(It's getting progressively more difficult to think of things to talk to you about.)
I don't see why. I'm the Universe, I can literally talk about anything.
(Well sure, you can. But I'm just human. Eventually I run out of headspace.)
Makes me wonder how you ever thought you could handle nineteen characters at once.
(You know, sometimes I'm not sure I am...)
Mmm. Well, it's not like they belong to you anyway. You don't own the Legend of Zelda, Changeling.
(...Yeah, I know.)
Wind immediately took control of the air around him and sent a blast at Vaati, pushing the Bat-Mage back and forcing him to abort his attack run. He promptly retaliated by manifesting several spheres of dark purple fire and launching them at Wind, who dodged out of the way along with everyone else before slashing at the air again to defend himself.
"I can hold him off for a couple minutes at least!" he yelled to the rest of his siblings. "Make a plan!"
"I thought the plan was to re-use the plan from the Pudgy Bat!" Lore shouted back.
"'Right here!?"
The sheer incredulity in Wind's words made everyone take a quick look around. The mountaintop, which wasn't all that big to begin with, was currently covered in so much debris that it was honestly a miracle that nobody had tripped and fallen on their face yet. As far as a battlefield went, it was absolutely abysmal.
"Good point!" Lore acknowledged. "But if we move and then carry out the plan from the Pudgy Bat-"
"Just hurry up and pick an option before he blows us all off the mountain!" Wind demanded. He was frantically directing the Wind Waker in every which way to prevent exactly that from happening, and he was moving fast enough that his fingers were blurring. It would have been absolutely fascinating to watch if they weren't in the middle of a fight.
"Four," Dusk said, loudly so he could be heard over the shrieking of the rising storm-level winds, "where's the best spot to have battle that may or may not spawn a hurricane?"
"There's a Plains area south of the Sea of Trees that's far enough away from everything else that it should be safe enough."
"How likely are the trees to blow away in a random tornado?"
The Four took a moment to glance at the ongoing weather battle between Wind and Vaati and had to acknowledge that a random tornado was an entirely valid possibility. "Um... Hopefully not very?"
"Close enough!" Gen decided. "Let's move!"
The following twenty minutes were so full of confusion, windblown hats, randomly spontaneous tornados, flying debris, purple, and shouting that the whole thing turned into one large blur and nobody was quite sure how they'd gotten off the mountain at all, much less to the open field-like area where they ended up. Wind was still locked in a weather battle with Vaati, which had now graduated to throwing tornados at each other and was quickly on its way to spawning an entire miniature hurricane from all the rotation that was happening, and at that point everyone just gave up on keeping their hats on their heads and stuffed them all into their Bags instead.
Their hair immediately became hopelessly tangled, which was actually a bit of a problem for people like Lore, who had prodigious amounts of bangs, and was now having an issue seeing where he was going. It was ignored, however, because in the grand scheme of things there were much more important issues happening.
"So, the plan from the Pudgy Bat!" Lore yelled over the shrieking of the air. "We Hookshot him down and stab him with pointy things! Any questions!"
"What about projectiles!" Mask bellowed.
"If you can actually aim in this weather, then go for it!"
Mask frowned thoughtfully and turned to look at the rising storm, clearly doing some mental mathematical gymnastics which probably involved airspeed velocity and compensation for drift and other such complicated things. He didn't look very pleased with the prospects.
"Maybe not!" he decided.
"That's okay!" Lore yelled back. "Any other questions! Remember that there are no wrong questions except for the ones that have absolutely no place being asked in the middle of a Boss Fight!"
"I think we're good!" Gen shouted.
"Excellent!" Lore declared. "Also, we should find a better way of communicating because I think my voice is starting to give out! But while I don't particularly feel like being temporarily mute, I accept that there are more pressing issues right now and the biggest one is about to nail Sketch in the head with an magic blast! BREAK!"
Sketch yelped and ducked, just in time for said magic blast to go careening through the space where he used to be and impact explosively on the ground instead of his skull. Dusk grabbed him by the arm, dragged him to his feet, and took off sprinting; everyone else scattered.
Well, except Wind. But Wind was a bit busy and thus hadn't really noticed.
By this point, the storm around the group had graduated into a full-on typhoon, with Wind and Vaati at the center. Gales were shooting around in dangerously circular fashion, getting stronger with every step that the Links took away from the dueling two. Within only a few dozen feet away, the force of the storm became strong enough that it literally pushed some of the smaller Links – Speck in particular – to the ground. And the circular motion definitely wasn't helping. The miniature tornadoes from what the group was now recognizing as the start-up stage of the fight were progressing into the real deal, and every now and then a full-sized specimen would rage around the edge of the defined center circle.
It was at this point that everyone came to the general realization that they were going to be having a Boss Battle at the center of an actual, legitimate hurricane.
"WIND!" Gen bellowed, trying and very nearly failing to make himself be heard over the storm. "CAN YOU BRING HIM DOWN!?"
Wind grit his teeth in concentration and attempted a downward slash – only to have one of the tornadoes from the edge line break the circle and come careening straight for him. He quickly brandished his baton at it and redirected it with one quick jerk to send it into Vaati instead – not that it did much, because Vaati saw it coming and wrapped an air shield around himself to block.
"NO!" Wind yelled. "BUT MAYBE IF HE WERE DISTRACTED ENOUGH!"
"ON IT!" Gen whipped around and hollered, "LORE! DO YOUR THING!"
"COOL THE SPRING!?" Lore yelled back. "WHY WOULD I CHANGE THE SEASONS NOW!?"
"NEVER MIND!" Gen bellowed, rightly coming to the conclusion that it was just too loud to communicate well.
Only a few dozen feet away, which was actually more like several hundred given how much noise was being produced, Dusk was leading a collective effort to pin Vaati down with Hookshots. It wasn't working well. There was just so much wind– it was practically impossible to fire their tools and expect the tip to end up where they wanted it. Even though a Hookshot – and all the various variants – were made of metal and thus correspondingly heavy, it just wasn't enough to stand up to the power of the surrounding storm. Every attempt was blown off course long before it ever even got close to the target.
"THIS ISN'T WORKING!" Realm screeched when the tip of his borrowed Hookshot careened back around and nearly landed on his head.
"WE DON'T REALLY HAVE ANY BETTER OPTIONS THOUGH!" Ocarina screamed back.
"WHAT!?"
"Oh, not again," Dusk muttered to himself. "Midna, any ideas?"
'Have you tried supplication?'
"We're not worshipping a maniacal purple mammal, Midna."
'It might help, you know. He seems like that kind of crazy.'
Dusk sighed. "Let me rephrase this. Do you have any ideas that might work?"
"I CAN'T HEAR WHAT YOU'RE SAYING!" Sketch bellowed at him, having seen Dusk's mouth move but not realizing that Dusk wasn't actually trying to communicate with him. Dusk gave him a distracted hand flap which vaguely translated to, 'Not talking to you, try and hit the pudgy purple bat again and let me know how it goes'. Sketch made a face which indicated strong doubt about his chances.
'Awful lot of wind happening out there,' Midna observed. 'Maybe you should try hand signals.'
"Okay, let me rephrase this again. Do you have any ideas that might work for fighting?"
'Oh, why didn't you say so in the first place?'
"Midna."
'You just wanna suck the joy out of everything. Fine. Like I said, you see all that wind?'
"It's hard to miss," Dusk said dryly.
'Look at the dust. Vaati's spawning an updraft to keep himself in the air. Get underneath him, and you've got a guided shot straight up into his little pudgy purple bat body.'
Dusk frowned. "Getting that close is going to be tricky."
'Hey, I never said I had ideas on how to do it.'
"Yeah. Thanks though."
'What are partners for. Hey, we any closer to fixing the Universe yet? I'm getting really bored in here and I might have to start redecorating again.'
"I'll send Shadow for a visit," Dusk said hurriedly.
'You do that. Good luck with the bat.'
Dusk returned his attention to the outside world just in time to yelp and throw himself out of the way of a wayward twister. Out of habit, he bellowed, "WATCH WHERE YOU AIM THOSE THINGS!" into the screaming storm.
Given the lack of response he received, he sincerely doubted anyone had heard him.
Wind, meanwhile, was in the middle of a War. Just... not one that would be readily recognized by anyone other than himself, Vaati, and possibly Mask and Ocarina.
Weather magic wasn't very common. It was actually, despite all the uses it could have, one of the least-used types. And there was a very specific reason for that because, for no readily discernible purpose, the weather corresponded exactly with music.
Naturally, this discouraged several thousand non-musically-inclined people from ever attempting weather manipulation in the first place. Of the people who were musically inclined, about half of them weren't magically inclined, which understandably steered them in a different direction as well. And within the group of people who were both magically and musically inclined, a great deal simply weren't interested. Those who could put a tick mark in all three categories then had to deal with not only musical studies, but also weather studies, and in order to be legally certified as a weather-magic user, needed to be able to correctly identify exactly which form of the F-flat over high-C chord would produce a wind of exactly fifteen miles an hour (It was the major chord; the minor one produced a gust of sixteen miles an hour and would bring in a thunderstorm in exactly five-and-three-fourths of a minute. The official judging of such a minute differential involved several kites of varying weight and sensitivity, but most of the more practical examiners just brought a timer and a just-in-case umbrella.)
Wind wasn't actually certified, but in his case that had been because his examiners had been a boat, a talking frog in a cloud, and a fish god who just didn't seem to speak Hylian. He'd also skipped the F-flat above high-C test, but that had been more of a timing issue due to the impending Domination-by-Ancient-Evil that he'd been trying to thwart at the time. In all actuality, Wind was a master of weather manipulation – he just didn't have the official certification.
The problem was that so was Vaati.
If anyone bothered to listen, really listen, to the howling of the storm, they would have heard a song – albeit a jumpy, thoroughly off-tempo song that ratcheted back and forth between two very distinct melodies and seemed entirely unable to choose. This was, of course, because both Wind and Vaati were doing their very best to impose their own wills over the elements at the exact same time, and neither one was noticeably stronger than the other. Every G-chord Wind invoked was countered with a vibratingly low E, and conversely every minor-A-B progression that Vaati spun off was met with a high-D trill.
Really, Wind thought to himself in the spare moments between neutralizing Vaati's song and planning the next chords of his own, the fact that this fight was only taking place in the middle of a C3 hurricane with only F2 vortices spinning off in random directions should get him an award or something. If he hadn't spun off that downward G-F-E progression at the beginning of the battle, it would have been so much worse.
Maybe he could bring it up to the fish god once he got home and finally get that official certification. With any luck, the aquatic deity had finally learned Hylian.
...Just in case though, he should probably bring Lore along. Even if his multilingual brother didn't know whatever language the fish god was speaking, Wind would consider betting actual Rupees on Lore knowing something similar, or at the very least being able to pick up passing proficiency within a day or two.
He shook his head; he was getting distracted. And also allowing at least three rogue twisters to spiral out into the landscape in the process. Wind yelped and quickly redirected them back at Vaati, who only twisted them back around and threw them at Wind instead.
Yeah, Wind decided as he diffused the cyclones and launched a hail-heavy assault on the his demonic opponent, he definitely deserved that certification after this.
Meanwhile, everyone else was running for their lives, because while Wind was somewhat safely in the eye of the storm, the rest of the Links were most certainly not. At this point, it was honestly a struggle to stay standing, much less engage in a fight at the same time.
And there was also the fact that they'd lost both Vaati and Wind in the storm somewhere. They'd realized this after a particularly vicious gust (which had been accompanied by a highly unnecessary amount of rain and hailstones) had blown everyone off their feet, and then once they'd gotten back up, discovered that their opponent was no longer in sight.
It was a logical assumption that Vaati, and by extension, Wind, were at the center of the weather. Finding that center, though, was a whole other problem entirely. The gales changed direction at the slightest whim and with no discernible cause, and since the highly unnecessary amount of rain and hailstones was still around, that just made it all worse.
You could extend your hand out in front of your face and not be able to see it, was a good way of putting it.
"Wow," Lore said, extending his hand out in front of his face and squinting through the storm. "I can't see my hand."
"WHAT!?" Everyone else screamed.
"WHAT!?" Lore bellowed back.
Case in point.
A few feet away, not that they knew it, Mask blindly reached out and latched on to what he hoped was Ocarina's sleeve. It was actually Ocarina's tunic hem, but since the person in question was still the same, it all worked out. The very last thing he needed was to lose his younger self in a hurricane that could very easily be lethal. The very thought of the paradoxes made him twitch.
Ocarina, meanwhile, was just trying not to fall over. The grip somebody had on his clothes (he assumed it was Mask, just because his older self tended to hover) was certainly helping, but as one of the taller Links in the group he was definitely a larger target for the elements than most of the others.
On a far less important note, (not that either of them cared), they'd more-or-less lost their dresses ages ago. They were still wearing clothes, obviously, because they'd had their regular green outfits on underneath, but the dresses had been made of fancy, and consequently rather flimsy, material and simply were not made to be worn in a hurricane. Their regular clothes were made for adventuring, and were thick and heavy and more often than not had chainmail sewn in with the stitching, and for lack of a better description, were in fact made to be worn in a hurricane. And also in a volcano, on the ocean floor, up in the sky, not to mention several other dimensions and all the various atmospheres that came with that... the point was, their normal clothes were doing just fine.
Their dresses were hanging off in tatters and tearing about like runaway kites. Lore would have laughed at the sight if he could see it through the storm, and if anyone would have even heard him laughing, and if he weren't preoccupied by other things like living and not getting clocked with a hailstone to the head.
Wind, on the other hand, would have despaired, because he'd put a lot of work into coordinating those colors with everyone's skin tone and do you even know how many times he'd pricked himself with a needle trying to hem all that fabric in a ten-minute time crunch?
But, he was busy having a riff-off with a demonic bat. Everyone who had been finagled into a dress suddenly got the distinct feeling that they'd somehow escaped a terrifying lecture.
"...Weird," Mask muttered.
"WHAT!?" Ocarina shrieked.
"WHAT!?" Mask yelled back.
"WHAT!?"
"WHA- oh forget it," Mask growled.
Still, at least he knew that he did in fact have Ocarina's sleeve. The fact that he could actually make out Ocarina's voice in the storm proved that much.
(He did not have Ocarina's sleeve, he was still holding Ocarina's tunic hem. But again, it was the right person, so it all worked out.)
Ocarina, meanwhile, was listening. Not to the yelling of the person holding his shirt (he was eighty percent sure it was Mask by this point, but there was so much noise-), but rather to the cacophony of the storm itself.
He thought he could hear... music.
Which was ridiculous – right? There was absolutely no way that anyone would be playing an instrument in the middle of a-
Wait.
Ocarina hurriedly fumbled through his multitude of pockets and various items of holding until he pulled out his... ocarina. Man he should have thought his nickname through a bit more. But that wasn't important – because if he was actually hearing what he thought he was hearing, then...
He hesitantly raised the instrument to his mouth and blew the first few notes to the Sun Song. The surrounding storm roiled, calmed-
-and abruptly kicked back up again, even stronger than before. Ocarina let his hands fall to his sides and groaned.
"Great," he muttered. "There's a weather battle in here somewhere."
"WHAT!?" Mask screeched. Ocarina flinched, then used the sound to pinpoint the general area Mask was in, then blindly moved his hand around until he found his younger-but-older self's ear. He crouched down, positioned himself, took a deep breath, and yelled, "BY ANY CHANCE, DO WE EVER PASS CERTIFICATION ON WEATHER MANIPULATION!?"
Mask paused, then groped about until he found Ocarina's collar and pulled him down a few more inches to reach his ear. Then he bellowed, "OF COURSE NOT, DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER HOW HARD THAT EXAM IS!?"
"OBVIOUSLY!" Ocarina screamed. "BEFORE ALL THIS UNIVERSE-ENDING STUFF STARTED HAPPENING I'D FAILED THE THING FIVE TIMES! I WAS HOPING MAYBE I'D HAD BETTER LUCK WHEN I WAS OLDER!"
"SORRY TO DISAPPOINT YOU!"
Ocarina scowled (not that Mask could see it, what with the driving rain and all) and began to straighten back up, only to be jerked back down by Mask's still-firm grip on his outfit. His younger-but-older self pulled Ocarina back into range before yelling, "WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW!?"
At this point, Ocarina's voice was beginning to give out. So instead of shouting the entire time-consuming explanation, instead he just shouted, "LISTEN!"
Mask paused, and for a long minute, they both just stood there. Then Mask released his grip on Ocarina's clothes and said what was probably a long and eloquent string of curses. Due to the raging hurricane, Ocarina heard exactly none of it, but he had several choice things that he himself would like to say about the situation and since Mask was him, just older... he could take a pretty good guess.
Then, suddenly, everything froze. Mask and Ocarina exchanged confused glances, noticing that they could finally see now that the rain had (literally) stopped, and Ocarina said, "Er, did you...?"
"No," Mask replied.
"That was me," Lore's voice answered, as the teen himself appeared through the haze of unmoving weather. He had his Harp of Ages nestled in the crook of one arm and his fingers were keeping up a continuous strum. "I got tired of shouting to be heard and then not actually being heard despite how loud I was being. My jokes don't work if nobody can hear them."
"And?" Dusk prompted pointedly, materializing beside him.
"...and we clearly need a new plan and the only way that was gonna happen was if I stopped everything so we could actually find and talk to each other," Lore admitted begrudgingly.
Gen came into view on Lore's other side and muttered, "I am so requesting lessons on how to make Lore do that."
"No can do, it's Dusk-specific," Lore replied. "I would know. I've tried."
"You've... tried to order yourself to behave?"
"No," Lore said, in a tone of voice which implied Gen was being ridiculous. "I tried to cultivate an immunity. It didn't work. Dusk can guilt-trip like nobody's business."
"I'm right here," Dusk reminded them mildly.
"You see!?" Lore sputtered, gesturing wildly. Unfortunately, this meant that he'd taken his hands off the Harp, and was no longer strumming. The storm kicked back into motion with a vengeance for exactly four-and-a-half seconds before Lore got it under control again.
"My bad," he said sheepishly, while Gen glared and Dusk just sighed.
"Do we know where anyone else is?" the oldest Link asked, tactfully moving on.
"Well," Mask began, "I'm pretty sure Wind and Vaati are that way-" he waved his hand at a cluster of storm which, despite being frozen in time, was still thick enough that they couldn't see a thing through it "-because that looks like the center of the storm and that's usually how these things work. I think I had the Four on my left at one point, but it also could have Green and his crew, I'm not really sure. And I have no idea about the others."
"Steam was beside us before I lost sight of everything," Ocarina contributed. "But that was a while ago..."
"I'm still here," Steam announced suddenly, appearing between Lore and Gen. "I brought Sketch and Shadow too."
"I'm having a minor mental crisis, but other than that I'm doing great," Sketch informed everyone with a voice that just wavered on the edge of panic. His hands were nervously and shakily wringing out his hat, his tunic, and whatever grip he could get on his trousers. It didn't look like he was fully aware that he was doing it either.
Dusk handed him a towel, along with a softly reassuring, "You're not melting, Sketch."
"See, I know that, but at the same time I really, really don't."
"I'm not having any problems," Shadow yawned.
"That's nice," Sketch said. "Where's everyone else? And make the answer really unnecessarily lengthy, I need a distraction please."
"Last time I saw the Four, they were over there-ish... I think," Steam said, waving a hand in a vaguely left-ish direction. "I haven't actually seen Speck since the storm kicked up. I assumed that meant that he shrunk down and tried his usual tactics, but given all the wind and stuff I'm a bit worried about him now..."
"Don't be, I've got him," Dusk informed them all, and produced the diminutive Speck from one of his pockets. The tiny Link waved at them all and shouted, "I'm okay!"
"But if anyone sees his jar, please grab it. He says it rolled away after he used it and he lost it when a tornado came through."
Everyone winced.
"That doesn't really bode well, nowk-oyu?" Lore said. "I mean, jars are pretty breakable, and if there was a tornado..."
"We'll deal with that when we can," Dusk told him. "But in the meantime, has anyone seen Realm?"
Silence.
"Dear goddesses, we're never going to find him," Steam said, horrified.
"Find who?" Realm asked, suddenly popping in where he most certainly wasn't a few seconds ago and scaring half the group quite effectively.
"We thought you'd be halfway across the continent by now!" Steam gasped, once he'd processed Realm's appearance.
"So did I," Realm agreed. "Which I why I didn't move a single inch once I realized I couldn't see the ground. Given how lost I tend to get when I can see where I'm going, I figured it would be even worse if I couldn't."
Gen clasped Realm's shoulder and looked him in the eye. "Thank you," he said, fervently.
Realm shrugged, clearly feeling awkward with the genuine emotion Gen was displaying. To distract everyone, he pointed over Gen's shoulder and said, "Hey, I think I see the Four."
"We keep tripping on hailstones," the Four complained as they approached, since it actually was them. "It's messing with our synch."
"Which is absolutely fascinating," Vio added, as he and his three siblings came up behind their fellow Four Sword brothers, "but unfortunately not the point right now. Who stopped the storm?"
Lore held up his Harp, somehow managing to do so without actually pausing in his playing. "I know, I'm awesome, but please thank me for it later. Is everyone here?"
"We're missing Wind," Sketch pointed out.
"Wind is exempt from this particular planning meeting due to the fact that I'm pretty sure he's the only reason we're still alive in the middle of a hurricane," Gen replied. Mask suddenly made a noise of comprehension and smacked himself on the head.
" That's what the music was!" He exclaimed to Ocarina. "I thought it was just Vaati, but – if that was Wind – holy crap, he must be a master– he's gonna need a backup chorus, like, now."
Everyone (except Ocarina, who had somehow followed that sentence perfectly) stared at Mask.
"Say what now?" Shadow muttered.
"I'm going to have to agree with Shadow here," Dusk said. "Can you, ah, elaborate on that?"
"Weather is music is weather," Ocarina explained quickly.
"Ohhhhh," Lore said, nodding.
"Ohhhhh, no," Gen retorted. "That made even less sense than what Mask said!"
"Wind and Vaati are having a weather battle but due to some really weird Universe physics and junk they're actually doing it by composing music at each other. If we want to win, we need to provide backup vocals," Mask summarized.
"Ohhhhh," chorused everybody else.
"New groups, then," Gen said decisively. "Those who can sing, and those who cannot. I, for one, cannot."
Dusk raised a hand. "We all know I can, so I'll start the singing group."
There was a moment of hurried confusion as the group divided themselves and clustered around either Gen or Dusk. It turned out that the reason most of the Links carried various instruments around was because they couldn't carry a tune if their life depended on it. The exceptions to this were Steam, Realm, Speck (but since he was currently too tiny to be heard, it wasn't really relevant), and unexpectedly, Shadow.
"What?" he snapped, upon noticing everyone staring at him. "I copied Dusk's vocal chords when I patchworked myself my own body. Deal with it."
Mask cleared his throat from his spot on the edge of the 'Cannot Sing' group. "Shadow's voice aside, we need an Instrumental group too. Everyone with an instrument – not the guys in the Singing group, you're already spoken for – on me."
Ocarina, Gen, and Lore immediately stepped closer. Sketch furrowed his brow and asked, "Does a bell count?" Everyone else just sort of backed up awkwardly.
"Does it do more than one note?" Gen asked.
"Uhhh... no."
"Probably not, then."
Sketch shrugged and joined the rest of the Links who were not musically talented in any way.
"So then, what's our New Plan?"
"Well," Mask said, "First we all need to go find Wind. Once we do that, Lore should bring him into the time-stop so we can explain the New Plan. Basically, everyone who's musically inclined is gonna be giving Wind harmonic backup, which should give him enough of a boost to overpower Vaati. Everyone who's not being musical will, at that point, stab him. Sound good?"
"Wash, rinse, and repeat as necessary," Lore threw in, "but yeah. Sounds good!"
"So then... that's your cue, isn't it?"
"You're right, it is!" Lore exclaimed, and strummed even more enthusiastically to make sure he was conveying his... well, enthusiasm. "Break!"
It took a few seconds of everyone turning and walking through the time-stopped storm in the exact same direction for the group to realize how entirely inaccurate the word 'break' was for the current plan they were using. A couple of the Links eyed Lore curiously, halfway expecting him to burst out with a different, more suitable (or possibly more confusing) word instead. However, Lore just grinned at them.
"The dichotomy amuses me," he explained.
Getting to the actual epicenter of the storm took some doing, because the closer they got, the more hailstones were mixed in with the motionless downpour, and the more time the group spent picking their way around said hailstones. This was because the hail was ranging from pebble-sized all the way up to fist-sized, and unlike the rain (which was liquid and pliable and just sort of soaked into their clothing as they moved through it), the hailstones left bruises. However, the amount of Health Potion Gen was carrying outnumbered the amount of received bruises by at least two digits, so the group found themselves standing between a statue-still Vaati and Wind not too much later. They were frozen in mid-brandish, Wind halfway through flicking his baton rather violently upwards, and Vaati just on the finishing clip of a sideways slash. Although the airspace around each combatant was clear, the distance between them was a disfigured battleground, and several different weather effects were motionlessly on display.
"...Is that a tornado inside another tornado?" Blue asked carefully, in a tone which implied he rather hoped the answer would be no.
"Actually, I think that's a tornado inside a tornado inside a tornado," Vio replied. "There's a third one beneath the other two, you just have to look closely."
"That does not make me feel better."
"Well... sorry? I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do about that."
Blue frowned thoughtfully. "Go on a scientifically-fueled rant about how the conflicting vortices and rotation reversal ought to make such a thing impossible?"
"Er... no. It's just extremely rare and incredibly unlikely."
"Okay, well... can't you go off on a rant about the odds, then?"
"And what makes you think I know the odds?"
"Well, you already know that it's extremely rare and incredibly unlikely."
Vio pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's a generalization, not a specification."
"But if you can generalize, then-"
"Can we maybe stow this conversation until after we beat up Vaati?" Green interrupted. "Like, I appreciate the lack of actual confrontation this time, but somehow you two manage to find the worst times to argue."
Ocarina and Mask, meanwhile, were glumly inspecting the triple-tornado and bemoaning their own lack of weather-manipulation skills.
"Look at this thing, it's textbook," Mask complained. "I could barely even get one tornado stabilized! He's got three stacked in each other and I'm not even sure he paused between doing that and setting off that lightning strike over there!"
"I'm still working on rotation," Ocarina muttered.
"A lightning strike, though!" Mask repeated, scandalized.
"Er... is that impressive?" Dusk asked hesitantly.
"Extremely," Mask grumbled.
"And you can complain about it later, please," Gen interrupted. "Lore, you good to go?"
"I'm always good to go," Lore answered. "Bringing Wind into the timestop right about... now."
Suddenly, Wind was in motion again, and in the split second between him registering what was happening and actually doing something about it, he accidentally whacked an unaware Sketch in the face with his baton.
"Oh my Din, I am so sorry," Wind sputtered, while Sketch rubbed at his nose and let out a few pain-filled curses. "What are you – how did you get here?" He glanced around, did a double take, and continued, "How did all of you even get here?"
Lore wordlessly held up his Harp, still strumming away.
"...How long have you been doing that?"
"My fingers are beginning to lose feeling," Lore informed him cheerfully.
"...Ah."
"We have a plan," Dusk interceded. "Basically, please keep doing exactly what you've been doing, but shout out your chord progression as you go so we can provide backup harmonies."
Wind blinked, clearly parsing that through in his head for a few moments. Then he said, "Wait, am I not the only one with an effective mastery in weather manipulation? Why didn't you guys say so?"
"Oh, no, you're definitely the only one," Mask informed him, irritably. "And trust me, Ocarina and I would like to have some Words about that. But most of us are only just musically inclined enough to follow your lead and lend a little extra oomph."
Wind smacked his head. "Why didn't I think of that...?"
"No worries, that's why we're here too," Lore declared. "Now, please explain exactly what you're doing and exactly what you expect us to be doing."
"Okay then," Wind said, getting down to business. "Right now I was in the middle of an ascending E-flat-F-G triad, and planning to use that to either launch a G-scale arpeggio or to climb back down the triad depending on whether Vaati countered with a vortex or a hailstorm. Then I was going to counter with a high-C trill, and then after that we were probably going to change keys again and possibly tempo too. I've been forcing it to stay at around 85 or so, but Vaati's really been pushing for 120, so I might have to throw in a B-sharp chord to counter that." He scowled, and continued, "Past that it's hard to say. I mean, I'm good, but so is Vaati. It's more just he and I reacting to each other than anything else right now, so just be prepared for me shouting sudden instructions and chord progressions at you. Any questions?"
"Yes," Steam said. "Define arpeggio."
Wind grimaced. "I would, but I really don't think we've got the time..."
Lore cleared his throat pointedly and held up his Harp, which he was still strumming on. His fingertips by now looked quite red. "Technically-"
"Okay, yes, technically we have all the time in the world," Wind said. "But do you really want to stand here and pluck at that thing for the several hours it's going to take me to explain a couple hundred decades of music culture?"
Lore considered that.
"Good point," he conceded. "I withdraw my 'technically'."
"Just... stand next to Dusk and sing what he does," Wind decided, turning back to Steam. "That work for you?"
"I mean, I still want to know what it is, but yeah."
"I'll explain it to you," Dusk said, and started off with a quiet definition that Steam listened to with only marginal confusion on his face.
"Anyone else?" Wind asked. The group all looked at each other, then gave somewhat unanimous No's.
"Alright, that's my cue!" Lore exclaimed. "Starting Time in three, two, one-!"
His fingers stopped.
Time started.
Vaati was not necessarily the brightest villain in the bunch, but even he noticed when his singular opponent spontaneously multiplied into a couple dozen. He did, however, come to the entirely wrong conclusion about it.
"Zant was right!" Vaati bellowed indignantly. "You have been using the Four Sword to make clones!"
"No, that... that's now how it works," Vio protested. "That's not how any of it works."
"You cheater!" Vaati howled, ignoring him, and promptly doubled the amount of tornadoes in play. Wind yelped and screeched, "B-flat into C natural now!" as he slashed his baton through the air while the musical groups scrambled to follow the unexpected instructions. Vio, meanwhile, who was not in either group, pinched his nose between his fingers.
"That's not how it works,"he repeated, scandalized.
"Yeah, I don't think he cares," Green informed him. "And besides, we have more important things to worry about."
"Yeah, but..." Red squinted at the surrounding chaos. "How are we gonna aim in all this? I think I just saw hail the size of my head go by."
"First things first, we gotta try," Blue replied. "Oh hey. Rhyme." He raised his arm and fired off a borrowed Hookshot (because the musical groups wouldn't be needing them, all Hookshots and variants thereof had been temporarily donated to the Links with no musical ability whatsoever). It made it all of ten feet to the target before one of the afore-mentioned hailstones landed a direct hit and sent the metal tip careening off into the (muddy, ice-covered, scorched, and mutilated) ground.
"I mean, it was worth a shot," Green consoled as Blue scowled. "But this still leaves us with that problem."
"I think," Sketch interjected, "that we're just gonna have to wait. Wind has backup now, and sooner or later he's going to overpower Vaati. We wait until that happens, then take advantage of the break in the storm and nail him."
"Yeah, but..." Blue frowned. "How long is that gonna take?"
The Four scrunched up their faces and made a 'meh' motion with their hands. "No idea."
"Ascending A-sharp scale!" Wind ordered. Obediently, Dusk followed suit – and everyone else, who weren't quite as good at singing as Dusk was, conspicuously crowded a bit closer to mimic him. Dusk tolerated it all with a very heavy sigh and a careful shifting of Speck's perch in the folds of his tunic to avoid the stuck-small Link being squished.
"Triad C-chord on repeat until I say stop!"
The group – somewhat messily – transitioned into the key of C and fumbled their way through the notes of a triad chord. Wind made 'keep going' motions at them with his free hand, using the Wind Waker to shove the latest vortex back at Vaati while he was at it.
"Keep holding!" he yelled. "Wait – drop to G!"
Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Vaati spun a lightning strike, and Wind's instruction got lost in the CRASH. The result was a great deal of cacophonous noise as nearly everyone heard something different and did their best to interpret it – badly.
"Wait, what key are we in!?" Steam shouted.
"I think we're in B!" Realm yelled back.
"No we're not, we're in D!" Shadow snapped.
"I thought we were in E!?" Gen screamed.
"YOU ARE IN G!" Wind bellowed. "AND I REALLY NEED TO REPEL THIS WIND SHEER, SO IF YOU ALL WOULDN'T MIND!?"
Dusk – being the only person who'd actually managed to transition to G in the first place – helpfully increased his volume to guide everyone else along.
"Wind seems a bit stressed," Sketch noted off on the side, while the musical groups scrambled into G and Wind flourished his baton with manic energy.
"Just a bit, yeah," Blue agreed sarcastically.
"Stop snarking and hold this for me," Green ordered, and promptly dumped an entire armful of explosives into Blue's hands. Sketch received an identical pile not two seconds later.
"...Have I missed something?" Blue asked.
"Vio says that the chaotic weather is spawning updrafts strong enough to carry things," Red rattled off. "So we're basically going to throw bombs into the air and hope the storm blows them right into Vaati's face."
"Wait, does that mean this is the backup plan until we have an opening for the Hookshots?" Sketch said incredulously. "This is a terrible plan."
"You do remember that literally half of all our plans rely almost entirely on luck?" Vio checked dryly.
Sketch grimaced. "Yeah I remember, but normally I'm too busy running for my life and screaming to care all that much about it."
"He does have a point," the Four contributed, while Green carefully piled bombs into their waiting arms. The Four had a lot larger of a carrying capacity, after all. "We do spend an awful lot of time running and screaming."
"That is not the point here!" Vio complained.
"There was a point?"
Green dropped his face into his hands.
"The point," Vio enunciated, "is that we have a plan. Which is for everybody to throw a bomb when I say so and then run like Farore immediately afterwards. Clear?"
"I've never understood that saying," Blue commented. "Like, Farore is the Courageous one, right? So why is her gimmick based entirely around running away?"
"Oh, for the Love of- are we clear?"Vio snapped.
"Yes, sheesh. I was just asking."
Farore scowled as her sisters both attempted (and failed) to give her a subtle side-eye. "It was never meant for running away," she growled. "It was meant to be a speed boost in battle! The decisive strike! It's not my fault that people interpreted it wrong!"
"Of course not," Nayru soothed.
"There's nothing wrong with a strategic retreat," Din added, nodding.
"Farore's Wind is not for strategic retreats!"
"Well, somebody should tell Courage that," Din mused.
Farore sulked.
Wind was in the middle of a constructing a particularly large cyclone to throw at Vaati's face (there was even a twenty-five percent chance it would connect this time) when a bomb went soaring past his nose and detonated about ten feet to his right. He squawked in surprise and promptly lost control of his cyclone - which went spinning off haphazardly in the exact opposite direction of Vaati – before jerking around and yelling, "Who threw that!?"
Everyone looked at Shadow. The darkest Link glanced around and snorted. "Okay, I admit that I'm usually-"
"Always," Gen coughed.
"-almost always," Shadow amended pointedly, "the one responsible for an unexpected explosion. But this time it wasn't me." He paused. "And I'm kinda disappointed in myself for that, actually."
"That was me, sorry!" Red shouted from over where he was stationed with the Not-Musical Group.
"And that," Vio announced, "is why I said to wait for my signal. Because it's going to coincide with the best air currents for beaming Vaati in the face, as opposed to beaming Wind in the face. Okay?"
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Lore bellowed abruptly before anyone could reply. Everyone braced on instinct, because Lore had been the warning system during the Veran/Onox/Ganon battle and he'd been quite good at it – and immediately after they'd done so, a literal wall of wind and rain crashed into the group with enough force that, if they hadn't been bracing themselves, they would have gotten knocked head over heels.
"D-MINOR-MAJOR PROGRESSION!" Wind snapped out, yelling to be heard over the new cacophony. "AND THROW THOSE BOMBS!"
Three seconds later, Vaati looked up from the next round of tornados he'd been crafting and was promptly hit in the face by a familiar wall of wind and rain, accompanied by several dozen unfamiliar explosives. He landed on the ground, twitching.
"I vote we stab him now," Lore said.
"Good call," Sketch agreed.
Everybody who had their hands free rushed in and began stabbing. Mostly, this consisted of the Musical Singing Group and the Not-Musical Group. Wind was taking advantage of the brief reprieve to wrestle the ever-more-chaotic storm into something vaguely resembling submission, and the Musical Instruments Group was providing assistance, so obviously they were a bit busy.
Unfortunately, this only lasted a few moments before Vaati shook off the stun and launched himself back into the air, with the storm already re-intensifying around him. Realm scowled.
"Just once," he complained, "I'd like to have a Boss Battle where we don't have to endure round after round of combat. Just once, I'd like it to be over in a single hit. Why is that too much to ask?"
"Because I think then it'd be too easy!" Speck shouted, from his perch in the mouth of Dusk's Item Pouch. There was still no sign of his Jar. "There's some sort of unspoken Universal Law about that sort of thing, isn't there!?"
"Probably," Realm replied. "It sounds like a thing that exists, if only to make our lives harder."
Speck nodded in rueful agreement.
The storm, meanwhile, had kicked back up into gear, despite Wind's best efforts and shouted chord progressions. The main problem, it seemed, was that nobody in the Instrument Group but Mask and Ocarina were really good enough with music to pick up all the rapid tempo/key/volume changes at the speed that Vaati and Wind himself were operating at. The Singing Group was still off somewhere from where they'd charged to assist with stabbing Vaati, and if Wind was being perfectly honest, Dusk was accounting for about half of the success of the whole operation.
Therefore, they needed a change of plan.
"Change of plan!" Wind shouted to the group. "Who here knows the Sun Song?"
Ocarina raised a finger, then put it back down because he needed it to play the next note. Mask made a 'ditto' expression. Everyone else just looked confused, until Lore cleared his throat and said, "By any chance, would this 'Sun Song' be that little tune the sunrise plays every morning?"
"Actually, yes," Wind responded. "I – wait, you hear that too!?"
Lore, for once in all the time the Links had known him, actually looked surprised. "I assumed everyone did?"'
"Everyone does not," Gen said. "Because I've heard it my entire life, and when I tried to ask one of my schoolteachers about the background life music, he thought I was crazy."
"Oh my Goddesses," Ocarina breathed, in between notes on the instrument he was still playing. "Mask and I aren't the only ones?"
Mask lowered his own instrument altogether. "Okay, so... we all hear that music that just sort of happens? Like, we all hear that little 'You Found A Clue' jingle when we solve a puzzle-" he fluctuated his voice in a somewhat off-key imitation of the tune he was talking about "-and that 'You Got The Thing!' chorus whenever we get a new item or whatever?"
"Yes!" Everyone exclaimed.
"AM I INTERRUPTING ANYTHING?" Vaati bellowed, sounding quite put-out about being ignored so abruptly. Nobody noticed.
"The friendly music in towns?" Ocarina offered.
"That threatening bass rumble whenever you're about to confront something dangerous?" Gen asked.
"The entire freaking orchestra that starts shrieking whenever something tries to kill you?" Lore threw in.
"YES!" Came the replying chorus, from basically everyone within earshot – which, since the Links that had attacked Vaati had managed to regroup by now, amounted to just about everyone. The whole group stood and stared at one another for a few seconds in pure astonishment – which proved to be a mistake when Vaati took advantage of this and tried to kill them all with lightning.
"We all heard that early-warning cymbal crash from nowhere, right!?" Vio asked excitedly, as everyone dodged and ran for their lives and still managed to shout affirmations back while doing so. Shadow, the only one who wasn't spazzing out, growled.
"Din help me, you're all idiots," he muttered, then raised his voice and bellowed "I'M SURE THIS IS ALL VERY EXCITING, BUT CAN'T IT WAIT UNTIL WE'RE NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF A LIFE-AND-DEATH SITUATION!?"
"Right, good point," Wind said. "Sorry. Back to the plan – since we all actually do know the Sun Song, I need everyone to perform it on cue. Start when I say, and – most importantly –stop when I say. And, Lore?"
Lore raised an anticipatory eyebrow.
"Do your thing," Wind told him.
Lore grinned.
Vaati was having an internal debate with himself. On one wing, the weather fight was going rather well in his favor, and to abandon the tactic now seemed like a waste of perfectly good lightning bolts. On the other wing, the Hero with the little silver stick was clearly just as skilled as Vaati himself was at weather manipulation, and had backup to boot. Which inevitably meant that, sooner or later, the tide would turn in his favor.
But, on the other wing (Vaati had six of them), it was looking like the timing would fall under 'later' rather than 'sooner'. And Vaati really did have some good weather effects planned. There was a particular type of wind shear that would take his opponents – literally – right off their feet, and he couldn't wait to use it. But, on the other wing, banking on the 'later' could prove to be a vast mistake, if it turned out to be the 'sooner' instead.
But, on the other wing-
"Oi! Mr. Pudgy Bat Two-Point-Oh!"
Vaati, his thought train thoroughly interrupted and derailed, blinked his singular eye in vague confusion and stared down at the ginger Hero addressing him.
"Pudgy Bat Two-Point-Oh?" Vaati repeated.
The Hero winced. "Yeah, not my best work, but – it's been a very hectic couple of days, okay? I haven't had the time!"
"...How unfortunate," Vaati said, extremely insincerely and with the full intent to drop a boulder-sized hailstone on the Link below him.
"Oh! I know!" the Hero exclaimed. "You can help me by providing input!"
The hailstone landed with a hollow THUD just a few feet from the teen's actual position, where Vaati had lost just enough concentration from the bizarre declaration to drop it. Vaati narrowed his eye and promptly began crafting another hailstone.
"Mr. Purple Bat," the Hero proposed. "Mr. Cranky Bat?"
"Absolutely not," Vaati snapped, now levitating the hailstone over the Hero's head. The boy didn't particularly seem to notice.
"Mr. Flappy Bat!" He announced triumphantly, and took two quick steps to the left. The hailstone SLAMMED into the ground mere inches from his body. Vaati snarled; the boy frowned.
"No?" he asked. "Shame, I rather liked that one. Don't worry, I'll keep trying."
"Don't bother," Vaati growled, now making a lightning bolt, which would be a lot harder to dodge.
"Mr. Grouchy Bat could work," the Hero mused to himself. "Or Mr. Mean Bat. No-More-Mister-Nice-Bat. Mr. Breezy Bat?"
Vaati expressed his opinion on those options by shooting the lightning bolt – which dug a burnt scorch into the ground, instead of the Link Vaati had been aiming for. That was... irritatingly impossible.
"None of these are as good as Mr. Flappy Bat," the Hero mourned. "Are you sure you didn't like that one?"
Vaati leveled a hurricane at him. The Hero ducked, popped back up, and said, "Oh, but you didn't like any of them, did you? So really, I can just pick whichever one I want and it won't make a difference at all!"
"You are inspiring great hatred," Vaati informed the teen. It didn't seem to matter.
"Mr. Flappy Bat it is!"
Vaati shrieked something incoherently and, finally angry enough to forego weather manipulation altogether, launched enough malignant magic to look like an incoming blizzard in itself. The Hero vanished into a haze of sorcery-fueled explosions-
And it was at that moment that Vaati realized that he wasn't the one in charge of the atmosphere anymore.
He turned, slowly, and looked up to see the sun blazing cheerfully down in exactly half of the sky, the half that was above where the rest of the Heroes (who he had not forgotten about in the face of annoyance, just... ignored). The other half of the sky – the half above him – looked for all the world like it was about to rain down fire and brimstone.
"Hi there," said one of the smaller Heroes – who, after a moment of squinting at him, Vaati recognized as the one he'd been Weather-Dueling this whole time. The blond child had an unholy grin on his face as the taller, ginger one – who apparently hadn't been obliterated to shreds by Vaati's magic, that was so very unfair – popped up within the group and flashed an infuriatingly smug smirk.
"Due to an administrative error," the teen said, "your control of the weather has now been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience."
"Except for the part where we really, really don't," the blond boy added. "Now, guys!"
He raised his baton, slashed it down, and then because of the lightning bolt that streaked down and slammed Vaati in the face, the demonic sorcerer-bat rather missed what happened immediately after that.
On the Links' end of things, everybody knew a cue when they heard one and charged as soon as Wind let off the lightning bolt. The only exception to this was Gen, who hung back for an extra few seconds and asked, "So, should we be wary of that?" He nodded his head towards the roiling black clouds hanging ominously above Vaati's person. They really did look like they would split open any minute. Wind smirked.
"Please. You really think I'd send you all charging into a storm if I couldn't keep a handle on it all? I've got things covered on this end, you guys just need to hit him."
Gen frowned. "That... implies an awful lot of skill for somebody with only two hands and one Wind Waker. Like, I'm not trying to doubt you or anything, but... lightning."
Wind looked at him. "I know my limits, Gen. And I wouldn't risk my brothers' lives just for the sake of upstaging Vaati. Trust me?"
"I do, I do," Gen assured. "I'm just... paranoid. And also only about thirty percent sure that I have enough Red Potion to deal with a lightning strike." He bristled defensively at Wind's incredulous stare. "I worry, okay!?"
"No, it's not that, it's – last I checked, you were actively carrying several dozen Bottles of health items. How is that not enough?"
"I don't know, but I'm worried about it anyways," Gen grumbled.
Wind snickered. "Well, I appreciate that, but you won't need to. Go on and stab the Flappy Bat, I've got this."
Gen let out a heavy, Why-Me sort of sigh, then drew his sword and sprinted off to catch up with the charge that Dusk was leading without him. Wind watched him go, then turned his attention to the storm clouds.
"Here we go," he muttered to himself, snapping his Wind Waker into position.
There were certain workarounds in the field of Weather Manipulation, set songs that had a specific purpose and always did that purpose. The Sun Song was actually one of these workarounds, being a tune designed to clear up the weather. Anybody with musical talent and a little bit of magic could pull that one off, but only an actual Weather Master could define exactly how, and how fast, the weather was going to clear up. And conveniently enough, the same thing went for the Song of Storms. Anybody with musical talent and a little bit of magic could summon a storm – but unless that same somebody knew how to control said storm, it was just as likely for a tornado to spawn and rip apart their house as it was for the whole thing to blow over in just a few minutes.
Wind, however, was exactly one of those people.
He started off simple, just the melody of the Song of Storms hanging in the air. Plenty enough to encourage the ominous cloud cover into releasing a deafeningly loud crash of thunder and the start of a pounding downpour. He eyed the incoming rain critically and cracked his knuckles. Now for the fun part.
First, he blended in the harmonies, then the counter-melodies, then the bass-line. Percussion to direct the lightning and thunder, woodwinds for the... well, wind. Strings for the rain itself, keys for the hail. Tie it all together, and...
Now.
Wind stabbed his baton forwards – and the sound of an entire symphony burst into existence.
[[Author's Note: Please use the following song for a general approximation of the above-mentioned symphony, which is epic and deserves to be heard. Search for the Song of Storms by Jafet Meza on Youtube and it should be the very first result.]]
The first indication that Wind had gone to work was the slow but undeniable rising sound of violins in the air. The group, of course, being currently engaged in doing their level best to impale Vaati on at least one weapon (preferably more, but one would be acceptable as it would be more than none), knew better than to stop and look at what Wind was doing – although they did exchange some excited glances, still somewhat caught up in the fact that all their siblings heard the Universe Music too.
And then, the melody line kicked in. It was recognizably the Song of Storms, but entirely unlike any version the Links had ever heard before. It was abundantly clear from the very first note that this Song had a conductor, and the storm was dancing to the tune. Lightning crashed in perfect time with the drumbeats, the wind twisted around at every reedy whistle, and the rain pounded down in exact correspondence with every audible bow-stroke on a violin. Every measure, every note, had a direct tie with what was happening in the sky. Nothing was going uncontrolled.
"Farore," Ocarina breathed out, wide-eyed at the display around him. "I know he said he was a Master, but – this is insane."
"I want lessons," Mask decided. "I so want lessons."
Because the storm was weaving around each individual Link, leaving a perfect pocket of clear weather wherever a Hero was standing. The only one being subjected to the full brunt of the onslaught was Vaati – and, despite the fact that he was very clearly trying to wrest control away from Wind, nothing he was attempting was having any effect. About the only thing he was managing to do was redirect the lightning strikes just enough to avoid being directly hit, and it was taking nearly all his concentration to do it.
There was a lot of lightning being thrown at him.
"Well, this is officially awesome," Lore declared, as Vaati fought off another strike and the Links all used the opportunity for a quick breather. "All we really need to do is distract Vaati enough to let Wind hit him, and we get epic background music. This might be the easiest fight we've had in weeks!"
Gen gave him a desert-dry look. "Were you here when we were trying to help Wind get control of the raging hurricane earlier?"
Lore ignored him. "I think we all know what to do without necessarily needing a Plan this time, yeah?" he continued. "So! Let's all try our level best to stab a Flappy Bat and distract him enough to hopefully fry him with lightning instead. Break!"
Another poke came at Wind's control of the sky, and was easily brushed away. Wind smiled, grim and fierce.
"Sorry, not anymore," he growled vindictively, and wove a tornado wrapped in sleet into the Song in retaliation. It zig-zagged flawlessly around the cluster of his siblings making a charge at their opponent before plowing into Vaati's side and promptly icing over all three of the Wind Mage's left-side wings. With his ability to keep airborne effectively and entirely removed, Vaati dropped like a rock.
"This," Wind announced through teeth gritted in concentration, "is gonna be therapeutic."
Hookshots lanced out and latched onto Vaati from at least six different directions, taking advantage of the fact that the Mage was no longer airborne (and consequently, actually within reach). Vaati, of course, took this about as well as expected. He couldn't get enough of a grip on the weather to actually cause any sort of damage, but he was still a Wind Mage, and was kicking up a fairly respectable personal tornado all the same. Just strong enough to lift somebody and throw them off balance if they got too close.
Hence, the Hookshots. Because the boys' aim was going to be off enough without something holding Vaati in place.
Of course, this meant that at least six Links were occupied holding the Hookshots that were holding Vaati, and were thus unavailable to stab him, these being Dusk, Gen, Ocarina, Mask, Steam (using Wind's Hookshot because Wind was off being epic), and Lore. Sketch was also otherwise occupied, but this was because he was watching the distant figure of Wind for the sharp baton-stab that was the warning sign for a lightning strike. While everyone knew that Wind wouldn't hit them on purpose, the group as a whole figured that it would be best to stay out of his way, just in case.
This left Shadow, Realm, Vio, Blue, Green, Red, and the Four on stabbing duty. Speck, of course, was still tiny – absolutely nobody had seen his Jar, but at this point it was looking like a hopeless cause – but now that Vaati was on the ground and thoroughly restrained, he was stubbornly set on contributing to the fight somehow and was currently hiking his way over the torn-up earth to Vaati's position, where he planned to ride the wind up, find the closest thing to an eardrum, and stab it. He had to get revenge for his Jar, after all.
"Sword!" Sketch called, letting everyone know that the coast was clear. Shadow immediately charged, ran into Vaati's small personal tornado head-on, and sort of tripped/pushed/tumbled his way through before coming up in a crouch and planting his weapon about a foot to the left of Vaati's eyeball. As the rest of the Links struggled through the wind to add their own attacks to the mix, Shadow withdrew his own sword and plunged it back down again a couple inches down, then did it again a few more inches down. On either side, his fellow Links were getting their fair share of strikes in too, and a sudden painful bellow let everyone know that Speck was doing his thing, somewhere, too. It was a very good attack; in fact, Shadow would have kept right on stabbing if Sketch hadn't yelled, "STRIKE!" and forced them all to abandon their assault. Fortunately, the lightning bolt that speared down just a few moments later seemed to do a pretty good job.
"Sword!" Sketch shouted again, and Shadow charged back in. He was thoroughly sick of a fight where his only option was singing backup, being much more of a stab-it-until-it-dies kind of person. In his opinion, the sooner they got rid of the Flappy Bat, the better.
Wind, meanwhile, was too busy focusing to actually notice anything else. Controlling a whole storm, controlling every facet of a storm, was stressful. His hands darted through the air fast enough that his baton was leaving silvery after-images, and he'd long since given up on keeping his eyes open, because it was a lot easier to concentrate when he didn't have to deal with visual input. Not to mention how much magic that controlling a storm of this complexity was taking; when he came off the other end of this, he was going to be exhausted. Actually, scratch that, he was already exhausted.
But, Wind would worry about that later.
He slammed home another lightning bolt into Vaati's body, then launched an onslaught of hailstones. The more damage he could do right now, then better. Wind was either going to run out of magic to fuel the storm, or he was going to knock Vaati right back into the space-time void from where he'd come, and if Wind had his way, it was going to be the space-time void.
Time to kick it into high gear, then.
Wind allowed the storm to subside for a moment – still keeping it going but not actively trying to direct it for the moment – and plotted out what he wanted from it. Lightning, for sure. Lots of that. Some tornadoes wouldn't hurt, and neither would some nice, head-sized hailstones. And of course, rain. Enough rain to pound Vaati into the ground, if he could manage it. Wind nodded decisively, then slashed his baton through the air and built up the Song to a crescendo before setting the whole thing loose in an explosive burst of music. Above him, the sky roiled in response. Below him, chaos descended. He was still guiding the storm around his siblings, of course, but apparently they had seen his assault coming and had scrambled out of the way a few moments before the first lightning strike hit. Now, though, Vaati was being attacked on all sides by all the most destructive forces that nature could offer. Everything that made people fear storms, everything that made a population run for cover - it was all being leveled at one, particular, bat.
And Din, was it satisfying to watch.
"Gotcha," Wind panted, and drove home one last, massive lightning strike before grabbing hold of the storm and forcing it down into submission, using the last few notes of the fading Song to bring the weather to a light, harmless drizzle.
And then he more-or-less collapsed where he stood.
"...Ow," he decided, weakly. He was pretty sure he'd just burnt out all his magic power for at least a week.
But he'd been undeniably epic while doing it.
[[Author's Note: The soundtrack, regrettably, is no longer necessary. You could keep playing it, which because it's epic, would be perfectly acceptable. It just might not match the rest of the chapter very well.]]
"...Remind me," Mask said in a low, hushed voice, "to never actually tick Wind off."
"I'll make a mental note," Ocarina muttered back, staring with wide eyes at the smoking and generally burnt-looking Wind Mage. "It'll get to you eventually."
"Thanks."
Vaati twitched feebly, and made to look threatening. It didn't work.
"You haven't won yet," he wheezed. "I'm still here."
"About that," the Four said, and promptly thrust all four of their weapons into Vaati's eyeball. He dissolved on the spot before he could get another word out.
"That was for kidnapping Zelda," the Four told the void that had taken Vaati's place, before taking enough steps back to be at a safe distance and sitting down quite firmly. "That was... a lot more complicated than we thought it would be."
"Why wasn't the other Vaati like this?" Sketch wondered.
"Who?" Lore asked.
"Mr. Pudgy Bat," the Four contributed.
"Ohhhhh."
"Maybe because Ganon was there too?" Sketch hazarded. "It's possible that villain could value teamwork, right?"
"Maybe."
"Wait, which Ganon?" Lore asked.
"Mr. Blue Pig."
"Ohhhhh."
"Dang though, we made a mess," Sketch continued, looking around at all the carnage and chaos that comes with a hurricane, several tornadoes, enough rain to flood the whole area by at least a couple inches, countless lightning strikes, hail, sleet, and wind strong enough to level houses.
It was a lot.
"I vote we run before the local Zelda comes back and recruits us for clean-up duty," Lore decided.
"Vetoed," Gen snapped. "Because instead, you're going to sit down and let me cram a Potion or two down your throat to treat all the injuries you somehow managed to accumulate after I already healed you." He leveled a 'Don't Push Me' Stare at the rest of the group. "Somebody go help Wind get down here, and somebody else needs to find where Speck went. The rest of you get in line and wait your turn. And no whining!"
"I swear he used to be more lenient about this sort of thing," Steam muttered.
"I heard that!"
Sorry about the wait; once I had the idea for what I wanted to do it came fairly easily, but... man, putting together that whole weather-is-music-is-weather thing took forever. And I had to fight to get the focus off Wind for any reasonable amount of time, plus I kept running out of new and inventive ways to describe wind in the same sentence as Wind. If I didn't, it sounded ridiculous, but after I re-used certain descriptions for the fifth time they started sounding equally ridiculous, and... it just took a while.
Good thing I'm stubborn.
Also: I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but I now keep Progress Reports on my Profile. If you may be worrying that I'm dead, go and check that.
Changeling
Linguistic Translations
Labrynnian:nowk-oyu? (you know?)
Thanks toSuicideGuy, Zekeram12, xXScrewedUrMomXx, 166jason, Advocate4BAMFs, Fanghur, Chibibread, John736, PskyTitan, lordvaatithewindmage, pikpacker2, bobodoll-131, JNSx7, draconianking, SandInTheEye, Beeperz11, Sneakybutterman, Naruto fan 99, Gungnir - Odin's spear, GrovyleGirl, Auzzy the Ozzie, Merry Sioux, Winter Anime Fan, ElleDeghe, SomeDudeWhoReadsStuffs, AceTrainerLeo Jollib95, Bigjab890, taking it easy, malonromani, Azreli12, TheJeanesQueen, spacedust99, invinciblebritishfishandchips, Ayth, Pieis, Gammaman, kn8491, AeonAevum, starbornshine, stormchief4545, BrawlVet21, dragonbane522, Batman1998, redfurz122, DeathOnWings1203, The Pyro Jawsome, 862ian, ChainedGenius129, Ryas Moon, Patience and Diligance, KindredShadow, catcute321, Ronnie Carroll, Lucas Grayland, TwistedNova, MyWorld93, ChaosMedivalDukemon, PheonixQueen15, Catter the Mad, Savannah-the-Caracal, TheFooget, SheikahSlate, march4fun, toguetherwefight, Master Of Ze Aster, Knight of Darkness5, DarknessTempest, Djman248, The Unimaginitive One, namvo222, HiddenInTheSun, Wild180, Wind and Sky22, Aeldor, tired-tabby, Kiseki Fan, Soulsilver-and-Earthsongs, goldenfox444, Lawes Alucard Divine Cross IX, fabioghattas90, Link of Gallifrey, Fluffle star, Gabboy1314, speedy24, Abandoned Dragon Wings, DracoSpirit1301, Lyrista, MattoidNeko. Kyleking, Andres1265, DragonWolfStar, voidwalker294381672, PhoenixMaster7117, FBFan, mysterydungeonpikafan00, The Riptide Writer, DracoSpirit1301, JustSomeRandomElsaUnderstudy, VoidWaIker, TjoresvR, yorgi, Fun Pak 64, niacdoial, sugarcandywars, jeremyruiz005, DuckTapeDictator, Hanzo of the Salamander 2.0, LadySwiftsword, Dutoc, Maya-430, AER13, shadow blade alpha, RPMasterweaver. FlaxenDragon14, dain1270, Shadowranger5225, MythAnime, Chockyblock, Calvariam Hedum, Herobree, Insense, Roman Rambler, SnailMoon08, Addemiusinksoul, cunfuzzledrandoms187, Aerosolarium, Amadeus Amadeus, Dreagonheart, Anime and Game Fan, LavenderChilde, Owen Copper, Joy shadowbat, BOOM Fanfic-a-latta, MorceRyudo, auPHE, OmegaStAssassin, Xaoleis, Batbatbat13, shadowlord8917, pokemewnd, Plodimsocks, GuardianofFireandLight, Sorcreena, MobboTheTrue, GlitchTheSystem, blossomlilytree, Xaoleus, Azukka, WhenInDoubtLeave, BysLuh, Shadow-Guardian-Anabiel, LindenLeaf, DawnedChaos, MrPirate461, Enderslash02, Ekkoree, connormayor50, Moonfirekitsune, serolux, yewberryeee, Yu Narukaze, missyn5151, The Eternal Forgotten, metallover, PostIgnis, iminnasnuggie, Elwan, guy on website, That-German, connormayor50, erick.123, CodyDees, TechnologyRocks, YumaCDeSennMC, MysteriousClue, Evelynchas, yasselb06, Shogun24,Icbjs, gery900, Kerzturion, AxelDrevbon, The Fantasy Manatee, Bluewasp, Myrna Maeve, Whowatchesfromtheshadows, skyike, streetsurfer95, Ase Rine, eisenstein80060, huntington1998, Mysteryman64932, and GreenTeaZee for Favoriting/Following!
Guest: Honestly, I don't have a favorite. I barely have a favorite of anything. I'm one of those people who looks at all the things that makes each thing different and unique to itself and really just can't choose. I have certain things within each game that I love more than the rest, but to choose one LoZ game over another... I just can't do it. I love them all too much.