Dimensional Links

by ChangelingRin

Centuries after Demise was sealed in the Master Sword, he reforms himself to find that his Hatred Incarnations have been utterly useless. He decides to take things into his own hands-and in the process tears holes in reality itself. To save the Universe, the Goddesses turn to their last hope: the Hero. Except this time, they're not sending just one - they're sending all of them.

21. A Blue Pig and a Pudgy Bat

(...The Universe is inarguably sentient, likes to mess with my disclaimers, and has a pickling hobby.

(…

(I'm going to go have an existential crisis now.)

No you are not, you still haven't done the disclaimer yet.

...Changeling?

Ah, due to some 'technical difficulties', the author is currently huddled in a corner muttering about quantum theory and the nature of reality. So, if you'll excuse me, I need to go fold myself into a concept understandable to the human mind and retrieve a physics book or two while I'm at it.

Oh, and, Changeling does not own the Legend of Zelda.

---

About halfway down the mountain, Green had an abrupt thought about a rather pressing problem.

With the exception of himself and his immediate siblings, none of the Links knew basically anything about the Hyrule they were in. And while this would be a bit of a problem in any circumstance, it was the fact that Realm knew nothing about the Hyrule they were in that was worth considering.

More to the point, had this occurred to anybody else?

Green looked around. Most of the group had on Pegasus Boots or some other speed-boosting item, the exceptions to this being Dusk, who had shifted into his wolf form; Gen, who was using a pair of Hookshots to propel himself through the treeline; Wind, who had taken his baton back out from behind his ear and was using it to maintain a self-propelling tornado; Sketch, who had a Tornado Rod and was using it in much the same way that Wind was; and Steam, who was using a small green fan-like thing that Green remembered being described as his 'Whirlwind' and blowing himself around by aiming it down and back. Miraculously, Realm was still in sight - for now - but because he was literally just jogging, he was rapidly being left behind. And way up front was Mask, who had slapped on another one of his soul-powered items and promptly transformed into a Goron - and to be honest, Green hadn't even considered that Gorons could move that fast, but seeing it now, it made a whole lot of sense.

"Is he using Rollout?" Blue panted. "That is so not fair."

In the interest of time management, and also because they were sprinting down a mountainside, Green opted to rapidly thump Blue upside the head as opposed to flat-out tackling him for breaking things, because they had places to be and better things to do than minding walls right now. "Red's in charge," he announced quickly, then added upon seeing both Blue and Vio gear up to protest this, "because I don't trust either of you to not immediately pick a fight with the other for perceived favoritism."

"Okay, point," Blue muttered, while Vio made a deliberate effort to look at anything but Green.

"I'm going to go make sure Realm doesn't end up in a volcano again," the Four Sword leader continued. "Meet you all back at the foot of the mountain, unless Realm gets us both lost, in which case Red is still in charge. Actually, just assume Red is in charge until whenever I get back."

Red beamed; his two siblings sulked. Green rolled his eyes at all three of them, then dropped back and made a beeline for Realm.

"Oh, hi," Realm said as Green joined him. "Is there a change of plan?"

"No, we're still charging Vaati and Ganon," Green replied, although by this point he was starting to breathe a little heavier and so his sentence came out significantly choppier than Realm's did. "I just realized that you've never been here before."

"Oohhhh," Realm said, and scrunched up his face a little. Clearly, he was fully aware of what Green was indicating. "That might be a problem, yeah…"

"Just follow me, and hopefully, it'll be fine," Green told him, turning and making eye contact as they both ran to make sure Realm got the point. "It's literally just a straight line-of-sight shot from here."

Realm shrugged agreeably, and Green turned his head back to the direction he was heading in.

Which was no longer the direction he'd been heading in.

Green jerked to a startled stop, causing Realm to immediately overshoot him and double back to see what the problem was, and stared confusedly at the surrounding landscape. It was, most definitively, not the mountainside anymore.

Somehow, they were standing on a beach instead.

"When did we get here!?" Green sputtered. Realm blinked, then surveyed the sandy dunes with interest.

"...Huh," he said knowledgeably.

"More to the point," Green continued spastically, "how did you drag me along!?"

"That's a very good question," Realm said. He didn't bother continuing that sentence, mostly because he didn't have a good answer. Instead, he asked, "Do you know where we are?"

"We're on the other side of Hyrule," Green groaned, dropping his face into his hands. This quickly turned into a stranglehold on the bridge of his nose. "It is going to take us literal days to hike back to where we're supposed to be. It should have taken us literal days to get here in the first place!"

"Oh, okay then," Realm said, not sounding at all concerned about that. "Let's get started."

Green dropped his hand and gave Realm a tired stare. He looked as though he was imagining all the walking he was going to have to do and feeling the effects already. "Why does your misdirectional field always kick in at the worst possible times?"

"Comedic design, probably," Realm replied, shrugging. He kicked off into a jog again, heading off the beach as Green fell in beside him.

"Yeah, well, you can tell 'comedic design' that I don't appreciate being taken along for the ride," Green muttered. Realm glanced down at him, then back up, and upon doing so realized that they were now in a snowy pine forest. Which, quite obviously, looked nothing like the blatantly tropical foliage that they'd been pushing through a few moments before.

"About that," Realm said awkwardly, at which point Green noticed the wintry trees too and let out a small shriek of baffled frustration.

Needless to say, that didn't really bode well.

---

"Should we be worried about that?" Blue asked as he sprinted, pointing back to where Realm and Green should have been but clearly no longer were. He'd looked away for two seconds, he swore, that had been all. This was not his fault.

"Probably yes," Vio admitted, "but I think we have bigger problems." As if in emphasis of this, Ganon bellowed something made incoherent by distance at the bottom of the mountain and promptly smashed through two different buildings and a water fountain.

"Well, yeah, but…" Blue trailed off. "Green's kinda important."

They ran in silence for a moment; then Blue and Vio twisted in unison to look at Red, who quite suddenly remembered that Green had put him in charge. To be fair, Red was not normally in charge, and thus could be forgiven for momentarily forgetting this fact. It had never happened before, after all.

"Green said he was coming back," Red decided, in the most simplistic logic possible, "so he's coming back. It just… might take him a bit longer than he planned, is all."

Both Blue and Vio considered that.

"...why does that make sense?" Vio asked.

"Let's wonder about that after we take care of the villain issue," Blue muttered.

---

Meanwhile, Vaati was in a terrible mood. Not quite as bad of a mood as the one Demise was still nursing a couple timelines over, but by Vaati's standards it was pretty high up there. If it weren't for the fact that Hyrule Ganon was right next to him, and in an equally terrible mood, it could have been said that Vaati was the most upset person on the planet right then.

Now, under normal circumstances, Vaati would have been in an excellent mood. He was finally free of Demise's headspace, he was in the middle of one of his favorite activities - that being pillaging - and the screams of the villagers as they ran in terror could have been put to a snappy drumbeat and played at a party with very little tonal correction needed, if Vaati'd had a recording device on him.

These were not, however, normal circumstances.

In lieu of a lot of very complicated godly terminology (and even more complicated (and also very vulgar) cursing) and in the simplest terms possible, the crux of the matter was that Vaati and Hyrule Ganon were on a leash. Some might think that this leash is metaphorical, and those some would be… wrong. Ish. There was no physical leash, as far as physicality and the laws of matter were concerned. The laws of magic, on the other hand, had always thought that the laws of matter were a stuck-up prissy group of laws who wouldn't notice a soul-bond if it stared them in the face.

The leash, of course, was not a soul-bond, nor anything close to it, but the point still stood and the laws of magic were going to honor it. Therefore, while Vaati and Hyrule Ganon were no longer trapped in Demise's head… they were basically still trapped. And the Rules of this trap went thusly:

They could do whatever they wanted, so long as it fell neatly within the confines of Demise's wills, desires, whims, and/or goals. Anything not within those restrictions resulted in painful (and oddly hilarious, to anyone not on the receiving end) loss of function.

In even simpler terms, if Vaati did anything Demise would disapprove of, his body stopped working and he dropped like a sack of rocks.

Experimentation had revealed that, until Vaati tried to move with the intent to follow Demise's will again, his attempts would be entirely unsuccessful. And some would think that, given that Demise was Evil, and Vaati was only slightly less so, that their desires would align fairly well and there would be very little issue. These some would be entirely correct.

It was the principle of the thing, though, that Vaati was hung up on. If he was going to destroy the lives of petty background civilians, he was going to do it on his own whims, thank you very much!

Of course, that resulted in immediate paralysis, which resulted in an even worse mood, which resulted in what Vaati was doing now: throwing what essentially amounted to a carefully-within-Demise's-will tantrum.

This was also, coincidentally, what Hyrule Ganon was doing. And conveniently, there were a lot of very breakable, very tantrum-friendly buildings in the immediate vicinity.

It was a bad day to be an Item Shop.

---

By the time the Links made it to the bottom of the mountain, there was a significant gap between those in front and… well, basically everybody else. This was because the speed of a traveling Link was either 'average' or 'ridiculously quick' and there was no in-between.

Mask was first, due to currently being a Goron and the inherent nature of round things on steep surfaces. There was absolutely no hope of anyone catching up with him.

In a cluster a good few minutes after him were Dusk, who was currently a wolf and sprinting for all he was worth, followed closely by Lore, the Four, Speck, Red, Blue, and Vio all with various models of Pegasus Boots. About a minute behind them was Ocarina, wearing a Bunny Hood that he'd borrowed from Mask, accompanied by Wind, Steam, and Sketch, who had somehow all had the same idea of using a wind-powered item to propel themselves. It was a bit breezy because of this, but they managed.

Gen, meanwhile, was propelling himself through the somewhat distant treeline, because the fastest thing he had was technically a pair of Clawshots. He was also technically in last, because in order to use the Clawshots, he'd had to go get within the range of the trees. The only reason he wasn't definitely in last was because Realm, who had opted to just jog on account of literally not having any better options, was nowhere to be seen and that was probably not a good thing.

Now that Gen thought about it, letting Realm go alone had probably been a mistake, if his story had been anything to judge by. But then again, Gen was the new guy, so what did he know? Maybe Realm was an unusually fast runner, and was waiting at the bottom with everyone else in front of him.

About ten seconds after having that thought, Gen arrived at the bottom of the mountain and was met with a distinct lack of Realm. And also Green, for some reason, which was a bit odd because Gen specifically remembered Green being present at the beginning. This seemed to be enough of a discrepancy that Gen decided to bring it up to the rest of the group, who were busy putting away their various speed-strategies.

"Should I be concerned that we seem to be missing both Realm and Green, or is this just a normal occurrence?"

There was a distinct pause in the equipment shuffle.

"Aww, crud," Sketch muttered. "We shoulda thought of that."

"Green did," Red piped up. "He's helping Realm find the way back."

"...you sure about that?"

Red nodded firmly. "Green said he was coming back, so he's coming back. He just never said how long it was gonna take him."

"Why does that still make sense?" Vio muttered helplessly.

Gen frowned heavily. "Exactly how important is Green to your dynamic?" He pointed at the remaining three Four Sword Links just to make it absolutely clear who he was talking to. Red, Blue, and Vio all exchanged loaded looks.

"Very," Blue summarized shortly.

"Alright, and how important is it that Realm be here with us instead of wandering aimlessly across the country somewhere?"

"VERY," the entire sixteen-odd group of Links chorused. Gen leaned back from the noise, squinting.

"So, what I'm getting here, is that we're going to have to pause this whole mission to go and find our stray members?"

"No need," Green groaned, all but dragging himself into the loosely-formed circle and beelining for his immediate siblings, where he promptly collapsed onto Blue. This almost caused a pile-up, because Blue was somewhat unprepared to support the entire weight of his fellow Link, but then Red dragged them both back upright in a frantic rush. The end result was that Green ended up piggybacking on Blue, and he immediately buried his face in Blue's shirt.

"I am so Din-danged tired," he mumbled through the fabric.

"I said I was sorry!" Realm protested, having arrived immediately after Green.

"Not nearly enough."

"I may regret asking this," Gen interrupted, "but, what just happened?"

"Well," Realm said, and took a deep breath. "First we were on a beach, but when we tried to get off of that we ended up in a taiga forest. When we tried to get out of that, we ran into a Chu-Chu horde. They were all the Ice kind-"

Everyone shivered reflexively.

"-and they kept freezing us when we tried to run, so understandably that took a couple minutes. Then we ended up back on top of the mountain, except that there were Like-Likes there now, and in trying to get away from them I fell off the opposite side of the slope and it all went downhill from there-"

Green made a strangled noise that sounded an awful lot like the words, "Don't you pun about that!"

"-and when we landed I realized I'd lost my shield, except that when we stabbed the Like-Likes that had fallen down the mountain with us, it turned out they didn't have it. So then we backtracked back to the taiga biome, except that we ended up going through a volcano, the beach, a desert, some grasslands, the beach again, and then a glacier before we finally found the Ice Chus. Of course, then it turned out that ice plus metal equals a really sticky problem, and to get my shield back we actually ended up having to drag the Ice Chu back to the volcano-

"We weren't even trying to get to the volcano that time," Green hissed, actually lifting his face enough to be understood.

"-but it melted no problem once we were there. Then we backtracked here, except that we went through the beach, the desert, and the beach again on the way." Realm frowned a moment, thinking. "Or maybe it was the beach once and the desert twice. There was a lot of sand, I don't exactly remember where it all came from."

Green emitted a sound that was somewhere between absolute exhaustion, utter bafflement, and a complete loss of the ability to care, and dropped his head back onto Blue's shoulder blades. "So. Din. Danged. Tired," he enunciated.

"...It's barely been ten minutes," Gen said slowly. "How did you cram all of that traveling into ten minutes?"

"I have a condition," Realm told him.

"And this is… normal. For you."

"Yes."

Very slowly, Gen sat himself on the ground. He was going to need a minute. It was one thing to listen to Realm describe all his directional mishaps, and somehow quite another thing to actually have them happen. He hadn't realized exactly how boggling it was until he was staring it in the face.

"This is my life now," Gen muttered. "Okay. Cool. Okay."

"Oh good, you're coping already," Realm said, somewhat missing the sarcasm that Gen was oozing. "

Because we still need to deal with the bat and the pig, right? Ideas?"

"An excellent suggestion. Native Links!" Lore declared forcefully. "Tell us what you know about the Pudgy Bat and the Blue Pig, please and thank you."

With effort, Blue shifted Green onto the ground (and his own feet), which Green accepted with only a small amount of bleary grumbling and a minor slouch. "Sorry, team leader," Blue said apologetically, "but we need you awake for this."

Green absorbed that, grumbled a bit more, then hauled himself into a proper posture and peeled his eyes back open. "Right, yeah, okay." He inhaled deeply. "What's the problem?"

"Them," Vio reminded, pointing across the plains-at-the-base-of-the-mountain to where the now-ruins of the Town were, and the largely visible figures of Vaati and Ganon rampaging through it. "We need to tell everyone how to beat them."

"Right," Green repeated, a bit more awake this time. "Small problem, we never actually did that."

"I would qualify that as a bit larger of a problem," Mask said.

"We did research though!" Red offered.

"I did research," Vio corrected. "Both Vaati and Ganon have appeared in Hyrule before, from our perspective in time at least. There's plenty of legends and stuff on how they fight."

"And that sounds like a bad paradox just waiting to happen," Mask winced. "But… it's probably impossible for the state of reality to get much worse, so…"

"I mean, you're right, one of the accounts comes directly from who I'm pretty sure is Ocarina," Vio agreed. Then he frowned, and corrected, "Or, I guess… you? However it is that works?"

"Yes," Mask told him, which shouldn't have made any sense but somehow did. Vio visibly decided not to question it.

"Okay so, according to historical accounts, Vaati likes tornados," he said. "He also likes to pick up things in his tornados and throw those things at people."

"Oh my Din, he's a disgrace to weather magic," Wind mourned quietly.

"Conveniently, he has a glaring weak spot in the middle of his face in the form of his absolutely massive eyeball," Vio continued, "so we can probably just shoot arrows at him from a distance and not bother with the tornados at all."

"Those are really low quality tornados," Wind agreed, and actually sounded upset about it. There was a short, confused pause. Sketch reached out and awkwardly patted Wind's shoulder in a vague attempt at comfort. Granted, he had no idea what he was providing comfort for, but Wind seemed to appreciate it, so Sketch counted that as a win.

"Ganon, Vio said in a pointed attempt to move on, "was a bit harder to find stuff on. The most I could gather was that he used to be a man from the desert who got corrupted by greed. The reason he looks like a pig is because he hunted down a Triforce piece, and for some reason the Sacred Power tends to pull this 'appearance reflects your nature' thing."

"That does tend to happen, yeah," Lore agreed thoughtfully, while Dusk nodded along.

"I did try and look into the fighting strategies of the desert people," Vio continued, "but watching Ganon now, I think what I read was a bit out of date…"

"How so?" Speck asked curiously.

"Tridents are fairly pointless in a biome without water," Vio said bluntly, and pointed at the massive fork that Ganon was swinging around with wild abandon. "I have no idea why he's using that, it doesn't match any of his people's traditional weaponry-" He went off on a small rant about historical inaccuracies, seemingly oblivious to the awkward stares he was receiving. After about ten solid seconds of this, Blue began wondering why Green hadn't headed Vio off yet, then realized that Green was actually nodding off on his own feet. A jab to the ribs quickly corrected this problem.

Green, now once again firmly awake, grasped the situation impressively fast. "Back to the trident?" he inserted smoothly in between Vio's complaints about proper source material. Vio blinked, visibly rerouting his thought processes.

"Oh. Honestly, I had no idea he was going to use a trident, I didn't research for that."

"...Whoops?" Red offered.

"Yeah, whoops," Vio agreed ruefully, and sent an irritated glare off towards the distant Ganon. "That being said, from what I can see from here, he hits like a train and seems to be inordinately fond of magic lightning. We should probably avoid that."

"Nah, I'm pretty sure my Train can hit harder than that," Steam said, eyeing one of the far-off, half-standing buildings.

"It's a comparison," Vio retorted. "It got the point across, didn't it? My point is, that's all I've got."

"Let me try, then," Gen said. "Hey, Fi?"

There was a moment's pause, as all the versions of the Master Sword lit up sequentially and Fi hopped around identifying which vessel was closest to the time period she was in. Then Dusk's sword once again settled into a low thrum, and Fi's voice echoed, "Yes, Master?"

"Can you analyze those two?" Gen asked, pointing. Helpfully, Ganon picked that moment to slam his trident straight through a library, making him rather difficult to miss.

Dusk's weapon emitted a wavering chime. "Of course, Master. My apologies for not taking initiative the first time I scanned them."

"...Did she just subtly mock you for not asking when you had her out thirty minutes ago?" Ocarina ventured confusedly.

"Probably," Gen sighed. "She does that sometimes. Speaking of, Fi?"

"Targeting," Fi announced. "Vaati, the Wind Mage. This Demonic Wind Spirit takes the form of his own deepest desires; his own magic has twisted him beyond all recognition. He controls the wind itself, but very little else, using weather manipulation primarily to literally gain higher ground. He attacks with magic projectiles, most prominently featuring either basic untyped or shadow energy. His only means of locomotion are the wings upon his back; I would advise taking them out so as to inhibit his ability to escape. Further analysis suggests that he is susceptible to combustible materials."

"How d'you figure that?" Blue asked, interested.

"Magic users tend to focus all their effort on their spells and neglect their body in the process," Fi said. "Therefore, Vaati has an eighty-five percent chance of being soft and squishy in a way that would not mix well with violent exothermic reactions."

"...What?"

"Kaboom," Gen offered dryly, having plenty of experience translating Fi's jargon by this point.

"Ohhhhhh."

"That's actually really helpful," Vio mused thoughtfully. "Do you have anything on Ganon?"

"Retargeting," Fi replied. "Ganon, the Evil Beast. Once a human of the Gerudo tribe, he was transformed by his own greed for the Sacred Power into the form you see now. He is also in the remaining fifteen percent of magic users who do not neglect their physical bodies, so I advise avoiding close-range combat unless absolutely necessary. Analysis of his power signature indicates a seventy-five percent chance of teleportation being in his repertoire, along with calling down lightning and the basic untyped energy projectile. Given the corrupted state of his being, there is a ninety-percent chance that he is weak to light energy and any weapons imbued with it, such as myself. I suggest watching for an opening before moving into his range in that case."

"Got it," Gen said. "Anything else?"

"As previously stated, both foes utilize untyped energy projectiles," Fi said. "Lack of an elemental affiliation makes these attacks vulnerable to deflection and volleying."

The look on Gen's face indicated that he was very pleased with that analysis. The look on Lore's face indicated… well, there wasn't really a good enough word for what the look on Lore's face indicated. The way he was brandishing a Bug Net like a tennis racquet allowed for a few conclusions, though. "Thanks, Fi."

"It is my pleasure, Master," chimed Dusk's Master Sword neutrally, before falling silent.

"Okay, she is super useful," Mask said. "How come she didn't stick around for me? I would have liked a companion that can't get knocked out by barrier magic."

Gen shrugged at him. "No idea. But in any case, Fi's said all she can."

"Well between her and Vio, I'm satisfied," Lore said, nodding authoritatively. "Now, based on that info, who wants to fight whom?"

"Dibs on Vaati," Wind volunteered. "Someone needs to clean up his mess."

Dusk snapped his fingers. "That's actually a good idea. If Wind cancels the tornadoes, that would give the rest of us a clear shot."

Wind shrugged. "I mean, you'd have a pretty clear shot anyways because Vaati's quality control is terrible, but I can totally do that if you want."

"Please," Dusk told him, then went back to addressing the whole group. "Also, anyone who's got a Clawshot or some variation on one would be helpful. It's really easy to foul up an enemy's wings and bring them down with one of those." He held up his own pair of Clawshots as demonstration.

There was a moment of shuffling, as the group slowly separated into two, smaller clusters. Dusk became the center of the Clawshot cluster, while everyone not meeting that requirement concentrated off to the left. There was a brief moment of awkwardness when it turned out that the group without Clawshots or Clawshot variants was a whole lot larger.

"I've got some spares?" Lore offered, in a clear attempt to even out the numbers.

"Same," Mask agreed, while Dusk just held his extra up demonstratively.

After a moment of two of inter-group debate, Green said, "Yeah, sure. Red?"

"This is gonna be fun," Red announced, bouncing a little in his excitement. The two of them crossed the distance to the Clawshot group and immediately got absorbed into a teaching session as Dusk quietly explained to them exactly how a Clawshot actually worked.

"Yeah, this is better distribution," Vio said, sweeping his eyes over the group in a quick headcount. Himself and Blue, along with Steam, the Four, Realm, and Speck were making up the Normal group aiming to fight Ganon. Meanwhile, Lore, Gen, Dusk, Green, Red, Ocarina, Mask, and Sketch were making up the Vaati team.

"Can I, uh," Steam said, raising a hand. "I'm not the most… athletic guy? Like, Ganon seems like he's going to involve a lot of running and screaming, and I spent most of my adventure standing still, driving a Train. Can I swap?"

"Sure, I'll trade you," Gen said easily. Or, well more easily than he would have during the Demise fight. It'd barely been a day since then, he was still adjusting. Personally he thought he was doing really well, given the circumstances. But, because he was still adjusting, he followed that up with, "Just, please don't break my stuff, okay? This is my only pair."

"Sure thing," Steam said, carefully taking Gen's Double Hookshots with something vaguely resembling reverence, and promptly proceeded to get completely lost in the inner mechanics. "How do these even work?" He muttered.

"Well don't check now," Gen said exasperatedly, prying Steam's curious fingers off of the gear interlock that he was somehow already fiddling with. "You need to use them before you break them."

"I'm not gonna break them," Steam protested. The hand caught in Gen's grip twitched longingly. "I'm just gonna… dissemble them. To see how they work."

"Yeah, well, you can't fire them at Vaati if they're in pieces," Gen sighed. "Look, you can fiddle with them if we live, but please put them back together at the end."

"You are my new favorite person," Steam told him in complete and utter sincerity.

"Aww, man," Sketch muttered in mock offense. "Does this mean our self-sustaining lantern idea is cancelled?"

Steam paused. "Well, crap. Can I have two favorite people?"

"How about I respectfully decline your affections, take a consolatory position as your second favorite person, and we actually finally get to the massive Boss Battle problem?" Gen broke in, slightly fed up by this point.

"Yeah, that works."

"Okay then!" Lore declared. "We have tentative battle plans, designated opponents, and most importantly, the appropriate pointy things! Any other questions, comments, concerns, or cries of anguish I should know about?"

There was silence for a moment as everyone processed that.

"...Cries of anguish?" Gen asked disbelievingly.

"Well, you never know," Lore said, waving a hand nonchalantly. "Now, as the LiT, I do believe it's my job to start this party."

"We appear to have very different definitions of the word party."

"Eh, details," Lore dismissed, then grinned sharply. "I've always wanted to do this. Everyone, BREAK!"

While not the most explanatory sentence, the whole group took that for the signal it was. Everyone scattered.

---

Vaati, still in a terrible mood but now slightly less terrible because taking out his frustrations on buildings was a marvelous stress-reliever, had just finished throwing a tornado through the remains of an inn. It looked better than way, in his opinion. Granted, it was a rather unpopular opinion, but this was because most of Vaati's fellow villains thought that the world looked best when it was on fire, rather than in rubble. Which, Vaati could admit, burning things had perks, but rubble was much more… refined.

(Approximately none of these opinions were to be said out loud, though. Even less so in the presence of Majora. Majora tended to express their opinions about burning through… very hands-on demonstration.)

Vaati's briefly boosted mood plummeted right back down again. Stupid Majora. Stupid fellow villains. Stupid Demise, except he couldn't actually express that one without loss of bodily function.

"Oi! Mr. Pudgy Bat!"

Vaati paused. Turned. Came eyeball-to-face with a somewhat short, violently ginger Hero who seemed much less intimidated than he ought to have been. Processed this. Blinked.

"Excuse me?" Vaati said, thoroughly caught off-guard. Because, it seemed to him, that this green person was talking to him as though there wasn't a town lying in ruins around them that was most certainly Vaati's fault. Also, he felt like he'd been insulted. There was definitely a vague feeling of offense.

"Oh, did you not hear me?" the Hero asked. "I'm so sorry, I totally should have made sure I had your attention first. I said, 'Oi! Mr. Pudgy Bat!' Did you get it this time?"

"Pudgy… Bat," Vaati said slowly, as the vague feeling of being insulted morphed into a definite feeling of being insulted. He was not pudgy.

"Yes, that's you," said the Hero, looking very much as though he was trying not to devolve into giggles if the way his face was twitching was anything to judge by. Oh yes, Vaati was very insulted now. "I'm hoping we could have a chat?"

Vaati, however, wasn't done feeling insulted. He also had absolutely no idea which Hero this was. "Exactly who are you?"

"Well, I'm the Hero," said the Hero patiently.

"Not mine, you aren't," Vaati said brusquely. "Mine is smaller, wears significantly more colorful clothing, and has three more bodies to run around in. You're just… ginger."

"...This feels like Hero prejudice," said ginger observed suspiciously.

Vaati squinted at him. "Look, I'm just gonna kill you real quick and get on with my job, okay?"

"What, without even a proper fight?" the Hero asked incredulously. "I knew you were trying to oppress me! This is unfair treatment! This is unequal distribution! This is-!"

"By Demise, I don't have time for this," Vaati snarled over the loudly complaining teenager.

"I demand the proper amount of hatred and villainous one-liners!" the ginger Hero shouted.

Vaati, in what was one of his more practical decisions, concluded that this new Hero was insane and made to end his pathetic life right then and there by dropping a boulder on him. Unfortunately, he missed.

"Oh, are we fighting now?" the Hero asked brightly, suddenly no longer nearly as upset and also right there in front of Vaati's face.

And then he stabbed his sword right into Vaati's singular massive eyeball. Which, given the positioning of this, Vaati really should have seen it coming.

---

"...What just happened?" Dusk asked, somewhat blankly while Vaati flailed and spewed violent curses in the background. All six of the Wind Mage's wings were folded around his newly-stabbed eye, and Vaati appeared to be appropriately upset by this.

"I distracted him," Lore said. "It works practically every time. All you have to do is completely defy expectations, and nine times out of ten everyone will be too surprised to stop you before you get what you want out of the situation."

"...You've used this tactic on the group already, haven't you," Dusk concluded tonelessly.

Lore wobbled a hand. "Well, I mean, maybe a little…? Just in the beginning when I was trying to invite myself along. Also maybe when I wanted to be LiT. Also a bit during the Demise fight, but Demise turned out to be immune so maybe that one doesn't count."

"Can you do it again?" Dusk asked pointedly, to bring Lore back around from the tangent he was gearing up on.

"Not on Vaati," Lore sighed regretfully. "I stabbed him in the eyeball, he'll be way too suspicious now."

Vaati punctuated this with a particularly aggressive insinuation about Lore's mother, followed by an awful lot of predictions of very painful death. Assuming Vaati was in fact an accurate Seer, Lore was going to end up the victim of a very convoluted homicide.

"It'd totally work on the Ganon over there, though," Lore finished, somehow utterly unconcerned about the blatant threats to his life.

"I can't believe you found a way to weaponize your personality," Dusk muttered. "Actually - no, I can believe it. I can absolutely believe it."

"Aww, you're gonna make me blush."

At that moment, Vaati decided that his insults weren't getting his displeasure across well enough, and graduated to flinging spheres of dark, shadowy magic in every which direction. The Hookshot Group, who'd been hiding behind the rubble while Lore did his thing and were now taking advantage of Vaati's distraction and collectively shuffling closer, immediately scattered again.

"We might have to try distance strategies first!" Mask yelled.

---

Over on the Ganon side of things, the Four had just been volunteered as the Distraction and were appropriately worried by it. This was mostly because they themselves had not been doing the volunteering, and had no idea how it had happened.

"Why, exactly, are we the Distraction?" the Four asked with said appropriate worry.

"Because you guys naturally cluster and will automatically be the largest target regardless, so it makes sense to take advantage of that," Vio told them.

"...Okay, and what's the actual reason?"

"That's totally the actual reason."

"What's the other actual reason?"

Vio deigned to look a bit sheepish. "...You guys weren't paying attention when we voted on it."

"Gee," the Four said dryly. "Thanks."

"Look, just… holler if you need to swap out, okay?"

The Four bestowed Vio with exactly the sort of Look that comment deserved, then turned to face the still-rampaging Ganon and marched determinedly out from behind the house ruins they'd been hiding behind.

'This is not one of our smarter decisions,' the red member commented solemnly as they approached.

'Shut up and don't trip this time,' the purple member replied.

'When are you gonna let that go, it was not my fault the path was unstable!'

'Can we focus please?' the blue member groaned. 'This is not a single-pilot hive mind.'

'Right, sorry.'

They had the advantage of making their approach while Ganon was preoccupied with trampling through the remains of what looked like a Game Shop, the prizes of which were rolling in every which direction. The Four took a collective deep breath.

Then they drew their swords, broke into a sprint, and proceeded to stab Ganon right through the top of his left foot. Ganon took this about as well as he could be expected to take it, and by that it can be understood that Ganon immediately tried to wipe the Four from existence via impaling by trident. The Four, naturally, took that about as well as could be expected.

And by that, it can be understood that they shrieked at the top of their lungs, frantically dodged, and sprinted away screeching, "THIS WAS A BAD IDEA! THIS WAS A VERY BAD IDEA!" while being pursued by several crackling spheres of violently green magic, courtesy of Ganon because he'd just been stabbed in the foot and couldn't chase the Four the way he wanted to, was angry by that, and was using that anger to fuel a lot of painful magical projectiles instead.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Ganon group was busy taking advantage of the fact that the giant pig in question was very distracted. This meant that instead of taking shelter from behind bits of rubble and sniping down their opponents health with arrows bit by bit, they were instead creeping up behind with the intent to stab. Halfway there, Blue squinted at the green magic spheres Ganon was throwing and frowned. "...That looks like Energy Ball," he muttered to himself. "Did we hop franchises?"

Vio immediately smacked him upside the head, hissing, "Stop breaking things, now is not the time."

"But did we? Because if we did, and I can get a Gyarados, we need to make a side trip."

"If you don't focus right now, I'm telling Green on you."

"Okay, okay!" Blue yelped. "Point taken!"

"Shut up!" Realm whispered frantically, because they were in the middle of trying to perform a sneak attack and Blue had just shattered whatever silence they'd been maintaining. Unfortunately, he was already too late. Ganon paused, snorted, and slowly turned around to glare at the group of Heroes attempting to stab his backside.

"...Oops?" Blue offered.

"Slash and run and we'll talk about this later!" Gen yelled. And since this seemed like an excellent suggestion, everyone listened to him. Consequently, Ganon ended up with six sword-shaped holes in his other foot, and six more Links ended up running for their lives when Ganon decided that he was done playing around and spammed green magic everywhere.

"This probably could be going better," Speck panted as they sprinted.

"I'm sorry, okay!?" Blue retorted.

---

On the other side of the rubble, Vaati had gotten over being stabbed in the eyeball just enough to actually see again. ...Maybe. Given that his eye was red enough to be a tomato and he had to keep blinking water out of the way, his actual vision seemed a bit suspect.

Not that the Links cared about that, because Vaati was a jerk, but it was still sorta concerning to look at.

At the moment, everyone was hiding behind rubble again, because Vaati was flinging magic at anything that moved regardless of whether or not he could see what it was. In between this, though, Wind was making a careful approach - he and Vaati needed to have a Discussion.

"Excuse me," he said politely, because his Grandma had drilled manners into him even if his conversation partner was an evil demon bat. "But you're using weather magic, right? Can I ask what your certification level is?"

Vaati blinked at him, though whether this was because he was confused or because he had to get more water out of the way was unclear. "Why would I bother with certification?"

"Aaaaand that's exactly what I thought you'd say," Wind sighed. "Did you just lift your spells straight from a book or something?"

"Excuse you, I am self taught," Vaati informed him haughtily.

"...okay, you should never become a teacher."

Vaati shrieked something incoherent, wildly offended - but not because he'd ever wanted to be a teacher. It was an issue of the implications. He sent a tornado full of his bruised ego at Wind's head, probably in an attempt to prove him wrong.

Wind, though, just flicked his baton and dissipated the whole thing.

"Yeah, okay," he sighed, and got into a ready stance as Vaati let out several more insulted screeches and launched more weather patterns at him. He didn't know why he'd gotten his hopes up again, it wasn't like the view from the mountaintop had made Vaati's skill level look any better.

Still hiding behind rubble, Lore poked his head out and observed the chaos.

"Wow," he said. "Whatever Wind said to him, that worked amazingly. You think he'd give me lessons?"

"I… think it might have been a situation-specific conversation," Dusk replied, as Vaati bellowed something about totally being a great teacher if he'd wanted to and Wind just sighed heavily.

"On the bright side," Sketch offered, "Vaati isn't paying attention to anything else right now."

"Good point," Mask agreed. "Now would probably be a really good time to try out this Clawshot strategy."

"Aim for his wings," Dusk advised.

They had to wait a bit, because there was actively a tornado happening, but then the weather cleared and six chains lanced out and latched onto various parts of Vaati's body. A seventh chain, however, went wildly sideways and hit the remains of a tree instead, which was unexpected enough that everyone paused to blink at it.

"So I may have forgotten to mention," Lore said casually, "that my long-distance aim really sucks."

"Are you serious." Ocarina said.

"Why are you only telling us this in the middle of a fight!?" Mask sputtered, somewhat more vehemently than his younger self.

"More to the point, why are you on the team that specifically requires us to be aiming at far away targets?" Green demanded.

"Well, normally I can just bluff my way around it."

Vaati picked that moment to lunge, which cut off the conversation for a few moments. In between struggling to bring him back down, Dusk panted, "How's that working out for you?"

"I've had more successful attempts," Lore replied. He was by now climbing the tree, because the chain had gotten tangled in the small branches. This was made more difficult by the fact that Vaati was throwing himself in every which direction in an attempt to stay in the air and out of reach of the group's swords, and more often than not he was coordinating his lunges with endeavors to bodily knock Lore unconscious.

"PULL!" Dusk shouted, seeing this and deciding it was probably best to prevent it, and because Dusk had a very good Authority Voice when he decided to use it, everyone listened. Vaati, strong though he was, couldn't out-pull six people at once, especially not since Wind was twisting the weather around and pushing down on him with it. He still out up a good fight, though, and ended up going down like a cluster of stubborn helium balloons rather than any normal, gravity-abiding person, but the point was he was now within range of being stabbed.

Of course, Vaati had a vested interest in not being stabbed, and the instant he hit the ground he threw magic projectiles in every direction possible. Blocking and dodging instantly became a higher priority than stabbing could ever manage to be, and in the end only Steam actually managed to land a hit before Vaati tore himself free from the Hook and Clawshots and launched back into the sky. The weather battle immediately kicked back into gear again; Wind parried it with an almost apathetic effort.

"Let's try that again," Green sighed, watching what had been the beginnings of an impressive whirlwind dissipate long before it ever reached the ground while Vaati screamed his frustrations. "Only this time, let's not have Lore be on the Hookshot squad."

"I agree with this alteration to the plan!" Lore called from where he was still in the tree. "I'm just gonna stick to stabbing things once I get down!"

"That'll work," Dusk nodded. "We bring him down, Lore hits him, we bring backup if there's time."

"BREAK!" Lore hollered from the tree.

"Wind!" Dusk called. "Bring him back down!"

"Sure," Wind said. He flicked his baton through a quick sequence, then jabbed the tip at the ground.

The downdraft hit Vaati like a brick wall, and Vaati hit the ground like a sack of rocks. There was a moment of surprised silence.

"...I'll be honest, I thought he was going to counter that," Wind admitted.

---

"Perhaps," Gen mused, from the safe distance he and the rest of the group had retreated to as he watched the Four sprint screaming across the battlefield, "we should have approached this differently."

As if to punctuate that statement, Ganon bellowed something incoherently loud, proceeded to set his trident on fire, and then threw the thing like a boomerang. Somehow, it actually worked despite having absolutely no grounds to do so.

"Hey," Speck said suddenly. "D'you think that's what Fi meant about choosing our approach carefully? He just threw his weapon away, he's literally wide open."

"Worth a shot," Gen decided. "Vio, Blue, go with Speck and test that theory. Realm, you're with me, we're gonna swap out with the Four."

Realm tilted his head. "But they've only been running for fifteen minutes?"

"...I keep forgetting you have absolutely no frame of reference for what exertion for normal people is," Gen muttered. "Okay, uh…" He dug around in his (admittedly limited) memories pertaining to Realm. In his defense, he'd only just hit the twenty-four hour mark in his relationship with these people. "It's like when you've been running for five days straight," he concluded eventually.

"Ohhhhh," Realm said, with a tone of great realization. "Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I'll swap them, no problem." And with that, he promptly sprinted onto the battlefield with absolutely zero regard for the fact that this now made him a perfect target. But since Realm was already well-used to being a target, sometimes for several consecutive hours (and normally at the mercy of a dragon), this thought didn't occur to him with the same level of urgency as it would to almost anyone else.

Conveniently though, the exact moment Realm made his entrance was also when Vio, Blue, and Speck tested their hypothesis on Ganon's vulnerability. The results seemed a bit inconclusive; on one hand, they'd definitely stabbed him. On the other hand-

"I think we just made it worse!" Blue screeched, almost inaudibly beneath Ganon's furious 'May your sword strike a Cucco' roaring. THe giant pig punctuated this by snagging his still-boomeranging weapon as it made a fly-by and shooting magic lightning with it, which backed up Blue's words pretty well.

"No, hang on," Vio replied, turning around as he ran and squinting. "I think he's favoring his right arm."

"That's progress, right?" Speck panted optimistically.

He didn't get an answer, but that was mostly because of the incoming lightning. It was understandably hard to hold a conversation and dodge for one's life at the same time.

The one good thing about Ganon being so intently focused on them, though, was that it allowed Realm to slip past his notice and make a beeline for the Four. They had perched their hands on their knees, taking advantage of the brief lapse in Ganon's attention to try and get their breath back. Judging by the way their backs were heaving in exhaustion synchronization, they weren't having very good luck with it.

"Swap me," Realm declared.

"Gladly," the Four wheezed. "We would love to stop being bait now. It's exhausting."

Realm made an 'If-you-say-so' expression, but chose not to express that thought out loud. "Do you guys need a distraction while you make your escape?"

"Sure," the Four said, and pulled themselves upright through sheer force of will and the promise of a break. "Tell us when."

"When," Realm echoed.

The Four didn't move. Realm raised his eyebrows pointedly. "When," he emphasized.

"Oh!" the Four said, and then immediately took off sprinting.

"Honestly, I used their codeword and everything," Realm muttered to himself in amusement. Then he took a deep breath, braced himself, and performed what was probably one of the stupidest actions in the fight to date.

"HEY MR. BLUE PIG!" He shrieked across the battlefield. Ganon, halfway through the motion of throwing his impossibly boomeranging trident again, froze.

"WHAT?"

"Oh Farore," Realm squeaked, finding himself pinned under the full force of Ganon's fury and being appropriately intimidated. This was a lot more of Ganon's attention than he'd been bargaining for when he'd borrowed Mask's earlier mountaintop observation for a quick nickname, which was apparently not at all within Ganon's allowed forms of address. This observation was quickly proved true when Ganon switched the trajectory of his trident and threw it directly at Realm instead.

Once again, it was also on fire. Realm took one look at it and the fact that it was going to clock him in the head, and promptly put his stamina to good use.

---

Between Wind completely and utterly curb-stomping any weather pattern Vaati tried to use, Lore's ridiculously varied sword skill repertoire, and everyone else hounding Vaati with Hookshots… there really wasn't a whole lot Vaati could actually do to put up resistance. It was actually a bit weird. Less than twenty-four hours ago the Links had very nearly gotten themselves killed by Demise, and in some part of their brains, all their survival instincts were still very much on high alert.

The thing was that Vaati, for all that he was trying to be, just wasn't on the same level as the literal god of destruction fueled by all the powers of every threat to Hyrule. He was still putting up a good fight, for sure, but it just… wasn't as good as he thought it was.

Case in point, despite all of Vaati's best efforts, he was singularly unable to dismantle the vacuum tunnel that Wind was fueling right into his face, which was also coincidentally carrying an awful lot of explosives with it.

"N'pmm, ns'nu!" Lore crowed, proudly watching as the bombs went off with a sound that was an awful lot like thunder. "You gotta love a good explosion."

"I BEG TO DIFFER!" Vaati bellowed, now burnt and somewhat smoking and looking none too happy about it.

"Nope, you gotta. It's in the Laws set by the Subrosian Circle of Incendiary Materials."

"Do I look," Vaati snarled, "like I care what any of that is?" This may or may not have been a trick question, because it was blatantly obvious that he didn't; Lore decided to take him at face value.

"...Wow," he said , and then capitalized on the brief moment of distraction to chuck about sixteen more bombs into the still-present vacuum tunnel. Vaati let out an enraged howl as they blew up in his face. "That's a travesty. Now I'm gonna have to get loud about it." He took a deep breath, threw a few more bombs, and then hollered, "THE SUBROSIANS HAVE BEEN INSULTED!" and immediately went off on a wildly confusing tangent about cloaks. Somehow this didn't detract from his ability to fight in the slightest.

"I don't understand how he does that," Ocarina said blankly, because his own ability to fight was usually tied to how much focus he was putting into it. Talking generally wasn't something he tried to pair with avoiding swords and magic attacks aimed at his head.

"It's a learned skill," Mask told him. He left out the part where he knew how to do it, because he was still compiling his mental list of what he could and could not tell his younger self without causing a paradox when they were literally living through a separate, unrelated paradox. It was a very long and complicated list, and Mask had been a bit busy. Don't judge him. "Now help me foul up Vaati's wings again, we can't rely on bombs alone to beat him."

"Why not?" Red asked. "It seems like it's working pretty well so far."

"Because sooner or later he's going to figure out how to defend against that," Green told him, "and we should mix it up before he realizes."

"That makes sense!"

The difference between Vaati and Demise was once again made abundantly clear when Vaati, too focused on Lore's continued tirade about cloaks and accompanied bomb-throwing, completely missed the fact that the rest of the group had fired their Hookshots again until all six chains latched onto his body and slammed him to the ground again. Lore immediately took advantage of this and pulled out his sword to target Vaati's eyeball.

It was a very good target. Vaati had a very prominent eyeball. Really, it made up his entire face. He had no mouth.

...How did he eat?

Halfway through this onslaught, though, Vaati apparently remembered that he was a Wind Mage. He spawned an updraft directly beneath his body with enough force that he knocked all the Hookshots loose, and enough spontaneity that Wind didn't counter it in time to prevent the demon bat from rising up into the air above their heads again.

"I was already having a bad day before you little molds showed up!" he shrieked. "I DO NOT NEED THESE KINDS OF COMPLICATIONS!"

"We should start running," Dusk opined quietly. His opinion was immediately proven correct by Vaati spamming as much magic as he could physically fit into the airspace around him, and for a few minutes everyone lost track of what was going on because they were too busy running for their lives.

---

"So" Gen said conversationally, as Realm sprinted across the middle distance behind him and Ganon released dozens of magic spheres in pursuit, "does anyone know how to use that light energy Fi was talking about?"

"Not without Zelda," Steam said ruefully. Everyone else shook their heads in similar negatives. Magic masters, the Links typically were not, and even then it was usually combat magic. Light-based energy was usually used in more passive ways like blessings, sealings, and general healing ability. And while it was dead useful, especially since it happened to be the direct counter to the much more destructive and almost unanimously antagonistic shadow magic, getting light power in itself to be a weapon was easier said than done. There was a reason that all light-based attack strategies revolved around a weapon pre-imbued with said light energy, and that reason was that light magic was stubbornly purist and profoundly refused to be shaped into a projectile laser. The next best thing was blessing a sheave of arrows with the stuff and firing away.

Of course, there was also the small issue where light magic really liked to be hereditary, and the only known family with light magic in their bloodline was the royal one. Not to say that light magic couldn't be learned, because it could. Light magic was a practice just like everything else, but it did happen to be significantly easier to master if one was born with it. Among the eight energy types that magic could be organized into, light energy was by far the most difficult to master. As a result, ninety-eight percent of sorcerers said "Screw this" and went on to specialize in something a lot more manageable, like fire-based magic.

Long story short, this meant that if Princess Zelda in some way or form was not around to help a Hero out, there was almost literally nobody else who could cast light magic.

It was a very irritating problem

"I guess it's a good thing that Fi is already imbued with the stuff," Gen sighed. "Does anybody else know if their weapon comes pre-blessed?"

There was a moment where everyone unsheathed their swords and examined them with frowns and contemplative poking.

"...We think our specific blessings are aimed at other benefits," the Four said at length, and gestured to… themselves. To be fair, it was a pretty noticeable blessing. Identical quadruplets, no matter what anybody said, were a rare sight under even the most normal of circumstances. The synchronicity just made the preternatural aspect of it even more obvious.

"So it's literally just the Master Sword then," Gen summarized. "And all the other people with a Master Sword are in the other group."

"This probably could have been planned better," Blue noted bluntly.

"We were in a rush!" Gen pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. "Okay, altering the plan. I have the most effective weapon, so I'm in charge of Damage. Realm looks like he's going great with Distraction, so he can keep doing that."

"Also, I don't think we could flag him down to tell him a new plan if we tried," Vio noted, watching as Realm blurred across the battlefield in the opposite direction from before, now trailing an entire flock of Keese behind him that he'd apparently picked up from… somewhere. Following closely behind the Keese was Ganon's trident, once again on fire and leaving an alarming amount of residual lightning in its wake, and bringing up the rear was Ganon himself, lurching heavily across the ground due to the sword holes in both feet and covered in… stone dust?

"...Also it looks like he sidetracked through a cave at some point when we weren't looking and dragged Ganon along for the ride? Even though he really shouldn't have been able to do that, because there's no caves around this part of Hyrule."

"That surprises me less than it should," Gen groaned. "And somehow that part that's more surprising is that he managed to find his way back here within five minutes. Regardless, he's doing a great job and I'm just gonna let him keep doing it."

"THANK YOU!" Realm hollered as he blew past once again, having apparently caught just enough of the conversation in passing. Everyone ducked as the confused Keese flock flapped past in pursuit, then scrambled out of the way in a panic as the trident boomeranged through and Ganon followed close behind. They reconvened behind a larger, more secure piece of rubble than the last chunk had been.

"Everyone who's not Realm or me, play tennis," Gen said, resuming his outline of the new plan. "We're both gonna be too busy to dodge forever, and if Fi says untyped energy is deflectable then that's exactly what will happen. We're gonna take this guy down one way or another. Clear?"

Blue saluted him. Everyone else nodded. Then Gen, not being one for unnecessarily flashy declarations the way Lore was, unsheathed his Master Sword without another word and sprinted off after Ganon, presumably with the intent to stab him in whatever location presented itself.

"...Alright," Vio said, taking over the conversation since the Link in charge had left. "Who here has a good forehand?"

The Four collectively raised their hands.

"Perfect, you're on point."

---

"Can I ask," Lore said conversationally, in blatant disregard for the atmosphere, "exactly which part of 'Pudgy Bat' are you taking offense to?"

"ALL OF IT," Vaati bellowed. He was not pudgy, nor was he a bat! It was completely inaccurate! He launched a few tornados in his irritation, all except one of which got immediately dissolved. The one remaining twister was so pathetically impotent that it only managed to ruffle everyone's hair. Vaati compensated for this by launching shadow magic projectiles at everyone instead.

Lore ducked, Wind sidestepped, and everyone else threw themselves into rolls, which had the convenient side effect of putting all six of the Hookshot-wielding Links into the perfect starting stances to fire said Hookshots. It took approximately two-point-seven seconds for them all to realize this, and about three more seconds after that to capitalize on it.

Magic though Vaati was, he still needed workings wings to stay in the air just like the rest of the normal, physics-obeying people. When he tried to counter this with a personal tornado between him and the ground, Wind twisted the vortex into reverse and turned it into a suction instead, and Vaati once again hit the ground hard enough to make it shake.

Lore darted in and promptly planted his weapon in Vaati's eyeball, then backpedaled as Wind dropped a hailstone the size of a small dog on Vaati's back. With Vaati firmly pinned, Lore darted back in to deliver more sword strikes, and a couple of the Hookshot Links shot forwards to lend their weapons to the assault.

Everyone else chose to stay at their designated stations and throw bombs from a distance. Multiple Links were actively carrying several dozen explosives, even with taking into account all the bombs that had already been tossed.

Vaati may have been a demonic sorcerer, with powers most people might consider unnatural and an unusual resemblance to a fuzzy nocturnal mammal (no matter how much he denied it). But there were some things in life that simply outranked him, and absurd quantities of TNT were one of those things.

(For the interested, the other things were Demise, Majora, the very-recently added Wind (not that Vaati was acknowledging that), and one really stubborn owl that just couldn't seem to take the hint that Vaati was, in fact, not a bat. The fact that Vaati was also far too large for this owl to eat in one sitting hadn't seemed to occur to the creature either. To his dying day Vaati would deny being frightened of one small (in comparison to him, anyway) bird, but it wouldn't stop swooping at his head and it had really sharp talons. There was a reason Vaati made his palace on top of a mountain above the flight path of owls.)

The bombs, combined with the swords and the hailstone and everything else that had hit him in the fight previously, cracked the last notion of defense Vaati had. Dark wisping magic began leaking from Vaati's eye, which was also coincidentally where all his stab wound were. Then again, maybe it wasn't that much of a coincidence. Lore's long-range aim may have been crap, but his hand-eye coordination was anything but and he'd hit his target every time he'd swung his weapon. What this added up to, effectively, was Vaati letting out a shriek of pure, incandescent rage before dissolving into a mass of roiling shadows, which hung for a moment before coalescing into a tiny flicker of black. The flicker then darted away, streaming straight towards the mountain in the distance and the still-growing black void at the peak.

"...We're going to have to climb that again, aren't we," Green said flatly.

"At least we'll have a pretty view once we get there," Red offered brightly.

"...Red, I am trying so hard to be cheerful for you right now, but I'm literally about to pass out at the thought of more physical exertion. Please point your optimism at someone else."

"Okay!" Red chirped, accepting this reasoning effortlessly and promptly turning his sunshine smile onto Sketch instead.

"That was a lot easier than Demise," Steam said slowly. "Like, nobody had a near-death experience that time. Is that good?"

"Well, I can say for sure that it means Demise is on a whole other level," Dusk decided. "Granted, I have no reference for what he might have been like before the Universe broke and he absorbed all our villains. I'm glad we can take out his smaller pieces at least, but…"

"He's the deep end and we got thrown back to the shallow part of the pond," Wind concluded.

"I'm not so sure that could be qualified as the shallow part," Sketch said dryly, pushing up his sleeves to show off his new collection of magic-induced bruises. It was important to note that they were the magic kind, because the magic kind showed up immediately darkened to the most painful colors, and then stayed that way for far longer than anyone wanted them to. His skin looked a lot like the paint he sometimes turned into. Seeing that, everyone else suddenly became aware of their own collections of minor injuries, which were actually somewhat bordering on being major injuries due to how many of them there were.

"...Okay, maybe this is the part in the pond where we stand on our tiptoes," Wind revised, pulling down the neckline of his tunic to grimace at his collarbone. "Anyone got a Health Potion?"

"I donated all mine during the Demise fight," Dusk murmured, a sentiment that was quickly echoed by everyone else.

"Same, that's why I was asking," Wind sighed. "Maybe someone in the Ganon group still has a bit?"

"Actually, where is the Ganon group?" Ocarina wondered. Possibly because of the amount of wind being thrown around, the battle with Vaati had ended up well outside the borders of the previously-standing Castle Town, which meant that all the Links that had been fighting him were now just sort of standing around in the middle of nowhere. It also meant that they'd lost track of the other half of their squad a long time ago.

"Well," Lore said. "Taking into account the wind speed, the location of the sun, the number of active cicadas, and the fact that something just set that distant tree on fire," he pointed towards said distant tree, which was indeed newly ablaze, "I think they might be that way."

Mask squinted at the tree, then at Lore. "Why didn't you just point out the tree in the first place…?"

"There's a very good reason for that," Lore said, then winked, and walked off in the direction of the tree without another word.

"...I don't know why I was expecting anything else," Mask said blankly, resigning himself to following.

---

There was one major problem with having Realm be the bait, and that was because Realm just never seemed to stop. For Realm, of course, this wasn't a huge issue, and for Ganon, who had apparently left his human endurance behind along with his humanity and was still chasing Realm, it didn't seem to be much of a problem either.

For Gen, however, who was doing his darnedest to catch up, it was exhausting. The one bright spot he had right now was that the lost Keese flock Realm had picked up from who-knew-where had lost interest and fluttered off to sleep in the ruins of the town until the moon came up, and he was perfectly fine with that development. It gave him the time to concentrate and get his breathing under control before throwing his head down and sprinting as hard as he could.

If there was one thing Gen could do well, it was run. Not for any extended amount of time, really, but he was a fantastic burst runner. If Realm was the machine that never stopped, Gen was the cheetah who could outrun the machine for about twenty seconds before dropping flat from exhaustion.

But really, if he used those twenty seconds of flat-out sprinting to actually get somewhere, then it all worked out, didn't it?

For Ganon, it was a rather unexpected development. One moment, there was nobody behind him, and the next there was a second Hero, moving so quickly that he passed Ganon entirely. Then, gasping with every movement, the new arrival twisted himself around, drew his sword in one quick snap, and made a torso-wide strike across Ganon's entire abdomen.

This, understandably, brought Ganon to a resounding halt.

"...I'm going to kill you for that, you know," Ganon said conversationally. The Hero, having apparently spent all his energy in just catching up, made a faint wheezing noise.

"Raincheck," he rasped, and then all but fell over trying to get his breath back.

"I'm evil," Ganon emphasized. "What makes you think I'm going to honor it?"

"We're going-" wheeze "-to make you."

This was a very disputable claim, and Ganon fully intended to do so, but quite suddenly Realm came careening through the conversation, having apparently never stopped running. He'd also apparently noticed the situation and decided to do something about it, because he used the force of his momentum to literally run Ganon over.

Ganon slowly picked himself back up, straightened his armor, and calmly informed Gen, "Raincheck," and launched his trident - once again on fire - directly at the fleeing Realm's head.

Gen dragged in a breath that was just big enough to let him screech, "REALM, DOWN!" just in time for Realm to jerk out of the way and for the trident to hit a nearby tree instead, which immediately went up in flames. Gen used the distraction to get out of Ganon's line of sight. Ganon himself, meanwhile, roared in frustration, spawned enough magic spheres that they were actually uncountable, and threw them all after Realm, who had somewhat wisely still not stopped running.

This was about when the rest of the Ganon group put their 'tennis' designation into practice. Speck, not being very physically built, returned one sphere, though not for lack of trying. All the others just went over his head. Vio returned three, while Blue returned four. There was in no way an unspoken competition between the two of them to see who could volley the most. Absolutely not. What a completely ridiculous notion.

(Blue totally reserved bragging rights, though.)

The Four, however, managed to return a whopping thirteen spheres. While theoretically each individual member had only swung four times, their inherent clustering meant that they automatically covered a larger surface area and as a result, a larger number of incoming projectiles.

And of course, none of it would have worked nearly as well as it did if Ganon hadn't made every single one of the spheres in his attack out of untyped magic energy. As Fi had said, untyped magic was the easiest kind to reflect, on account of it having no inherent trait to interfere with the surrounding area. Fire magic, for example, was really hard to bounce back, because it was more likely to just burn a hole straight through whatever was being used to deflect it. Untyped magic came with no such issues.

As such, Ganon received a face-full of his own magic, right at the same time that Gen finally got his breath back and used the opportunity to plant his Master Sword straight through Ganon's armor.

Fi had previously stated that she was imbued with light magic. She had also previously stated that Ganon was weak to light magic. Ganon had previously taken damage from several stab wounds, and a whole lot of volleyed magic. And Ganon now had Fi's host body buried up to the hilt in his ribcage.

He could take a lot of hits, but not quite that many. With a furious bellow, Ganon dissolved into clouds of black, then condensed into a small tendril of utter darkness, and shot off back towards the mountain everyone had just climbed down not two hours ago.

"...huh," Gen said, watching it go before sitting down heavily.

"I think that went pretty well, all things considered," Realm contributed.

"You have five different burn scars that I can see on your legs alone," Vio told him.

"Well, yes, but they're all pretty mild."
"How many do you have where I can't see?"

"Erm," Realm said. "A few more… like, ten or so…"

Vio narrowed his eyes pointedly. "After a certain point, the quantity becomes more of an issue than the severity." Then he raised his voice, "And that goes for everyone!"

"Who's injured?" Gen asked, looking up from where he sat on the ground.

"It's just mild burns and a couple blunt-magic-impacts," Realm assured.

"Are bruises supposed to be this dark so soon?" the Four asked, pulling their tunic hems away from their collective right shoulders.

It was almost like watching a landslide in slow motion. The Links could see the building outburst, rising closer and closer to Gen's tolerance point until the whole thing spilled over in a spectacular display of mother-henning. At some point, it had registered in Gen's brain that, with the exception of Dusk (and maybe Lore, depending on how old he was because Gen couldn't actually tell), he was the oldest Link in the group. And while Gen was an only child, this did nothing to the fact that he had a very healthy set of older-brother instincts.

Basically, his subconscious had just finished absorbing the entire group into the Protect portion of his personality and Gen was running full force with it. He had a bottle of Red Potion in his hand in ten seconds flat.

Or rather, he would have had a bottle of Red Potion, if the bottle hadn't been empty due to the fact that all his stock had gotten used up on Demise.

He processed this new development for a second, then asked, "Does anyone have a Potion on them?"

Nobody did; either they hadn't been carrying one in the first place, or the Demise fight had used it all up. Gen was not pleased with this.

"We just threw ourselves into a boss battle - a damaging boss battle - without any healing items," he said slowly. "Unacceptable. We're meeting up with the rest of the guys, taking a tally of all the injuries, and then I'm going shopping. This crap is not happening again, not on my watch."

With that, he stormed off, irritated enough that there might actually have been a rumbling raincloud above his head. Everyone else stared after him.

"What just happened?" Speck asked.

"I think Gen just appointed himself to be the group medic," Vio answered.

"...Huh."

---

It took a few minutes to find everyone again, and much to each group's dismay, the other was just as roughed up as they were. If possible, the figmentary mother-hen image that Gen was producing puffed up even more, and he immediately dragged the entire gaggle of Links through the rubble of the town to where the Item Shop merchant was emerging from the chaos and pulling his stock back together.

"Hello," Gen said, and slammed a ludicrous amount of Rupees down on the somewhat cracked piece of drywall that was now functioning as the countertop. "I am buying your entire stock of Red Potion with the highest energy boost possible. I don't care how much it will cost."

The merchant looked at the Rupee pile, then up at Gen's face, and turned a distinctly paler shade than what his natural skin tone was at the expression he found there. Unbeknownst to Gen, there was a local suburban cryptid legend in the form of a sleep-deprived, cranky, and uncaring-about-the-cost customer, who was rumored to show up in Potion Shops at odd business hours and order the largest and most potent brew in the store regardless of whether the item was theoretically available to the public or not. The owner of the Milk Bar, who the Item Shopkeeper happened to be very good friends with, told a horror story about the customer who came in, ordered Premium Milk, then filled an entire gallon bucket with the stuff and proceeded to spike the milk with sixteen shots of Green Potion and a terrifying twenty of Red. ("I have never," the Shopkeeper's friend said, trembling, "never in my life seen someone so sleep-deprived and calcium-tolerant. That wasn't a customer - that was a demon.")

Faced with the appearance of this sleep-deprived customer demon in his own Shop - disregarding the rubble his Shop was currently - the merchant did the only thing he could.

"Y-yes, sir," he said, and was proud that his voice only shook a little bit. He shuffled away to retrieve the Potions who's containers had miraculously survived the damage, and as he did, the demon customer behind him said, "Bottles, guys. Now."

By Nayru's Name, the demon had accomplices.

---

It took a bit of rearranging, but Gen somehow managed to both requisition and fit the Empty Bottles of the entire group into his own Bag. How he was fitting them all and still leaving room for everything else he was carrying was a mystery, but given that Gen was blowing through the normal workings of physics with the determination of a man on a mission, the Links thought it best not to question it.

Gen was also now basically broke, but as he watched his counterparts drink their Potion (under his eagle-eyed gaze, which was so intimidating that nobody even thought of trying to get out of it) he considered the disappearing burns and bruises to be well worth it.

"Going into this right after Demise, what were we thinking," he grumbled, stalking around and making sure everyone drank the whole thing.

Zelda showed up right as Gen finished putting the Bottles away in his Bag again, and while she wasn't necessarily pleased about the level of destruction that her country was now in, she eventually decided the benefits outweighed the costs.

"It's a shame about the historic architecture," she sighed, "but we needed to rebuild anyway. And I'm really just relieved Vaati is gone."

Red promptly gave her a hug. Kidnapping was just one of those traumatic experiences.

"Anyways," she continued, "has there been any progress on that void on the mountain?"

"We… found the source?" Vio offered.

"The source kinda kicked our butts though," Blue muttered.

"We're working on it," Green assured her. "It's just… a bigger issue than we thought."

Zelda eyed her local Heroes, then the cluster of extremely similar Heroes behind them. "...Multiverse theory?" she asked.

"More like a timeline theory, but close enough," Vio told her. "Long story short, our Hyrule isn't the only one having this problem. It's turning into a universal thing, and to fix one we gotta fix them all."

"And the more Links on the problem, the better," Zelda finished, and then grinned at the stupefied faces she received. "Oh really, you thought I wouldn't pick up on that? If I didn't know better I'd say the Four Sword glitched. It's uncanny how alike you all are."

"Oh, I like her," Lore announced.

"But back to the void problem," Zelda continued. "The one on the mountain is still there, and very quickly becoming larger. We're actively losing the mountaintop."

"Farore," Green muttered. "I was kinda hoping that beating up these people would solve that problem."

"Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case," Zelda sighed. "I'm not sure why that would have been the case, though?"

Blue cleared his throat. "Okay, so it turns out that there's this literal god of destruction trying to destroy reality and he's the reason the holes are here because he absorbed all of Hyrule's villains for a power boost but didn't bother patching reality behind them. It kinda seemed like since the villains showed up again that beating them might fix the issue, but that turned out to not be true because the hole is still here, so the destruction god is probably still behind it all and that means we gotta go beat him up too."

"...Oh dear," Zelda said, hearing the words 'god of destruction' and becoming appropriately concerned.

"Right!" Lore broke in. "So, we're gonna take a nap, because we've just had one near-death experience and then a whole lot of running afterwards, and then we're gonna get on this issue, because if we don't then there won't be any places to take more naps."

Zelda stared at him. "...I shall pretend that I understand your reasoning," she said slowly. "But I do agree that rest is important and you did just take down both Vaati and Ganon at once. You're all welcome here for as long as you need to stay." She smoothed down her dress, set her shoulders, and continued, "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to start overseeing the rebuild process," and swept off, somehow managing to look graceful even as she clambered over a rubble pile the size of herself.

"...We can't rest here," Dusk said, watching her go. More specifically, watching her pick her way through the utter destruction of former buildings. "It's a mess."

"The void is on the mountain," Gen agreed. "And the void is our ride, from what you've all told me. It seems like a good idea to head there, then rest, so we can pick up where we left off once we're done."

Lore squinted at the two of them. "...Am I still the LiT?"

"Yes," Dusk said instantly, while Gen frowned.

"Was there any reason why you wouldn't be…?"

Lore squinted some more, then counted on his fingers a couple times. Slowly, he grinned.

"Ooh, I see what's happening. Looks like I get to be a LiTT!"

"Where did the extra 'T' come from?"

"Like you don't know," Lore said, flapping an errant hand. Then he declared, "To the mountaintop!" and marched off.

Gen blinked for a moment, then said, "So, it seems to me that you know how to reign him in."

Dusk shrugged. "Not really? Mostly I just let him do his thing, and then occasionally remind him when he needs to put his empathy back in charge."

"But he listens to you," Gen emphasized. "He doesn't do that with any of the other Links. I need to you teach me."

Dusk raised an eyebrow at him.

"Look, for some reason, you all put him in charge," Gen said. "I'm not gonna question it, because I'm the new guy, and I'm sure there was good reasoning at the time-"

"Not especially, he just wanted to be in charge and nobody else was interested."

"...That doesn't help, but okay. Look, he's the kind of person that needs an anchor, and if you're not doing it…?"

"You're volunteering," Dusk realized.

"Someone has to."

"And you think Lore listens to me."

"I don't know why you haven't realized, but yes. You teach me how to anchor him, and I'll… I dunno, take over whatever leadership position you're holding since you clearly don't like it."

"I'm not in a leadership position," Dusk said. Gen paused.

"What, really?"

"Really," Dusk said firmly.

"Huh. Could've fooled me," Gen muttered. "Alright, teach me how to anchor Lore and I'll co-leader with him so you won't have to. Deal?"

"I'm really not sure what I'll be teaching you," Dusk said doubtfully, "but sure. Deal."

"Pleasure doing business with you," Gen said, shaking Dusk's hand. "Now, we should probably go catch up with Lore before he does something problematic."

"You're learning already," Dusk joked.

---

Unfortunately, climbing up mountains takes much longer than sprinting down them, and by the time the group made it back to the top, the sun was going down. Also, Red Potions were not energy potions, and did approximately nothing to the level of stamina that everyone did not have after going through Demise, the hike down, Vaati, Ganon, and then the hike back up.

The end result was that everybody was really tired once they finally got to their destination, and since there was really nothing stopping them from crashing right then and there, that was exactly what they did.

There was just the matter of the unexpected visitor in the gray hours before the sun rose, who planted his foot on Blue's stomach and bellowed, "RISE AND SHINE, IDIOTS!" at the top of his lungs.

An exact copy of Green and his crew stood smirking at them, ash-gray skin contrasting with black clothes and even blacker hair. Bright red eyes glowed through the gloom of pre-dawn lightning with an intensity that made everyone feel like a target despite the fact that the newcomer was only about four-foot-one.

"S'up, losers?" Shadow Link chuckled.

---

I have, once again, produced an over-ten-thousand word chapter simply by trying to expand on what I already had. What is WRONG with me.

Oh well, more words to read for you all, I suppose. In other news, for some reason, I kept forgetting that I'd swapped Steam for Gen. I think I got all the mistakes, but if anybody found a discrepancy, please do let me know.

As far as rewriting goes, I've suddenly stumbled upon the discovery that I'd been saying the holes were no longer there and only reappeared when a villain got beat up, but also acting like there was a pre-existing hole for everyone to jump through to get where they're going. In light of this incredibly irritating mistake, I've made a change to how the voids work.

They exist constantly. Demise yanked his Incarnations out of spacetime where they were supposed to be, but never put them back. When the villains appear now, it's as (albeit unwilling) extensions of Demise's will. They're still attached to their Master, and as such have not been 'put back' per se, in their proper place in the Universe. Thus, the holes are still there, and in fact are actively getting worse because now not only is their missing piece still missing, but the missing piece is now gallivanting around where it should not be and pushing all the rest of reality out of the way to make room. Beating up the villains slows the problem down, but doesn't fix it. Demise is still the source and still the endgame to solve the issue.

Does this make more sense than what I had originally? No idea. But it seems to work better as a plot device, so I'm gonna keep it.

It's things like this that make me glad I decided to do a rewrite in the first place.

(Also, any guesses as to what the LiTT stands for? Hint: one of the T's stands for triad. Lore knows what's up, even if his co-leaders might take thirty more chapters to figure it out.)

Changeling

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Linguistic Translations

-Holodese

N'pmm, ns'nu! (Boom, baby!)

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**Frankly, the number of Favorites/Follows is getting ridiculous. (It's awesome, don't you guys dare stop.) So I'm implementing a new strategy. First Thanks goes to the 'First Time I Posted' People, then Second Thanks goes to the 'Rewrite' Newcomers. This will be the norm from here on until I finish the rewrite, just an FYI. Please excuse the buildup, but I have a LOT of people to thank right now.**

First Thanks to bajimmin, castielsl.a.b., Lonecho, The Reader II, Dark Pit not Pittoo, and Raine Signs for Favoriting/Following!

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DrBananaFace: Thanks! That means a lot.

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Thegeniusyoshi: I FOUND IT! It's called Breakdown, written by RandomObserver42. And I'll have you know, I went all the way back to March in my internet history to find this. 'Cause I'm stubborn like that.

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