...Triforce Heroes. TRIFORCE. HEROES. ARE YOU KIDDING ME, NINTENDO?! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK THESE GUYS IN?!
Ahem. Okay. I can work with this. Maybe.
But... if I'm being honest with myself, probably not. This game is scheduled for, what, October or something? I'll probably be done by then. And what are their personalities? What are their names? Do I give them color names in French or something, or should I go with gemstones? Colored Links almost always get assigned an official name, we know that. IF I put them in... it would be as a spin-off.
Huh. Spin-off. Y'know, I might actually be able to do something with that. 'The Misadventures of the Dimensional Links'... wow that's bad. I'm rubbish at titles, okay?!
"Are we all ready this time?" Lore asked in an exasperated tone. The previous three attempts to leave had been thwarted due to various incidents and problems. Most of which involved Realm wandering off somewhere he wasn't supposed to.
"I'm pretty sure we are," Gen told his co-leader. "The Four put Realm in the middle of their formation thingie this time, so I don't think he's going anywhere anytime soon."
"It's not like I do it on purpose!" Realm protested to his surrounding wander-guards. "This is complete and total overkill guys, come on!"
"The day this becomes overkill is the day you learn how to read a map," The Four told him.
"...Yeah, they've totally got this," Gen said.
Lore clapped his hands together excitedly. "Brilliant! Move out everyone, we're going dimension-hopping!"
"I wonder where we'll end up next," Speck said as he stuffed his Jar Portal into his bag.
"We won't know until we get there, I guess," Dusk replied. Then stopped in his tracks as a thought ocurred to him.
"Oh... crud. Midna!"
Midna poked her head out of Dusk's shadow and eyed him. "Did you just shout at me?"
"Not now!" Dusk snapped. "Are you still intent on coming with me?"
Midna rolled her eye. "Obviously. Haven't you been listening?"
By this point, the rest of the group had formed a loose circle around the two partners. Lore looked distinctly irritated, probably because they were being delayed yet again.
"Then we've got a problem," Dusk said. "Companions can't go through the holes like we can, they fall asleep."
Midna stared at him. "...Uh-huh. Care to back that up with some evidence?"
In response, Dusk snatched Ocarina's hat ("HEY!") and dumped the still-unconcious Navi into his palm. "This fairy has been asleep for about five weeks straight, ever since Ocarina and Mask went through their first hole."
He handed both items back to their owner, then plucked Ezlo off of Speck's head. "And this is Ezlo, he's a talking hat. No, I don't know how it works," he said, cutting off Midna's question. "He's been asleep for about three weeks, ever since we met Speck and he followed us into Gen's time. Every companion who comes with us goes into this stasis and we can't wake them up. This is what'll happen to you if you come with me."
Midna tapped her finger on her cheek, considering this. "...What if I stay inside your shadow?"
Dusk blinked. "How would that-"
"Because I would technically be a part of you," Midna interrupted. "Your shadow, attached to you, housing me. Protection, yes?"
"I don't think that's how it works..." Dusk trailed off. "Okay, say it does, and you're protected. You probably couldn't leave my shadow until we got back to my Hyrule. Are you sure you'd be alright with that?"
Midna floated up to Dusk's eye level and flicked him in the forehead. "You ask the stupidest questions, little wolf. Of course not. I'll probably go stir-crazy within two weeks. But I am not letting you walk away from me again, not when you've somehow managed to get yourself responsible for the entirety of existence. You think I'd miss that because of some stupid 'stasis'? Heck no. I'm coming with you any way I can, whether you like it or not. And besides," she winked at him, "I've been meaning to do some redecorating down in that shadow of yours. There's a serious need for a new coat of paint, and I'm thinking orange."
Dusk gaped, unsure whether to focus on that fact that she had apparently painted his shadow, or that she was determined to come with him. Midna flashed him her fanged grin, clearly considering the conversation over, and shot back into his shadow. He could hear her high-pitched giggling in the back of his mind.
"... I guess she's coming with us," Dusk said weakly.
Midna put her hands on her hips and surveyed her new home for the next who-knew-how-long-it-would-be period of time. She definitely liked the black suede furniture, that could stay. The ceiling... ugh. Why had she decided to leave it that color? That would have to go. The walls needed a makeover too, Link's natural soul color was peeking through again.
The floor... needed some carpet, she decided. She had originally gone for stonework, but it was cold under her feet and she wanted cozy. Some nice dark gray carpet, the thick kind. That would be nice. And she could put the Sol-lamps there, and there... oh, and if she made them glow in that one way...
Yes, she decided, she could definitely make this work. The only hard part would be getting her black-stone squares to float the way she wanted them to. Maybe she just had to up the power of the gravity spell on the stones... she would have to try that.
With that, Midna set about making herself feel as comfortable as possible. And what better way to do that than to create her own little slice of Twilight?
As that human saying went, she thought to herself, it wasn't much.
But it was home.
"...Now that that's settled," Lore started, "does anyone else have something they need to delay us with?"
Everyone shook their heads.
"Good. Now, can we, please, please, PLEASE go?!"
"Keep your head on, dude," Blue told him before grabbing his three other siblings and dragging them all bodily through the hole to many yells and complaints.
"He is really impatient," Steam noted, seemingly oblivous to the similarities. "I guess we should follow, huh."
And once again, the Links stepped into another world.
...Sort of.
What they actually ended up doing was falling and splashing, as the hole had, for some unfathomable reason, dropped them all in the middle of an ocean.
"You have got to be KIDDING ME!" Lore roared. "I AM FED UP WITH OCEANS AND THE WINDFISH!"
"Actually, I think this is my Hyrule," Wind said, treading water like a pro. Lore abruptly stopped mid-yell.
"Oh."
"Little help here?" Dusk called. He, Mask (who was currently a Zora), Sketch, and Gen were supporting the rest of the Links who couldn't swim. Ocarina was nowhere to be seen, but Mask didn't seem worried in the slightest about that.
"Oh, he can't actually swim, but he's got a tunic for it," he explained in response to the questions. "He's somewhere on the ocean floor with the Iron Boots, I'll get him in a minute."
"You think he's alright down there?"
'...I did not think this through...' Ocarina thought to himself as he stood on the sandy bottom. He craned his neck upwards in an attempt to see the surface, which was just barely visible. There were multiple tiny black specks on top of the water, which he supposed were the other Links.
In between him and the other Links were what he suspected was the local equivalent of sharks. One of them, hopefully just curious, swam down and investigated him. Ocarina eyed it apprehensively as it circled his head.
'One of these days, I actually need to learn how to swim. This is ridiculous.'
"I'm sure he's fine... probably," Mask said, waving a webbed hand. "My question is, what do we do now? We can't support each other forever and I have no idea where the nearest land is."
"We're actually not too far from my home," Wind realized, squinting up at the sun. "By boat, anyways. Swimming, it could take a while. Lemme try something here." He took a deep, deep breath, bigger than any of the other Links thought possible, then let it all out in one, massive blast.
"LIIIIIINEBEEEEEEECK!"
"DUDE!" Lore bellowed, hands over his ears. "I THINK YOU JUST DEAFENED ME! WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT FOR?!"
"You'll see," Wind said, staring at the horizon. "He should be here in about... six minutes. Mask, now might be a good time to go and get Ocarina, it'll take you a couple minutes to get down there."
"On it."
"Everyone else... well, we can just keep treading."
"Speak for yourself," Steam grumbled, currently being supported by Gen. "This is humiliating."
"Then learn how to swim," Sketch said snarkily.
"I drove a Train for a living! I never even set foot in the ocean!"
"That's no excuse, I was a goatherd," Dusk told him. "I don't even think my Hyrule has an ocean, all our Zoras just went by river."
Steam didn't have a good comeback for that, settling for some cranky mutterings instead.
Mask resurfaced with Ocarina, who was no longer wearing the Iron Boots. He appeared to be in the middle of an argument with his other self, though how they had started arguing underwater was a mystery.
"-you long enough!" Ocarina complained.
"I was helping the others!" Mask protested. "Besides, you were fine!"
"That was NOT my definition of fine!" Ocarina shouted. "There were hungry predators down there!"
"It's not like they were biting you!"
"THEY WERE ABOUT TO!"
"...Maybe we should have gotten him sooner," Gen said as the bickering escalated.
"The one thing about arguing with yourself is that you know exactly how to mess with you," Vio agreed.
Everything was suddenly interrupted by a piercingly loud whistle and the sound of a boat. Wind broke into a grin.
"Right on time."
...It was a very odd looking boat.
It was made from a mismatch of different bits and pieces that looked as though they belonged with some other sort of decorations. The man in the boat looked as though he hadn't slept in about three months, with strangely short legs and an even stranger elongated torso. He was wearing almost entirely blue, with only a red scarf to offset it.
He also looked exceedingly annoyed.
"Mind telling me where you've been, kid?"
"It's a really long story, Linebeck."
"Over thirty chapters, if my math is right," Blue muttered, then got smacked by all three of his siblings and the Four.
"If you don't stop breaking things, I will break you," Green threatened.
Linebeck blinked, then shrugged and dismissed it. "You got some nerve running off on me like that. And where do you get off calling me outta nowhere like I'm some sorta dog?"
Dusk twitched.
"You're not a dog," Wind told the man. "But I didn't know how else to contact you. Can you give us a ride to Outset?"
Linebeck pursed his mouth, exhaled heavily, then did a quick head count and ran a hand through his hair. "That's gonna cost ya, kid. Fitting everyone of my boat's gonna put her through some stress..."
Wind just sighed, as though this was nothing new. "How much?"
Linebeck started counting again. "Say... five Rupees per extra passenger?"
Wind didn't even blink. "Get us to Outset and I'll pay you there. I've got a stash of saved Rupees in my house I can use."
Linebeck grinned. "You got yourself a deal, kid. Climb on."
"So who's the fish?"
Mask grimaced. "Not a fish. A Zora. And I'm not actually a Zora." He took the mask off and stuffed it (but carefully) into his bag. Linebeck nearly leaped off the boat in surprise. Then he grinned.
"That's some trick you got there kid. Mind telling me how much that mask is worth?"
Mask gave the sailor a 'touch it and die' glare. "It's not for sale."
Linebeck suddenly became very interested in steering.
"Don't mind him," Wind said. "He's treasure-hungry, but not very brave. He won't try and take them."
"He'd better not," Mask growled.
A seagull cried and landed on Wind's head. Rather than take offense at that, Wind broke into the biggest grin the Links had ever seen on his face.
"Yeah, go and tell her," he said, peering up at the bird as best he could. The gull cried again and took off, making a beeline towards the small spit of land growing on the horizon. Gen watched it go with a intrigued expression.
"Er... who's 'her'?" Realm asked.
"My sister," Wind replied. "Her name's Aryll. I told you guys about her, remember?"
As a matter of fact, the group did remember that Wind had mentioned a sister. But at the time he had mentioned her, they had been preoccupied by the fact that the words "kidnapped by a giant bird" were being used in the same sentence.
As such, the fact that they more-or-less actually had a sister had gotten a bit lost.
"...Sister?!" Lore spluttered.
"Okay, did nobody listen when I talked about this?" Wind asked, seeing the expressions on everyone's faces. "Yes, I have a little sister. You'll love her, trust me."
"I... don't think it's that that we're worried about," Speck said. "How's she gonna react when her big brother comes home with..." he did a quick head count, "sixteen more of himself?"
Wind thought for a moment. "Actually, I think she'd be ecstatic over having more Big Brothers."
"I get to have a sister!" Red squealed.
"...Maybe we should just pretend to be mute," the Four decided.
"Er... that might be best," Wind agreed reluctantly. "Unless you can pull your talking-separately trick?"
The Four visibly concentrated, then the violet member spoke alone. "We're not... very... good at it... yet."
The other three nodded in synchronization, then winced as they realized what they did.
"Okay, just go with being mute," Wind decided.
"I hope you're right about this," Dusk told him. Wind flashed a small smirk.
"The day when I don't know my own sister is the day I don't deserve to have one."
By then, Linebeck was easily close enough to Outset Island to dock, and did so promptly. Then he turned to Wind.
"I'll be expecting that payment, kid."
"You have to let me get it first," Wind replied good-naturedly, vaulting himself over the side of the boat and trudging through the shallows. The rest of the Links followed, splashing their way to the shore. Linebeck opted to stay on his boat and wait.
There was a massive gathering of seagulls waiting on the beach, all incredibly noisy and seemingly focused on Wind, who seemed inordinately happy at the sight of them.
And he was abruptly glomped by a small blonde cannonball.
"BIG BROTHER!" the girl -Aryll- squealed. "I'm so happy you're back!"
"I missed you too, Aryll," Wind laughed, plastered on his back into the sand. "Listen, you think you could let me up?"
"Oh, sorry!" Aryll clambered off her brother and stood up, beaming ear-to-ear. Wind hoisted himself to his feet and, brushing himself off, said, "Aryll, there's some people I want you to meet. For all intents and purposes, they're me, so I want you to treat them how you would treat me. Okay?"
Aryll's eyes were very big, but she nodded excitedly.
"Okay. These," Wind said, indicating the rest of the group who had been standing amongst the seagulls awkwardly, "are my friends. This is Dusk, Gen, Lore, Speck, Steam, Sketch, Mask, Ocarina, Green, Vio, Blue, Red, Realm, and the Four." The Links each waved a hand at their nicknames, although the Four did theirs simultaneously. This reminded Wind of their earlier conversation.
"Oh, and the Four kinda can't talk," he added.
Aryll was still for approximately two seconds before she exploded into motion and proceeded to glomp every single Link on the beach.
"MORE BIG BROTHERS!"
Underneath the ecstatic child, Dusk caught Wind smirking at him in an 'I told you so' fashion.
After a few minutes of the Aryll Treatment, Wind decided to rescue his fellow Links and pulled his sister off of her current victim.
"I think you've hugged them enough," he told her, chuckling. "But hey, I've got a question for you."
Aryll faced him eagerly.
"Have... have you seen a massive golden squid with eyes on his tentacles?"
Aryll suddenly became serious. "I did a few days ago. There was a funny man with red hair riding on him and arguing."
All pretenses of a smile dropped from Wind's face as he heard that, as well as all the other Links. Everyone was remembering the battle they had just fought, against a man with flaming red hair.
"Ganondorf," Lore growled.
"My Ganondorf," Wind agreed. "We need to go and find him. Bellum too."
"You're leaving already?" Aryll wailed. "But you just got here! I want to play with my new brothers!"
Red nodded emphatically in agreement.
Now, a Link, by general law of the universe, was not a heartless person. It was often in their genes to help and make people happy. So when Wind was faced with his one and only sister begging him to stay, well...
You can probably guess how that turned out.
"Now remember, it's just for one night," Wind reminded his sister yet again as they tried to figure out how to fit sixteen more beds in their island house. Aryll beamed at him.
"I know. I'm just glad you're home."
Down on the beach, Gen was staring at the grouping seagulls with an almost lethal intensity. Then he abruptly turned and marched over the sand until he reached Dusk.
"I need your Curse Rock," he said.
"Curse Stone. And why are you trying to fly now?"
"Because they," Gen said, jerking a thumb at the seagulls, "can teach me."
Dusk blinked, decided he didn't want to know, and dumped the Curse Stone into Gen's waiting palm.
Suddenly, a falcon!
"Now, if you need me, I'll be trying to convince some of my natural prey to teach me how to hunt them better," Gen said before walking off. As the general translation came through, Dusk stared.
Then Shadow walked in his usual fashion, which is to say, out of nowhere. "Normally I'm opposed to translating," he said, "but that one was so fantastically confusing that I honestly wouldn't mind at all."
"I don't want to know," Dusk said promptly, rightly deciding that anything Shadow found amusing was better off being left unsaid.
Meanwhile, Gen was trying to approach the seagulls without scaring the daylights out of them.
"Er... hi?" He tried.
"Hi!" A seagull said brightly. "I've never seen you before. Are you a foreigner?"
Gen blinked. "...You could say that. Um... why aren't you afraid of me?"
"Should I be?" The seagull asked. "You don't look dangerous, just different."
"Just... never mind," Gen decided. "Can I ask you a favor?"
"Well, we only just met, but I don't see why not," the seagull decided, looking him up and down. "Whatcha need?"
"I need you to teach me how to fly."
The seagull blinked. "Didn't your parents teach you?"
"My parents... er... didn't know either." It wasn't exactly a lie, Gen thought. They knew how to fly on a Loftwing, just not as an actual bird. Small difference, but important.
"Ah." The seagull sounded as though it was reserving it's own judgement on the quality of Gen's parents, but had clearly decided not to pry. "Well, I can teach you no problem. Do you know anything about flying already?"
"I can get a decent takeoff, but that's about it."
"Show me," the seagull commanded.
Complying, Gen launched himself into the air with a few quick wing-beats, then promptly crashed head-first into the sand. The seagull frowned.
"Okay. From what I can tell, you already know the basics, which is good. But why are you twisting your wings like that?"
"I was trying to bring them back up without throwing myself down," Gen explained. The seagull stared blankly.
"First of all, stop doing that, it's never going to work."
"Thanks for telling me gently," Gen muttered.
"Second, when you move for your upthrust, bend your wings halfway at the joint. That allows the air to slip past and pool underneath and gives you a bigger cushion to push back up with. Also..." Here the seagull gave Gen an appraising look. "From the looks of things you've got a much wider wingspan than I do. That's going to be key for your power thrusting, which means you've got a lot more oomph behind you than most other birds. It's also going to come in handy for gliding, what with all that surface area to catch the updrafts."
Gen blinked. He had no idea flying was such an involved process. The seagull noticed this and tactfully moved on to, "So, think you're ready to try again?"
"Maybe," Gen replied. "Can you show me what you mean by bending halfway at the joint?"
A few minutes later, Wind walked past on his way to Linebeck's boat and was greeted with the extraordinarily confusing sight of a falcon (who were not native in the slightest) apparently getting flying lessons from a seagull.
"Gen's got your Curse Stone?" He asked the nearby Dusk.
"Gen's got my Curse Stone," Dusk confirmed in a voice that clearly said he had no idea what was happening. Wind nodded sagely and continued on his way, splashing through the waves again to Linebeck's ship and handing the man a Rupee sack.
"Thank you very much, kid," Linebeck said, stowing the bag away in a pocket somewhere. "By the way, are you planning on being here long?"
"On Outset?" Wind clarified. "Until tomorrow at least... why?"
"Eh, I promised Sparkles I'd tell her when I found you," Linebeck answered idly. "I was gonna go and get her so she'd get off my back about looking."
Wind winced. "Yeah... if you wouldn't mind?"
Linebeck gave him a look. "Kid, anything that gets that fairy out of my hair is a godsend." With that, the sailor pushed the throttle and steered the boat into the open ocean, getting Wind thoroughly wet as he did so.
Dusk gave him a curious look as he trudged back onto the beach. "Everything okay?"
"Well... eventually I'm going to have to explain to my fairy friend where I've been all this time, and that's gonna be fun," Wind replied, wringing out his hat. "Other than that... I'm good."
Dusk nodded and went back to watching Gen and the seagull, the latter of which seemed to be teaching the former how to flap properly.
"Y'know, I would have thought the seagulls would've been afraid of him," he commented after a minute. Wind sat down beside him with a small thump.
"Not really. As far as I know, the only other bird around is the Helmaroc King and I took care of him ages ago. Really, the seagulls haven't ever seen a bird of prey. I don't even think they thought the Helmaroc King was real, something about an island legend."
"...Huh."
Over at the tutoring session, Gen launched himself into the air again and actually managed to get farther than the takeoff, climbing to almost ten feet off the ground. He was shaky, but far, far better than his previous attempts. Wind and Dusk broke into polite applause.
"Sooo... you can't talk?"
The Four shook their heads somewhat nervously. Aryll smiled encouragingly at them.
"It's okay, I won't judge you for it."
...Aside from the fact that she had the completely wrong idea, it was a very sweet thing to say. They could practically feel themselves melting.
"I'm gonna go find the others," Aryll continued, hopping from one foot to the other. "Wanna come?"
The Four smiled and nodded. Unfortunately they did it simultaneously, but luckily Aryll didn't seem to mind at all.
The newest addition to Demise's head, Twilight Ganondorf, was in a very foul mood.
Not necessarily because he had lost, although that was certainly part of it.
No, the main reason he was annoyed was because Zant was doing a thing.
It was a very annoying thing.
It was also one of the things which Zant happened to do best. In this case, it was taunting.
Zant was very good at taunting.
Look who faaaiiiiled, he sang, stretching the word 'failed' to an unreasonable length. We did, we did!
That was the other thing about Zant and his taunting. He had a complete lack of the understanding that normal people didn't taunt themselves. As such, nobody could really taunt him back because he was already doing it.
Not that they weren't trying.
Zant, Twilight Ganondorf growled. Shut up or I will obliterate your mouth from your face.
Well, it was really more threats than anything else.
Great is my god's power, that he may obliterate my mouth from my face! Zant cried ecstatically.
Demise received the distinct impression of a facepalm.
"If you wouldn't mind actually carrying out that threat?" he asked smoothly. "I think we would all welcome the chance for some silence."
My pleasure!
There was the sound of an explosion, and something made a long, drawn out ripping noise. Then there was a faint clunk and the impression of extreme satisfaction.
Done, Twilight Ganondorf announced. Zant no longer has his mouth.
That's all well and good, and I'm... grateful, that he's quiet, Malladus put in, but what exactly is he doing?
...He appears to be communicating through interpretive dance, Demon Vaati observed.
"You know, this is one of those times when I am very glad I cannot see what is happening in there."
I almost wish Majora was here, Original Ganon muttered, sounding disgusted. If there was one thing that mask knew how to do, it was punish something.
You mean us, Hyrule Ganon said.
Well yes, but Zant usually got the brunt of it, Original Ganon replied.
Really? I thought it was usually Bellum who got burnt.
As the rest of the villains got into an argument, Twilight Ganondorf took the opportunity to fill Demise in on his... reconnaissance.
There's been an addition to their group, he said. I personally don't know him, but I get the feeling that Hyrule Ganondorf might have something to do with it. He seemed to have a very large grudge.
"Was he colored all black with red eyes?"
That's exactly him. You know who he is?
"An... experiment I once thought of, originally meant for Hylia. It seems one of my incarnations kept the idea and brought it into reality."
Mmm... they have gotten better. They had a plan and they quickly found my weak point.
In all honesty, it's not that hard to spot, Demon Vaati suddenly chipped in. I mean, it's white, shiny, and glaringly obvious.
I will tear off your wings and force feed them to you with a-!
"All of you, shut up!"Demise commanded suddenly. "I can sense their presence."
Your goddesses? Hyrule Ganon asked
"They're not my goddesses," Demise snarled. "But yes, them. They are close."
Finally! Demon Vaati said. You've been looking for these people for weeks, it's about time!
"...You're right, I do wish Majora was here,"Demise said conversationally. "Would someone mind punishing him in the mask's stead?"
Gladly, Twilight Ganondorf growled, cracking his knuckles.
Ignoring the sounds of pain filling his head, Demise concentrated on the power he could feel. They were very good hiders, as he knew well from experience. But everyone was found eventually.
Now he was close. Very, very close.
So... How'd I do with the Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass universe?
I had a lot of fun writing Aryll and Wind's relationship. It flowed very easily while I was doing it.
Midna... well, I couldn't make myself leave her behind. I enjoy her snarkiness. So this is what I came up with instead. We'll check in on her every once in a while, and maybe she'll comment inside Dusk's head a bit, but for the most part she'll be fulfilling my compromise with my plot-line.
Y'know, pretty soon I'm gonna have to write a battle with a squid... I should probably figure out what I'm gonna do with the Links who can't swim.
Until next time,
Changeling
Thanks to AkakoChiYuki, FadingSunlight, and DarkNutDestroyer for favoriting/following!
Dark Pit Not Pittoo: See my rant up at the top.
Immortal Horse: Hmm... not sure. Probably because no-one's stupid enough to antagonize them.
PsycoFangirl: That... is still in progress.
Alcidis Aurora: That would be one weird remake then. And I think Nintendo would have advertised that if it were true. But it's nice to dream...
ThisIsANiceName: ...Maybe. Maybe not. He's weird, we all know that.
therichardater: Good for you!
Freefan1412: I was of the opinion that this particular Ganondorf was one of the hardest to defeat. At least, he was for me.
SkyPirate0614: That's for me to know, and you to find out :)
LordOfGaming: You guys learn fast ;)