In the era of the Hero of Time, somewhere during the seventh-year-that-may-or-may-not-have-happened that we can all thank Princess Zelda for – she just couldn't leave well enough along, could she? Location – Hyrule, which by this point has an incredibly concerning Gibdo population and a severe lack of exterminators to deal with it:
There were many theories surrounding the Great Fairies of Hyrule.
One was that they were a tribe of banshees who had all gotten hit with an amnesia spell and now lived in fountains because they thought that was normal. Another was that the fairies were conspiring with the Cuccos to take over the world and the Great Fairies met with the Cucco Boss in Kakariko on a regular basis to plan their next move.
Some people just thought that the Greats simply had an unfortunate sense of fashion and were actually quite nice girls, but their opinions were ignored as they clearly had fluff for brains.
There was simply no denying it.
The Great Fairies laughed like maniacal psychopaths and nobody knew how to deal with it.
If there was one thing that always, always separated a villain from a civilian, it was an evil laugh. It was common sense. Ganondorf had an evil laugh, that creature down the well in Kakariko had an evil laugh, the Cuccos had this clucking noise that was an evil laugh approximation – if it was evil, it had a laugh to match, and that was that. It was just how things worked.
And therein lay the conundrum. Great Fairies, without fail, had an evil laugh. No matter where one went, no matter which kind of Great Fairy one might speak with, they always had an evil laugh. It was high-pitched, screechy, cackling, and make whoever heard it want to hide under a rock until it was over.
Yet their actions didn't match their laugh in the slightest. If a wounded Hero came to their fountain, they wouldn't kill him like any other villain would do; rather, they would heal him. If a Princess came asking for their aid in disguise, they would give it. If someone needed to be taught magic, they would teach it. Items needing to be powered up, they upgraded them. It simply didn't add up.
Some folks, the poor ignorant fools, suggested that maybe people were letting the physical attributes of the Greats influence their opinions. This was blatantly true, but there was a good reason for it. Along with her maniacally evil laugh, every Great Fairy unfailingly gave off the impression that she was about to go for someone's throat. Nobody could quite pin down why this was, although there was certainly a lot of speculation about it. Perhaps it was in the way that the Great would stare down her nose at you as she floated above your head, or the way that she wore far too much eyeshadow and made herself look like a disturbing clown. Perhaps it was the way the Greats dressed – that is to say, hardly at all, or maybe it was simply the fact that none of them ever stopped smiling. Ever. Combined with the eyeshadow, this was understandably an unnerving sight.
Yes, there was something off about the Great Fairies. The people just had yet to figure out exactly what.
"Report, Navi," the Violet Great Fairy said, smile ever fixed on her face.
"I'm making progress on the Hero of Time," Navi replied. "He doesn't suspect a thing. He thinks of me as a useless moron who's far too repetitive and dimwitted to actually be of help."
"Excellent," the Great smiled wider. "And what of his sanity?"
"Slowly chipping away, my lady," Navi replied. "I just need to keep saying 'Hey! Listen!' every twenty seconds for the rest of our partnership and he should snap within a few more weeks."
"Well done, my child," the Great Fairy said, and her smile grew ever wider until it morphed into the high-pitched screeching laugh that so many residents of Hyrule feared. It echoed off the rock walls of the fountain and down the entryway of the cave, where the Hero of Time stood dumbfounded.
"I knew there was something wrong with those things!" he muttered.
Link blinked at the book he was holding, then checked the genre sticker to make sure he had the right section. Then he checked again, just to be sure, and blinked some more.
"...Maybe this was misfiled..." he muttered, and got up to ask the librarian if Beware the Screeching Laugh: the Truth the Fairies Don't Want Us to Know was supposed to be under historical nonfiction.
Rule Number Twenty: Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.