(So apparently, I understand just enough of quantum theory to realize that I understand absolutely nothing about quantum theory, which makes me the perfect candidate to be messed with by the Universe.)

To be fair, you never were all that good at math.

(Look, I can't exactly help the fact that anything past Advanced Algebra doesn't make sense to me.)

And that's why you're perfect. Now, shall we?

(Yeah, let's get this compromise rolling.)

Changeling does not own the Legend of Zelda. This is for a multitude of reasons, but a more prominent one is that the idea of being in charge of a multi-million dollar franchise is an inherently terrifying amount of responsibility.

(This feels like a very one-sided compromise.)

Nonsense. You need a disclaimer, and I want a scapegoat to mock for all of humanity's flaws. It works out splendidly.

(...Right. Thanks?)

Oh, it's my pleasure.

There was a niggling sense of 'Huh' in the back of Farore's mind that had been there for a solid hour, and by this point it was becoming distracting enough that she was having trouble concentrating on the issue at hand, this being the transition of Great Deku Trees. It took several more minutes before she actually acknowledged it. When she almost misplaced the species marker as Great Fairy instead instead of Great Deku, that was when Farore let out a frustrated huff and legitimately turned her attention to whatever was so important that her Sphere of Influence was poking her about it.

Then she paused, and stared for a long, long time.

"...Huh," she said. "That's… not necessarily supposed to be there."

"What?" Din asked.

"You remember all those times that I swore something was pulling on Courage's element, and how I thought I had two Aspects in one moment and may or may not have panicked over conflicting signals?"

"Yes…" Din said slowly.

"So it turns out," Farore explained, somewhat bewilderedly, "that I wasn't crazy. Courage has a dark-magic duplicate." She pointed through the reality window, where a spot of black stood out in an otherwise solid green patch.

"...Huh," Din said. There was really nothing else to say about that sort of thing. "Where did that come from?"

"I don't actually know," Farore admitted. She screwed her face up in fierce concentration, then blinked several times. "Oh. It's - He's - mine. He's Courage, just… darker. Oh."

Din evaluated her sister's face for approximately two seconds before darting off to get Nayru.

"Oh my Me, he's a baby Courage," Farore cooed, and practically melted on the spot. "Oh, look at him! He's so new! Oh, he must have just gained a conscience! I get to have a baby, this is so exciting!" She did her happy dance for a few moments, then paused as a new thought struck her. "Oh, where's he been? He was that conflicting Courage signal all those times, he must have been, but he wasn't nearly so bright as he is now…"

Several more new thoughts were occurring to Farore now, and none of them were very happy. "Oh, sweetheart," Farore said softly, rifling through the new connection that her newest Aspect was establishing with her. "Oh, baby. Oh, I should have noticed you sooner. I'm a terrible Patron goddess…"

"What's going on?" Nayru asked, inadvertently announcing her presence as she and Din rejoined their sister.

"I have a baby Courage!" Farore exclaimed, whirling to face her siblings. Then she drooped and said, "But… he might not be strong enough to stay."

"Why not?"

"Demise crafted him," Farore confided miserably. "Or at least, one of Demise's Hatred Incarnations did. He's been put together and then torn apart so many times, over so many eras, and he's never had the chance to think for himself before. He's always been under someone else's control, doing someone else's will; the darkest reflection of the Hero, designed solely to kill the very person giving him form in the first place."

"Oh, poor baby," Nayru breathed. The three goddesses were of very similar minds when it came to their Attributes.

"He's been trying so hard to break free for so long," Farore continued. "And then when Demise reabsorbed his Incarnations, Courage had his chance. He's been hiding in dark places ever since." The goddess worried at her lower lip. "He's been exposed to shadow magic for so long, even with his new conscience he's balancing on the edge. He could go either way, at any time. I could lose him."

"What a time for this to be a problem," Din muttered, moving forward to comfort her sister. "As if we didn't have enough to worry about already…"

"He's just a baby," Farore emphasized, just in case she hadn't made that part clear already with her crooning and continued use of endearments. (Farore tended to love very, very quickly. It was impossible to have life without love, after all, though it did get Farore into trouble occasionally when she loved an invasive fern species too much to eradicate it to make room for the equally-loved native fern species. "They're just trying to live!" She'd sobbed over the growing seed spores of the invasive fern. She'd had a bit of a rough time that day.)

"Alright then," Din replied, "what are you going to do about it?"

"I," Farore declared, "am going to love him to pieces."

"Okay, and what are you going to do about it that doesn't violate the Interference Laws?"

Farore had to concede the point there. "I'm going to use all the other Courage Aspects to love my new baby to pieces in my place."

"You'd best get started on that, then," Nayru called. "Because it looks to me like the rest of Courage isn't too happy to meet your newest kid."

Farore flashed to the reality window, which was now displaying a green horde facing off against a solitary black dot. "Noooooo, they were doing so well!" She complained. "Eighteen Aspects without anybody trying to fight each other, but now I have a baby and they all hate him, because of course they do. It just wouldn't be Courage if he was making things easy for me."

"Also, Courage probably remembers your new Aspect from all those times he probably tried to kill them while under Demise's Influence," Din pointed out.

"Thank you for the reminder, now please stop talking so I can concentrate on keeping Courage from stabbing himself," Farore requested.

Given the sheer amount of swords that were currently pointed at his heart - or at least, his torso area - Shadow looked remarkably unbothered by the hostility he was receiving. In fact, contrary to all the normal responses of a person in his situation, he widened his lazy grin and stepped forwards into the swords. Or at least, the ones immediately next to him. He also made a point to avoid any version of the Master Sword, not that it was particularly noticeable to anyone but himself. He was a dark magic duplicate, after all, and the last thing he wanted right now was to get discorporated via accidental proximity to a light-magic-imbued blade.

Overall though, he seemed largely unconcerned by the fact that he'd now impaled himself by doing this, and it definitely didn't help the impression he was making on the rest of the Links. If anything, that made it worse.

"Now that we've established that you can't really hurt me," Shadow yawned, "can we talk?" He left out the bit about light magic and Master Swords. His enemies didn't need to know his weaknesses (and quite honestly neither did his friends, if he'd had any. The list of people who knew Shadow's weaknesses consisted of himself, and the unfortunate inclusions of any of the idiots who'd summoned or formed his body over the centuries. Still a fairly short list, though).

"Talk about what?" Blue asked, with a healthy amount of scathing disbelief. "The last time I saw you, you threw a bomb the size of a house at my head."

Lore perked up. "Really? Are there blueprints?"

"Are you serious right now," Gen snapped.

"Look, I'm just trying to keep my status as an Honorary Subrosian of Holodrum. I have to meet a certain amount of explosions for the month or else I'm not doing the country justice."

"By Din's Fire, you're all idiots," Shadow muttered to himself, which effectively cut off whatever Gen had been about to sputter in reply. "Also, don't be such a pansy. If I'd actually been trying to hit you, you'd be a soot smear right now."

Blue nodded calmly. "Green," he said, "permission to strangle him?"

"No," Green said.

"Please?"

"You can't commit casual murder, Blue," Green sighed, sounding like he'd had this conversation before. "For one, I don't think it'd work on him." The fact that there were several swords still embedded in Shadow's abdomen was a solid point in that argument. "Also, disregarding numerous other issues, it's impolite."

"Don't be rude, Blue," Red agreed.

"Yeah, pansy," Shadow sneered. "Don't be rude."

Blue twitched. "House. Sized. Bombs," he repeated, with several wide and spastic gestures which vaguely communicated the belief that explosives that large were very rude indeed.

"Come off it," Shadow snapped, irritated now. "We're enemies, what else was I going to do with them?"

"Literally anything else."

Gen cleared his throat loudly. "Can I get an explanation here?"

"Finally, one of you has sense," Shadow said, regaining his grin. "Call me Shadow. I'm here to join the party."

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Blue shrieked, which was affirmed by all three of his immediate siblings and a couple other Links behind him as well.

"Okay," Gen said slowly. "But can I ask why not? I'm genuinely not sure who this guy is."

"Remember when we told our story?" Vio said. "And there was that dark version of us running around and causing all sorts of problems?"

"The magic clone working for Vaati?" Gen clarified.

"I prefer the term 'dark reflection'," Shadow informed him. Then he grinned as the realization set in and waggled his fingers tauntingly. "Hi there."

"...Oh," Gen said.

"Wait," Ocarina said suddenly. "Dark reflection? Were you-?"

"The shadow copy in the lake under that one Temple?" Shadow finished. "Yep. That was me."

"But," Ocarina tilted his head, visibly confused. "That was a really long time ago…?"

"About five hundred years, give or take a decade," Vio specified quickly.

Shadow snorted. "Do I look like I follow normal aging patterns?"

Given that he currently looked exactly like Vio, Blue, Green, and Red, and had previously looked exactly like Ocarina, and was also still impaled by at least six different weapons, the Links had to admit that Shadow had a point there.

"Hang on," Mask said suddenly. "You tried to kill me."

Shadow looked nostalgic. "Good times," he sighed wistfully.

"I almost died," Mask emphasized.

"It was traumatizing," Ocarina added.

Shadow wobbled a hand back and forth. "Ehhhh… can't have been that bad. You're here, aren't you?"

There was a moment of dumbfounded silence.

"I don't like you," Mask informed Shadow sourly. "At all."

"Good thing I'm not here for your approval then," Shadow said. "Like I said, I'm here to join the party."

Wind put his hand up. "About that," he began. "You don't seem to like us very much? And have actively tried to kill several people here? So I'm kinda confused as to why you're trying to tag along?"

Shadow shrugged dismissively. " Eh, you're the lesser annoyance. More or less."

"Sooooo you hate us slightly less than somebody else," Lore observed. "Lucky us. Hey, who's the special someone who gets all your dislike?"

"That," Shadow said, with a grin that wasn't so much friendly as it was murderous, "is a rather long list, actually. And it just so happens that your little group here is gonna run into every single one of them if you keep flailing around like you've been, so I just thought I'd hitch a ride while you morons are in the area." He paused, then added, "Thanks for taking care of my first target, by the way. Not that I needed it but…" He glared ferociously at the middle distance, which was rather unfair because the middle distance hadn't done anything wrong. "I don't do well with sunlight and fighting a weather mage seemed like a really good way to get myself painfully dissipated before I managed to get my revenge."

"I really wouldn't have called Vaati a 'weather mage' per se," Wind said automatically. Then there was a short pause, as what he said actually registered to him and lodged in the minds of everyone else.

"Hold up, your grudge is against Vaati?" Vio exclaimed.

"Vaati… Ganon… some Ganondorfs... " Shadow somehow managed to look bored as he listed off the extremely concerningly evil list of people he had a grudge against. "I was a… popular concept."

"Wait, then…" Vio was beginning to look a little queasy. "How many times have you been summoned?"

"Don't know, don't care," Shadow yawned, which was in blatant contradiction to the fact that his fists were clenched so tightly that the gray of his skin was going black with the force. "But I'm sick of it. I'm my own person, and if I have to murder every idiot from here until the end of time who thinks otherwise, then that's what I'm going to do."

Everyone took a large step back, because Shadow was leaking an alarming amount of undirected malice. This had the added effect of removing the swords from the darker Link's torso, since everyone was still holding their individual weapon and took it with them when they retreated. The holes left in Shadow's abdomen immediately closed back up; somehow, so did the ones in his shirt.

"So," Shadow said cheerfully, ignoring all this, "when do we leave?"

"...Can you excuse us, for just, one second real quick," Gen requested, and then immediately dragged the entire eighteen-odd group of regular Links into a huddle about twenty feet away.

"No," Blue said immediately. "Negative, absolutely not, I refuse."

"Noted, but can I get a better reason than just 'No'?" Gen said dryly.

"How about the five-plus times he's tried to kill one of us?"

"About that," Lore broke in. "I've been getting the impression that it may not have entirely been his choice to attempt fratricide."

"...Fratricide," Vio repeated doubtfully.

"He looks just like us, I doubt that's a coincidence," Lore said, in one of his few shining moments of sensible logic. "And we're probably all related somehow anyway, 'brother' is just a lot less complicated than whatever it actually is - but that's not my point here. Shadow has some epic authority issues, which is usually because the slave has no free will in doing the master's bidding."

There was a pause as everyone absorbed the implications of that.

"Great," Blue grumbled. "Now I feel bad about wanting to strangle him."

"He gets sympathy points for that, for sure," Steam said. "But, uh, the impression I got was that Shadow was more angry at the fact that the attempted fratricide wasn't his idea, rather than the actual violence itself. He seems like he enjoys… er, carnage."

"Well, you're not wrong," Green sighed. "So then I guess the real question is, would he have still attacked us if he hadn't been under someone else's control?"

"He hasn't attacked us yet," Red pointed out. "And he's been here for, like, ten whole minutes."

"Which is about ten whole minutes longer than it usually took for him to throw a bomb at us," Vio agreed. "That's a fair point."

From his position about twenty feet away, Shadow emitted an amused snort. Given that the rest of the Links had specifically retreated to where Shadow was supposed to be unable to hear them, this was a fairly unexpected response. The group silently and unanimously scooted an extra fifteen feet, just to be safe.

"...The way I see it," Lore continued, picking up the discussion again, "is Shadow's carrying enough of a grudge that any murderous tendencies he might have are more often going to be directed at our mutual enemies than us. Also, in the event that he does attack us, we outnumber him a dozen to one."

"That didn't seem to help much just now," Ocarina pointed out. "Given that we sorta stabbed him a lot and I'm not really sure he noticed."

"About that," Speck piped up. "If there's not actually a lot we can do to stop him, then is it really going to matter if we decide he can't join? Because, I'm pretty sure that he's coming regardless of whether we're happy about it or not."

Everyone thought about that for a moment. More than one Link came to the depressing conclusion that Speck was probably right.

"...So the actually real question here," Realm said slowly, "is whether or not we're going to willingly let Shadow come along, or put up with him when he does anyway?"

"Pretty much, yep," Shadow said, suddenly right there in the group huddle. The Links collectively flinched. "What was the point of this little group conference, again?"

"Oh, we have a fluctuating majority-vote democracy," Lore said. "We're still working out the kinks, hence the huddle."

"Do I get a vote?"

"You're going on probation until otherwise noted."

"You don't trust me," Shadow accused, grinning. "Smart."

"Yeah, well," Lore said. "Attempted fratricide, and all that."

"Exactly," Shadow replied. "It was 'attempted'. Can we go now?"

"If we say 'no', are you going to acknowledge it at all?" Dusk asked.

"Not in the slightest."

Dusk let out a heavy sigh. "Okay then. Rule One, the group is now off limits to murder, maiming, explosions, stabbing, beheading, and any other form of harm, physical or otherwise, that I've not just mentioned. Rule Two, no unsolicited murdering of people outside the group - if it's a villain, or an idiot who's literally asking for it, you have free game. Rule Three, please try not to cause any national incidents. Follow those, and you've got a deal."

Shadow considered that. "...Define 'unsolicited'."

Dusk gave him a pointedly flat stare.

"Yes, yes, fine," Shadow grumbled. "Pleasure doing business with you."

"I'm sure it wasn't," Blue muttered.

Shadow narrowed his eyes at what was basically his exact duplicate. "I really wish I hadn't just agreed to not stab you…" He trailed off, and then eyed Blue up and down with an almost lethal intensity. "Hang on, is that what I look like right now?"

"You have a palette swap, but otherwise yes," the Four said helpfully.

"...Eww," Shadow declared, and wrinkled his nose up like he was smelling something bad. "You're so short. How did I not realize how short you were when I mimicked you?"

"Uh," Blue said.

"This is gonna have to change," Shadow said decisively. His gaze began ranging over the rest of the group appraisingly. After a few seconds, he stopped on Dusk, contemplated something, and began to smile.

"You'll do," he said, nodding to himself. Then, quite abruptly, his body blurred into an unrecognizable mass of dark, which then shot up into a taller mass of dark where details carved themselves efficiently into the featureless cloud. Within ten seconds, Shadow completely reconfigured his entire physical form.

"Ooh, I like this one," he said approvingly as the last few characteristics settled into place. He gave an experimental stretch, then grinned. "Yep, definitely keeping this." Then he noticed the whole group staring at him and snapped, "What?"

"That's… kind of terrifying," Sketch said, because Shadow now looked exactly like Dusk, right down to the tiny flyaways of his hair. The grin on Shadow's face was one that would look entirely unnatural on Dusk's, which only made the similarities more disturbing.

Somehow though, Dusk seemed to be remarkably unbothered by it. He just gave Shadow a skeptical once-over, shrugged, and apparently accepted it just like that. No doubt, he'd probably seen stranger.

"Deal with it," Shadow responded, giving Sketch a glare. "I'm not changing again."

"Guys," Lore broke in, "can we maybe try to stay civil for at least five minutes? Because we've still got a void problem to fix." He marched pointedly towards the hole, tossing, "Come on then," over his shoulder as he went.

Conveniently, the hole was now large enough to encompass the entire group passing through at once, rather than the single-file or pairs of before. Inconveniently, this also meant that when Shadow stretched out a leg and tripped Sketch, Sketch fell into Wind, who fell onto Gen, who stumbled into Green, landed on top of Vio, who got knocked over and landed on top of Blue's leg, which knocked Blue into the Four, and then the whole thing just fell apart from there.

Shadow, of course, was the only one to escape this fate, and did absolutely nothing to help the situation. He just snickered, and walked right on by.

"Alright, sound off," Gen said, once they'd gotten the tangle sorted out and could actually take stock of their new surroundings. "Who recognizes the landscape?"

"I do," Steam said, sounding a bit surprised by this fact. "This is my Hyrule."

"Oh," Wind said interestedly. He looked around clear curiosity. "So this is the land that Tetra and I will find eventually to make a new Hyrule on?"

"If you're asking about coordinates, I have no idea where it is in relation to your ocean," Steam sighed, having told everyone about the founding of his Hyrule during one of the several storytelling sessions. "You're probably gonna have to find it the hard way."

"Worth a shot," Wind replied, shrugging. "Just so long as it's still around to find in the end."

"Right," Steam winced. "On that point, why is it important that I recognize the landscape?"

"Probably because your native villain is loose again too, and you'd have the best idea of where to find him since he doesn't seem to be causing any sort of convenient chaos for us to track him with," Lore put in.

Steam winced again. "Oh yeah… Malladus is probably back."

"He's the Demon Train guy, right?" Speck clarified.

"That's him," Steam affirmed absently. He was giving his surroundings a thorough look-over now, actively kicking his brain into gear. They were back on the plains that Steam had left the remains of the Demon Train in so long ago, and there really wasn't a whole lot in sight aside from the mountain range in the way far off distance and the ever-present void they'd just come out of. Steam let out an irritated huff. "Great," he said. "We are literally miles away from any sort of targetable civilization."

"Alright then," Dusk said. "What's the most likely objective for someone like Malladus to go after?"

Steam was silent for a moment, thinking. Then his eyes went wide.

"Well, crap," he said. "He's going to go after the Tower of Spirits again."

Farore sagged into a newly-conjured chair and let out a breath of intense relief. "He's going to be okay," she murmured. "I think they're all going to get along… eventually."

"He's still really dark though," Din observed, with a hint of worry in her voice. "All that work and he's still just barely balancing on the edge. Are you sure he'll be worth it?"

"Yes," Farore said immediately. "He's going to be one of the brightest, one day, just you watch."

"That'll take a while," Nayru muttered. "He's far too intent on stabbing things to let himself be anything but dark right now."

"Well then, it's a good thing he's surrounded by lighter influences," Farore replied firmly. "But now that my new Courage is taken care of, we should really get back to what we were doing beforehand…?"

Din snapped her fingers. "Right," she said. "I was working on the Dragon Roost problem."

"And I was doing family lineage on Great Deku Trees," Farore groaned. "Suddenly I wish this distraction had lasted a bit longer."

"The more time we waste, the less chances we have of fitting everything together before it all falls apart," Nayru reminded her sisters.

"We know," Farore sighed. She fixed a reality window just to her immediate right, so that she could look over and keep an eye on Courage while she worked, and got back the the Great Deku Tree problem. Then she blinked.

"Whoops," she muttered, and reached out to nudge the Great Fairy species marker to where it actually belonged. Apparently, she'd been distracted with her new baby enough that she had made that mistake after all, which would have been an interesting result for sure. Probably for the best that she caught it before the sequence hit the physical stage though.

After the disaster that was the original Tingle, Farore wouldn't be taking any chances.

Demise may or may not have completely eroded away the realm outside of reality in a fifty-foot circumference around his person. By this, it can be understood that this is exactly what Demise did, but given that, at the time, he'd been in an epic rage and not in the mood to bother with his surroundings, he both hadn't noticed and hadn't cared until this exact moment.

In the interest of accuracy, Demise had now noticed, but still didn't care. Then again, he rarely did.

But now that he'd finally calmed down… he realized something.

His head was empty.

This was, of course, reason to celebrate, and Demise was immediately put into a better mood by the sheer, glorious silence that was the absence of any thoughts but his own, but he didn't quite remember how that had happened.

...No, wait - yes he did, he'd just been so angry at the time that he'd momentarily suppressed it.

Demise examined the decision-making of his past self and narrowed his eyes. It was not… the most elegant plan he'd ever come up with, but then again the plans he made in fury rarely were. By all rights, it was actually one of the more coherent plans he'd made while angry. He could feel the tethers connected to each of his Incarnations, and for all intents and purposes it seemed like they were all falling into line, irrelevant seething at their situations aside.

Now, along with his steadily-growing voids, he had personal agents in each time period to spread chaos in the meantime. How nice.

Yes, Demise could actually see how his previous, anger-fueled plans would be useful. Not to mention that his head was wonderfully still silent.

He could actually hear himself think again. Marvellous. He was going to get so much destruction done now that he had his full mental facilities back.

It took approximately twelve seconds for the Universe to prove him wrong.

They arrived with shouting, rage, and a rather lot of vehement cursing that was so fantastically creative that even Demise didn't know what all of it meant. Demon Vaati and Hyrule Ganon came crashing back into his head with all the subtlety of the Demon Train and even less of the tact, which was really quite impressive given that the Demon Train was... well, inanimate.

There was a moment of startled, unbroken silence. Demise took the quick opportunity to bid an agonized farewell to his peace of mind.

And then Vaati started screaming at the top of his newly non-corporeal lungs, Ganon started shouting back at an even louder volume, something went THUD, BOOM, and FWOMP, in that order, and then the whole thing devolved into what, judging by the noise, was an all-out one-on-one brawl.

Demise almost - almost - cried right then and there.

He took a deep breath.

He let it out, very, very, slowly.

"Perfect timing," he said, to nobody in particular and certainly not to the pair of scuffling villains in his head, "I was just about to begin some emotional therapy. Thank you so much for volunteering."

Emotional therapy, Vaati and Ganon discovered about ten seconds later, was not so much meant to help them feel better, as it was to help Demise feel better by making everyone else feel worse. The only thing 'therapeutic' about it was the glee Demise seemed to exude while imagining his tenants into torture devices.

It was just not a good day on the Evil side of things.

Baby Courage Shadow, because why not? He is, technically, a Link just like the rest of them, and I cannot BELIEVE I didn't think of it sooner. Given his backstory and typical treatment by villains, I felt he needed a patron goddess to squeal over him and give spiritual cuddles. He's a soft boi under all that prickly aggression.

...It's just way deep down in there.

Changeling

First Thanks to bobbybelcher and DeamonAngel Song for favoriting/following!

Second Thanks to bozom, Darthcourt, , Yawna-More, Nocturnal Writer Kaitie, xander1009, briannaherche16, Doctor poo and the TURDIS, Violentlycourageous, gdfbnuytr, abigailsieve, 009imgamer, Amklaas, Iados Jaxx, Kytigami, Darth Furiz, APAG-Rafael, ThatWriterGuy1, and speaker of babbel for Favoriting/Following!

First Responses

-PsycoFangirl: Whoops. Thanks! As for the plan... I dunno, just seemed like something he'd do. And the smile... well, just think creeper/stalker and that's probably pretty close.

-Ruari McDonald: Thanks!

-Dark Pit not Pittoo: I know, right? I swear that's what it looks like.

Second Responses

-TheAmberShadow: Funny you should say that, because according to Realm's second game (The Adventure of Link) inherent latent magic is exactly what he has. I'll be addressing that at some point, just not right now. (Also - you're exactly correct. But you'd be surprised, several people have actually guessed wrong. It's apparently not as obvious an answer as I or you thought.)

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