Sage of Innocence Saga -or- Two Links and a Bunch of Authors
By Galaxy Girl
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: TRUTH, JUSTICE, JELLO, AND COWS!
Disclaimer: Let me put this simply. Me no own Zelda... Me no own Link, LL, Hyrule, and stuff... Me do own self, Blue Butterfly, Doseki, seven extra temples. You ask before you use. Me no mean make fun of authors in story. Me just try make you laugh.
(A group of Termanian swamp monkeys appear next to GG's computer chair)
Monkey: She speak our language!
GG: Huh?
Monkey 2: You be friend swamp monkeys brother goober poo poo!
GG: AAGGGH!
This is Goron News, and I'm your anchor-Goron, Little Link of the Gorons Darunia Flint Goron Jr. OK, just kidding. Anyway, last time on SOIS, we (very slowly) made our way to Kokiri Forest to find the sixth and final Author Sage. Instead, we found my girlfriend's little sister, Link's friend Saria, a bunch of mean Kokiri, Dokoru/Skull Kid, and the author Cerena who thought she was a lonely Kokiri named Siriana. When we last saw her, Cerena was glowing purple and floating through the air into the Truth Temple while saying "Moo..." Mysterious... TERRIBLY mysterious! Well, by the end of this chapter, we'll either have six Author Sages on out hands or we'll be dead. I guess we'll find out.
We stood there in the clearing staring at the entrance to the temple far above our heads for quite a while, when Link finally put on his thinking cap and figured something out.
"Wait! This is the... TRUTH Temple... so maybe we need to use the... LENS OF TRUTH!" he shouted.
"It's worth a try," I shrugged.
Link pulled out the little purple lens that had been so useful over the past six temples, and he held it up to his eye.
"WHOA!" he said. "There's a big huge staircase that leads up to the door!"
"Oh. Well, that was kind stupid of us," Yumi chuckled.
Link took a few steps to be sure that the staircase really was there, and then he started racing up to the top. Then he turned around and saw me standing there.
"Well, come on, Doseki. We don't have all day."
"Um..."
"What's um? It's just a staircase. Come on!"
"It's invisible." I said calmly.
"So?"
"I can't see anything but the ground when I stand on it."
"So?"
"Hmmm... I seem to remember the last time I used a staircase... back in the Galaxy Temple, was it? Hmmm... I seem to recall... FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS AND BREAKING MY NOSE!" I shrieked.
"That was a whole four temples ago. You can do it!" Link pointed out.
"And besides, you never really broke your nose, did you?" Yumi retorted.
I sighed. "Why fight it?" I shrugged.
"I don't know. Here, follow me very closely." Link said, looking through the Lens of Truth again.
Following Link very carefully, we took the staircase step by step. Since the stairs were invisible, it was not a very pleasant thing to do...
I very unsteadily wobbled halfway up the stairs, and took a look around. The great green cloud of the forest was on all sides of us, and it was a long way to the ground.
I remembered my unpleasant experience in the Emotion Temple, gulped and turned back towards the staircase. I couldn't see the stairs, so it was even worse. "Don't... look... down." I said calmly.
"Good boy, Doseki!" Link said, more reassuring than I had ever heard him before. "See, it's not so bad! Just don't look down."
"I'm way ahead of you," I mumbled, as I crawled (literally) up another step.
Link and Yumi turned around and Link rolled his eyes. "You can't do it that way!"
"Why not?" I said. "I'm quite comfortable this way, thank you very much." "Because then you can't see any monsters around you," Yumi pointed out.
I shrieked and raced up the stairs until I was in the doorway of the Truth Temple.
"Don't say things like that!" I cried. "I'm only three, ya know!"
"In human years," Link said.
A couple seconds later, Link and Yumi finally reached the top step alongside me. Link fixed his pants, and stared defiantly into the Truth Temple.
"All right. Here we go..." he said. "The last temple... the last sage... the last everything!"
"CERENA! DON'T WORRY! WE'RE COMING!" I yelled into the doorway.
Link pulled out his Master Sword and shield, and I grabbed the Little Giant.
"DOOODA LOO DOOT DOO DOOOO!" Yumi hummed.
"CHAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!!!"
We both ran screaming into a long dark corridor much like the one in the Galaxy Temple.
"OK MONSTERS, HERE WE COME!" the three of us screamed. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and finally we stepped out of the tunnel to find ourselves surrounded by...
Mirrors.
Heh, you thought I was going to say some kind of evil creepy monster or something, huh? Heh heh heh. Nope. Just a whole entire room surrounded in mirrors.
"Oh," said Link. "Well... are they like... demon mirrors and our reflections are going to try and kill us?"
Yumi flew up to one and tapped it. "Nope. Just a mirror."
"Huh." Link said. "I thought it might be a bit more exciting than that."
I looked around in awe. The whole room was made up of nothing but mirrors. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all shiny panes of glass. It looked as if there were a million Links, Yumis, and Dosekis all standing (and flying, in Yumi's case) there.
I hadn't really seen my human reflection since... well... it was a while ago. I still wasn't used to it.
"So... now what?" I asked.
"One of these mirrors isn't really a mirror. It's a door." Yumi explained.
"And... how are we supposed to figure out which one it is?" Link asked.
"Gee, I don't know!" she said angrily. "What do I look like, a player's guide?"
"It's going to be hard to tell." Link said, scratching his head. "See, each of the mirrors reflects the image of the one directly across from it. So they all look the same."
We stood around, staring at all the mirrors for a second, when Link finally ran up to one and tried to open it. "Nope, this one's a mirror. Let's try this one... uh, nope."
"That's going to take all day!" I whined.
"Do you have a better idea?" he shot back.
I looked around. "Actually, yes. All of the mirrors are reflected in one another, except for one." I said.
"Which one?" asked Link.
"The one directly across from the doorway," I said. "See? Because there is no mirror on the door we just came in."
"You're a genius!" Yumi cried as she flew over to the mirror right across from the entrance.
"I wouldn't say that," I chuckled.
Link pushed the door open, and made a gesture. "After you."
"What are you trying to pull? I know what kind of monsters might be in there. After you!"
"No, no, I insist."
"No, no, I INSIST!"
"Hey, come on. I'm trying to be polite."
"You mean trying to get me killed!"
"I would never!"
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
"Aww... that's so nice!" I said. "OK, I'll go first."
"Nah, now that you mention it, I should go first."
"No, no, no, I'm being silly. I'll go."
"No! I'll go!"
Yumi sighed dejectedly and flew into the corridor. "I cannot believe you two..."
"OK, OK, I got it! We'll both go in at the same time." I suggested.
"Fine with me. One... two..."
We both pushed into the corridor, which was surprisingly small.
"OW!"
"Ouch!"
"Hey watch it!"
"You watch it!"
"I didn't mean to, excuse me!"
"No, no, excuse me."
"No, I insi-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIST!"
That was the sound of Link and me dropping into the trap door in the floor of the corridor.
BANG!
That was the sound of Link and me landing on the hard, cold stone floor.
CRUNCH!
That was the sound of me landing on poor Link one more time.
"AAAAAGH!"
"Oops... sorry, Link." I said sheepishly. I stood up and brushed myself off. "Man, am I tired of falling!"
"Man, am I going to need a spleen transplant when all this is over..." Link groaned.
Me, Yumi, and the agonized Link were standing (and rolling around in pain) in a small square room made out of hard gray stone. The walls were inscribed with all different kinds of writing and symbols.
"Hey, I think these may mean something!" Yumi cried.
While Yumi and I tried to decipher the writing, Link took an aspirin. Then all three of us got to work on the mysterious symbols.
Three sets of them were in large carved out squares.
STARTODDBHEEWJAERLELTO
U0U0L0L0U0U0L0L0A0A0S0S0H0H0U0O0N0N0U0U0F0F0T0T0R0R0U0U0T0T0H0H
(X the 0's, divide by 2)
And the last one in a square was:
Moo.
"Fascinating..." murmured Yumi. "Well, the door is locked to the next room, so we'd better get cracking on these.
Link was staring at the first inscription. "Hey... if you add a space in there, the first sentence before the arrows is 'START ODD'."
"Fascinating..." murmured Yumi.
"And the one after all the junk is 'START EVEN'." I added. "Start odd and start even what?"
Link started mumbling to himself and pointing at all the different letters. "Oh! I think I get it. The directions say to start with the odds."
"The odd what?" I asked. "Those are letters. There's no such things as odd letters."
"X is an odd letter," Yumi shrugged.
"Not like that. The odd numbers are 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11... so on. The first odd number is one. So what is the first letter?"
"B!" I said. I think I was starting to get it.
"OK, and what is the third number?"
"E!" Yumi cried. "I GET IT! If you keep going like that, then it spells B-E-W-A-R-E-T..."
"And then we start back at the beginning," said Link. "Only this time with the evens. So we have H-E-J-E-L-L-O."
"And all together, it spells B-E-W-A-R-E-T-H-E-J-E-L-L-O. Or... BEWARE THE JELLO!" I said, very proud of myself and of Link for figuring out that tough puzzle.
"Beware the Jello? Well, that's a very useful hint." Link said, rolling his eyes. "OK... now... what does the second one say?"
"A really long weird sentence and then at the bottom it says 'X the 0's and divide by 2." Yumi said. "Any ideas?"
"Let's try doing what it says." I suggested. I felt around in my pack, and then said to Link, "You wouldn't happen to have a number two pencil, would you?"
"Sorry, fresh out," he said.
"OK then, would you happen to have a magical dagger, then?"
"Of course," he said, handing me the Black Dagger.
I carefully scratched away the carving of the first 0.
"What are you doing?" asked Yumi.
"I'm X-ing the 0's..." I replied.
I kept on moving down the line, scratching out 0's as I went, and finally, I reached the end. There were no more 0's in the carving now that I had scratched them out.
"Look. Now it says, 'UULLUULLAASSHHUUNNUUFFTTRRUUTTHH!" I said.
"And divide by two. Of course!" Yumi said. She took the dagger from me, and did her best to scratch out every letter that was duplicated in a row.
"Now it says, 'ULULASHUNUFTRUTH'." Link said.
"Or ULULASHUN UF TRUTH." Yumi replied.
"Hey... they spelled Ululation wrong!" I said. "And same with Of!"
"It's because Ululation and Of have O's in them." Link said. "OK, I think we know what to do now."
"But what about the third inscription?" I asked.
"It says 'Moo.' What else is there to say?" Link shrugged. "Must have something to do with something later in the temple."
He pulled out his Ocarina and quickly played the Ululation of Truth. The door at the end of the room slid open, and we entered the next room.
The next room, which was in fact... a giant shrubbery maze.
"You have GOT to be kidding me." Link said.
"Shrubbery!" Yumi laughed. "Well, I think we can figure this out. It's just a shrubbery maze. The door to the next room is over there," She pointed to a door on the far wall.
Several big eye switches were hanging on the walls, and I noticed a strange gleam coming from a few particular places in the room.
"What happens if we go over the walls?" I asked.
"Let's see," said Link, pulling a leaf off of the nearest shrub to us. He tossed it gently over the wall of shrubbery, and giant evil laser beam shot out of one of the eye switches, crumbling the poor leaf to a fine powder.
"EEEEEEK!" I gasped. "That's not good!"
Link gulped, and then tried to look tough. "OK... we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way."
We stumbled our way through the first few twists and turns of the maze, and we noticed the shrubbery gradually got higher and higher. That prevented us from seeing over the walls to know which way to go.
A while later, we reached a wide section of the maze. A great big treasure chest sat in the middle, next to a large signpost.
LINK AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE DUNGEON MAP! NOW THEY CAN FIND THEIR WAY THROUGH THE DUNGEON. I MEAN... UGH, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. OH NO! I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING! THIS IS THE LAST DUNGEON MAP THE BOYS WILL EVER FIND! OH MAN... I SUDDENLY FEEL VERY LONELY...
"What does the sign say?" I asked Link.
"I can't read it," he said. "It's in some crazy language."
"Are you sure?" I said, taking a look. "HEY! That's written in Goronese!" I gasped.
"Really? Then what's it say?" cried Yumi.
"It says... 'Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Cheesecake Macaroni Jellybean Shenanigan Washing Machine'." I said.
"Don't be stupid. What's it say?" asked Link.
"I told you! It says 'Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Cheesecake Macaroni Jellybean Shenanigan Washing Machine'!" I snapped. "Don't you believe me?"
"And what in the name of my grandma's underwear does THAT mean?" Yumi shouted. "Hmmm..."
"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this is the Truth Temple." Link shrugged. "Let's see."
He pulled out the trusty-rusty Lens of Truth and stared at the sign. "Now it's in Goronese again."
"Let me see," I said. I took the Lens from him and gazed at the sign. "Oh! Now it says, 'Be cautious, brave travelers, for YOU are not what YOU seem'."
"Is it just me, or does that make LESS sense than the purple monkey dishwasher thing?" Link asked dejectedly.
"Beats me," I said. "Come on, let's keep going."
We turned around the next corner, and we found ourselves in an even deeper part of the maze. The walls were so high we couldn't see the top, and at the end of the part of the path we were on, was a shiny silver mirror.
"So that's what was causing the gleaming!" Link nodded. He stepped up to the mirror and began to examine it closely.
I stepped back a few feet and stared up at the seemingly endless shrubbery.
"Why do you think they put a maze in here?" I asked her. She shrugged.
"I don't know. I just..." Suddenly, Yumi turned a bright yellow. "HUH?"
"Hey, what's the matter?" I asked frantically.
"Nothing!"
"Then why are you yellow?"
"I don't know!" she gasped.
"Why are you turning yellow if there's no reason to?" I asked.
"Hey, what's with the third degree?" Yumi yelled. "I don't know why I'm changing colors! There's no bad guy nearby! Or at least... I don't think there is..."
We looked around quickly for the evildoer that had snuck up near us. But... there was none.
Link was standing where he had been, gazing into the mirror blankly.
"Hey Link, do you see any bad guys?" I asked.
"DOSEKI! RUN!" I heard Link scream.
"What?" I replied.
"RUN!" he said again.
Yumi raised her eyebrows. "Run from what?"
"JUST RUN!"
"Link, you're not making any sense!" I said. I stepped towards him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Come on. Help us look for the monster."
Suddenly, Link turned around, and I screamed bloody murder.
"AAAGGGHHHHHH!" I shrieked.
THE GUY IN FRONT OF ME WITH THE HAT AND GREEN TUNIC WAS NOT LINK!
He looked enough like Link. But his eyes were blank, and really creepy looking. Everything about him was darker. His skin looked puke-green, and he was definitely not a nice-looking character.
"I'M NOT LINK!" the creepy thing said. Oh gee, I could have figured that out by myself.
"AIEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I squealed again.
"AGGGH!" Yumi screamed. "It's a Shadow! It's an evil reflection of someone! It lives in a special kind of evil mirror, and it's really hard to kill!"
"Why is it hard to kill?" I asked quickly.
"Because each one has a different weak spot!" Yumi yelled back.
"Then what is it?"
"I DON'T KNOW!" she screamed. "It changes all the time! And I can't tell by looking at him because his whole self is a lie!"
The Shadow version of Link pulled out a big creeped out version of the Master Sword and came running after me.
"EEEEEEEK!" I squealed, ducking past the Shadow and racing towards the mirror.
That's when I saw it. In the mirror was a NORMAL reflection of Link. It was banging on the mirror and screaming at me.
"RUN!" it yelled.
"I'm WAY ahead of you!" I said, as I ducked away from another chop of the Shadow's sword that was aimed at my head.
"No, DOSEKI! It's me!" the reflection yelled. "I'm Link! I'm the real Link!"
"Really?" I asked.
"DUCK!" screamed the reflection.
I ducked, just as Shadow Link's sword almost ran me through.
"How did you get in there?" asked Yumi.
"I don't know! That creepy thing grabbed me and then jumped out of the mirror!" Link yelled. "I don't think I can get out until you kill it!"
"Give me a minute!" I cried.
"Try... the fax machine!" Link shouted. "I think that will stun it!"
I pulled out the compact Fax Machine O' Randomness and aimed the paper tray at the evil Link. "Take this, you bad evil thing!"
I pressed the little red button, and a single sheet of white 8 x 11 paper shot out of the Fax Machine like a knife. It sliced Shadow Link across his arm, and he stopped for a second, screaming in pain.
"Uh... try... its... HEAD!" Yumi yelled. "I... think so, anyway."
With a quick swing of the Little Giant, I sent Shadow Link reeling to the ground. He didn't get back up.
"Did I kill it?" I asked warily, stepping away from the thing on the ground.
"I don't know... I think so!" Yumi said.
But of course, we were wrong. The Shadow thingy got up and raced over at me again.
"EEEK!" I yelled as I jumped out of the way.
"Uh... try... its... um... AGH! I can't tell!" Yumi cried, grabbing her head in frustration.
"I have an idea!" I said. I ran up to the mirror and got ready to smack it. "Watch out, Link..."
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" screamed Link. "Don't break the mirror!"
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because! Then I'll probably be stuck in here forever!"
"Well then, what do you suggest?" I shot back.
"Just keep hitting it. Maybe it'll die." Link shrugged.
"Oh, brilliant strategy. Thanks, Napoleon!" I yelled.
But there really wasn't much else I could do. I ran up to the evil thing when it was distracted, and hit it again and again.
It spun around and sent me flying into the wall of shrubbery.
"OW!" I cried. "OK, THAT'S IT!"
I stood up, marched over to the Shadow, and punched him in the gut.
It was the Goron thing to do.
And apparently, it worked! The Shadow screamed in pain and vanished into thin air.
"The GUT! Of course!" Yumi cried, snapping her fingers.
"What about me!?" Link yelled.
"Come on, you can come out now." Yumi said.
Link moved his arm up and touched the mirror, finding that his hand went right through it. He jumped through, and rejoined the group.
"Good one, Doseki," he said. "Thank you for getting me out of that crappy mirror."
"I owed you one anyway," I said proudly.
"Doseki, in the Hero business, you don't keep track of how much you owe somebody," Link said. "Because if you actually try to, you'll find out that everyone owes you a lot more than they could ever pay back."
We turned another two corners, and at the end of the row saw another evil mirror.
"Oh great..." Link groaned.
"What do we do, Yumi?" I asked.
"I guess we'll just have to walk by it." Yumi shrugged.
We tiptoed very slowly up to the mirror, and found that no evil things came out of it. Or anyway, not at first.
"Maybe... if... I... do... THIS!" yelled Link, stepping out in front of the mirror again. Nothing happened.
"What's wrong with it?" I said, scratching my head. "Did it break?"
"I don't know." Link shrugged. "OH HEY! Look! There in the mirror! It's Yumi!"
A perfect reflection of the author-turned-fairy was staring back at us from inside the mirror. It banged on the glass and screamed several curses. "HEY! HEY! LOOK OUT!"
"That's the REAL Yumi!" Link gasped.
An epiphany hit me. "Hey wait a sec... if Yumi's reflection is in the mirror... Then the Shadow..."
That's when I heard the tiny scream and seconds later, I was picked up by the collar and tossed across the row and into the bushes. "AIEEEE!"
Link came a few seconds later. "YAAAAH!"
"Oh no! Link! Yumi's trapped in the mirror!" I cried.
"Yeah? Well I think we may have something else to worry about!"
A tiny flash of pukey green and yellow later, Link and I were both on the floor again.
"OW! CUT IT OUT!" I screamed to the Shadow version of my guardian fairy. It laughed maniacally and fluttered around our heads some more.
"MOVE IT! IT'S COMING AGAIN!" Link screamed.
I have to admit, it looked pretty funny to see two guys like Link and me running around and screaming for help about a five-inch tall evil fairy attempting to dive bomb us to death.
"WHAT DO WE DO?" I cried. "HEEEELP!"
"Watch out! That thing is strong for such a little squirt!" Link yelled. He pulled me out of the way of a psycho fairy dive-bomb.
"Stop it!" I yelled at the thing. It didn't listen.
"If we can find some way to slow it down, we can try and kill it!" Link said coolly, dodging another attack.
"AAHA! The bracelet!" I cried. I reached to activate the Spiral Bracelet, when I realized that it wasn't there. I thought my arm had felt a bit drafty...
Then I heard a whistle. I looked up to see the Shadow Yumi holding my bracelet over her head and laughing like a maniac. "LOOKING FOR THIS?" she giggled.
"Uh oh... She must have grabbed it when she threw me!" I shrugged.
"Well, we'll have to find some other way!" Link said. "I wonder if the little fairy likes... ICE!" he screamed, pulling out his bow.
Well, at least he WANTED to pull out his bow.
He reached into an empty bag and felt around. "WHAT? Where did all of my stuff go?"
We heard another whistle and saw Shadow Yumi juggling my bracelet, as well as all of Link's weapons.
"D'OH!" Link cursed.
"Don't worry, I still have mine!" I yelled. But then I realized that I didn't.
"HOW DID SHE GET ALL OF OUR STUFF SO QUICKLY?" Link cried.
"It's the bracelet! She used it to speed herself up and then she took all of our stuff while we were just standing here!" I said. I have to admit, I was impressed with my own ability to comprehend the situation, as well as my ability to use all those big words in this sentence.
"How are we going to kill her NOW?" Link wailed.
"Remember the Goron saying, Link: You're never really defeated until you're on the ground bleeding!" I said proudly.
Seconds later...
"I... think... we're... defeated now..." Link moaned from his spot on the ground bleeding next to me.
"Not... yet!" I said angrily. "There's one thing she DIDN'T take yet!"
I pulled the white Emotion Medallion out of the bag and threw it at the wall. It bounced off and hit the floor as a white light began to shoot out of it.
Shadow Yumi screamed and covered her eyes, stopping herself from beating us up any more.
Suddenly, the figure of Wintyr appeared in the light. She was in a small white room, washing her hands at the sink.
She turned towards us, and screamed in shock.
"YAHH! Oh... oh man, you guys scared me..." she gasped, clutching her chest." "Can't you see I'm in the bathroom?"
"Correction: You're washing your hands." Link groaned.
Wintyr gasped again. "Good grief! What happened to you?"
"We're having the crap kicked out of us by an evil fairy..." I muttered.
"Oh no! Oh, there she is... an evil Yumi, huh? Well, I'll make short work of her!" Wintyr said defiantly.
The Sage of Emotion ran backwards into the bathroom and checked to see that no one was watching. Then she ran back towards us, put her hands together, and started rapidly chanting in Japanese.
I couldn't understand a word she was saying, but as she chanted, she started to glow a bluish white like ice.
The light got so big, Shadow Yumi had to shut her eyes again.
It looked like she was almost done. "... jigora jiii majuan... FROZEN..."
Suddenly, Wintyr stopped, and turned away from the light. Someone was watching her from the bathroom doorway!
"Waa? Whaddya mean stop talking to myself? I'm not talking to myself, I'm saving the world here!" Wintyr snapped.
There was a pause. We could hear a little bit of mumbling from the bathroom doorway.
"I can't go to the office, I'm busy! I've got people to save here!" Wintyr said, very annoyed. "Pssh. Fine, leave then!" Wintyr groaned.
Then she noticed Link and me, backed up against the shrubbery, trying to get away from Shadow Yumi, who had recovered and was coming in for the kill again.
"SORRY!" she said. Then she started chanting again. "... jigora jii majuan... FROZEN... HEART!" Wintyr yelled.
A spinning whoosh of white and blue appeared around the evil Yumi, and we heard a high pitched scream.
The entire room seemed to fill with fog, and when the fog and mist faded, we saw a gleaming blue object hovering in midair.
It was Shadow Yumi, frozen solid in a barrier of ice shaped like a heart. The heart tumbled to the ground and shattered, and the evil Yumi vanished into thin air. The mirror started to glow and the REAL Yumi zipped out.
"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry, you guys... I didn't know the evil me was so... EVIL!" she said.
"Ow..." Link and I grunted.
"How was that?" asked Wintyr.
"Great... now could you get us some Advil?" begged Link.
"Oh, I'm sorry it took so long!" Wintyr said. "It was my first try... but hey, I really did it! Cool!"
"Thank you, Wintyr," I said.
"No problem. Now if you two'll excuse me, I have to get to class..." she said. "Or it's the principal's office for me!"
"See ya later, Wintyr!" I grinned.
"Yeah, see ya," added Link.
The Sage of Emotion waved back, and the light faded as the medallion returned to normal.
"OK, now to finish navigating this DA&%*$ shrub maze, and then we can get back to the action!" Link said triumphantly.
"I think I've had enough action for one lifetime..." I groaned.
"Come on, guys!" Yumi said, pointing around the next corner. "Cerena's not going to save herself!"
We followed Yumi down a few more corridors, and FINALLY!- the shrub maze ended and the door to the next room was open.
But in front of the door was a big tempting-looking treasure chest.
LINK AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE OPTICAL GLASS OF FALSE! THIS IS A CHEAP GENERIC LENS OF TRUTH THAT CAN SHOW YOU THE FALSE SIDES OF THINGS! WHY YOU WOULD WANT TO SEE THAT, I'M NOT SURE... BUT YOU HAVE IT NOW, SO DEAL WITH IT.
AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, LET'S KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE. LINK AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE COMPASS BURIED UNDER SOME STUFF AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SAME TREASURE CHEST! NOW THEY CAN SEE SOME CRAP HIDDEN IN THE DUNGEON. NOT LITERAL CRAP, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
"Two goodies in one chest!" Yumi cheered. "How lucky are we?"
I stared at the Optical Glass of False. It was a poorly-made version of Link's Lens of Truth.
"Try looking through it," suggested Link.
I held the glass up to my face and looked at Yumi and Link. What I saw instead was a big fat pink hippopotamus in a pink tutu and Marlon Brando.
"Uh..." I stammered. "I think you'd better look at this, Link..."
Link took the glass from me and tried it for himself. "What the- You look like a guy in a hot dog suit!"
"I do?" I gasped.
"This thing shows you fake stuff! What's the use in that?" Link groaned, throwing it into his bag roughly. "Well, we might as well keep it anyway."
"What a useless treasure!" Yumi said, rolling her eyes. "Whatever. OK, let's go."
Through the next door was another big huge room full of mirrors. Mirrors all over the place!
"Cool," Link said. "Where's the door in here?"
"Right over there!" said Yumi, pointing across the room. "Hey, look! That door has the symbol of the Truth Temple on it! That must be the boss key door!"
"Wow, that was fast." I whistled.
Link raced over to the door and crashed into something halfway there, falling on his butt.
"OW!" he yelled.
I burst out laughing, and so did Yumi. Link was not happy.
"That's not funny!" he said.
"Neither were all the pies in the Innocence Temple, but I was sure laughing hard!" I giggled.
"It doesn't look like there's anything here..." Link said. "But there must be invisible walls or something."
He took out the Lens of Truth and stared around. "Oh. There's a huge invisible brick wall cutting off that entire side of the room. And there's no way past!"
"Then... where do we go?" I asked him.
"Oh. There's an invisible door right there," he said, pointing to our immediate left.
"Looks like we're not done yet!" Yumi sighed.
Link opened the new door and glumly stepped through.
Only one word could describe the next room. "WHOA!" I gasped.
The room was HUMONGOUS! It looked almost like it was leading up to a cathedral or a temple or something of that sort. Statues of all shapes and sizes led up to a giant tunnel in the shape of a dinosaur's head. It looked kinda like Dodongo's Cavern.
"Weird..." Link muttered.
"This is supposed to be the Truth Temple... what does a dinosaur have to do with Truth?" Yumi asked.
Suddenly, a booming voice echoed throughout the room. It was a deep, really scary voice...
"HALT! WHO GOES THERE?"
"AAAAGGGH!" I shrieked. "GET IT AWAY!"
"Get what away?" asked Link. Then he turned his attention back to the voice. "Who said that?"
"I DID!" said the giant dinosaur head tunnel at the end of the room. "THIS IS THE SHRINE OF THE GREAT AND POWERFUL YENRAB! HE DOES NOT LIKE INTRUDERS!"
"Who's YENRAB?" I asked.
"YENRAB IS THE HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE TELLER OF TRUTH! THE FREAKISHLY FREAKY FANATIC OF FALSEHOODS! THE CORRUPT CREATURE KEEPER OF THE TRUTHMASTER'S TERRIFIC TREASURE!"
"Enough alliteration, sheesh." Yumi growled.
"YENRAB AND YENRAB ALONE IS POWERFUL ENOUGH TO GUARD THE ONLY WEAPON THAT CAN DESTROY THE TRUTHMASTER! HE IS NOT TO BE DISTURBED!" the voice continued.
"Well, what if we want to fight YENRAB?" asked Link smugly.
"THEN YOU MAY ENTER! BUT YOU WON'T COME OUT ALIVE!" laughed the dinosaur head maniacally.
Link marched triumphantly towards the dinosaur head.
"LINK! Didn't you hear what he said?" I cried. "We are going to DIE!"
"Do you remember the last time someone told us we were going to be killed?" Link asked me.
"Uh... yeah. Coeur de Glace."
"And what happened to her?"
"We killed her."
"Right. How about Dark Wintyr?"
"We defeated her too."
"And Terry and Kim?"
"Uh..."
"Dark Zel?"
"Well..."
"NMR? Dark Jigglypuff?"
"Well those guys..."
"EATEMUP? Dark Chica?"
"Er..."
"Dischord? DARK GG?"
"Well, those guys didn't have 'Great and Powerful' in their title!" I protested weakly.
"COME ON!" Link said, dragging me along with him.
Just as we reached the dinosaur head tunnel, we heard the voice talk again.
"UM... YOU SERIOUSLY AREN'T CONSIDERING GOING IN THERE, ARE YOU?"
"Yep. We're going in," answered Link.
"OH, POOPY! IT'S MY JOB TO TRY AND SCARE YOU OFF. DIDN'T I SCARE YOU AT ALL?"
"Not really."
"NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT?"
"Not even a little bit."
"AW, MAN! WELL THEN, UM... COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT WOULD HAVE SCARED YOU?"
"Maybe a big rubber mask," Link said sarcastically.
"OOH! THAT'S GOOD! OH, OH, AND I COULD GROWL A LITTLE BIT... OOH! OOH! I'LL SCARE SO MANY ADVENTURERS!"
"Sorry pal, but we're going to defeat this 'YENRAB' guy, so there won't be any more adventurers." Link shrugged.
"OH REALLY? AWW... POOPY... OH! I'M SUPPOSED TO ASK YOU. DO YOU HAVE INSURANCE?"
"Green Cross and Hylian Shield," Link said.
"Slate Farm," I added.
"Hyrulian Fairy Insurance," Yumi finished.
"OH. AND DO YOU HAVE ANY... SHARP OBJECTS ON YOU?"
"Well sure. We both have swords, and lots of little things too," I said.
"OH... THAT'S NOT GOOD..."
"Why?" asked Yumi.
"WELL, IT'S JUST THAT... PEOPLE WHO FIGHT YENRAB HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO TRY AND JAM THEIR EARDRUMS OUT WITH SHARP OBJECTS..."
"Eeeeeeeeehhhh..." I groaned.
"WELL, JUST THOUGHT I'D LET YOU KNOW. OH, HAVE FUN! AND BY THE WAY... IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND AND DECIDE TO LET HIM KILL YOU OR DECIDE TO RUN AWAY SCREAMING, I'LL REALLY APPRECIATE IT."
"Nope. We're gonna get him," Link said.
"OH. POO."
And then the voice was silent.
Link stepped up into the dinosaur's mouth, and called, "OK, there's a big long staircase going down. "Ready to go?"
"Why not? Let's rush to our dooms!" I said pessimistically.
Link started going down the stairs, and as I climbed down after him, I said quietly, "Over the teeth and past the gums... Look out YENRAB, here we come!"
"... 63 pieces of rock on the wall, 63 pieces of rock! If one of these pieces should happen to fall, 62 pieces of rock on the wall!" I sang.
"Ugh... enough already!" Link said, skipping three steps down.
"But I'm bored!" I whined. "And who knows how long these stairs are going to go down? It's already been 37 pieces of rock on the wall!"
"AKA half an hour..." Yumi said, extremely bored. "HOW MANY STAIRS DOES THIS GUY NEED FOR AN EERIE INTRODUCTION?"
"... 24 pieces of rock on the wall, 24 pieces of rock! If one of these pieces should happen to fall, 23 pieces of rock on the wall..."
"... 2 pieces of rock on the wall, 2 pieces of rock... If one of these pieces should happen to fall, 1 piece of rock on the wall..."
"... -33 pieces of rock on the wall, -33 pieces of rock! If one of these pieces should happen to fall, -34 pieces of rock on the wall!"
"If I hear that song one more time, something is going to fall down these stairs, and it's not going to be a piece of rock..." Link threatened.
"Gee, sorry Link... but thanks for making me stop. I was tired of singing too..."
"LOOK! LIGHT AT THE END OF THE BIG LONG STAIRWAY!" Yumi gasped.
The three of us ran as fast as we could down to the bottom of the stairs, where a door was waiting for us.
"YENRAB: THE TRUTHMASTER'S HEAD BODYGUARD. EXTREME DANGER. YOU GOTTA BE FREAKIN' NUTS TO GO IN THERE. YOU THINK I'M KIDDING HUH? JUST OPEN THE DOOR THEN..." the sign on the door said.
"Let's go... That YENRAB guy is going to pay for making me hear 132 verses of '99 Pieces Of Rock On The Wall'..." Link growled.
He threw open the door and stepped inside triumphantly.
"ALL RIGHT, YENRAB YOU STUPID DORK! COME OUT WHERE I CAN KICK YOUR @$$!" he screamed.
The room was wide open and rectangular, with the same stone patterned walls as before. In the center of the room was a large throne turned away from us so we couldn't see who was sitting in it.
Then we heard the scariest voice in the world. Worse than the other guy's.
"WELL, WELL, WELL..." the deep voice grumbled. "IT LOOKS LIKE A FEW PEOPLE FORGOT TO TAKE MY WARNING SERIOUSLY... NOW I WILL BE FORCED TO CRUSH YOU LIKE BUGS! HEAR MY NAME AND TREMBLE! I AM YENRAB! MUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA!"
"Stand up and turn around!" Link ordered.
"AS YOU WISH!" said YENRAB. We saw YENRAB's shadow stand up and step around the throne... and we were met with the most terrifying sight any of the three of us had seen since our journey began... Well, it was just a little bit more terrifying than the Teletubbies, and just as terrifying as my near-fall from Gerudo Valley, but terrifying nonetheless.
A dinosaur... A purple dinosaur with a green stomach and shiny white teeth... An all-too-familiar purple dinosaur speaking into a voice changer...
The dinosaur tossed the voice changer aside and spoke in his real voice. "Super-DEE-Duper! New friends to play with!"
Link, Yumi and I glanced at each other and let loose a collective terrified shriek.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"That's no YENRAB! It's BARNEY!" Yumi gasped, turning bright yellow. "OH SH&$! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"
Link leaped backwards screaming. "OH IS THERE NOTHING AS FRIGHTENING AS A CHILDREN'S SHOW DINOSAUR? AAAGGGH!"
Barney began walking towards us... Giggling demonically all the way...
"OK, OK... Calm down..." Yumi shouted at Link and me. "This is Barney, the Demon Dinosaur of the... Darned. I'm not sure what its weak point is... but I know one thing's for sure... STAY AWAY FROM ITS EVIL RAY OF DOOM!"
"What Evil Ray?" asked Link.
"THAT ONE ABOUT TO HIT YOU!" Yumi shrieked.
Barney was about to launch a big evil purple ray at Link. Link screamed, and jumped back just before the ray hit him and did who knows what kind of damage!
"HOW ARE WE GOING TO KILL IT?" I screamed.
"Give me three minutes... I can figure out its weak point by then!" Yumi said. "Just try and defend yourself, and stay away from the ray!"
I hit the ground dodging another ray, and Link pulled out his sword. "All right you big stupid thing... I hope you've received your last rites, because it's time to die!"
"That's not nice to say! UHOY HOY HUY HOYU HOYU HUOY!" chuckled Barney.
I stood back with the Little Giant drawn, watching the master at work. It was just like I had always imagined: the stories of Link killing the King Dodongo so many years ago... and the story of Link putting that awful Volvagia to rest again! I guess it was kind of amazing to me at the time, that I was really right here fighting beside my long-time hero... Er, well I was about to fight beside him anyway.
"I'm coming, Link!" I yelled.
"Gee, Link... It's not nice to hurt people! I'll have to sing a song about it!" Barney said, just as Link was about to chop him into pieces.
"Don't listen to his song, whatever you do! It's a spell that'll mess up your brain!" Yumi warned.
"NO! ANYTHING BUT THAT!" Link screamed.
Barney started to dance around, and corny background music began to play.
"Oh don't hurt people even if they are bad. Evil guys can too, be sad! They might get mad and call their dad! Oh, don't hurt people even if they are bad!"
I was plugging my ears, and Link was rolling his eyes. "What kind of stupid attack was that? Take this, you evil thing!"
Barney could see that his ruse had failed, so he tried again.
"Why save the world when you could sing? Cause singing is such a marvelous thing! It's better than a root canal or a diamond ring! Why save the world when you could sing?"
"Because it's my job," Link laughed. "OK, now stop the singing, I'm going to kill you."
Barney decided to try one more time. "All righty then, Mr. Link... If you want to try, it's just Super-DEE-DUPER to me! But first..."
"I'm not listening to any of your songs!" Link yelled. "Get ready to get him, Doseki..."
"Right," I said.
Barney jumped backwards to begin his dorky dance, and then started belting out, "I'M BAD! I'M BAD! I'M BAD! YOU KNOW IT! YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW I'M BAD! I'M BAD! I'M BAD! YOU KNOW IT!"
Link raised his eyebrows and stared at the Michael Jackson dancing dinosaur. "WHAT? What happened to 'I Love You' and 'The Wheels On The Bus'?"
Link didn't even see it coming. Just as Barney finished the Michael Jackson dance, he spun around and shot out the evil ray of doom! And poor Link didn't have time to even blink.
"AGGGH!" he screamed.
"LINK!" I cried.
"OH NO!" Yumi gasped.
"Yumi, what does the ray do?" I asked frantically.
"I... I'm not sure!" Yumi gasped again. "I don't think it's deadly, but still!"
Barney laughed that evil laugh again. "UHOY UOY OYUOY UOY UOY HUOY!"
I ran over to my partner's side. "Link! Link, are you all right?"
He looked like he was in a daze. "... I... love... you... You... love... me... We're... a... happy... family..."
"OH NO!" I cried. The poor guy was completely out of it.
"Do you want to have fun and play with me too?" asked Barney dementedly.
"You're gonna pay for that!" I screamed in anger.
I drew the Little Giant again, and charged at that big purple menace. He merely ducked, and I went sailing into the wall.
"OW! OK, really this time!" I said, racing after him.
This time, Barney swung his tail and tripped me.
"Owwww..." I wailed. "Why do I keep tripping?"
"MOVE DOSEKI!" Yumi shrieked.
I instinctively rolled to the left, just as another purple ray crashed into the floor where I had been.
I stood up again. "OK then, NOW I'm gonna hit you!" I cried.
I raced at the dinosaur, and surprisingly, I missed again.
"Yumi, what's going on with me?" I wailed. "I can't hit him at all!"
"I think it's Link," Yumi said.
"Huh?"
"No, no, no! Doseki, it's a psychological thing! Link can't help you this time! You're too afraid to try and hit Barney because Link can't back you up! You have to be brave and attack him!"
Was Yumi right? Was I really afraid to hit Barney because Link wasn't able to help?
It WAS the first time I had to fight a big powerful monster by myself... I had fought Dark GG, but I wasn't afraid then because I wanted my girlfriend back... I had fought Dark Jigglypuff because he had chosen me, but that wasn't a regular battle... I had fought a few Shiniinoru, but I had a weapon that could grind them down easily...
This was it! It was my time to shine now! Time to show Link, Barney, and everyone that I wasn't just a scared little Goron in a hero's body... Time to show the world that I am Little Link of the Gorons, son of the Great Darunia! LL, the Brave! LL, the Strong! LL, the Powerful! LL, the...
"DUCK!" screamed Yumi.
I ducked.
Where was I? Oh yeah... LL the... um... aw man, I lost my train of thought... maybe I should just kill him now...
"HERE I COME!" I screamed.
"Oh, like I haven't heard that before. UHOY HOY HUY HUYO HOYU!"
"Will you stop that laughing?" I said, thoroughly annoyed.
It was time for some serious dino-butt kicking!
"Hey Barney, wanna see how fast I can go?" I said slyly. It was fun egging on the bad guys.
"Why not? I love playing tag!" laughed Barney maniacally.
"Let's go, Yumi! Got his weakness yet?" I asked.
"Sure do. Go for the tail!" Yumi said.
I activated the Spiral Bracelet, and everything around Yumi and me slowed down. Barney was just warming up another ray blast. I jumped into the air and flipped over his big ugly head, and slashed on his tail with the Little Giant.
Just as I landed, time was restored, and Barney jumped forward, yelling in pain.
"Hey! How did you move so quickly?" Barney yelled angrily.
"Oh, you mean... like... THIS?" I said.
The bracelet flashed again, and I jumped into the air Matrix-style. WHACK! A big kick, right in the face!
Barney went flying backwards, very slowly. Finally, he hit the wall and stood up again once time was restored to normal.
Barney stood up again, very woozy. "You're not playing nice... I think you need to learn how to play fair!"
"All is fair in love and war!" Yumi said very dramatically.
"OK now, Barney!" I yelled. "You take back that curse-thingy you put on my buddy Link, or else!"
"Awww, but he looks so happy!" Barney said evilly.
I turned over to Link, and saw that he was playing with two rocks on the ground, and providing their voices.
"JOOOHN!" he squealed in a high voice. "MAAARSHAAA!" he said in a low voice. "I LOOOVE YOU JOOOOOOHN!" he said in the high voice. "I LOOOOVE YOU TOOOOO, MARSHAAAAAA!" "OH JOOOHN!" "OH MAAAARSHAAAAA!"
"Link, what are you doing?" asked Yumi.
"Who's Link?" asked Link.
"OK, THAT'S IT! I've had it up to here with you, Barney!" I yelled to the evil purple villain. "It's time for you to go extinct!"
"Not quite yet!" Barney sneered. He let loose another blast that to my surprise, wasn't aimed at me, but at Link! The hypnotized Hylian hero stood up slowly, and tiptoed towards Yumi and me.
"I... love... you... You... love... me... We're... a... happy... family... With... a... great... big... hug... and... a... kiss... from... me... to... you..." he murmured.
"Leave him alone!" I cried.
"You'll have to get past him first!" said Barney, stepping back against the wall and leaving Link mumbling like an idiot in the middle of the room.
"OK," I said. I ran towards Barney, but at the last second, Link jumped in front and cocked his head to the side. "YOU NO LOVE BARNEY? ME KILL!"
"EEK!" I shrieked. "Yumi, what's up with him?"
"He's under Barney's control, of course... he'll do anything to protect his 'master'!" she said. "If we could do something to snap him out of it..."
"I know!" I gasped. "I have an idea!"
I pulled the Galaxy Medallion out of the bag and threw it at the floor. The blue light shot upwards, and seconds later my girlfriend appeared, reading a book on her bed.
"GG! Emergency!" I cried.
She looked up quickly. "Huh? Oh! What's up?"
Yumi flew in front of the light and pointed at the drooling idiot that was once the Hero of Time. "Barney got him!"
GG made a shuddering noise, and jumped off her bed. "Right. What can I do for you?"
"We need something to snap him out of it!" I said.
"I got just the thing..." she grinned. "Be right with you..."
As we saw GG racing out of her bedroom, the medallion's light flickered and it returned to normal.
"OH NO! What happened?" I gasped. "It broke!"
"I... don't know!" Yumi said. "Maybe she hung up... OK... well, let's just TRY and cure him by ourselves..."
I grabbed the Little Giant and once again tried to get at the evil dinosaur of the darned, but Link was right in the way. He drew his own sword, and like a robot, began trying to kill me. It wasn't his style at all! It was all choppy and he didn't seem to know what he was doing.
He swung the Master Sword over his head, trying to take a chop out of MY head, but I blocked it and we were stuck there, blocking off each other's weapons with our own.
We circled around and around, and I was totally concentrated on keeping my concentration... That's a little redundant, isn't it?
Suddenly, Yumi shrieked. "WATCH OUT!"
"Huh?" I said stupidly. The purple glow told me what was happening. I immediately swung around Link, and like a good zombie-friend, he took the blast.
But this blast seemed to do something different to Link... It rebuilt him! He was better than before... Faster... Stronger... eviler...
Before I knew it, I was on my butt again. Zombie Link screamed in rage and ran for me. Uh oh...
I was ready to meet my maker, when a bright blue flash from the other side of the room distracted Zombie Link.
It was GG! She was back!
"Hey Link! Look what I got!" she said, holding up a freshly printed picture of Princess Ruto, in all her naked Zora glory.
Zombie Link's eyes got all big, and he gasped and passed out. Well that got rid of HIM...
"Thanks GG!" I called. "D'ya think you could give me a hand with HIM now?"
"Can't," she said sheepishly. "It's against Author Sage Rules to help you with sub-bosses or bosses... Sorry."
I shrugged. "It's OK..."
Suddenly, GG screamed in terror. "BEHIND YOU!"
I ducked just as another purple blast came my way. "EEEEEEAAA!" I interjected.
"Oh shoot!" Barney said, snapping his claws. Wait... you can't snap a claw! Er, anyway, his eyes started to glow red, and he powered up a huge purple orb. "Prepare to DIE!"
"SorryGGgottago!" I said all at once.
"Good luck!" she cried worriedly, as the medallion's power faded.
Barney was stomping towards me like a dinosaur straight outta Jurassic Park... I stepped backwards to avoid him, and just like the klutz I am, I tripped over the Galaxy Medallion on the ground and went straight on my butt.
"OH GOOD GOING!" Yumi shrieked. "GET UP!"
"No, DON'T GET UP!" said Barney wickedly, preparing to blast both Yumi and my brains out.
Man, it was like David and Goliath! How could I ever have thought I could have beat this guy?
Hey wait... David and Goliath? DAVID AND GOLIATH! Of course!
I quickly grabbed the Galaxy Medallion and tossed it like a frisbee. HARD! Right into Barney's head!
The Purple Demon Dino of the Darned flinched as the medallion bounced off his head and took a step forwards-
Hey, don't interrupt with your gasps of worry. You didn't let me finish.
He took a step forwards, tripping right over Link's unconscious butt.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Barney as he tumbled to the ground face-first.
It was like a cartoon. He flipped head over heels, and rolled right into the wall, bashing his head again and putting him out like a light. FOR GOOD!
I stood up and picked up the Galaxy Medallion from where it had landed. "Good ol' medallion..."
"It nearly killed you!" gasped Yumi.
"It didn't," I said, as if that made it all better.
Barney disappeared, and a big treasure chest rose up in his place.
"Hey! This is the treasure that can defeat the Truthmaster!" I said happily.
"Great, great. Get it and let's go." Yumi said. "There's another door over there... and what are we going to do about Link?"
LL/DOSEKI AND LL/DOSEKI ALONE GOT THE FIRE/ICE/LIGHT ROD! THIS IS ACTUALLY CERENA'S SECRET WEAPON, BUT CONSIDERING SHE'S ALL WEIRDED OUT RIGHT NOW, IT CAN BE YOURS FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. (DON'T WORRY. YOU'LL GET A SMALLER ONE TO REPLACE IT WHEN CERENA COMES AROUND...) IT'S PRETTY SELF EXPLANITORY. IT SHOOTS FIRE, ICE, OR LIGHT DEPENDING ON WHAT BUTTON YOU PRESS. LEGEND HAS IT THAT THIS IS THE ONLY THING THAT CAN DEFEAT THE TRUTHMASTER... WHOEVER HE IS. I BETCHA HE'S WORSE THAN BARNEY.
I stuffed the F/I/L Rod into my pocket and ran over to Link. "Hey Link!" I cried. "Get up! I beat Barney!"
He was out cold.
Yumi landed on his chest and started kicking his face. "Come on, lazy! Let's get the heck outta this stupid place!"
He didn't move.
"OH CRAP! Yumi! Is he... dead?" I gasped.
"No, he's not dead." Yumi said reassuringly. "He's just very, very unconscious. That was one nasty spell he got hit with three times."
"But Barney's dead now. It should be gone, right?"
"Unless it has some after-effects." Yumi said. "Hmmm... Let me think... Ah! Hey Doseki, gimme the a piece of paper from the Magical Fax Machine O' Randomness."
I handed Yumi a clean sheet of white paper, and she rolled it up into a cone-shape. "Now cover your ears," she ordered.
I did so. The pint-sized author held the cone up to her mouth, got right up next to Link's head, and shrieked in the highest voice imaginable, "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!"
Link sat up quickly. "Dude... heh heh, Dude, it's not nice to do that..."
I gasped. "AFTER-EFFECTS!"
Link rubbed his head and stood up. "Woo, what a trip... That totally sucked. I wonder if I'll have any after-effects... eh, oh well."
"Oh well?" Yumi said in disbelief. "Doseki here saved your butt!"
"Dude, cool... heh heh heh..." he said woozily.
"He doesn't even care!" I said, pouting.
"I think it's just an after-effect." Yumi said. "He'll get over it. Come on now, let's go."
Through the next door was a long, long hallway full of mirrors of all shapes and sizes.
"Mirrors... heh heh heh... aren't they lovely?" said Link dreamily.
"What's he smoking?" I asked Yumi.
"Nothing. OK now... Before you go forward, let me check out all these mirrors to make sure that none of them are evil ones."
Yumi took off down the corridor, and reappeared a few minutes later. "Nope, all's well. But there is a big wall of ice at the end of the hall."
"No problem!" I said, holding up the F/I/L Rod.
I raced off down the hall, expecting Link to be right behind me. Wrong.
He was fixated on Yumi's glowing. "Purdy..." he said blankly.
"Heeyyyy, eyes off!" Yumi said, snapping her fingers and extinguishing her glow. "That guy just dropped 40 IQ points..."
"Come on Link," I said, feeling like the babysitter for the first time on this trip.
I dragged Link down the hallway and we finally reached the ice wall.
"Purdy..." giggled Link stupidly.
I studied the F/I/L Rod until I found a tiny red button on the side. I pointed the top of it at the wall and WHOOSH! A stream of fire whooshed out and reduced the wall to a puddle.
"COOOOOOOOOL..." Link murmured.
"What's so cool? You have arrows that can do that," I said, rolling my eyes.
On the other side of the door was another long hallway full of mirrors. At the end was a big wall of light.
Yumi did another mirror check, and told me it was safe to go. I grabbed Link and dragged him down the hallway, and up to the light wall.
"How do I do this?" I asked Yumi.
"Well, Ice is weakened by Fire," Yumi began. "So Light must be weakened by one of them."
"Let's try this," I said, pressing the little blue button. A rush of ice shot out of the rod and the barrier disappeared.
"Hey... wait a sec! Light isn't weakened by ice! What kind of screwed up weapon is this?"
"Don't ask questions about it, or it'll kick out when you most need it." Yumi said wisely.
I bet you can guess what was behind that wall. Yep. A big hall of mirrors with a barrier of fire at the end.
Yumi once again told me the hallway was safe, and the wonked-out hero and I raced down to the other end of the hallway.
"So, by process of elimination, light must weaken this door." I said.
"Good boy. You get a treat," laughed Yumi.
"I wanna treat!" whined Link.
"I wish he would just go back to normal already..." I groaned as I blasted the wall with light.
The wall crumbled like the others, and I pulled Link through the doorway to find ourselves in a long room with a big staircase at the far end, leading up to a big door.
"OOH... Looks important!" I said.
"Uh oh..."
"What's uh oh?" I asked Yumi.
"Link's all weirded out... What if this is Dark Cerena?"
"I can take her!"
"You don't know that," Yumi said. "I'm worried about you all by yourself. I'm going to give Link a talk."
Yumi grabbed Link and pulled him over to her. "ALL RIGHT BUB! Listen up! We have a brainwashed Author Sage to save here! And I don't care if you just got the crap kicked out of you by a big evil dinosaur! You're gonna help Doseki defeat her with no questions asked! OR ELSE!"
Link didn't say anything. He just kind of giggled.
Yumi rolled her eyes. "I did the best I could..."
"It's all right, Yumi..." I said. "After all, after Cerena, there's the Truthmaster, and that'll be the last bad guy I'll ever have to beat! I need to triumph now, or be a loser forever!"
Boy, was I wrong.
Up the stairs and through the door, we were met by the same kind of room that had had all of the inscriptions on it earlier in the temple. And we could hear the familiar beat of the Goron International Anthem playing on a flute from the far end of the room, in a big area of shadow.
"There she is!" I said, pointing at the mysterious flautist.
A pair of gleaming purple eyes appeared in the shadow. "YENRAB was weak against your power... But I shall not suffer the same fate as him!"
"That's for sure. You get to be an Author Sage!" Yumi said.
"The Author Sages? HA! The mere idea that I am an Author Sage. They are weak against the power of my master, and his master too, the great creator of this virus! And just to prove how weak they are, I will defeat you in the name of all that is not Author-Sagey!"
"'Sagey' isn't a word," Yumi said matter-of-factly.
The voice growled deeply, and then leaped out of the shadows. Dark Cerena stood before us! She was wearing a green Kokiri-ish dress, with her red hair in its normal style, and a black chain around her right wrist. What else is new?
"Oh look how cute!" Link murmured. "A girl with evil powers! Looks like we'll all be crushed into a pulp! Oh well..."
Yumi flashed yellow. "We know the drill. This is Dark Cerena, the evil Mistress of Truth... She attacks with blasts of energy, like Barney did... but three of the attacks aren't really attacks at all!"
"Huh?" I said, very confused.
"Say she blasts out four attacks. Only one of them can actually hurt you!" Yumi said.
"Oh. I get it! What's her weak point?"
"See that thing on her head?"
"Uh... a headband?"
"Yeah. It changes from red to blue to yellow. You hit her with fire if it's blue, ice if it's yellow, and light if it's red."
"Got it," I said, just as Dark Cerena unleashed a blast of purple energy.
"EEEEK!" I squealed, leaping out of the way. Link just stood there stupidly.
Cerena let go three more blasts, and I ran away from each one.
"Doseki, no, no, no!" Yumi said. "I told you, only one of them is real! The others are fake, and if they hit you, they'll just disappear. No pain! Understand?"
"But how do I know which ones?" I asked.
"Uh... er... um..." Yumi said, scratching her head.
Suddenly, a blast of purple energy exploded feet away from us, throwing both Yumi and me backwards into the wall.
"OW!" we both yelled.
"That one... was real..." Yumi mumbled.
"Link! We could REALLY use some help here!" I cried angrily.
He was busy watching the colored light show going on.
"Come on, Link! We can't do it alone!" I shouted.
I stood up, and watched Cerena blast me some more. So those ones were fake... that meant the next one... OWWWW!
I rolled over against the wall and stayed there.
"Come on! Get up, Doseki!" Yumi cried.
"If I stay here, she won't hurt me..." I protested weakly.
Sure enough, Dark Cerena laughed at me. "HAHAHAHAHAA! Weakling! Now watch while I take care of your friend!"
"WATCH OUT!" Yumi screamed to Link.
All I saw was a big purple explosion and all I heard was a grunt of surprise out of the confused hero.
I didn't see him get up.
"AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!" laughed Cerena. "DON'T YOU FOOLS REALIZE THAT EVIL WILL ALWAYS BE BETTER THAN GOOD BECAUSE GOOD IS DUMB?"
I stood up. "Come on! Bring it on, girl!"
BANG! I was on the floor again.
"YUUUUMIII!" I wailed. "How can I tell which ones are real?"
"I don't know!" she said. "The Lens of Truth is with Link... try the Optical Glass of False!"
"THAT SCREWY THING? It doesn't even work!" I whined.
"Just do it!" she said.
I pulled out the Optical Glass of False and looked through it. Marlon Brando was fluttering around my head, and a sheep was in Dark Cerena's place. I was standing in a discotheque, too. The sheep fired a purple blast of energy at me.
"EEEIA!" I gasped, stepping out of the way. But it didn't seem to do anything at all but hit the floor and vanish.
The sheep fired two more purple rays, and then a gigantic hot dog appeared in her hands and she tossed it at me as hard as she could.
The hot dog hit the floor and exploded, throwing me backwards against the wall.
"OWW!" I whined. Suddenly, I realized the secret of the Optical Glass of False.
"Yumi! I get it! When she fires fake beams at me, it shows them as real purple thingys that hurt, because that's what they're NOT!" I grinned, very proud of myself. "And when she throws a real beam, it looks like a hot dog because that's what it's NOT!"
Yumi hovered in the air, her hands on her hips. "That made no sense whatsoever."
"Sorry. But I get it now!" I said.
I flipped back up, and when Dark Cerena tried to fire another blast at me, I held still and stared at her color-changing thing. It was blue.
"Take this, you mean old thing!" I cried, blasting the evil Truth Sage with a burst of fire from the F/I/L Rod.
Dark Cerena became VERY angry with me... She charged up a huge blast, and a quick check with the Optical Glass proved it to be fake. I blasted the now-yellow headband with a cloud of misty ice.
It appeared I was doing a good job. But I had never counted on Cerena doing what she did next.
Behind Cerena was a big door. She glared at me evilly, and backed up until she passed through the door and it shut behind her.
"Uh... Where did she go?" I asked Yumi worriedly.
"I have no clue... she's the evil one here." Yumi shrugged.
A few seconds later, the door from the back swung open again, and the shadowy eyes appeared again.
"I am the terror that snores in the night!" screamed Dark Cerena. "I am that one girl at the movies who just can't hold still! I- am DARK CERENA ON SPANISH INSANITY JELLO!"
Yumi squealed. "NOOO! NOT SPANISH INSANITY JELLO!"
"Huh?" I said, kinda confused.
Dark Cerena slammed the door behind her and stepped into the light. She was holding a small hospital food cup full of something green and squishy.
"IT'S THE SPANISH INSANITY JELLO!" Yumi shrieked. "One bite will make you go absolutely bonkers! I really hope she doesn't eat any!" Yumi added, just as Dark Cerena ate some. "Oh crap..."
Dark Cerena's eyes got the look of someone who has just smacked his or her head into a tree in front of a large crowd of people, and then she raced in to attack me.
"YIKES!" I screamed.
She was kicking and punching and hitting up a sword, and I was trying not to get the crap beat out of me. I wasn't doing a very good job...
Finally, Dark Cerena grabbed me by the shirt and threw me across the room into the wall.
"OWWW!" I whined.
She came over and did it again. I was back where I had been before.
Then she stomped over and grabbed me by the hair, grinning evilly.
"NO, PLEASE! I'LL GIVE YOU A QUARTER IF YOU STOP HURTING ME! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!" I shrieked.
Dark Cerena charged up a big huge blast, and got ready to hit me. I had a feeling that this one was NOT fake...
Yumi smacked into Dark Cerena's head to try and get her to leave me alone. "GO! AWAY!" she yelled.
Seconds later, Yumi was tied up with Dark Cerena's headband and thrown on the ground next to me like a piece of garbage.
"Sorry, Dosek..." she said sadly.
"Me too..." I answered sadly.
We were about ready to get blown to bits, when I heard rustling from one corner of the room. What could it be?
Dark Cerena was only distracted for a minute. A few seconds later, she was all ready again.
And just as Cerena prepared to throw the blast, we heard a familiar grunty noise and the sound of boots scraping the floor.
"What's that?" snapped Dark Cerena. She turned around in time to see an all-too familiar black swirl rise into the ceiling, and a single pebble land at her feet.
Suddenly, the room was filled with hundreds of tumbling rocks coming in from nowhere. They crashed to the floor and into Cerena, breaking into pieces and vanishing.
"OW! OW! OW! OW! WHAT MISCHIEF IS THIS?" she shouted.
It was lucky Dark Cerena was standing over us. Or Yumi and I might have been crushed by the falling rocks.
The Meteo Spell! That meant...
LINK!
Dark Cerena was unconscious by the time the meteors stopped falling. I stood up slowly, and there he was in all his heroic glory: Link was standing behind Dark Cerena's fallen form, hands on his hips and a big grin on his face.
"Take that, you creep," he laughed, as the black chain vanished.
"LINK! You're not a brain-dead idiot anymore!" I cried.
"Of course not." Link said frankly. "You think a dinosaur can take me down?! HA!"
"I killed him!" I said proudly. "I got Barney all by myself!"
"Great job," he replied. "I really appreciate it. It's not fun singing the 'I Love You' song all day..."
The Villain Formerly Known As Dark Cerena got to her feet, her eyes glowing purple. "Moo..." she murmured. And then she floated aimlessly through the wall in the back of the room.
"There she goes!" Link said. "It's time for me to get my revenge on that jerk 'Truthmaster' for siccing his big dumb dinosaur on me..."
"YOU GUYS!" shrieked a small voice. "COULD SOMEONE PLEEEEEASE UNTIE ME? IF IT'S NOT TOO MUCH TROUBLE!!?!?!?!?"
"Oops... Sorry, Yumi," I said sheepishly as I untied my poor fairy.
A treasure chest rose out of the floor near the door Dark Cerena went through.
LINK (KINDA...) AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE TRUTH KEY! IT'S AN IRON KEY WITH THE SYMBOL OF THE LENS OF TRUTH ON THE END, AND IT UNLOCKS THE DOOR TO THE LAIR OF THE TRUTHMASTER! OOOOOOOH! YOU GOT IT WHEN YOU KICKED DARK CERENA'S SHINY HINEY.
Link pushed the back door open. "Follow that zombie-like author!" he shouted triumphantly.
I followed Link through the door, where I found him standing in disbelief staring at what was around us.
We were on a narrow platform next to the last door, and another tiny platform like ours was on the other side of the room, next to another door. A narrow plank connected them. And below the plank was a giant sea of chunks of green, jiggly, glowing jello.
"Holy freakolé!" I screamed. "Is that where Cerena got the Spanish Insanity Jello?"
"Must be," said Yumi. "All right... the boss door is behind that door over there. We're got to get over there without touching the jello. The last thing we need is one of you to go insane."
Link nodded. "'K. I'll go first..." he said. He warily stepped out onto the plank and took a few steps.
"Uh..." I stammered.
"What?" asked Yumi.
"Do you remember the last time we did this?" I asked.
"Energy Temple? Yeah."
"Do you remember what I did?"
"Do you remember hitting the invisible floor a foot away from the plank?" asked Yumi sweetly.
"Well, there is no floor here." I said.
Link snorted as he walked across. "Doseki, if I have to drag you across another high spot, I'll..."
"Coming!" I cried quickly.
I waited until Link reached the other side, and then I walked across the plank as fast as I could. "PHEW!" I said when I finally reached the other side.
"See?" asked Link smugly. "Was that so bad?"
"Not really," I said. "Come on. We're almost done with the last temple! Let's go!"
We found ourselves on the other side of the room where Link had crashed into the wall earlier. We could reach the boss key door!
Link stuck the key in the lock, and got ready to turn it. "OK, before we battle this boss, anybody got any questions?"
"Yeah... where's the nearest restroom?" I asked sheepishly.
"Back at my house," Link said, rolling his eyes. "Any other questions?"
No one said anything.
"OK. Now, let's get ready to go and kick the butt of that big, stupid..." Link began, opening the door.
As soon as the door swung open, we could see the ominous form of the boss standing across the room, which looked a lot like the mirror room at the beginning.
We could see its amazing muscles...
We could see its gleaming white horns...
We could see its markings on its white coat...
We could see its cud and its udders...
Huh? Cud and Udders?
"Moo," said the boss.
"... kick the butt of that big, stupid... COW?" Link gasped.
COW: LOATHSOME LYING LIVESTOCK
"MOO!" said COW.
We raised our eyebrows. "The Truthmaster is a COW?" Link said in disbelief.
"Wow... who would have guessed?" chuckled Yumi.
Suddenly, COW's horns began to glow red. "MOO!" screamed the cow, firing a blast of fire at us.
"EEEEEK!" I yelled, leaping out of the way. Link went the other way.
Turns out that that was one angry cow. We hardly had time to think before it was blasting beam after beam of fire, ice, and light. Each blast left a big dent in the wall. I hated to think what would happen if one hit us.
"How do we kill it?" I asked Yumi.
"Its horns change colors! Just like Dark Cerena's headband... But the problem is getting to stop trying to hurt us before we can hit it!"
I nodded. The COW sure was blasting a lot. "What'll stun it?"
"I... don't know," Yumi shrugged. "You're the hero here."
"No, LINK'S the hero here!" I protested.
"I'm on it!" he shouted from across the room.
Link had pulled out his bow, and was trying to fire arrows at the COW. But they only seemed to be making it angry.
"Uh... Gimme a minute!" he cried.
Suddenly, the COW stood back on its back legs. It let out a mighty "MOO!" and... began shooting milk at us.
"THAT'S DISGUSTING!" Yumi groaned.
"At least it's not cheese," I laughed.
She hit me.
"That's French Insanity Milk! It'll make you go koo koo if you touch any of it."
When the cow got done spraying its... ewww... milk all over the place, it sat there on the ground for a minute, panting. It was tired!
"The horns are red! Quick, get it!" Yumi cried.
I fired a blast of light at the evil COW, and it mooed in rage.
The COW aimed straight at me with its horns, and tried to blow me away. I leaped to dodge, and the beam sent the wall crumbling.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEYIYIYIYIYIYIIII!" I shrieked, racing away from the evil cow.
"Good one!" Link laughed. "Here, gimme that! I wanna give that baby a try!" he said.
I threw him the F/I/L Rod and he saluted. That's when the cow stood on its back legs again.
"Oh no..." Yumi gasped. "More milk!"
But Yumi had no reason to worry. Because what the COW was shooting at us was actually thicker than milk. It was cream.
"EWWWW! BOHEMIAN INSANITY CREAM!" she cried. "Same thing as French Insanity Milk."
"This is getting grody..." I whined.
When the COW ran out of dairy products, its horns turned blue and it took a big drink of Gatorade out of a bottle it pulled out of nowhere.
Link fired a blast of fire at the COW, and the singed COW mooed in rage.
The COW fired some more fire, ice, and light beams, but it appeared that the disgruntled farm animal (Get it? DisGRUNTled? Farm animal? AAHAHAHA!) was out of tricks.
Boy, were we wrong.
After a few waves of German Insanity Chocolate, Danish Insanity Butter, American Insanity Cheese, and Irish Insanity Ice Cream, the COW appeared to have been defeated.
But then something we didn't expect happened. The COW made the noise of someone hocking up a loogie, and then with a mighty PATOOOIE- pasted me to the wall with a giant, slimy lump of twice-chewed grass.
"AWWWWW, GAAAAWWSH!" I groaned. "THIS IS DISGUSTING! THIS IS JUST PLAIN SICK!"
"Hold on, Dosek! I'm almost done with it!" Link yelled.
The COW tried to cud Link to the wall, but the hero was too fast for the ferocious farm freak. Link blasted the COW with a beam of ice, and the freakish furry fiend gave a final moo and went off to the big pasture in the sky.
A warp portal appeared in the middle of the floor, and Link was performing what I THINK was his victory dance.
"HEEEYYY! GET THIS DISGUSTING THING OFF OF ME!" I cried.
"Oh. OK, no prob," said Link. He slowly burned off the cud with the F/I/L Rod, and the three of us triumphantly strolled to the warp portal.
**HERE THEY ARE, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN... LINK AND LL/DOSEKI, THE HEROES!**
"WOOO!" cheered the five Author Sages as Link and I lowered into the Chamber of Sages.
"I can't believe it!" Jigglypuff grinned happily. "You guys really did it! All six Author Sages are awake!"
"Er, not yet." Link said.
"Hey, before we keep going, does anyone mind if I change?" I asked.
"Go ahead," said Zel.
~*~*~*~*~*~*POOF*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
**I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. I WAS SO NERVOUS ABOUT YOU TWO GOONS GOING OUT TO SAVE THE WORLD... AND IT TURNS OUT, YOU REALLY DID AWAKEN ALL THE SAGES!**
"Not yet!" Link yelled.
**QUIT YELLING AT DESTINY, FOO!**
"Oh. Sorry," Link murmured. "So Destiny... considering that we did what you asked us to, could you reveal to us your true identity?"
**WHAT?**
"You know. Like Sheik did?" he said smugly.
"Link, Sheik only showed us what's below his mask!" I said. "He didn't have a secret identity."
"Well, Destiny must have one!" protested Link.
"Liiiink..." warned Wintyr.
**NO LINK, I DON'T HAVE A SECRET IDENTITY. THIS IS ME. REALLY. I REALLY HAVE NO BODY AND YOU CAN ONLY HEAR MY VOICE.**
"Really? Are you sure?" asked Link. "How do you know you don't have a body?"
**ONE DAY I LOOKED DOWN AND THERE WAS NOTHING THERE.**
"Oh," said Link. "Just checking."
Chica and GG rolled their eyes.
**ALL RIGHT PEOPLE, QUIET DOWN, QUIET DOWN... NOW, I WANT YOU ALL TO GIVE A VERY WARM WELCOME TO THE SIXTH AND FINAL AUTHOR SAGE, CERENA, THE SAGE OF TRUTH!**
A purple glow rose from the final Sage circle, and Cerena appeared. Back in her normal clothes, with her normal hair and her normal, not-glowing eyes.
"HEYYEEEEE!" she grinned. "You guys are great!"
"Thank you," smiled Yumi.
"I can't believe I was imprisoned by... A COW!" Cerena cried in disbelief.
"Don't feel bad," said Chica. "I was imprisoned by a lunch bag."
"I was imprisoned by a pair of dental hygienists," Zel cut in.
"I was imprisoned by some fat kid in my band class," GG piped up.
"I was imprisoned by... a witch?" said Wintyr weakly.
"No way. You actually had a cool, really evil boss, Wintyr." Zel said. "Sorry."
Wintyr snapped her fingers.
"Anyway," continued Cerena, "I wanted to thank you for braving Barney and the Jello and the Cream and all that crap to rescue me,"
"It's my... OUR job," Link said, throwing me a smile.
"Now I need my Rod back. I'll trade you," she said, holding out a small pen that looked just like the F/I/L rod.
I took the pen from her, and Cerena smiled and patted her beloved Fire/Ice/Light Rod.
"And so," said Cerena dramatically, "It is my privilege and pleasure to present you with this, my medallion."
Cerena held up her hands and the neon purple medallion tumbled to the ground.
LINK AND LL/DOSEKI GOT THE TRUTH MEDALLION! CERENA AWAKENS AS AN AUTHOR SAGE AND LETS YOU BORROW HER MEDALLION FOR A BIT. YOU CAN USE IT TO CALL HER, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH... HEY! YOU FINALLY GOT ALL SIX SAGE MEDALLION! SCHA-WEEEET!
**OH, AND BY THE WAY LINK... YOU DIDN'T DO WHAT I ASKED YOU TO.**
"WHAT?" he gasped. "But we awakened the six Author Sages! We did what you asked. Offer void, contract terminated!"
**I DO BELIEVE THAT MY EXACT WORDS WERE: "YOU BOTH NEED TO WORK TOGETHER AND COOPERATE TO AWAKEN THE AUTHOR SAGES AND SAVE HYRULE FROM REDUNDANCY!" ALL YOU DID WAS AWAKEN THE AUTHOR SAGES. I DIDN'T SEE YOU DO ANYTHING TO SAVE HYRULE FROM REDUNDANCY.**
"You mean..." I said, "We have to do something else too?"
"Sorry, LL..." said GG. "But you're not done yet!"
**THAT'S RIGHT. YOU TWO MUST TRAVEL TO THE TEMPLE OF TIME IN THE CASTLE TOWN... AND YOU MUST DEFEAT THE VIRUS'S CREATOR IN BATTLE!**
"Ganondorf, right?" said Link glumly.
**ERRR, MAYBE.**
"Come on! Can we PLEASE just find out who started the virus already?" begged Link.
**I REALLY COULDN'T TELL YOU. ALL I CAN TELL YOU IS THAT THE VIRUS'S CREATOR HAILS FROM A DESERT, AND HAS GERUDO BLOOD IN HIM.**
"Well THAT totally gave it away." Link said, rolling his eyes.
**SHAAAADDDUP! ANYWAY, REMEMBER THAT AWESOME TREASURE I TOLD YOU ABOUT? THE ONE THAT FORMS WHEN ALL SIX AUTHOR SAGES ARE AWAKENED?**
"Yeah," I said. "What is it?"
**OK, AUTHOR SAGES. DO YOUR STUFF!**
All six of the Author Sage's circles began to glow, and they did what was like an "Author Sage Sound-Off".
"Galaxy!" cried Galaxy Girl.
"Energy!" shouted Chica.
"Dance Dance Revolution!" yelled Jigglypuff.
"Randomness!" screamed Sailor Zel.
"Emotion!" cried Wintyr.
"Truth!" yelled Cerena.
Suddenly, a blue, lime green, dark green, lavender blue, white, and neon purple light shot out of the ceiling of the Chamber of Sages, and surrounded Link, Yumi and me.
"Coool..." I drooled.
A golden object appeared in the light above us, and when the colors and light faded, it remained floating there.
**THE TREASURE OF THE AUTHOR SAGES IS... THE MIGHTY LAPTOP OF AUTHORNESS!**
And that's exactly what it was. A shiny, brand new laptop computer... complete with snack bar, color-changing mouse pad, and crammed full of disk space!
"OOOOOH..." Link, Yumi and I whispered.
**AFTER ALL, WITH A SIMPLE LAPTOP, ANYONE CAN CHANGE THE OUTCOME OF A STORY.**
"What about the Mighty PENCIL of Authorness?" asked Yumi.
**NO, A LAPTOP IS COOLER.**
"Ah." said Link. "It's all well and good, but how is that office paperweight going to help LL and me defeat Ganondorf?"
**FIRST OF ALL, NO ONE EVER SAID IT WAS GANONDORF! AND SECOND OF ALL, WATCH YOUR MOUTH! THE LAPTOP OF AUTHORNESS IS NOT A PAPERWEIGHT! WITH IT, THE AUTHORS CAN ALL COLLABORATE A WAY TO GET RID OF THE BAD GUY ONCE AND FOR ALL!**
"So why do we have to defeat him?" shot back Link.
**HE'S WAY TOO STRONG FOR THE AUTHOR SAGES TO JUST WRITE HIM OUT OF THE STORY. YOU NEED TO WEAKEN HIM SO THAT EVEN HIS POWER CAN'T PUT HIMSELF BACK IN THE PLOT.**
"Oh." I said. "I get it."
"But before you go," said GG quickly. "There's one more thing you guys need. In order to summon us, the Author Sages in the midst of battle, or to summon the Laptop, you need this song."
"Another song? Oh joy!" I cried.
"This," said Chica. "Is the Ritornello of Author-Ism."
"What's a Ritornello?" I asked.
"It's a song, LL." Jigglypuff said.
"Oh."
"With this song, you can call us all for any reason. Use the medallions for one on one calling. But this is like a conference call," explained Zel.
"You can play it anytime. But it's kinda expensive, so we can only respond to it three times. So save it for when you really need it." Wintyr added.
"And only one of you needs to play it. It's not a group affair," finished Cerena.
With that, the authors all pulled out their own instruments. GG had a shiny gold alto sax, and Chica had a pretty black oboe. Jigglypuff somehow managed a drum set, and Zel had a xylophone, with a large pair of cymbals strapped to the side. How Wintyr managed to fit a keyboard (the musical kind) in her pocket, I'll never know. And Cerena had a lovely flute.
Then, with all the quality of a mismatched rock band, the Author Sages pounded out this:
________________________________________^________
________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_______________A__________A______________________
Link and I matched it, and we jammed.
**ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. WE GET THE IDEA.**
The Author Sage's instruments vanished, and the light of the warp portal reappeared around Link, Yumi and me.
**ALL RIGHT GUYS... ARE YOU READY?**
"NO!" I yelled.
"Don't worry, LL. You'll be fine!" said GG reassuringly. "Good luck."
"Double good luck," added Cerena.
"Definitely," nodded Wintyr.
"May the Shwartz be with you!" said Zel.
"Go for it!" Chica grinned.
"And win one for the Gipper!" shouted Jigglypuff.
The female Author Sages stared at him.
"WHAT?" he cried in dismay.
**YEAH... GOOD LUCK YOU GUYS... THIS IS THE LAST TIME I CAN TALK TO YOU BEFORE... THE FIGHT. SO, WIN ONE FOR ME, OK?**
"DESTINY!" I gasped. "YOU'RE THE GIPPER?"
If Destiny had had hands, she would have slapped herself in the head. Instead we heard a dejected sigh.
**JUST... GOOD LUCK.**
"Thanks," said Link.
"Don't worry, guys!" I said triumphantly. "We won't let Hyrule down! Or the authors!"
"That punk'll never know what hit him!" said Yumi.
"This'll be the last big fight... we're going to prove once and for all who's the tough one around here!" Link said.
**THAT'S WHAT I'M AFRAID OF...** sighed Destiny, as the Chamber of Sages faded from around us.
WOWEEEE! So many questions have been answered in this chapter! But we still don't know who the bad guy is... is it really Ganondorf, AGAIN? Or is it someone else who just happens to be a male Gerudo? Naaaaah...
The action is really getting going now! Will Link, LL and Yumi be able to stop the evil from screwing up Hyrule? Will everyone have to relive the past over and over again? Aren't both those questions kind of the same? THE SUSPENSE IS SO THICK YOU COULD CUT IT WITH A KNIFE!
Stay tuned for the next action-packed chapter:
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE HYRULE
-or-
I SMELL A CLIMAX COMING ON!
By Galaxy Girl
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: TRUTH, JUSTICE, JELLO, AND COWS!
Disclaimer: Let me put this simply. Me no own Zelda... Me no own Link, LL, Hyrule, and stuff... Me do own self, Blue Butterfly, Doseki, seven extra temples. You ask before you use. Me no mean make fun of authors in story. Me just try make you laugh.
(A group of Termanian swamp monkeys appear next to GG's computer chair)
Monkey: She speak our language!
GG: Huh?
Monkey 2: You be friend swamp monkeys brother goober poo poo!
GG: AAGGGH!
This is Goron News, and I'm your anchor-Goron, Little Link of the Gorons Darunia Flint Goron Jr. OK, just kidding. Anyway, last time on SOIS, we (very slowly) made our way to Kokiri Forest to find the sixth and final Author Sage. Instead, we found my girlfriend's little sister, Link's friend Saria, a bunch of mean Kokiri, Dokoru/Skull Kid, and the author Cerena who thought she was a lonely Kokiri named Siriana. When we last saw her, Cerena was glowing purple and floating through the air into the Truth Temple while saying "Moo..." Mysterious... TERRIBLY mysterious! Well, by the end of this chapter, we'll either have six Author Sages on out hands or we'll be dead. I guess we'll find out.
We stood there in the clearing staring at the entrance to the temple far above our heads for quite a while, when Link finally put on his thinking cap and figured something out.
"Wait! This is the... TRUTH Temple... so maybe we need to use the... LENS OF TRUTH!" he shouted.
"It's worth a try," I shrugged.
Link pulled out the little purple lens that had been so useful over the past six temples, and he held it up to his eye.
"WHOA!" he said. "There's a big huge staircase that leads up to the door!"
"Oh. Well, that was kind stupid of us," Yumi chuckled.
Link took a few steps to be sure that the staircase really was there, and then he started racing up to the top. Then he turned around and saw me standing there.
"Well, come on, Doseki. We don't have all day."
"Um..."
"What's um? It's just a staircase. Come on!"
"It's invisible." I said calmly.
"So?"
"I can't see anything but the ground when I stand on it."
"So?"
"Hmmm... I seem to remember the last time I used a staircase... back in the Galaxy Temple, was it? Hmmm... I seem to recall... FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS AND BREAKING MY NOSE!" I shrieked.
"That was a whole four temples ago. You can do it!" Link pointed out.
"And besides, you never really broke your nose, did you?" Yumi retorted.
I sighed. "Why fight it?" I shrugged.
"I don't know. Here, follow me very closely." Link said, looking through the Lens of Truth again.
Following Link very carefully, we took the staircase step by step. Since the stairs were invisible, it was not a very pleasant thing to do...
I very unsteadily wobbled halfway up the stairs, and took a look around. The great green cloud of the forest was on all sides of us, and it was a long way to the ground.
I remembered my unpleasant experience in the Emotion Temple, gulped and turned back towards the staircase. I couldn't see the stairs, so it was even worse. "Don't... look... down." I said calmly.
"Good boy, Doseki!" Link said, more reassuring than I had ever heard him before. "See, it's not so bad! Just don't look down."
"I'm way ahead of you," I mumbled, as I crawled (literally) up another step.
Link and Yumi turned around and Link rolled his eyes. "You can't do it that way!"
"Why not?" I said. "I'm quite comfortable this way, thank you very much." "Because then you can't see any monsters around you," Yumi pointed out.
I shrieked and raced up the stairs until I was in the doorway of the Truth Temple.
"Don't say things like that!" I cried. "I'm only three, ya know!"
"In human years," Link said.
A couple seconds later, Link and Yumi finally reached the top step alongside me. Link fixed his pants, and stared defiantly into the Truth Temple.
"All right. Here we go..." he said. "The last temple... the last sage... the last everything!"
"CERENA! DON'T WORRY! WE'RE COMING!" I yelled into the doorway.
Link pulled out his Master Sword and shield, and I grabbed the Little Giant.
"DOOODA LOO DOOT DOO DOOOO!" Yumi hummed.
"CHAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!!!"
We both ran screaming into a long dark corridor much like the one in the Galaxy Temple.
"OK MONSTERS, HERE WE COME!" the three of us screamed. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and finally we stepped out of the tunnel to find ourselves surrounded by...
Mirrors.
Heh, you thought I was going to say some kind of evil creepy monster or something, huh? Heh heh heh. Nope. Just a whole entire room surrounded in mirrors.
"Oh," said Link. "Well... are they like... demon mirrors and our reflections are going to try and kill us?"
Yumi flew up to one and tapped it. "Nope. Just a mirror."
"Huh." Link said. "I thought it might be a bit more exciting than that."
I looked around in awe. The whole room was made up of nothing but mirrors. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all shiny panes of glass. It looked as if there were a million Links, Yumis, and Dosekis all standing (and flying, in Yumi's case) there.
I hadn't really seen my human reflection since... well... it was a while ago. I still wasn't used to it.
"So... now what?" I asked.
"One of these mirrors isn't really a mirror. It's a door." Yumi explained.
"And... how are we supposed to figure out which one it is?" Link asked.
"Gee, I don't know!" she said angrily. "What do I look like, a player's guide?"
"It's going to be hard to tell." Link said, scratching his head. "See, each of the mirrors reflects the image of the one directly across from it. So they all look the same."
We stood around, staring at all the mirrors for a second, when Link finally ran up to one and tried to open it. "Nope, this one's a mirror. Let's try this one... uh, nope."
"That's going to take all day!" I whined.
"Do you have a better idea?" he shot back.
I looked around. "Actually, yes. All of the mirrors are reflected in one another, except for one." I said.
"Which one?" asked Link.
"The one directly across from the doorway," I said. "See? Because there is no mirror on the door we just came in."
"You're a genius!" Yumi cried as she flew over to the mirror right across from the entrance.
"I wouldn't say that," I chuckled.
Link pushed the door open, and made a gesture. "After you."
"What are you trying to pull? I know what kind of monsters might be in there. After you!"
"No, no, I insist."
"No, no, I INSIST!"
"Hey, come on. I'm trying to be polite."
"You mean trying to get me killed!"
"I would never!"
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
"Aww... that's so nice!" I said. "OK, I'll go first."
"Nah, now that you mention it, I should go first."
"No, no, no, I'm being silly. I'll go."
"No! I'll go!"
Yumi sighed dejectedly and flew into the corridor. "I cannot believe you two..."
"OK, OK, I got it! We'll both go in at the same time." I suggested.
"Fine with me. One... two..."
We both pushed into the corridor, which was surprisingly small.
"OW!"
"Ouch!"
"Hey watch it!"
"You watch it!"
"I didn't mean to, excuse me!"
"No, no, excuse me."
"No, I insi-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIST!"
That was the sound of Link and me dropping into the trap door in the floor of the corridor.
BANG!
That was the sound of Link and me landing on the hard, cold stone floor.
CRUNCH!
That was the sound of me landing on poor Link one more time.
"AAAAAGH!"
"Oops... sorry, Link." I said sheepishly. I stood up and brushed myself off. "Man, am I tired of falling!"
"Man, am I going to need a spleen transplant when all this is over..." Link groaned.
Me, Yumi, and the agonized Link were standing (and rolling around in pain) in a small square room made out of hard gray stone. The walls were inscribed with all different kinds of writing and symbols.
"Hey, I think these may mean something!" Yumi cried.
While Yumi and I tried to decipher the writing, Link took an aspirin. Then all three of us got to work on the mysterious symbols.
Three sets of them were in large carved out squares.
STARTODDBHEEWJAERLELTO
U0U0L0L0U0U0L0L0A0A0S0S0H0H0U0O0N0N0U0U0F0F0T0T0R0R0U0U0T0T0H0H
(X the 0's, divide by 2)
And the last one in a square was:
Moo.
"Fascinating..." murmured Yumi. "Well, the door is locked to the next room, so we'd better get cracking on these.
Link was staring at the first inscription. "Hey... if you add a space in there, the first sentence before the arrows is 'START ODD'."
"Fascinating..." murmured Yumi.
"And the one after all the junk is 'START EVEN'." I added. "Start odd and start even what?"
Link started mumbling to himself and pointing at all the different letters. "Oh! I think I get it. The directions say to start with the odds."
"The odd what?" I asked. "Those are letters. There's no such things as odd letters."
"X is an odd letter," Yumi shrugged.
"Not like that. The odd numbers are 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11... so on. The first odd number is one. So what is the first letter?"
"B!" I said. I think I was starting to get it.
"OK, and what is the third number?"
"E!" Yumi cried. "I GET IT! If you keep going like that, then it spells B-E-W-A-R-E-T..."
"And then we start back at the beginning," said Link. "Only this time with the evens. So we have H-E-J-E-L-L-O."
"And all together, it spells B-E-W-A-R-E-T-H-E-J-E-L-L-O. Or... BEWARE THE JELLO!" I said, very proud of myself and of Link for figuring out that tough puzzle.
"Beware the Jello? Well, that's a very useful hint." Link said, rolling his eyes. "OK... now... what does the second one say?"
"A really long weird sentence and then at the bottom it says 'X the 0's and divide by 2." Yumi said. "Any ideas?"
"Let's try doing what it says." I suggested. I felt around in my pack, and then said to Link, "You wouldn't happen to have a number two pencil, would you?"
"Sorry, fresh out," he said.
"OK then, would you happen to have a magical dagger, then?"
"Of course," he said, handing me the Black Dagger.
I carefully scratched away the carving of the first 0.
"What are you doing?" asked Yumi.
"I'm X-ing the 0's..." I replied.
I kept on moving down the line, scratching out 0's as I went, and finally, I reached the end. There were no more 0's in the carving now that I had scratched them out.
"Look. Now it says, 'UULLUULLAASSHHUUNNUUFFTTRRUUTTHH!" I said.
"And divide by two. Of course!" Yumi said. She took the dagger from me, and did her best to scratch out every letter that was duplicated in a row.
"Now it says, 'ULULASHUNUFTRUTH'." Link said.
"Or ULULASHUN UF TRUTH." Yumi replied.
"Hey... they spelled Ululation wrong!" I said. "And same with Of!"
"It's because Ululation and Of have O's in them." Link said. "OK, I think we know what to do now."
"But what about the third inscription?" I asked.
"It says 'Moo.' What else is there to say?" Link shrugged. "Must have something to do with something later in the temple."
He pulled out his Ocarina and quickly played the Ululation of Truth. The door at the end of the room slid open, and we entered the next room.
The next room, which was in fact... a giant shrubbery maze.
"You have GOT to be kidding me." Link said.
"Shrubbery!" Yumi laughed. "Well, I think we can figure this out. It's just a shrubbery maze. The door to the next room is over there," She pointed to a door on the far wall.
Several big eye switches were hanging on the walls, and I noticed a strange gleam coming from a few particular places in the room.
"What happens if we go over the walls?" I asked.
"Let's see," said Link, pulling a leaf off of the nearest shrub to us. He tossed it gently over the wall of shrubbery, and giant evil laser beam shot out of one of the eye switches, crumbling the poor leaf to a fine powder.
"EEEEEEK!" I gasped. "That's not good!"
Link gulped, and then tried to look tough. "OK... we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way."
We stumbled our way through the first few twists and turns of the maze, and we noticed the shrubbery gradually got higher and higher. That prevented us from seeing over the walls to know which way to go.
A while later, we reached a wide section of the maze. A great big treasure chest sat in the middle, next to a large signpost.
LINK AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE DUNGEON MAP! NOW THEY CAN FIND THEIR WAY THROUGH THE DUNGEON. I MEAN... UGH, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. OH NO! I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING! THIS IS THE LAST DUNGEON MAP THE BOYS WILL EVER FIND! OH MAN... I SUDDENLY FEEL VERY LONELY...
"What does the sign say?" I asked Link.
"I can't read it," he said. "It's in some crazy language."
"Are you sure?" I said, taking a look. "HEY! That's written in Goronese!" I gasped.
"Really? Then what's it say?" cried Yumi.
"It says... 'Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Cheesecake Macaroni Jellybean Shenanigan Washing Machine'." I said.
"Don't be stupid. What's it say?" asked Link.
"I told you! It says 'Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Cheesecake Macaroni Jellybean Shenanigan Washing Machine'!" I snapped. "Don't you believe me?"
"And what in the name of my grandma's underwear does THAT mean?" Yumi shouted. "Hmmm..."
"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this is the Truth Temple." Link shrugged. "Let's see."
He pulled out the trusty-rusty Lens of Truth and stared at the sign. "Now it's in Goronese again."
"Let me see," I said. I took the Lens from him and gazed at the sign. "Oh! Now it says, 'Be cautious, brave travelers, for YOU are not what YOU seem'."
"Is it just me, or does that make LESS sense than the purple monkey dishwasher thing?" Link asked dejectedly.
"Beats me," I said. "Come on, let's keep going."
We turned around the next corner, and we found ourselves in an even deeper part of the maze. The walls were so high we couldn't see the top, and at the end of the part of the path we were on, was a shiny silver mirror.
"So that's what was causing the gleaming!" Link nodded. He stepped up to the mirror and began to examine it closely.
I stepped back a few feet and stared up at the seemingly endless shrubbery.
"Why do you think they put a maze in here?" I asked her. She shrugged.
"I don't know. I just..." Suddenly, Yumi turned a bright yellow. "HUH?"
"Hey, what's the matter?" I asked frantically.
"Nothing!"
"Then why are you yellow?"
"I don't know!" she gasped.
"Why are you turning yellow if there's no reason to?" I asked.
"Hey, what's with the third degree?" Yumi yelled. "I don't know why I'm changing colors! There's no bad guy nearby! Or at least... I don't think there is..."
We looked around quickly for the evildoer that had snuck up near us. But... there was none.
Link was standing where he had been, gazing into the mirror blankly.
"Hey Link, do you see any bad guys?" I asked.
"DOSEKI! RUN!" I heard Link scream.
"What?" I replied.
"RUN!" he said again.
Yumi raised her eyebrows. "Run from what?"
"JUST RUN!"
"Link, you're not making any sense!" I said. I stepped towards him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Come on. Help us look for the monster."
Suddenly, Link turned around, and I screamed bloody murder.
"AAAGGGHHHHHH!" I shrieked.
THE GUY IN FRONT OF ME WITH THE HAT AND GREEN TUNIC WAS NOT LINK!
He looked enough like Link. But his eyes were blank, and really creepy looking. Everything about him was darker. His skin looked puke-green, and he was definitely not a nice-looking character.
"I'M NOT LINK!" the creepy thing said. Oh gee, I could have figured that out by myself.
"AIEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I squealed again.
"AGGGH!" Yumi screamed. "It's a Shadow! It's an evil reflection of someone! It lives in a special kind of evil mirror, and it's really hard to kill!"
"Why is it hard to kill?" I asked quickly.
"Because each one has a different weak spot!" Yumi yelled back.
"Then what is it?"
"I DON'T KNOW!" she screamed. "It changes all the time! And I can't tell by looking at him because his whole self is a lie!"
The Shadow version of Link pulled out a big creeped out version of the Master Sword and came running after me.
"EEEEEEEK!" I squealed, ducking past the Shadow and racing towards the mirror.
That's when I saw it. In the mirror was a NORMAL reflection of Link. It was banging on the mirror and screaming at me.
"RUN!" it yelled.
"I'm WAY ahead of you!" I said, as I ducked away from another chop of the Shadow's sword that was aimed at my head.
"No, DOSEKI! It's me!" the reflection yelled. "I'm Link! I'm the real Link!"
"Really?" I asked.
"DUCK!" screamed the reflection.
I ducked, just as Shadow Link's sword almost ran me through.
"How did you get in there?" asked Yumi.
"I don't know! That creepy thing grabbed me and then jumped out of the mirror!" Link yelled. "I don't think I can get out until you kill it!"
"Give me a minute!" I cried.
"Try... the fax machine!" Link shouted. "I think that will stun it!"
I pulled out the compact Fax Machine O' Randomness and aimed the paper tray at the evil Link. "Take this, you bad evil thing!"
I pressed the little red button, and a single sheet of white 8 x 11 paper shot out of the Fax Machine like a knife. It sliced Shadow Link across his arm, and he stopped for a second, screaming in pain.
"Uh... try... its... HEAD!" Yumi yelled. "I... think so, anyway."
With a quick swing of the Little Giant, I sent Shadow Link reeling to the ground. He didn't get back up.
"Did I kill it?" I asked warily, stepping away from the thing on the ground.
"I don't know... I think so!" Yumi said.
But of course, we were wrong. The Shadow thingy got up and raced over at me again.
"EEEK!" I yelled as I jumped out of the way.
"Uh... try... its... um... AGH! I can't tell!" Yumi cried, grabbing her head in frustration.
"I have an idea!" I said. I ran up to the mirror and got ready to smack it. "Watch out, Link..."
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" screamed Link. "Don't break the mirror!"
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because! Then I'll probably be stuck in here forever!"
"Well then, what do you suggest?" I shot back.
"Just keep hitting it. Maybe it'll die." Link shrugged.
"Oh, brilliant strategy. Thanks, Napoleon!" I yelled.
But there really wasn't much else I could do. I ran up to the evil thing when it was distracted, and hit it again and again.
It spun around and sent me flying into the wall of shrubbery.
"OW!" I cried. "OK, THAT'S IT!"
I stood up, marched over to the Shadow, and punched him in the gut.
It was the Goron thing to do.
And apparently, it worked! The Shadow screamed in pain and vanished into thin air.
"The GUT! Of course!" Yumi cried, snapping her fingers.
"What about me!?" Link yelled.
"Come on, you can come out now." Yumi said.
Link moved his arm up and touched the mirror, finding that his hand went right through it. He jumped through, and rejoined the group.
"Good one, Doseki," he said. "Thank you for getting me out of that crappy mirror."
"I owed you one anyway," I said proudly.
"Doseki, in the Hero business, you don't keep track of how much you owe somebody," Link said. "Because if you actually try to, you'll find out that everyone owes you a lot more than they could ever pay back."
We turned another two corners, and at the end of the row saw another evil mirror.
"Oh great..." Link groaned.
"What do we do, Yumi?" I asked.
"I guess we'll just have to walk by it." Yumi shrugged.
We tiptoed very slowly up to the mirror, and found that no evil things came out of it. Or anyway, not at first.
"Maybe... if... I... do... THIS!" yelled Link, stepping out in front of the mirror again. Nothing happened.
"What's wrong with it?" I said, scratching my head. "Did it break?"
"I don't know." Link shrugged. "OH HEY! Look! There in the mirror! It's Yumi!"
A perfect reflection of the author-turned-fairy was staring back at us from inside the mirror. It banged on the glass and screamed several curses. "HEY! HEY! LOOK OUT!"
"That's the REAL Yumi!" Link gasped.
An epiphany hit me. "Hey wait a sec... if Yumi's reflection is in the mirror... Then the Shadow..."
That's when I heard the tiny scream and seconds later, I was picked up by the collar and tossed across the row and into the bushes. "AIEEEE!"
Link came a few seconds later. "YAAAAH!"
"Oh no! Link! Yumi's trapped in the mirror!" I cried.
"Yeah? Well I think we may have something else to worry about!"
A tiny flash of pukey green and yellow later, Link and I were both on the floor again.
"OW! CUT IT OUT!" I screamed to the Shadow version of my guardian fairy. It laughed maniacally and fluttered around our heads some more.
"MOVE IT! IT'S COMING AGAIN!" Link screamed.
I have to admit, it looked pretty funny to see two guys like Link and me running around and screaming for help about a five-inch tall evil fairy attempting to dive bomb us to death.
"WHAT DO WE DO?" I cried. "HEEEELP!"
"Watch out! That thing is strong for such a little squirt!" Link yelled. He pulled me out of the way of a psycho fairy dive-bomb.
"Stop it!" I yelled at the thing. It didn't listen.
"If we can find some way to slow it down, we can try and kill it!" Link said coolly, dodging another attack.
"AAHA! The bracelet!" I cried. I reached to activate the Spiral Bracelet, when I realized that it wasn't there. I thought my arm had felt a bit drafty...
Then I heard a whistle. I looked up to see the Shadow Yumi holding my bracelet over her head and laughing like a maniac. "LOOKING FOR THIS?" she giggled.
"Uh oh... She must have grabbed it when she threw me!" I shrugged.
"Well, we'll have to find some other way!" Link said. "I wonder if the little fairy likes... ICE!" he screamed, pulling out his bow.
Well, at least he WANTED to pull out his bow.
He reached into an empty bag and felt around. "WHAT? Where did all of my stuff go?"
We heard another whistle and saw Shadow Yumi juggling my bracelet, as well as all of Link's weapons.
"D'OH!" Link cursed.
"Don't worry, I still have mine!" I yelled. But then I realized that I didn't.
"HOW DID SHE GET ALL OF OUR STUFF SO QUICKLY?" Link cried.
"It's the bracelet! She used it to speed herself up and then she took all of our stuff while we were just standing here!" I said. I have to admit, I was impressed with my own ability to comprehend the situation, as well as my ability to use all those big words in this sentence.
"How are we going to kill her NOW?" Link wailed.
"Remember the Goron saying, Link: You're never really defeated until you're on the ground bleeding!" I said proudly.
Seconds later...
"I... think... we're... defeated now..." Link moaned from his spot on the ground bleeding next to me.
"Not... yet!" I said angrily. "There's one thing she DIDN'T take yet!"
I pulled the white Emotion Medallion out of the bag and threw it at the wall. It bounced off and hit the floor as a white light began to shoot out of it.
Shadow Yumi screamed and covered her eyes, stopping herself from beating us up any more.
Suddenly, the figure of Wintyr appeared in the light. She was in a small white room, washing her hands at the sink.
She turned towards us, and screamed in shock.
"YAHH! Oh... oh man, you guys scared me..." she gasped, clutching her chest." "Can't you see I'm in the bathroom?"
"Correction: You're washing your hands." Link groaned.
Wintyr gasped again. "Good grief! What happened to you?"
"We're having the crap kicked out of us by an evil fairy..." I muttered.
"Oh no! Oh, there she is... an evil Yumi, huh? Well, I'll make short work of her!" Wintyr said defiantly.
The Sage of Emotion ran backwards into the bathroom and checked to see that no one was watching. Then she ran back towards us, put her hands together, and started rapidly chanting in Japanese.
I couldn't understand a word she was saying, but as she chanted, she started to glow a bluish white like ice.
The light got so big, Shadow Yumi had to shut her eyes again.
It looked like she was almost done. "... jigora jiii majuan... FROZEN..."
Suddenly, Wintyr stopped, and turned away from the light. Someone was watching her from the bathroom doorway!
"Waa? Whaddya mean stop talking to myself? I'm not talking to myself, I'm saving the world here!" Wintyr snapped.
There was a pause. We could hear a little bit of mumbling from the bathroom doorway.
"I can't go to the office, I'm busy! I've got people to save here!" Wintyr said, very annoyed. "Pssh. Fine, leave then!" Wintyr groaned.
Then she noticed Link and me, backed up against the shrubbery, trying to get away from Shadow Yumi, who had recovered and was coming in for the kill again.
"SORRY!" she said. Then she started chanting again. "... jigora jii majuan... FROZEN... HEART!" Wintyr yelled.
A spinning whoosh of white and blue appeared around the evil Yumi, and we heard a high pitched scream.
The entire room seemed to fill with fog, and when the fog and mist faded, we saw a gleaming blue object hovering in midair.
It was Shadow Yumi, frozen solid in a barrier of ice shaped like a heart. The heart tumbled to the ground and shattered, and the evil Yumi vanished into thin air. The mirror started to glow and the REAL Yumi zipped out.
"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry, you guys... I didn't know the evil me was so... EVIL!" she said.
"Ow..." Link and I grunted.
"How was that?" asked Wintyr.
"Great... now could you get us some Advil?" begged Link.
"Oh, I'm sorry it took so long!" Wintyr said. "It was my first try... but hey, I really did it! Cool!"
"Thank you, Wintyr," I said.
"No problem. Now if you two'll excuse me, I have to get to class..." she said. "Or it's the principal's office for me!"
"See ya later, Wintyr!" I grinned.
"Yeah, see ya," added Link.
The Sage of Emotion waved back, and the light faded as the medallion returned to normal.
"OK, now to finish navigating this DA&%*$ shrub maze, and then we can get back to the action!" Link said triumphantly.
"I think I've had enough action for one lifetime..." I groaned.
"Come on, guys!" Yumi said, pointing around the next corner. "Cerena's not going to save herself!"
We followed Yumi down a few more corridors, and FINALLY!- the shrub maze ended and the door to the next room was open.
But in front of the door was a big tempting-looking treasure chest.
LINK AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE OPTICAL GLASS OF FALSE! THIS IS A CHEAP GENERIC LENS OF TRUTH THAT CAN SHOW YOU THE FALSE SIDES OF THINGS! WHY YOU WOULD WANT TO SEE THAT, I'M NOT SURE... BUT YOU HAVE IT NOW, SO DEAL WITH IT.
AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, LET'S KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE. LINK AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE COMPASS BURIED UNDER SOME STUFF AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SAME TREASURE CHEST! NOW THEY CAN SEE SOME CRAP HIDDEN IN THE DUNGEON. NOT LITERAL CRAP, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
"Two goodies in one chest!" Yumi cheered. "How lucky are we?"
I stared at the Optical Glass of False. It was a poorly-made version of Link's Lens of Truth.
"Try looking through it," suggested Link.
I held the glass up to my face and looked at Yumi and Link. What I saw instead was a big fat pink hippopotamus in a pink tutu and Marlon Brando.
"Uh..." I stammered. "I think you'd better look at this, Link..."
Link took the glass from me and tried it for himself. "What the- You look like a guy in a hot dog suit!"
"I do?" I gasped.
"This thing shows you fake stuff! What's the use in that?" Link groaned, throwing it into his bag roughly. "Well, we might as well keep it anyway."
"What a useless treasure!" Yumi said, rolling her eyes. "Whatever. OK, let's go."
Through the next door was another big huge room full of mirrors. Mirrors all over the place!
"Cool," Link said. "Where's the door in here?"
"Right over there!" said Yumi, pointing across the room. "Hey, look! That door has the symbol of the Truth Temple on it! That must be the boss key door!"
"Wow, that was fast." I whistled.
Link raced over to the door and crashed into something halfway there, falling on his butt.
"OW!" he yelled.
I burst out laughing, and so did Yumi. Link was not happy.
"That's not funny!" he said.
"Neither were all the pies in the Innocence Temple, but I was sure laughing hard!" I giggled.
"It doesn't look like there's anything here..." Link said. "But there must be invisible walls or something."
He took out the Lens of Truth and stared around. "Oh. There's a huge invisible brick wall cutting off that entire side of the room. And there's no way past!"
"Then... where do we go?" I asked him.
"Oh. There's an invisible door right there," he said, pointing to our immediate left.
"Looks like we're not done yet!" Yumi sighed.
Link opened the new door and glumly stepped through.
Only one word could describe the next room. "WHOA!" I gasped.
The room was HUMONGOUS! It looked almost like it was leading up to a cathedral or a temple or something of that sort. Statues of all shapes and sizes led up to a giant tunnel in the shape of a dinosaur's head. It looked kinda like Dodongo's Cavern.
"Weird..." Link muttered.
"This is supposed to be the Truth Temple... what does a dinosaur have to do with Truth?" Yumi asked.
Suddenly, a booming voice echoed throughout the room. It was a deep, really scary voice...
"HALT! WHO GOES THERE?"
"AAAAGGGH!" I shrieked. "GET IT AWAY!"
"Get what away?" asked Link. Then he turned his attention back to the voice. "Who said that?"
"I DID!" said the giant dinosaur head tunnel at the end of the room. "THIS IS THE SHRINE OF THE GREAT AND POWERFUL YENRAB! HE DOES NOT LIKE INTRUDERS!"
"Who's YENRAB?" I asked.
"YENRAB IS THE HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE TELLER OF TRUTH! THE FREAKISHLY FREAKY FANATIC OF FALSEHOODS! THE CORRUPT CREATURE KEEPER OF THE TRUTHMASTER'S TERRIFIC TREASURE!"
"Enough alliteration, sheesh." Yumi growled.
"YENRAB AND YENRAB ALONE IS POWERFUL ENOUGH TO GUARD THE ONLY WEAPON THAT CAN DESTROY THE TRUTHMASTER! HE IS NOT TO BE DISTURBED!" the voice continued.
"Well, what if we want to fight YENRAB?" asked Link smugly.
"THEN YOU MAY ENTER! BUT YOU WON'T COME OUT ALIVE!" laughed the dinosaur head maniacally.
Link marched triumphantly towards the dinosaur head.
"LINK! Didn't you hear what he said?" I cried. "We are going to DIE!"
"Do you remember the last time someone told us we were going to be killed?" Link asked me.
"Uh... yeah. Coeur de Glace."
"And what happened to her?"
"We killed her."
"Right. How about Dark Wintyr?"
"We defeated her too."
"And Terry and Kim?"
"Uh..."
"Dark Zel?"
"Well..."
"NMR? Dark Jigglypuff?"
"Well those guys..."
"EATEMUP? Dark Chica?"
"Er..."
"Dischord? DARK GG?"
"Well, those guys didn't have 'Great and Powerful' in their title!" I protested weakly.
"COME ON!" Link said, dragging me along with him.
Just as we reached the dinosaur head tunnel, we heard the voice talk again.
"UM... YOU SERIOUSLY AREN'T CONSIDERING GOING IN THERE, ARE YOU?"
"Yep. We're going in," answered Link.
"OH, POOPY! IT'S MY JOB TO TRY AND SCARE YOU OFF. DIDN'T I SCARE YOU AT ALL?"
"Not really."
"NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT?"
"Not even a little bit."
"AW, MAN! WELL THEN, UM... COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT WOULD HAVE SCARED YOU?"
"Maybe a big rubber mask," Link said sarcastically.
"OOH! THAT'S GOOD! OH, OH, AND I COULD GROWL A LITTLE BIT... OOH! OOH! I'LL SCARE SO MANY ADVENTURERS!"
"Sorry pal, but we're going to defeat this 'YENRAB' guy, so there won't be any more adventurers." Link shrugged.
"OH REALLY? AWW... POOPY... OH! I'M SUPPOSED TO ASK YOU. DO YOU HAVE INSURANCE?"
"Green Cross and Hylian Shield," Link said.
"Slate Farm," I added.
"Hyrulian Fairy Insurance," Yumi finished.
"OH. AND DO YOU HAVE ANY... SHARP OBJECTS ON YOU?"
"Well sure. We both have swords, and lots of little things too," I said.
"OH... THAT'S NOT GOOD..."
"Why?" asked Yumi.
"WELL, IT'S JUST THAT... PEOPLE WHO FIGHT YENRAB HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO TRY AND JAM THEIR EARDRUMS OUT WITH SHARP OBJECTS..."
"Eeeeeeeeehhhh..." I groaned.
"WELL, JUST THOUGHT I'D LET YOU KNOW. OH, HAVE FUN! AND BY THE WAY... IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND AND DECIDE TO LET HIM KILL YOU OR DECIDE TO RUN AWAY SCREAMING, I'LL REALLY APPRECIATE IT."
"Nope. We're gonna get him," Link said.
"OH. POO."
And then the voice was silent.
Link stepped up into the dinosaur's mouth, and called, "OK, there's a big long staircase going down. "Ready to go?"
"Why not? Let's rush to our dooms!" I said pessimistically.
Link started going down the stairs, and as I climbed down after him, I said quietly, "Over the teeth and past the gums... Look out YENRAB, here we come!"
"... 63 pieces of rock on the wall, 63 pieces of rock! If one of these pieces should happen to fall, 62 pieces of rock on the wall!" I sang.
"Ugh... enough already!" Link said, skipping three steps down.
"But I'm bored!" I whined. "And who knows how long these stairs are going to go down? It's already been 37 pieces of rock on the wall!"
"AKA half an hour..." Yumi said, extremely bored. "HOW MANY STAIRS DOES THIS GUY NEED FOR AN EERIE INTRODUCTION?"
"... 24 pieces of rock on the wall, 24 pieces of rock! If one of these pieces should happen to fall, 23 pieces of rock on the wall..."
"... 2 pieces of rock on the wall, 2 pieces of rock... If one of these pieces should happen to fall, 1 piece of rock on the wall..."
"... -33 pieces of rock on the wall, -33 pieces of rock! If one of these pieces should happen to fall, -34 pieces of rock on the wall!"
"If I hear that song one more time, something is going to fall down these stairs, and it's not going to be a piece of rock..." Link threatened.
"Gee, sorry Link... but thanks for making me stop. I was tired of singing too..."
"LOOK! LIGHT AT THE END OF THE BIG LONG STAIRWAY!" Yumi gasped.
The three of us ran as fast as we could down to the bottom of the stairs, where a door was waiting for us.
"YENRAB: THE TRUTHMASTER'S HEAD BODYGUARD. EXTREME DANGER. YOU GOTTA BE FREAKIN' NUTS TO GO IN THERE. YOU THINK I'M KIDDING HUH? JUST OPEN THE DOOR THEN..." the sign on the door said.
"Let's go... That YENRAB guy is going to pay for making me hear 132 verses of '99 Pieces Of Rock On The Wall'..." Link growled.
He threw open the door and stepped inside triumphantly.
"ALL RIGHT, YENRAB YOU STUPID DORK! COME OUT WHERE I CAN KICK YOUR @$$!" he screamed.
The room was wide open and rectangular, with the same stone patterned walls as before. In the center of the room was a large throne turned away from us so we couldn't see who was sitting in it.
Then we heard the scariest voice in the world. Worse than the other guy's.
"WELL, WELL, WELL..." the deep voice grumbled. "IT LOOKS LIKE A FEW PEOPLE FORGOT TO TAKE MY WARNING SERIOUSLY... NOW I WILL BE FORCED TO CRUSH YOU LIKE BUGS! HEAR MY NAME AND TREMBLE! I AM YENRAB! MUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA!"
"Stand up and turn around!" Link ordered.
"AS YOU WISH!" said YENRAB. We saw YENRAB's shadow stand up and step around the throne... and we were met with the most terrifying sight any of the three of us had seen since our journey began... Well, it was just a little bit more terrifying than the Teletubbies, and just as terrifying as my near-fall from Gerudo Valley, but terrifying nonetheless.
A dinosaur... A purple dinosaur with a green stomach and shiny white teeth... An all-too-familiar purple dinosaur speaking into a voice changer...
The dinosaur tossed the voice changer aside and spoke in his real voice. "Super-DEE-Duper! New friends to play with!"
Link, Yumi and I glanced at each other and let loose a collective terrified shriek.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"That's no YENRAB! It's BARNEY!" Yumi gasped, turning bright yellow. "OH SH&$! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"
Link leaped backwards screaming. "OH IS THERE NOTHING AS FRIGHTENING AS A CHILDREN'S SHOW DINOSAUR? AAAGGGH!"
Barney began walking towards us... Giggling demonically all the way...
"OK, OK... Calm down..." Yumi shouted at Link and me. "This is Barney, the Demon Dinosaur of the... Darned. I'm not sure what its weak point is... but I know one thing's for sure... STAY AWAY FROM ITS EVIL RAY OF DOOM!"
"What Evil Ray?" asked Link.
"THAT ONE ABOUT TO HIT YOU!" Yumi shrieked.
Barney was about to launch a big evil purple ray at Link. Link screamed, and jumped back just before the ray hit him and did who knows what kind of damage!
"HOW ARE WE GOING TO KILL IT?" I screamed.
"Give me three minutes... I can figure out its weak point by then!" Yumi said. "Just try and defend yourself, and stay away from the ray!"
I hit the ground dodging another ray, and Link pulled out his sword. "All right you big stupid thing... I hope you've received your last rites, because it's time to die!"
"That's not nice to say! UHOY HOY HUY HOYU HOYU HUOY!" chuckled Barney.
I stood back with the Little Giant drawn, watching the master at work. It was just like I had always imagined: the stories of Link killing the King Dodongo so many years ago... and the story of Link putting that awful Volvagia to rest again! I guess it was kind of amazing to me at the time, that I was really right here fighting beside my long-time hero... Er, well I was about to fight beside him anyway.
"I'm coming, Link!" I yelled.
"Gee, Link... It's not nice to hurt people! I'll have to sing a song about it!" Barney said, just as Link was about to chop him into pieces.
"Don't listen to his song, whatever you do! It's a spell that'll mess up your brain!" Yumi warned.
"NO! ANYTHING BUT THAT!" Link screamed.
Barney started to dance around, and corny background music began to play.
"Oh don't hurt people even if they are bad. Evil guys can too, be sad! They might get mad and call their dad! Oh, don't hurt people even if they are bad!"
I was plugging my ears, and Link was rolling his eyes. "What kind of stupid attack was that? Take this, you evil thing!"
Barney could see that his ruse had failed, so he tried again.
"Why save the world when you could sing? Cause singing is such a marvelous thing! It's better than a root canal or a diamond ring! Why save the world when you could sing?"
"Because it's my job," Link laughed. "OK, now stop the singing, I'm going to kill you."
Barney decided to try one more time. "All righty then, Mr. Link... If you want to try, it's just Super-DEE-DUPER to me! But first..."
"I'm not listening to any of your songs!" Link yelled. "Get ready to get him, Doseki..."
"Right," I said.
Barney jumped backwards to begin his dorky dance, and then started belting out, "I'M BAD! I'M BAD! I'M BAD! YOU KNOW IT! YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW I'M BAD! I'M BAD! I'M BAD! YOU KNOW IT!"
Link raised his eyebrows and stared at the Michael Jackson dancing dinosaur. "WHAT? What happened to 'I Love You' and 'The Wheels On The Bus'?"
Link didn't even see it coming. Just as Barney finished the Michael Jackson dance, he spun around and shot out the evil ray of doom! And poor Link didn't have time to even blink.
"AGGGH!" he screamed.
"LINK!" I cried.
"OH NO!" Yumi gasped.
"Yumi, what does the ray do?" I asked frantically.
"I... I'm not sure!" Yumi gasped again. "I don't think it's deadly, but still!"
Barney laughed that evil laugh again. "UHOY UOY OYUOY UOY UOY HUOY!"
I ran over to my partner's side. "Link! Link, are you all right?"
He looked like he was in a daze. "... I... love... you... You... love... me... We're... a... happy... family..."
"OH NO!" I cried. The poor guy was completely out of it.
"Do you want to have fun and play with me too?" asked Barney dementedly.
"You're gonna pay for that!" I screamed in anger.
I drew the Little Giant again, and charged at that big purple menace. He merely ducked, and I went sailing into the wall.
"OW! OK, really this time!" I said, racing after him.
This time, Barney swung his tail and tripped me.
"Owwww..." I wailed. "Why do I keep tripping?"
"MOVE DOSEKI!" Yumi shrieked.
I instinctively rolled to the left, just as another purple ray crashed into the floor where I had been.
I stood up again. "OK then, NOW I'm gonna hit you!" I cried.
I raced at the dinosaur, and surprisingly, I missed again.
"Yumi, what's going on with me?" I wailed. "I can't hit him at all!"
"I think it's Link," Yumi said.
"Huh?"
"No, no, no! Doseki, it's a psychological thing! Link can't help you this time! You're too afraid to try and hit Barney because Link can't back you up! You have to be brave and attack him!"
Was Yumi right? Was I really afraid to hit Barney because Link wasn't able to help?
It WAS the first time I had to fight a big powerful monster by myself... I had fought Dark GG, but I wasn't afraid then because I wanted my girlfriend back... I had fought Dark Jigglypuff because he had chosen me, but that wasn't a regular battle... I had fought a few Shiniinoru, but I had a weapon that could grind them down easily...
This was it! It was my time to shine now! Time to show Link, Barney, and everyone that I wasn't just a scared little Goron in a hero's body... Time to show the world that I am Little Link of the Gorons, son of the Great Darunia! LL, the Brave! LL, the Strong! LL, the Powerful! LL, the...
"DUCK!" screamed Yumi.
I ducked.
Where was I? Oh yeah... LL the... um... aw man, I lost my train of thought... maybe I should just kill him now...
"HERE I COME!" I screamed.
"Oh, like I haven't heard that before. UHOY HOY HUY HUYO HOYU!"
"Will you stop that laughing?" I said, thoroughly annoyed.
It was time for some serious dino-butt kicking!
"Hey Barney, wanna see how fast I can go?" I said slyly. It was fun egging on the bad guys.
"Why not? I love playing tag!" laughed Barney maniacally.
"Let's go, Yumi! Got his weakness yet?" I asked.
"Sure do. Go for the tail!" Yumi said.
I activated the Spiral Bracelet, and everything around Yumi and me slowed down. Barney was just warming up another ray blast. I jumped into the air and flipped over his big ugly head, and slashed on his tail with the Little Giant.
Just as I landed, time was restored, and Barney jumped forward, yelling in pain.
"Hey! How did you move so quickly?" Barney yelled angrily.
"Oh, you mean... like... THIS?" I said.
The bracelet flashed again, and I jumped into the air Matrix-style. WHACK! A big kick, right in the face!
Barney went flying backwards, very slowly. Finally, he hit the wall and stood up again once time was restored to normal.
Barney stood up again, very woozy. "You're not playing nice... I think you need to learn how to play fair!"
"All is fair in love and war!" Yumi said very dramatically.
"OK now, Barney!" I yelled. "You take back that curse-thingy you put on my buddy Link, or else!"
"Awww, but he looks so happy!" Barney said evilly.
I turned over to Link, and saw that he was playing with two rocks on the ground, and providing their voices.
"JOOOHN!" he squealed in a high voice. "MAAARSHAAA!" he said in a low voice. "I LOOOVE YOU JOOOOOOHN!" he said in the high voice. "I LOOOOVE YOU TOOOOO, MARSHAAAAAA!" "OH JOOOHN!" "OH MAAAARSHAAAAA!"
"Link, what are you doing?" asked Yumi.
"Who's Link?" asked Link.
"OK, THAT'S IT! I've had it up to here with you, Barney!" I yelled to the evil purple villain. "It's time for you to go extinct!"
"Not quite yet!" Barney sneered. He let loose another blast that to my surprise, wasn't aimed at me, but at Link! The hypnotized Hylian hero stood up slowly, and tiptoed towards Yumi and me.
"I... love... you... You... love... me... We're... a... happy... family... With... a... great... big... hug... and... a... kiss... from... me... to... you..." he murmured.
"Leave him alone!" I cried.
"You'll have to get past him first!" said Barney, stepping back against the wall and leaving Link mumbling like an idiot in the middle of the room.
"OK," I said. I ran towards Barney, but at the last second, Link jumped in front and cocked his head to the side. "YOU NO LOVE BARNEY? ME KILL!"
"EEK!" I shrieked. "Yumi, what's up with him?"
"He's under Barney's control, of course... he'll do anything to protect his 'master'!" she said. "If we could do something to snap him out of it..."
"I know!" I gasped. "I have an idea!"
I pulled the Galaxy Medallion out of the bag and threw it at the floor. The blue light shot upwards, and seconds later my girlfriend appeared, reading a book on her bed.
"GG! Emergency!" I cried.
She looked up quickly. "Huh? Oh! What's up?"
Yumi flew in front of the light and pointed at the drooling idiot that was once the Hero of Time. "Barney got him!"
GG made a shuddering noise, and jumped off her bed. "Right. What can I do for you?"
"We need something to snap him out of it!" I said.
"I got just the thing..." she grinned. "Be right with you..."
As we saw GG racing out of her bedroom, the medallion's light flickered and it returned to normal.
"OH NO! What happened?" I gasped. "It broke!"
"I... don't know!" Yumi said. "Maybe she hung up... OK... well, let's just TRY and cure him by ourselves..."
I grabbed the Little Giant and once again tried to get at the evil dinosaur of the darned, but Link was right in the way. He drew his own sword, and like a robot, began trying to kill me. It wasn't his style at all! It was all choppy and he didn't seem to know what he was doing.
He swung the Master Sword over his head, trying to take a chop out of MY head, but I blocked it and we were stuck there, blocking off each other's weapons with our own.
We circled around and around, and I was totally concentrated on keeping my concentration... That's a little redundant, isn't it?
Suddenly, Yumi shrieked. "WATCH OUT!"
"Huh?" I said stupidly. The purple glow told me what was happening. I immediately swung around Link, and like a good zombie-friend, he took the blast.
But this blast seemed to do something different to Link... It rebuilt him! He was better than before... Faster... Stronger... eviler...
Before I knew it, I was on my butt again. Zombie Link screamed in rage and ran for me. Uh oh...
I was ready to meet my maker, when a bright blue flash from the other side of the room distracted Zombie Link.
It was GG! She was back!
"Hey Link! Look what I got!" she said, holding up a freshly printed picture of Princess Ruto, in all her naked Zora glory.
Zombie Link's eyes got all big, and he gasped and passed out. Well that got rid of HIM...
"Thanks GG!" I called. "D'ya think you could give me a hand with HIM now?"
"Can't," she said sheepishly. "It's against Author Sage Rules to help you with sub-bosses or bosses... Sorry."
I shrugged. "It's OK..."
Suddenly, GG screamed in terror. "BEHIND YOU!"
I ducked just as another purple blast came my way. "EEEEEEAAA!" I interjected.
"Oh shoot!" Barney said, snapping his claws. Wait... you can't snap a claw! Er, anyway, his eyes started to glow red, and he powered up a huge purple orb. "Prepare to DIE!"
"SorryGGgottago!" I said all at once.
"Good luck!" she cried worriedly, as the medallion's power faded.
Barney was stomping towards me like a dinosaur straight outta Jurassic Park... I stepped backwards to avoid him, and just like the klutz I am, I tripped over the Galaxy Medallion on the ground and went straight on my butt.
"OH GOOD GOING!" Yumi shrieked. "GET UP!"
"No, DON'T GET UP!" said Barney wickedly, preparing to blast both Yumi and my brains out.
Man, it was like David and Goliath! How could I ever have thought I could have beat this guy?
Hey wait... David and Goliath? DAVID AND GOLIATH! Of course!
I quickly grabbed the Galaxy Medallion and tossed it like a frisbee. HARD! Right into Barney's head!
The Purple Demon Dino of the Darned flinched as the medallion bounced off his head and took a step forwards-
Hey, don't interrupt with your gasps of worry. You didn't let me finish.
He took a step forwards, tripping right over Link's unconscious butt.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Barney as he tumbled to the ground face-first.
It was like a cartoon. He flipped head over heels, and rolled right into the wall, bashing his head again and putting him out like a light. FOR GOOD!
I stood up and picked up the Galaxy Medallion from where it had landed. "Good ol' medallion..."
"It nearly killed you!" gasped Yumi.
"It didn't," I said, as if that made it all better.
Barney disappeared, and a big treasure chest rose up in his place.
"Hey! This is the treasure that can defeat the Truthmaster!" I said happily.
"Great, great. Get it and let's go." Yumi said. "There's another door over there... and what are we going to do about Link?"
LL/DOSEKI AND LL/DOSEKI ALONE GOT THE FIRE/ICE/LIGHT ROD! THIS IS ACTUALLY CERENA'S SECRET WEAPON, BUT CONSIDERING SHE'S ALL WEIRDED OUT RIGHT NOW, IT CAN BE YOURS FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. (DON'T WORRY. YOU'LL GET A SMALLER ONE TO REPLACE IT WHEN CERENA COMES AROUND...) IT'S PRETTY SELF EXPLANITORY. IT SHOOTS FIRE, ICE, OR LIGHT DEPENDING ON WHAT BUTTON YOU PRESS. LEGEND HAS IT THAT THIS IS THE ONLY THING THAT CAN DEFEAT THE TRUTHMASTER... WHOEVER HE IS. I BETCHA HE'S WORSE THAN BARNEY.
I stuffed the F/I/L Rod into my pocket and ran over to Link. "Hey Link!" I cried. "Get up! I beat Barney!"
He was out cold.
Yumi landed on his chest and started kicking his face. "Come on, lazy! Let's get the heck outta this stupid place!"
He didn't move.
"OH CRAP! Yumi! Is he... dead?" I gasped.
"No, he's not dead." Yumi said reassuringly. "He's just very, very unconscious. That was one nasty spell he got hit with three times."
"But Barney's dead now. It should be gone, right?"
"Unless it has some after-effects." Yumi said. "Hmmm... Let me think... Ah! Hey Doseki, gimme the a piece of paper from the Magical Fax Machine O' Randomness."
I handed Yumi a clean sheet of white paper, and she rolled it up into a cone-shape. "Now cover your ears," she ordered.
I did so. The pint-sized author held the cone up to her mouth, got right up next to Link's head, and shrieked in the highest voice imaginable, "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!"
Link sat up quickly. "Dude... heh heh, Dude, it's not nice to do that..."
I gasped. "AFTER-EFFECTS!"
Link rubbed his head and stood up. "Woo, what a trip... That totally sucked. I wonder if I'll have any after-effects... eh, oh well."
"Oh well?" Yumi said in disbelief. "Doseki here saved your butt!"
"Dude, cool... heh heh heh..." he said woozily.
"He doesn't even care!" I said, pouting.
"I think it's just an after-effect." Yumi said. "He'll get over it. Come on now, let's go."
Through the next door was a long, long hallway full of mirrors of all shapes and sizes.
"Mirrors... heh heh heh... aren't they lovely?" said Link dreamily.
"What's he smoking?" I asked Yumi.
"Nothing. OK now... Before you go forward, let me check out all these mirrors to make sure that none of them are evil ones."
Yumi took off down the corridor, and reappeared a few minutes later. "Nope, all's well. But there is a big wall of ice at the end of the hall."
"No problem!" I said, holding up the F/I/L Rod.
I raced off down the hall, expecting Link to be right behind me. Wrong.
He was fixated on Yumi's glowing. "Purdy..." he said blankly.
"Heeyyyy, eyes off!" Yumi said, snapping her fingers and extinguishing her glow. "That guy just dropped 40 IQ points..."
"Come on Link," I said, feeling like the babysitter for the first time on this trip.
I dragged Link down the hallway and we finally reached the ice wall.
"Purdy..." giggled Link stupidly.
I studied the F/I/L Rod until I found a tiny red button on the side. I pointed the top of it at the wall and WHOOSH! A stream of fire whooshed out and reduced the wall to a puddle.
"COOOOOOOOOL..." Link murmured.
"What's so cool? You have arrows that can do that," I said, rolling my eyes.
On the other side of the door was another long hallway full of mirrors. At the end was a big wall of light.
Yumi did another mirror check, and told me it was safe to go. I grabbed Link and dragged him down the hallway, and up to the light wall.
"How do I do this?" I asked Yumi.
"Well, Ice is weakened by Fire," Yumi began. "So Light must be weakened by one of them."
"Let's try this," I said, pressing the little blue button. A rush of ice shot out of the rod and the barrier disappeared.
"Hey... wait a sec! Light isn't weakened by ice! What kind of screwed up weapon is this?"
"Don't ask questions about it, or it'll kick out when you most need it." Yumi said wisely.
I bet you can guess what was behind that wall. Yep. A big hall of mirrors with a barrier of fire at the end.
Yumi once again told me the hallway was safe, and the wonked-out hero and I raced down to the other end of the hallway.
"So, by process of elimination, light must weaken this door." I said.
"Good boy. You get a treat," laughed Yumi.
"I wanna treat!" whined Link.
"I wish he would just go back to normal already..." I groaned as I blasted the wall with light.
The wall crumbled like the others, and I pulled Link through the doorway to find ourselves in a long room with a big staircase at the far end, leading up to a big door.
"OOH... Looks important!" I said.
"Uh oh..."
"What's uh oh?" I asked Yumi.
"Link's all weirded out... What if this is Dark Cerena?"
"I can take her!"
"You don't know that," Yumi said. "I'm worried about you all by yourself. I'm going to give Link a talk."
Yumi grabbed Link and pulled him over to her. "ALL RIGHT BUB! Listen up! We have a brainwashed Author Sage to save here! And I don't care if you just got the crap kicked out of you by a big evil dinosaur! You're gonna help Doseki defeat her with no questions asked! OR ELSE!"
Link didn't say anything. He just kind of giggled.
Yumi rolled her eyes. "I did the best I could..."
"It's all right, Yumi..." I said. "After all, after Cerena, there's the Truthmaster, and that'll be the last bad guy I'll ever have to beat! I need to triumph now, or be a loser forever!"
Boy, was I wrong.
Up the stairs and through the door, we were met by the same kind of room that had had all of the inscriptions on it earlier in the temple. And we could hear the familiar beat of the Goron International Anthem playing on a flute from the far end of the room, in a big area of shadow.
"There she is!" I said, pointing at the mysterious flautist.
A pair of gleaming purple eyes appeared in the shadow. "YENRAB was weak against your power... But I shall not suffer the same fate as him!"
"That's for sure. You get to be an Author Sage!" Yumi said.
"The Author Sages? HA! The mere idea that I am an Author Sage. They are weak against the power of my master, and his master too, the great creator of this virus! And just to prove how weak they are, I will defeat you in the name of all that is not Author-Sagey!"
"'Sagey' isn't a word," Yumi said matter-of-factly.
The voice growled deeply, and then leaped out of the shadows. Dark Cerena stood before us! She was wearing a green Kokiri-ish dress, with her red hair in its normal style, and a black chain around her right wrist. What else is new?
"Oh look how cute!" Link murmured. "A girl with evil powers! Looks like we'll all be crushed into a pulp! Oh well..."
Yumi flashed yellow. "We know the drill. This is Dark Cerena, the evil Mistress of Truth... She attacks with blasts of energy, like Barney did... but three of the attacks aren't really attacks at all!"
"Huh?" I said, very confused.
"Say she blasts out four attacks. Only one of them can actually hurt you!" Yumi said.
"Oh. I get it! What's her weak point?"
"See that thing on her head?"
"Uh... a headband?"
"Yeah. It changes from red to blue to yellow. You hit her with fire if it's blue, ice if it's yellow, and light if it's red."
"Got it," I said, just as Dark Cerena unleashed a blast of purple energy.
"EEEEK!" I squealed, leaping out of the way. Link just stood there stupidly.
Cerena let go three more blasts, and I ran away from each one.
"Doseki, no, no, no!" Yumi said. "I told you, only one of them is real! The others are fake, and if they hit you, they'll just disappear. No pain! Understand?"
"But how do I know which ones?" I asked.
"Uh... er... um..." Yumi said, scratching her head.
Suddenly, a blast of purple energy exploded feet away from us, throwing both Yumi and me backwards into the wall.
"OW!" we both yelled.
"That one... was real..." Yumi mumbled.
"Link! We could REALLY use some help here!" I cried angrily.
He was busy watching the colored light show going on.
"Come on, Link! We can't do it alone!" I shouted.
I stood up, and watched Cerena blast me some more. So those ones were fake... that meant the next one... OWWWW!
I rolled over against the wall and stayed there.
"Come on! Get up, Doseki!" Yumi cried.
"If I stay here, she won't hurt me..." I protested weakly.
Sure enough, Dark Cerena laughed at me. "HAHAHAHAHAA! Weakling! Now watch while I take care of your friend!"
"WATCH OUT!" Yumi screamed to Link.
All I saw was a big purple explosion and all I heard was a grunt of surprise out of the confused hero.
I didn't see him get up.
"AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!" laughed Cerena. "DON'T YOU FOOLS REALIZE THAT EVIL WILL ALWAYS BE BETTER THAN GOOD BECAUSE GOOD IS DUMB?"
I stood up. "Come on! Bring it on, girl!"
BANG! I was on the floor again.
"YUUUUMIII!" I wailed. "How can I tell which ones are real?"
"I don't know!" she said. "The Lens of Truth is with Link... try the Optical Glass of False!"
"THAT SCREWY THING? It doesn't even work!" I whined.
"Just do it!" she said.
I pulled out the Optical Glass of False and looked through it. Marlon Brando was fluttering around my head, and a sheep was in Dark Cerena's place. I was standing in a discotheque, too. The sheep fired a purple blast of energy at me.
"EEEIA!" I gasped, stepping out of the way. But it didn't seem to do anything at all but hit the floor and vanish.
The sheep fired two more purple rays, and then a gigantic hot dog appeared in her hands and she tossed it at me as hard as she could.
The hot dog hit the floor and exploded, throwing me backwards against the wall.
"OWW!" I whined. Suddenly, I realized the secret of the Optical Glass of False.
"Yumi! I get it! When she fires fake beams at me, it shows them as real purple thingys that hurt, because that's what they're NOT!" I grinned, very proud of myself. "And when she throws a real beam, it looks like a hot dog because that's what it's NOT!"
Yumi hovered in the air, her hands on her hips. "That made no sense whatsoever."
"Sorry. But I get it now!" I said.
I flipped back up, and when Dark Cerena tried to fire another blast at me, I held still and stared at her color-changing thing. It was blue.
"Take this, you mean old thing!" I cried, blasting the evil Truth Sage with a burst of fire from the F/I/L Rod.
Dark Cerena became VERY angry with me... She charged up a huge blast, and a quick check with the Optical Glass proved it to be fake. I blasted the now-yellow headband with a cloud of misty ice.
It appeared I was doing a good job. But I had never counted on Cerena doing what she did next.
Behind Cerena was a big door. She glared at me evilly, and backed up until she passed through the door and it shut behind her.
"Uh... Where did she go?" I asked Yumi worriedly.
"I have no clue... she's the evil one here." Yumi shrugged.
A few seconds later, the door from the back swung open again, and the shadowy eyes appeared again.
"I am the terror that snores in the night!" screamed Dark Cerena. "I am that one girl at the movies who just can't hold still! I- am DARK CERENA ON SPANISH INSANITY JELLO!"
Yumi squealed. "NOOO! NOT SPANISH INSANITY JELLO!"
"Huh?" I said, kinda confused.
Dark Cerena slammed the door behind her and stepped into the light. She was holding a small hospital food cup full of something green and squishy.
"IT'S THE SPANISH INSANITY JELLO!" Yumi shrieked. "One bite will make you go absolutely bonkers! I really hope she doesn't eat any!" Yumi added, just as Dark Cerena ate some. "Oh crap..."
Dark Cerena's eyes got the look of someone who has just smacked his or her head into a tree in front of a large crowd of people, and then she raced in to attack me.
"YIKES!" I screamed.
She was kicking and punching and hitting up a sword, and I was trying not to get the crap beat out of me. I wasn't doing a very good job...
Finally, Dark Cerena grabbed me by the shirt and threw me across the room into the wall.
"OWWW!" I whined.
She came over and did it again. I was back where I had been before.
Then she stomped over and grabbed me by the hair, grinning evilly.
"NO, PLEASE! I'LL GIVE YOU A QUARTER IF YOU STOP HURTING ME! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!" I shrieked.
Dark Cerena charged up a big huge blast, and got ready to hit me. I had a feeling that this one was NOT fake...
Yumi smacked into Dark Cerena's head to try and get her to leave me alone. "GO! AWAY!" she yelled.
Seconds later, Yumi was tied up with Dark Cerena's headband and thrown on the ground next to me like a piece of garbage.
"Sorry, Dosek..." she said sadly.
"Me too..." I answered sadly.
We were about ready to get blown to bits, when I heard rustling from one corner of the room. What could it be?
Dark Cerena was only distracted for a minute. A few seconds later, she was all ready again.
And just as Cerena prepared to throw the blast, we heard a familiar grunty noise and the sound of boots scraping the floor.
"What's that?" snapped Dark Cerena. She turned around in time to see an all-too familiar black swirl rise into the ceiling, and a single pebble land at her feet.
Suddenly, the room was filled with hundreds of tumbling rocks coming in from nowhere. They crashed to the floor and into Cerena, breaking into pieces and vanishing.
"OW! OW! OW! OW! WHAT MISCHIEF IS THIS?" she shouted.
It was lucky Dark Cerena was standing over us. Or Yumi and I might have been crushed by the falling rocks.
The Meteo Spell! That meant...
LINK!
Dark Cerena was unconscious by the time the meteors stopped falling. I stood up slowly, and there he was in all his heroic glory: Link was standing behind Dark Cerena's fallen form, hands on his hips and a big grin on his face.
"Take that, you creep," he laughed, as the black chain vanished.
"LINK! You're not a brain-dead idiot anymore!" I cried.
"Of course not." Link said frankly. "You think a dinosaur can take me down?! HA!"
"I killed him!" I said proudly. "I got Barney all by myself!"
"Great job," he replied. "I really appreciate it. It's not fun singing the 'I Love You' song all day..."
The Villain Formerly Known As Dark Cerena got to her feet, her eyes glowing purple. "Moo..." she murmured. And then she floated aimlessly through the wall in the back of the room.
"There she goes!" Link said. "It's time for me to get my revenge on that jerk 'Truthmaster' for siccing his big dumb dinosaur on me..."
"YOU GUYS!" shrieked a small voice. "COULD SOMEONE PLEEEEEASE UNTIE ME? IF IT'S NOT TOO MUCH TROUBLE!!?!?!?!?"
"Oops... Sorry, Yumi," I said sheepishly as I untied my poor fairy.
A treasure chest rose out of the floor near the door Dark Cerena went through.
LINK (KINDA...) AND LL/DOSEKI FOUND THE TRUTH KEY! IT'S AN IRON KEY WITH THE SYMBOL OF THE LENS OF TRUTH ON THE END, AND IT UNLOCKS THE DOOR TO THE LAIR OF THE TRUTHMASTER! OOOOOOOH! YOU GOT IT WHEN YOU KICKED DARK CERENA'S SHINY HINEY.
Link pushed the back door open. "Follow that zombie-like author!" he shouted triumphantly.
I followed Link through the door, where I found him standing in disbelief staring at what was around us.
We were on a narrow platform next to the last door, and another tiny platform like ours was on the other side of the room, next to another door. A narrow plank connected them. And below the plank was a giant sea of chunks of green, jiggly, glowing jello.
"Holy freakolé!" I screamed. "Is that where Cerena got the Spanish Insanity Jello?"
"Must be," said Yumi. "All right... the boss door is behind that door over there. We're got to get over there without touching the jello. The last thing we need is one of you to go insane."
Link nodded. "'K. I'll go first..." he said. He warily stepped out onto the plank and took a few steps.
"Uh..." I stammered.
"What?" asked Yumi.
"Do you remember the last time we did this?" I asked.
"Energy Temple? Yeah."
"Do you remember what I did?"
"Do you remember hitting the invisible floor a foot away from the plank?" asked Yumi sweetly.
"Well, there is no floor here." I said.
Link snorted as he walked across. "Doseki, if I have to drag you across another high spot, I'll..."
"Coming!" I cried quickly.
I waited until Link reached the other side, and then I walked across the plank as fast as I could. "PHEW!" I said when I finally reached the other side.
"See?" asked Link smugly. "Was that so bad?"
"Not really," I said. "Come on. We're almost done with the last temple! Let's go!"
We found ourselves on the other side of the room where Link had crashed into the wall earlier. We could reach the boss key door!
Link stuck the key in the lock, and got ready to turn it. "OK, before we battle this boss, anybody got any questions?"
"Yeah... where's the nearest restroom?" I asked sheepishly.
"Back at my house," Link said, rolling his eyes. "Any other questions?"
No one said anything.
"OK. Now, let's get ready to go and kick the butt of that big, stupid..." Link began, opening the door.
As soon as the door swung open, we could see the ominous form of the boss standing across the room, which looked a lot like the mirror room at the beginning.
We could see its amazing muscles...
We could see its gleaming white horns...
We could see its markings on its white coat...
We could see its cud and its udders...
Huh? Cud and Udders?
"Moo," said the boss.
"... kick the butt of that big, stupid... COW?" Link gasped.
COW: LOATHSOME LYING LIVESTOCK
"MOO!" said COW.
We raised our eyebrows. "The Truthmaster is a COW?" Link said in disbelief.
"Wow... who would have guessed?" chuckled Yumi.
Suddenly, COW's horns began to glow red. "MOO!" screamed the cow, firing a blast of fire at us.
"EEEEEK!" I yelled, leaping out of the way. Link went the other way.
Turns out that that was one angry cow. We hardly had time to think before it was blasting beam after beam of fire, ice, and light. Each blast left a big dent in the wall. I hated to think what would happen if one hit us.
"How do we kill it?" I asked Yumi.
"Its horns change colors! Just like Dark Cerena's headband... But the problem is getting to stop trying to hurt us before we can hit it!"
I nodded. The COW sure was blasting a lot. "What'll stun it?"
"I... don't know," Yumi shrugged. "You're the hero here."
"No, LINK'S the hero here!" I protested.
"I'm on it!" he shouted from across the room.
Link had pulled out his bow, and was trying to fire arrows at the COW. But they only seemed to be making it angry.
"Uh... Gimme a minute!" he cried.
Suddenly, the COW stood back on its back legs. It let out a mighty "MOO!" and... began shooting milk at us.
"THAT'S DISGUSTING!" Yumi groaned.
"At least it's not cheese," I laughed.
She hit me.
"That's French Insanity Milk! It'll make you go koo koo if you touch any of it."
When the cow got done spraying its... ewww... milk all over the place, it sat there on the ground for a minute, panting. It was tired!
"The horns are red! Quick, get it!" Yumi cried.
I fired a blast of light at the evil COW, and it mooed in rage.
The COW aimed straight at me with its horns, and tried to blow me away. I leaped to dodge, and the beam sent the wall crumbling.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEYIYIYIYIYIYIIII!" I shrieked, racing away from the evil cow.
"Good one!" Link laughed. "Here, gimme that! I wanna give that baby a try!" he said.
I threw him the F/I/L Rod and he saluted. That's when the cow stood on its back legs again.
"Oh no..." Yumi gasped. "More milk!"
But Yumi had no reason to worry. Because what the COW was shooting at us was actually thicker than milk. It was cream.
"EWWWW! BOHEMIAN INSANITY CREAM!" she cried. "Same thing as French Insanity Milk."
"This is getting grody..." I whined.
When the COW ran out of dairy products, its horns turned blue and it took a big drink of Gatorade out of a bottle it pulled out of nowhere.
Link fired a blast of fire at the COW, and the singed COW mooed in rage.
The COW fired some more fire, ice, and light beams, but it appeared that the disgruntled farm animal (Get it? DisGRUNTled? Farm animal? AAHAHAHA!) was out of tricks.
Boy, were we wrong.
After a few waves of German Insanity Chocolate, Danish Insanity Butter, American Insanity Cheese, and Irish Insanity Ice Cream, the COW appeared to have been defeated.
But then something we didn't expect happened. The COW made the noise of someone hocking up a loogie, and then with a mighty PATOOOIE- pasted me to the wall with a giant, slimy lump of twice-chewed grass.
"AWWWWW, GAAAAWWSH!" I groaned. "THIS IS DISGUSTING! THIS IS JUST PLAIN SICK!"
"Hold on, Dosek! I'm almost done with it!" Link yelled.
The COW tried to cud Link to the wall, but the hero was too fast for the ferocious farm freak. Link blasted the COW with a beam of ice, and the freakish furry fiend gave a final moo and went off to the big pasture in the sky.
A warp portal appeared in the middle of the floor, and Link was performing what I THINK was his victory dance.
"HEEEYYY! GET THIS DISGUSTING THING OFF OF ME!" I cried.
"Oh. OK, no prob," said Link. He slowly burned off the cud with the F/I/L Rod, and the three of us triumphantly strolled to the warp portal.
**HERE THEY ARE, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN... LINK AND LL/DOSEKI, THE HEROES!**
"WOOO!" cheered the five Author Sages as Link and I lowered into the Chamber of Sages.
"I can't believe it!" Jigglypuff grinned happily. "You guys really did it! All six Author Sages are awake!"
"Er, not yet." Link said.
"Hey, before we keep going, does anyone mind if I change?" I asked.
"Go ahead," said Zel.
~*~*~*~*~*~*POOF*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
**I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. I WAS SO NERVOUS ABOUT YOU TWO GOONS GOING OUT TO SAVE THE WORLD... AND IT TURNS OUT, YOU REALLY DID AWAKEN ALL THE SAGES!**
"Not yet!" Link yelled.
**QUIT YELLING AT DESTINY, FOO!**
"Oh. Sorry," Link murmured. "So Destiny... considering that we did what you asked us to, could you reveal to us your true identity?"
**WHAT?**
"You know. Like Sheik did?" he said smugly.
"Link, Sheik only showed us what's below his mask!" I said. "He didn't have a secret identity."
"Well, Destiny must have one!" protested Link.
"Liiiink..." warned Wintyr.
**NO LINK, I DON'T HAVE A SECRET IDENTITY. THIS IS ME. REALLY. I REALLY HAVE NO BODY AND YOU CAN ONLY HEAR MY VOICE.**
"Really? Are you sure?" asked Link. "How do you know you don't have a body?"
**ONE DAY I LOOKED DOWN AND THERE WAS NOTHING THERE.**
"Oh," said Link. "Just checking."
Chica and GG rolled their eyes.
**ALL RIGHT PEOPLE, QUIET DOWN, QUIET DOWN... NOW, I WANT YOU ALL TO GIVE A VERY WARM WELCOME TO THE SIXTH AND FINAL AUTHOR SAGE, CERENA, THE SAGE OF TRUTH!**
A purple glow rose from the final Sage circle, and Cerena appeared. Back in her normal clothes, with her normal hair and her normal, not-glowing eyes.
"HEYYEEEEE!" she grinned. "You guys are great!"
"Thank you," smiled Yumi.
"I can't believe I was imprisoned by... A COW!" Cerena cried in disbelief.
"Don't feel bad," said Chica. "I was imprisoned by a lunch bag."
"I was imprisoned by a pair of dental hygienists," Zel cut in.
"I was imprisoned by some fat kid in my band class," GG piped up.
"I was imprisoned by... a witch?" said Wintyr weakly.
"No way. You actually had a cool, really evil boss, Wintyr." Zel said. "Sorry."
Wintyr snapped her fingers.
"Anyway," continued Cerena, "I wanted to thank you for braving Barney and the Jello and the Cream and all that crap to rescue me,"
"It's my... OUR job," Link said, throwing me a smile.
"Now I need my Rod back. I'll trade you," she said, holding out a small pen that looked just like the F/I/L rod.
I took the pen from her, and Cerena smiled and patted her beloved Fire/Ice/Light Rod.
"And so," said Cerena dramatically, "It is my privilege and pleasure to present you with this, my medallion."
Cerena held up her hands and the neon purple medallion tumbled to the ground.
LINK AND LL/DOSEKI GOT THE TRUTH MEDALLION! CERENA AWAKENS AS AN AUTHOR SAGE AND LETS YOU BORROW HER MEDALLION FOR A BIT. YOU CAN USE IT TO CALL HER, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH... HEY! YOU FINALLY GOT ALL SIX SAGE MEDALLION! SCHA-WEEEET!
**OH, AND BY THE WAY LINK... YOU DIDN'T DO WHAT I ASKED YOU TO.**
"WHAT?" he gasped. "But we awakened the six Author Sages! We did what you asked. Offer void, contract terminated!"
**I DO BELIEVE THAT MY EXACT WORDS WERE: "YOU BOTH NEED TO WORK TOGETHER AND COOPERATE TO AWAKEN THE AUTHOR SAGES AND SAVE HYRULE FROM REDUNDANCY!" ALL YOU DID WAS AWAKEN THE AUTHOR SAGES. I DIDN'T SEE YOU DO ANYTHING TO SAVE HYRULE FROM REDUNDANCY.**
"You mean..." I said, "We have to do something else too?"
"Sorry, LL..." said GG. "But you're not done yet!"
**THAT'S RIGHT. YOU TWO MUST TRAVEL TO THE TEMPLE OF TIME IN THE CASTLE TOWN... AND YOU MUST DEFEAT THE VIRUS'S CREATOR IN BATTLE!**
"Ganondorf, right?" said Link glumly.
**ERRR, MAYBE.**
"Come on! Can we PLEASE just find out who started the virus already?" begged Link.
**I REALLY COULDN'T TELL YOU. ALL I CAN TELL YOU IS THAT THE VIRUS'S CREATOR HAILS FROM A DESERT, AND HAS GERUDO BLOOD IN HIM.**
"Well THAT totally gave it away." Link said, rolling his eyes.
**SHAAAADDDUP! ANYWAY, REMEMBER THAT AWESOME TREASURE I TOLD YOU ABOUT? THE ONE THAT FORMS WHEN ALL SIX AUTHOR SAGES ARE AWAKENED?**
"Yeah," I said. "What is it?"
**OK, AUTHOR SAGES. DO YOUR STUFF!**
All six of the Author Sage's circles began to glow, and they did what was like an "Author Sage Sound-Off".
"Galaxy!" cried Galaxy Girl.
"Energy!" shouted Chica.
"Dance Dance Revolution!" yelled Jigglypuff.
"Randomness!" screamed Sailor Zel.
"Emotion!" cried Wintyr.
"Truth!" yelled Cerena.
Suddenly, a blue, lime green, dark green, lavender blue, white, and neon purple light shot out of the ceiling of the Chamber of Sages, and surrounded Link, Yumi and me.
"Coool..." I drooled.
A golden object appeared in the light above us, and when the colors and light faded, it remained floating there.
**THE TREASURE OF THE AUTHOR SAGES IS... THE MIGHTY LAPTOP OF AUTHORNESS!**
And that's exactly what it was. A shiny, brand new laptop computer... complete with snack bar, color-changing mouse pad, and crammed full of disk space!
"OOOOOH..." Link, Yumi and I whispered.
**AFTER ALL, WITH A SIMPLE LAPTOP, ANYONE CAN CHANGE THE OUTCOME OF A STORY.**
"What about the Mighty PENCIL of Authorness?" asked Yumi.
**NO, A LAPTOP IS COOLER.**
"Ah." said Link. "It's all well and good, but how is that office paperweight going to help LL and me defeat Ganondorf?"
**FIRST OF ALL, NO ONE EVER SAID IT WAS GANONDORF! AND SECOND OF ALL, WATCH YOUR MOUTH! THE LAPTOP OF AUTHORNESS IS NOT A PAPERWEIGHT! WITH IT, THE AUTHORS CAN ALL COLLABORATE A WAY TO GET RID OF THE BAD GUY ONCE AND FOR ALL!**
"So why do we have to defeat him?" shot back Link.
**HE'S WAY TOO STRONG FOR THE AUTHOR SAGES TO JUST WRITE HIM OUT OF THE STORY. YOU NEED TO WEAKEN HIM SO THAT EVEN HIS POWER CAN'T PUT HIMSELF BACK IN THE PLOT.**
"Oh." I said. "I get it."
"But before you go," said GG quickly. "There's one more thing you guys need. In order to summon us, the Author Sages in the midst of battle, or to summon the Laptop, you need this song."
"Another song? Oh joy!" I cried.
"This," said Chica. "Is the Ritornello of Author-Ism."
"What's a Ritornello?" I asked.
"It's a song, LL." Jigglypuff said.
"Oh."
"With this song, you can call us all for any reason. Use the medallions for one on one calling. But this is like a conference call," explained Zel.
"You can play it anytime. But it's kinda expensive, so we can only respond to it three times. So save it for when you really need it." Wintyr added.
"And only one of you needs to play it. It's not a group affair," finished Cerena.
With that, the authors all pulled out their own instruments. GG had a shiny gold alto sax, and Chica had a pretty black oboe. Jigglypuff somehow managed a drum set, and Zel had a xylophone, with a large pair of cymbals strapped to the side. How Wintyr managed to fit a keyboard (the musical kind) in her pocket, I'll never know. And Cerena had a lovely flute.
Then, with all the quality of a mismatched rock band, the Author Sages pounded out this:
________________________________________^________
________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_______________A__________A______________________
Link and I matched it, and we jammed.
**ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. WE GET THE IDEA.**
The Author Sage's instruments vanished, and the light of the warp portal reappeared around Link, Yumi and me.
**ALL RIGHT GUYS... ARE YOU READY?**
"NO!" I yelled.
"Don't worry, LL. You'll be fine!" said GG reassuringly. "Good luck."
"Double good luck," added Cerena.
"Definitely," nodded Wintyr.
"May the Shwartz be with you!" said Zel.
"Go for it!" Chica grinned.
"And win one for the Gipper!" shouted Jigglypuff.
The female Author Sages stared at him.
"WHAT?" he cried in dismay.
**YEAH... GOOD LUCK YOU GUYS... THIS IS THE LAST TIME I CAN TALK TO YOU BEFORE... THE FIGHT. SO, WIN ONE FOR ME, OK?**
"DESTINY!" I gasped. "YOU'RE THE GIPPER?"
If Destiny had had hands, she would have slapped herself in the head. Instead we heard a dejected sigh.
**JUST... GOOD LUCK.**
"Thanks," said Link.
"Don't worry, guys!" I said triumphantly. "We won't let Hyrule down! Or the authors!"
"That punk'll never know what hit him!" said Yumi.
"This'll be the last big fight... we're going to prove once and for all who's the tough one around here!" Link said.
**THAT'S WHAT I'M AFRAID OF...** sighed Destiny, as the Chamber of Sages faded from around us.
WOWEEEE! So many questions have been answered in this chapter! But we still don't know who the bad guy is... is it really Ganondorf, AGAIN? Or is it someone else who just happens to be a male Gerudo? Naaaaah...
The action is really getting going now! Will Link, LL and Yumi be able to stop the evil from screwing up Hyrule? Will everyone have to relive the past over and over again? Aren't both those questions kind of the same? THE SUSPENSE IS SO THICK YOU COULD CUT IT WITH A KNIFE!
Stay tuned for the next action-packed chapter:
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE HYRULE
-or-
I SMELL A CLIMAX COMING ON!
