For the first Gerudo challenge, each contestant will fight a molduga. The problem is that the four moldugas are in different locations. Therefore, they will spend the night at the oasis, fight one of the nearby moldugas in the morning, then the other one in the evening, then relocate further into the desert to fight the next tow the next day. Riju is disappointed that fewer people are planning to attend the second day, so she arranges to have a handful of reporters and rumor mongers there the second day. This causes problems when people decide she's showing favoritism to the reporters. Then she has problems when people decide that Riju is clearly playing favorites with the order the contestants will fight. She's clearly showing favoritism to Barta and Tali, who will fight on the first day before a crowd.

Riju rubs her forehead, and Zelda teaches her a breathing exercise that she used to use.

"Does it help?" Riju asks.

"It...for a few minutes, it takes your mind away from the problem at hand," she says.

"A diplomatic way of saying no. Okay. Teach me."

The Gerudo have constructed stands into the side of the Southern Oasis Plateau. There's a clear view of the molduga's territory, and the molduga burrowing around. The oasis has water, and shade, and vendors selling food, and vendors selling drinks, and vendors selling flags to cheer on your favorite contestant, and vendors selling telescopes for better viewing. Zelda and Link have great seats near enough to Riju to still be under the shade of her canopy and far enough away that no one asks Zelda to fix any last-minute hiccups.

Barta is up first. She's arranged her outfit to better accommodate her chosen way of wearing her prospective Champion sash around her hips. She marches into the Molduga's territory with a thunder spear in her hand, with a scimitar strapped to her hip and a shield on her back. It's hard to tell if her approaching footsteps get the molduga's attention, or if it's the deafening cheer from the crowd.

She braces herself as the beast comes barreling forward. She stands there and waits. And waits. As it rushes closer. And closer. Zelda clutches at the bench on which she sits.

The second before the beast burst vertically out of the sand, Barta leaps, using her spear to leverage herself into a back flip. The beast brushes the tips of her hair, it's so close to her. She lands and flies forward, stabbing into the beast's hide with the thunder spear. The molduga cries out, and flops to the sand, where she rams the spear into its flank, so it twitches and groans, sparking with electricity, while she wails on it with her scimitar, re-stabbing it with her spear to keep it shocked and down.

She does not finish it off before it burrows back under the sand, and this is the most dangerous part. Her body becomes liquid, and she slides down an eddy of sand, holding absolutely still. The molduga rides under her, searching her out, and she rides the wave of sand up and over its body without a twitch or a flail or any sort of sound. The beast looks this way and that, then wanders away, moving a bit slower now that it's so injured.

She doesn't let it get too far before she hops up, her feet light on the sand, and Zelda notices only then that her feet are bare. Somehow that's more shocking than battling the monster. Barta stomps her foot, and the molduga pauses. Without removing her shield from her back, she reaches back and smacks it three times with her spear. She shouts a vocalization, dances a hop-stepped war dance, then slams her spear blade first into the sand.

The monster rushes her again, and once again she waits. But this time when she jumps away, she leaves the spear buried in the sand, and shortly it's buried inside the beast's mouth. Its cry is like a deep buzz, like a blast of a brass horn. It jumps and twitches, its body fizzling with electricity. It can't close its mouth. It can't move its tongue to dislodge the spear. as the spear works on it from the inside, Barta finishes it from the outside with her scimitar.

As the crowd cheers and Barta collects her spear and an assortment of other treasurers from the belly of the beast, Link leans into Zelda's side. "She's better at that than I am."

"I'll admit, it is nice to see it done right," she says.

He grins at her, always pleased for her good-natured ribbing.

She pats his cheek and says, "I'm sure you'll be victorious in your own Champion tournament."

He grows slightly more serious. "What time is it?"

She checks the slate. "Time to go."

They rise from their seats, and Riju waves at them. "Good luck!" she calls. "Try to make it back for Tali's battle, if you can."

"Try my best," Link says. He throws her a lazy salute, and they head up the stairs attached to the levels of seating.

The oasis is crowded with Gerudo and tourists, over-analyzing the battle and getting lunch before relocating. They manage to find a quiet spot from which to warp, and twenty minutes later, Link is back in his disguise and She's kissing his cheek for good luck. He leaves her on the cliff edge overlooking the stadium behind the Yiga hideout and slips to the ground unnoticed until he's in their midst. He startles quite a few people.

The Yiga's first challenge is an archery competition. The crowd sprawls lazily in the sand. On one side are targets, and spaced every thirty feet away from them are red lines drawn in the sand. The targets are human shaped silhouettes, two of which are inexpertly drawn caricatures of Sheikah and one of which is an inexpertly drawn caricature of Link. They've drawn him with yellow hair sticking up every direction and small, blue eyes with angry eyebrows. He has a full set of spiked teeth. All the targets' arms stick awkwardly out to the side, and they hold their straight legs in a wide stance, so they look like giant gingerbread men. Red circles mark their hearts and foreheads.

Link, of course, sets himself in front of the target that looks like him.

The contestants stand behind the first red line and aim duplex bows. The master of ceremonies shouts, "Fire!" and all six of the contestants' arrows embed themselves in a targets' heart. They shoot again, and six arrows find homes in the targets' heads. For the third shot, Link slips an extra finger between the two notched arrows, so one of his arrows lodges itself between the two already in his forehead. The other shreds through one of the arrows already sunk into his heart.

Zelda cringes and has to look away for a moment, overwhelmed by sudden nausea. Link with three arrows in his heart. Link with a dozen laser sights on his chest, his eyebrows drawn and angry in determination. She lowers her forehead to the stone where she lies on her belly. It's overly warm against her skin, drawing her back into her body. She looks down again, and Link is so proud of himself as he falls back to the next line, that she focuses on that-on the real Link instead of the horrible drawing of how the Yiga see him.

The arrows are removed from the targets, and the archers fire again. This time the Yiga contestants each land one arrow where it belongs and one a few inches off the mark. Still deadly, but fewer points. Link sinks every arrow, and again her stomach twists. She decides she's only going to watch Link. The way he stretches one arm over his head, grabbing his elbow and pulling. The way he scuffs his boots against the ground before setting his stance. His movements are so distinctive, so familiar, that it's shocking the Yiga don't recognize him.

They move back to the third line, where the Yiga start to truly make mistakes. The duplex bows are good for mid-range battles, but they don't have the power of Link's more preferred bows. The Yiga on Link's right lands both arrows around his target's heart, so they frame the red dot instead of hitting it. He does the same again around the bullseye on the Sheikah's forehead, except that pair is also slightly too low. The Yiga on the left seems to have given up aiming both arrows. He sends one wide by a good handspan, while the other finds its mark in the Sheikah's heart. When he aims at the head, one hits home, but the other is so wide that it misses the target completely, earning him his first strike. Link hits them all, pulling back on the bow so hard that she can see that he's clenching his jaw in the way he holds his neck. All his arrows hit the bull's eyes, but He doesn't try to be fancy aiming two arrows at both targets simultaneously. For the third shot, he aims at the head, and embeds both arrows within the red circle.

They fall back again for a fourth round, and the Yiga are out of their element. On the first shot, the Blademaster on the left doesn't aim high enough to account for the arrow's arc. One arrow hits the target's knee, the other embeds in the dirt-his second strike. He gets his third (and fourth if anyone was counting) when he overcompensates and aims too high for the head, so they sweep over the target completely. He slams his bow to the ground and stalks off.

The Yiga on the right also misses the target's head, one arrow flying over the target's shoulder, the other burying itself dead center in the Sheikah's throat, earning him a round of cheers. He just aims for the target's chest on the third shot, lodging both arrows in random places in its torso.

One of the two arrows that Link aims at his own heart is a bit low, and he lowers his bow to frown at it. He takes his time with the second and third shots, hitting the bull's eye with every arrow.

They fall back to 150 feet for the fifth round. While Link takes his time setting up his shot, focusing his breathing, willing enough power into the arrow to cross the distance, the Blademaster goes for it, and both his arrows clatter into the dust.

Link gets to finish out the round. Even though he's well ahead of his competition, he still takes his shots with annoying patience and seriousness. He puts so much force behind his shots that he's visibly sweating, and the arrows splinter the already weakened wood around his heart and forehead. On the third shot, his arrows punch a hole through his chest, causing one of them to fall loose. He's clearly frustrated with his performance, and glares daggers at the ruined picture of himself as the assembled Yiga cheer.

#

They get back to the Gerudo tournament just as Tali is walking out onto the sand. While the oasis is still the central hub of activity, these seats are closer to this mulduga's hunting grounds, set in three short arcs of stadium seating. Most of the seats are long benches, raised one behind the other, but Riju has a throne-like chair, set slightly apart in a break between two benches, Buliara standing at attention beside her. The last open seats are on the bench closest to the chief. Zelda slips into the seat, with Link trying to be unobtrusive at her side. He ducks down as if there's a possibility that he's blocking someone's view.

Riju leans forward, apparently glad to have some company. She asks in a quiet voice, "How did it go?"

Link rocks his hand in a so-so gesture. Zelda rolls her eyes and says, "He won handily."

Riju says, "Excellent," and sits back. She keeps talking in such a way that makes Zelda think she hasn't spoken to anyone conversationally today. "This isn't Tali's strong suit. I expect she'll go about it the traditional way."

"There's a traditional way?" Zelda asks.

Riju smirks. "Watch."

Tali crashes her thunder spear against the shield on her back. "Eh! Eh! Ouu!" Her feet stomp the ground in the same dance that Barta did, the movements slightly wider this time as she windmills her arms to clap her hands and honor the sun. Tali is wearing shoes, her candidate sash still cutting across her form from shoulder to hip, but it's tighter now, the loose ends tucked into her belt. Her hair is a red halo around her head. She does not remove her sunglasses.

The molduga charges forward, and she sets her feet, adjusts her hold on her spear. As the monster bursts the surface beneath her, she shifts her stance and grabs onto the beast's face, riding it skyward instead of being thrown. For a second, Zelda thinks she's misplaced her feet, she's at such a strange angle on the side of the molduga's face. At the apex of their flight, she hefts her spear, and stabs it into the molduga's eye.

It cries out as it falls, and Tali sweeps her shield from her back, banging it against the protruding butt of the spear, hammering it deeper, deeper, deeper. The monster roars with every hit, and it's clear in the change of timbre of its cry when the spear breaks through to its brain. It crashes to an awkward heap, paralyzed, electricity flickering over its head. Tali leaves the spear in place but climbs higher onto his head, standing above it between its eyes. She takes her scimitar in hand and stabs downward, then she falls through the puff of purple smoke that erupts around her as the monster vanishes.

The crowd cheers, and Riju leans in as she claps, talking across where Buliara is standing guard between them. "That was a clean kill. Not fancy, but proficient."

Link leans forward to talk across both Zelda and Buliara. "Who do I get to teach me how to ride it like that?"

Riju's face lights. Zelda turns to glare at him.