Chapter 7 - Showcase Showdown
A/N: Now it's time to finally get back to those Western themes that this story's barely touched on since the first couple of chapters, lol
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"There's something I want to point out before progressing any further with this excessively inane plot," Link interjected. "Why the hell does Ganondorf think he can assume control of Hyrule by overthrowing the governor, your dad? Hyrule has a democracy now, right? That's...not how democracies work. Like, at all. At least, if what I remember from my high school social studies class is correct..."
"Just suspend your disbelief anyway!" Zelda implored.
Link shrugged his shoulders and continued on. "So at this point, it was time to load up the ole save file and finally get to saving this land I had grown quite fond of. So I turned on my N64 with the gold OoT cartridge inserted, pressed Start at the title screen and loaded my save file...only to find that it wasn't there! 'Oh, for the love of Nayru! Houston, we have a problem!' I remember shouting. Well...OK—what I said actually had a lot more expletives in it, but this is the PG-13 version."
"What did you do next?" Zelda asked.
"What do you think I had to do?!" was Link's annoyed response. "I had to play the whole game all over again to get back to where I was! I had to pretend I was meeting you for the first time again and solve all those puzzles again and make all those clever sexual innuendos again."
"Technically, you didn't have to do that last thing."
"Yeah, I did," Link retorted without missing a beat. "Anyway, after I finally got back to where I left off, it was time for the ultimate confrontation. I found Gan-Gan in the immense throne room of The Castle, the same one he usurped from your dad, and I prepared myself to..."
"Wait just a minute," Zelda interrupted, looking puzzled. "There's no throne room in the governor's mansion."
"Well...whatever the governor's mansion equivalent of that is. I found him In the oval office, on the porcelain pedestal, making a sacrificial offering in the temple of water."
"Meaning...?" Zelda asked, still completely clueless.
"In the bathroom, of course!" he cried, sighing heavily.
"Oh boy," she chuckled. A hand was held to her face out of mild embarrassment. "So let me get this straight...you ambushed Ganondorf while he was on the potty?"
"It sounds so much more ridiculous when you say it like that. But he certainly doesn't fight fair so why should I? After I confronted him there, he flew the coop through a nearby window and I gave chase. He crossed paths with a horse and acquired it using the five-finger discount. Luckily, there was another horse nearby for me to 'borrow,' which is totally different from stealing because...um...I needed it and stuff. He pushed that horse to the limit, galloping swiftly along until he spotted a train headed due north, which he boarded from his horse in what was quite honestly a very daring maneuver. Of course, Nintendo insisted that my horse-to-train jump be done by a stuntman because their insurance wouldn't allow me to do it and totally not because I couldn't do it or anything...So I continued chasing the big bad guy to the top of the train cars. The wind was unbelievably strong and—"
"Now wait just a Redead-frozen minute there, Link!" Zelda huffed, putting her hands up in the sign for time out. "Thanks for the Hollywood theatrics and all, but I was with you that day when you fought Ganondorf, remember? You know none of that actually happened!"
"It's called 'taking creative liberties,' Zelda! The real story is usually so boring that no one wants to hear it, so I gotta jazz up some of the more mundane details a bit."
"A bit?!" she scoffed incredulously. "Please just stick to telling what actually happened this time! The real version of events isn't nearly as unexciting as you make it seem."
Link sighed out of resignation. "Fine. I didn't actually find Ganondorf in The Castle—he was on the streets of Cattle Town instead. I knew it was time for a duel 'cuz the settlement was eerily devoid people—the NPCs were all MIAs, if you will. Picture all the Western tropes you can think of because they were all present and accounted for—high noon sun directly overhead, tumbleweed blowing along, twangy BGM which only the player can hear, hands poised over the pistols at our sides, staring each other down in a come hither way..."
"Wait, what was that last part?" Zelda inquired curiously.
"Um...hold on, let me re-read the script." He whipped the 2H2W script out from under his cap (A/N: So that's what he keeps in there...) and rapidly scanned it until he found the line in question. "Oh yeah, here it is. I said, 'Staring each other down in a come hither way, dot dot dot.'"
"You do realize that sounds kinda gay, right?"
"Cut!" cried the director, Miyamoto-san, through a megaphone. Link and Zelda looked toward the off-set spot where the director was sitting.
"No, no, no, the lighting in this scene is all wrong! The setting sun should be over there!" Miyamoto-san yelled, pointing to his left. "Link should be bathed in warm light since he's the hero-guy everyone loves and Ganondorf needs to be cast in shadows since he's more evil than my ex-wife during our divorce proceedings." Muttering to himself, he added, "I thought all film students learned basic good vs. evil lighting techniques in their first year...Meh. What a bunch of noobs."
The crew scurried around the set in order to meet the director's demands before the next take. "Places, everyone! I gotta meet Mario at six for Italian so we gotta wrap this up soon," he said while pointing at his watch impatiently.
The executive producer ran up to Miyamoto with a cell phone pressed to his ear, out of breath and with a concerned look on his face. "Sir, I have a...um...'RandomReader?'...on the phone. You won't believe this, but...she says she doesn't know who Aerith is!"
Miyamoto's jaw dropped to the floor as he slowly shook his head in disbelief. "This...this is simply unprecedented. How...? How can one call himself a gamer yet not know Aerith? Have people already forgotten about the tremendous sacrifice she made to save us all?" He bit his lower lip, looking as if he was holding back tears. Clearly, he was greatly affected by this news. "We'll have to wrap for the day. I'm going to need some time alone in my trailer." He began walking in a daze away from the set. No one saw him again for several days as he painstakingly worked through his complex emotions.
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"I know that you and Ganondorf had a duel at high noon...but what I don't remember is...who shot first?" Zelda asked.
"C'mon, Zelda! Everyone knows it was Han," Link swiftly answered.
"Huh?"
"J/k, j/k! But really, my quick draw skills are simply not up to par, so Big G inevitably shot first. However, you used a lightning-quick ice spell (err...ice-quick?) that froze the bullet in place and made it so heavy that it simply fell down and shattered. That was followed by your rendition of 'Let it Go' which I think any ice spell-using sorceress princess is contractually obligated to belt out at some point. You saved my tail, Zelda! That's when I knew...I just knew for sure that you really, truly cared about me."
"More like I didn't want to have a mess to clean up if your innards were splattered everywhere," she retorted tartly.
"Pfft! You know I could never really die! I make too much money for Nintendo, so the chances of me kicking the bucket are probably the same as Ganondorf taking a break from usurping the throne to actually pursue a hobby or something. I'm sure there's an evil overlord simulator/minion management game somewhere on Steam that could keep him happily occupied with some good, clean fun for once."
"Um...actually," Zelda explained, "sorry to burst your bubble, but the series could totally go on even if you died since all the LoZ games star different guys who just happen to be named 'Link' or 'Buttface' or whatever the almighty player feels like entering for your name...with the exception of the games that are directly related, of course. And besides...if you died, that would just prove that you weren't really hero material anyway, so maybe the goddesses would do a better job of picking a chosen one next time."
"As if! This is me you're talking about here—Link, the guy everybody and their mailman loves, who's always in the box art of any game I appear in, front and center—or slightly off-center, but still definitely in the front—including even the Smash Bros. games which contain roughly a bazillion characters at this point. Yep, Nintendo's figured out that just by slapping me, Mario, or Pikachu on a box and charging 500 rupees for it, they can sit back and just wait for the dough to come rollin' in! Ehehehe! Where are you on the box art, huh, Zelda? Wait, let me get my magnifying glass out so we can play a game of 'Where's Zelda?' to find out, shall we?" He pretended to hold a magnifying glass to his face as if he were examining something. "Hold on a minute...I think I've almost found you on this box...Oops! Uh, sorry, that was just a speck of dust. My bad."
Zelda was so steamed about this that it seemed she was about to boil over. "Oh, who cares about the box art anyway?! My name's right in the title! Without me, it wouldn't even be the same game!"
"Um, no. Hyrule Warriors doesn't have your precious name in the title, for one. You don't even show up in some games, and even when you are in them, you usually don't really do anything but boss me around and get kidnapped. I'm the one always risking this pretty-boy face of mine to fulfill your stupid legend! The whole series could easily go on without you, just like it did in Majora's Mask and Link's (My?) Awakening!"
Zelda could only stamp her feet and puff her cheeks adorably in response. "Hmph!"
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"Now finish him off so I can send him to the Dark Realm," Zelda commanded, referring to the usurper king who she had just successfully incapacitated with light magic.
"Wait, that seems a little harsh. Don't they have due process in Hyrule territory?" Link inquired.
"Dew process? What the heck is that? Is that how they make Mountain Dew?"
"Ugh, no! It's that right people have to go through the snore-inducing judicial process rather than be thrown straight into a dungeon or executed for something that they potentially didn't do."
"Ew, heavens, no," Zelda replied. "We do things here the way we've done them for millenia: we see dark skin and/or strange features on a person and immediately think 'evil!'...Isn't that how they do things everywhere?" she asked curiously.
"Oh, for the love of..." He sweatdropped in exasperation. "You've got to be kidding me! So your 'justice system' is the equivalent of racial profiling?"
"Is there something wrong with that? Some races are just plain evi—"
"OoooooK, this seems like a good enough place to end the chapter while Zelly and I have a chit-chat about a little thing called the Geneva convention."
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How important do you think Zelda is to the LoZ series on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 = essential, 1 = what was her name again?). Do you think if Miyamoto had directed the '90s Mario Bros. movie, it would have actually been good? Is it possible to hear the words 'let it go' and not think of the damn Disney song every time?! All of these questions and more may be answered in the series finale of—dun dun dun!—How Hyrule Was Won...