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Thank you and please enjoy

The Legend of Zelda: Interloper of Time

-Chapter 23-

-Lake Hylia-

After traversing back through the frozen home of the Zora and climbing back down the treacherous path leading back, Naruto and Saria now stood at the edge of the dramatically smaller Lake Hylia while fully decked out in their now dubbed 'Zora Armor'.

"Well, time for the moment of truth." Saria said, nervousness clear in her voice as she gently nudged the water with her flipper covered foot.

"On three?" Naruto suggested, getting a slow nod in response. Navi floated out and onto Naruto's shoulder,

"I'll count for you guys …one," Both tensed up, "…two," They set themselves in slight crouches and took deep breaths, "…Three!"

The two dove straight into the water with a splash, pushing themselves below the surface with powerful strokes. The second they passed through the surface of the water, black half-masks formed over the lower half of their faces, which allowed them to breathe without a problem as they sank deeper under the water and closer to the entrance to the temple entrance.

"This is awesome!" Naruto cheered as he corkscrewed through the water, his voice sounding higher and slightly distorted.

"Oi! Stop flailing around so much!" Navi screamed at the blonde as she clung to his shoulder. She could swim by herself no problem, but she would be much slower due to her small body, not to mention all the not-so-little fish swimming around that would like nothing more than to gobble her up as a snack.

"Hehehe, sorry Navi-chan," Naruto said sheepishly as he stopped doing tricks and focused on swimming towards the temple entrance.

Said entrance was a large fancy looking gate carved from light blue stone that softly reflected the small amount of sunlight that had managed to pierce through the water, giving the whole thing a gentle glow. A large, pyramid shaped sapphire sat in the middle of the gate with a four point star impression beneath it and a single metal point jutting out the bottom, and a slightly eroded and algae covered slate sat at the bottom with writing carved into it.

Naruto went straight for the gate, trying and failing to pry it open by hand, while Saria swam down to the slate. "Elia, little help please," She asked, getting a short nod in response from the fairy as she started glowing brighter, lighting up the tablet enough for her to make out the writing on it.

To open my path

You must remember

The sun as it's setting

Then the first light of day

The cold winds of winter

Then press me to enter

"Uhh, I got nothing, you?" Elia asked as she read the tablet with a confused expression. She didn't get an answer as Saria continued to reread the riddle over and over, mouthing the words silently as she tried to figure out their meaning. Closing her eyes, she visualized the things being described in her mind, trying to see what they had in common but coming up with nothing.

*CRACK!*

Flinching at the extremely loud crashing, Saria and Elia looked up to see Naruto uselessly beating against the gateway with his hammer. Each strike was dramatically slower thanks to water resistance, reducing the power behind each swing so much that all he managed to do was cause the gate to shake slightly.

Swimming up to give him a piece of their minds, Saria paused about halfway there as she spotted something. The sapphire and it's metal point were shaking, swaying ever so slightly from side to side as each hit shook it. Staring at it for about a minute, her eyes widened as the figurative lightbulb alit inside her mind.

"That's it! Naruto stop!" Saria shouted, making the blonde freeze mid swing. Swimming up to the sapphire, Saria cautiously grasped the large gem and twisted, smirking under her mask as the gem turned with her hand.

"The setting of the sun," She turned the revealed dial till the metal point lined up with the right part of the star impression, "The first light of day," She spun the dial all the way to the left side. "Winds of winter," Now she had it point straight up. "And press to enter," She pushed on the gem, smiling even wider as it sank into the stone with a loud clicking noise.

At first nothing seemed to happen and Saria's confidence started faltering slightly, before yelping in surprise as she and Naruto were blown back by a sudden burst of bubbles blasting them. When it cleared up, the quartet was greeted with the sight of the gate sinking into the ground, revealing the entrance to a dark tunnel.

"Great job Saria," Naruto said as he holstered his weapon and they swam inside. With Navi and Elia lighting the path, they carefully navigated through the narrow tunnel, and I mean really narrow. Naruto and Saria both were glad for the mask covering their faces and the low lighting as it hid the atomic blushes on their faces as they were constantly bumping into each other.

(Un)fortunately for them, after several minutes of awkward silence they finally emerged from the tunnel into a large well lit cavern. It was almost entirely circular with a mildly strong current spiraling around and glowing blue stones. The only thing ruining this delightful picture was the absolute amount of devastation all over the place.

"Sheesh, somebody needs to fire the janitor, cause they clearly weren't doing their job." Navi said as they looked over the destroyed architecture. A lone building sat in the middle of the room, anchored to the floor and ceiling, a good thing too since the entire middle section was missing. Destroyed statues of Zora's littered the area while debris drifted around casually, bumping into each other or against some of the handful of large aquatic monsters that were idly swimming around. The wall farthest to them had two large gaping holes partially filled with broken rock.

Grabbing a piece of stone that was passing them by, Naruto looked over the shattered rock with a critical eye. "Navi, do you see what I see?"

"Yeah, no erosion at all, this happened recently, like yesterday or earlier today recently." Navi said with a groan, before gesturing to the aforementioned holes. "And whatever did it was likely very large, probably still around, and almost definitely wants us dead."

"Greeeeeaaaat…" Saria drawled out, "So just like every other place we've had to explore so far." It was practically set to clockwork at this point. Explore hazardous and trap filled place, kill bunch of small monsters trying to kill them, and then go against a giant ass monster that wants to kill them.

"For now, let's avoid going anywhere near that side, it just reeks of trouble." Elia cut in with a shiver as she gazed destroyed wall.

"Agreed!" Naruto, Navi, and Saria said in sync.

Naruto and Saria instead swam for the destroyed building in the middle. After a brief debate, they decided to explore the lower section first, mostly cause it was a pain in the ass for Naruto to swim upwards thanks to the weight of the hammer on his back.

Most of the rooms were easy to pass through as the traps inside them were either broken or designed in a way that they wouldn't affect you if you were swimming, such as platforms, pitfalls, pressure plates, and spinning floor blades. This made Saria theorize that the building would normally be empty of water somehow but had flooded due to more obvious reasons.

Of course that was last thing on her mind currently as she felt her eye twitching as she had to figure out the dozenth riddle that day. Almost every freaking room so far had one that you had to solve in order to move onto the next room, and each one was more frustrating than the last.

The current one was a series of clues hinting at how you had to move certain floor tiles around until they were set in a specific pattern, which was no easy task while they were still underwater. "Move that one three feet to the left," Saria told Naruto as she floated above, overlooking the whole thing.

"Got it, *huff* jeez these things are heavy," The blonde grunted as he shoved the stone slab into place. As soon as he did, it sank into the floor with a small burst of bubbles as a hidden door slid open. "I swear if we have to deal with another one of these stupid puzzles then I'mm gonna smash this place the rest of the way do-Oof!"

Naruto was cut off as a bluish green blur shot out of the newly opened corridor and tackled him. Dazed from the sudden impact, it took several seconds for Naruto to regain his senses, but when he did he found himself face to face with a suspiciously familiar fishy face staring back at him with a smile.

"Naruto! Your back! Now we can finally get married!"

'Crud,'

-End Chapter-

AN: I am so sorry that it took so long for this chapter to come out. It took me longer than I thought it would to rewrite this whole thing and be happy with it. Thank you for reading and please review.