The next day at school... Well, for one thing, I overslept again. Not my fault this time, though. Did anyone really expect me to wake up on time when I was up at like one in the morning fighting a reincarnated evil overlord on a playground?

Not that they knew about that. Even Tris didn't know. She was sleeping soundly at home the whole time. And that was the problem. Everyone had to know about this threat in our midst. And given my difficulty talking, especially about stressful things...

Well, there was always texting. So as soon as I was awake enough to process things, I typed Tris a hasty message.

"ok yeah i know i overslept but theres a rvery imrptonat reason for it. and you need ot tell the class it includign mr kirya. basicly murasaki texted me at like midnihtg yesterdy that she was in the park and needded me to go there assap. so i did. she was beign mind controled and attakcked me. i icncpaccitated her long enough to find who was controling her. it was the new transfere student in hebijo. and she said she was doing it to get me to give her my scrol. her name is ganni whcih sounds FAMILAIR and liek. i trust murasaki, ryobi, ryona, tehy are ok. but tranfser student gani is obvisly startign to do somthing dangerous liKE I SAID! and we need to get gessen involved, their trsanfer student should know about this."

After the text message, I realized she probably had her phone put away in her bag like a responsible student. And she wouldn't see the text until class broke for lunch. And it felt too urgent for that. So I called her, hoping the buzzing would be loud enough to disrupt class and get her—or even someone else—to look inside the bag. But then, instead of waiting for a response, I hurried to finish getting ready, and ran to school.

Thankfully I knew how to get to the classroom this time. I'd found out awhile ago there was a shortcut at the back gate the whole time, and we weren't even really supposed to use the front gate. That way, it'd keep the normal students from detecting us too much.

When I burst into the classroom, catching my breath, Tris was being reprimanded by Mr. Kiriya for her phone going off from her bag in class. I stormed over there—yeah, I knew I was doing myself no favors when it came to looking like a good and respectful student—and grabbed the phone off Mr. Kiriya's desk, tapping the screen aggressively, like, look at it.

Mr. Kiriya moved from scolding Tris to scolding me.

"Miss Linkle, excuse me—"

I kept tapping aggressively at the phone. Tap tap tap.

"You called me in the middle of class?" Tris asked, frowning in exasperation. I scowled at her. Tap tap tap. Finally I got fed up and tried to unlock the phone. It required her fingerprint. I grabbed her hand and pressed her finger into the screen for her, then opened up my text to her. Then I thrust the phone in Mr. Kiriya's face. Tris reached to take her phone back, but I yanked it away from her, and thrust it in Mr. Kiriya's face again.

Finally he read the message.

"You were attacked by two of the Hebijo girls, one of them being Hebijo's new transfer student?" he asked. I shook my head and tapped at the part that said mind controlled, however wrong it was spelled in the heat of the moment, then elbowed Tris.

"Yeah, um, I know this is probably bad, but we ended up being friends with a couple of the Hebijo students," she admitted. "It was before we knew who they were, and before they knew who we were," she added, lying. "That's how she was able to text Linkle, claiming she was in trouble, and get her to go out there in the first place. But it wasn't her. She was being mind controlled, by the transfer student."

"You believe that?" Mr. Kiriya asked.

I wanted to tell him that the transfer student had had freaky eyes, ones that looked familiar somehow. Familiar... because someone in this class had freaky eyes. Hibari. She was as sweet as could be, but there was no question her pupils were... not pupil shaped. I dashed over to her and pointed at her eyes.

"Don't make fun of her eyes," Yagyuu snapped at me. "It's rude."

"She's not making fun," Tris said. "She's trying to ask if there's a reason they look like that, right?"

"Uh, um, it's okay," Hibari said, laughing nervously. "It's just... a power I have, that shows up first by making my eyes look weird. I don't use it much 'cause it's kinda mean, but if I really, really need to, I can control people's minds..."

I nodded to her in thanks, then looked at Mr. Kiriya again, and gestured to her with a "see?!" motion.

"The transfer student had the Kagan power, and used it to control the other student's mind?" he asked. I nodded. If that was what it was called, then, yeah, that's what I was saying. "And she wanted your scroll." I nodded again. "Your scroll in particular? Not our school's secret scroll?" I nodded yet again. I wished I could tell them how it had been glowing in a way it never had before. "And you think we should get Gessen involved, because their transfer student might know something?" More nodding. I was glad he was finally getting it.

Ikaruga stood up and approached us, nodding as well.

"This sounds like a good plan. As our class representative, I'll contact Yumi of Gessen, and tell her we need to have a secret meeting somewhere. We'll set it up, and I'll tell you when it is. If this is as much of a threat as Linkle is implying, I expect you all to show up."

"I'll call Homura too then," Asuka called out, pretty eagerly. "The more friends we have on our side, the better."

Mr. Kiriya sighed. "Yes, but now that the matter seems to be settled for now, let's return to our scheduled lesson."

I concentrated a bit better that day than I usually did, knowing that all the things I was worried about had been listened to and were actually going to be dealt with. I mean, I still wasn't the best at concentrating, but I concentrated better.

The meeting did get set up. All seven of us Hanzo students headed to a clearing in the woods outside of town that apparently "regular people" didn't know about? Whatever. I'd roll with it, as best as I could. Even though it was hard to roll with anything when so many people showed up. Besides us, there were six Gessen students identifiable by their uniforms, and five other girls in casual clothes.

"What's this all about, anyway, Asuka?" a tanned girl with a casual ponytail and t-shirt asked her. "You're lucky we're letting you use our training field, y'know? I wouldn't do this for anyone else." There was giggling amongst her casually dressed friends. She turned to them angrily, turning a little red. "It's not like that! Shut up!" Okay, that red wasn't anger. It obviously was like that. Even I could see it.

"Well, um, like I told you, our class got two new transfer students, and apparently Gessen, and Hebijo got one each at the same time too. It seemed like a weird coincidence, right? So many transfer students in the middle of the year? But one of our transfer students, Linkle—" She paused to gesture toward me. "She says it's not a coincidence, and the Hebijo transfer student is up to no good. And then that student called her out in the middle of the night pretending to be someone else, and then was mind controlling another Hebijo student in order to attack her. Just her. So, yeah, we gotta do something."

Casual girl sighed. "You know they'd kill us on sight, right?"

"You fought them for us before," Asuka said.

"We fought them for you before." Casual girl was turning red again. "Not some random transfer student we haven't met yet." I gave her a wave, like, please don't talk about me like I'm not here, or like I am here but too stupid to understand you.

"I don't see the difference," a green haired girl said. Her voice was particularly deadpan. "It's just helping Hanzo again. If we did it before, why not now?"

"There is a difference!"

"Yeah, we're coming out here for this?" a particularly short, young looking girl with an eye patch said. "I could be at home working on my next book."

"Excuse me, miss Mirai, be polite to our visitors." This was from a taller girl, with neatly curled dirty blonde hair.

"S-sorry, Mistress Haruka!" I didn't want to know what was going on there.

The bickering continued, with one of them demanding to know why I hadn't told them myself what the issue was, and Tris having to storm over and tell them I was selectively mute. Before long, Tris was passing around her phone, presumably to show them the text I'd sent. But that didn't seem to solve anything.

While they kept arguing, I turned my attention to the Gessen students. One of them, a girl with ice blue eyes and silvery hair, had come to stand next to Asuka, hearing out the argument between her and the girl with the obvious crush on her. The others were just talking with the other Hanzo students. Hibari was chatting cheerfully with a girl with pigtails. Kat was chasing around a girl with short dark hair, obviously with the intent to cop a feel. Shiki noticed me looking at her, and gave a wave. I waved back.

Then I saw her...

A girl with long golden hair, and blue eyes, and a certain level of poise and elegance to her. She was sitting on a stump, ankles crossed all ladylike, casually observing the chaos of all these ninja girls gathered together in one place. I only had to glance at her to know that was the transfer student. Because, and this is gonna sound cheesy, but it felt like I'd known her my whole life. Like every moment up until now was just waiting for her to appear. Maybe I'd known her even longer than my whole life. Like, not in a cheesy romantic sense, not at all. But like... I didn't know how else to think of it.

"It's you, isn't it?" I looked around for who had spoken, for a second, before realizing it was a thought in my head. A thought I hadn't put there. What the...?

"You hear me, don't you?" it continued. "I can hear what you're thinking, too. You're wondering what's happening." I felt myself get startled into making a weird squeaking noise. "It's me, the Gessen transfer student. My name's Zelda. You're... Linkle? That's... different than usual. You're usually male, but this time it seems like all three of us are female, aren't we?"

All three of us? This time? Was this supposed to be confirmation that my weird dreams had indeed been past lives, and all of them were part of an endless cycle of repetition of events like these?

"Yes, exactly. It took me awhile to remember what was going on, myself, but it came to me when I felt the power coming from... my scroll, I suppose."

So I'm literally the last to know anything.

"You usually are."

I must have gotten visibly offended, because Tris looked over at me.

"You okay?" she asked.

I held up a finger to shush her.

"I'll give you a quick rundown, I suppose," Zelda said in my head again. "There's a power called the Triforce, that bends to its owner's will and grants them the ability to wish the world they want into existence. There are three pieces to it. Currently... one's in your scroll. One's in my scroll. One's in Ganondorf's scroll. To gain its complete power, one needs to collect all three pieces. Naturally, Ganondorf wants to collect them, to make the world bend to his—her? Evil will. Traditionally, you're the hero that rises to fight h—her every time... she appears. I'm typically a princess, and my role is to aid you."

I nodded at her the whole time, making sure she knew I understood. But then, what was Tris?

"Tris? Oh, you have a twin sister this time. That is interesting. As far as I can remember, you've only had a sister in one other iteration, and in that circumstance, she was more of a damsel in distress type. So, as to what role your sister plays this time, I'm not sure. It remains to be seen. She does assist you a lot given your inability to really speak, doesn't she? Perhaps that's her intended role, here in a world where no one knows who you are, and won't really regard you as much otherwise."

Yeah, that's... a thing. But it didn't matter. We had to figure out a way to get this across to all our classmates, and their friends, and possibly even some of the Hebijo students, the ones we could trust, like Murasaki. So they could help us... do whatever we need to do to stop Ganondorf from getting our scrolls.

"Yes, we typically find a way to seal him in another realm. Sometimes we kill him."

And now she's a seemingly innocent eighteen year old girl. So, convincing people she needs to die? That'll go over well.

"It'll make itself evident to everyone else soon enough. Anyway, hold on. Let me try to explain the situation to our classmates." And she got up and strode over to the cluster of what appeared to be the group leaders: Asuka with Ikaruga and Tris to back her up, the casual ponytail girl, and the silvery haired, blue eyed ice girl. She spent a minute or so talking to them, and...

"May I have everyone's attention, please?" she asked, as loud and clear as a bell.

And everyone turned to listen to her, just like that. How come no one ever listens to me? Sure, I don't talk. But I communicate as best as I can. And it still feels like I'm sending messages to a rock.

Anyway, no time to be bitter. I went to go stand by her side as she explained the same thing she'd explained to me, to the entire group. She even mentioned that, even though I'd forgotten the exact circumstances, I'd had dreams of my past lives, and that was why I'd been so frantic to communicate the threat to everyone.

And they seemed like they just... believed her.

When they never would have believed me.

Maybe it was because she was just so poised and super eloquent about everything. Or maybe just because she was capable of... y'know... actual words in the first place. Maybe if I was able to just explain what I knew, I would have been believed.

I shouldn't have been salty. I needed to remember to be grateful I had a good communicator on my side now.

Yet, even as everyone realized the looming threat, we all still had no idea what to do about it. Like I thought, saying we need to kill a seemingly innocent girl wouldn't go over well with anyone. So, for now, there seemed to be a few different ideas on the table.

That Mirai girl seemed to think we should just sit around and wait for her to do something evil enough that would justify attacking her. But then Haruka shook her head at her.

"You're just saying that because you don't want to get involved, is all. Don't be lazy." Then Haruka decided to look square at me. "We definitely need to help this cutie out, don't we?" And she gave me a bit too painful jab in the shoulder in a way that came off as... well, her flirting with me. Which sucked, because it hurt. But something told me her idea of that kind of thing involved causing pain, so... it is what it is, I guess.

"It does seem to me it's quite important for us to help her, doesn't it?" Another one of the casually dressed girls, a blonde in a tracksuit, was giving me another weird look. Something about her felt very ladylike and poised, in spite of her attire and apparently living out here in the woods. "But, yes, I'm not really sure what the first step ought to be. We can't just rush in and attack this girl that's set to be a huge threat to us all, but we can't just wait for her to start things either..."

"Take some time to gather intel, at least," Haruka said.

"That's true." Tracksuit girl nodded. "By the way, miss Linkle, if I may ask... do you like bean sprouts?"

I nodded, even though I had no idea what that had to do with anything. I mean, bean sprouts were good in, like, salads and stir fry...

"See, I knew you were trustworthy! And very down to earth, besides. Some people are just too haughty to appreciate the goodness of bean sprouts, you know. Isn't that upsetting?" Interesting test of character, but okay.

The icy Gessen girl came over to me too, and looked me over, before outright standing between me and the casually dressed girls.

"A legendary hero, hm? You don't look too dangerous, but looks can be deceiving, can't they? You certainly do seem very pure and virtuous, putting yourself out there like this just to try to prevent evil from taking its hold. It's a shame we have to work with them, isn't it?"

I tilted my head in question.

"The Crimson Squad, or whatever they call themselves. They were former students of Hebijo themselves. They like to claim they changed their ways when they became renegades, but does evil ever really change?"

I shrugged at her, and decided not to let ice girl know I was close with Murasaki.

"In any case, I think it's important to be proactive in terms of all this. Sure, we can't just go in and attack the Hebijo transfer student, but we can't wait for her to make the first move either. We have to figure out a way to lure her out into doing something, while we're already ready to strike. Like cheese in a mouse trap. You get me?"

I nodded. That sounded like the most solid plan so far.

Overall, it had gone well. Zelda had been able to communicate to everyone the things we feared would come to pass, and everyone else believed us. They were all willing to pitch in however they could, in order to prevent the Hebijo transfer student from stealing the scrolls she was after. So I was super relieved.

Until I was chilling at home that night, after everything that'd happened that day.

"You've got a lot of admirers," a voice said, barging into my head without any warning.

"Zelda?! You can get into my mind all the way from wherever you're at right now?" I thought, directing it at her.

"Well, yes. Don't worry, I won't make a habit of it unless it's necessary. And even if I do end up in there by accident, it's hard to find anything. Do you have ADHD?"

"No," I thought to her.

"Ah, so you have undiagnosed ADHD." It took me longer than I'd like to admit to puzzle that one out. She kept going anyway. "Really, though, did you pick up on just how many of those girls were interested in you? My classmate Yumi seemed to develop an admiration of you right away. Then there was that Crimson Squad girl who asked you about bean sprouts who was making eyes at you too. And that other Crimson Squad girl who called you a cutie, she definitely meant it..."

I sighed out loud, hoping Tris wouldn't hear me across the bedroom and ask me what my deal was.

"Really? I have more girls with weird things for me? Because there's already this girl who gave me a kiss on the cheek recently, and I'm still trying to puzzle out if that one's a friendship kiss or something else."

"Ah. She's from Hebijo, isn't she? Don't worry, I don't believe they're all as evil as Ganondorf, so unlike many others, I won't fault you for hanging out with her. But, yes, I'm willing to bet it was certainly not just a friendship kiss. You have quite the list of admirers."

"That's... something... does this usually happen?"

"The male version of you does tend to attract a lot of female attention, yes."

"So this always happens?"

"This always happens."

"Great. Well, I'll cross those bridges when I get to them. For now, can you get out of my head so I can go to bed soon?"
"Of course. Have a good night's sleep."

It's always something, isn't it?