Here's a New Year's treat for you all. I know not much happens here outside of dialogue, but the way I see it, being able to just have the characters just bond and be able to interact during a lull is nice. It helps the characters build their relationships with one another. Trust me, though; the next chapter will begin the Great Bay arc, where the action will pick up once again.

Until next time!

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Chapter Twenty-Six: Bonding Over A Meal

(Dawn of the First Day, 6:00 am, 72 hours remain)

Link and his companions appeared in a bright flash of light which naturally went unnoticed by the rest of the people in town.

"Ugh, still gettin' used to that," Eddy grumbled.

"Welp, time to hit the ocean, I guess," Tatl spoke up.

"Not before I've had some chow, Tinkerbell," Lee remarked.

"I agree," Eddy added. "I'm starvin'."

Link shrugged. "It's early in the morning. I guess we have time. Anywhere in mind?"

"The Treasure Chest Diner's supposed to be partaking in a unlimited barbecue ribs for two special today," Edd ventured. "We could all do that."

"Ribs?" Lee repeated. "Holy crap, that sounds freakin' yummy. Maybe Eddy 'n I should'a gone there!"

"Yeah, instead of getting drunk off our asses at the Milk Bar," Eddy groaned. "Who the hell puts alcohol in milk anyway?!"

"How much money do we have, Double D?" Link asked.

"If I recall correctly, we still have five hundred and sixty rupees to our credit," the sock-hatted genius replied. "That will most certainly be enough to cover all of us."

"Let's go, then," Link said, leading the way through Clock Town over to the restaurant in question.

Once inside, they quickly found a large table and took a seat around it. Again, the only other patrons were a handful of soldiers and construction workers having breakfast before their shifts started.

"So Link, have you ever eaten ribs before?" Edd asked.

Link shook his head. "No, can't say I have. I'm not even entirely sure what to expect from it, since I've never seen anything like it in Hyrule."

"No ribs in Hyrule?" Eddy repeated. "You poor, poor soul."

At that moment, the waitress came by, who Edd and Marie recognized as Sylvia, interrupting their conversation. "Hi, welcome to Treasure Chest Diner! I'm Sylvia, and I'll be your waitress today! Any drinks to start you off?" she asked as she handed them all menus.

Knowing Ed, May, Eddy, and Lee wouldn't be able to read the menu, Edd piped up, "Their drinks are water, milk, orange juice, apple juice, mango juice, and pineapple juice."

Eddy, Lee, and May nodded before they sounded off their orders.

"I think I'll take orange juice," Lee said.

"Me too," Marie added.

"Mango juice would be wonderful," Edd ordered.

"Pineapple juice!" May chirped.

"Milk for Ed!"

"What the heck? I'll try pineapple," Eddy said.

Link thought for a moment before saying, "You know what? I think I'll give the mango juice a try."

"I'll take water," Tatl said. "Um, do you mind putting it in a bowl? It would be easier for me to drink that way."

Sylvia jotted down their orders. "I sure can. Alright, I'll get your drinks in a sec, okay?"

Sylvia then trotted off. With that out of the way, Link continued, "Anyways, there's actually a lot here in Clock Town I've never seen before. The clocks, in particular; Hyrule doesn't have them. We still use sundials. Based on what I've seen, I'd say Termina's a little more technologically advanced than Hyrule, and if it weren't for, you know, the impending end of the world, I'd definitely want to look into it a little more."

"This is nuthin'," Eddy replied. "You should see how far we've come along. We got electronic watches, TVs, video games, cars, and all kinds of cool stuff!"

"And we can't even afford most of it," Lee sourly grumbled.

Link quirked an eyebrow at this. "Is your family not well off?"

"You could say that," Lee responded. "Our ma works three part-time jobs just to support us, and since Marie's and my piece'a shit dads won't pay child support, she's kinda up shit creek on that front."

"You and Marie have different dads?" Link asked.

"We all do," Marie piped up. "The three of us are actually half-sisters; same mom, different dads. May's dad's the only one that's bothered to stick around, and even he isn't around a lot."

"Sorry to hear that," Link apologized.

Marie and Lee shrugged. "We've managed," Lee said offhandedly. "I'll tell ya the truth; this is probably gonna be the highest-quality meal we've ever had. Usually high-quality for us is a couple'a hot dogs."

Link's eyes widened a bit, but as he was opening his mouth, Edd interrupted, "No, Link, they aren't actually made of dog meat. They're…almost like sausage, but a little different."

Soon Sylvia came by with their drinks and set them down. "Are you all ready to order?"

"Yes," Edd replied. "We'll have four orders of your rib special."

Sylvia smiled genially as she wrote this down. "Sounds like a plan. I'll get those ready for you, okay?"

They all murmured thanks as she took their menus and went off to process their orders.

"Are ya actually serious?" Eddy marveled. "Hot dogs 're a treat for you?"

"Basically," Lee replied. "Oh, don't look so surprised. There's a good reason a lotta people call us Kankers trailer trash."

"If I recall correctly, one of your ancestors owned the land the cul-de-sac sits on," Edd pointed out. "How do you not have some form of wealth from that?"

"We didn't say this at the time," Marie responded, "but Lord Kanker actually lost that deed in a bet to that blond bimbo's family, who then handed it over to the city a few years later."

"Nazz, Marie," Edd corrected. "Her name is Nazz."

Marie rolled her eyes. "Eh, she's still a bimbo."

Edd sighed. "Although I'll say this," Lee continued. "After we fleeced ya for your cash that one time not long after we first met, we used that to buy some decent food. We had a pretty good dinner that night, let me tell ya, compared to the sandwiches we usually eat."

"I worked hard for that money, Kanker," Eddy grumbled.

"By scammin' the other kids," Lee countered smugly.

"Your point?"

Lee rolled her eyes at this, taking a swig of her drink. "Shit, that's good."

Ed, wanting to include himself in the conversation, abruptly proclaimed, "One time, I got grounded and my parents took out the stairs so I could not leave my room!"

Link, Tatl, and the Kankers all stared at Ed with wide, shocked eyes.

"Your parents…did what?" Tatl breathed.

"It's true," Edd spoke up. "Ed's bedroom is in the basement of his house, and when his parents grounded him, they took out the stairs, essentially leaving him trapped down there."

Link blinked. "That's…"

"Disturbing, I know," Edd finished for him. "That's what I said. Coupled with the fact that Ed is permitted to wallow in his own filth down in the basement, while his younger sister, Sarah, lives upstairs and is treated like a princess has led me to believe that Ed suffers some form of parental neglect." He sagged his shoulders a bit, a sad expression on his face. "Just like me."

May scowled. "That's just screwed up, Big Ed. That ain't fair to you."

Marie shook her head. "I always hated that little brat in particular. She's got one hell of an attitude; probably the only one ballsy enough to spit in our faces like that."

Link leaned back in his seat. "How did you all manage to have messed-up families?" he wondered aloud.

"I find it morbidly ironic that the Kankers' living conditions are more…normal, than our own," Edd said. "To answer your question, Link, life has always been less than kind to us, and I often find myself wondering why."

Link sighed and folded his arms. "You know, I always thought I was the Goddesses' plaything, considering everything I've gone through. I basically exist to solve their problems. At least fate toys with me for a greater purpose. It sounds like fate in your world's just being mean-spirited."

"So what's your family like?" May asked abruptly. "Ya haven't said much about 'em."

Link's expression saddened. "That's because I don't have any family to speak of."

The whole table went quiet.

"I grew up in the Kokiri Forest of Hyrule, which bordered the Lost Woods. All that time, I thought I was one of the Kokiri, and yet there had always been something different about me. Most importantly, I didn't have a fairy of my own like all the other Kokiri did. The Kokiri who liked to think of himself as the leader, Mido, always had it out for me, and I never knew why until a long, long time later. He always liked to bully me, and he took particular pleasure in reminding me that I didn't have a fairy. I at least had some friends, particularly Saria, and I eventually found out Mido was mean to me because he was jealous of my closeness with her. Then Ganondorf came and cursed the guardian who watched over us, the Great Deku Tree, trying to get his hands on something called the Kokiri's Emerald, one of the three Spiritual Stones needed to open the Door of Time to reach the Sacred Realm where the Triforce was kept. I…couldn't save the Deku Tree, and because of that, Mido essentially banished me from the forest, even though I was forced to leave anyway. I at least finally got a fairy out of it. Her name was Navi, and she served as my companion throughout the whole adventure. Anyways, during that adventure, I found out the truth; I really wasn't a Kokiri, I was a Hylian, which was why I was able to leave the Kokiri Forest and not wither and die like the Deku Tree said Kokiri who left the forest would. When I was just a baby, there was a civil war in Hyrule, where the King attempted to unify the country. My father was one of the knights in service to the king, and he fell defending his family's castle from a rebel siege. My mother was mortally wounded as she was whisking me away from the battle, but she was able to take me to the forest before she passed, and the Deku Tree promised he would look after me, because I was apparently destined from the beginning to become the long-lost Hero of Time."

Finally someone was able to find their voice again. "D-don't you have any other family?" May timidly asked. "Aunts? Uncles? Grandparents? Anyone?"

Link sighed sadly. "I don't know. Zelda said there were very few survivors of that battle, so most likely not. While on my adventure, I found the ruins, and I found my father's grave. William Marcus Taburi…I finally knew my father's name, and my family's last name. I wasn't just Link; I was Link Taburi. It…it helped, a little bit. Knowing his identity brought me just that little bit closer to my family, even though I'd never know him personally."

Tatl's wings sagged as she decided to speak up. "My brother's the only family I got. My mother was a Great Fairy named Lilina, and she was the queen of Tarm, the homeland of the fairies. She died in the Demon Wars, when the armies of the demon kings reduced Tarm to ruins. My brother and I were only a few decades old at the time, and…"

"Whoa, hang on!" Eddy interrupted. "A few decades?!"

"Well, yeah," Tatl responded. "Fairies live thousands of years, didn't you know?"

"Well, considering fairies don't exist in our world, no, we didn't," Edd answered.

"Anyways, yeah, we never returned to Tarm. I don't know what's happened to it after all this time."

Everyone was silent for a moment. "I guess there really isn't any such thing as a normal family, huh?" Marie mused out loud.

Edd found it in him to smile. "The way I see it, when family cannot provide you with the love and companionship you need, that's where your friends come in."

"That was…really sappy," Eddy griped, but then he smiled. "Doesn't change the fact you're right, though."

Ed stuck out his hand. "Friends forever!" he proclaimed with his signature goofy grin.

May slapped her hand onto his, followed by Eddy. Edd smiled as he laid his hand over May's, after which came Marie's. The two of them smiled at each other as they touched. Then, with a dramatic roll of her eyes, Lee smacked her hand over Marie's. After a few moments, everyone smiled as they saw Link's hand fall over top Lee's own, finishing with Tatl sitting down on Link's hand.

"Friends forever," Link repeated, smiling widely.

"Friends forever!" the rest of them all chorused.

XXXXXX

A few minutes later, with plates stacked full of ribs in front of them, the eight of them laughed giddily as stories went around.

"So anyways, I walk into the light, and the first thing I see when I'm back outside Jabu-Jabu's Shrine is Princess Ruto right in my face, giggling. She scared the living daylights out of me! I tripped and fell off the big branch we were sitting on and fell into the damn water again!" At this, he and the others laughed uproariously. "No, wait! It gets better! She tells me thank you for saving her life, and also that she had willingly let herself get swallowed by that big dang fish just so she wouldn't get married off to some Zora noble! And so she finally gives me the Zora's Sapphire, but then she tells me that the Sapphire is apparently the Zoras' equivalent of an engagement ring, and…"

"Oh God, don't tell me!" Eddy could hardly contain his laughter.

"…oh, yes. By accepting the Sapphire, I was now engaged to a Zora Princess. And she's telling me this, and I'm thinking to myself, 'by the Goddesses, you're insane'!"

All of them laughed again, with Eddy doubling over and slapping the table. "Sweet Jesus, looks like you had your own personal Kanker there for a while! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Ho man, she definitely had the right idea!" Lee crowed.

"And that was the fourth girl that developed a crush on me," Link continued.

Eddy shook his head as he cackled. "Why did you not take advantage of that?! Seriously!"

"I was kind of in the middle of saving the world, duh," Link countered.

"One night each! C'mon, man! That's hardly any time at all! And two of 'em are freakin' princesses!"

"I was ten years old at the time!" Link stressed. "I didn't even know what a crush was back then!"

"Might I remind you, Eddy, that you're too young to be considering such adult things yourself," Edd chastised.

"Oh, Double D, quit being a moodkiller!" Eddy groused.

"I do find myself wondering what Rolf would have thought of that Malon girl," Edd went on.

"Are you kiddin' me?" Marie responded with a laugh. "He'd weird the hell out of that poor chick! Where the hell was that Old Country he came from anyways?!"

"I'm willing to bet Romania," Edd replied. "Though as always, I could be wrong. Rolf's never referred to his homeland by name, oddly enough."

"What are the other kids from your home like?" Tatl asked as she idly chewed on the single rib she had taken for herself.

"There's my baby sister Sarah!" Ed declared.

"Yeah, you mentioned her before," Link interjected.

"Man, Sarah's the biggest brat on the block," Eddy grumbled. "Seriously, she's spoiled rotten! Jimmy's literally the only other kid in the cul-de-sac she's actually nice to."

"I always wondered what was so special about Duchess that made that little shit like him so much," Lee voiced aloud.

Eddy shrugged. "Dames. Who can figure 'em?"

"Anyways, her friend is a boy named Jimmy," Edd continued. "He's rather…accident-prone, shall we say. Also a little naïve, but definitely dangerous when feeling vengeful, as we found out the hard way."

Link quirked an eyebrow at this.

"Eddy, for reasons still unfathomable to me, gave poor Jimmy a wedgie during a Friendship Day celebration. It made virtually everyone laugh, even me, though I felt extremely remorseful about it and still do. Anyways, that made something snap in him, and he set in motion a series of events that turned the whole cul-de-sac on us and caused them to chase the three of us into the forest, all without us knowing he was the mastermind. These events culminated in us hiding in an old shed, only to find ourselves at the mercy of a certain trio of amorous sisters, and the other kids banging on the door outside."

"Caught between a rock and a hard place, huh?" Tatl asked as the Kankers giggled.

"Oh man, I remember that," Lee chuckled. "I was actually kinda surprised ya chose the wrath of those squirts over our fun-time."

"Yeah," Marie piped up. "I mean, if you had asked us to, we actually would'a chased 'em off for ya." Her grin widened. "Then we would've had our fun-time."

"Well, we were in a state of panic at the time," Edd conceded.

"Still, gotta give Duchess props," Lee said. "That kid has bigger balls than I thought, actually comin' up to us and willingly let us be a part of that plan of his. Boy, that was freakin' crafty on his part. He actually earned a little respect from us after that."

"Anyways, there's of course Rolf," Eddy said, "or Stretch, as I like to call 'im. Real old-fashioned, has a funny way'a talkin'. He also has a big farm on his property with a whole bunch'a animals."

"And chickens!" Ed butted in cheerfully.

"Yeah, we could hardly keep Ed away from the chicken coop whenever we were around," Eddy continued. "He has the weirdest obsession with them. I freakin' hate birds."

"Ed actually once had a flock of seagulls living under his bed," Edd interrupted. "We accidentally let them all out one day, and they escaped. I was understandably mortified that Ed preferred to live this way."

Link shook his head. "Ed, you never cease to amaze me."

"Thanks, Link!"

The boy hero promptly facepalmed.

"And then there's Kevin," Edd explained. "Before the Kankers came along, he was the number one bully in the cul-de-sac. He and Eddy often have a tendency to butt heads."

"Hey, it's not my fault he's always had it out for me!" Eddy said defensively.

"It partially is, Eddy," Edd replied matter-of-factly. "Though I admit he was always rather short-tempered and vindictive. He also treasures this red bicycle of his, to the point that he often ignored Nazz in favor of it, which understandably frustrated her to no end. It took him forever to realize she had romantic feelings towards him."

Eddy chuckled. "What an idiot. A lucky idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. Cuz Nazz is freakin' hot."

"Watch it there, buster," Lee warned.

"I'm only stating a fact! Sheesh!"

"He raises a fine point. Nazz does possess a multitude of physical attributes that the common male would find attractive. And I am merely stating this from a logical, non-biased standpoint. She's also the nicest out of all the kids, but we've gotten on her bad side before too."

"And last but not least, there's ol' Jonny 2-by-4," Eddy picked up.

"Two-by-four?" Link repeated questioningly.

"We call him that due to his imaginary friend, Plank," Edd explained, "which he talks to and carries around with him everywhere. Plank is, well, a piece of board with a smiley-face painted on it."

"That kid always weirded the hell outta me," Lee commented. "Freakin' carryin' on one-sided conversations with a piece of wood."

"And what worries me is that he has yet to grow out of it, despite being thirteen now," Edd continued.

Marie shook her head. "Somethin' ain't right with that kid."

Edd shrugged. Link found himself chuckling at a stray thought. "You know, I'm kind of wondering what it would have been like if I had met you all way back when I was still living in Kokiri Forest."

"And why do you say that, Link?" Edd asked.

Link shrugged. "The Kankers would've easily taken Mido down a few pegs."

Eddy snickered. "Man, I'd pay good money to see that."

"Of course, I cringe at the idea of you guys taking over after that," Link laughed.

"What's that supposed to mean?!" May indignantly responded.

"Hey, you may be cute 'n all, but we got eyes only for our Eds," Marie remarked, nuzzling Edd's shoulders.

Link's cheeks flushed rosy pink as he tried to recover from that. "Uh, thanks…somehow…I guess?"

"Eh, you're a little too young for our tastes anyway," Lee said.

Link leaned back in his seat, sighing in exasperation. "Only now do I finally comprehend the fact I'm the youngest person here."

"And I'm the oldest," Tatl piped up. "You mortals age so quickly, it's scary."

"Gee, thanks," Eddy grumbled, the memory of that really odd dream he had had about getting old still fresh on his mind.

After that, a comfortable silence followed as they focused on eating for a minute. After finishing another rib, Link swallowed and cleared his throat. "Okay, now's the time for us to think about what we're gonna do next," he said.

"The ocean, right?" Edd inquired.

Link nodded.

"Y'know, I've never been to the ocean before," Marie abruptly said.

"I'm willing to bet none of us have," Edd remarked. "I'm certain it will be quite the spectacle."

"Well, not at the moment," Tatl reminded them. "I mean, the swamp and the mountains were both put under terrible curses. What do you think's happened to the Zoras? Or the Gerudo?"

All of them frowned as they thought of this before Link replied, "No matter what's happened there, we will make it right."

"Even if we have to fight a giant, mean, ugly monster to do it!" Ed declared eagerly.

A flash of fear briefly eclipsed Eddy's face, but then it vanished behind his signature cocky grin. "What the hell, it was fun the last couple'a times. How bad could it be?"

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