This chapter was a lot of fun to write. I'd also like to say that I really appreciate everyone who reviewed; it may not seem like you did anything special, but it tells me that there are people out there that like my story and want to read it. You guys are the best! Keep them coming. :D

"I bet you anything he's a Hylian. Just look at those ears! Not as pointy as a Sheikah's."

"No way, Mako, he's definitely a Sheikah! I'm sure of it!"

"Niko, I don't think any Sheikahs even live in Skyloft."

"W-well, he could be a traveler!"

"Sure, you go with that. I'll just leave you with the prisoners."

"For the record, I had the last word!"

A door closed shut, and Link could hear heaving breathing. "So, Mr. Green Elf Hero Person Thing," Niko laughed maliciously. "What to do?"

"I have a name, you know."

Niko jumped back with a girlish scream. "You're awake!"

Link blinked open his eyes and took a quick look around his surroundings. From the view of things, it looked like he and Mido were tied up together in a broom closet. Not really pirate material; he was expecting to be locked deep down in a brig or something.

Niko regained his composure and cleared his throat. "No matter!" he declared. "You're still my prisoner!"

By the looks of him, Link could tell he was the newest member of that girl's crew. And with a little persuasion…

"Er, yes, you see, I have a reason for waking up. I terribly have to go to the bathroom. Very urgent matter, yes."

Niko sneered back. "Well, it looks like you're just going to have to hold it, bub!"

"Ah, yes, but when I saw I terribly have to go, I mean I terribly have to go. As in, I'm ready to go right here, right now. And you'll have to clean it up."

Niko seemed horrified at this. "Uh, well… Tetra told me to not let you go at all… Uh…" It seemed like too much for his scrawny head to decipher. "Er, well, fine! You have three minutes! I'll wait outside so I know if you're up to any funny business!"

"Yeah, okay."

Niko unlocked the chains that were tied around Link, which proved to be a big mistake on his part. With his hands free, Link slammed Niko into the sides of the closet, and Niko fell down as a lifeless lump. He plucked the keys from Niko's hands and unlocked Mido's chains.

"Hey, wake up, Mido," Link said, nudging him. Mido grumbled himself awake and blearily opened his eyes.

"Oh, Din, I feel like I'm recovering from a hangover or something," he groaned.

Link sighed; even when he was half-conscious, Mido still found a way to annoy the heck out of him. "Look, I'm doing you a favor! Right now, we are literally in the same boat together, so if we cooperate, we can both get out."

"I'd rather stay on here with she-devil than work with you," Mido said, sticking out his tongue.

"Fine!" Link said, throwing his hands up in the air. "Why did I bother unlocking you in the first place then?"

He was ready to leave the room when Mido let out a, "Wait!" He sighed and said, "I want to go back home to Ilia. I can't do that when I'm trapped here, so…" It seemed like it was killing him to admit he needed Link's help. He smirked.

"Well, come on!"

They exited the broom closet and checked around the barren hallway for anyone coming. Looks like the coast was clear. They were about to make a break for it when a voice overhead said, "What in Hyrule was that noise?" The footsteps started walking over to where the two boys were, and they started to freak out.

"Uh… Uh… what do we do?" Mido asked.

"Um… In here!" Link grabbed on his arm and pulled him into an empty room. It was nicely furnished, with two twin beds adorned with drapes and bookshelves looming mysteriously over them. Some side tables that looked very fancy sat beside both beds. But there wasn't any time to sit back and admire the scenery, because loud footsteps had clomped down the stairs and had opened up the closet they were in previously.

"Niko!" the girl boomed. "You idiot! You've let them escape!"

"What should we do?" the one of her cronies asked.

"Well, they can't exactly get off the ship, so we might as well start searching. Go look over there." The goon scuttled away, but the girl remained in her tracks. Was she mulling something over?

"Oh, Farore, we're going to die," Mido whined. "This is all your fault, Link! If I hadn't listened to you, I'd still be in there, and only you would be tracked down for Redead meat!"

"Shut up!" Link shushed. Footsteps were starting to approach. Link pushed Mido back out of harm's way as the door slammed open.

"Aha!" the girl proclaimed. She surveyed the room and let out a sigh. "I know you're in here, kids. Your nasty shoes left behind a footprint going in this direction. Come out quietly, and no harm has to be done."

"Over my dead body!" Mido screeched, and he promptly threw a side table at her. She dodged out of its way as it crashed into the wall, damaging one of its legs.

"That was imported all the way from Holodrum!" she pouted. "Oh, you'll pay for that, you will." She outreached a hand. "500,000 rupees."

"F-five hundred THOUSAND rupees?" Mido gaped. "You can't be serious."

She threw up her hands in mock distress. "And here I was, trying to be nice to you two. Yes, I am completely serious, that side table is solid mahogany and gold! Worth more than you two combined!"

Mido chuckled nervously. "Hehe… oops?"

She glared at him. "Well, I have another one somewhere, so whatever." She cleared her throat. "Anyway, I came down here for a reason."

"Yeah, to murder us violently with your hands since we broke out of our prison," Mido muttered.

The girl scoffed. "No, that was that idiot's fault for not keeping a good eye on you two. No, I came down here because I think you have the wrong impression of me."

"You took us as your hostages!" Link pointed out. "I think I have a pretty clear impression of who you really are!"

"I didn't want to take you as my hostage!" she groaned. "My ship was under attack, and I couldn't just throw you off the side! That river down below isn't the deepest, I noticed."

"That's a very unpiratey thing to say," Link said, raising an eyebrow.

"Exactly my point!" she cried. "Just because I'm a pirate doesn't mean that I do pirate things. I'm on a mission from the Golden Goddesses. I don't have time for trivial things like hostages." Glancing aside, she muttered, "Although, it did take me five years to find the Hylian Shield…"

"So, you're saying that you're not trying to be a pirate?" Link asked.

"No! Well, yes, but… Agh, I don't know how to explain it!" She grabbed the sides of her heads and clenched her teeth. "Well, I wanted to invite you to dinner in any case. I like to know the people who are roaming around on my ship so I can sleep in good conscious."

"Y-you're letting us go?" Link gasped.

"I'm not letting you go, per se, but I'm letting you walk around my ship. I'm not an evil person; I just like to stay focused on task."

"Prove it," Mido sneered. "If you're not evil, then you'll take us home."

"Don't give me that false dichotomy," she snapped back. "Did you not see your fellow villagers shooting death cannonballs at me? I'll send you back there when your village has calmed down and I can safely land there without becoming public enemy number one."

Mido glared at her, but Link stepped into the middle of it. "Alright, we'll eat dinner with you if that makes you feel better, okay?"

"Oh, no," Mido pouted. "I'm not eating any food with her, and I sure as heck am not eating with the both of you."

"It's ok, I don't want to eat with your shoddy attitude anyway," she huffed. "You can just eat with the crew; I'm sure you'll find them appealing. Birds of a feather flock together, am I right?" She gestured to the room and said, "Unless you really like the stuffiness of that closet, you can stay in here. Just try not to kill each other over your animosity, alright?"

She was about to leave the room when she turned back around. "Oh, and make sure you clean up your shoes. I don't want any more mud around here."

Link followed the instructions one of the crew members had given him and made his way down to the bottom of the ship where a decorative door awaited him. He knocked twice on it, and a voice from behind it yelled, "Enter!" He had to use a lot of strength to open the heavy door, but when it was ajar, he felt his mouth hang open.

A huge buffet table was stretched out in front of him, adorned with all sorts of food, including fruits, desserts, and a rather large roast pig in the middle. The table itself seemed to be of the same nature of the side table Mido broke, as it was a rich brown color accented with flecks of gold. The girl got up from her chair and dabbed her mouth with a fancy napkin. She, too, seemed magnificent as she had dressed up for the occasion. Over her usual blue vest and khaki shorts, she was wearing a brilliant magenta cloak fastened with golden buttons and a frilly cravat around her neck. She was wearing tan boots that went up to her knees, and her floppy ponytail was tied up into a nice bun. She looked very distinguished.

"You like the buffet?" she asked. "We rarely use this room except on special occasions, and I figured this happened to be one. It's not every day a new person comes on board!" Link didn't say anything, and she grew a bit awkward at his silence. She waved a hand over to a seat opposite from hers. "Please, sit down."

Link scooted the chair out and sat down. The intoxicating smells were so heavenly that Link took a deep whiff and let out a sigh. The girl giggled. "Believe it or not, Nudge is a great cook." She nodded at him. "Go ahead; dig in."

Link helped himself to a juicy part of the pig, which seemed rather familiar to him. Hadn't he seen this somewhere? No matter; he piled a blob of corn casserole on his plate and ripped off a piece of bread. A lot of time must have passed since he last ate with his family as his stomach was growling up a storm.

"So," the girl said. "Would you like to start off by asking me any questions?"

Link furrowed his brow at her strange way of making conversation, but nevertheless he said, "Yeah, I don't think I know your name."

"Tetra," she said.

Link was taken aback by her abruptness. "What, just Tetra? Do you have a last name?"

"I do." Well, she was a being a bit stubborn. "I also have a first name, too. Tetra's my middle name. But I don't think you really need to know my first or last name, now do you?" Cryptic and secretive. Just what he wanted from a captor. "And what's your name?"

"Link. But you don't need to know my middle or last name."

Tetra glared back at him and sighed. "Well, then we'll have a mutual agreement that neither needs to know any more about the other person's name, agreed?"

"Agreed."

"Excellent. Anything else you want to know?"

Link swallowed his bread down and asked, "So, how exactly does a teenage girl like you go about conducting a crew of middle-aged men? Aren't you a bit concerned about this at all?"

"They're not all middle-aged men," she muttered. "Niko's, like twenty or something." She cleared her throat and said, "They respect me, that's all. Without me, they'd be lost little ducklings. They need some authority, and I am the perfect person to provide it."

"A… a teenage girl? Them being bossed around by one? Are you following me?"

"A teenage girl can be a lot of things, Link," she stated, and the issue was dropped.

"I just have one more question. What exactly is that wind thing you do? You know, the… thing." He motioned with his hands a swinging of a lasso, and Tetra nearly choked on her grapes.

"You must mean Farore's Wind," she said, catching her breath. "You must be Hylian, am I right?"

"Er, yeah, I am."

"That's what I thought. Most Hylians aren't accustomed to seeing Sheikah magic." She cleared her throat and smoothed down her cravat. "You see, I'm half Hylian, half Sheikah. My mom was pure Sheikah, my dad is pure Hylian."

"You're an actual Sheikah?" Link asked in amazement.

"Er, half Sheikah."

"That's awesome! So, what else can you do beside teleport? Breathe underwater? Start fires? Bring down huge lightning bolts?"

Tetra started laughing. "I'm not that good, Link! Well, I can start fires, but I really only know three spells." She scratched her head awkwardly. "I was being trained by another Sheikah, and I had to leave before I got to learn everything. But I learned three of the basics."

"Oh, really? What are they?"

Tetra beamed. "I'm glad you asked!" She seemed to like getting the chance to be an insufferable know-it-all. "Well, as you've experienced, Farore's Wind is a teleporting spell. It casts a green wind on the user and anybody or thing attached to the user, and it teleports them anywhere they want to."

"Anywhere? So why use a ship when you could just teleport your crew everywhere?"

Tetra scratched her head again. "Well, it's not that simple. I only have half Sheikah blood, so my spells aren't that powerful to begin with. Only a highly trained Sheikah can go anywhere, and not even that far. You see, you have to be able to imagine the place you want to go clearly in your mind, otherwise…" She shuddered and scratched at a fingernail of hers. "Things happen."

She cleared her throat. "Another one is Din's Fire, which obviously starts a fire. Like before, I'm not that powerful, so I have to sort of cup my hands together to even start a tiny flame." She demonstrated this hand motion, and Link ooh'ed his appreciation. "Cool, right? I mean, hot." She giggled at her lame pun.

"So what's the third one?"

"The third is perhaps the strongest out of all of them," she said ominously. "Nayru's Love. With it, you can protect yourself or someone else from anything imagined. Arrows, bombs-"

"Cannonballs."

Tetra laughed. "Yes, that too. But all I can do is a measly shield, and I have to point my hand at it as well." She raised her arm, and a small blue force field appeared. It was only about the size of a regular shield, but Link was sure it proved to be helpful in more cases than one. "My mentor used to be able to encompass me and her in an entire crystal!" she said giddily. "It was stupefying!"

"Your mentor wasn't your mother?" Link asked, confused.

"O-oh," Tetra faltered. "My mother died when I was only six." She looked down into her lap to avoid meeting Link's gaze.

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that." Now Link felt bad. Great. "Well, both my parents died when I was only two, so I know how you feel."

"Oh, Link," Tetra said softly, her normally ice cold eyes turning a warm blue. "And here I was, moping about my mother when you've lost both your parents."

"Yes, well, you were older when she passed away, so you knew her more, and it was more devastating," he hastily said, a tinge of pink creeping up on his cheeks.

All of a sudden, Tetra started to laugh. "Look at us!" she chuckled. "Fighting over whose death was more depressing! Who even fights over things like that?"

Tetra's laugh was so infectious that Link started to get the giggles as well. A wave of emotions just came over him, and suddenly, both him and Tetra were both laughing and crying at the same time. Link wiped away a tear and realized how strange the scene must be. A captor and her hostage were eating dinner like civilized people and then proceeded to laugh and cry off their heads like they were old friends. It was weird. Link felt strangely at home with this girl, even having known her for mere hours. She seemed to notice this, too.

"Y'know, Link? I like you. You seem like a friendly guy. Nice and chivalrous, too. In this day and age, it's hard to find someone with a passion for protecting the weak like you. I respect that." She cleared her throat and dried her eyes with her napkin. "Consider my death threats your initiation for coming on board my ship. And congratulations; you passed."

Link smiled. "Thanks, Tetra." He cut out a piece of the pork and plopped it into his mouth. "So, any questions for me?"

"Well, I guess we're already past all of my initial questions of 'Are you a good person?' or 'What race are you?' so…" She seemed hesitant.

"What? What is it?"

"Erm… It's nothing." Her eyes shifted to the left, and she fiddled with her fork.

"C'mon, ask me anything. I can handle it. Yes, I am sixteen. I have a sister who's fifteen, a grandma who's ancient, I like chocolate over vanilla, I wear boxers…"

Tetra stifled a laugh. "Well, that's not exactly what I was going to ask, but…"

"So, come on!"

"Er… Do you have a girlfriend?"

Link blushed. "U-uh," he stammered. Tetra was blushing just as red as he was.

"Er, this is strictly for background purposes! You know, so I can clearly see what kind of person you are! I-I don't have a boyfriend, but that's coincidental with what I'm asking. This is all merely scientific!"

"Yes, yes of course," Link coughed. "Er, no."

"No?"

"Er, no, I don't have one."

"Oh."

"I have a friend that's a girl that would say otherwise, but Mido has the hots for her and… Well, no getting in his way."

"So… you like her?"

"No! That's not what I meant! I… Ugh, it's complicated."

"I see…" Tetra looked down at her lap, and her hands were wringing together. The awkwardness in the room was thicker than the cream puffs. Suddenly, she stood up from the table and smoothed down her cape. "Dinner was pleasant, Link," she said, regaining her clear speaking voice. "I had a nice time."

"You barely ate," Link pointed out.

"Well, it is, like, four in the morning. I'm not that hungry." She stood there for a while in silence before saying, "Well, I'll see you later." She hustled out of the room.

Link stared back at the mountains of food. "Who's going to clean this up?" he wondered.

So, how was it? I got Tetra's formal outfit from one of my favorite games (Miles Edgeworth, anybody?) Thank you again everyone who reviewed last chapter; it means a lot to me. Let's keep it up! I love me some reviews. And don't forget to fave/follow! :)