(...It is in my expert opinion, that the Universe is now avoiding me on purpose. Evidence for this consists of the fact that all the beach postcards it has sent me are actually the same beach picture that's been Photoshopped to look slightly different every single time. Curse you, Universe.
Okay... I do not own the Legend of Zelda. On the whole, this is probably a good thing because I don't speak Japanese and that language barrier would be one heck of a problem.)
"There's a high probability that this will end badly," Sketch decided.
"No backing out now, you already agreed to it," Steam scolded.
"That was before my brain had caught up with my mouth."
The Links were gathered in front of the Portal that Sketch had led them to, specifically the one right outside Sketch's house. Sketch was laden down with half a dozen bottles of solid magic and was working up the motivation to walk in and use it. The rest of the group was standing in a cluster off to the left, along with Ravio who was doing some odd nervous tick with his hands.
Shadow was... somewhere. Probably still arguing with Midna.
"If this kills me, tell Ravio I blame him," Sketch decided weakly.
Steam frowned. "You sure that's a good idea? He seems more timid than a moblin in the Sacred Realm."
"...Okay, point," Sketch conceded. "Scratch that. Tell Lore instead."
"Can do," Steam saluted.
Sketch took a deep breath, faced the wall, and merged himself onto it-only to realize halfway through that the bottles weren't following him. There were a few successive clinks as they dropped onto the ground next to the wall, and Sketch stared at them through his now-painted eyes in disbelief and a good bit of annoyance.
You have got to be kidding me.
He phased himself off the wall, grumbling. "All that worrying and it won't even work? The heck!"
Steam, failing to keep an amused grin off his face, leaned down and gathered up the bottles. "Maybe if you put them in your bag?" he suggested. "That's how all your other items make the trip, right?"
Sketch blinked. "Yeah... good idea. I'll try that."
With the bottles now securely inside Sketch's adventure pouch, the New Hero of Hyrule once again faced the wall and phased on. This time, the bottles followed him.
"All right!" Steam grinned, running a finger over the pigment of Sketch's bag. Then he paused as something occurred to him, and moved his hand down to Sketch's knee. "If I poke you," he asked curiously, "can you feel it?"
Sketch opened his mouth to answer, realized he didn't know and couldn't verbalize, and shrugged instead.
So naturally, Steam poked him.
Sketch twitched and shuffled out of the way as fast as he could manage. It hadn't hurt, but... well, he had never before realized that his knees were ticklish. And judging from Steam's expression, the Hero of Trains had just discovered this fact as well.
"Well," the unpainted boy said, "that's gonna be some excellent pranking material. Do you think that applies to all us Links, or just you?"
Sketch rolled his eyes, turned, and shuffled in through the Portal crack. Steam just grinned.
"Only one way to find out," he mused to himself, and jogged off to see if Realm had ticklish knees too.
Okay, this looks far enough in, Sketch decided. Now for the stupid part.
He knelt down and pulled out a hollowed-out bomb and the mutliple bottles of magic, then carefully poured the bottle contents into the explosive and lit the fuse.
Then he made an abrupt about-face and ran like there was a horde of Cuccos on his heels.
"You are not tickling my knees," Realm ordered.
"It's an experimental test in the relation of our similarities and whether or not more than our appearance carries over!" Steam protested.
"...what?"
"Let me poke you."
"No!"
They were abruptly interrupted by a very large BOOM and a now three-dimensional Sketch tumbling out of the now three-dimensional Portal.
"I am never doing that again," he groaned hazily.
"Hey, it worked," Blue said. "And you didn't die, so plus!"
"I have the worst headache right now..."
"Drink a potion, you'll get over it," Lore said. "Now, any objections to going through the Portal right away?"
Everyone shook their heads.
"Excellent," Lore declared, and marched on in.
"No matter what you see in there, just keep walking!" Sketch yelled after him.
"Er... what's in there, exactly?" Wind asked.
"Well, usually nothing but a lot of pretty colors. But since Lore is... well, himself and I'm pretty sure he's 'Attention Deficit-Ooh, Shiny!', I figured I should warn him a little.
"'Attention Deficit-Ooh, Shiny!'?" Dusk repeated.
"I think it fits."
Dusk thought that over for a moment and decided that yes, it did.
"I claim copyright infingement," Lore declared.
After a moment of confused silence, Green decided to take the bait and asked. "Er... what?"
"Does this," Lore said, gesturing around, "not look exactly like the Dark World, the Twilight, and all those other Reverse places we keep stumbling into?"
The Links glanced at their surroundings.
"I... don't really see it," Speck admitted.
"You just offended Midna," Dusk added, wincing. He paused, then added, "She 's calling you a... actually, I'm not going to repeat that. ...No, I'm not calling him that! ...Tell him yourself!"
"Lorule is completely different from those places," Sketch informed his half-leader. "The Twilight is a half-lit world on another dimension accessed by a magical mirror. The Dark World is a... dimly lit world... accessed by... a magical... mirror... huh."
"You see my point?"
"Lorule is still different."
"How? It looks like a dimly-lit world that we just accessed through a magical gateway."
"But it wasn't a mirror," Sketch argued.
"Details."
"We're not having this argument right now," Sketch decided. "Come on, we're going to the Castle. Hilda's got Ganon-possessing-Yuga in her dungeon and he's the guy we probably need to smack."
From where the Portal was, the Links weren't very far from the Lorule Castle at all. In fact, it wasn't much more than a five-minute walk. The only thing that kept the group from walking right on in was the large black spider-web looking substance stretched across the door.
"Oh great," Gen shuddered. "Please tell me whatever spun that isn't still around."
"Hero of Hyrule, can you hear me?"
Realm frowned. "Is your Zelda telepathic?"
"No, that's Hilda," Sketch replied. "She's... I guess you could call her Zelda's counterpart."
"Weird," Realm decided.
"You have arrived just in time, for Yuga has escaped his bonds and his minions are loose in Lorule Castle. Give me a moment while I remove the protective barrier, then make haste, Link!"
"Which one of us is she talking to?"
"Sketch."
"Right."
The black web seemingly absorbed itself and vanished, allowing the door to swing open. Sketch turned around and faced the group.
"So," he started, "it sounds like there's a bit of a monster maze inside. Wanna make it a contest?"
"Sounds fun," Shadow said from out of nowhere, causing everyone to jump. He had taken his cloak off somewhere and was in his usual attire. "Any restrictions on physical maiming and/or mutilation?"
"Only if they're mindless monsters," Gen decided. Shadow let a feral grin crawl onto his face.
"Excellent."
"Whoever takes down the most minions wins," Dusk said. "And everyone, don't falsify about your total. I can smell when you're lying."
"I keep forgetting those senses carry over," Lore grumbled.
"I would never lie!" Red protested, tears already forming in his eyes at the thought. Dusk gave him an encouraging smile.
"I don't doubt that you'll be honest, Red. I'm mainly saying that for all the people I'm not so sure about."
Blue rubbed the back of his head and let out an awkward laugh.
"Hang on, who'll keep you honest?" Steam accused.
"Midna."
Everyone considered that for a moment, then shuddered.
"Good point,"Mask agreed.
"We can meet back up at the entrance to the throne room," Sketch decided. "If nobody can tell what a throne room looks like after all the time we've spent with our individual Zelda's, there's no hope for you."
That drew a few chuckles, mostly from Shadow because he appreciated the out-down.
"Break!"
Both Wind and the Four caught up with Realm a few minutes after the Links went their separate ways, and took up a formation on all sides of him.
"...Making sure I don't get lost?" Realm asked in a resigned fashion.
"Wind is here to navigate," the Four explained. "We're here to keep you from walking into a monster ambush while he does that."
"...Okay, yeah, that sounds exactly like something I'd somehow manage to do," Realm admitted. "Thanks."
"No problem."
Dusk took one look at the many gaps in the walkways and floor and promptly turned into a wolf. For one thing, he had much better mobility on four legs. For another, he was getting a little rusty with his fighting skills in this body, mostly because Gen kept borrowing the Curse Stone so much that he didn't have a chance to use it anymore.
And also, because now Gen couldn't spam his falcon form to fly through the dungeon before anyone else and it amused Dusk to see his half-leader annoyed.
Crud, Midna was rubbing off on him again. He really needed her out of his head.
Mask and Ocarina had teamed up because it made sense, and because it just naturally seemed to happen. A lot. While Mask had turned into a Goron and was happily punching the minions clear across the room, Ocarina was covering anything Mask missed by shooting it in the face with an Ice Arrow. He was using Ice because the sheer amount of lava made the Fire Arrows obsolete, and the Light Arrows really worked the best on creatures of darkness. While these minions were definitely evil, made of it they weren't.
Although, Ocarina had to wonder if really black paint pigment counted?
Green, Vio, Red, and Blue were making their way through the Castle in a back-to-back formation. They'd decided to use something else other than their swords for once, and as such had their individual items out and were using them as they saw fit. Green used his Boomerang to stun their enemies, which allowed Vio and Red to pick them off with their Bow and Fire/Ice Rod respectively, and Blue smashed anything that got past them with his hammer.
All in all, a very efficient strategy, and one that they'd used many times before. The only problem was that it only worked with a large amount of enemies.
But since they were surrounded by a large amount of enemies, there was nothing to worry about.
Lore had his Harp in one hand and his sword in the other, was somehow managing to tunefully strum the instrument with his weapon without cutting any of the strings, freezing his enemies by messing with their surrounding time-stream, and veritably waltzing around their unmoving forms before he stabbed them.
In other words, a completely normal battle as far as Lore was concerned.
Across the room, Mask and Ocarina watched their half-leader incredulously.
"...how is he doing that?" Mask asked plaintively, which sounded quite odd with the deep voice of a Goron.
"I'm going to assume we don't want to know," Ocarina replied. He squinted for a moment. "Who knew he was a good dancer?"
"This is the matador battle with Big Ginger all over again," Mask lamented.
Steam walked onto the wire grating and was immediately ambushed by what looked like a purple electric jellyfish. He stepped back a few paces, then carefully glanced around to see if anyone else was within earshot.
It seemed safe enough.
"So, you have any likes, dislikes?" Steam asked casually, sidestepping a tentacle. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."
The electric jellyfish just sparked at him.
"Shy? Okay, I'll go first. I dislike evil minions, and..." Steam paused and grinned maliciously at the enemy.
"I like trains."
The Spirit Train, in a dazzling display of complete and total disregard for the laws of physics, logic, and just the Universe in general, came rocketing in out of nowhere and slammed the jellyfish into the wall with all the force of... well, a freight train, then vanished into the suddenly existing middle distance.
The now very squished minion trembled for a moment, then poofed into a multitude of smaller clones of itself, which in turn trembled for a moment and poofed out of existence.
"Man I love that summons," Steam said.
Now if only he could remember that Summoning Song, and maybe he could figure out where his dignity was hiding.
Sketch stepped though the door and was promptly attacked by a Moldorm.
"Oh, not you guys again," he groaned. The minion blinked at him.
"Alright look. You present your tail tip to me without any fuss, and I promise I'll make it quick," Sketch said.
The creature failed to do so.
"Fine," Sketch sighed. "I swear, half my fights could be eliminated if you guys would just talk to me."
Ignoring the moving walls, Sketch launched himself at the Moldorm's tail and unleashed a rapid-fire series of sword strikes.
"Maybe all the fighting I've been doing recently was good for practice after all," Sketch mused to himself as the Moldorm self-destructed behind him. "I think that was a new personal best."
"Okay, how did you even do this?" Wind asked incredulously, one hand on top of his hat in an attempt to keep it on his head. "You literally weren't even leading! You were following! How did you get us lost?!"
Realm shrugged helplessly.
"Er... not to pick at the details," the Four said, "but how are we going to get down?"
Wind stared out at the impressive view of Lorule that the Castle roof provided them. "I have absolutely no idea."
Speck removed his sword from the monster's ear and hopped down to the ground, using the minion's collapsed form as a staircase, and jogged back over to his jar to resize himself.
"Now there's a door here somewhere..." he muttered to himself, shoving his pottery back in his bag. "I just need to not fall before I find it."
The room he was in was in fact, very, very dark. Speck had the fortunate luck as to own a lantern that he'd gotten from a Temple back in his home Hyrule. He was also walking extremely slowly.
Speck inched his way along the path that he suspected was there until he reached a portion of the floor that thankfully reacted normally to the light of his lantern. He paused for a minute to shrink himself and take out the minion guarding a door, then resized himself and carefully walked through.
The monster on the other side proceeded to throw fire at him. Annoyingly, the fire had the exact opposite effect of what it should and actually made the floor impossible to see.
Speck frowned.
Then, to the creature's eyes, he vanished.
The minion caught his fireball warily and searched the scrutinized the room. There was nowhere for a hylian to hide, so where...
There was suddenly a horrific pain in his ear. He passed out.
Speck clambered off the unconscious creature and resized himself, then finished it off with a stab.
"The more I fight like that, the more afraid I become of the Picori," Speck decided. "If they wanted to, they could kill us all."
It was a very good thing, he decided, that the Picori were pacifists. And that Vaati was an idiot who didn't realize the potential of his natural size.
"Why-won't-you-stay-dead?!" Gen snarled as he attacked the Wallmaster for the umpteenth time. "All I want to do is use my clawshot for an incredibly tedious puzzle that is only made worse by the fact that you won't stop coming back!"
He punctuated his last few words with sword stabs and the Wallmaster dissolved into smoke... for the time being.
"Creepy disembodied nastiness," Gen shuddered. He picked up the eyeball-colored orb again and started the mental countdown until the hand reappeared... again.
One... two... three...
He pulled himself along above the lava using his clawshot and a raft. The eyeball-orb was at his feet.
Twelve... thirteen... fourteen...
He paused to kill an annoying eyeball-bat, then resumed clawshotting.
Twenty-three... twenty-four... twenty-five.
A shadow appeared on the floor around Gen's body.
Right on time.
Luckily, he'd just gotten back to the solid floor, and the hole for the eyeball-orb was only a few feet away. Gen tossed it in with a relieved sigh, then stepped two feet to the left to avoid the Wallmaster as it slammed down in an attempt to catch him.
"I hope you anger a Cucco," Gen growled, retrieving a key from the now-visible chest. "Then you can both duke it out and see which immortal dies first."
With that, he left through the door he'd just unlocked.
And was confronted with a large amount of unblinking eyeballs.
"...Yeah, I just don't care," Gen decided. "Skyward Strike!"
The resulting blast of holy energy obliterated the eyeballs, the larger eyeball behind the eyeballs, and nicely purified the slightly violet water Gen was standing in.
"Could've skipped all of this if I were a falcon," Gen grumbled. "Note to self, ask Dusk to ask Midna for one of my own."
The Links eventually all grouped together in front of a large door with four glowing illustrations of monsters they'd just battled.
Well... almost everyone.
"Where've you guys been?" Lore asked as Wind, Realm and the Four all trudged up, looking bedraggled.
"I don't even know," Wind groaned.
"We got caught in Realm's misdirection field," the Four explained. Realm grinned apologetically.
"And I had to rescue them," Shadow growled, bringing up the rear. "He landed them on the roof! The roof! I have no idea how they got there. The only reason I got there was because I don't have a set physical form and I abused the laws of physics! He defies all logic."
"At least I didn't lose my sword this time," Realm offered meekly.
"Don't jinx it," Shadow snarled.
Realm meeped.
"Shadow, don't terrorize your companions," Gen sighed. "As far as I can tell, we are legitimately the only people who sometimes like you. Hurting us would be bad."
Shadow subsided into unintelligible angry grumbles instead.
"So... going through the doors?" Mask prompted, now back to his normal twelve-year-old self.
"Oh yeah," Sketch remembered. He pushed the entrance open along with a few of the other Links, then started leading the way down a long and lightning-filled path that bridged the gap between the two castle towers.
"Well, I'm bored," Blue declared after only about ten steps. "How long is this walkway?"
"A good bit longer than this," Sketch replied.
"Awesome. Anyone want to tally the minion score along the way?"
"I got six," Gen said.
"We got four," Green said. Behind him, Vio and Red had Blue in a headlock to keep him from shouting out higher numbers.
"We got six too," Ocarina said, while Mask nodded.
"Four," Sketch admitted.
"Five," Steam said.
"Absolutely none," Realm said brightly.
"Same. I was keeping track of him," Wind groaned.
"So were we," the Four grumbled.
"I only got one, because I had to rescue the idiots," Shadow growled.
"Six," Dusk said, getting the tally back on track.
"Twenty-eight," Lore announced. There was a beat of silence, during which Dusk could be heard faintly growling at him.
"...Fine, I got twelve," Lore corrected. Dusk growled a little louder.
"...Would you accept nine?
Dusk began climbing into the range of snarling.
"Stupid wolf senses that stupidly carry over," Lore muttered. "I got six too. Happy?"
"Yes," Dusk said.
"I got nine," Speck offered quietly.
There was another beat of silence, during which... actually, it was just silence.
"Wait, you actually got nine?" Steam asked.
Speck turned a bit red. "Well, they had very conspicuous eardrums, and their armor made for some really good handholds. And they may have been a bit top-heavy, because they all went down really fast..."
"I will never underestimate tiny people again," Steam decided.
"We're here," Sketch interrupted. "Hilda and Ganon-possessing-Yuga should be through this door. Are we all ready?"
"That seems like a silly question," Mask said.
"Never hurts to check. Lore?"
"Thank you," Lore replied. "Now... what he said. Break!"
"...Okay, what was the purpose of that?"
"It let me say 'Break!'. It's my job to say 'Break!', otherwise we would never know when we're going to do something stupid and dangerous."
Sketch gaped. "Why can't you say, 'We're about to do something stupid and dangerous!'?"
"Because 'Break!' is a lot faster."
To his horror, Sketch found that he couldn't actually argue with that logic.
The Links were greeted with an unusual and somewhat confusing sight.
Princess Zelda appeared to be a painting and was hanging on the far wall. In front of that, lying on the ground and clearly out of it, was a black-haired girl who looked almost exactly like Zelda. And in front of her, was a very large and somewhat lavender pig, with violently red hair tied back in braids. He also had a very large trident.
"I admit, I had not quite expected this," Sketch admitted. "So, umm... do you prefer Yuga, or Ganon?"
"Yuga is the name of the imbecile who thought he could control me," the lavender pig rumbled. "He's not available right now. May I take a message?"
"Ganon, gotcha."
The now-identified Lorule Ganon opened his mouth to reply, but was abruptly sidelined by Lore shouting, "FINALLY!"
"You can nickname him?" Dusk guessed.
"And it even goes along with the pre-established theme!" Lore enthused. "Everyone, meet Mr. Purple Pig!"
About half the Links burst out in hysterical laughter. The other half, the more reserved Links, agreed that it did indeed go along with Mr. Blue Pig and Mr. Teal Pig. They also thought that the alliterative effect was quite nice and complimented Lore on his language prowess.
Lorule Ganon just stared blankly, not at all sure what was going on. He had the vague feeling he'd just been insulted, but he couldn't quite tell.
Sketch wiped some moisture from his eyes and took a deep breath to get his amusement under control. "Okay... okay, I'm good. I've just got a question. Why is Hilda out cold?"
"She thought she could control me too," Lorule Ganon said, shrugging. "She seemed rather desperate, actually, I believe she was going to steal your Triforce of Courage. Would've made an excellent addition to the gang, now that I think about it," he added thoughtfully. "Veran would have been so pleased to have another girl in the group."
"She's not evil," Sketch argued. "Hilda's just... well, desperate. And confused. She cares far too much about her kingdom to ever join a villain group."
"Also, you just knocked her out," Steam said. "Now, Sketch may be the only one who knows her, and she may have been planning to steal his Triforce – y'know, now that I think about it, it's probably a good thing she's not awake. Imagine seeing multiple Heroes with multiple Triforces when you're already planning to take one. I think she'd have shorted out."
"...Did you have a point in all that?"
"Right sorry. Umm... oh yeah. You just took a Princess hostage. And buddy, rescuing Princesses is in our job description."
Blue frowned. "Did you rip that off from somebody? Like, an Italian plumber, or-"
He was abruptly cut off as his three siblings threw themselves on top of him.
"He's never going to learn, is he," Green lamented from the top of the pile-up.
"How on earth have you people lived this long?" Ganon asked incredulously.
"I ask myself that every day," Shadow agreed.
Ganon pondered that, then shrugged and cracked his knuckles. "Well, no matter. This will simply make it easier for me to crush you."
"I could swear I've heard that before," Lore said thoughtfully. "From Mr. Pudgy Bat... and Mr. Blue Pig... and Mr. Teal Pig..."
"Malladus..." Steam chipped in.
"Zant and Big Ginger," Dusk contributed.
"Bellum and the other Ganondorf who we never actually named because Big Ginger was already taken," Wind added.
"The Piece of Heart reject," Mask said.
"Man we've fought a lot of things," Gen realized.
"STOP TALKING AND FIGHT ME!" Ganon roared.
"...Yeah, we might as well add you to the list," Realm agreed.
Everyone charged.
Hello.
For the record, I blame writer's block. I'm so sorry.
Lorule, and a bit of the last dungeon. Because I wanted to, and it provided inspiration to fix my writers block.
Until next time,
Changeling.
Thanks to Shemar893, Quertypip, Sandwichcats, 1 up, Firekat Archer, Silvara, hetalia4ever, noxlux013, RandomObserver42, and minouuu974 for favoriting/following!
Qwertypip: That would be amusing. / And I will keep that in mind for his fight.
Nick Pillow: Why hello, fellow Whovian. And your Reverse Link plot intrigues me. This may call for a spin-off plot-arc. If I may ask though, why did you choose the names you did for the TriLinks?
Talon: Oh dear. If you could please revive yourself, I'd rather not go to jail for unintentional murder.
Guest: Umm... was there meant to be an image, or something? Because all I'm seeing is 'share Gif:'...
Blackleaf: You'd be surprised :)