Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever, own Nintendo. And by extension, the Legend of Zelda. I do, however, own Sega. (Wait, what? What the heck, I didn't write that!)
"That looks like it's going well," Nayru observed as several smaller blond Heroes attempted to explain things to the taller one. It involved a lot of emphatic gesturing and what was presumably a good deal of confusion.
"He'll be fine," Farore said confidently. "If any of my Attributes can handle this situation without issue, it's this one."
"I don't think I've ever realized how many Attributes you have," Din commented. "I mean, we've already assembled six, the new guy makes seven, and there's still at least eight or so left to gather. The fact that you can keep track of them all is impressive."
"Practice," Farore replied, shrugging. "Now, while those seven are bonding, I'm going to look in on some of my other Attributes and see where they are. Let me know if anything interesting happens here, okay?"
"Will do."
"So... you're all me," the new Link said.
"Yep," Steam replied.
"But you're from alternate... what, dimensions? And there's holes there too?"
"That's the general gist," Vio agreed. "From what I can tell, the universe as we know it is being destroyed and the voids are a result of that. What we perceive as a hole is actually the physical manifestation of literal nothing where something used to be."
"Which, for some reason, you six can travel through," Link said.
"So can you," Red pointed out. "You just did, when you landed on Realm."
Link closed his eyes. "Yeah... sorry about that. If I'd known you were there I would have tried to miss you."
"Okay, that's like the fifth time you've apologized," Realm chuckled. "I think I've forgiven you by now."
"Right," Link smiled. "Well, I won't deny that this is weird, but it's nice to meet you all. Now, exactly how do I get back to where I live? I need to chew my partner out for throwing through a cross-dimensional void."
Green frowned. "But the universe is dying. Did you not hear that bit?"
"No, I heard that bit," Link said. "I'm just not sure I believe it. Don't get me wrong, you all seem like nice people – and you do look like me, which is odd. But other timelines, other mes? That just seems a little too far-fetched..."
"You don't believe us," Blue accused.
"Would you believe it if someone walked up and told you what you just told me?" Link replied.
The six Links exchanged concerned glances. "Okay, what would make you believe us?" Vio asked.
Link pursed his mouth, glanced around, then lifted his left hand up to eye level. "If you're really me," he said, "then you should have this."
On his skin was a three-triangle mark – clearly part of his hand, but so geometrically perfect that it looked impossible. Everyone stared at it.
"The Triforce has three pieces!?" Realm sputtered.
Link blinked. "Say what now?" That had not been the reaction he'd been expecting.
Realm openly gaped at Link's hand for a few seconds. "I... in my Hyrule, there's only two. Ganon has one, he holds Power, that's why he was able to take over, but Wisdom was scattered through the kingdom. It's kinda been my job to collect it – but now you're telling me there's a third one?"
Link nodded slowly. "Well, yeah... I mean, it's the Triforce."
"...Can I see?" Realm asked, almost reverently. Behind him, Steam, Green, Vio, Blue, and Red were all exchanging worried looks. As far as they knew, none of them had a Triforce piece.
"...Sure," Link said, after a moment of careful consideration. Realm slowly reached out a hand and traced the pattern on Link's skin, staring wide-eyed.
"There's three pieces," he said, wonderingly. "Wow. Kinda makes me wonder where the third piece is back home..."
His fingers passed over the third of the Triforce where Link's skin was lighter than the other two triangles, and Link let out an exclamation as the back of his hand flared hot – but that was nothing compared to the startled screech that Realm emitted. He flinched backwards and violently shook his left hand as a golden glow shone off the back of it and hissed through gritted teeth.
"Nayru's Love that hurt!" he cursed, and glared at his hand. "What the heck was that-!"
He froze.
"...Alright," Link said, dumbfounded. "That'll work."
Pulsing dimly on the back of Realm's left hand was a Triforce mark.
"What." Realm said emotionlessly. "What. The. Actual. Heck."
"If I had to guess," Vio said, sounding just as surprised, "it looks like you've had the potential to be a Triforce Bearer lying dormant in your body. Possibly the close proximity to another Triforce brought your ability to the surface?"
"I have the Triforce!?" Realm repeated frantically.
"On the bright side," Link out in, "I believe you now."
"I have the Triforce," Realm said again, and ran his glowing hand through his bangs in disbelief. "Oh my goddesses, I have the Triforce. This is insane."
"I think he's in shock," Steam noted.
Realm didn't seem to hear. "What was it even doing in me? Why me of all people?" He paused as something occurred to him. "And is this why Impa never seemed to have a problem asking a small boy to kill a demon? That whole conversation makes so much more sense now..."
"You gonna be okay, dude?" Blue asked. Realm inhaled excessively.
"I think so. Wow. Okay. This is gonna... wow. I'm... I'm gonna need a minute. To, uh, get used to this. Wow."
"Sure thing," Green said. "We'll be over there when you're ready."
"Do the rest of you have hidden Triforces?" Link asked hesitantly as they all moved to the spot Green had indicated. "Because activating his kinda hurt and I'm not keen on doing that again."
"No, no Triforce here," Steam sighed.
"Same," Vio agreed. Link paused and gave the five of them a searching look.
"...You don't actually have a Triforce, do you," he said. It wasn't a question.
Steam shrugged. "Maybe I do and it's just hiding, I dunno. Where I come from, the original Hyrule is submerged. I don't know where our Triforce might be, but I can tell you that I don't have it. The closest thing I've got to a 'gift from the gods' is my sword." He unsheathed the weapon to demonstrate, and continued, "Well, that and my Spirit Train, but that's in another dimension and you understand that it might be hard to get that here. So unless you wanna, like, see if my weapon resonates with yours or something like that, I've got nothing."
"And essentially, that's our situation too," Green sighed. "And it was Realm's, up until about two minutes ago."
Link considered that.
"Okay," he said simply, and unsheathed his own sword. "If that's the closest thing you've got, then they should resonate, right?"
"That seems a bit ridiculous if you ask me-" Steam started, and was abruptly cut off as all six weapons began to glow. "...Never mind."
"Alright then," Link said, and sheathed his sword in one swift movement. "That settles that."
"How, exactly?" Blue said, confused. "I mean, I'm not complaining, but...?"
"This is the Master Sword," Link said, motioning over his shoulder. "And yes," he continued as Steam let out a snort, "I know it's a pretentious title. Long story short, it's a sacred blade. No evil can touch it without pain and it pretty much exorcises anything bad that it comes across. Logically then, if your weapons are resonating, that would mean that you've got sacred blades too. Which would also mean that you're not evil, which probably means you're telling the truth. Plus," he smiled, "you really do look an astonishing amount like me."
"But you're not blond," Red pointed out.
"Realm's brunet," Link replied, shrugging. "Think of me as a combination."
"I've never really considered it," Vio mused, "but it really does make sense for the Four Sword to be sacred."
"Wait, is that what your sword is called?" Steam said, grinning. "That's ridiculously literal. Whoever named that thing must have been severely lacking in creativity."
"Well, what's yours called?"
"The Lokomo Sword," Steam replied.
There was a moment of silence.
"Er... what's a Lokomo?" Link asked.
"I... don't actually know," Steam admitted, a frown creeping onto his face. "It's a people group, but as to what a Lokomois, I'm not actually sure."
"Might be an alteration of the word 'locomotive'," Vio theorized.
"Okay, but what the heck's a locomotive?" Blue asked.
"It's another word for train," Vio sighed. "Honestly, weren't you listening when Steam explained this to us?"
"I was, I just didn't listen to the detail stuff."
"Well if you had, then you would have known what a locomotive was."
"Why do I need to know what a locomotive is, you memorize all that stuff anyways!"
"Because knowledge is important and you never know when you might need-"
"Will you both quit it!?" Green snapped. "Now is not the time!"
"Is this a common occurrence?" Link asked Red and Steam.
"Dunno," Steam shrugged. " I only met these guys yesterday."
"It's fairly common, yes," Red answered.
"Right..." Link contemplated that. "Sibling arguments. I can handle that."
"Handle what?" Realm asked, walking up next to them. He still looked somewhat shaken, his left hand angled firmly away from his line of sight, but he was significantly less pale than he'd been.
"You guys," Link replied. "After all, if you're telling the truth about yourselves, that means that you're telling the truth about the holes, and what kind of Hero would I be if I let Hyrule get wiped from existence?"
Steam snorted. "A really bad one."
Red let out an excited squeal. "Welcome to the group! Any opinions on your nickname?"
"My what now?"
"If we're all called Link, it gets really confusing," Realm said informatively. "Red gave us nicknames to differentiate."
"I did wonder about that," Link commented. "The word 'Green' hardly seemed like a name one would be born with."
"So," Red said, bouncing in place a little. "What's your Hero title?"
"Hero of Twilight," Link replied.
"Wanna use it?"
Link blinked. "Uh... not really. It's already the name of a people, a place, and a substance, not to mention that I don't have the best memories of the word."
Red was only mildly dissuaded. "I get to be creative instead! Vio, can I get some words that mean 'Twilight'?"
Vio thought for a moment, then rattled off, "Sunset, evening, dusk, dark, gloom, nightfall, shadow, sable, sundown... any of those sound good?"
"Dusk wasn't too bad," Link said helpfully.
Red beamed. "Dusk it is, then!"
"How come his gets to sound cool?" Steam complained.
"You don't think 'Steam' sounds cool?"
"I mean, it's nice enough, but his sounds like the name of a guy who means business."
"Actually, I just liked the phonetics," Dusk admitted.
"The heck is a 'phonetics'?"
"Phonetics are the sounds that form words," Vio explained quickly.
"Well, his phonetics sound cooler."
"I think they both sound cool," Red pouted. Steam made the mistake of turning to face the smaller Link and was promptly hit with the surprisingly accurate image of an adorable puppy. Curiously enough, he also discovered his weakness to adorable puppies in the same moment.
"...Yeah," he replied weakly. "They both sound cool."
"Question for you guys," Dusk said, attempting to get the conversation back to something resembling 'on-topic'. "What now?"
The other six Links exchanged glances with each other. "Well," Green said. "We've basically just been portal-hopping. It started as us four," he gestured to his three siblings, "trying to get back home, but now it's more of a 'let's see who else we meet while trying to find the source' type of thing."
"Which I'm now part of," Dusk finished. "Right. So, do I just run and jump, or...?"
"Yeah, pretty much," Blue said. "And something will probably start glowing to let you know it's safe."
"Oh," Dusk said in tones of realization, looking at the void then down to his hand. "That makes more sense now."
"You know what glows?"
"My hand," Dusk replied, lifting it for them to see. "It was glowing right before my partner threw me in."
He paused. Then he smiled in a way that was somehow altogether more toothy than it ought to have been and reminded everyone rather forcibly of a feral beast. "Would anyone like to help me take revenge on her for that?"
"...I think I'm going to like you," Blue informed him.
"Well, they look like they've bonded successfully," Din observed, stretching. "Think we should tell Farore that one of the Aspects manifested his Triforce early?"
"I'm sure she already knows," Nayru responded. "Besides, she's busy influencing that Aspect with the paint gimmick, remember?"
They both paused for a moment as Farore let out another string of frustrated complaints – from the sound of things, the boy was heading in the exact opposite direction of where she needed him to be.
"...Yeah, we can fill her in later," Din agreed.
Contrary to his patron goddess' current belief, the New Hero of Hyrule was not directionally challenged. He was just in a very tight spot that required him to go in a very certain direction due to the fact that any other direction was going to get him killed.
He was also currently a painting on a wall, but that was surprisingly not the reason he may or may not be dead within the next few minutes. No, that reason belonged solely to the vast number of guards patrolling the outer borders of the Castle.
Link frowned irately at the guard walking past his currently-pigmented body, keeping a mental tally of how much magic he still had. This was vitally important, as running out of magic would result in Link turning back into a normal, three-dimensional boy and would almost certainly get him killed.
Quite a lot of things would get him killed right now, Link belatedly realized.
To his substantial relief, the guard moved on after a few more seconds of scrutiny, and Link let out a sigh before popping himself off the wall. This was ridiculous. All he wanted to do was get past the Castle to use a Lorule Gate to inform Princess Hilda that he'd finally figured out how to beat up Yuga/Ganon/whoever he was now so that he could rescue Hyrule and get everything back to normal. Was that really too much to ask?
Apparently.
The thumping of metal footsteps alerted Link to the fact that the guard was making his circuit again, and Link cursed to himself before activating the bracelet on his wrist and fusing back into the wall. It was a strange feeling, when he thought about it. He was literally turning into paint, going from three-dimensional to two-dimensional in seconds and trading his hylian body for one that was made of... watercolors, he thought, judging from The Rain Incident.
He shuddered briefly. He didn't like thinking about The Rain Incident.
Unfortunately, Link had forgotten that he was hiding from a guard (nobody looked at artwork for some reason), and the shudder earned him the full attention of a heavily armed and armored knight who, now that Link looked closer, seemed to be made entirely of Yuga's/Ganon's/whoever he was now's living paint.
Well, that explained a lot.
Link froze, holding his breath for good measure, and nervously checked on his magic levels. He was about halfway depleted – he should really look into some stamina training – which technically should last him until the guard lost interest, unless he was unlucky.
The guard spent a few more seconds scrutinizing Link's painted form on the wall before shrugging and lumbering off to continue his route. Link waited until the henchman was out of sight entirely before popping off the wall again and letting out his breath in one explosive burst.
"And that," he muttered, "was way too close."
He wasn't keen on repeating that experience, so he beelined past the Castle gates and rushed down the path that led to his house/Ravio's shop/he didn't actually know what to call it anymore because Ravio spent more time in it than he did. The rock wall in front of the building had the next-closest Lorule Gate from the one in Hyrule Castle itself, which Link unfortunately couldn't get to because the Castle had been closed off ever since Zelda had been kidnapped. It turned out that having your Queen-to-be transformed into a painting and taken into a different dimension caused lots of panic. Who knew?
Link veered around the turn and stopped in front of the wall he needed. He glanced up at his house/Ravio's Shop for a moment and wondered if he should drop in, then decided against it. He'd already been working towards this final confrontation for weeks. He didn't want to delay it anymore. So he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and approached the Lorule Gate.
Lorule Gates basically just looked like cracks in the walls, regardless of what the walls were made of. Link had learned, however, that only a crack that emitted smoky-mist-type stuff would lead him to the alternate world. He'd found that out the hard way after one adventure through a wall crack had landed him in Hyrule's sewer system.
In hindsight, though, it did explain the smell that everyone complained about.
Link abruptly stopped again and took a quick inventory. Sword and Shield, check. Red Potion and emergency Fairy, check. Dungeon Items, check. As far as he could tell, he was good to go.
So, Link steeled his nerves, fused with the wall, stepped forwards into the Gate...
...and came out on a tropical island.
Well, technically he was fused with a large rock sitting on a sandbar about fifteen feet off a tropical island, but still. There was a flipping tropical island.
Link stared.
Clearly, something was not quite right.
He detached from the boulder that the Gate had led to and blinked confusedly at what was very clearly the ocean around him. He looked to his right where the island was and was greeted with a cluster of cheerfully swaying palm trees. On his left was a black-and-white bird that he'd never seen before bobbing up and down in the waves. He glanced down and watched a... actually, he had no idea what it was, but it had a bright red body and six frantically moving legs that propelled it sideways, for some bizarre reason, and an alarmingly large set of claws for a creature smaller than his foot. Link prudently stepped out of the way, and the thing shot off diagonally across the sand to bury itself in a hole.
He factored all of this into his mind and came to a conclusion.
"This," Link decided in a highly confused voice, "is not Lorule."
At any rate, it was more pleasant than the sewer, which Link was grateful for. But he really did need to meet up with Princess Hilda. He turned around to go back through the Gate-
-and stopped, because the boulder where the Gate had been now appeared to have been swallowed by a large black hole.
Link stared at it, too. For a good twenty seconds. Idly, his brain noted the odd clawed creature from a few seconds earlier side-swimming against the current and brushing up against the void. It promptly ceased to exist.
Link took a very large step backwards.
It was at that point that his mind registered the fact that he was on a sandbar and pointed out all the relevant information that went with it, such as the bit where sandbars are in the ocean and the ocean was made of water. Link's mind immediately flashed to The Rain Incident and he had to fight to keep himself from panicking.
The Rain Incident had the distinction of being the single most traumatizing experience of Link's life and was something that he actively tried not to think about most of the time. When Yuga had cast his spell, Link's body had been transformed into paint. Watercolor paint, to be exact. Why did Link know he was made of watercolors? Because when watercolor paint got wet, it bled. And when Link had gone out in the rain one day and fused with a wall in order to solve a puzzle, his pigment had literallybegun running off the stone. And it had hurt. It was just a dull ache, the kind of pain that bruises come with, but it had been enough to alert Link to the fact that something was wrong and he'd looked down to discover that his entire lower torso was nearly unrecognizable. And to top it all off, his legs hadn't even moved like legs anymore, so distorted from the water running down the wall that they'd functioned more like tentacles than anything else. Link had popped off the wall in a frantic rush and dragged himself to the nearest shelter, gasping until his limbs had slowly corrected themselves again.
He'd had a bad case of hydrophobia ever since. Thankfully, water only seemed to affect him in that way when he was a painting, because when he was Hylian the only thing that happened was that he got wet. But the memory of seeing his legs disfigured and having to drag himself to safety when they wouldn't work right was never very far in his mind.
In fact, right now it was about the only thing on his mind, and he forced himself not to look down.
"Just get to the island," Link told himself. "Just get to the island and you can freak out there."
Goddesses, he hoped he didn't have to swim.
Ten minutes of barely controlled panic later, Link lunged out of the surf and scrambled up as far onto the beach as his limbs would let him before he collapsed in the sand, chest heaving. He rolled onto his back and squeezed his eyes shut , feeling for his limbs and tracing their shapes to reassure himself that he wasn't melting.
He wasn't.
"I gotta get over this," Link moaned to himself, pressing his hands against his still-closed eyelids. Even if he acknowledged that he had a perfectly legitimate reason for his phobia, that still didn't make it acceptable! He was the freaking Hero, for Din's sake, water shouldn't be the thing that brought him down.
Link entertained that thought for a few more seconds before sighing resignedly and opening his eyes.
Now, since Link was lying on his back, he was looking straight up. Since he was looking straight up, he could see the clouds. And since he could see the clouds, he could also see that they were rather, big, dark, and very wet-looking clouds.
Said clouds then chose that moment to let out a jarring BOOM of thunder and start pouring right onto Link's island. The Hero let out a yelp and scurried off the sand under the copse of palm trees he'd noticed earlier.
...Well, this was just peachy.
"You know what?" Farore said to nobody in particular. "Close enough. Wasn't even near to the hole I was going for, but it's still a hole. Close enough."
"You talking to yourself again?"
"It's only a problem if I get an answer!" Farore yelled. "Any updates on Courage?"
"Well, the seven in the group worked out their differences and look like they're heading through the void again," Nayru listed. "I took the liberty of checking in on a few other Aspects that you got started with, and the one who just dealt with the Windfish is getting close to land."
"Right." Farore quickly checked on her painted Aspect again; aside from an obvious distaste for the weather, he seemed fairly stationary for the moment. "I'll be there shortly. He'll need some guidance once he makes landfall, the way the current pushed him will put the boy a long ways from where he needs to be."
There was only so many times one could sing the 'Ninety-Nine Potions of Health On the Wall' song before it got veryboring. That, and Firetongue – the language of the Dragons – translated horribly into the rhythm of the tune and pretty much ruined the whole experience.
Thus, Link was now bored. And a bored Link was something that had, on at least one highly memorable occasion, sent Gibdos running for the hills.
Unfortunately, Gibdos didn't live in the ocean. Link spent a few moments being annoyed at this fact, then moved on because being annoyed was depressing and he made a point of not being depressed for more than five minutes a day.
Technically though, with all the days he'd missed regarding his five-minute depression limit, he could probably spend the next straight day or so being depressed... he just didn't want to. Depression was depressing.
So with a severe lack of literally anything else to do, Link began swimming on his back instead.
It wasn't all that different from swimming on his front, actually. There just wasn't a lot of things to look at when everything was blue.
Although, that bit up there was white.
Link paused in his stroke and just floated, staring at the bit of white. It wasn't a cloud. It looked like a bird. A seagull, to be precise.
Seagulls were shore birds.
"Goddesses, I'm a RRRHAaarrRRKKH!" Link exclaimed, slipping into Firetongue for a brief moment because the Dragon language expressed idiocy far better than any of the others he knew. He should have looked up ages ago, he probably could have made land by now!
He turned in the water and snagged the piece of driftwood, which he'd been towing the whole time, and perched his upper torso on the board while the half of him that wore the Mermaid Suit remained in the water. It was going to be a lot easier to follow the birds if he could both look up and where he was going at the same time, and having a stable base to lean on helped that tremendously.
Although... was that east, where the birds were going? He really wasn't sure anymore; astronomy had never been his strongest point (the stars were just pretty points of light as far as Link was concerned), and while he could read a map without any problems, there was an astounding lack of maps that depicted the middle of the ocean. He could, technically, try and use the sun, but he hadn't paid attention to which direction it had risen from and as it was now smack in the middle of the sky, told him absolutely nothing about which direction it was going. Basically, following the birds was his best bet.
So follow them he did. For the next three hours. By which point it was quite dark, and the only reason Link realized that he'd hit land was because he swam straight into the beach.
It was mildly painful.
Link, however, was far to excited to be out of the ocean to care about scratchy grains of sea detritus, and after pulling off the Mermaid Suit, veritably bounded up the coastline.
Of course, then his multiple-day ocean excursion decided to remind him that he hadn't actually eaten or slept in a verylong time, and Link's legs gave out on him as his body initiated a full muscle lockdown until it got some rest in.
"Alright, I can get behind a nap," Link agreed out loud, even though nobody was around to hear him, and nestled his head into the sand a bit to hollow out a space. The substance scratched at his cheek as he moved, and he paused, frowning. He knew this feeling. There was a very specific kind of sand that scratched in this manner, and there was only one place that had sand like this.
"Yūvūtōneegirh-Ai teah," Link muttered as the realization hit him, feeling the phrase was only appropriate considering that it was the native language here.
Link was in Labrynna, which was nowhere near Hyrule. He was going to have to walk all the flipping way back to Hyrule.
Again.
"I don't know where, how, or why," Link decided, "but somehow this is all the Windfish's fault."
"...Well, he's making progress," Nayru offered.
"Yeah..." Farore frowned, tilting her head. "Nayru, do you... feel something odd?"
Her sister thought for a moment, while Din quietly took over at the reality window. "Aside from all the voids in space-time, you mean?"
Farore gave her a Look.
"Just checking," Nayru chuckled. "Not particularly, though that might be because the holes are so big that they drown out everything else. Was there something specific that you-"
She stopped mid-sentence. At the same time, Farore's breath caught in her throat, and Din called, "Hey girls? You might want to see this."
"Oh," Nayru said quietly, as Farore hurried to look at what Din was indicating. "That is odd."
"Are they stable?" Farore asked quickly.
Nayru concentrated. "I... believe they are. For now. We'll have to monitor this carefully to see how their individual time-streams interact with each other, but at the moment... Yes."
Farore sagged in relief and dragged a hand down her face. "Of all the things... I wasn't expecting this kind of a split. How did that even happen?"
"Time is in such a mess right now, I honestly can't say," Nayru sighed.
"Girls!" Din exclaimed, motioning rapidly. "They're interacting!"
Nayru crossed her fingers.
Link stared.
Link also stared.
They both stared for a while. Identical pairs of angled blue eyes met and blinked at each other, then moved and took in the messy straw-blond hair, the forest-green tunics, the matching hats, and the swords strapped to each other's backs. Because, aside from a few superficial differences, they were exactly the same.
The younger one eventually broke the stunned silence with a small, muted, "What... the... heck...?"
The older one suddenly inhaled sharply, like he'd been forgetting to breathe for the past minute or so. "Are you...?"
Younger Link examined Older Link like he was under the Lens of Truth. "Are you?"
"Er, well... I'm the Hero of Time."
"So am I."
Older Link stared again. "But... how?"
"I'm guessing something broke?" the younger Link theorized. "Did you drop the Ocarina of Time?"
"No!" Older Link snapped, scandalized. "You of all people should know I'd never be so careless!"
"I'm not sure about that," Younger Link replied skeptically. "How do I know you're me and not some doppelganger rip-off that I have to deal with? Again?"
"Well how do I know that you're not some doppelganger rip-off that I have to deal with? Again?"
Younger Link regarded Older Link with a blank face. "For someone who's supposed to be my older self, you seem remarkably immature."
"Oh... uh..." Older Link suddenly became significantly more awkward. "I'm not, um, not actually sixteen. Well, I mean, I am, I just... wasn't awake for the time in between... it's just kinda complicated?"
Younger Link blinked at him. "Hang on. Are you in Hyrule? Fighting Ganondorf? Like, with Navi and the Seven Sages and Sheik and all them?"
'Older' Link raised his eyebrows, surprised. "I thought you hadn't experienced that yet?"
"Oh my goddesses," 'Younger' Link said. "I'm older than you. You're technically nine, aren't you?"
"Mentally...yes?"
"I'm twelve."
The taller Link stared again. "You're twelve?"
"Time flies," the younger-but-older Link replied with a small grin. His counterpart immediately scowled.
"Don't go starting that again."
"I won't if you won't."
"I'm not the one who said it."
"Point," the shorter Link conceded. "You know, if you're a doppelganger, you're doing a really good job."
"Same to you," the older-but-younger Link replied, nodding at his double. "Unless you're actually me..."
There was another stretch of silence as both Links sized each other up. Then they both reached for their bags, paused as they saw the other move, and locked eyes.
"I'm not going for a weapon," the older-but-younger Link said.
"Neither am I."
They slowly completed the motion and pulled out... ocarinas. Specifically, the Ocarina(s) of Time.
Both Links regarded each other in surprise, partly because, what were the odds, and also because they'd been expecting some sort of paradox and resulting end of the world due to two identical objects occupying the same space at the same time. But nothing happened except for more surprised staring.
"Okay," the younger-but-older Link said. "That's a fairly strong point for the 'Not a doppelganger' argument."
His opposite hummed noncommittally. A moment passed; then they both raised their ocarinas to their mouths and played the Song of Storms in perfect synchronization.
Ten seconds later, they played the Sun Song to get rid of the thunderstorm, then locked eyes with each other again, grinned, and went on a medley of all the songs they knew, soaring through Saria's Song, lingering on Zelda's Lullaby, and then dropping into the Song of Time. Younger-but-older Link smirked around his mouthpiece and then switched over into a harmony right as the two transitioned into the Bolero of Fire, causing his counterpart to roll his eyes and begin improvising a crescendo into the Minuet of the Forest, which the first Link matched perfectly. Their back-and-forth duet continued through the Requiem, Nocturne, Serenade, and Prelude until the younger-but-older Link began playing some he knew that his younger self didn't and the latter was forced to stop.
"Now that's not fair," the taller Link complained, stowing his ocarina back in his bag. "I haven't learned that one yet."
"Perks of being the older one," his counterpart laughed, and did the same thing with his own instrument. "That was honestly... extremely convincing. You even improvise the way I do."
"Which means... you're really me."
"And you're really me..."
They examined each other fiercely.
"...I looked good with earrings," the younger-but-older Link decided. "I should get those again when I'm old enough."
"Thanks," his other self said, grinning. "But remember to remind Impa to use ice."
The shorter Link winced at the memory. "Ouch, yeah,"
More silence. It wasn't awkward, not really. It was just that neither of them knew what to say to themself.
"...So, since you're my future," the taller Link started, "what do I get into?"
His counterpart frowned. "Can I even tell you without risking a temporal collapse? We're already pushing things enough as is by meeting."
"Oh, right. Uhhh... general details?"
"...Probably can't hurt," the shorter Link decided. "We briefly get cursed, but we get over it. We spend a lot of time playing with masks, and we learn that Mask Salesmen are far creepier than we gave them credit for. We develop a severe aversion to moons, especially if they have faces on them-"
"I'm sorry, what?" the other Link interrupted, looking extremely confused. "Moons? With faces?"
His other self shuddered. "Trust me, you want to stay as far away from that thing as physically possible."
"...Is this one of those things that'll make sense when I get there?"
"Probably."
All three goddesses breathed sighs of relief.
"Oh, that could have gone so much worse," Nayru sighed, slumping. "I have a big enough migraine as it is from the voids in the universe, I do not need a paradox on top of everything else.
"Well, it's already a paradox," Farore pointed out tiredly. "It just happens to be self-sustaining."
"The best kind of paradox," Nayru replied.
Farore let out a puff of air, then launched back to her feet and said, "I'll be right back. I want to check in on my boys again; I think my painted Aspect is about to meet himself."
She was gone before either of her sisters could respond.
"I don't think I've ever seen her so busy," Din commented.
Link dearly wished that the storm would let up, because he could only take so much stress. He decided right then and there that immersion therapy was not his chosen method of getting over a phobia. Although, he had to admit that, after a while, there was only so much paranoia he could feel before everything started to go a bit numb.
...That probably wasn't a good thing, now that he thought about it.
The copse of palm trees above him had proven to be spectacularly useless as far as shelter went, and chose that exact moment to once again prove why as they dumped a veritable bucketload of water on Link's head. Tropical foliage, Link decided, was ridiculously flimsy. The fronds above him could barely hold their own weight, much less water weight.
The wind didn't help much either.
So, put very, very simply, Link was absolutely soaked and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, aside from perhaps resigning himself to his fate.
Naturally though, as soon as he'd decided to do just that, his fate decided to play a joke on him.
High above the wind came a rolling, trilling tune that made Link blink and tap at his ears to make sure they were still working. Music in the middle of a storm? Who would be stupid enough to bring an instrument out in this weather?
The song built up to a crescendo, and as it did the clouds abruptly stopped pouring rain and in fact just ceased to exist altogether. Link spent a brief moment gaping at what was clearly not normal cloud behavior before the sun broke out and proceeded to blind him, as he'd unfortunately been looking right at it when it did. He rubbed his eyes and furiously blinked the dark spots out of his vision.
Then he blinked again, because now instead of dark spots he was seeing a small red boat with a face, and a somewhat smaller boy wearing a very familiar green tunic.
"...What?" he breathed, thoroughly and utterly confused.
The boy steered the small boat up to the island and anchored it on the sandbar – giving the large black void a wide berth and apprehensive look as he did – then hopped out of the vessel and splashed his way to shore.
"Hi," he said, wringing out the hat hanging from his head and sending Link a friendly grin. "My name's Link. Can I ask you something?"
Upon hearing this, Link's brain decided that it needed a break from all the insanity and just gave up on trying, which left Link gaping like a fish and rather unable to do anything else. The new boy raised an eyebrow in concern.
"Uh... okay, I'll just be quick then. Have you by any chance seen a giant squid? I need to destroy it to save a pirate princess and a whale god." Then he blinked, and muttered, "That made a lot more sense in my head."
Link processed all this vaguely due to the fact that most of his attention was on the boy's face. While his hair was almost bleach-blond instead of auburn and his face was a bit rounder due to being younger, the kid looked almost exactly like Link himself.
"Hey, um, are you okay?" the boy asked, waving a hand in front of Link's face. "You look like you've seen... a..."
He paused, and from the way his eyes widened, Link could tell that he'd just noticed the freakish similarities as well. Both boys stared at each other for a moment, utterly silent.
The new boy reached out and gingerly poked Link's hat, then made a complete circle and pursed his mouth in utter confusion.
"...Okay, who are you, and why have you got my fashion sense?"
12/6/16
I'm trying to do a better job at specifying which Link is which, so that when I hop around you guys can tell who is who without their nicknames. It's harder than I was expecting.
Aside from that, I felt that the meeting of the Hero(es) of Time went much more realistically. And I got to flesh out Sketch and his phobia more, which I count as a win. I didn't do a very good job the first time around.
Firetongue Translations: RRRHAaarrRRKKH (idiot)
Labrynnian Translations: Yūvūtōneegirh-Ai teah(I hate everything)
Changeling
Thanks to Kianie Black and XzDaFelixZfor favoriting/following!
Guest: Yay! My readers like my stuff :)
LuckyLugia(Guest): Oh, I have every intention of writing this thing until it's done. I have put way too much work in to give up now. As for where 'Shifter' ended up... Spoilers. I'm not telling ;) On a slightly unrelated note, I love that you like my story!
XzDaFelixZ: Realm comes from the original Legend of Zelda game from 1986. Yes, I do watch Game Theory and am an avid subscriber... and let me tell you, that particular video has come in really handy for this story. ALL the Links will be appearing, except for non-canon games (Hyrule Warriors; I really thought about it but in the end I decided against), the really creepy ones (Zelda CDI), and games that haven't come out yet (Zelda Wii U). And actually, I did have an Epona joke planned somewhere. Good call! And I am SO glad you like this!
KnownForHardlyNothing: Yeah, I took inspiration from me and my siblings. It's really easy to write quarreling for some reason...probably because I've got so much experience. And, wow... you just called my stuff perfection. Just, wow. THANK YOU.
Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!
Find the fan-run ask blog on Tumblr at ask-the-dimensional-links!