(To everyone who was in the path of Hurricane Harvey: I hope you get back on your feet soon and that nothing happened to your house that can't be fixed. To everyone who will be in the path of Hurricane Irma: WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING THERE, GET THE CRAP OUT OF THE WAY.)
It's only a Category Five.
(That's the highest rating there is.)
What? That's ridiculous, there's far more – oh, you're talking about Earth storms. Well then, yes, I agree. You humans should remove yourselves from the immediate vicinity.
(...Out of horribly misplaced curiosity, what were you talking about?)
Oh, you haven't discovered them yet. But, take Jupiter, think of the Spot, and multiply that by at least six figures. And put it in space.
(And I'm going to tactfully segue into a new topic now. I do not own the Legend of Zelda or any referenced material.)
That was a terrible segue.
(Oh, shut up.)
The top of the mountain was gray, rocky, windy, and for some reason incredibly reminiscent of scrambled eggs.
Blue abruptly stopped in his tracks and stared up at the sky with an utterly bewildered look on his face. "I'm sorry, did the narrative just compare the mountain to scrambled eggs? The heck?"
"Blue!" Green hissed from further up in the line, though he was regrettably too far away from his sibling to enforce the usual disciplinary measures.
"I know, but I'm serious this time! What's up with that description?"
Well, scrambled eggs are rather lumpy and don't always look appetizing despite being breakfast food. The top of this mountain is also rather lumpy, because of the rocks, and if you look at it right and imagine it's yellow, it looks like scrambled eggs. Make sense?
Blue frowned and narrowed his eyes at the landscape. "...Yeah, I guess it kinda does."
"You are breaking the walls!" Green snapped. "Into little tiny pieces!" He transferred his gaze to Shadow, who had come back out from visiting Midna and was currently in line behind Blue. "Shadow, do something!"
Shadow tilted his head. "...It would look like scrambled eggs if it were yellow," he decided. In the background, Green slapped his hand across his face, rapidly approaching the end of his wits. You really should listen to him, Blue, he might be about to burst.
"But he's so stiff sometimes," Blue complained.
You are breaking the walls though. Don't make me write you into a Cucco Apocalypse.
Blue turned white. "Please don't."
Well, that would be a drastic measure anyways. All I really need to do is have Shadow decide that enough is enough and smack you upside the head.
"Wait don't-!"
Shadow abruptly decided that enough was enough, and firmly smacked Blue upside the head in order to restore the balance of the Universe – or, rather, as much of the balance that could be restored given the fact that it was ending. Blue immediately keeled over.
"How hard did you hit him?"Vio asked in shock.
"Decently," Shadow replied, bored. "Oi tiny, carry this idiot would you?"
Speck stared up at him. "What makes you think I can carry him? I am literally the smallest person in this group."
"That's why you need to toughen yourself up. Start by carrying this idiot."
Speck drew himself up to his tallest height, which wasn't honestly all that impressive but it was the thought that counted. "Do it yourself, you're the one who knocked him out."
Shadow examined the smaller Link for a moment.
"...Shrimp."
"Copycat," Speck shot back, but now they were both grinning. "I'll take his legs if you take his head?"
"Deal," Shadow said, just a bit too quickly. Speck abruptly realized where Shadow was going with that and blanched.
"On second thought, I'll take his head. You are entirely too liable to drop him for the fun of it."
Shadow just rolled his eyes and swooped down to grab Blue's legs while Speck handled the other end. Then they trundled their cargo over to join the rest of the group, who by this point had made it all the way to the top of the peak and looked slightly ridiculous given that half of them were wearing dresses and it was extraordinarily windy.
"So," Ocarina began, batting down the hem of his dress between words, "now what?"
"You climbed an entire mountain without wondering why you were climbing the mountain?" Sketch asked incredulously.
"Of course I know why we climbed the mountain," Ocarina said. "I'm wearing a dress because of the reason we climbed the mountain, that's a little hard to miss!"
"He's asking because the mountaintop looks empty," Mask supplied, "and the general idea was that Vaati was going to be here and we were going to kick his butt."
"Oh." Sketch looked around and frowned. "Yeah, wasn't he supposed to be here?"
"He probably is," the Four assured everyone. "But he'd be in his Palace over there rather than out in the open." So saying, they pointed across the peak to where the very large, very impressive, and very out-of-place Palace sat amidst the scrambled-egg rocks.
"That is such an odd metaphor," Shadow noted, right as Blue regained consciousness and said, "I know, right?" In retaliation for breaking the walls (even though he'd just done it himself), Shadow proceeded to drop Blue's legs right then and there, which made his heels slam into the very hard, very rocky ground in an extremely painful manner. Speck lowered Blue's torso in a much gentler fashion – not that Blue noticed, because he was too busy whimpering, but he appreciated it later and it was the thought that counted anyways.
"So the plan," Gen said, ignoring this with the skill of practice. "Did we make a new plan or did we come up here purely on improvisation?"
"Of course there's a new plan, lysil," Lore said brightly. "Obviously, the Links who are dressed like girls are going to infiltrate the group of captive actual girls and launch a cleverly timed ambush attack when Vaati becomes distracted by the rest of us normally-dressed Links launching an assault on the outer walls. That, or we're just going to wing it like we do basically every other time but I think the first plan reflects a bit better on our intelligence, don't you?"
"The first plan does sound slightly less stressful," Wind offered.
"You're only saying that because you're not in a dress," Sketch shot back.
Wind shrugged.
"Do you need to borrow the sneaky music from that time we kidnapped Veran?" Lore asked, holding out a small red box with a white arrow in the middle. He received multiple confused frowns (which were soundly ignored).
"Er... no," Sketch said. "I really, really doubt it. Besides, won't we need to be stealthy? I don't think playing music will help with that."
"Nonsense," Lore declared. "You just need the right music. Give me a minute, I know just the soundtrack for this..." He trailed off into unintelligible mutterings.
"...So, sneaking in?" Green repeated in a valiant effort to get back on topic. "Where's the best place to do that?"
"There ought to be a servant's entrance around the back," the Four said. "The girls will probably be in the dungeons, and those will be in the basement, so... just find the stairs and head down."
"Great," Mask said. "Really, really great. Nobody's claustrophobic, right?"
"I feel like we would have said so a long time ago if that were the case," Sketch pointed out.
Mask shrugged, and the movement rippled all the way down his dress. "Yeah, but on the other hand we only found out that Gen was afraid of spiders a few weeks ago. I'd rather not run the risk, you know?"
"All things considered, I think we're good," Ocarina reassured him.
There was a moment of silence where everybody, out of sheer habit, looked at Lore expecting him to declare something motivational and/or incredibly confusing, but he was still staring at the red box and muttering to himself. So Gen belatedly cleared his throat instead and said, "Alright then. Dress Group, you know what to do. The rest of us will meet up with you guys when it's time to kick Vaati's purple bat behind. Now let's go do this thi-"
"I've got it!" Lore declared triumphantly, utterly cutting off whatever Gen had been saying. "Told you I'd find the perfect soundtrack. I set the timer to play once you start your sneaky infiltration, but don't sing along! That would ruin the stealth, you know."
"Don't worry, we won't," Red reassured him, totally ignoring the oddness of the statement in the process. Lore promptly handed him the red box with the white arrow in the middle.
"Don't poke it or you'll set it off early," he instructed with a stern-ish look. Red saluted him.
Ten minutes later, the Link who were not dressed in dresses gathered loosely around the outermost wall and stared at it contemplatively. After a moment, Realm said, "Was there anything more specific that we had to do other than 'assault'?"
"Don't think so," Steam replied, shrugging.
Realm considered that, then turned to Wind and said, "Can I have my Bag?"
"Why do you have his Bag?" Blue asked as Wind handed it over.
"He'd lose it otherwise," Wind replied matter-of-factly. Realm gave a rueful nod of agreement before digging through it in search of something. After a few moments, he looked up and said, "I don't have a lot in the name of 'assault'. I think I need some new stuff."
"Default to Adventuring Rule Number One," Lore told him. "Because if all else fails, you've probably still got explosives."
"Can do," Realm replied with a grin. "But I really should get some new stuff all the same. Compared to some of you guys, my arsenal is pathetic."
"That would be because you always lose it," Wind said, and reclaimed Realm's Bag because leaving it with Realm was about the worst idea possible.
"That's probably accurate," Realm agreed easily. "Anyone else wanna blow stuff up with me?"
"I thought you'd never ask," Shadow smirked.
Everyone immediately upped the mission from 'assault' to 'make sure something's still standing when Shadow's done with it'.
"Shouldn't that thing have kicked in by now?" Sketch asked, looking at the red-and-white box skeptically.
"We're not being sneaky yet," Red informed him. "It'll only play when we're being sneaky. Lore said so."
"What's supposed to count as 'sneaky' then?"
"Maybe if we crouch," Speck suggested.
"We're wearing dresses."
"And we have pants on underneath," Speck emphasized in one of his rare moments of snark.
"Good point."
"This is ridiculous," Mask declared. "Just – get down-"
He grabbed the sleeves of his two nearest siblings and dragged them to the ground alongside himself, and a few seconds later everyone else followed suit. From there, the group took approximately four awkwardly-crouched steps before the red-and-white box suddenly activated and vanished.
*Author's Note: This segment is more-or-less inspired by the Pink Panther theme song. You might want to click on your own red-and-white arrow boxes and look it up, just to get the full experience.*
Everyone paused expectantly. Nothing happened.
"...I thought there was going to be sneaky music?" Green hedged hesitantly.
Mask tilted his head and listened for a moment. "...I think it's a fourth-wall thing," he decided. "So we should probably start talking about something else. Speaking of which, I think the Four said the back entrance was around this way."
On the Assault Team, Lore suddenly paused in the midst of blasting Summer at the Palace wall and beamed. "Ooh, the sneaky music's playing!"
"That's nice!" Gen yelled, over the complete and utter chaos of the Summer setting off all of Shadow's house-sized explosives. Interestingly, Gen didn't actually know what Lore had said, because his ears were blown out from the concussive shockwave. He was just giving a generic response and assuming that, because it was Lore who was talking, it didn't actually matter what he said in response anyways.
He was proved right when Lore just kept on talking. "This really doesn't fit the scene right now though..." he mused, frowning. Behind him, Steam launched the Spirit Train straight through the Palace Wall and into the minion-filled hallways beyond, which created a lot of screaming. Lore frowned some more. "Definitely clashes with the aesthetic."
"Whatever you're saying, can it wait until after the Assault!?"
Lore flashed a thumbs-up. "Can do," he agreed. "Besides, the sneaky music is meant for the Sneaky group anyhow."
"What!?"
Mask executed a dramatic roll past one of the stationed guard monsters, then waved the rest of the group forward. They took the crossing at a much more relaxed pace.
"You do know that's an Armos and that we're nowhere near its line of activation," Green pointed out.
"Duh," Mask rolled his eyes. "But this is really good sneaky music and I don't wanna waste it."
"When, exactly, did I learn to hear the fourth wall?" Ocarina asked skeptically.
"Spoilers."
"I really hate that reason."
"I know," Mask grinned. "Now shush. We're being sneaky, remember?"
The Armos took that moment to rattle at them despite the fact that they were out of its range, because they were being quite loud and interrupting its nap. Everyone scooted a few inches further away anyways, just to be safe.
"We should probably move on," Green suggested tactfully, and in a much quieter voice.
The group slunk down the hallway, looking completely ridiculous as they did because they kept tripping over the hems of their dresses and completely ruining their already-questionable stealth. By some miracle (or possibly plot convenience) this never happened when there was a guard-minion around to see them, which was good because that would have ruined the whole point. Part of the problem was that, as a whole, the Links were not the most stealthy of people. Their normal M.O. was to charge in with swords swinging; very few of them were actually good at being quiet and staying that way in a hostile environment.
It was a good thing, then, that most of those Links were on the Assault team. As convenient as Shadow's shapeshifting would have been, he was far too fond of massive explosions and general violent insanity to successfully pull off stealth.
The girls, according to the Four, were being kept in the dungeons, which were in the lowest level of the Palace. Basically what this meant, was that the Stealth Group had a long way to go.
"Why did I have to give my Stone Mask to that creepy kid in the Moon?" Mask groaned when he tripped on the hem of his dress yet again. "That would have been literally so convenient right now!"
"Oh, we're allowed to use stuff like that?" Speck asked in surprise. "I was under the impression that we were challenging ourselves or something..."
"I could totally go fly-on-the-wall in here," Sketch said, looking at the walls appraisingly. "Nobody ever looks at the painting."
"Sure, rub it in," Mask sighed ruefully.
"I think we should try and stick together," Green said, "but maybe you two go and scout ahead and make sure the coast is clear for the rest of us? Since you guys are the least noticeable, and all."
Sketch nodded. "Makes sense." He merged with the wall and quickly darted around the corner, presumably to go and do just that. Speck shrugged amiably, then pulled out his Jar and promptly used it. Red picked it up and cradled it in his arms while Speck himself lined up with the corner where the wall met the floor and marched determinedly in the other direction, using the cracks as camouflage.
There was a moment of silence while everyone waited – until the silence was shattered by an absolutely tremendous BOOM and the entire building shuddered.
"What the Din was that?"
"My rupees are on either Lore or Shadow."
"That was mildly unexpected," Shadow decided, tilting his head and admiring the carnage.
"I'm so proud!" Lore bawled.
Dusk, meanwhile, flushed red all the way down to his neck. "It's just a bit of rubble..."
"Rubble," Lore said, beaming through his tears, "which used to be an entire watchtower made of solid granite. Oh, wrog-yeth pu os staf..."
"What he said," Shadow agreed. "But without that sappy nonsense at the end."
Dusk, if possible, flushed confusedly.
"Maybe both," Ocarina mused.
Speck came back and informed everyone that he'd run into a dead end, which may or may not have been literal considering that he'd actually walked into what basically amounted to the barracks for Vaati's minions and had spent the past few minutes systematically picking them off one by one. But that was kind of unimportant in the grand scheme of what the group was trying to do, so Speck left that bit out and just said that it was a room with only one door.
Sketch, on the other hand, had considerably more luck with his chosen direction. So everyone went that way instead.
It was immediately apparent that Sketch and Speck were in their element. Speck was already the least noticeable Link because of how quiet and unassuming he was, and combined with the fact that he was currently mere inches tall and actually trying not to be seen, he was all but invisible. Sketch was a bit more obvious, if only because his version of stealth was a painting on the wall and all his siblings knew what he looked like when he did that. But then, he wasn't trying to sneak up on his siblings.
It really was odd how nobody ever noticed the art on the wall until it was too late.
They came to another crossway, where Sketch and Speck immediately vanished down the different hallways to figure out where to go next. This time, Sketch came back first, popping off the wall with a flash of multicolored light and shaking his head.
"Bathrooms," he explained.
Speck, meanwhile, had found a downwards-leading staircase, so everybody went that way.
At the bottom of the stairs was a trio of bokoblins, two of which Sketch took out with little issue while Speck did his usual on the third, although the fact that he was wearing a dress did make it a bit more cumbersome than usual. From there, the group continued down the hallway without incident – at least, until Sketch rounded a corner and got his paint impaled by a startled Darknut. It didn't hurt, oddly enough, but now Sketch had a sword in his gut and he couldn't actually move away from it. More to the point, his magic was running out and he really didn't want to know what would happen if he was forcibly removed from the wall while the sword was still 'in' him.
Then Speck catapulted himself through a chink between the Darknut's chest-plate and helmet, and the whole thing collapsed moments later.
Sketch gave him a grateful smile as the rest of the group ventured around the corner, then pointed urgently at the sword that was still pinning him on the wall until Ocarina yanked it out. The pigment filled itself back in; then Sketch popped off the wall just in time to avoid total magical depletion.
"That was unpleasant," he said.
"I would believe that," Mask agreed. "Did you know you were immune to death when you do that?"
"Only if the sword isn't also a painting," Sketch shrugged.
"...And why do you know that?"
"Yuga liked to use his minions as art practice," Sketch replied. "Every now and then one of them had a sword."
It was a testament to the weirdness of their lives that everyone's response to that was to consider it and nod like it made perfect sense.
After that, Sketch was a bit more careful when he went around corners, and the next few minutes passed uneventfully aside from the occasional takedown of some hapless minion. It was a good thing that monsters dissolved, because otherwise there would have been a trail of bodies marking the route they'd taken and that was about as far from stealthy as it got.
They found another split path, and once again Speck and Sketch split up to scout up ahead. Sketch, when he came back, said, "I found the armory, but there's only one way in and out of that, so... yeah."
Speck, on the other hand, came back, climbed Ocarina, and shouted, "We've got a problem!" in order to be heard as anything louder than a small squeak. This statement was immediately met with much frowning.
"Define 'problem'," Mask requested.
"There's a lot more Beamos than are strictly necessary!" Speck shouted.
Sketch scowled at the middle distance, which was really unfair because the middle distance hadn't done anything wrong. "Dang. There goes our pattern."
"So we make a new one," Green said decisively. "Mask, Ocarina, shoot the eyes out and do it quickly. We'll cover for you if there's return fire."
"Just use regular arrows, the magic ones would be overkill," Mask advised his other self as they slipped down the hallway, Ocarina nodding determinedly as he loaded his bow. Ten seconds later, there was a muffled twang of a bowstring followed by several ensuing explosions. A probably-related cloud of smoke drifted back down the passageway.
Mask poked his head back around the corner a few seconds later and waved away the smoke. "All clear," he said cheerfully. His words were unexpectedly punctuated by one last belated explosion, which made Mask pinch his eyebrows together in confusion and disappear back around the corner for a moment. The words, "How did you manage to let a Beamos sneak up on you?" wafted vaguely through the air before Mask reappeared and said, "Okay, now we're all clear."
Ocarina met them as they moved through the previously-occupied-by-Beamos room, looking mildly disgruntled and not at all like he wanted to talk about it, so everybody took the hint and didn't talk about it. Once through, Sketch and Speck darted off on reconnaissance again.
Two minutes later, Sketch came back and said, "I think I found the dungeons."
"I'm not really an expert on owning a Palace," Steam said, "or anything remotely close to it. But shouldn't Vaati have, maybe, noticed that he's under attack by now?"
"He's probably more concerned about his girls," the Four replied. "He's got... unusual priorities."
"But... I mean, he's got to have realized that he can't keep anybody captive without a place to keep them captive in, right?"
The Four shrugged, which looked rather impressive given that it was synchronized. "He's a deranged sorcerer-bat. Who knows what he's thinking."
Meanwhile, Shadow cackled, "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" and promptly set off six house-sized bombs at once. All the minions cowered appropriately.
The staircase was sequestered off into a corner and looked generally unsafe, given that the stairs were steep enough that someone was liable to take a step, miss said step, and keel over headfirst and finish the rest of the steps in a highly painful fashion. It also had no lighting of any sort and descended far enough into the darkness that it vanished from sight before it actually got to wherever it was going.
"...Yeah, this looks like a dungeon staircase," Mask agreed. "We going down all at once or should Speck and Sketch do their thing first?"
"We should do our thing!" Speck shouted from where he was perched on Green's shoulder. "Just to be safe!"
"Agreed," Sketch said, and promptly fused himself with the wall before sidling down the edge of the staircase (the actual staircase looked like a broken neck just waiting to happen and Sketch had no interest in tempting that). Speck, meanwhile, gave everyone a minor heart attack by leaping off Green's shoulder and using a large leaf which he pulled out somewhere to float down the passageway like he had a parachute.
For a few long minutes, everything was quiet.
Then Sketch hiked his way back up the staircase wall, detached himself, and announced, "Well this is definitely the dungeon and there's definitely a lot of girls in it. But this is gonna be a lot trickier than we thought."
"Of course it is," Ocarina sighed.
*Author's Note: The sneaky music stops being relevant now. You can exit the red-and-white arrow box, unless you don't want to. The rest of the chapter may not flow as well with Pink Panther though, just saying.*
There were several things that the Link noticed once they got down into the dungeon. The first thing, however, was not necessarily even close to being the most important thing; it was simply the thing that all but threw itself in their faces and refused to be ignored. Wedding dresses were like that, after all.
"Oh, thank the goddesses," Princess Zelda said – incidentally, her presence was actually the most important thing – and hoisted up the considerable fabric of the wedding dress she was wearing in order to cross the floor without tripping. "I was running out of ways to believably stall a wedding. Have you ever tried to convince someone that you're allergic to lace? Let me tell you, it is not easy."
"I think I'm going to like you," Mask decided. "I take it that you've guessed why we're here?"
"Well I should hope that you're the rescue party," Zelda replied dryly. "I can only assume that you're related to Link somehow, given that he's not here and you all look remarkably like him, which leads me to believe that he recruited you to assist him in his quest against Vaati. Is he still split into Four, by the way?"
"Very," Ocarina said.
"I thought as much," Zelda nodded to herself. "Now, what's the plan?"
The plan, like basically every single other plan that the Links came up with, was along the lines of, 'Try and do a thing and improvise wildly along the way because something will inevitably go sideways in the process of trying to do the thing.' There had been, in the very beginning, one instance where the group had tried to execute a fully fleshed-out, beautifully detailed plan that would have made snowflakes jealous with its intricacy. It had lasted for all of three-and-a-half minutes before something had exploded that wasn't supposed to explode and it had all gone downhill from there.
So, basically, there was no plan.
"Um," Ocarina said, trying to think of a way to explain this to Zelda that didn't involve causing mass panic. Mask, thankfully, had no such issues.
"Not enough time to explain," he said hurriedly, because in his experience the less time he gave someone to wonder about it the better, and also because it had the convenient excuse of being true. "We've got another group launching an Assault to cover for the rescue and there's only so much time before Vaati notices."
As if on cue, the entire Palace shook again and a crumble of dirt landed on Mask's head. He brushed it off absently and said, "Case in point."
Zelda pursed her mouth, clearly evaluating the whole situation. "Fill me in later then," she decided, then turned around and snapped out, "Girls! Ditch your heels, we're staging an escape and stilettos aren't going to be very helpful."
"Can I use mine as a weapon?" One of the women asked, holding up a shoe with a heel that had been whittled to be far pointier than it had any right to be.
"That," Zelda replied, pointing at her and smiling disturbingly, "is a much better idea."
The woman replied with an equally disturbing smile and began showing her fellow marriage victims the best way to sharpen their shoes on the stone walls. The Links all suppressed shivers.
"We've been in here for a while," Zelda said to the group as if that was a sufficient explanation. "But anyways, we should move."
There was silence for a moment, before Red made a small confused noise and said, "What was the plan to get the girls out of the dungeon again?"
Sketch promptly facepalmed, while Ocarina flushed and Mask just let out a long-suffering sigh. "It's a miracle that we ever get anything done, I swear."
"Excuse us for a minute," Green said to the now-slightly-suspicious Zelda before herding everyone into a circle and giving everyone his personal version of a Leader's Stare. "We just told Zelda that we had a plan. The usual course of action after that is to act like we've got a plan!"
"In Red's defense," Speck said, "our usual plan isn't very good. And since we're more-or-less using the usual plan..."
"We need to start making supplement plans for the usual plan," Sketch muttered. "Like, we need a bomb-supplement, at least."
"We've never had to break other people out of a dungeon before," Ocarina added. "Before this it's always just been ourselves."
"Plus," Mask agreed, "there's probably ten or twelve girls in here. We can't just lead them all back through the Palace, regardless of how sharp their shoes are. The Assault Team is going to bring this place down sooner or later, and since they've got Shadow my rupees are on sooner."
Green rubbed at his face. "I know all that. I'm just saying that Princess Zelda's presence is not the best time to hash it all out!"
Everyone considered that.
"...Yeah, probably would have been better to do this during that planning phase," Mask conceded.
"That's all well and good for next time, but what do we do for right now?"
Sketch frowned. "Maybe there's a secret exit somewhere?"
"Or we could bomb a hole in the wall," Red said. He received several confused glances, mostly because he was usually the very last person in the group to suggest blowing things up and hearing him do it now was vaguely worrying. Red just met it all with a smile. "Shadow's already blowing stuff up, right? Who's gonna notice one more explosion in the basement?"
"...That's a good point," Speck said.
"And it's not exactly like we're short on explosives," Sketch agreed, grinning.
Green just shook his head in completely fake exasperation. "I'll go tell Zelda and the other girls to stand out of the blast zone, then."
"I," Shadow announced, looking absolutely devastated as he did, "am out of bombs."
Lore promptly fell over in a dead faint. Gen rolled his eyes, hoisted his now-unconscious co-leader over his shoulder, and said, "So use something else. Improvise. Shape-shift into a Dragon or a whale or whatever. You're not restricted to just bombs, you know."
"But bombs are the most fun!"
Lore suddenly revived himself. "Ooh, be a whale!" he exclaimed. "Then I can take out some of my Windfish frustrations out on you!"
"No," Shadow said bluntly.
Lore, to nobody's surprise, was unaffected. "Okay then, I'll be your comedic partner. I can do an excellent impersonation of a bowl of petunias." He cleared his throat, then crouched down to approximate a pot, then blasted Spring from the Rod of Seasons and manifested several colorful flowers which he held over his head. Then he cleared his throat a second time and intoned, "Oh no, not again."
Gen stared. Then he blinked. Then he stared again. Shadow, meanwhile, fell over laughing. "I remember that reference!" he cackled. "Wait, wait, give me a minute, I need to be a whale."
His body blurred, enlarged, and refocused to be a sperm whale, albeit a very dark-colored sperm whale with glowing red eyes. He then gave Lore a conspiratorial wink and said, "That's a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
Then they both fell over laughing, which, because Shadow was currently being a whale, turned out to be very unfortunate for the portion of Vaati's Palace which happened to be in the way. Several hapless minions disintegrated beneath him.
"...They're insane," Gen decided. "Goddesses help me, they're insane and I willingly associate with them. What is wrong with me?"
"They decided to adopt you and you decided to let them," Dusk said, having watched everything from a safe distance. "And now you're too far into their sphere of influence to have any hope of escaping."
Gen just groaned, entirely unable to deny it.
Meanwhile, Blue noticed Shadow being a whale and Lore impersonating a bowl of petunias and gaped irately. "Did they just make a reference without me?" he sputtered. "And nobody smacked them for it!?"
"He's Lore," Vio replied, shrugging in between shooting things with arrows. "I think he's immune."
"That is so unfair! I make references all the time and I never get away with it!"
"Oh," Vio said, suddenly reminded, and proceeded to smack Blue upside the head. "Mind the walls."
Blue whimpered. "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."
"What did I just say!?"
"This raises so many architectural questions," Zelda said, staring up at the hole that the Links had blasted in the side of the Palace while the Links themselves helped the last of the girls out through it. "I could swear that this was a load-bearing wall. I'm almost positive."
"Let's not question it," Green told her. Just then, the last girl hopped over the rim of the hole in the wall – which proceeded to collapse and bring a good portion of the upper floors with it not five seconds later. At least six Keese poofed out of existence.
"I knew it," Zelda declared, looking unusually vindicated given that her fellow captive had escaped death by literal seconds.
"Idiots," Din grunted.
"Remind me to beam some architecture wisdom into their heads at some point," Farore requested. Nayru glared at her.
"I'll take care of any wisdom beaming, thank you very much."
"They're my Attribute, I'll do what I want with them!"
"Absolutely not, Wisdom is my Sphere!"
The argument rapidly dissolved into pointless bickering. Din let out an aggrieved sigh.
"I'll just keep watching then," she muttered. "Someone's got to keep them from bringing the Castle down on themselves."
By this point, the only thing keeping the Palace standing was probably the Anti-Logic field that Lore dragged around with him. Between the gaping chasm in the back of the Palace where the load-bearing wall used to be and the rampant destruction from the Assault Team out front, there was really no reason for the building to still be upright. Consequently, any minion that had somehow escaped the collapse of the load-bearing wall and the chaos of the Assault Team had abandoned its station long ago. Given that these minions consisted of a handful of battered bokoblins, one dented Armos, and the remnants of the resident Keese flock, it wasn't much of a surprise when Shadow Smiled at them and they all fled for their lives.
It should be noted that Shadow's 'Smile', which had recently been capitalized and all but trademarked in the minds of the group, had gained said prowess due to the fact that it involved far more teeth than were strictly necessary and did absolutely none of the things that smiles are normally supposed to do. It was not a nice Smile, or a comforting Smile. It was not the kind of Smile that made anyone feel better about themselves.
Shadow's Smile was the kind of Smile that said, 'Run while you still can and maybe, just maybe, I'll let you live.'
Thankfully, the rest of the group had built up an immunity to the Smile by this point. Otherwise things might have gotten awkward. Equally thankfully, Shadow stopped Smiling just in time for the Stealth Group to appear from around the corner of what was left of the Palace wall with Zelda and the rest of the kidnapped women in tow. After all, the girls were wielding sharpened stiletto heels and they were wearing wedding dresses, which automatically made them twice as dangerous as they would have been otherwise and there was just no real way that any sort of confrontation between them and Shadow would have ended well.
"Hey guys!" Lore called, waving cheerfully with the Rod of Seasons still in his off hand. The patch of flowers sprouting from the item lost a few petals in the movement.
"...Wow," Mask said, surveying the damage. "You could take a pictograph of this and put it in the dictionary next to 'overkill' and it would work out just fine."
"Nah, this wasn't overkill," Steam said, rather unconvincingly. "This was just... enthusiastic landscaping."
Off in the distance, the sole remaining guard-tower shuddered and crumbled to pieces. Steam winced. "Very enthusiastic," he amended.
The Stealth Team looked generally unconvinced. Green crossed his arms doubtfully.
"In his defense, he only used the Spirit Train six times," Wind said helpfully. "Dusk actually caused more damage than Steam did."
"What, really?" Sketch said. "What triggered his wolf this time?"
"Er... nothing," Dusk muttered, displaying his usual amount of fondness for attention. "I just have some heavy artillery and I decided to use it. That's all."
"You guys should have seen what Lore and Shadow did," Realm put in. "It was weird."
"It was awesome," Shadow corrected smugly. In the background, Blue mumbled something vaguely irritated and the words, "...could've invited me..." drifted over the group.
"Next time," Lore promised, grinning. "You can be the depressed android."
Blue perked up considerably. Vio groaned.
Meanwhile, the last of the girls traipsed over to the group and joined the general huddle around Princess Zelda, who was helping Wind alter the wedding dresses that they were all wearing so that they could actually get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. Zelda herself, who had already had her dress altered, was looking up at the remains of the Palace with vicious satisfaction. While she normally didn't condone this amount of violence, she also normally hadn't been kidnapped, forced into a (quite frankly hideous; Zelda was a very practical girl and avoided lace and ruffles like Gen avoided spiders) wedding dress, made to wear heels, shoved into a dungeon, and badly coerced into a marriage ceremony. The marriage ceremony had failed, obviously, but it was the trauma that counted and Zelda was going to milk that trauma for all it was worth.
Therefore, she didn't feel guilty in the slightest. In her opinion, Vaati had it coming.
"I believe," she said, turning to the large group of Link look-alikes that were milling about in front of her, "that we should leave before Vaati notices our escape. Link?"
Speck gave the leftmost member of the Four a nudge. "She's talking to you," he whispered. Then he blinked, and belatedly tacked on, "guys."
"Yeah?" the Four said. Zelda took a minute to search them out from all the other Heroes in front of her, which was a lot harder than it sounded given how many of them there were.
"A word?" she requested.
The Four picked their way across the uneven mountaintop, a task which was not helped in the slightest by all the Castle debris scattered everywhere. Zelda, thankfully, just matched their somewhat slower pace until she felt that their privacy would be assured.
"So," she said, "you've picked up some new friends."
The Four grinned sheepishly and rubbed the backs of their collective necks, which was a motion that never ceased to be interesting to watch simply because of how coordinated it was. "We've been busy."
"I can see that," Zelda responded. "Surely, though, Vaati isn't that much of a threat to require..." she did a quick head count, "...fifteen more Heroes?" She ran her eyes over the group again and frowned. "And why do you all look so similar?"
"About that," the Four said. "Vaati's just kind of... part of a larger problem. We're taking care of him while we're moving on to fix the underlying issue."
Zelda absorbed this and nodded. "Alright. I'll take the girls down the mountain, then. Much as I'd like to stay and help, there's only so much that sharpened stiletto shoes can do to protect a girl and I'm one of the few people with self-defense training in our little wedding-victim group."
The Four nodded, not quite knowing how to respond to that.
"Now," Zelda said, "about my second question which you so cleverly avoided answering."
The Four quickly consulted each other.
'Lie?'
'She'd know. She's Wisdom.'
'We don't have time for the entire truth.'
'To be fair, it's a really complicated truth.'
'Bare minimum truth, then?'
There was an agreement from the other three, then the Four looked up and said, "They're our brothers."
It was hard to identify the look on Zelda's face. On one hand, she was generally a no-nonsense kind of person. On the other hand, there were four pairs of very blue eyes looking at her with absolute sincerity and a little bit of desperation. Her brain was sending her some very mixed messages.
And then what was left of the Palace abruptly exploded, as Vaati finally noticed that he'd been attacked and decided to do something about it. He burst out of the standing remains and sent rock flying everywhere, inadvertently destroying everything that had escaped the initial Assault as he did, though he didn't care much. There wasn't much left of it to care about anyways.
"Farore," Zelda cursed, and immediately flattened herself to avoid being seen. "I was hoping to get away before this mess went down. Link, do any of your brothers have really fast transportation?"
"Wind has a teleport," the Four said. "WIND! OVER HERE!"
Wind, thankfully, was one of those people who could pick up on a plan without ever having been told the plan, which was good because Vaati was putting his title as a Wind Mage to good use and it was making things very difficult to hear. He took one look at Zelda, then glanced over at the rest of the girls, put two and two together, and was using the Wind Waker to transport them all away before Vaati even noticed.
It was debatable as to whether or not that was a good thing, though, because if Vaati wasn't focusing on his potential wives leaving, it meant that he was focusing on the Links instead. And judging by the way his singular massive eye was narrowed, he wasn't happy.
"Do you have any idea how long it took me to rebuild my Palace of Winds!?" he bellowed. "Look at it! The rubble is in pieces!"
"You're welcome," Shadow said smugly.
"My brides were in my dungeon!" Vaati shrieked. "My dungeon is currently beneath several tons of crushed rock!"
"Actually, we rescued the girls, like, two minutes ago," Sketch corrected. Vaati paused.
"Oh," he said, and for a moment he seemed quite confused. But then he rallied with, "HOW DARE YOU STEAL MY WIVES FROM ME?!"
"Daringly," Lore told him. Vaati glared at him, flapped his six wings in unison and sent a massive blast of wind at the group. Halfway there, Wind reappeared from transporting the girls to safety, took one look at the veritable wall heading for them all, and yelped in surprise before he slashed through the air with the Wind Waker and the whole thing dissolved before it ever reached them.
"...Dude," Steam said.
"You DARE!?" Vaati thundered.
"What just happened?" Wind asked discreetly.
"You just cancelled out Mr. Purple Bat's attack in less than a second," Lore told him. "You're officially on point for the fight, by the way."
"Ah," Wind said. "Okay." He raised the Wind Waker again, and Vaati narrowed his eye.
Then he charged.
Hey, guys. Been a while, right? Turns out that, once a person graduates, you've gotta rework your entire schedule. All my life I've gone to school, and suddenly... there's no school. I've lost the entire framework that I built my life around. Adjusting to the lack of that is... time-consuming.
But hey, I think I've got it all worked out now.
On a happier note, I think I found the real-life version of Realm. Kinda. He's animated, so it's not exactly 'real-life', quote unquote, but it's pretty darn close. Look up Milo Murphy's Law and watch the pilot, it's on Youtube. I swear, Milo has Realm's exact personality but with a better sense of direction.
Something to do in your spare time, I suppose.
By the way, anybody catch the Hitchhiker's Guide reference?
Changeling
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian: lysil (an extremely mild insult. He basically called Gen 'silly')
Oh, wrog-yeth pu os staf... (they grow up so fast...)
Thanks to CenturionsofRome, .green, Deifyd Shadow, digimonhero, Jolteongrl, toddsamuel01, ShadraRune, aloof-kokiri, EowaElemn, Dual Eclipse 5, Zephyr Winds, Karmia, Maximum035, SonicTheUltimate, TheHyrulianHero, ecco-song, riku-soncazenosee, Meditatio, Appletank, Lerobin, Rose Colored Philosophies, Zephirth, J2Dragon, Dark Lidia, TheSuperMario, SnowLink2, Digital Bibliophile, crayontesla, Blargg888, cerokun, Kingster16, TechGamer5, JerryTheWaddleDee, draco1221, Jimmythebass, slightlyabovehuman, okami kurama 666, x-smith, DarkHeiliger, Gguy12345, Sheep6873, zero-the-avenger, Wintermittens, CreateStuff, 9, Jejuneic, Artiexli, PinkSaphira, DianaxAkiraFTW, NightOwlCity, Whatwasthatnoise, theLilPen, ArtixViper, EvilMoW, kingpariah, DetectiveSky612, Kameo1, morwekai, Purrskitty6, fantasylover53, Fanite, Dragoneir, FierySprites, somethingrandom101, Tylerear11, KitsuneShin0bi, fancyfairy, Morskijez, AlternateSol, ravegrl96, JazzApples, Rocket Rover, Esaki Nalex, Morskijez, Blazinator, DeamonAngel Song, citysunknown, TrackTiger101, BewareTheDragon1, shinshinjane, Goku-kun, EtherAlly, Chatspurrincess, Treki26, Purplemoon-on-the-rise, JustDance04, Extreme Light 9, , aGenndy Oda C.O.G, Calvin H, NightWing2060, dartya, Luchux, GallifreyanRavenclaw01, ChroniclerOfFantasies, The Purple Goddesses, Fun Pak 64, Zakara, , Etirdoyn, Conbur, , Gailux, YveltalFan, Big-X, Chocolate Shaymin, Keyblade132, fluffyreadings, M-A-F-R-A, Triforce Dragons, ThePolishSausageRoaster, Milly the Dragon, Fictiondevourer, siulus18, NoSignalBlueScreen, Zraul Prime, Strife89, Darckaiser2005, TetraForce214, Loremaster Endsong, DigiKouichi, Everwinterbloodmoon, Galieo Figaro, Shioran Toushin, 321Technonote123, Flamegoboom14, OwlsCantRead, wildrook, Ordinarycomet3, triria3965, Lilif3r19, DJman248, TheLonelyWillow, blossomlilytree, PuppetofL, Foreigner55, Farsong, AmethystFeather, Kelrisathefiredemoness, Duja89, taynfat, The Deck Master, zeldawolffang, RoBlu321, Scorpius02, Reg774, Sky Guardian warrior739, and Magyk-Foal1 for Favoriting/Following!
gatibolo: So, I can't actually speak Spanish, (I know more French and ASL than I do Spanish) but I'm hoping Google Translate did a better job then usual. Therefore: glad you like the story, and I plan on making more chapters soon.
Anonymousse: Regrettably, adding a new Link this late in the story would throw everything out of whack. I will not be adding BotW Link to DL; I will, however, feature him heavily in the sequel/spin-off thing I'm planning. But yes, he will be the chef, and I like your running gag idea. I hope you don't mind if I use it?
Endsong: Hyrule Warriors is scheduled to make an appearance in the sequel/spin-off, and HW Link will be joining the group at that time. And I'm totally crashing the Spirit Train into Cia's proceedings; I mean, how could I not?