Hey, all. I got this one finished so I could let you all know that Hansel and Gretel went really well. The orchestra did a good job, the singers did a good job, and everything else about the production was good too. It's kind of hard to see it go after two performances, but eh, that's life.

Anyways, I'm doing an AU take on Link that I think I should have mentioned earlier. And trust me, if you don't freakin' hate the guy after this chapter, I'm at a loss to tell you otherwise. Of course, you can still like him elsewhere, but here, I'm not inclined to think so.

So yeah. You know the rest.

I wanted this author's note to be longer, but for some reason I flashed to the C2 list while writing this. Isn't that one of the most annoying things in the world?

But I digress. Here's the next chapter.

Chapter 7: Character Studies, Phase 1

The Altean Prince sat on a bench with his hand on his face.

He knew that he could not bring himself to tell any of them the truth. If he did, then he knew that his reputation as being one of the more popular men of the tournament would change to the point that nobody would talk to him.

Besides, who was a prince to say that the decisions of others forced him to end up where he was?

Marth thought about his father and how much of a hypocrite the man was. He had told many of the wisdoms that Marth knew, yet he publicly violated all of them whenever he had the chance. The worst part for Marth was that everybody gave no heed to the double-sidedness of his father's personna.

The young prince seemed to be the only one who would pick up on such a thing, but nobody ever listened to him. Whenver he did say it to his father's face, he would somehow find himself locked up in a cellar of some peasant's house. This made Marth hate him quite a bit, and over the years he came to defy his father at every turn.

Of course, this soiled his reputation with other people as well; it eventually caused his friends to leave him, and it also caused many royals within his own court to distrust him.

Eventually, however, the truth came out with an effort from Marth; the king had told them that an invading army was coming in to attack, and then Marth found his opportunity to expose his hipocrisy when he failed to follow up to his promise to end the threat. In the end, Marth disobeyed his father's orders to help just to make a point about how hypocritical that man was.

And they took the point away. Peasants refused to listen to him after that, and many began to dissaprove of him.

However, he did not count in the fact that his father would be so infuriated he would be willing to do anything to get his own son out of his sight forever.

And because of all of that, Marth had gotten to where he was.

Not that he wasn't gratefull he was there. After all, he had made a few new friends at this place who seemed to listen to all of the wisdoms he gave.

For Marth, though, it was the bitterness of the whole affair that made him angry. It was the bitterness towards his father, who constantly violated his own truths. It was bitterness towards his mother, who did not live long enough to constantly remind him to live up to his oftentimes blank promises. It was bitterness towards his friends, who spoke sweet phrases yet backed away when he told them things. It was bitterness towards his countrymen for not realizing that perhaps the young prince had a point. It was bitterness that fueled his anger towards those in his old country.

Marth did not want to say any of this to anybody, for he knew that besides leaving him, they would begin festering a bitterness towards something.

The last thing the young prince wanted was for somebody else to go through what he did.

Marth's train of thought was interrupted as he heard footsteps approach. He turned to see Ganondorf walking up to him.

"Why, hello," said Marth. "What are you doing here?"

"Listen, Marth, you've been hiding these things you do not wish to speak of since the start of the tournament, yes?" asked Ganondorf.

"Ganondorf, can you not respect other's privacy for once?" asked Marth. "I do not want to talk about it."

"Minding your business is better than leaving it alone to burst," said Ganondorf. "Please, Marth. Letting the thoughts out is better than keeping them in."

"Well, I prefer to keep my thoughts to myself," said Marth. Ganondorf apparently did not want to notice the anger rising in the prince's voice.

"But Marth, you really should –"

"I wish not to talk about it!" snapped the young prince.

There was a slight pause in the conversation.

"Alright then," said Ganondorf. "Have it your way."

The king came closer to Marth and put a hand on his shoulder.

"But let me tell you this," said Ganondorf. "If there is anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me. You listen to me when I speak, so it is only fair for me to do the same to you."

Ganondorf's hand departed from its spot on Marth's shoulder.

"With that, I will wish you a good day," said the king.

He left without saying another word.

Link sat down on the couch in the match lounge, with the screen black as if to help him with his thoughts.

Somebody had ratted the information that Link had given about Ganondorf to Master Hand, and he had made an announcement the day before that there was no evidence of cheating. Of course, Link pointed out that a masking magic could have been used and that Ganondorf more than anybody could have done it, but then the hand countered by saying that Zelda could have done it as well, and that she had no reason to let Ganondorf win. Which meant that it was safe to assume that what he said was a lie.

Link knew this did not help his reputation any.

That damn Ganondorf is always attempting to soil my reputation, thought Link. Well, tough. The more he messes with my reputation, the worse I will make him look.

And Link of course knew he would follow up to this promise.

After all, the incident almost did reveal the dishonesty of his tactics to win the tournament.

Link was so popular people failed to notice that his match with Popo had gone by a little too quickly to be true. The Hylian had also told Samus not to tell anybody so Ganondorf could suffer in silence.

However, the young Hylian had a different reason for hiding the mass lie he had told.

It was because he himself was employing cheating in hopes of winning the tournament. No matter what happened, he had a resolve to win the tournament and look good to everybody, even if he had to resort to dishonest methods to do so.

In fact, he had been cheating the entire first tournament as well. Link probably would not have gotten to the final match if it was not for the fact that he had constantly been hacking the code the nights before his matches. At first, it was a little hard to do, seeing as he had no technical knowledge, but he improved as the tournament went on, and by the start of the second tournament, he had gotten good enough that he could control each person's match. The young man smirked as he thought about how Captain Falcon lost the first match of the tournament; he had enough gall to say disrespectful things about Link, and thus Link had hacked the code to give Samus twice as much power as she normally had.

And Link felt he could not stop cheating. Once he had started, he found the notion of winning without work to be too tempting. Therefore, he constantly went back to the same monitor in the same office to ensure that he would make it to the final match.

He especially wanted to look good for Zelda. True, they had been in a relationship for the longest time, but Link wanted it to go to the next step sometime soon; he was getting ready to propose to her.

Of course, Zelda was royalty, which meant that any proposal to her meant that you instantly acclaimed the spot of king of Hyrule. And that was why Link wanted to get Zelda to love him in the first place.

He wanted to be king becaused of the attention it garnered him.

Attention was all Link wanted from anybody; he yearned to be known by everybody. He had been vastly unappreciated as a boy living in Kokiri Woods, and when he became king of Hyrule, they would beforced to know who he was, whether the inhabitants of Hyrule desired it to be so or not.

Attention was also why he was the only one daring enough to save Hyrule in the first place; half of Link's life was playing the role of con man while having enough evidence to back this conning of the people. True, he did have the Triforce of Courage, but Hero of Time he was definitely not. He had mastered magic of all sorts, and he had mastered it enough so that he could leave an energy signature equal to that of the Hero of Time so he could get the Master Sword out of the stone.

Therefore, he was used to manipulating people so he could get the desired attention out of them. He was also quite good at it, and thus one could detect no hint of deception in his eyes whenever he stated that he was the Hero of Time.

Thus, Link's life was full of deception; he used it to get people to like him just because he loved the feeling of having everybody's eye on him.

Link got up with a smug smile on his face and went to the mess hall to eat.