Taking Things for Granite

King Link and Queen Zelda defend the castle without blinking an eye.

Ravio approached the sword pedestal in the same hesitant manner as he would approach a wild horse. He was mostly on board with saving the world and putting his neck on the line. The Master Sword felt better in his hand than any weapon he'd ever wielded. This was still frustrating and difficult. Long years of listening to his self-preservation instinct to run away had kept him alive. Self-preservation refused to simply vanish in the face of heroic destiny. A trembling hand was reached to the sword. He jumped when he heard Hazel's voice behind him.

"Hey, you okay there?"

"H-Hilda! Hi! It's um. Well. I'm working on it." Ravio knew she was disappointed. She deserved a proper hero who was ready to take on stuff. At least there were no ledges to be pushed off here. His mind would not stop going over worst-case scenarios when sparring with the echo of the previous hero. She folded her arms.

"It's good you took a break at least. Does-does he give you pointers, or is he just fighting you?" She asked with curiosity in her eyes. Ravio rubbed the back of his head while recalling his words.

"He said to play to my strengths and start acting on instinct? My instinct is to run from scary things..." Hazel bit her lip. She thought for a moment.

"Sometimes a different perspective helps. Will you fight me?"

"Huh? Wait! Fight you?" Hazel in response grabbed a couple of fallen tree branches.

"Relax, I'm not going to kill you," Hazel said and noticed a relaxing in his shoulders.

"Are you?" He seemed oddly concerned about this. She spent another few sentences reassuring Ravio that she was not out to kill him. "Your friends might help too. Groose and Strich did pass basic knight training after all." Groose and Strich were called over while Ana and Aryll kept playing around with the slate. After a few minutes of parrying and swinging, she called out a few orders. Groose and Strich contributed with stuff they could remember from when they first started with the knights.

After about fifteen minutes of that, Hazel stopped Ravio and told him to stop worrying he'd hurt them. Ravio was using a stick. They would be fine.

After the thirty-minute mark, her initial impression of Ravio being somewhat rabbity had not been changed, but he seemed less skittish and more focused on trying to clear his mind. As an experiment, Groose suggested trying to take along a lightning rod to take advantage of Ravio's affinity for magic. Hazel and Ravio very much doubted that would work but Ravio tied it to his belt anyway. The helpers left with a lot of misgivings after Ravio vanished again.

Due to Ana and Aryll messing with the Slate and its varied ways to exploit it for fun, they were not paying attention to the Gossip Stone function it had. Ana said she'd teleport in with the Slate and came up with the idea to have Koroks help. No one wanted to find out what side effects happened with more than the recommended daily allowance of dissolving into blueness. Each person would teleport out with a Korok that would then bring back the Hero's Slate until they had everyone over. Small-denomination rupees and more elixirs were stowed in the adventurers' pouches. Hazel had only one ancient tech shield and sword on her, so she took along extra wood equipment too.

Ana and a Korok named Birch teleported to the castle. Ana figured she could explain to her great-uncle and the Knights about the situation. Birch came back waving the Hero's Slate around in a panic.

"BAD GUYS! There's bad guys all over the castle! They killed the King!"

A Yiga Blademaster stalked the halls of Hyrule Castle with intent to terrorize. Let us call him Earnest. There's no real importance to his name.

Earnest was a simple man. He was good at killing things with big swords. He also loved bananas. He approached a courtyard cautiously when a bit of gold caught his attention. The courtyard was a lovely small one and over the years was repaired and gardened with loving care by botanical researchers. In the ensuing chaos, a small statue seemed to have been dropped to the ground. Normally the desecration would make Earnest smile a little and chuckle but the gold was there next to the statue. It occupied his attention.

Bananas.

He took a swift look around the ground to see if anyone else was there to see the precious commodity which was just sitting there. He gave in to the temptation and gleefully bounced over on tip-toe to scoop up the delectable fruit. He had every intention of continuing the destruction of this castle right away but there was this fruit...

King Link's stony countenance stopped Earnest in his tracks and felled him instantly. The Yiga teleported away leaving the bananas on the ground. Link lay facedown on the grass next to it without any flinching on his part. From the window, up above three people laughed, whispered, and realized another Yiga was approaching.

Nice work on the aim Toal!

Oh, look. Another guy is coming.

Would they seriously be stupid enough to-

Shush! Get the other one Yunica!

The second Yiga Blademaster came to see where his comrade had gone. He too spotted the bananas. Events transpired in a nearly identical manner. This time, it was the matching stone bust of Queen Zelda which did him in at 9.8 meters per second per second. The people watching from the window cringed a bit when the next visitor ran through the courtyard and stopped.

"Come on guys! This should be the fastest way to the Library! Hey, who did this?" Ana looked down at the two statues of her great-grandparents lying next to the bananas. She then looked up at the window above to see a knight helmet looking down. "Oh, HEY ARE YOU OKAY UP THERE?" She called to the knight who was joined by a couple of other knights. Ana was followed by Aryll, Strich, and Groose. All were armed with wooden swords, bows, spears, rods, and a crossbow.

"We're fine. Uh, Hazelda, right? Sorry about the statues."

"We got two Yiga scum with them."

"Great Grandpa would applaud! I'm Ana." Ana pointed at her friends. "They're allies! Bye now!" She took off in the direction of the danger, much to the knights' dismay. The hue and cry had been raised; they didn't know what to believe when people were yelling that the Hero had stabbed the old man. Groose left a blue rupee and some green ones on the ground behind them as they ran towards where Ana said to go. Another Yiga, this time a footsoldier, came by because of the noise and froze. The bananas called to him but rupees were surrounding it. He cautiously tip-toed between the rupees in an attempt to avoid Like-Likes, oblivious to the heavy chair being readied above. Toal hissed to his comrades to get going and follow while he got this one.

Toal's aim was true.

As for Hilda, she waited impatiently next to the Master Sword with slate in hand. She desperately needed and hated to watch the Gossip Stone Network news from the castle. She wanted to scream about the terrible timing and was second-guessing her decision to have everyone else leave to guard Ana. It might have been better to risk over-use of the transport rune rather than wait for Ravio here. She had his pouch ready to hand over the second he reappeared. Hilda finished the disguise spell which wasn't much, just hair coloration changes. She didn't want to have to worry about maintaining a glamour while fighting.

Ravio didn't have the ability to do ridiculous bullet-time stunts. (Arrow time?) He was light on his feet but a perfect dodge attack? Wasn't happening. He ducked and dodged like a pro but swings kept going wide of their mark. What he was learning was that using the Master Sword with a rod in the other hand seemed to be working well for him. Ravio honestly wasn't sure why he'd been allowed to keep the thunder rod but hey, he was grateful. Link grinned and the traveler sword dissolved into blue. It was replaced by a massive cobble crusher.

They fought on and time just seemed meaningless. Ravio wasn't sure why he wasn't tired when fighting in this trial, but he suspected it wasn't located anywhere physical. Link kept going with weapon after weapon. No words were spoken by him and it was rather unnerving.

"Stop." Link said as Ravio was rolling away from getting impaled. Ravio stopped and struggled up as Link put away the trident.

You are needed at once, echoed the voice through the trial shrine, It is time to leave.

Ravio panicked. "I'm not ready for this! I don't know if I can protect anyone!" Link sighed. Ravio was shocked by came out of his predecessor's mouth while the shrine started the exit process.

"I felt that way too." Link said.

Ravio didn't have time to process things before he was back in the forest with Hilda screaming in his ear. With the clan attacking the castle and her sister there, she was not giving any opportunity for Ravio to protest. She grabbed his arm, made sure he had the Master Sword, and teleported them both to the shrine at the docks. Ravio's ears were ringing a little. A piece of paper torn from a sketchbook was weighted down to the ground with a rock. Hazel glared at it.

"ANA! She ran off without us!"

"Huh?" Hazel looked at the half-deafened boy and muttered the spell again. This time she dyed Ravio's hair blonde. Ravio followed quickly and kept a sharp lookout for Yiga, like-likes, and Fan Club members. The two rounded a corner only for Ravio to adopt a battle stance and stutter a challenge in the Sheikah language. What he thought was Kishgal matched his movements perfectly. It was a mirror. After the third time where Ravio adopted a battle position for his own reflection, Hazel removed the disguise spell on him with a sigh.

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