Here I be, making slow and steady progress on this story.

Disclaimer: See Chapter 2, which will redirect you to Chapter 1 while playing snazzy music.

Link suppressed a groan as his body hopped up with more energy than he was feeling at the moment and started running towards the stupid vines—oh, how he had grown to hate those seemingly innocent vines—and, to his surprise, stopped. Right in front of the red-haired girl from the market.

She was still grinning like a loon and rocking back and forth on her heels, and as such Link was a bit wary about approaching her. His body inched forward, though, and when he was about a foot away from her she started talking in the normal super-fast manner that people afflicted by the "B-button" seemed to favor. As quickly as she had started talking she stopped, and Link suddenly found himself lifting a cuckoo egg high into the air, as though it were a crown for a king or something.

Now, Link would happily admit that not having any control over his own body was not normal. He would allow that randomly blacking out was strange, and he had no idea why he was currently holding an egg up into the air.

Link thought all these things were strange…Until a creepily excited voice that was most definitely NOT First Voice or Deep Voice spoke up out of nowhere. It very slowly informed him that he had gotten a cuckoo egg, and if he was good to it maybe something special would happen.

Link was terrified. He didn't like the sound of this new voice, and he didn't like the thought of something "special" happening. Absurdly enough, he found himself craving the reassuring tones of his regular voices.

To his relief, First Voice piped up with a curious "What now?" and Deep Voice answered with a lazy "Oh, it doesn't matter. The egg won't hatch 'til morning, so just run around in circles or something."

Well, so much for reassuring.

FIVE MINUTES LATER

"Waaaagh!" wailed Link as he rolled head-first into the single tree outside the gates of the castle for what had to be the millionth time. First Voice and Deep Voice seemed to be having a grand time making him roll into things—"Hey, why doesn't anything fall out of the tree when I hit it? Whoops, missed the tree. Good thing there was a rock wall there! Hey, look, I can roll into the gate! Look, I can roll into the guard! I can even roll into Bailon!" "Malon" Deep Voice had muttered in what Link assumed was a corrective interruption. It hadn't deterred First Voice in the slightest. "Look, he even rolls off the cliff!" That one had actually hurt. His poor sore bottom…

Finally, day broke, and the creepy voice suddenly reappeared along with the sound of a rooster crowing. At the same time Link found himself abruptly holding a live cuckoo high in the air, just like he had with the egg.

About 30 seconds later the fact that he was holding a live cuckoo hit him, resulting in a brief inner panic attack. He had once poked a cuckoo one too many times, and the thing had nearly clawed his eyes out. Link had been afraid of the birds ever since.

Fortunately, the cuckoo disappeared just as soon as the scary voice stopped talking, and Link found himself running delightfully smoothly once more. Apparently, First Voice had given up on trying to get him past the guards successfully and had delegated the task to Deep Voice.

He made it back to the fat sleeping man in record time. When he got close to him this time, though, his hand started rummaging in his side pocket and pulled out the live cuckoo. Link nearly had another panic attack right there.

To his surprise, however, the cuckoo didn't attempt to claw his eyes out. It simply crowed once and disappeared.

Then an even more surprising thing happened: the fat man leapt to his feet, made a few panicked comments about his daughter, and tore off towards the main gate of the castle. He could hear First Voice laughing at the way the man ran. Link supposed that if his daughter had a creepy grin and a rocking problem he would worry about leaving her alone in public places, too.

"Alright," lectured Deep Voice, "now you have to push the blocks so you can get into that little hole over there." Link's body turned towards the aforementioned hole. It looked like a little drain hole, honestly, but Link figured he could probably get through it if he crawled.

His body abruptly turned itself around and proceeded to push and pull several wooden crates so that there was a little bridge from his side of the moat to the drainage hole. Before he had time to brace himself, his body flung itself across the gap and he found himself crawling into the hole.

Once on the inside, Deep Voice spoke up again. "Okay, Rachel. There are a lot of guards in here." Link felt a headache rising against his forehead and a…er…butt-ache rising in his bottom. He had a feeling this would not end well. "They all follow a pattern, though, and are apparently deaf, so just walk right behind them and be very, very careful."

Now Link knew it wasn't going to end well. He didn't get any say in it, though, and his body took off at its normal awkward gait towards a large flowery hedge. He found himself standing behind it until a guard passed by and started walking away from him. His body followed so closely behind the guard that if Link had had control of his own body he could have reached out and touched him. He repeated this with a couple more guards, and was beginning to feel a little confident.

Then, disaster struck.

Well, sort of. Link found himself at a guard-walkey-place with a large wooden lattice crossing over it. "You need to climb up and cross the walkway to the other side." Deep Voice instructed. Link felt his stomach drop—they had been doing so good.

Link's body slowly lifted itself onto the thin beam that crossed over the guards. Link found himself walking one giant, awkward step at a time, just barely avoiding falling off. He almost thought that he would make it across—

"Augggggh!" Link fell with a frantic scream and landed right in front of a guard who was about to turn the corner. As his body leapt up and began frantically running away from the guard, all Link could hear was First Voice yelling "Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap" and Deep Voice yelling "RUNRUNRUNRUN!!!"

When Link finally got to a safe hedge, his body froze for a moment, then First Voice seemed to get ahold of herself and he made it past the rest of the guards with no problem.

When he reached a smaller courtyard, his body stopped moving. For a moment he wondered what was going on—but then he realized his body was moving naturally. Not just smoothly, like when Deep Voice had control, but naturally, as though he were the one doing the moving.

He froze again when he realized there was a girl standing at the far end of the courtyard. His initial impression was that she was very, very pretty. Then she turned around.

He decided she was absolutely beautiful.