(...Cookie Slavedriver.)
Don't complain, you enjoyed it. Now let's see... The author does not own the Legend of Zelda. If they did, the timeline probably wouldn't be such a complicated mess and might actually work linearly.
(I dunno, I kinda like the timeline all confusing and messed up. This way I have proper justification for why the Links need rips/portals to get around.)
But when you try and explain it to people...?
(Oh. ...I hate it when you're right. Curse You, Universe!)
"Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad," Ocarina chanted as the group backed away.
"What do we do?!" Sketch panicked.
"Lore was the one with experience in people getting possessed!" Wind replied, equally panicked. "I didn't know Bellum could do this, I thought he just made statues!"
"Clearly he does more!"
"I KNOW THAT NOW!"
"Gen? Plan?" Dusk asked quietly, eyes focused on his possessed half-leader who was advancing in a rather zombie-esque staggering fashion.
Gen didn't respond.
"Gen," Dusk said louder and a good bit more urgently. "Don't blank on us now, dude."
Gen narrowed his eyes at Bellum-Lore and muttered to himself.
"Really bad, really really bad..." Ocarina intoned to himself. Mask started snapping his fingers in front of his older-but-younger self's face.
"I can't believe I used to panic like this," he sighed. Then he paused, considered something, then said, "I also can't believe I'm not panicking right now."
"Gen! What's the plan?" Dusk repeated. Once again, the only response he received was some unintelligible mutterings.
'Perhaps if you yelled, little wolf,' Midna suggested.
Dusk took a deep breath, then-
"GENESIS!"
"Beware of the Leopard!" Gen yelped, leaping a good two feet into the air. He landed, staggered, then turned and yelled, "What was that for?!"
"I was getting your attention!" Dusk shot back. "In case you haven't noticed, we're all panicking-"
"I'm not, surprisingly," Mask chipped in. Dusk glared at him before continuing.
"Almost all of us are panicking, and you're standing there like a dead tree! You're the other half of the leadership, DO SOMETHING!"
Gen twitched. "First of all, please never call me Genesis again. It sounds proper. Second, I was doing something, thank you very much. I was making a plan like you asked me about."
Dusk raised an eyebrow. "Care to elaborate on that then?"
"Yes. Yes I would," Gen replied. "First, who here runs the fastest?"
"Pegasus Boots," Sketch volunteered.
"Fast as you can, go and find the Land Group. Get them over here as soon as possible," Gen ordered. Sketch promptly kicked up a plume of water and sand as he sprinted away.
"And we," Gen continued, turning to face the possessed Lore once again, "are going to stall until he gets back."
There was a moment of silence.
"That's my plan," Gen clarified.
"Not a very good plan," Mask said, frowning.
Gen sighed. "Okay, remember how Lore always has an item for everything? How he's always giving out tips and bits of information that he learned over the course of his adventures? The fact that he's had adventures, plural?"
There was a slow realization.
"If he actually tried, I think he could probably kick all of our butts if he wanted to," Gen said. "Possibly combined. And right now he doesn't have any control over what he does and whether or not he kills us. Do we really want to face him without everyone else?"
"...Good plan," Wind decided.
The battle with Ganondorf was going... interestingly. The group had gotten to the point where Ganondorf was wary enough of the Light Arrows to dodge, which meant the Links had to set up with a Mirror Shield.
But of course, Ganondorf wasn't about to sit still and be an easy target. Equally difficult was the actual task of aiming the arrows to properly bounce off the Mirror Shield in the first place. Even more difficult was keeping Ganondorf occupied while Speck and Realm tried to fix their projectile coordination, although luckily Shadow was more than happy to help with that bit.
When Sketch came streaking into the middle of the fight though, everyone, even Ganondorf, paused in confusion.
"Weren't you in the Swim Group?" Green asked.
Sketch, hands on his knees and gasping for breath, flapped a hand futilely at his friend and completely failed to get any words out. Vio frowned.
"What happened?" He questioned seriously.
"Lore," Sketch heaved. "Bellum-possessed... oh geez..." He took a massive gulp of air, then continued with, "blank eyes-tentacles-Gen sent-help-" He sucked in another breath.
"...What?"
Sketch inhaled again and, with an annoyed glare, yelled, "Lore got possessed and I got sent for help!"
There was a beat of dead silence, in which Ganondorf threatened Shadow with something painful and Shadow laughed at him. Then-
"HE GOT WHAT?!"
"Turns out Bellum can do more than make statues," Sketch wheezed, having used up his available breath for the explanation.
Steam turned to face Ganondorf. "Would you mind waiting about fifteen minutes while we go and de-possess our half-leader?"
"No," Ganondorf growled bluntly.
"That's unfortunate."
"I'm staying," Shadow announced. "If the idiot was stupid enough to get himself taken over that's his problem. I'm still not interested in the squid."
"Aren't you his shadow too?"
Shadow rolled his eyes and snorted derisively. "I'm Link's shadow. Conveniently there happens to be a large number of Links for me to choose from at the moment. I am choosing not to be Lore's. Make sense?"
He received a large amount of glares from everyone present, except Ganondorf was glaring for a different reason. He thoroughly ignored all of them.
"You can be extremely dislikable, you know that?"
"I take pride in it," Shadow confirmed smugly.
"IF you're all done ignoring me," Ganondorf snarled, "I REFUSE to be challenged by one darkly colored brat!"
"Fine, we'll leave Realm," Steam decided. Realm flinched.
"What?!"
"You've got the most endurance and the most experience dodging angry monsters, it makes sense."
Realm considered that for a moment, remembered the astounding amount of times he had run frantically from a certain three-headed dragon, and shrugged agreeably.
"Am I to understand," Ganondorf said slowly, "that you are leaving me with two pathetic opponents to head off and do battle with a squid? Bellum, the squid?"
"Pretty much, yep."
"'Pathetic opponents'?" Shadow repeated incredulously while Realm twitched. "Oh, it is ON."
It was then discovered that a furious battle acts as an excellent distraction while most of a group runs off to fight a squid.
Sketch, with nearly all the Links from the Land Group in tow, skidded across the beach and plowed straight into Mask, unable to stop due to the sand beneath his feet. The rest of the group, who had been luckily moving slower, stopped with much more control and stared at the situation.
"...Okay yeah, that's really, really bad," Blue agreed, eyeing the new opponent.
"Do we have a plan?" Speck asked.
"I didn't know Bellum could do this..." Wind said quietly. "I should have known what he could do, he's my villain. If I did then Lore wouldn't be like this..."
"Did you ever fight him before this?" Vio asked.
"No..."
"Then explain to me how it's your fault that you didn't know he could do something."
"...No wonder Sketch hates logic."
Speck coughed nervously. "Still need a plan..."
"Right, right..." Wind examined Lore, who was still staggering forwards, and narrowed his eyes. "Who else can mess with time?"
Mask and Ocarina snorted, amused, and simultaneously pulled out their Ocarinas of Time.
"Okay, dumb question," Wind acknowledged. "Better one: can you do it in a concentrated area? Without," he added quickly, "pulling everyone back three days?"
"That was just what the situation demanded!" Mask protested. "I can mess with time normally just like Ocarina here!"
"That means yes," Ocarina translated helpfully.
"Good. Now, here's the plan: parry him, don't hit him, and someone watch Bellum and let these two," he motioned to the Hero(es) of Time, "know when to freeze him. We want to hit his main eyeball."
There was an awkward pause as everyone waited for Lore's usual "Break!"
"...He's still possessed, isn't he," Steam muttered.
"I'm not filling in for him again," Green said firmly.
"Kinda my job anyways," Gen decided. "Therefore... Break!"
Possession, as a tactic, is used a good amount in most battles of epic and world-deciding proportions. One thing that is never particularly addressed, however, is what goes on in the mind of the possessed.
Therefore, we now take a look at the inside of Lore's head.
'How does this possession thing even work?
'I mean, here I am, unable to control my own body. It's rather annoying.
'Really though, he has a tentacle on the back of my head. This is how he's possessing me. How is that a thing? Is there something attached to my brain through my skull? And for that matter, aren't I still wearing a hat? How is he getting through the fabric?
'Oh, I think he's raising my arm. I wonder if that's the one with my sword?
'...Yes, I believe it is.
'I wonder what I'm aiming at?
'And there's another thing. Why can't I see what it is my body is doing? Is Bellum tapped into my optical nerves? If he is, that begs the question, again, of how? He's on the BACK of my head, I thought my optics center was over in my forehead somewhere.
'Perhaps I should be slightly more panicked about this. I feel as though I ought to be having an entirely different reaction. One with a good deal more screaming.
'...I blame Veran.
'There goes my arm again. I think I'm swinging at something. Probably the guys. I'm gonna need to have a talk with them once I get this squid off my head. Nice tongue-lashing. I'm their bloody half-leader, you'd think I would get a bit of a warning when an octopus attacks me.
'...What? ...Fine, not an octopus. Touchy bunch of tentacles, aren't you? Now leave me alone, I'm ruminating over here.
'Come to think of it, how can he hear me? Has my entire inner monologue been readily available to Bellum to hear?
'Well now, this has FANTASTIC implications.
'I wonder how long I can sing the Song That Gets on Everybody's Nerves before it gets on his nerves?'
The Four had all four of their shields blocking Lore's attempted strike when something odd happened. The previously blank-faced Hero, who, in the usual possessed fashion, was showing no emotion whatsoever, blinked.
"He moved!" The Four yelled.
"Of course he moved, he's trying to inadvertantly kill us!" Gen retorted testily, trying and failing to circle around and catch Bellum off guard.
The reason it was failing was because Bellum was ignoring him, but that was beside the point.
"Not like that," The Four called. "Like it was his own movements, not Bellum moving for him."
"What'd he do?"
"He blinked!"
There was a pause, in which the Four blocked another strike from Lore.
"Are you sure Bellum didn't feel the eyes getting dry? Blinking is sorta necessary, you know."
"He hasn't blinked since Bellum latched on," Dusk contributed. "I've been watching. You think he's getting loose?"
"I think," Steam contributed, "that Lore is doing what he does best."
"Annoying the heck out of people?"
"Exactly."
"Well then," Gen decided, "let's not leave him hanging."
There was a clang as the Four parried this time rather than block with shields. It was much harder than they had thought, to fight without wounding their opponent. The natural instinct was to go for a stab after blocking, but in this case...
Unfortunately, Bellum was a terrible swordsman and clearly didn't have the slightest idea on how to properly fight with said sword. He also clearly didn't know about Lore's item repertoire, otherwise the Links had a feeling the squid would have used at least one of them a long time ago.
And while normally this would make for an easy opponent...
"The one time we don't want to hurt someone," the Four muttered, blocking again.
"NEVER-CALL-ME-PATHETIC!"
"I WILL CALL YOU WHATEVER I WANT, YOU DARK ABOMINATION!"
"ABOMINATION?!" Shadow shrieked. He tried to say something else, only for rage to render him incomprehensible and only ended up screaming a few spluttered syllables instead. Apparently Ganondorf still managed to find an insult in there somewhere, because he roared in rage and charged with both swords aimed to kill. Shadow, equally furious, met him head on and the two clashed with an impressive display of sparks and protesting metal.
Realm, standing meekly at a very safe distance, watched the two combatants apprehensively. On one hand, he really ought to go and help. On the other, Shadow seemed to be doing very well for himself and probably wouldn't take kindly to an interruption.
Realm figured he was equally likely to get stabbed by either opponents if he interfered. Thus, in the interest of keeping his internal organs right where they were supposed to be, Realm stayed out of it and sent encouraging thoughts in Shadow's general direction.
'I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves! Oh, I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, and this is how it goes! Bum, bum, bum!
'I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves! Oh, I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, and this is how it goes! Bum, bum, bum!
'I know a song that gets on- what? I'm messing up your concentration?
'Thank you so much for the progress report! Clearly I'm not singing loud enough if I'm only messing with your concentration. I'm going for complete and total disruption of the thought process here. Wish me luck!
'Now where was I... oh yes. A-hem.
'I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves! Oh, I know a song...'
Completely apart from his vessel, Bellum shuddered. His eye opened and rolled wildly, as if trying to find something. Seeing this, Gen took full advantage of the moment and shouted, "NOW!"
Ocarina and Mask, having conveniently rehearsed, started playing at the same time. While one Hero concentrated on freezing the time, the other focused on restricting the area of effect. Although they were playing two different songs, the melodies intertwined and complimented each other in a rather beautiful but also haunting way. The end result was Bellum-Lore being unable to move while everyone else was free.
"I'm going to say this exactly once," Gen said as he marched up to Bellum's open eyeball. "Get. Off. My. Friend. Now."
And with that, Gen stabbed him. Not very deep, obviously, because Lore's spine was underneath there somewhere and hitting that would be bad. But it was still a sword lodged in Bellum's eye, and clearly it had to hurt.
"Anyone else who wants a go, now's the time," Gen said, one eye on his instrument players. Mask gave him a quick We're-Good nod and moved his fingers around to create the next set of notes he needed.
Wind marched up and took Gen's place in front of Bellum. "You've caused me a lot of trouble," he said to the squid. "You kidnapped Tetra. Tormented the Ocean King. Gave Demise your power- and no, I don't care if that was intentional or not," he added. "Took my home captive, put my sister and Grandma in danger. And then, and then, you took possession of my brother and tried to kill the rest of my family with his hands."
He glared at Bellum's frozen eye with an uncharacteristic fury. "I'm not a very violent person, usually. I do what's necessary to protect the people I care about and that's the end of it. But you... you have somehow managed to push me to where I actually want to hurt you. And I'm not okay with that."
He took a deep breath, then continued, "So I'm not going to, just to prove that I can. But if I ever, ever see you back here, if I ever see you threatening what I care about..." Wind shrugged nonchalantly.
"I can't promise what I'll do to you then. Understand?"
Although he couldn't move, Bellum still managed to give off the impression of quivering. Wind nodded in satisfaction, sheathed his sword, and walked away. His legs then promptly gave out and he slumped against a convenient palm tree, where he took very deep breaths and attempted to calm himself down. The group stared.
"Whoa..." Blue managed.
Gen nodded in approval. "Not exactly what I meant, but well done. Well done indeed." He paused, then said, "But we still need to actually beat this guy, and I think those two are running out of breath." He gestured to Ocarina and Mask, who were still playing but were also turning ever so slightly purple.
The rest of the group took the cue. Bellum, still unfortunately (for him, anyway) frozen, received a large amount of sword wounds to the eye, which started to leak purple and green goop/slime/stuff.
And at that point, Mask's lungs finally gave out. He inhaled greedily despite the fact that his ocarina was still on his mouth and caused a horrendous screeching which cancelled out the frozen time effect quite nicely. Bellum promptly dropped off Lore's back with a wet and squishy plop and lay on the ground, oozing weakly.
Lore blinked.
Then he blinked again.
Then he opened his mouth and said, "I wasn't done with my five-hundred and fifty-fifth verse of the Song That Gets on Everybody's Nerves. Could you please have the decency to wait for a guy to finish his song next time?"
"NO YOU IDIOT!" Gen bellowed, smacking his co-leader upside the head and sending him sprawling. "If there's EVER a 'next time', I will PERSONALLY knock you unconscious and smack the green off your floppy hat!"
"I like my floppy hat!" Lore protested, grabbing said ornament protectively and stroking it.
"I don't care. Never do that again, you hear me?"
"Sure," Lore snarked, rolling his eyes. "The next time I get a say in whether or not I get possessed I'll absolutely say no. Happy?"
Gen grumbled something unintelligible and gave a quick, one-handed hug before stomping away in a cranky fashion. As a general rule, men weren't very good at expressing emotions and this was about as close to saying 'I was worried' as they were going to get.
On the sand, Bellum flopped weakly and squished wetly. It could be assumed that he was saying something derisive and intimidating, as most of the villains had done upon defeat, but it was rendered rather useless due to the language barrier preventing any and all of his words from being understandable.
Rather unfortunate, really.
He then vanished into the usual void that spawned from its usual nowhere.
"Did anyone else think that was anticlimactic?" Sketch asked.
"I feel like we normally do more than this," Dusk agreed.
"I feel like we're forgetting something," Steam said. "Where's Realm and Shadow?"
There was a brief moment of silence as everyone abruptly remembered the other opponent on the island.
There was much sprinting.
"Take. It. Back," Shadow threatened, still very much hung up on the 'pathetic' insult. He and his opponent were currently in a deadlock, swords straining against each other and both trying very hard to take the other's head off.
"No," Ganondorf replied in an equally threatening fashion, still very much hung up on not recanting said insult.
"I feel slightly useless," Realm mused from his safe distance, still very much intent on keeping his innards where they were supposed to be. He was also concentrating very hard on not losing Ocarina's Mirror Shield, which was proving far more difficult than he ever thought it would be. It was like trying to keep track of a fish. He forgot he was holding it about five times a minute.
He was then bowled over by the rest of the Swim-and-Land Group as they sprinted into the fight zone just a bit too quickly to make a proper stop.
"Sorry!" Red cried as he extracted himself from the pile. "We were in a hurry..."
"Did you fix Lore?" Realm wheezed.
"I don't remember being broken," Lore commented in a how-about-that voice.
"Oh good, you fixed him. Now can you please let me up?"
"I said sorry..."
"You're interrupting my fight," Shadow snarled. But since it was generally acknowledged that Shadow was a cranky individual, nobody took him very seriously.
However, the fact that he was in a fight was taken rather seriously. So Shadow abruptly found himself surrounded by the rest of the group in a supportive formation, a fact which annoyed him.
Later he would accept that it was probably helpful, but only grudgingly and not at all audibly.
"How far did you get before Sketch came to get you?" Wind asked, sword held out protectively in front of him.
"We were trying to bounce the Light Arrows off the Mirror Shield," Vio answered. "'Trying' being the operative word..."
"He kept moving!" Realm protested.
"Aiming is a difficult thing," Lore agreed, nodding wisely.
Shadow disengaged from Ganondorf's swords with a screech of protesting metal, then whipped his own weapon in from the side in an attempt to slash his opponent's ribcage. Ganondorf blocked him with a derisive sneer and the two went back into their deadlock from earlier, both straining every muscle to try and get an edge in the fight.
"I would very much appreciate it if you would die," Shadow said in a deceptively calm tone. "Would you be so kind?"
"I would say the same about you," Ganondorf shot back. "Care to humor me?"
"I love this," Lore exclaimed enthusiastically. "The sheer sarcasm! The biting wit! The complete unwillingness to back down! The drama! The sarcasm!"
"He's back," Gen sighed.
"Bloody right I am. Now, I believe some assistance is in order?"
Shadow grumbled, but otherwise made no intelligible protests.
"I'll take that as a yes," Lore said brightly. With that, the Hero of Legend began circling around the two duelists, eyeing their movements and searching for an opening.
The rest of the group followed suit, taking up their own positions and looking for their own openings. Rather than mess with the system, both Speck and Realm were back on their respective duties of Light Arrow-ing and Mirror Shield-ing, and both were making absolutely sure their aim was correct before Speck fired his shots.
Unfortunately while Ganondorf was occupied with Shadow, that didn't mean he couldn't still divide his attention. He then proved himself to be scarily competent with swords by holding Shadow off with one weapon and blocking the Light Arrow with the other.
"THAT'S HAX!" Steam bellowed angrily. "People can't do that, it's dexterously impossible!"
"Er...We think, if someone can do it, then that makes it possible," the Four offered quietly.
"THAT STILL DOESN'T MAKE IT FAIR!"
Ganondorf laughed in a typical evil fashion and eyed all his new opponents. "This finally seems to have gotten interesting," he mused.
Shadow bristled, literally. His usually Link-looking form grew small spikes all the way down his back, rather like a disgruntled cat. Except that these looked a lot pointier.
"So I wasn't interesting enough for you, was I?"
"You..." Ganondorf looked Shadow up and down, seemingly ignorant of the fact that they were still locked together.
"...were a mild annoyance," Ganondorf decided.
Shadow bared his teeth in an excellent approximation of a feral animal and, in a surprising display of strength, heaved his sword out and forwards and forced Ganondorf to stumble backwards. Caught off guard, Ganondorf landed on one knee and stabbed his left sword into the ground in an attempt to balance himself.
This, of course, was exactly the opening that the Links had been waiting for and Shadow knew it. With a fanged grin that reminded everyone very much of Midna, he pointed his own weapon at Ganondorf's head and hissed, "Now."
Speck unleashed every Light Arrow he had left (which was about three by this point-there had been a lot of misses), and bounced them off the Mirror Shield just to make sure he would catch his target off guard. The Four, Sketch, Wind, and Dusk came in from the left, while Lore, Gen, and Mask moved on the right. Vio, Green, Blue, and Red, along with Ocarina and Steam, sprinted in from the back. And Shadow made sure that Ganondorf's other sword, the one that wasn't buried in the ground, was far too busy defending it's owner's front to do anything about the other attacks that were inevitably incoming.
Thus, everyone felt like they had contributed in a significant or at least mildly important way, despite the fact that everyone also knew that it was the Light Arrows that had taken Ganondorf down.
This Ganondorf, surprisingly, didn't say anything as he dissolved. He simply glared at them. But it was probably the most intensive and harm-wishing glare any of the Links had ever been on the receiving end of, and most of them shivered.
Shadow just snorted and ignored it, but also made a mental note on how to improve his own glare. If there was one thing he was bound and determined to be the best at, it was glaring at people.
It turned out that Ciela and Linebeck had actually been watching the entire fight, all the way from when the group had first run off to deal with it. Ciela had been all for flying out and helping them, but Linebeck had convinced her to stay put and watch, on the surprisingly sensible reason that whatever the Links had gotten themselves into, it was probably far too big and complicated for people like them.
Also, he had trapped her in a bottle and corked it.
Consequently, Ciela refused to acknowledge Linebeck's existence for the rest of the day.
It also turned out that some of the stuff that Bellum had oozed upon defeat (the green bits) were Ciela's missing memories. She was now the Spirit of Time and Courage.
And as such, she was now in tune with the natural flow of time. And the blatant disregard for the natural flow of time caused by Lore, Ocarina, and Mask's instruments made her absolutely furious.
It also made her a bit woozy. So luckily her tirade on the responsible uses of time manipulation had been cut off by her need for a nap.
"I say she's a hypocrite," Mask grumbled, throwing a cranky look at the sleeping fairy. "According to you, she messed with time on a regular basis to help you out. How can she fault us for doing the same?"
"She's the literal Spirit of Time," Wind explained. "When she does it, she's doing it naturally because she's tapped in. You're sort of... breaking in and stealing the accelerator, I guess. Oh, and the brakes."
"...still say she's a hypocrite..."
Gen had camped out in Wind's house, because he had discovered the ridiculously potent healing properties of Wind's Grandma's soup. It also tasted a whole heck of a lot better than health potion, and Gen was determined to stock up on some.
He was also trying to learn the recipe, but that wasn't going quite as well.
"How's this batch?" he asked, wiping his forehead and accidentally marking himself with the soup spoon as he did so. Grandma leaned in, sniffed the soup critically, then dipped a single finger in and let the soup drip. Whatever she saw apparently satisfied her, because she then put the finger in her mouth and analyzed the flavor.
"Hmmm..."
Gen fidgeted anxiously.
"...Did you remember the carrots?" the old woman asked eventually.
Gen blinked, counted back on his fingers, then facepalmed himself, getting soup in his bangs and on his hat this time.
"I remembered the carrots every time before this!" He complained angrily, gesturing widely to the multitude of failed soup scattered throughout the house and also splattering some onto the walls. "I can't believe I forgot!" He took a deep breath, exhaled, then asked, "Did I forget anything else?"
Grandma smiled gently. "Only the onions, potatoes, crab, grouper, and pepper, dear. You're doing much, much better."
"AARRRGH!"
Later, down on the beach, Gen had borrowed Dusk's Curse Stone again and was trying to convince Wind to use it with him.
"You're absolutely sure this won't end badly?" Wind asked, eyeing the Stone which was currently wrapped in a large tropical leaf.
"What's the worst that could happen?"
"We could short it out, we could accidentally combine ourselves, we could switch Curse Forms, we could accidentally combine our Curse Forms, we could-"
"Okay, so there's a good bit of worst that could happen," Gen interrupted. "But we've only got one Stone, and you're the Link who told me you wanted to learn how to fly. These guys are the best teachers I've found." He motioned to the crowd of curiously watching seagulls. "Now will you touch it with me or not?"
Wind heaved a sigh. "I'm going to regret this later..."
Gen held out the leaf which held the Curse Stone and hovered his hand over it. Wind stretched out his own arm and did the same.
"On three?" Gen asked. Wind nodded. "Okay then... one, two three-"
"So let me get this straight," the seagull said disbelievingly. "Your parents didn't teach you how to fly either?"
Wind, currently a seagull, shook his head nervously. Beside him, Gen ruffled one of his wings and repositioned it better.
"We had... strange parents," Gen explained. The seagull gaped.
"Strange is not the word I would use," the shorebird decided firmly. "Neglectful. How a bird wouldn't teach their hatchlings how to fly is just..."
The seagull struggled with something, then decided against it. "Well, I suppose that's not my place. I assume then, that you're here to learn?"
"I thought, since you taught me so well, you might be able to teach my friend too," Gen said. "Also, I'm having some trouble landing, so I was wondering if...?"
"Oh, that's right. We never got that far in your last lesson," the seagull realized. "Well, let's fix that. And I'll get someone to teach your friend, Din knows my attention span isn't nearly good enough to teach two. Be back in a bit, you two."
The seagull walked off, leaving Wind and Gen with themselves.
"Umm..." Wind started, "why do they have such a poor opinion of our parentage?"
"From what I can tell, flying is something taught to you by your parents, at least in a bird's case," Gen explained. "The fact that we're not hatchlings anymore and don't know how to fly casts a poor image."
Wind frowned. "Couldn't you have just said we were orphans and there wasn't anybody to teach us? I'm glad they care and all, it's just a bit odd to hear a seagull critiquing my Hylian parents for not teaching me how to fly. I've only been a seagull for about five hours, all things combined."
Gen paused. "I... honestly did not think of that."
The seagull came back, with a partner in tow this time. "Okay, are you ready to learn?"
"Absolutely!" Gen declared, and marched off with the first gull. The second one gave Wind a once-over and ruffled its feathers.
"How much flight experience do you have?"
"Uh... probably none."
The seagull took that in a resigned fashion. "That's alright then. First things, getting you used to the flapping motion. I want you to spread your wings and move them up and down, slowly."
Wind did as he was ordered. "Like this?"
"Yes, exactly," the seagull agreed. Then the bird cocked its head. "You know... you kind of sound like our two-legs friend with the yellow feathers on top. Isn't that strange?"
"Yeah... heh... really strange," Wind gulped, dearly hoping that Aryll wasn't around and silently cursing the similarities of genetics.
Thanks to Jon Voris, Whatstoknow, zeldafan 2015, Irokaichio, and fm0825 for favoriting/following!
Guest: Sorry about that. But on the bright side, I usually don't use cliffhangers. This is a bit of a new thing for me.
PsycoFangirl: Glad you liked it!
LordOfGaming: Pretty much, yep.
Okami no Fude: No, she's in this fic. And... hmm... Lore, probably. That's part of the reason I picked him for possession.
HylianHero: I never said I stopped :)
I am VERY sorry about the wait. But you'll be happy to know that I have a perfectly good excuse this time.
Our WiFi broke.
No, I'm not sure how that works either, but the guy who came to fix it was here for like three hours and then ended up not fixing it because there was some problem with the cable wire up a telephone pole or something. Long story short, the actual problem wasn't actually on the ground and required a ladder and what I assume was some fairly necessary electrical protection.
Clearly though, it got better, otherwise I wouldn't be posting.
The guys finished the fight, some other stuff happened, and I referenced the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In case you missed it, it was the 'Beware of the Leopard!' line.
Until next time,
Changeling.