Two
('Existential Revenge')
Davin Sunrider, Dark Side Comedian, watched with narrowed eyes as his hurled missile rapidly approached its target. One hand came up to stroke his bearded chin as he waited anxiously, but both hands came up in elation as his target collapsed under the punishing assault.
"That's your fourth strike in a row," said the Dark Lord Ganondorf, nodding appreciatively. "You just might get a perfect game."
Davin walked back to where the Great King of Evil sat on the bench at the end of the lane, one hand on his own bowling ball. The other two members of their team, a Moblin and a Gerudo warrior, lightly put their hands together in acknowledgment of the Dark Side Comedian's bowling skills.
They were in what was quite probably the only bowling alley in all of Hyrule, in the basement of the Gerudo fortress. Ganondorf had fashioned it with magic after returning from the Real World, and now most of the Dark Lord's minions hung out there when not on duty.
Being as it was, built by Ganondorf, it was most definitely an evil bowling alley. In fact, that was its name; Evil Bowling Alley. The Evil Bowling Alley was built of tan sandstone, decorated in black and dark red like most evil buildings, with lots of skulls and grim-looking tapestries. Also as was to be expected, it was rather ominously lit by torches and red candles, and the lanes were outlined in flame for added visibility and general ambiance. The pins were all decorated to look like Hylian soldiers, and it was clear the Dark Lord and his minions had great fun knocking them down with large heavy bowling balls.
Davin wore his 'Team Ganondorf' bowling shirt, as did the rest of Team Ganondorf. In addition to his monogrammed black and dark red bowling shirt, the Dark Lord still wore his purloined State Trooper sunglasses as well as evil shorts and evil bowling shoes. Davin thought amusedly to himself that Ganondorf was probably the only person he knew who could make bowling shoes look sinister.
Grarffnarg the Moblin got up for his turn and picked up his bowling ball, which was painted to resemble a human skull. Actually, Davin thought as he sat down, it could very well be a human skull; you never knew in the Evil Bowling Alley.
"This is an interesting puzzle we have, Sunrider dude," said Ganondorf, taking a sip of his evil soda. "If we all exist in the Author's imagination, how do we get revenge on him without him knowing what we're planning?"
Davin frowned around the straw of his own soda, which was not evil, but merely mildly misbehaving. "Near as I can figure," he said, scratching at his beard, "I'm part of his subconscious, and he has no conscious control over what I do. I'm pretty sure he doesn't control you, either, Your Evilness. He's spent so much time characterizing both of us in the previous two stories that now we're both manifestations of his subconscious and so we can do pretty much whatever we want."
"This is sounding dangerously close to infringing on that movie you were telling me about," said Ganondorf. "Not to mention perhaps a bit too complicated for a silly humor story."
Davin shrugged. "We'll throw in a fart joke or a pratfall somewhere for the people who don't understand all this psychological stuff."
Indeed, when Grarffnarg threw his bowling ball, the Moblin farted loudly and therefore was too distracted to let go. Thus, he was dragged down the lane behind his ball and crashed headfirst into the array of pins, sending them flying everywhere. He grunted embarrassedly as he attempted to extricate himself from the ball-retrieval system, but the mechanism was too strong and so Grarffnarg was dragged back to wherever bowling balls go after they knock over the pins.
"Does that count?" said the Gerudo warrior, whose name happened to be Nabooru. Davin wasn't sure if she was the Nabooru, but he guessed it didn't really matter in a Hyrule this weird.
Ganondorf shrugged. "Why not?"
"Strike for Grarffnarg, then," Nabooru said, marking it on the score sheet.
"So what you're saying is," Ganondorf said around a mouthful of evil popcorn, "this Hyrule exists deep within the Author's subconscious, and so we can do whatever we like because he can't control us."
"That's right," said Davin, taking a bite out of a mildly misbehaving hot dog.
"And," Ganondorf went on, "the Author only really interacts with us when he's asleep and dreaming."
"Or just daydreaming when he's supposed to be doing something else," said Davin, flicking a spot of lint off the knee of his jeans.
"Or he's completely aware of all of this," said Nabooru, eating some just-following-orders jellybeans, "you're both under his complete control, and he's doing all of this totally on purpose so that anyone watching will laugh at how silly this is."
Davin and Ganondorf looked at Nabooru, then each other, then back at Nabooru.
"I highly doubt that," said the Dark Lord.
Davin scoffed. "Yeah, there's no way he's that smart."
They turned at a scuffle as Grarffnarg squirmed out of the ball-return next to their seats, carefully set his skull-ball back down on the rack, then took his seat on the semicircular bench next to Nabooru. "What's my score?" he inquired, rubbing his snout.
"Strike," Nabooru told him.
Grarffnarg pumped both hairy, muscular arms in the air. "All right!" he exclaimed. "Evil five!"
Nabooru slapped his outstretched hand, then turned hers over for him to slap in return.
Ganondorf got up for his turn and picked up his ball. The Dark Lord's ball was painted to resemble a fireball, though from the way it flickered, it could very easily have been an actual fireball. The King of Evil held his ball up, frowning in concentration, then wound back and hurled it down the lane in a screaming streak of fire.
Davin noticed with disturbed amusement that the pins actually shrieked in terror before Ganondorf's ball plowed into them, sending them flying back into wherever bowling pins go when you knock them over.
Ganondorf turned and casually pumped one fist. "Strike," he said with a satisfied grin.
"Not quite," Nabooru said, gesturing back down the lane with her pen.
One solitary pin remained standing.
Ganondorf glared at it over the rims of his cop sunglasses, and the pin emitted a squeak before suddenly wobbling and then falling over.
The Dark Lord looked over at the Gerudo warrior. "Strike," he said again.
The red-haired woman arched an eyebrow that said he wasn't fooling anybody, but marked it as a strike anyway. She got up for her turn and picked up her ball, by all appearances a perfectly ordinary bowling ball with a swirling red-and-orange pattern.
As Nabooru stared down the lane at the pins in preparation for her throw, Davin turned to Ganondorf again. "What's the best way of getting revenge on the Author, do you think?"
"Drive him insane," Ganondorf replied. "Twist Hyrule into a land of madness so terrifying that he never ventures here again."
"Yeah, but we have to live here," Davin pointed out. "I realize you'd be perfectly happy with, what'd you call it, a 'land of madness', but the rest of us would probably rather have a Hyrule that's nice to live in."
He glanced over as Nabooru threw her ball with deadly precision, and it rolled perfectly down the lane and knocked over every single pin. She sauntered back to her seat and marked a strike on the score sheet, smiling in satisfaction. "And that was without cheating," she said to Ganondorf teasingly.
"I do not cheat, woman," the Dark Lord said indignantly. "It's not my fault I'm so intimidating."
"I forgot we were playing by 'Ganondorf rules'," said Nabooru, still grinning mischievously. "Which is to say, none at all."
Ganondorf frowned and rather pointedly did not respond, instead turning back to Davin. "So what you're saying is, you don't want a land of ash, smoke, and lava, with the entire population enslaved to do our evil bidding?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of all of us getting along for the most part," Davin said. "Maybe add a few more interesting canyons and ruins to explore, but otherwise, I'd like to live here as it is, if I have to." He leaned back in his seat. "What kind of evil bidding could you possibly have, anyway? Once you conquer the world, then what are you going to do with it?"
"Build a lot of statues of myself, I suppose," Ganondorf replied, idly tossing a small fireball from hand to hand. "Maybe persecute people for a while."
"Nah," Davin said dismissively. "That's what every evil conqueror does. You gotta come up with something original, man. Like, zombies or something. You could conjure a couple legions of the undead, and we could be gritty, determined survivors fighting them off."
"Why would I conquer the world with zombies?" Ganondorf said scornfully. "I'd just have to kill them all after they ate everybody, and then what do I do? Rebuild civilization? Pfft!" The Dark Lord sneered. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm more of a 'destruction' guy than a 'construction' guy."
"What in the world are you two talking about?" said Nabooru, looking at them incredulously. "I swear, you two are the most-"
But, she was interrupted by an only slightly unusual event in the Evil Bowling Alley; a Lizalfos flying through the air to crash into the seats at the back of one of the lanes.
Davin turned to see what the commotion was, only to discover that it was the Chosen Nuisance himself, Link the Hero, striding boldly into the Evil Bowling Alley like, well, a hero.
"What's this den of iniquity?" Link demanded, marching over to Team Ganondorf's lane and gesturing wildly at the ball-return. "What manner of fiendish torture devices are these? Does your evil truly know no bounds, Dark Lord?" For good measure, he stabbed a Bulblin that, to be honest, really hadn't done anything other than emit a confused grunt as he walked past.
"It's a bowling alley," Ganondorf said, nonplussed.
"Bowling, eh?" Link exclaimed in righteous fury. "And what manner of depraved, ghoulish activity is bowling?"
"Bowling is actually the least depraved sport I can think of," Davin said from his seat, taking a casual sip of his mildly misbehaving soda. "Except maybe golf, although I've heard some pretty blue language on the golf course."
"Oh, nobody asked you," Link snapped at Davin. "And get a haircut; you look like a hippie."
"You'd know," Davin said with a snarky grin.
"Shut up, you," Link snapped.
"Pants on your head, pants on your head," Davin sang, still grinning obnoxiously. "Lookin' like a fool with your pants on your- whoa!" Davin ducked as Link snatched a plate of moderately unpleasant nachos from a passing Darknut and hurled them at him.
"Oi!" the Darknut exclaimed irritably, his deep voice echoing within his enormous helmet. "I was going to eat those, you little ponce!"
"So?" Link sneered at the Darknut, who was a good two feet taller than he was and probably outweighed him by two hundred pounds. "What are you going to do about it?"
The Darknut happened to have three friends, just as tall and heavily armed and armored as himself. Slowly, the armored giants rose from their seats and moved to stand next to their comrade.
Link looked markedly less confident, but did not back down.
"You know, BoneEater," one of the Darknuts said to his friend, "I think this little fellow is one o' them, what d'you call 'em, contortionists."
"Oh, really, BloodDrinker?" BoneEater said. "What do you think, IntestineChewer?"
A third Darknut pondered this. "I think BloodDrinker's right," he said. "'e looks like 'e can twist 'imself inna lit'l ball. What d'you say we see if 'e can do it, BrainGnasher? Maybe 'e's lucky, get us a strike?"
BrainGnasher's accent was so thick it was incomprehensible, but the general sentiment was, 'Let's go for it.'
"Why do they have English accents?" Davin whispered to Ganondorf.
"The Author watched too much Monty Python as a kid?" the Dark Lord guessed.
"That actually explains a lot," said Davin.
As they had threatened, the four Darknuts rolled the Chosen Nuisance into a ball and bowled him.
"Oh, 'e missed two pins!" IntestineChewer complained. "You rolled 'im crooked, BoneEater!"
"Well then, you do better," BoneEater said as Link came up through the ball-return.
"Maybe I will!" said IntestineChewer, and he grabbed the Nuisance-ball.
"If I buy you some replacement nachos, will you let me go?" Link said as IntestineChewer approached the lane.
"No," said IntestineChewer, and bowled him.
Author's Note: Thanks very much to all the reviewers; I'm glad to see you're all enjoying this already. I'm having far too much fun with it, myself. :D
Davin the Dark Side Comedian will return in 'More Evil Sports', coming soon.