(Welcome back, Universe. Just in time for Winter.)
...On second thought, I'm going back to Tahiti. It's a magical place.
(NO! No Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. references! You are getting right back here and you are doing this disclaimer with me!)
...Fine. The author does not own the Legend of Zelda. Happy?
(What, no alternative comment? Are you angry again?)
...Hmph.
(...oh dear.)
"WAIT!" Lore bellowed in his usual fashion – that is, completely out of nowhere. "HOLD EVERYTHING AND SOMEBODY BREW SOME EGGNOG!"
"...Eggnog?" Speck asked.
"It's a delightful beverage made from eggs," Lore explained in a spectacularly unexplanatory way. "Or egg flavoring, I forget which. And we need some!"
"...Why?"
"Because it's necessary!"
"That answers absolutely nothing."
"It answers everything," Lore said. "Also, who knows where we can find a pine tree?"
"...Lore, this is your Hyrule. You do." Gen told him dryly.
Lore blinked. "THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE! I AM A GENIUS!" He whirled and pointed randomly at the Four. "You! Go about fifteen-point-six-oh-seven miles due southwest and find a pine tree! It has to be the prickly kind or else we can't get the traditional needle-in-the-finger when we cut it down."
The Four stared at him. "...What?"
"Exactly. You!" Lore pointed at Dusk. "Find something twinkly and put it on a really really really long string!"
"Why?"
"Because it's necessary! You!" He switched his finger to a bored Shadow. "Find round things!"
Shadow leveled a Look at his half-leader.
"...please?" Lore added.
Shadow rolled his eyes. "How many?"
"Three-hundred-and-two," Lore said promptly. Shadow let out a huff of air, threw the hood of his cloak over his head and walked off looking confused but mildly interested.
"Lore, what are you doing?" Wind asked.
"Preparing. Can you find eighteen large colorful socks and a fireplace?"
Wind blinked. "A... why do we need a fireplace?"
Lore put a finger on his chin. "Well, theoretically we just need a fire and way to hang the socks. It's nice to have a mantle, but we could always make do with a branch construct and some string."
"...You know what, I'm just gonna go with it and hope it all makes sense later," Wind decided. "Who out of us is best at woodwork?"
"I'm decent," Steam volunteered.
"Want to help me build a functional mantle out of sticks?"
Steam grinned. "Do I?"
"Get on that," Lore said, nodding decisively. "Now, somebody else needs to buy eighty-five candles and learn how make them smell like cinnamon. Any takers?"
Nobody said anything, until Blue broke the silence by coughing
"Excellent, thank you for volunteering!" Lore cried, pointing to him and his three counterparts.
"...Sorry," Blue muttered as Vio and Green stared at him. Red, on the other hand, smiled excitedly. Lore glanced at everyone, did a head count, then seized Red's arm and pulled him away from the other three.
"Sorry, but I need you to help me make snow," he said.
"Snow? Why?" Mask asked.
"Because it's necessary!"
"It's also cold and wet!"
"It's necessary! Now, who here can cook?"
"Well, Gen can make soup," Sketch said.
"Not very well," Gen grumbled.
"Close enough!" Lore declared. "Can you bake a Cucco?"
Gen stared at him wildly. "You want me to what?! Are you trying to get me killed!?"
"No, I'm trying to emulate a turkey," Lore said.
"A what?"
Lore ignored that. "You and you, find firewood!" He ordered, pointing at Mask and Ocarina. "Somebody else dig a fire-pit! And will someone FIND SOME EGGNOG?!"
"...I think he's finally lost it," Realm said.
"Is this a good tree?" the Four asked. Lore examined the specimen up and down with laser-like intensity.
"...It's a bit bare on this side," he said at last.
"That's what you said about the last four trees," the Four complained. "All things considered this one is easily the fullest and it's the only one within this mile that satisfied your height qualifications, and it's the only one that was fat enough for you."
Lore nodded along with the list agreeably. "That's all true... But it still needs to pass the test of prickliness!"
He stepped forward, regarded the tree for a minute, then flung himself straight into the needles and proceeded to give the tree a bear hug.
"...I believe it passes," Lore's muffled voice drifted out of the branches, and he backed away with a stray branch in his bangs and two needles stuck in his left cheek. He brushed them off idly, then plucked the branch off his head and grinned at the tree. "This is the one!"
"Finally," the Four sighed. "Now are we allowed to cut it down?"
"No, I can do that," Lore said, flattening himself to the ground and drawing his sword to hack at the trunk. "You can haul it back though, I need to go and see if Shadow's found enough round things yet."
"...Right..."
"Normally, nothing surprises me," Lore said with wide eyes. "But this has officially broken that streak. Where and how did you even find this many Moon Pearls?"
Shadow yawned, looking bored. "I didn't. I swiped yours when you weren't looking and hijacked the magic of the Four Sword to create duplicates."
"You WHAT?!" Vio roared from a considerable distance away, having somehow heard everything Shadow had just said.
"I think it worked well," Shadow continued, ignoring the furious purple stick figure that was rapidly getting closer. "Just to let you know, three-hundred-and-two isn't actually divisible by four. You'll have to make do with an even three-hundred."
"That's fine, what's a few missing here and there," Lore said. "Now the real question is, can you make them colorful?"
Shadow rolled his eyes, stooped down and knocked on the closest Moon Pearl in the way that someone would tap at a lightbulb with a bad connection. The Pearl flickered, wavered – and then died completely.
"Don't you give me that," Shadow snarled, and kicked the previously luminescent sphere sharply. The Pearl flickered again, briefly, then booted back up and promptly turned a nice shade of green.
"Yes," Shadow told Lore bluntly.
"BRILLIANT!" Lore declared, grinning like a madman.
At that point, Vio arrived and began attempting to mutilate Shadow for messing with the Four Sword's enchantments. Lore, having decided that Shadow had the collection of round things well under control, took the interruption as an excellent sign to move on down the list.
Shadow, on the other hand, lazily held up a Moon Pearl to block Vio's latest head shot (it turned blue), and hummed something depressing he'd heard the other day.
Vio was not amused.
"Was this Midna's idea?" Lore asked, examining the fairy tied to the string. The fairy flickered in his approximation of scowling and adjusted the thread around his waist so that it hung more comfortably.
"No, she was all for knocking them out with chloroform and gagging them," Dusk said. "I went to the nearest Fairy Fountain and asked nicely."
"And then you chloroformed them?" Lore asked hopefully.
Dusk raised a sanity-questioning eyebrow. "No, then I took the ones that agreed and helped them tie on the string. And then I went and did the same thing at fifteen other Fairy Fountains because I only got about six takers from the first one."
"Can you do patterns?" Lore asked the fairy. He nodded, then waved at the fairies next to him and started a running flash pattern that traveled all the way to the end of the rope before starting over again.
"That's very nice," Lore said, clapping. "Now we just need to stuff you around the pine needles and we'll be golden. If you'll excuse me, I need to go see how Gen is coming with the Cucco."
With that, he walked off and left Dusk to deal with the suddenly irate fairies demanding to know why he hadn't told them they would be twinkling among pointy needles.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
"Oh, it can't possibly be that bad," Lore said calmly.
"KILL THEM WITH FIRE!"
"Probably a bad idea," Lore noted.
"I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!" Gen screamed as he tried in vain to escape from the furious Cucco horde.
"Really now, if you're going to try and cook one you should be prepared for the response," Lore yawned, examining his fingernails.
Gen sprinted up and grabbed his co-leader's collar menacingly. "This was your idea," he hissed, then glanced over his shoulder and yelped before dashing away as the Cuccos swarmed after him.
"You're doing great!" Lore said, flashing a thumbs-up sign and solidly ignoring the pure undiluted fury he got in return.
"So it turns out that Vio was the only one who knew how to make candles," Green started sheepishly. "And he ran off someplace a while ago, so..."
"Get. This. Stuff. Off. Me," Blue said slowly and concisely, covered from head to toe in candle wax.
"Fell into the melting vat?" Lore asked.
"Fell into the melting vat," Green confirmed.
"...At least you smell good."
"I DON'T CARE!" Blue bellowed.
Lore chuckled and pulled out a booklet from his bag, then handed it off to Green. "This is my How-To-Make-Candles guidebook, just follow the instructions and you should be fine. Granted you could have just bought the candles like I said, but if you want to delve into the fantastic world of wax then I'm not going to stop you."
Blue froze and glared daggers at Green. "We could have bought candles?!"
"I... may have forgotten that part," Green admitted sheepishly.
Blue growled menacingly, but given that he was covered in wax he couldn't actually follow through with it.
"Exactly," Lore agreed confusingly. "Now, where's Red? He's on Make-Winter duty with me."
"He's freezing over that pond back there," Blue said, stiffly jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
"EXCELLENT!" Lore boomed. "THAT'S THE PERFECT ICE SKATING SURFACE!"
With that, he sprinted away, leaving Green to start leafing through the booklet and Blue to shuffle over to their melting fire to release his clothes.
"I can't make snow," Red lamented.
"Clearly not, then you'd have a Snow Rod instead," Lore said. "That's my job."
"I just thought I could help a bit more than just freezing a pond," Red sighed, gesturing.
"And you did a very nice job," Lore agreed. "But I'm pretty sure that encasing the entire Maku Tree in solid ice is a bit more up the scale than 'frost'."
Red nodded mournfully.
"On the aesthetic side though," Lore mused, "that looks fantastic."
It really did. Rather than being inside of a block of ice, the branches were actually covered in a 'skintight' layer that followed the contours of the tree itself. The result was that the Maku Tree looked like it was made of glass.
"I think I'll keep it," Lore decided, grinning. "Now, can you go help Blue and Green make candles? I'll take care of the rest here."
"Sure!" Red chirped, considerably more cheerful now that he knew Lore liked it. He stowed his Ice Rod inside his bag and ran off.
"Alright!" Lore announced to nobody in particular and pulled out his Rod of Seasons with a flourish. "Let's make Winter!"
He tapped the blue orb, making it light up, then swung the whole item through the air and released a concentrated blast of magic that instantly dropped the temperature by about forty degrees. Every tree that wasn't an evergreen spontaneously lost its leaves with a dull thwump, and the sky abruptly turned light gray and started dropping snow. Lore grinned at it.
"Now how did you know my theme was 'white'?" he asked a snowflake falling past his face.
Luckily, the snowflake didn't answer.
If it had, that would have caused some problems.
"Why couldn't you have waited a bit longer before you dropped the temperature?" Steam complained.
"Hush, you've got your bonfire, you're fine," Lore scolded. "How's the makeshift mantle coming?"
"It's... coming," Steam replied. "I'm working on making it stand up on its own."
Lore looked around, frowning. "I thought Wind was assigned with you?"
"He is. He went to look for the eighteen large and colorful socks that you wanted."
"I just need to borrow some," Wind explained futilely to the highly confused Labrynnians in the doorway. "I think it'll only be for one night... probably..."
This sentence did not earn him any points on the subject.
"You know what, I should've said nineteen," Lore said thoughtfully. "I forgot to count Oni."
"Oni's a mask," Steam said, tying a knot into place on his construct. "And besides, whoever we used to get him out here would effectively be not here."
"That's true," Lore agreed. "I wonder if we could build him a vessel or something that he could possess without actually possessing."
"Ask Mask, he'd probably know," Steam grunted, pulling. "What Oni would be able to possess, I mean. He's got experience there. Could you hand me that branch?"
Lore handed off the specified wood and watched as Steam lashed it into place, then backed away carefully. The makeshift mantle stayed upright.
"Score!"
"Nicely done," Lore said. "Let me know when you've got the socks. I'll be over that way seeing if anyone's managed to make eggnog yet."
Lore took a small sip of the substance Speck handed to him and promptly spat it out onto the now-inch-deep snow.
"That is an affront to all proper eggnog," he said.
"Well, you never exactly told me how to make it," Speck accused quietly. "You just handed me some eggs and milk, told me to mix them, then left me to deal with the fallout from all the Cuccos who's nests you robbed."
"Oh yeah... I forgot I did that," Lore remembered. "Alright, scratch the eggnog. Can you make hot chocolate?"
"...I'm guessing it's not actually straight up chocolate that's hot?"
"Add it to some milk, make sure they're both warm, and stir slowly," Lore advised.
Speck nodded. "I can do that."
"Good. Now!" Lore said, turning to Mask, Ocarina, and the massive pile of firewood they had accumulated. "You guys did brilliantly, I have nothing else to say."
The two gave each other high-fives.
"Realm!" Lore called, turning again and examining the very large to-be firepit. "How goes the digging?"
"Pretty good," Realm's voice echoed up. "But could someone throw me a rope? I forgot to leave myself a way out."
"How deep did he dig that thing?" Speck asked, peering down. "It's s firepit, not a hole to the Other Side."
"He said something about catching the ashes," Ocarina replied, already lowering a rope coil down.
"I'll leave you to that," Lore said, walking off. "We should be done as soon as you get him out of there, so I'll go and round everybody else up. And then we can work on the tree!"
The small grouping of Links watched their half-leader walk off skipping.
"...Seriously, I think he's lost it," Realm said, having just been hoisted over the edge.
"...It's still crooked," Lore decided.
Ocarina groaned, Shadow hissed angrily, Gen just glared, and Dusk merely sighed tolerantly.
"Which way?" he asked.
"To the left," Lore instructed. Dusk obediently leaned the tree a few inches to the left, to which Lore examined it closely and frowned.
"I was wrong, lean it to the right," he said.
Dusk let out a huff of air and leaned the tree to the right.
"Hurry up," Shadow growled. "You're shaking needles on me." The dark-colored Link was currently wrapped around the base of the tree trunk, utilizing his shapeshifting abilities to act as support.
"You and me both," Gen agreed crankily. He wasn't actually at the bottom, but he was supporting the trunk further up.
"We've been at this for fifteen minutes, it should not take this long to prop a tree upright," Ocarina complained.
"Right a little bit more," Lore said, completely ignoring the irate Links. "And... PERFECT! Red, ice the bottom!"
"Not on me!" Shadow shouted, slithering out from underneath and resuming his usual shape.
"I would have waited," Red assured him quietly. He pulled out his Ice Rod and carefully solidified the ground and the tree trunk in ice about a foot thick, then layered the substance even thicker at the place where the tree met the ground.
"Very nicely done," Lore complimented. "Now! Dusk, bring the twinkly things!"
"They have names," Dusk said, carefully uncoiling his fairy-laden string.
"Yes, and I'm sure they're all fairy-ish," Lore agreed. "I will ask them after we're done. Twine the string around the tree in a circular fashion."
Dusk did so, though it took him a good half-hour with the help of everyone but Shadow, who was quite frankly done with being social for the next week or so. Wind was especially helpful with using his Wind Waker to boost Dusk to the branches he couldn't reach. Which were many; Lore seemed to have chosen the tallest tree within ten miles.
"This looks great, guys," Lore said as Wind lowered Dusk down. "Now we just need to add the round things!"
Dusk blinked, looked at the pile of Moon Pearls, then looked at the top of the tree and sighed. "Wind, can you push me back up?" he asked resignedly.
The end result of all this strangeness was an effective localized Winter, with a thirty-foot-tall pine tree decorated from top to bottom in blinking fairies and multicolored Moon Pearls, a makeshift fireplace made from a firepit and a stick construct, complete with hanging socks for a reason which nobody but Lore knew, and accompanied by copious amounts of hot chocolate and candles which smelled of cinnamon.
Which was all very nice and atmospheric, except that nobody could figure out what the atmosphere was.
"Now isn't this nice?" Lore said, cheerfully sipping his hot chocolate and smiling up at the tree through the falling snow.
"Yeah..." Mask agreed doubtfully. "But we don't know what it's for."
"Oh, that's easy," Lore said. "It's for this!"
With that, he suddenly brandished a mass amount of brightly-colored packages from absolutely nowhere and dropped one in the lap of each Link, Shadow included. He dropped two in Mask's lap and said, "The green one's for Oni, but let me tell you it was hard to find him a gift at the last minute. Next time he decides to show up unexpectedly, tell him to do it at least three months in advance."
Mask blinked. "Uhh... okay?"
Lore plopped back down on the ground and said, "Well? Open them!"
After exchanging a few confused glances and confirming that, nope, nobody else knew what was going on either, the Links decided to humor their half-leader and opened their packages with a cacophony of tearing paper.
Lore veritably bounced in his seat. "Do you like them? I spent a long time deciding what each of you would like and let me tell you, it was really hard for a couple of you. How'd I do?"
Gen held up his item and blinked at it. "It's... wow. I mean... how'd you know?"
"Remember that time I asked you what your favorite color of the alphabet was?"
Gen frowned. "Yeah, I thought it was complete nonsense and told you to start making sense or I'd pummel you until you did."
Lore beamed. "Exactly!"
"And somehow, you translated that into a Find-It bag and a set of variously sized bottles?"
"Yep," Lore said. "They range from fairy to Goron-sized. And now you don't have to go rummaging in your bag for them!"
Gen smiled. "That's perfect. Thanks."
"Hang on," Mask said, having opened his gift to find an ocarina-care set. "So that one time when you asked me how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood was actually relevant?"
Lore nodded, beaming.
"...That's bizarre. And by the way, thanks for this. I was getting worried about keeping my ocarina nice."
Ocarina – the person, not the instrument – frowned. "Shoot, that would have been really nice to have..."
"Well, if you'd given the same answer as Mask then you would have gotten the same gift," Lore said. "Besides, whatever I got him I would eventually get you."
Ocarina visibly brightened.
"So what'd I get as you?" Mask asked, scooting over to his older-but-younger self. Ocarina held up a small but surprisingly thick book.
"It's the Dictionary and Guidebook to Time Travel and the Future Tense," Ocarina read off the back. "We can record our personal timeline and use this to figure out where and when we are, and then use the dictionary to get our tenses right when we're explaining to each other when and where we came from or are going to go."
Mask gave Ocarina a high-five. "Sweet!"
"No more getting confused!" Ocarina agreed.
By that point, the other Links had delved into their own gifts and were similarly pleased/surprised. Dusk had received an intensive guidebook on wolves (which he promptly sat down with and began reading), and a set of brushes that seemed to be made for animals. This confused him until Lore explained that the brushes were for Midna.
"She seems to like taking advantage of your inability to talk back when you're a wolf," he explained. "So now she has all the tools to groom you and make you feel awkward."
Inside Dusk's head, Midna burst into hysterical laughter.
'That is EASILY the best thing I've ever gotten!' she giggled. 'Pray to your goddesses, little wolf. I'm going to have FUN with this.'
Dusk got a distinct feeling that he was doomed.
Speck opened his gift to find a small blue gem-like object. After a moment of examination, he discovered that it created a self-sustaining shield around the holder.
"Oh, that's for when you're tiny," Lore explained. "It shrinks with you and it's designed to withstand a falling mountain. You told me once that getting attacked by everything is an occupational hazard of being small, so now you don't need to worry."
Speck blinked, then carefully tucked the gem into his bag.
"Thank you," he said. Lore winked.
Steam received a set of tinkering tools and some scrap metal and promptly set about making something loud and rackety. Realm received a compass which would straight out tell the person if they were going the wrong way, and the easiest set of operating instructions Lore could find. Wind received... his pictograph.
"...How?" Wind asked.
Lore snickered. "Look underneath."
Wind did so and discovered a new bag, with a nicely coordinated button on the closing flap.
"And now you won't get pick-pocketed so much," Lore said.
Wind rolled his eyes, smiling, and set about transferring his things into his new bag.
Shadow received a paper with an enchantment for changing the words on his cloak. Within minutes of reading the instructions he had changed the words from 'Death to Cows' to 'Touch Me and Die. Or suffer severe mutilation. Possibly both.'
Red, Blue, Green, and Vio had all received pieces of a tracking stone. The idea was that if they ever got separated, the individual pieces would locate one another and tell them where the others were. And if they ever put the Four Sword back, the pieces of the stone could be slotted together into one large rock.
The Four had received an enchantment that grew stronger the more people used it at once. This automatically granted them a multiplier of eight on whatever damage they did, but it only worked if the people involved were completely in sync. Luckily, Lore had figured that wouldn't be a problem.
Mask had, eventually, remembered to bring out Oni and had slipped the Fierce Deity onto his face. After a quick conversation with the Original Link, he eventually persuaded Oni to unwrap the gift. Oni received a set of sword care oils and polishers and, after careful contemplation, decided he approved of the gift and set about polishing his Double Helix weapon with long, steady strokes.
"I take it this means you like it?" Lore asked.
Oni paused in his polishing. "...Indeed. How were you aware that I wished to care for my weapon more properly?"
Lore grinned. "Remember that time I popped in and said you needed a suntan?"
Oni tilted his head. "I fail to see how that event is significant."
"That's the idea," Lore told him.
Sketch had opened his gift to find a simple necklace with a deep blue scale hanging from it. It was nice, sure, but he also wasn't sure he needed or wanted a piece of jewelry.
"Oh, that's for when you have to go swimming," Lore explained. "I had a guy put some spells on it that creates an air layer around you when you go under. It lets you breathe and prevents you from getting wet."
Sketch considered the trinket again and grinned. This was going to make oceans a lot more bearable.
At that point, everyone had opened their packages and were admiring/using their gifts. The only problem was that nobody knew what they were for or why. So Realm decided to ask.
"I'm not complaining about all this," he began. "But what's it all for?"
"Well, around this time of year people sometimes give gifts as a show of how much they mean to one another," Lore said. "It usually involves waking up to find the gifts underneath the tree, but I decided to just give them all now. What do you guys think?"
Everyone exchanged glances.
"...We like it," Dusk smiled.
"Excellent!" Lore declared. "We'll make it a thing."
"Does all this have a name?" Speck asked.
Lore shrugged. "If it does, I don't remember it."
He grinned, slightly concerningly. "But this worked brilliantly for the other thing I was trying to do."
"And what would that be?" Gen asked, eyes narrowed.
"Distracting you all long enough so that the Windfish moves on and I don't have to deal with it," Lore answered.
Sure enough, the Windfish was nowhere to be found. And Lore was incredibly pleased with himself.
"You went to all this," Blue said, gesturing at the Winter, tree, fireplace, and gifts, "to avoid dealing with an albino whale?"
Lore nodded cheerfully.
"...I really do think he's lost it," Realm decided.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Okay. I decided to calculate the number of views Dimensional Links has gotten so far, and I am frankly flabbergasted. This story has 49,957 views. FORTY-NINE THOUSAND VIEWS.
You guys are all amazing.
Also... guess what got a TV Tropes page?
Until next time,
Changeling
Thanks to Shikabocha, I483, hilli98215, HeroofTime73, PokeHetaFan, MaelstromYouko, AlmightlyHann, Catchandelier, and Ellenar Ride for favoriting/following!
RotomKnight: Yes, I am aware that streaking can mean running around without clothes. However, it can also mean sprinting really really fast. I'm sure you can tell which meaning I was using.
The has-been who never will be: Oh. Gosh. Um... Probably a combo between Realm and Lore. I get lost insanely easily, plus I'm ridiculously optimistic. And I really love bad puns and references and things. As for you... well, I don't think I know you well enough to personality-type you. You seem pretty enthusiastic, so... Red, maybe?