I do not, nor will I ever, own Sonic the Werehog. (Okay seriously, where is this coming from? That's supposed to say the Legend of Zelda! I didn't even play Unleashed!)

"Okay," Farore said, looking slightly frazzled. "The group of seven is portal-hopping, the multilingual Aspect is in Labrynna, the time-traveling Aspect is getting along with himself fairly well, and the painted Aspect just met up with the sailing Aspect. Have I missed anything?"

"Don't think so," Din replied, counting up the tally on her fingers. "You doing alright?"

"It's just a lot to keep track of," Farore sighed. "It's times like these that I dearly wish we were omniscient."

"If we were omniscient," Nayru said, "we'd likely be one of those stuffed-up elder gods who just sits and watches everything and never intervenes at all."

Farore grimaced. "Yeah, I much prefer being able to do something."

"Speaking of which," Din gestured to the reality window. "You might want to check in on the group again, they're on the move."

"Thanks," Farore breathed, rushing over. "Can you do me a big favor and keep an eye on the others? Let me know if the multilingual Aspect wakes up from his nap."

"Sure thing. I can check in with the sailing and painted ones too, a sleeping Aspect won't do much for a bit."

"And I'll keep an eye on our time-traveling duo," Nayru volunteered.

Farore smiled. "Girls, I don't know what I'd do without you. Now," she flexed her fingers, "let's get to it. We've still got a lot of work to do."

It was a strange thing, Dusk decided, to throw oneself through a black reality-eating void and have reasonable expectations to not be eaten in doing so. Probably, if it weren't for the fact that he was a Hero and had a vast amount of practice in stuffing his common sense down a hole in order to confront some ridiculously intimidating monster, he would have had more problems with this whole situation.

However, since he was a Hero and did have a vast amount of experience in stuffing his common sense down a hole, he followed his newly-met counterparts through the rift without issue.

Of course, when he popped out the other side and promptly tripped over the pile-up of other Links, he had a bit more of an issue.

"...Ow," he decided.

"Oh, like you've got problems," Blue snarled from somewhere underneath him. "Vio, get off my leg!"

"I only fell on your leg because you tripped me!" Vio shot back hotly. "If you weren't sprawled all over the floor right as I came out, we wouldn't be in this situation!"

"Well I only fell because Steam tripped me!"

"Oi, don't bring me into this," Steam grumbled from somewhere farther below. "You're all heavy enough as it is..."

"Speak for yourself," Realm wheezed, sounding as though he was on the very bottom.

"Blue, how can you complain about your leg when Realm has a bigger problem?" Vio demanded.

"Because I can't feel it, that's how!"

"I can't breathe," Realm gasped.

"Could whoever has their foot in my face please move it?" Red asked plaintively from... somewhere.

"Sorry Red, but I can't move my foot until I can feel it, and that won't happen until Vio gets off it!"

"Okay, could someone move!?" Steam snapped. "Who's on top?"

"Me," Dusk replied. "Hang on a minute, I'll get off."

"Thank you," Realm managed, sounding strained.

"VIO!"

"I can't get off you until Green gets off me!" Vio shouted. "Would you calm down already?"

"BOTH OF YOU, SHUT IT!" Green bellowed. "You're not helping anything! Blue, shut up and be patient, Vio, shut up and help me untangle our weapons."

"See Blue, I told you there was a reason-"

"VIO!"

"Right, sorry."

Dusk stooped down to where Red was sandwiched between Blue and Steam and asked, "Are you sure this is normal?"

"Yep," Red nodded happily.

Anything Dusk would have responded with was interrupted by a metallic clatter as Green and Vio got their equipment separated, followed by a rustling of fabric and a relieved gasp from Blue as his leg suddenly received circulation again.

"Owww, pins and needles," he announced.

"Sorry," Vio muttered.

"I mean, it's not like I lost the leg, but this is the second time! This really doesn't need to become a thing."

"It's not like I aim for you, it just happens."

"Well, maybe next time you can aim away."

"In midair?" Vio gave his sibling a skeptical look. "That's physically impossible."

"For you, maybe."

"It's impossible for everybody!"

"Have you ever tried?"

"That doesn't make any-"

"Seriously guys?" Green interrupted. "Seriously?"

Dusk tilted his head. "...he has his work cut out for him, doesn't he?"

"He always does a good job, though," Red replied, grinning. He slid off the pile and tugged his tunic back into place, and turned around to give Steam a hand up while Dusk reached down to Realm.

"You okay?"

Realm took a deep breath in and grinned. "Yeah, just slightly oxygen-deprived for a minute. Weird feeling, that. I don't feel it very often."

"What, you've never been out of breath before?"

"No, I have," Realm assured him. "It just doesn't happen very often."

Dusk gave him an odd look. "Er... were all your battles just really stationary...?"

"Oh, gosh no," Realm snickered. "I ran for my life for hours."

"Then how...?"

"Don't ask," Steam cut in. "Trust me on this. You don't wanna know."

"People can't run for hours," Dusk said blankly.

Steam seemed to shudder at a memory. "You don't wanna know."

"I'm not that bad, am I?" Realm asked.

Steam ignored him entirely, shuddered again, and walked off to the Four Sword Links instead. Dusk met Realm's confused gaze and just shrugged.

"I'm pretty sure I've missed something, so I'm just gonna go with it."

He turned around to find the rest of the group-

-and came face-to-face with the rather terrifying image of a ticked-off Midna.

"AND WHERE EXACTLY HAVE YOU BEEN?" She yelled into his face. "I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU FOR HOURS! HOURS! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW BORED I'VE BEEN?"

"Oh no" Dusk said, realizing that a bored Midna was even more dangerous. "Please tell me you didn't do something incredibly dangerous and stupid that will most likely end with me running for my life. Again."

"What kind of answer is that!?" Midna shot back, thankfully at a lower volume this time. "Of course I did! Who do you take me for, Shad? But that doesn't answer my question. So, Link, where have you been?"

"Uhh..." Dusk was just now realizing that he had no idea, and he glanced at Realm in the hopes that he would know. Unfortunately, Realm was staring at Midna and looking as though he'd just been slapped in the face with a fish. Dusk knew this look all too well; it was the default expression for anybody who'd just met Midna for the first time. He grimaced – Realm would be out of commission for at least four more minutes.

"I think it was Hyrule?" he offered eventually.

"You think it was Hyrule," Midna repeated dryly. "Well that's specific. Anything else you'd like to vaguely inform me about?"

"I met some people," Dusk said. "Want me to introduce you?"

"Is this kid one of them?" Midna asked, examining the still shell-shocked Realm curiously. "He looks kinda familiar."

She frowned at him, then flicked her eyes back to Dusk. Then back to Realm. Then back to Dusk, longer this time.

"Link," she said evenly. "Why does this kid look like you?"

"Well-"

"Why is there a floating dalmatian with a helmet?" Blue said abruptly.

"What did you just call-"

"Midna," Dusk said hurriedly, "this is Link. Over there is also Link, the guy next to him is also Link, and then we have Link, Link, and the boy behind them all who's also Link."

Midna paused, gave all of them an intense scrutiny, and then stared at her partner for a minute.

A cricket chirped awkwardly.

"...This is revenge for me throwing you through, isn't it?" she asked eventually.

"Added bonus, actually," Dusk replied, smirking.

"This probably should have occurred to me sooner," the older-but-younger Hero of Time said, "but how in Nayru's Name did you get here?"

His counterpart frowned. "I'm... not quite sure. Everything was moving very fast."

"Okay, but... do you have any ideas?"

"I think there was something black?" the other Link offered. "I was on my way to confront the thing that was trying to end the world and there was this tunnel, but everything sorta blurred once I got in there and then there was a black thing and then I was here. Which is why I thought you were a doppelganger rip-off, actually."

"When you say 'something black'," the taller Link said, "would that thing over there fit the description?"

Both Links turned and eyeballed the middlingly large, utterly black void that was happily eating away at Hyrule Field as they watched.

"...That's pretty close, yeah," the shorter Link agreed. "Think I can get back through? I was kinda in the middle of saving a country."

"Do you think you can?" his counterpart wondered. "I mean, it kind of looks like it's devouring reality."

As if to prove his point, a Cucco pecked at the edge of the hole and promptly ceased to exist.

"...Maybe not," the younger-but-older Link decided, looking queasy. "But I have to do something, the world was about to end!"

"The world was what?"

"Oh, uh – spoilers."

"You can't just say something like that and not expect me to notice!" his other self snapped. "I have to save the world again?"

"Stop talking before you cause another paradox!"

"That was a one-time thing!"

"A one-time thing which would have ripped the fabric of reality in half if it hadn't turned out to be a stable loop," the shorter Link retorted. "The Song of Storms technically shouldn't even exist because it was technically never written and don't even get me started on the temporal mechanics of how that works but we were lucky and that's all there is to it. I am not going to risk another reality collapse like that, got it?"

Older-but-younger Link stared at younger-but-older Link.

"...When did I become such a stick-in-the-mud?"

"How was I ever this immature?"

"I am not immature!"

"You're nine."

"What does that have to do with being immature!? Would people really leave the fate of the world to an immature nine-year-old!?"

"Apparently," the shorter Link muttered. "Though I don't know what they were thinking. I must have been a nightmare to work with."

"I am not a – actually, Impa would probably agree with you..."

Link snorted. "To be fair, Impa thinks everybody is a nightmare to work with. She likes her partners to be efficient to an impossible degree."

"That's true, but you'll remember that we kinda broke into the Castle and made the guards she trained look like idiots."

"If people are going to be stupid enough to only look one way in thirty second intervals, I'm going to take advantage of it," the smaller Link said. Then he added, "Remember that experience for when you meet Deku Scrubs, by the way."

"I assume that'll make sense once I get there?"

"Pretty much."

"That's really annoying," the taller Link informed his counterpart.

"It's either that or the paradox," the other Link replied.

Older-but-younger Link let out an irritated huff. "On second thought, you're annoying, which is why everything you say annoys me. Annoyance by proxy."

"Hey, a lot of what you say annoys me too," Younger-but-older Link retorted. "And for the record-"

He stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide as a thought occurred to him.

"I just realized – you're me and I'm you. We just insulted ourselves and then agreed on it."

The other Link blinked, then grimaced. "Okay, wow. I just gave myself a headache trying to think through that one."

"...Do you mean that you you gave you a headache, or I you gave you a headache?"

"You just made it worse!"

The future Link paused, then grinned mischievously. "Okay, but is that you you making it worse or I you making it worse?"

His counterpart just groaned.

"So, let me get this straight," Midna began, having processed the abnormal amount of her partner in a surprisingly short amount of time. "There's seven of you scattered throughout various dimensions or what-have-you?"

"Theoretically, there could be an infinite amount of Links in the universe," Vio said. "But yes, we currently know of seven."

Midna gave them all an appraising stare. "Mm-hmm. So, do all of you turn into wolves, have an utterly georgeous partner, and have to deal with an insane wackjob from another world, or is that just my Link here?"

"Georgous?" Dusk sputtered.

"Wait, insane wackjob?" Realm repeated, confused.

"Another world?" Steam added, equally confused.

"Who turns into a wolf!?" Blue yelped.

Dusk gave Midna a Look, which held the unspoken message of, 'This is why I don't let you do the talking anymore', then sighed and said, "I do."

Everyone gaped at him.

"You do what!?"

"I turn into a wolf," Dusk repeated, shrinking awkwardly under the incredulous looks. "It's a bit of a long story, but, uh, there was a curse, and I kinda got pulled into it. And now I turn into a wolf."

"Only really when I want you to, though," Midna added.

"That's only because you could actually hold the thing," Dusk retorted. "And it is most certainly not 'your' decision, it's mine."

"Except for the times when it is my decision," Midna yawned. "Want me to decide now?"

"You can't," Dusk said, smirking. "I'm holding it, remember? Thanks for figuring out a solution to that problem, by the way."

"I knew I was going to regret that," Midna muttered. "Good thing I can still do this, then."

She jerked her fingers in a sharp slashing motion and the pouch underneath Dusk's tunic flew into her palm, where she bounced it playfully and eyed her partner in a pointed manner. Dusk made a futile grab for the pouch, then settled for narrowing his eyes and growling at her – literally, much to the surprise of everyone else.

"Well, dang," Steam commented.

"I think we owe your counterparts a little show and tell, Link," Midna said, tossing the pouch up and down in her hand. "What do you think?"

"I think you enjoy freaking people out way too much," Dusk muttered, but held out his hand in a resigned manner. Midna flashed her fanged smirk and upended the contents of the pouch, an orange-and-black stone that was carved into an intricate, almost tribal shape, into his palm. Upon contact the crystal immediately sunk into Dusk's skin and a smoky-gray shroud raced up his arm and over his torso in a matter of seconds.

The actual change didn't hurt; not anymore. In the beginning, sure. Heck, the very first time Dusk had been transformed, he'd passed out because of the pain. But over time the sensation had dulled to the point where it now just felt a bit like his entire body had filled with pins-and-needles for a brief moment. Which was good, in Dusk's opinion, because wolf physiology was almost nothing like hylian physiology, and he would rather not be able to feel his spine moving into its new configuration, thank you very much. Given what he could be feeling, pins-and-needles were a welcomed sensation.

As the last wisps of the shadow magic settled in, Dusk shook himself and glanced up to find six pairs of eyes staring at him in identical startled interest.

"Well, dang," Steam repeated. "You're a wolf. You're an actual, literal wolf. I did not see this coming."

"You're fuzzy!" Red enthused.

"He's not feral, is he?" Vio asked Midna, who rolled her eyes.

"Of course not, you idiot. He's still Link, he's just got more fur now." To prove her point, she then dropped onto Dusk's back with all her weight, earning a heavy exhale and an annoyed look from her partner but no other form of retaliation.

"Okay, yeah, that's him," Vio smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

"You're fuzzy," Red repeated with a beaming grin. "Can I pet you?"

Midna turned her head to gauge her partner's response. In general, she didn't treat him like an actual wolf because he wasn't, and because doing so would be highly demeaning – although she made an exception for ear scratches. Normally this meant that things like petting – activities normally bestowed upon pets – weren't part of their normal interactions.

But after a few seconds of contemplation, Dusk nodded his head and rumbled, "Just be gentle please."

Red's grin got even wider and he all but buried his fingers in the fur of Dusk's neck. "Ooh, you're really soft," he complimented. "I see why you like to sit there, Midna."

"He's not a bad ride, all things considered," Midna replied, and yawned. "Little bumpy sometimes, but not bad."

"I only jolt you because you drop on me," Dusk muttered, forgetting that nobody could understand him.

"Can I feel?" Blue asked curiously, reaching out a hand and joining Red at Dusk's neck. "Oh wow, that is soft. Is this what your Hylian hair feels like?"

That was a good question, Dusk realized. Then he realized that he had no idea whatsoever, and shrugged as best he could to communicate it in lieu of words.

"Let me feel," Steam said, and ran his hand along Dusk's back, where he was quickly joined by Vio, Green, and Realm while Midna took up her usual seat in midair. Everyone spent a few minutes petting the slightly bewildered-at-how-he-got-in-this-situation wolf, although they were all careful to avoid Dusk's face. Everyone understood that there were some lines they just shouldn't cross at the moment and did their best to avoid them.

"Alright lookalikes, break it up," Midna said after a few more moments. "He needs room to change back, you know."

"Right sorry," Green apologized. "Just... I think I can speak for everyone when I say I've never seen anybody do that before."

The other five Links nodded in earnest agreement.

"Fair point," Midna mused, drifting down to Dusk's head level. She placed her hand on his forehead and made a grabbing motion, then pulled out the orange-and-black curse like she had it on strings.

Changing back felt exactly the same as changing; the only real difference was that the process happened in reverse. That, and Dusk didn't shake himself once the process was over with – he just shifted his weight a little and rolled his shoulders back slightly. It was basically his way of quickly familiarizing himself with whichever body he was in before getting down to business.

"It's not that big a deal," he said, taking back the pouch and its contents from Midna and stringing it around his neck again. "I'm sure one of you's done something equally impressive, right?"

"That might depend on what you did," Realm replied. "I, for one, am extremely curious."

Dusk blinked, then exchanged a glance with Midna. "It's more your story than it is mine," he said. "May I?"

"They are you," Midna reminded him. "Go right ahead, little wolf. In fact, I'll help you out just to make sure you don't mess up anything."

Dusk just sighed. "Alright then... basically, everything started when a group of monsters attacked my home village and kidnapped all the children as part of a country-wide hostile takeover by a race from another dimension who were trying to turn Hyrule into a second version of their home by covering the land in a substance called Twilight. I got pulled into the Twilight while chasing after the bulblins who kidnapped my adoptive brother and because Hylians can't actually exist in Twilight, per se, I got turned into a wolf as opposed to the normal result which is turning into a spirit."

"That's when he met me," Midna put in. "I saw him get pulled in and transformed and I followed him until he was thrown into the Castle dungeons, which was where I introduced myself and helped him escape."

"Your definition of 'escape' did not match very closely with mine," Dusk said dryly. "You know I've still got that cuff clanking around on my foreleg?"

"Details," Midna waved a hand idly. "Anyways, I told him what was happening-"

"Barely," Dusk added.

"-and recruited him to help me fix it."

"You blackmailed me with Colin and Ilia," Dusk corrected bluntly. "And then you dropped me off outside the Twilight as a wolf and left me to deal with my village thinking I was a monster and attacking me every time I took a wrong step."

"Good times," Midna sighed.

"...Is there a point to this?" Vio asked.

"Don't interrupt and there might be," Midna retorted.

After it had become clear that the banjos weren't working, the villains had switched to an even more annoying instrument – and Demise had legitimately not known that was possible.

It wasn't that bagpipes couldn't be epic. Everyone knew that a professional bagpipe player could riff like nobody's business. The problem lay in the fact that none of the villains actually knew how to play bagpipes, and only a select few of them actually had the lung capacity to blow hard enough to keep the bag inflated to keep the sound going. Of the five villains who actually made it that far – the three Ganondorfs, Onox, and Malladus – all of them had far too much muscle mass to control the airflow with the delicacy required, and thus made horrible squawking noises that rivaled a Cucco horde on a rampage.

Mixed in with the overly loud screeching was the feeble (and badly out-of-tune) blats from Veran, both the Vaatis, most of the Ganons (with the exception of Lorule Ganon, who had smashed his in a fury sometime earlier and was now making an earsplitting screech instead), and Zant. And rounding out the abysmal orchestra was Bellum, who instead of blowing air was apparently squirting ink through his bagpipe instead, and Majora, who hadn't even bothered playing its bagpipe and had simply set the whole contraption on fire and cackled madly while doing so.

Demise hadn't thought anything could have sounded worse than a group of people who didn't know how to play banjos.

He'd been so very, horribly wrong.

"STOP THAT INFERNAL NOISE THIS INSTANT!" Demise bellowed vainly for the thirteenth time. And for the thirteenth time, absolutely no one paid attention to him.

"I will eradicate you from all existence," he threatened, in an effort to be regarded with the respect he deserved.

You already did, fool, Majora said scathingly, pausing in its maniacal laughter for the moment. Why do you think we're stuck in your pitifully small mind in the first place?

"Well, this time I will be successful," Demise snarled.

Majora made a snorting noise. I doubt that. Then it went back to laughing maniacally, which grated on Demise's mental eardrums – when he could hear it over the rest of the bagpipes, anyway.

"Would someone at least take away Bellum's bagpipe," Demise growled irritably. "He sounds worse than all the rest of you put together."

Bellum's 'playing' suddenly cut off to be replaced by infuriated bubbling, until Malladus interrupted him with, No, that's a good thing! Play louder, you annoy him the most!

"DO NOT TOUCH THAT INSTRUMENT AGAIN OR SO HELP ME I WILL TIE ALL YOUR TENTACLES INTO GORDIAN KNOTS!" Demise roared.

Bellum bubbled something.

No idea, Malladus replied. I think it's supposed to be a threat. I wouldn't take it very seriously.

"On the contrary, I really think you should," Demise spat.

How? You can't touch us and we took out your mental defenses ages ago. You really should've picked something less edible than poultry.

"In my defense, I have never gotten close enough to know they tasted good," Demise muttered. "And I did not think you would be foolhardy enough to test the theory."

Well we did, and the Cuccos were delicious. The point is, there's nothing you can do to stop us. Bellum, use all the ink you've got!

Bellum bubbled enthusiastically. Then his bagpipe produced a sound that was somehow both squishy and screechy at the same time, and Demise shuddered.

Demise had never before regretted his actions. Heck, as a general rule, he didn't do 'regret' at all.

But he knew, without a doubt, that he regretted not killing the imbeciles inside his head when he'd had the chance.

"-and then we kicked Zant's fake-royal behind into next week," Midna said smugly. "It was immensely enjoyable."

"And by that, she means that she sat back while I did most of the work," Dusk added neutrally. "After that we went back and made a plan to take down the barrier around Hyrule Castle, until it turned out we didn't need it because, for some reason, Ganondorf was gone and there was this weird black hole in his place."

"Wonder what that means," Midna interrupted dryly, giving all the Links a look.

"So we investigated, Midna threw me in, and you all know the rest from there," Dusk finished. "Any questions?"

"Just one, yeah, how are you still sane?" Steam sputtered.

Dusk blinked. "Er... I just am?"

"If it helps," Midna added, "I made sure he kept his sanity. I didn't pay as much attention to his mind though, so I'm pretty sure he lost that somewhere..."

"Probably in the Lakebed Temple," Dusk agreed ruefully. "That's about where I just stopped caring altogether."

"...Okay, that's a bit more believable, but still," Steam complained. "I thought I had some wacky junk to deal with. You've got about three times as much."

"Oh?" Dusk replied in an interested tone. "What did you do? I don't think I ever actually got to hear... something about trains, whatever those are?"

"Trains are machines," Steam explained. "You know what a machine is, right?"

Dusk nodded.

"Okay, so they're basically big metal machines designed to carry a lot of people over a lot of distance. The Hyrule where I come from is kinda built around them – from a societal standpoint, I mean."

"Makes sense," Vio commented.

"So, I was in training to be an engineer, which is the person who controls the train. I'd just passed my exam so I went to the Castle to receive my Certificate from the Princess. That went fine, although I kinda rubbed the wrong way on this little toad-looking advisor with two hats." Steam paused to shudder for a moment. "Nasty dude. I'll come back to him later. Anyways, Princess Zelda used my Certificate Ceremony to sneak me a message in order to hire me to drive her to the Tower of Spirits because she had a suspicion that something was wrong with the Spirit Tracks, and she was right because once we got there it turned out that there was a demon breaking loose and a conspiracy behind Zelda's back and then there was a lot of magic thrown around and the next thing we know, Zelda's body's been jacked by the demon, everyone thinks the demon is actually Zelda, and the real Zelda is floating around as an incorporeal spirit and for some reason only I could see her-"

"Whoa, whoa, hold up there," Green interrupted. "Can you, like, rewind to the Tower of Spirits, explain what that is, and then go from there? Because that's about where you lost me to confusion."

Steam flushed. "Ah. Sorry."

"Can I get a quick check-in?" Farore called to her sisters.

"The Hero of Time hasn't caused a paradoxical meltdown yet and won't for the foreseeable future," Nayru replied.

"Your painted Aspect and the sailing one are still getting over their surprise," Din said. "And the multilingual one who fell asleep in Labrynna might be waking up."

There was a bright green flash and Farore was suddenly right there next to Din. "Switch me," she demanded. "I need to influence this."

"Sure," Din yawned, sliding out of the way. "Whatever you've been watching can't be more boring than staring at a sleeping guy."

Link yawned, immediately regretted it because now he had sand in his mouth, and groaned irritably as he sat up and spat a couple times to get the grittiness out. He grimaced, then opened his mouth and scraped a finger across his tongue just to make sure he'd gotten all of it out. Sand – particularly Labrynnian sand – tasted awful.

Link spat one last time, just to be absolutely positive, then got his feet underneath him and launched upright like a rabbit, thoroughly startling the seagull that had been eyeing his head as a prospective perch which resulted in a lot of alarmed squawking. Link, being himself, promptly squawked back.

The next few minutes would have been vastly confusing to any outside onlookers, if they had existed, because the sight of a boy having what appeared to be a shouting match with a bird was not something one saw every day.

Link eventually stopped squawking because the bird was winning whatever perceived argument was going on and moved on to surveying his surroundings instead. He was still on the beach, which was good because that was where he'd fallen asleep, and if he'd woken up somewhere else that would have been weird. It was a fairly standard beach; sand, absurdly salty water, the works. A few dozen feet up the shore, the sand met a dark green forest-type landscape which Link knew he would not enjoy slogging through in the next few minutes.

The shore wind chose that moment to kick up and blew Link's rather substantial ginger bangs into his face, which he pushed out of the way absently. He glanced up at the sky; judging by the light quality, it was still morning. Good, he had plenty of time to be bored out of his skull as he walked all the immensely long way back to Hyrule.

May as well get started now.

He trudged up the beach to the edge of the trees and paused to shake the sand out of his clothes. Then he did a double check on his items just to make sure nothing had washed away while he was asleep.

Nothing had. This was a good sign, Link decided, and capitalized on it by closing his bag and marching into the woods with a determined gait and an equally determined look on his face.

It would take him all week to hike his way back to Hyrule, and that was only if he got lucky. The sooner he got started, the sooner he could get it over with.

...But Goddesses he was going to be so very bored in the meantime.

"Alright, he's going in the right direction," Farore sighed. "Thank Me that he's self-sufficient most of the time. We can let him do his thing for now, he shouldn't get to where he needs to be for a while yet."

"His scheduled arrival time is approximately six days and ten hours from now," Nayru supplied helpfully.

"That's what I said, a while yet," Farore agreed. "Are the others still talking among themselves?"

"Yep," Din said, popping the 'p'. "It's only marginally less boring than staring at a sleeping guy. And by that I mean I'm basically the same amount of bored as I was beforehand."

"Then move and let me watch," Farore said, giving her sister a shoulder bump and a playful grin. "You can go help Nayru watch the other two."

"They've moved onto slowly poking one another," Nayru put in brightly.

"I'm not sure that's a much more interesting alternative," Din muttered.

"-so that all ended up leading into a massive Train battle between Malladus and I, which was really unfair because he had laser cannons and I didn't," Steam complained. "But at that point this whole void-in-the-world thing kicked in and I'm pretty sure it ate my villain, because the Demon Train crashed into a cliffside and that kinda put a damper on the whole 'fight' thing."

"Makes sense," Green nodded.

"After that, Zelda got her body back and went back to the Castle to deal with the mess Malladus caused while I stuck around to see if I could do anything with the hole. Then those four dummies fell out of it," he gestured to Green, Red, Vio, and Blue, "and we all freaked out a bit, but once we got over it we ended up hopping through the hole and ended up falling on top of Realm here and then we all freaked out again. And then Dusk fell on Realm, and you all know the rest."

"I wonder, since we're all Link, if we would have been able to see Zelda as well," Vio said thoughtfully. "Or perhaps you just have a special sight, of some sort?"

Steam shrugged. "Dunno. I wasn't the only one who could see Zelda's spirit, but aside from me they were all either wise and elderly, part of a magically-gifted race, or both, so... make of that what you want?"

"I have an idea," Midna said, which made Dusk grimace and take two steps out of the blast zone. "Oh, I haven't even done anything yet," his partner scolded. "You're being rude, little wolf."

"Ninety percent of your ideas end with something exploding," Dusk replied bluntly.

"That is blatantly untrue. Things only explode eighty percent of the time," Midna replied. "And for your information, this one is in that much-more-boring twenty percent, so keep your fur on."

"'Little wolf'?" Blue asked, amused. Dusk gave him a Look.

"Do you want to make something of it?"

Blue opened his mouth, abruptly remembered that Dusk could be a lot more terrifying if he needed to be, and opted for the much safer answer of, "Not really. It's just kind of amusing, is all. I wouldn't have pegged the word 'little' as being part of your nickname." Especially given that his wolf form was anything but.

Midna cleared her throat in annoyance. "If we're all done?" she said archly, then raised her hand and cupped her palm around air.

"Tell me if you can see this," she told Steam, then concentrated.

For a moment, nothing happened aside from most of the Links looking confused. Then Steam grinned and said, "Okay, that's pretty sweet. How are you making it dance like that?"

"Awesomeness," Midna said smugly.

"I don't see anything," Realm said, peering at Midna's apparently occupied hand. "What's there?"

Steam frowned. "Well, it's kinda... fluid... and angular? But it moves kinda curvy and it never stops changing. I don't... I don't know how to describe it better."

"You shouldn't try," Midna advised. "They won't get it unless they saw it too. Speaking of which, any takers?"

Everyone who wasn't Steam shook their heads.

"Alright, special sight it is," Midna said definitively. "Congratulations, all that jazz. Moving on!"

She pointed imperiously at Realm and commanded, "You next, brownie."

Realm blinked. "Uhh... okay...?"

"Get started," Midna urged. "The sooner you get to talking is the sooner we can get this whole introductory garbage over with."

Behind her, Dusk made an embarrassed and apologetic smile, accompanied by a neutral shrug which basically communicated, 'Might as well'.

Realm blinked again, then just went with it. "Well, it started because I got lost-"

Blue promptly broke down in hysterical giggles.

"I'm not that bad," Realm said, annoyed. "And I'll have you know that it only took me six days after that until I figured out where I was."

This only made Blue laugh harder.

"Ignore him," Vio sighed.

Realm rolled his eyes. "Sure thing. So anyways, I was lost somewhere in... Hyrule, and I ended up walking into the middle of an ambush that some monsters were springing on this old woman. I really couldn't just let that happen, so I beat off the monsters and rescued her. It turned out that she was the nursemaid of the Royal Family, that the Royal Family had just been attacked by a demon pig, and she was looking for somebody to help rescue the Princess. I ended up volunteering."

"And you said you've been at this for two years now?" Green checked.

Realm turned a bit red. "Not for lack of trying!"

"It's fine," Dusk soothed. "So what happened after that?"

Realm turned a bit more red. "Well... I got lost. And I'm not entirely sure I ever figured out where I was." He blinked as something occurred to him, then said, "Come to think of it, where are we right now?"

"We moved out of Hyrule Castle to avoid making a scene, remember?" Dusk informed him.

"No."

"Well that's understandable," Blue said. "I think the author executed a line break right about then to look in on some other characters."

Everyone stared at him blankly.

"...That made no sense," Midna told him.

"Not to you, maybe," Blue said, shrugging. "But it makes perfect sense to the readers and those are the only people who really – OW!"

Vio retracted the hand he'd just used to clock Blue over the head and glared at his brother. "You aren't supposed to show that you know about that sort of stuff! You're going to break the walls!"

"Okay, geez," Blue muttered, rubbing his head. "You didn't have to hit so hard..."

"Next time it'll be a flying tackle," Vio warned.

"Ooh, I'll help!" Red chirped.

"What's going on?" Realm asked, utterly confused.

"Nothing important, Blue's just being stupid," Green assured him. "Please continue."

Realm blinked. "Okay... um, anyways, I stayed lost and ended up stumbling into a dungeon where I got chased by the two-headed dragon for about two-and-a-half hours. That got me lost again for about... two weeks, and then I fell down a hole and ended up in a different dungeon. That was where I lost my first shield to Like-Likes... and now that I think about it, that was also where I lost shields two-through-fifteen."

"Is that shield sixteen then?" Dusk asked, nodding towards the one on Realm's back.

Realm frowned in thought. "No, this is shield eighty-three... I think. I kinda lost track during the Like-Like horde that lasted for two weeks back a couple months ago, so..." he shrugged.

Dusk stared at him. "...I'm not sure I'm going to believe the rest of your story."

Realm shrugged again. "Sometimes, neither do I. Where was I?"

"Shields two-through-fifteen," Red supplied helpfully.

"Oh yeah. So I actually made it through that dungeon eventually, then got lost again and ended up back in the dungeon with the two-headed dragon, which resulted in another two-and-a-half hour chase, which got me lost again. That lasted for about a week until I accidentally walked onto a beach that belonged to a tribe of Zora. They didn't take that very well so I spent about three days running and hiding from them until I hid inside a tree and ended up inside a different dungeon in the process-"

"The Zora I know are friendly," Dusk interrupted, frowning.

"Lucky you," Realm replied with a sigh. "So, do they only chase you once a month or something?"

Dusk stared at him. "No... they don't chase me at all. I'm on good terms with them."

Realm stared right back. "Now that's just weird."

"I'm not entirely sure that you're the best judge of what's weird."

Link poked Link one last time, then stood back and just stared for a bit.

Link stared back.

They both stared for a while.

The Link who'd pulled up on a red boat blinked a couple times, then said, "Okay seriously, why do you look so much like me?"

The Link who'd walked through what he'd thought was a Lorule Gate swallowed heavily and booted his brain back into gear. "I... I don't know."

"Weird," the Link with the boat decided. "Hey, what's your name?"

"...Don't freak out?"

"Why would I freak out?"

"Because my name is Link too?"

Boat Link paused. "...Okay, that's a pretty good reason."

Gate Link shrugged nervously. "Just, when you introduced yourself, my brain kinda broke, so... I dunno, I thought maybe fair warning would help?"

"Not really," Boat Link admitted, eyes still wide in surprise.

"Oh. Sorry."

They stared at each other again.

"Question," Boat Link said after a moment. "I've been to just about every island in the ocean and I've met pretty much everybody who lives on them. I've never met you before. How, exactly, did you get here?"

"Well... uh..." Gate Link ran a hand through his bangs, as he wasn't entirely sure himself. "I think I came through that hole over there, but I don't really know how that happened, to be honest."

Boat Link turned and surveyed the hole.

"Er... how?"

"Well, I was trying to use a Lorule Gate, but I guess I mixed up which type of portal I was actually going through and-"

"Hang on, 'Lorule Gate'?" Boat Link interrupted, furrowing his brow. "What's that?"

"...You've never heard of Lorule?"

"Well, no."

"Okay, what about the people turning into paintings? You had to have heard the rumors about that, right?"

Boat Link raised his eyebrows. "People turning into what?"

Gate Link was getting mildly annoyed. "Okay, seriously? What about Princess Zelda getting kidnapped by Yuga? Hyrule Castle being taken over by Paint-Guards? The weird smoky cracks in the walls that came out of nowhere one day? Is any of this ringing a bell?"

"...No," Boat Link said slowly. "Because Princess Zelda got kidnapped by Bellum, not 'Yuga', Hyrule Castle is at the bottom of the ocean, and, again, I've been to every island in the ocean and there are no 'weird smoky cracks' in any walls, anywhere."

Gate Link gaped at him. "WHAT!?"

"I could say the exact same thing to you," Boat Link muttered. "Seriously though, paintings? That's a thing that happens?"

"Forget about that, let's revisit the fact that Hyrule Castle is underwater!" Gate Link sputtered. "How did that happen!? When did that happen!?"

"...A couple centuries ago...?"

Gate Link stared, utterly flabbergasted.

"...How did that happen?" he repeated weakly.

"You know what, I'm gonna start over," Boat Link said, "because clearly all we're accomplishing here is more confusion. Hi, my name is Link, and I'm the Hero of Wind and the current Wind Waker. Nice to meet you."

"...Yeah," Gate Link managed. "...Okay. Um. I'm Link, the New Hero of Hyrule. I don't really have a second title."

"Nice to meet you," Boat Link said again. "Now that we've got the official introductions done, should I explain why Hyrule is about three-thousand feet below the surface?"

"Yes please," Gate Link said fervently."

"-then I got lost again and ended up in another dungeon instead," Realm said, "and then I got chased by the four-headed dragon because it turned out that he lived there. That lasted for about an hour and a half, until I literally tripped over the place where the Magical Sword was. So I switched out my weapons but got lost again and ended up in the middle of basically all of Ganon's minions and a large black hole. The minions all ended up running, but the hole seemed important so I made a concentrated effort to stick around, and then those five there fell on me." He shrugged, and said, "and that's about it."

"Two hundred and twenty six," Blue said.

"What?"

"That's how many times you remembered getting lost," Blue informed him. "I counted."

Realm considered that. "...You should probably add an extra fifty or so for all the times I forgot about."

"That's just ridiculous," Steam said, shaking his head in disbelief. "How does that even happen?"

Realm frowned. "I have no idea. I start walking and then I just end up places. You would not believe the amount of islands I've ended up on even though I can't actually swim."

"That's impossible," Vio said bluntly.

Realm just shrugged.

"I like him," Midna said to Dusk. "He's amusing."

"Glad to hear it," Dusk replied in a mildly confused tone, as he wasn't entirely sure why she was sharing this with him.

"I have a question," Red said, raising his hand. "Is it our turn now?"

Blue grunted. "What makes you think it's 'our turn'?"

"Because everyone's told their story but us," Red said. "So it's our turn now, right?"

"Knock yourself out blondie," Midna said.

Red tilted his head. "But that would hurt..."

"Figure of speech, Red," Vio informed him.

"Oh."

"I'll just get us started then," Green decided hastily. "Originally, we were one boy named Link-"

"Wait, what!?" Realm sputtered. "How!?"

"I'll get to that," Green told him. "So we were one boy named Link living in Castle Town and we were good friends with Princess Zelda-"

"-probably the only friend she had, now that I think about it," Vio suddenly said, picking up Green's sentence like it'd been his instead and giving the listening group a bit of whiplash trying to follow the speaker. "But anyways, she'd always been pretty sensitive to things like spiritual imbalance and one day-"

"-she sensed that something was wrong with the Four Sword," Blue abruptly put in, completely taking over the explanation while Vio settled back like he'd never been talking. "So she gathered the Spiritual Maidens-"

"-they're the ones who help keep Hyrule safe, because of their magical abilities-" Green took over quickly.

"-and took them and us into the Four Sword Shrine to check on the seal," Blue picked the explanation back up as though Green hadn't interrupted at all. "The only problem was that the whole thing turned out to be a trap-"

"-and Zelda and the Maidens got captured!" Red wailed, taking over from Blue without seemingly any communication between them. "So we had to do something about it and the only thing we could think of-"

"Was drawing the Four Sword," Vio said, smoothly taking the explanation again. "Now the Four Sword is called that for a reason, and you've probably already guessed what it did-"

"-and this is the result," Green spread his arms to gesture at himself and his three brothers. "The only problem was that-"

"-drawing the Four Sword broke the seal and released Vaati," Blue growled. "And he basically went out and made Hyrule a big fat mess, which of course-"

"-we had to fix because it was kinda our fault that he was released," Red said sheepishly. "So after we got ourselves sorted out-"

"-and stopped panicking," Green addded ruefully. "We set off to the nearest-"

"Okay, could you stop that!?" Steam demanded. "Pick a speaker and stick to it! Trying to follow you guys is giving me a headache!"

The four colored Links exchanged confused glances.

"Er... doing what, exactly?" Blue asked

"You're, like, picking up each other's sentences like you know what each other is going to say and it's seriously messing with me!"

The colored Links exchanged another round of looks. "I didn't think we did that," Vio mused.

"We'll try to tone it down," Green said hesitantly. "But we might slip up a bit-"

"-or a lot," Blue added.

"Guys no, we just said we wouldn't do that!" Red scolded.

"Farore," Nayru said gently. "I think you ought to rest."

"Not now," Farore said, not looking up from her reality window. "There so much I need to monitor and so much that could go wrong if I don't. We can't chance anything right now."

"Alternatively," Nayru countered, "You could let Din and I take the reigns because nothing is happening or going to happen for a while and there's not a lot you can do if you're too tired to notice something's wrong."

"I will notice when something's wrong," Farore insisted, still not looking up. Nayru raised an eyebrow that her sister didn't see.

"So, you've been aware that Din swapped your necklace for a fishhook and some string half an hour ago and just haven't done anything about it, then?"

"What?" Farore said, looking down. "DIN!"

"Took you long enough!" the goddess called back. "Your jewelry's tied around your ponytail, if you want it."

Nayru smiled in a satisfied fashion as Farore fixed her accessories. "So, about that rest."

"Yes, fine, I'll take a break," Farore agreed irately. "But you come and get me the minute anything goes wrong, got it?"

"Absolutely," Nayru said. "Now rest."

"I'm going, I'm going..."

"-so we climbed the mountain to Vaati's Palace without a lot of trouble, because it turned out that there wasn't actually anyone at the top-" Green explained, then nodded to Red as a signal to continue the narrative. Attempting to stop picking up each other's sentences had turned out to be really hard to do, so in order to spare their audience the confusion the four Links had moved to visually cueing who would take the sentence next instead. It helped... mostly.

"-and so we all split up to look for Princess Zelda, because she was still up there somewhere," Red chirped, taking the cue effortlessly. "But then Green got stuck in a tree and everything revolved around trees for a while-" he tapped Vio on the shoulder to pass the sentence on.

"-not terribly long, but enough to slow us down," Vio agreed. "But after we fixed that and regrouped, we went and found Zelda at the mountain's peak and escorted her back down the mountain. Then we spent a while in the Castle Library-" he gave Blue a gentle nudge in his ribcage and Blue took over the explanation without even pausing.

"-because there was this big black hole where Vaati had used to be," he continued. "That was boring and lasted longer than it needed to, but eventually we climbed the mountain again and tried to apply Vio's research to the hole."

He poked Green's arm as his cue and Green said, "None of it worked. Then we kinda found out completely by accident that we could travel through the thing and fell into Steam's Hyrule, and... you know the rest."

"The end," Red finished brightly.

There was a moment of silence as the listeners all took a moment to piece together the explanation they'd just been given.

"That," Steam said eventually, "was like listening to a conversation run through a blender."

Realm frowned. "What's a blender?"

"It's a machine, it mutilates food. Usually on purpose."

"...That doesn't explain it to me."

"Whose fault is that?"

"...Yours."

"Well," Midna interrupted pointedly, "this was... mediocre. Moving on to something much more interesting, what are you all going to do now?"

"Well, I would assume that we're going to keep hopping through the dimensions or whatever these are until we find what the problem is," Vio theorized. "Why?"

Midna yawned. "No real reason. I just wanted to make sure you were all okay with me bodily chucking you through." Before anyone could really respond to that, Midna flexed her hair and snatched all seven of them into the gigantic fist protruding from the top of her helmet. Blue yelled in surprise, Steam flinched, the other four just stared blankly as they registered things, and Dusk let out an annoyed groan.

"Seriously, again?" he asked.

"You should thank me," Midna sniffed. "I'm cutting your stall time by eighty percent, I'll have you know."

She snapped her fingers and they all briefly vanished to reappear once again inside Hyrule Castle's main hall, where the hole had grown large enough to swallow both the throne and the dais that the throne had sat upon, then arched her hair-hand and launched her cargo through the hole all within the span of about five seconds. This was done on purpose, so that she could have the last word in. Midna loved getting the last word in.

"Pardon my intrusion," Princess Zelda said suddenly, having been inside the hall at the moment. "But did you just throw Link and six doppelgangers through the hole? Again?"

"They're saving the world," Midna explained. "I was cutting their stall time."

Zelda considered that, then decided that it made enough sense for her to accept it. "As long as Link comes back at some point. We still need to do damage control on all those bridges Zant collapsed." She paused, and gave Midna an appraising look. "Speaking of which, I'm officially drafting you onto the Repair Crew."

"Excuse me?" Midna said. "Why on earth is that a good idea?"

"Because you can lift things thousands of pounds heavier than yourself and I'll pay you in opportunities to humiliate the Castle Town nobility," Zelda informed her.

"...I'm listening."

1/11/17

...The more I rewrite, the larger my word count gets. I'm not sure how this happens, because literally all I do is take what I had and improve it.

Maybe I was just really bad at providing explanatory narrative.

In other news, I've started naming the chapters. I think this will make it much easier to figure out what's happening when.

Changeling

Thanks to Xana100 for favoriting/following!

LuckyLugia (Guest): Yep, you were correct! Just to let you know, I'm not actually calling him 'Shifter'. I have a different name picked out.

XzDaFelixZ: Dang that was a long comment... right. Answers. ...Why is my updating on time exciting...? / Your favorite author? Really? Wow... I feel honored. / WW Link and ST Link huh? Mmm...yeah, I think they're related. Like, WW Link is Steam's ancestor. It makes sense. / I'm really glad you liked the Heroes of Time, I was looking forward to introducing them. Although I feel I should wonder what you were doing awake at 4 in the morning... / For Wii U Link, I'm basically waiting to see what his game is like before I decide whether or not I'm gonna throw him in. / I'm relieved you understand my position on yaoi. I don't really want to write stuff like that. So I don't. / I don't think I'll lose my motivation for a good long while. Not that I have people waiting on me now... my personality refuses to let me let anyone down. So no worries!

PsycoFangirl: Nah, Din's a goddess. She's outside of the laws of the jinxing universe which makes things worse upon the uttering of the chosen phrase. So we're good.

Guest: Wow, people really like having two Heroes of Time. I'm really glad I decided to do that! As for the Hero's Shade... I didn't even think about him. I more consider him as a ghost... plus when I was in my planning stage I was only using Links who were game protagonists. I also think I decided having a Link to represent death would be too morbid. The Master Sword in Windwaker, I believe, was still lodged in Ganondorf's head at the bottom of the ocean. Granted Ganondorf isn't exactly there anymore, but it's still at the bottom of the ocean. And I already gave WW Link the Phantom Sword, so... yeah.

jakeroo123: Yeah, I know it's a little confusing. That's why I'm going slowly, to give you guys a chance to remember who's who.

The Dark Lord: I'm glad you do!

KFHNIPod: I'm guessing you changed your username? Thanks for letting me know who you were! Yes, this story does have humor as one of the categories, and I'm glad you think I'm doing a good job! I'm just going to make sure I live up to your praise/expectations.

Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!

Find the fan-run ask blog on Tumblr at ask-the-dimensional-links!