a new and wonderful exploration to his audile senses. So the waterfall resonances of that guy's chuckles were quite welcome indeed.
"It's ten minutes to midnight."
And what then? What after the stroke of midnight and the center of his world opened up to swallow him and them whole? Would he still be there? He wouldn't be here, so maybe he would be there, but how could he count on that? There were an infinite number of possibilities for his position after the doom-clock began, so how in hell-praying-to-reach-heaven-and-the-natural-order-of-things was he supposed to know the position of his existence?
"Don't you have somewhere to be?"
So that was it, then. A foreordained appointment was the deciding factor in deciding his position relevant to the world post midnight. But at what speed would he reach the center of his world? How long would he take, and would time be consistent or would it fluctuate wildly like his consciousness these past three, three, three, three, three, three days? An intense feeling of anxiety crept over him, something that not even the thick air (growing into a resentful means of suffocation) could assuage. "Where?" he blurted out suddenly, and his limbs began a process of stuttering in motion.
"Clock tower."
He opened his eyes just in time to see the tower fly from the man's dirty lips and set on a course for his own destruction. The hands angrily pushed themselves forward, trying to strangle him, and four through eleven rotated suspiciously while twelve, one, and two pried themselves from the man's face only to shout obscenities at him. Three was the only one who pleaded for his safety, but soon it was crushed to death by that wicked eleven.
From the moment of motion to the point of three's untimely death, he debated between tearing his eyes out and unsheathing his sword to do battle with these no-doubt lunar villains, but instead he picked his body up and ran, crashing through molten goods and through the shady entrance (now his sunny exit).
"Chill out, son!" the owner of the sweetly nascent air called after him, but his auditory realm was far beyond the place of beginning. Instead it raced alongside him, struggling to keep up with the visual world sprinting backward.
He realized that he was singular and that he did not enter into this world that way. Falling, falling, falling down the rabbit hole he was, but alone he was not. There was something important, something irrevocably lost, stolen, or misplaced, but he couldn't remember what it is. It might matter, but then it might not, and as his consciousness progressed through the time-stream, the importance of the distinction between the two camps lessened.
And then there was the cacophonous noise of a terrible gong a few streets down complete with the popping and visual show of fireworks; it is midnight, and the center of his world gapes open.
But he is not present to meet the dark face of fate. Coming across a gathering of fear and steel, he resists the urge to show them his bravery and steel, but instead he shows them his face. They notice him not at first, talking amongst themselves worriedly, and he waits patiently with his face ready for acknowledgment. He is a patient waiter as he waits patiently, for none are as patient as him, not even if they wait in patience. But as the minutes pass and their fear heightens, he is impatient. "Hello," he says in genuine desire for the attention of fear and steel, and the fear and steel respond with a hasty jump.
"Dear Goddesses, kid!" one of the figures of fear and steel says waveringly, and some of the figures behind him make rough tumbles of nervous laughter yet they are not so fearful anymore. Pillars of fear and steel before, they become simple individuals trying to defend their hometown from fate. "You scared the living shit out of me!"
A soldier with different armor than the rest gives the other an unpleasant look that is shrouded in steel to the world yet apparent to him since it resonates so strongly in time. "Watch your mouth! He's just a kid!"
But the differently steeled soldier is wrong. Does he know he's wrong, he wonders, but he knows how the soldier can see how he's right.
"Anyway, you all are dismissed! ...It's been nice working with you men, so...good luck," the soldier ends, and the rest of the soldiers shed their steel yet hold onto their fear, transforming into simple men. As their eventual scatter begins, the different soldier finally addresses his face. "You ought to take your family and take refuge as far away from this place as you can, son. The moon...it's really going to fall this time."
The line below the center of his face curves upward, and he questions, "I am by myself. Do I still need to take refuge from fate without anyone else to consider?"
In a sort of latent frustration, the soldier shakes his head. "Then save your own skin, kid! Alone or with someone, you still need to take care of yourself!" When that upward curve doesn't change, the soldier sighs and sinks down on one knee. "What's your name, kid?"
"I am not a kid, sir," is the first thing he clarifies, but then he adds, "but I probably still am. My name is Link."
The soldier's nose wrinkles a bit, and then he holds out a pleasurable hand (to which Link immediately accepts, and at once it reminds him of the thick air in the backroom before things turned sour and stale). "I'm Viscen, Captain of the Guard. Or...I was up until an hour ago."
"Who are you if you are not still Viscen?" Link asks and his lips contort in confusion. He may be confused and this man who used to be may remind him of a honeymoon phase, but he does feel more refreshed (of that he feels certain).
"I...I am still Viscen!" the Viscen who may be no longer insists rather forcefully. "I am simply not the Captain of the Guard any longer... But that's not important. What is is that you've got to take yourself and get out of the city!"
"Why?"
Viscen stares at him in a frustrated shock and throws his hand up to point viciously at the impending moon. "That! The moon's going to fall on this city tonight. Please, please, Link, you have got to take whoever you can and just get the hell out of here! Don't be like that idiot Mutoh and insist everything is fine. It's not!"
Link considers the stressed man, but apparently his idle decision-making is too lengthy for Viscen's tastes.
"Come on, kid--Link! Just...you're alone, aren't you? Then come with me!"
This throws him out of his fog of possible post-midnight positions and possible post-midnight speeds, settling on just one for the moment. "Where could we go to escape fate?"
The way he phrases his words unsettles Viscen, and Link can tell, but he pinpoints a post-midnight position with: "Romani Ranch."
A certain clarity restores itself to his thoughts now that he finally has a destination in mind. He agrees in a sense that is outside his own internal process, and Romani Ranch it will be.
They will make their way as fast as they can across the field, ducking takkuri birds, until they reach the mouth of the Milk Road that is apparently oft-traveled, but Link knows from repetition that it is not. It is, however, open to them, he remembers, and so they'll travel.
An interruption is in store for them as a dwarfed man appearing to be older than he right ought to be with a billowing stomach accosts them to buy a map. He cannot be persuaded that trivial matters such as rupees are meaningless when the apocalypse is on its way with a menacing face. This strange fairy in every sense but the correct one will make Link wonder if the end of the world would be more frightening if the moon smiled joyously upon them.
Viscen will try to persuade the mock-frightening-drag-queen-who-reminds-Link-of-the-cloying-scent-in-the-back-room to take refuge with them in a safer place than the Milk Road (which is rumored to have trouble with bandits, and Link knows this truth but only in another time), but he will not budge.
They will leave him as he floats back up on his balloon powered by his hopes and dreams, and he and he alone with survive the moon-crash no matter what.
Two hours will have passed since midnight, and when they reach Romani Ranch, they will realize that all the buildings are locked since only a locked door can protect from the moon falling upon them.
Epona will whinny in instant recognition of her former master, and Link will apologize for neglecting her in this life, noting with sadness that she reminds him of nothing anymore. Viscen reminds him of everything with his hand that is reminiscent of the backroom and terrifying towers, and then he will know that it is all wrong.
This will not work.
This is not going to work.
This is not working.
With Viscen a memory left behind just as his companion at the beginning of time, Link moves through space as fast as he can to the center of his world. It is there that he sees the entranceway to the hole, and ignoring the carpenter's delirious joy upon realizing he was wrong all along, he climbs in.
One half of a whole greeted him in anxiety, frightfully inquiring upon the whereabouts of the one that was missing, and at once Link realized what it was he had forgot in the back room:
Ev-
'ry-
thing!
No instrument, no partner, no god, he was a singularity, and that was all wrong. Greeting the moon's monstrous smirk with a sardonic grin, Link smiled and gave himself up for indulging in his diversion, for trying to pretend that fate didn't exist and he wasn't tied to a hellish loop.
Eagerly the moon swallowed him whole.
You've suffered a terrible fate, haven't you.