(Okay, I have now set my disclaimer to cycle through just about every fandom that isn't Zelda. Let's see how this unknown force takes it!)

I do not own the Legend of Zelda.

(...And that was supposed to be about Star Wars. Stupid unknown force.)

"-and so after all of that, I finally had everything I needed to take Vaati down. Of course, that got a little bit postponed because of the hole in the Forest Picori Village, and then that turned out to be Vaati's fault and he apparently kinda got eaten by it? And that was making everyone else in the Village a bit nervous because it was growing and nobody else felt like getting eaten by a hole, so they called me to be their pack mule while they moved into the Library. And… that's where you guys came in, so… yeah."

Speck finished with an awkward little shrug which gave off the impression that he hadn't quite known how to end his story, but thankfully everyone else had heard so many variations of the 'Time To Save Hyrule Adventure' by this point that no one really cared.

Instead, they were questioning the World Logic.

"Why, exactly, do the Town Picori live in the library books?" Vio asked. "I mean, what happens if a normal-sized person wants to read one of the books that a Picori is living in? Won't they just open up the book to find hollowed-out pages and a bunch of tiny furniture? And what about the Picori living in the book? Are they just trapped or what?"

Speck blinked, and frowned. "Uh… I don't know? I never asked?"

"The Minish have their ways," Ezlo sniffed dismissively from the top of Speck's head. "Most of which you needn't concern yourselves with - but in this case, I believe there's a running agreement with the current librarian involving a barter system, a universal translation spell, and approximately seventeen variously placed magnifying glasses."

Vio visibly took a few moments to process all the ways that explanation didn't exactly make sense, and Lore took the opportunity to change the subject to something that was (in his opinion) far more interesting.

"My turn!" he declared. "So, it all started when I had this dream-"

"Wait, what?" Speck interrupted, confused. "Your turn for what?"

"Well, you just spent like three hours telling us everything that happened on your adventure," Lore explained, "so now we tell you ours. It's good bonding, or some sort of junk like that, but more importantly I get to take a nap after I'm done talking because I've heard everybody else's already. Now where was I?"

"You had a dream," Dusk prompted, because he was quickly learning that the best way to get Lore's eccentricities over and done with was to let him run himself out.

"Oh yeah! So, I had this dream, see, and in it Princess Zelda was telling me…"

Speck glanced around at the rest of the group, most of which had divided into various smaller groups and were pulling out different hobbies to pass the time, then shrugged and let Lore talk. If nothing else, it was sure to be interesting.

It was with a great deal of irritation and an even greater deal of cursing that Demise came to the conclusion that he had no idea where the Sealed Temple was, and that he was maybe, slightly, possibly, probably, lost. He knew this because this was the fifth time he had walked past that one specific grouping of mushrooms, and mushrooms were on the List of Things He Hated, for reasons such as sparkles, healing properties, and an infuriatingly cheerful boing noise.

(The boing noise hadn't actually been part of the List until about two minutes ago, when Demise had lost his temper and taken it out on said fungi. Unfortunately for his temper, none of his actions had any lasting effect on the mushrooms aside from dispersing the aforementioned healing sparkles. Demise hated mushrooms.)

Feel any better? Veran asked snidely.

"No," Demise growled, abandoning that one specific grouping of mushrooms and stomping on down the path. Of course, since the whole path was lined with mushrooms, it didn't really help.

You should eat one! Zant exclaimed suddenly. I heard from a friend of a cousin of a brother of a plumber once that eating mushrooms makes you grow giant! Then you can use it to defeat the spiky fire-breathing dinosaur who kidnapped your Princess!

Silence.

One of Demise's eyebrows twitched, sending off embers. Somewhere in his head, a cricket - which really should not have been there, why was there a cricket in his head? - chirped awkwardly.

"...Zant," Demise said slowly. "I had honestly thought I had experienced the limit of your stupidity. I am horrified to realize that I was wrong. What did any of what you just said have to do with our goal right now?"

Well, there's mushrooms.

"And?" Demise growled irritably.

Aren't we looking for the Princess? She's in another castle, right?

"That… makes… no… sense," Demise hissed just barely holding on to his temper and really only managing to do so because he had better things to use his magic on than a placeholder for one of the many idiots living in his head. "None of those words made sense in the order you put them in, and half of them didn't even sound real! What even is a 'plumber' anyways!?"

He's Italian? Zant offered, as though that explained everything even though it explained absolutely nothing.

Demise breathed in harshly through his nose and rubbed two fingers over his eyes. "Someone, do me a favor and shut him up."

With pleasure, Majora said, and immediately followed that statement with the telltale fwomp of something being violently set on fire. Demise tuned out the subsequent screaming with the ease of growing practice and glared at the landscape again, which still stubbornly refused to be the Sealed Grounds or the Temple within them.

Maybe if you got a vantage point, Picori Vaati suggested. Back in my home village, we did that all the time. It was practically wayfinding one-oh-one.

"Was this before or after you tried to destroy them all?" Demise asked absently, as he turned and evaluated the absolutely massive tree at the center of the forest as a possible scouting position.

Before, obviously.

Demise snorted, then gauged the distance to the top of the tree before deciding that he was above such things as climbing, and just willed himself there instead. He materialized in the canopy, received a branch to the face, promptly incinterated said branch and all the surrounding foliage within three feet for good measure, then looked out over the treetops to get his bearings.

"Finally," he grumbled, seeing the top of the Sealed Temple in the distance.

Took you long enough.

"Shut up or I'll set Majora on you."

Majora is still busy. Zant is its favorite target, after all.

"Shut up or I'll set Veran on you," Demise corrected.

I will decline that offer, thank you, Veran cut in.

Demise snarled. "For once can you people cooperate with me!?"

No.

Demise took a large breath, intending to let it out in the form of a lot of vehement cursing - but before he even got the first word out, he was interrupted by a sudden and rhythmic wheezing noise.

Slowly, Demise lifted his head, and found a Kikwi sound asleep in the branches right above his head. The creature was grey and unkempt-looking, and was snoring. Incredibly obnoxiously, and right in Demise's face.

Demise nearly killed the thing right then and there.

"What," he said, slowly and concisely through tightly gritted teeth, "is this creature even doing in a tree!?"

Several of the voices in his head began laughing at his misery. Demise did his best to ignore both them and the snoring Kikwi in the tree.

"Killing it," he told himself furiously, as he teleported himself back down to the ground and stalked off towards the Sealed Grounds, "is a waste of magic. And time. And I have better things to do right now with both."

He'd told himself this enough times in the past few hours that he'd lost count. At this point, though, it was probably in the low hundreds.

"Demise Check," Farore ordered. Din, because it was her turn this time, leaned over to the side-reality-window they had opened on Demise's position and appraised the scene.

"...I think he finally figured out where he's going," she announced. "So that gives us about… I'd say thirty minutes to finish our Plans?"

"Thirty-six minutes, twelve seconds," Nayru specified absently. "Give or take a few nanoseconds or so."

Farore fiddled with her jewelry, thinking. "That… that should be enough. Right? We've Planned enough for this, haven't we?"

"With the amount of warning we had and the influence available to us?" Din said. "I think we've done impressively well."

"And now we have thirty-five minutes, forty seconds to do the rest," Nayru put in.

Farore narrowed her eyes. "Alright. Din, put the Chosen Aspect of Courage on fast-track. Nayru, damage control on whatever Demise… well, damages. And I'll work on influencing the main group to where they need to be. Any questions?"

"Given the track record of the main group following your influencings," Din said, "do you really have the time to be asking if there's any questions?"

Farore paused, raised a finger, then lowered it again. "In my defense," she said eventually, "I'm a bit stressed."

Several hours after Lore kicked off the most recent round of storytime, Dusk finished explaining his own adventure (plus everything the group had done since meeting one another) and patiently waited for Speck to finish processing it all. He had, after all, just listened to about ten or so different versions of the Quest To Save Hyrule, and compiling all that took some doing.

"...Somehow, changing size doesn't seem so strange anymore," Speck decided once he was done. "It actually seems almost normal in comparison."

"It's entirely normal if you ask me," Ezlo squawked.

"...Ezlo, you're a sorcerer. You literally do that sort of thing every day."

"Your point?"

"I'm not. So it seems a lot crazier to me."

"Well, we've all got something weird," Steam told him. "But now that you say it out loud, I guess there are some things that are more odd than others."

"Wolves," Speck agreed, in a vaguely bewildered sort of tone. "I can safely say I wasn't expecting lycanthropy."

"Not actually a werewolf," Dusk coughed discreetly.

"Well, no," Speck acknowledged, "but still. The fact that it's an actual thing is just… blowing my mind a little bit. This is a whole lot to take in all in one go."

"Why is Dusk the person you're getting hung up on?" Wind asked curiously.

"Oh, no, it's not just him," Speck clarified. "He's just one of the most… drastic, I guess? I'm also coping with living artwork, one soul in four bodies, weather manipulation, time manipulation, transformation, inaccurate aging, and trains - it's just that I'm dealing with one epiphany at a time."

"Are you good at coping and walking at the same time, though?" Lore put in. "Because I'm done with my nap and I'm kinda bored now, and generally things happen when I get bored. We've been here a while, you know."

"We do try to avoid things happening," Steam agreed. "And Lore's right, we have been here a while - dawdling more than we already do probably isn't the best idea when the actual universe is ending."

"Back out the door then," Dusk said, and immediately went to round up everyone else, who were scattered around the Library doing various things.

"Er… am I coming with you all, or…?" Speck asked hesitantly.

"Silly question," Lore declared. "Of course you are! Red gave you a nickname, that means you're stuck with us."

"I thought it was more of a choice than that?"

"While that makes more sense, it really doesn't seem to work that way," Wind put in, shrugging. "It's more like… if you meet the group, then you're part of the group. Or at least, that's more or less what happened to Sketch and me."

"What happened to you and me?" Sketch asked, coming into the conversation a bit late alongside the rest of the group that Dusk had gone to collect.

"We sort of just got absorbed into the Link Collective without noticing until it was too late," Wind said.

"...Yeah, that sounds about right."

Dusk, meanwhile, was doing a head count, as was becoming his habit. He got to the end, frowned, counted again, then frowned more. After counting a third time, he let out a heavy sigh, then let out a quick whistle to get everyone's attention.

"So, we appear to be missing Realm," he began, and everybody who knew what that meant groaned loudly. There were a few exasperated facepalms. "I'm not entirely sure when we lost him, but by this point we could be looking at anywhere from ten minutes to five hours ago."

"Oh dear Goddesses, he's probably halfway across the country by now," Mask muttered, horrified.

"The good news is that I did not find any of his weapons, or his shield," Dusk continued, which garnered more than a few sighs of relative relief. "So this is probably only going to take the rest of the day." He paused, then added, "Unless he's just lost his items a bit belatedly this time. But let's think positive thoughts."

"Tracks lead this way," Lore said, examining the ground and pointing in a random direction. Speck, standing a few feet off to the side (not feeling necessarily like part of the group yet and also not exactly knowing entirely what was going on,) stared at them all, wide eyed.

"Wait, so," he said, slowly. "You mean that Realm was being serious about getting lost all those times?"

Blue put a comforting arm around Speck's shoulder. "It's okay," he soothed. "Realm gives the rest of us headaches too."

Speck just blinked in a bewildered sort of way.

Several more hours, and a whole lot of confusing and previously-thought-impossible events later, Speck hauled himself over the edge of the crater of the only volcano in Hyrule, registered the fact that Realm was there too, and collapsed in sheer exhaustion, along with everybody else following right behind him. (Because Speck knew the way to all the most improbable places in the country, he'd been put in front once Lore had pinpointed a direction.). Realm, noticing the sound of several people hitting the ground, stopped frowning at the surrounding landscape in confusion and turned around to see the whole group sprawled on the rock-strewn ground a few feet away.

"Hey guys," Realm said cheerfully, waving. "So, I dunno if you've noticed, but I may have gotten lost again."

"We noticed," Steam gasped, wheezing from the climb up. "How… did you even… get up here?"

"Oh, there's this maze right through the middle of the mountain, did you know? This is where it dropped me."

"Wait," Speck said suddenly. "Are you talking about the Cave of Flames?"

Realm shrugged. "I mean, I have no idea what it's called, but…"

Speck stared at him blankly. "The Cave of Flames is impassable."

Realm tilted his head. "Seemed pretty passable to me."

"No, I'm serious, it's literally impassable," Speck insisted. "The only reason I was ever able to get through was because I had Ezlo changing my size for me so I could fit through all the little cracks and things in order to keep going. How did you get here?"

Realm just shrugged.

"We were in the library!" Speck continued, flabbergasted. "We were literally on the other side of the country! How did you get from a library to a volcano?"

"Well," Realm said, "I think I may have taken a left when I was supposed to take a right?"

"...the library only has five rows of shelving units," Speck said slowly. "You can literally see the other end of the building from any given point inside. How did you… just… how?"

"In my defense, I thought I was going in a straight line at the time."

Speck made a sputtering noise. Realm looked at him for a moment, then gave a sheepish smile.

"Sorry. I… have a bit of a condition."

"Understatement," Blue snorted.

"You get used to it?" Realm offered.

"Oh, okay," Speck said faintly. "I'll just get used to the blatant disregard for physics and universal laws. That makes sense."

"That's the spirit," Blue said. "Now come on, we've got a long way to walk to get back to where we need to be. You can cope on the way."

Link walked out of the Skyloft Bazaar with what was probably far more Red Potion than he was ever going to need, and a respect bordering on concern for the Potion Woman's cauldron capacity. Either that thing was bottomless, or it was deceptively large, because with the amount of stuff Link had just bought from her that pot should have been pretty depleted.

Possible ramifications of an unending Potion supply aside, Link had also topped off his stock of arrows, bombs, and slingshot ammo, gotten all the upgrades he'd been missing from Gonzo at the Scrap Shop, dropped off anything he probably wasn't going to need with Peatrice at the Item Check (and had a fairly awkward conversation because she still didn't seem to be over the fact that he'd never been into her), and as a just-to-be-sure preemptive measure, checked with Sparrot the Fortune Teller before he'd finally left for the Surface. Unfortunately, Sparrot hadn't been much help this time - for some reason the only thing he could tell Link was that he was going to be seeing a lot of mirrors in the very near future.

(Okay, technically what Sparrot had actually said was, "You will look at your reflection and your reflection will look back… and your reflection will say, 'Aw, why'd you have to go and be taller than me?' ...I'm terribly sorry, give me a moment." He'd paused, blinked at something only he could see, then said, rather doubtfully, "Oh, no, I seem to have been correct the first time. How odd. Oh, there will also be a great deal of running, so do prepare for that.")

While interesting (and confusing), Link had to admit to himself that it wasn't a very helpful fortune considering what he was intending to do. All things considered, he really doubted that Demise would be vulnerable to mirrors. It would be nice, and probably way too convenient for the Demon King to have such an easily exploitable weakness, which was why Link was absolutely positive that mirrors were not the answer to his problems.

With that firmly decided, Link moved on to the next item on his Prepare For Demise list. With all his gear, Health options, ammunition, etc. stocked up (and with several backups), he really only had one more thing he wanted to do.

Link was going to take a nap.

...What? He hadn't had a good night's sleep in two weeks or more, don't judge him for wanting to be well-rested for the fight that was going to determine whether or not the world got to live. Link was going to take any advantage he could get, thank you very much.

Besides, if worse came to worst and Demise showed up while he was asleep, he had Fi to wake him up. For all that she insisted that her purpose was not to be an alarm clock, she did a very good job.

The walk back to the void eating the vacated Picori Village was long, boring, and tedious, and this was because the group essentially had to cross the entirety of the country to get to where they wanted to be from where Realm had gotten them all lost. As such, once Speck was properly processing the world again and the Links as a whole desperately needed a distraction, they began ranking each other.

"I just think I've got the high score in stealth," Sketch said. "Trust me, nobody notices the art on the wall until it stabs them."

"I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that," Vio objected. "Not necessarily on the point about art, because it's sadly mostly true - but have you ever seen a wolf go hunting? Dusk, back me up here."

Dusk paused mid-step, then let out a small sigh before resuming motion. "I… admittedly, there hasn't been something I can't sneak up on yet. But that probably just means all of my targets so far have been oblivious."

Vio raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you saying that because it's true or are you saying that because you'd like to stop being the topic of conversation now?"

Dusk shrugged. "Not a big spotlight guy, I'll admit that, but I'm still pretty sure that there's plenty of places and circumstances where Sketch's version of stealth would be a lot better than mine."

"He's got a point there," Blue chipped in, having been listening. "Sketch would be perfect for infiltrating a big fancy house, or the Castle, or literally anywhere with a lot of people in it, while Dusk's brand of stealth is a lot better for fieldwork and the places where seeing a wolf wouldn't be nearly as out of place as seeing one in the middle of town."

"I can say from experience that does tend to draw attention," Dusk agreed.

"What about Speck?" Wind suggested, joining in as well. "I mean, I can barely imagine a place where being mouse-sized wouldn't be effective."

"What?" Speck said, having heard his name.

"Isn't being able to shrink down and hide really convenient for stealth?"

Speck considered that. "Well, it sure works for the Minish, I know that much."

"You mean you've never tried?" Blue asked disbelievingly.

"Er… I can try now?"

At Blue's vehement nodding, Speck pulled out his Jar and vanished into it. For a minute or two, everyone watched the piece of pottery on the ground, waiting for Speck to walk out of it.

"...Is he coming or what?" Blue wondered.

Green, followed by Vio, knelt down and carefully picked up the Jar. There was nobody underneath it.

"Okay, when did he do that?" Sketch demanded. "Did anybody see him leave?"

There was a general impressed muttering in the negative.

"So then where did he go?"

Something tugged on Sketch's hair next to his ear, and Sketch paused before carefully turning his head. On his shoulder, a thumb-sized Speck was waving cheerfully at him.

"How did you get there without me feeling it?"

Speck shrugged, then said something that went entirely unheard by literally everyone around him because his voice was small like the rest of him.

"Er… what?"

"Your tunic has a lot of really good handholds!" Speck shouted, at what was clearly the top of his lungs, but was only coming out to everyone else as slightly-quieter than normal talking volume.

"I think Speck wins," Red voted.

Sketch sighed. "Yeah, okay, that's hard to beat. But I still say I've got one of the cooler abilities."

"Again, Dusk," Vio countered.

"Why is everyone so hung up on the fact that I shapeshift?" Dusk wondered.

"Because it's cool," Blue told him firmly. "And most of us don't see something like that everyday."

Dusk raised an eyebrow. "Really. From my perspective, splitting into four people or controlling the weather or travelling through time is much more interesting. More… fantastical."

"You literally turn into something else, how is that not fantastical?"

Dusk shrugged. "I mean, I suppose it is, I just… I think what you guys can do is cooler."

"Agree to disagree," Blue muttered. "But my point is - actually, what was my point? I can't remember what this conversation started as."

"Sketch thinks he has the coolest ability," Red said helpfully.

Blue snorted. "He does not."

"I so do," Sketch argued.

"Ooh, arguments!" Lore exclaimed, suddenly popping up right there between them. "I love arguing! What are we debating about and which side is losing?"

"Which of us has the coolest ability," Green sighed, having been keeping a careful eye on the whole thing in case he needed to rein Blue in. "And I'm not going to tell you who's losing, partly because I don't think this is that kind of argument, but mostly because I think you're going to immediately join the winning side after I tell you who they are."

"I can neither confirm nor deny that thought," Lore said, making sure to look as innocent as possible. "But ignoring your heinous accusations, I would like to submit that my own abilities of time travel, seasonal change, and general awesomeness put me at the top of the list."

"That all comes from an item though," Sketch argued. "Does that count?"

Wind coughed discreetly and tapped the bracelet around Sketch's wrist.

"...That's different."

"Not really!" Speck shouted from his perch on Sketch's shoulder, before turning around and beginning his downward descent. Sketch absently knelt down to give him an easier time, which stalled the walking for a minute. There was an odd group mentality beginning to develop in which everyone wanted to be in the same general area as everyone else, and that included walking speed. Sure, it meant that they got where they were going a little bit slower, but they all got there at the same time, and somehow that was the more important thing.

"I can fuse with a wall just fine though," Sketch said, standing back up once Speck was off and resized, and continuing his argument. "It's getting back off the wall where I need extra help."

"Still an item, still counts," Vio told him. "Sorry."

"I'm going to point out that my shapeshifting is entirely dependent upon a small rock," Dusk said. "So I'd like to withdraw from the competition now."

"Nope," Lore retorted. "We're officially counting items as abilities now, you're not getting out of it this easily. Tricky tricky, almost got away with it too."

Dusk just let out a resigned sigh.

"Wait, if items are included now, I'd like to submit my transformation masks to the jury," Mask put in, because literally everyone was listening in now. "Also, my ocarina."

"Ditto," added Ocarina.

Mask turned and stared at him. "Since when do you have transformation masks?"

"I don't," Ocarina said slowly, confused. "I was talking about my ocarina."

"...Oh, this is gonna get confusing," Mask muttered. "Okay, my bad."

"Submitting my Wind Waker for evaluation," Wind offered.

"I have a Train?" Steam asked. Everyone considered that.

"...I don't think that counts, it's not like you have it here," Vio said.

"He has special sight," Red reminded everyone.

Steam shrugged. "Yeah, okay, I submit my special eyesight."

"Submission received," Vio replied. "And I submit myself and my immediate siblings for being split by four. Anyone else want in for consideration?"

"We submit a copy of your submission," the Four told him.

"Noted. So we have Sketch with being art, Dusk with shapeshifting, Wind with weather control, Mask and Ocarina with time manipulation and timeline-specific shapeshifting, Lore with time and elemental manipulation in addition to… everything, Steam with special eyesight, the Four being split, me and mine being split, Speck with size manipulation, and Realm with… oh wait-"

"Yeah, I don't necessarily have anything," Realm said. "Unless my ability to get literally anywhere regardless of landscaping and laws of physics counts?"

"Can you do it on purpose?" Red asked curiously, as this was a thought that hadn't really occurred to any of them before.

Realm turned a bit pink. "Er… no."

"Submission denied," Vio sighed. "Anything else?"

Realm thought for a moment. "Uh… stamina?"

Vio thought about that, then shrugged. "Accepted."

"He's the only brunet," Blue offered, grinning. Vio blinked at him for a moment.

"...Also accepted," he decided, with a decided smirk. Realm gaped at them both, scandalized. Green dropped his face into his hand.

"Din help me, they're cooperating," he groaned. Red patted his shoulder in a comforting sort of way.

Dusk cleared his throat. "I think Lore wins."

"Oh, come on!" Sketch protested.

"Look, between time, the seasons and everything that goes with that, plus whatever he picked up on all those adventures that he didn't think was important to mention, combined with his personality, I just don't think there's much contest."

"But-"

"He's the most likely to figure out some insane way to combine every ability he's got and possibly break the world with it," Dusk said bluntly.

"It's true!" Lore beamed.

Sketch wilted. "...Point."

"Lore's victory aside, does anyone else feel slightly concerned by the fact that so many of us have abilities that should normally probably not be a thing?" Wind asked.

Everyone considered that for a moment.

"...Not really, no," Steam said.

Demise stared intently at the closed gate leading to the Sealed Temple, feeling an odd mix of vindication at the fact that he'd finally gotten there, and irritation at the fact that there was yet another obstacle in his way. Normally, a simple gate in his way wouldn't have even registered to him before he'd have blown it to pieces, but this particular gate happened to be blessed, and a bit holy, and backed by a barrier enchantment carved into the stone, and altogether painful to the touch and currently keeping Demise out.

Under other circumstances, it might have even been successful. Unfortunately for the gate, Demise was not only at his full power, but also at the full power of the dozen-odd villains inside his head.

So really, all he had to do was punch the thing.

The blessing on the gate was only so strong, after all, and Demise was far more evil than the gate could hope to repel. It did try, though, and Demise received a nasty jolt of holy energy before the poor gate couldn't take it anymore and exploded from the sheer stress.

That seemed a bit anticlimactic, Twilight Ganondorf noted, sounding bored. Truly, I thought there would be more precautions against the Demon King than one measly gate.

"Hylia became soft in my absence," Demise grunted, stalking through the smoking and shattered remains of the gate and making his way to the Temple itself. "One good thing that came from my centuries of imprisonment is that the memories of my enemies faded, and much of what I was capable of was lost to their pathetic minds."

Or, Veran put in snidely, that gate was always enough to keep him out before, and it's only because of our added strength that he could move forward.

"I am not in the mood for your comments, woman!"

You will treat me with respect or I will raze you molecule by molecule.

Demise said nothing for several long moments. Then he changed the subject.

"The entrance from the Temple into the Grounds should be right around here somewhere," he muttered, and studiously ignored the smug victory emanating from Veran. He'd never had the best track record winning against women anyways-

"You," an aged voice interrupted his thoughts, "are not welcome here."

Demise blinked, looked around, then down. There was an extremely elderly woman standing in front of him. She barely came to his waist, had thick white hair wound into a braid that hung from one side of her face and swayed with her every movement, and was wearing something that rather resembled a large red teepee. A tattooed teardrop on her cheek indicated she was a Sheikah warrior of the goddess, and Demise let out a furious snarl.

"Get out of my way or I will remove you."

The Sheikah woman raised one thin, wrinkled hand and displayed it to him, palm out. A shield bloomed between them.

"You may try."

With difficulty, Demise did not scream his frustration to the heavens, and instead began doing his level best to incinerate the Sheikah woman right then and there.

"So, we just… jump in?" Speck asked doubtfully, eyeing the void with understandable trepidation. After all, it didn't really look like the sort of thing that would act as a transport.

"Pretty much, yeah," Realm told him. "If you need proof, then you should find whatever sacred thing you're carrying and see if it glows."

"Probably your Sword, since you don't have a Triforce piece of your own," Vio put in. Speck scrunched up his face, then pulled his weapon from his back and held it forwards towards the hole. The red stone in the pommel immediately lit up.

"...Huh," Speck said, and re-sheathed it after a moment of careful examination. "Okay then. Just… we're gonna fix this, right?"

"You had darn well better be!" Ezlo contributed.

"That's the plan," Wind agreed.

"Okay, because - I mean, this was their home," Speck continued, gesturing to the hole, which by now was large enough to have swallowed the entirety of the Picori Village and a good bit of the surrounding forest foliage too. "And look at it. It's just… gone. And if I've got this all correct, this is what's going to happen to all of existence eventually?"

"All evidence so far points to that, yes," Vio confirmed.

"I know we seem to be immune, but…" Speck played with his equipment straps nervously, "how much is that really going to matter if everything is gone in the end?"

"Well, that's why we're fixing it," Lore told him. "Also, that's why I'm going to pick you up and throw you bodily through the hole now. We have the worst stall times, I swear."

"Wait, what!?" Speck sputtered, but doing so entirely too late as Lore had already picked him up and thrown him through the air. Speck vanished into the hole with a startled yelp cut short and a lot of furious screeching from Ezlo, and Lore nodded to himself before following suit.

"...Are we sure it was a good idea to let him be LiT?" Green asked.

"Not even remotely," Dusk sighed.

The void deposited them all in a hilly, wooded environment, with dappled sunlight streaming through vibrant treetops and the faint sound of unseen water. Lore looked around at it, frowning.

"Well this place looks boring," he said. "Where are we?"

"I can ask Ezlo," Speck volunteered. "I mean, I know this is a different time or dimension or whatever, but there hasn't been something he hasn't known about yet. Hey, Ezlo?"

In blatant contradiction of everything the group had learned about Ezlo so far, the bird-hat said absolutely nothing. In fact, he didn't even acknowledge that his name had been called. He just hung from Speck's head exactly like a normal hat, if a normal hat had a bird head and more sass than was strictly appreciated.

"Ezlo?" Speck repeated, straining his eyes up to try and see his companion and listening intently. "Are you okay?"

When there was still no response, Speck reached up and carefully lifted Ezlo off his head. The bird-hat hung limply from Speck's supportive grasp, eyes closed and breathing deep and even. Speck stared at his companion and blinked a couple times.

"I… is he asleep?"

Dusk leaned around and gently prodded at Ezlo's fabric, then delicately pushed back an eyelid. Ezlo did not seem to notice.

"He's deeply asleep," Dusk replied, frowning, and began prodding much less gently. "Very deeply asleep." The prodding turned into something more like rough shaking. "How is he not noticing this?"

"He's usually a really light sleeper," Speck said worriedly. "This isn't normal for him at all."

Dusk gave Ezlo one more shake, then leaned back and frowned. "I… I don't think we can wake him up."

Speck turned pale. "What?"

"But," Dusk continued, "I think I know what this is. My own partner, Midna, she mentioned something like this. She said I was safe because I was protected, whereas everything else was being erased. So, if somebody isn't protected, but still manages to make it through the void anyways…"

"You think this is what happens?" Speck asked, tilting his head.

"Well, I'm guessing that this is what happens," Dusk admitted.

"It's a fairly solid guess," Vio contributed. "Going off of that, I'd say that Ezlo's in some sort of stasis, and will probably stay that way until he's put back in his proper time."

"I guess, because he was on your head, the protection from your weapon extended to him," Dusk added. "Or at least, that's how I've been assuming our clothes have been surviving the trips."

"So… he's gonna be okay," Speck summarized. "But he won't actually wake up until I go home."

"Eh… probably?"

"Okay," Speck said, and took a deep breath, then put Ezlo back on his head. The bird-hat, despite being unconscious, tightened his grip on Speck's hair just like he always did to hang securely, and Speck smiled a little at that. "I can work with this. But I'm gonna request a minute to go make sure my size manipulation still works when the guy who controls most of the magic is asleep."

"That's-" Dusk started, only to be cut of by Ocarina's sudden yelp of, "Oh, CRAP!"

"-fine," Dusk finished, glancing over at the sudden commotion. "I don't think we're going anywhere for a while."

Ocarina, meanwhile, had snatched his hat off his head, upended it on his hands, and was staring with a wide-eyed and panicked expression at the soundly-asleep fairy that had slid out.

"Oh my Din, I'm so dead," he whimpered.

"She's going to kill you," Mask agreed, looking like he was struggling not to laugh. "How long have you had Navi under your hat?"

"She was taking a nap, and then you showed up, and then the holes happened, and then…"

Mask stared at him. "So she's been asleep on top of your head for a week, and you only just now remembered she was there?"

"We are never telling her I forgot she was there," Ocarina threatened. "Whatever she does to me, she'll have done to you, remember?"

"Yeah…" Mask said, sounding rather conflicted. "But…"

"There are no 'buts' in this situation!" Ocarina snapped.

"I'm trying to decide whether or not it'll be worth it."

"It won't!"

"Ehh…"

"MASK!"

"Okay, okay… probably."

Ocarina fisted both hands in his hair, clearly struggling. "You know what? I have time. She's not going to wake up until I get back to my own Hyrule-"

"Probably," Vio amended.

"Probably," Ocarina agreed quickly, "so I have some time to think of an excuse."

"Keep telling yourself that," Mask snickered.

"You're not helping."

"I'm not really trying to, but thanks for noticing."

Ocarina took a deep breath, then slipped Navi back into his hat and jammed the hat back onto his head. "I still can't believe I grow into you."

"Give it time, it'll sink in eventually," Mask said. "Now, weren't we figuring out where we are?"

"We're in an extremely boring forest," Lore said decisively. "And there's no other Us's in sight." He kicked a bush in frustration.

The bush, however, did not like being kicked, as it let out a startled squeal, folded up, and turned into a little black-and-white… bird… looking… thing. Maybe. The little creature sprang to its feet, took one look at the large group of Heroes surrounding it, and proceeded to shriek in absolute terror. It then tried flee in said terror, but forgot to look where it was going, ran headlong into a tree, then just threw itself to the ground and pretended to be a bush again.

The shrubbery trembled. Everyone stared at it.

"...Okay then, this place is weird," Steam decided, and everyone muttered in agreement.

Once again, I double my word count by being absolutely terrible at sufficient exposition the first time around. You know I sometimes just, didn't bother, to identify who was talking?

It's like I was being deliberately obtuse to annoy myself with it later.

Still, got to fix some accidental British profanity, so that was good. And did you guys know that the fortune teller in SS was named Sparrot? I sure didn't.

Changeling

Thanks to bimboy and Jonaman123 for favoriting/following!

LuckyLugia: Answered in the chapter. Your timing is freakish, I swear.

Find me on Tumblr at changeling-rin!

Find the fan-run ask blog on Tumblr at ask-the-dimensional-links!