Edward Kidnastoff
By John Little
Chp. 9: And Then There Were Five
*****
"...and the next thing I know I'm flyin' through the air! I landed on top of that watch tower without really getting hurt, but when I look to the gate I see him jump over it!"
"Are you sure that he didn't climb it?"
"Absolutely. He cleared it by a good five feet."
The guard who had encountered Dr. Kidnastoff just minutes earlier was just getting over his second shock of the evening, encountering not one but two of the Seven Sages: Nabooru of the Gerudo Thieves, and Saria of the Kokiri. That two of the Sages were concerning themselves with the strange man who had been able to throw him to the top of the watch tower indicated that the guard was certainly brushing against some big news.
"We should get going, Nabooru," Saria said as she turned from the guard. "If he's only moving half as fast as he was when he left the Kokiri Forest then he could be at the Goron City by now."
Nabooru nodded and turned towards the trail without saying a word. Saria was about to follow when the guard cleared his throat.
"Is it true what they're saying about Link? Is Link missing?"
Saria stared at the guard for a moment, not sure of what to say. If word was already spreading, then admitting some facts probably wouldn't hurt. "We don't know where Link is at the moment, but we know that he's alive."
The guard nodded, seemingly satisfied. Saria ran to catch up with Nabooru. As long as this Dr. Kidnastoff couldn't get back to Link, she felt reasonably certain that Link wouldn't be in danger. She hoped that Navi was having success in her mission to tell the other Sages; Navi hadn't even said good-bye when she just vanished during the meeting with Dr. Kidnastoff in the forest.
*****
Navi couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Sirloin rocks, you say?"
"Yes. We had become so used to them that we couldn't eat anything else. That's why Link is such a revered hero to us."
This Dr. Kidnastoff was peacefully chatting with another Goron while he waited for the shop's proprietor to return from a quick break. Navi had expected someone with a little more focus and drive in the master of evil who could kidnap Link and create monsters at will.
"Why couldn't you just dig around the boulders? You Gorons seem to be pretty good at working through the ground."
"Oh believe me, we tried! But what we found was this layer of stone so dense that we couldn't dig it. We couldn't even eat it!"
"Because it was dense or because you couldn't stand to eat anything other than the sirloin rocks?"
The proprietor of the Goron shop returned at that moment, carrying a sack that held several bombs and a few red tunics. "Sorry to keep you all waiting," he cheerfully said. "This shipment arrived, plus I was stopped outside by Impa and Darunia."
This caught Dr. Kidnastoff's attention entirely. "Aren't they Sages?"
"Yeah," said the proprietor as he began to place the wares onto shelves. "They're lookin' for Link. They say that he's missing."
"Could I purchase some bombs, please?"
"In a minute, I've almost sorted them."
"I'm really in a hurry. I've got to get these bombs and run."
"Just be patient, I'm almost done. Besides, it looks to me as if this Goron is ahead of you in line."
Dr. Kidnastoff nervously began drumming his fingers on the counter. He turned to the Goron that he had been peacefully chatting with just moments earlier. "Would you mind if I stepped ahead of you?"
"Actually, I'm in a hurry myself. We're trying to open up a new tunnel in the caves, and I need to get about fifty of these bombs to the construction site."
"Ah." Edward rocked back and forth on his feet, nervously glancing towards the door every two or three seconds. What if Darunia and Impa recognized him? How had Saria recognized him so easily in the Kokiri Forest? These thoughts, and other similar ones, raced around his head as the Goron behind the counter gradually finished setting up his most recent supplies. After a few tense moments, the Goron in line before him selected fifty bombs, fumbled through his wallet for money, made the payment, and received change. The Goron walked out of the shop and the proprietor turned to the doctor.
"Now then, what can I do for you?"
Dr. Kidnastoff quickly tossed Link's bomb bag onto the counter. "Fill it." He knew that the 200 Rupees he had sold the Zora Fire Water for didn't quite cover all of his expenses on this shopping trip, but he had a little money left over from his dealings before capturing Link. He handed over the required Rupees and stuffed the bomb bag into one of his many pockets (one that was dangerously close to Navi's hiding place) and turned to leave, only to find his way blocked by two very serious looking individuals.
The first was a Goron, a large one. His largeness didn't even originate from the fact that most standard Gorons seemed large in proportion to standard humans (their natural stockiness had a way of magnifying them in person). Instead, this Goron seemed to have genuinely built decent muscles. He was wearing various Goron symbols of achievement and respect that the doctor had not yet encountered during this trip to the city.
The second was a Hylian female, a very tall one who even seemed to make the Goron next to her seem smaller than he was. She wore some scars and signs of weariness and hardships, indicating a life of hard work, sacrifice, and experience. She was studying Dr. Kidnastoff with an arched eyebrow, an unsettling image.
The Goron's emotions were harder to read; he had a face that seemed well suited to scowling for the majority of the time. After a few tense moments, it was the Goron who spoke. "Greetings, sir. We don't see many Hylians in this city. Not an unheard of occurrence, of course, but still odd at any rate."
"Yes," responded Kidnastoff. He had no idea how to react in this situation. "I was....well, I'd heard that Goron bombs were stronger than most other bombs. I decided to check that out for myself."
"Ah," the Goron said. "That's not technically accurate, I'm afraid. Our bombs of that size are just about as good as the bombs that you would find elsewhere. We can make them cheaper than some places due to our mining operations, but outside of our powder kegs we don't have many specialty explosives."
"I see. Well, thanks for the info, but I've already got my bombs. I guess that I'll be going now."
"Don't be so hasty," came the female's answer. "We've not ever seen you around here. We've been looking for unusual people lately, and Link said that there was an unusual person in here. We've got some questions for you."
"LINK sent you in here?"
The Goron and Hyllian exchanged confused glances. "Yes," said the Goron. "His exact words were, 'I did see someone a little strange. He was buying bombs in the shop. He had a white coat on.' That describes you pretty well, if you ask me."
"You're telling me that....are you saying that the Link, the Hero of Time, was out there?"
"Oh, no. No, Link is my son. I named him after the Hero of Time due to Link's victorious endeavors in the Dodongo Caves. My son just left with some bombs for a mining operation."
"Oh! Oh, I see. Yes, that makes sense. Anyway, I should really be going-"
"Speaking of the Hero of Time," said the Hyllian, "we were wondering if you happened to know anything about his recent disappearance."
"Oh, no. Nothing at all." Dr. Kidnastoff confirmed in his mind that these had to be Darunia the Sage and one other, probably Impa (unless he was sorely mistaken about what the sages Rauru, Zelda or Ruto looked like). "I heard that he was missing in a village just before nightfall, but beyond that I don't know a thing."
"You heard that in a village?" Impa's arched eyebrow was certainly gaining more of a suspicious edge to it. "The only path from a village to this mountain was locked for the time. Darunia and myself both authorized it."
"Ah, yes. Well, you see....I really, really needed some bombs, so I found a shortcut up here. I wasn't aware that the road was blocked, I figured that the shortcut would be the best (and most rapid) way to go. Sorry, I'll take care to watch for official transportation halts in the future."
"You do that," Darunia responded. "All right, you're free to go. Just don't go further down than the path leading to the village."
Dr. Kidnastoff nodded and quickly walked out of the shop.
"Think he knew anything, Darunia?"
"Hard to tell. I wouldn't suspect him quite as much as some of the people that we've talked to in taverns, but he's certainly an odd one."
"Listen! Follow him, follow him! He knows where Link is!"
Nabooru and Impa turned towards the shop's entrance and saw Navi floating in.
"He knows where Link is?"
"Yes! I've been hiding in one of his pockets for almost a day now! I almost didn't get out without him seeing me! Anyway, you have to hurry! He can move really quickly, and before he started to climb the stairs to the village he said that he had something waiting to pick him up here at this city! You've got to hurry!"
Before a second could pass, Impa and Darunia had jumped out of the shop and looked to the top floor from their vantage point on the bottom, just in time to see Dr. Kidnastoff quickly walk through Goron City's exit.
"We'll never catch him on foot now," Impa muttered.
"Well, not on foot," Darunia sighed as he sat on the ground and curled into a ball. "But as long as he doesn't brake into a run, I should be able to catch up with him before he goes too far. Here's hoping that I can make the corners...."
So saying, Darunia began to quickly roll onto and up the stairs towards the exit of the Goron City, hoping that Dr. Kidnastoff had a ways to walk before reaching his next destination while a determined Navi skipped the stairs entirely and zipped out of Goron City just moments after the doctor, making a beeline for one of his pockets.
*****
"Nabooru! Up there!"
Saria pointed up the steep mountain trail to where the figure of Dr. Kidnastoff could clearly be seen in the light of the rising sun. He was standing just at the bend in the path where the road began to slope downwards to Goron City. He didn't see them, he seemed to be staring at the sun as it began to rise.
"I can catch him," Nabooru said. Without waiting for any response from Saria, Nabooru ran as fast as her feet would allow while still remaining silent, hoping that Dr. Kidnastoff would just keep looking at that sun for a few more moments.
She didn't see the rapidly approaching Darunia, rolling faster than many birds could fly, approaching from the opposite direction, seemingly intent on tackling the doctor.
Due to the sloping nature of the trail, neither of the Sages saw the other until they were within ten yards of each other, and by then their momentum was too great to prevent them from crashing into each other.
The crash never came, however. Just seconds before their collision, a large door-shaped rectangle of light appeared just in front of the doctor and pulled itself back to envelope himself, Darunia and Nabooru. In the blink of an eye, the rectangle vanished without leaving a trace of the three.
Saria managed to catch up shortly afterwards, as did Impa.
"That was a rectangle of light," Saria said. "That must have been the type of thing that Navi told us about."
Saria knelt on the spot where the three had been, frantically scanning the ground. Other than a few faint traces of footprints, one couldn't tell that anyone had been there recently. She felt a small pang of guilt for not calling back Nabooru. After all, this Dr. Kidnastoff had been able to out maneuver her back in the Forest when he was distracted, who knows what he could accomplish when someone wasn't talking to him?
"That makes Link and Nabooru, and judging by your presence I'd say that the Goron was Darunia."
Impa nodded.
"Three. This guy's got three of us."
"Four."
Saria looked up at Impa who was staring at the rising sun, as if trying to see where their comrades had vanished to. "Navi was with Darunia and myself. She managed to fly into one of that man's pockets just before he left the city."
Saria looked to the ground again. "Four. He's got four of us, and he didn't even plan to kidnap the last three. We need to speak with the others."
By John Little
Chp. 9: And Then There Were Five
*****
"...and the next thing I know I'm flyin' through the air! I landed on top of that watch tower without really getting hurt, but when I look to the gate I see him jump over it!"
"Are you sure that he didn't climb it?"
"Absolutely. He cleared it by a good five feet."
The guard who had encountered Dr. Kidnastoff just minutes earlier was just getting over his second shock of the evening, encountering not one but two of the Seven Sages: Nabooru of the Gerudo Thieves, and Saria of the Kokiri. That two of the Sages were concerning themselves with the strange man who had been able to throw him to the top of the watch tower indicated that the guard was certainly brushing against some big news.
"We should get going, Nabooru," Saria said as she turned from the guard. "If he's only moving half as fast as he was when he left the Kokiri Forest then he could be at the Goron City by now."
Nabooru nodded and turned towards the trail without saying a word. Saria was about to follow when the guard cleared his throat.
"Is it true what they're saying about Link? Is Link missing?"
Saria stared at the guard for a moment, not sure of what to say. If word was already spreading, then admitting some facts probably wouldn't hurt. "We don't know where Link is at the moment, but we know that he's alive."
The guard nodded, seemingly satisfied. Saria ran to catch up with Nabooru. As long as this Dr. Kidnastoff couldn't get back to Link, she felt reasonably certain that Link wouldn't be in danger. She hoped that Navi was having success in her mission to tell the other Sages; Navi hadn't even said good-bye when she just vanished during the meeting with Dr. Kidnastoff in the forest.
*****
Navi couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Sirloin rocks, you say?"
"Yes. We had become so used to them that we couldn't eat anything else. That's why Link is such a revered hero to us."
This Dr. Kidnastoff was peacefully chatting with another Goron while he waited for the shop's proprietor to return from a quick break. Navi had expected someone with a little more focus and drive in the master of evil who could kidnap Link and create monsters at will.
"Why couldn't you just dig around the boulders? You Gorons seem to be pretty good at working through the ground."
"Oh believe me, we tried! But what we found was this layer of stone so dense that we couldn't dig it. We couldn't even eat it!"
"Because it was dense or because you couldn't stand to eat anything other than the sirloin rocks?"
The proprietor of the Goron shop returned at that moment, carrying a sack that held several bombs and a few red tunics. "Sorry to keep you all waiting," he cheerfully said. "This shipment arrived, plus I was stopped outside by Impa and Darunia."
This caught Dr. Kidnastoff's attention entirely. "Aren't they Sages?"
"Yeah," said the proprietor as he began to place the wares onto shelves. "They're lookin' for Link. They say that he's missing."
"Could I purchase some bombs, please?"
"In a minute, I've almost sorted them."
"I'm really in a hurry. I've got to get these bombs and run."
"Just be patient, I'm almost done. Besides, it looks to me as if this Goron is ahead of you in line."
Dr. Kidnastoff nervously began drumming his fingers on the counter. He turned to the Goron that he had been peacefully chatting with just moments earlier. "Would you mind if I stepped ahead of you?"
"Actually, I'm in a hurry myself. We're trying to open up a new tunnel in the caves, and I need to get about fifty of these bombs to the construction site."
"Ah." Edward rocked back and forth on his feet, nervously glancing towards the door every two or three seconds. What if Darunia and Impa recognized him? How had Saria recognized him so easily in the Kokiri Forest? These thoughts, and other similar ones, raced around his head as the Goron behind the counter gradually finished setting up his most recent supplies. After a few tense moments, the Goron in line before him selected fifty bombs, fumbled through his wallet for money, made the payment, and received change. The Goron walked out of the shop and the proprietor turned to the doctor.
"Now then, what can I do for you?"
Dr. Kidnastoff quickly tossed Link's bomb bag onto the counter. "Fill it." He knew that the 200 Rupees he had sold the Zora Fire Water for didn't quite cover all of his expenses on this shopping trip, but he had a little money left over from his dealings before capturing Link. He handed over the required Rupees and stuffed the bomb bag into one of his many pockets (one that was dangerously close to Navi's hiding place) and turned to leave, only to find his way blocked by two very serious looking individuals.
The first was a Goron, a large one. His largeness didn't even originate from the fact that most standard Gorons seemed large in proportion to standard humans (their natural stockiness had a way of magnifying them in person). Instead, this Goron seemed to have genuinely built decent muscles. He was wearing various Goron symbols of achievement and respect that the doctor had not yet encountered during this trip to the city.
The second was a Hylian female, a very tall one who even seemed to make the Goron next to her seem smaller than he was. She wore some scars and signs of weariness and hardships, indicating a life of hard work, sacrifice, and experience. She was studying Dr. Kidnastoff with an arched eyebrow, an unsettling image.
The Goron's emotions were harder to read; he had a face that seemed well suited to scowling for the majority of the time. After a few tense moments, it was the Goron who spoke. "Greetings, sir. We don't see many Hylians in this city. Not an unheard of occurrence, of course, but still odd at any rate."
"Yes," responded Kidnastoff. He had no idea how to react in this situation. "I was....well, I'd heard that Goron bombs were stronger than most other bombs. I decided to check that out for myself."
"Ah," the Goron said. "That's not technically accurate, I'm afraid. Our bombs of that size are just about as good as the bombs that you would find elsewhere. We can make them cheaper than some places due to our mining operations, but outside of our powder kegs we don't have many specialty explosives."
"I see. Well, thanks for the info, but I've already got my bombs. I guess that I'll be going now."
"Don't be so hasty," came the female's answer. "We've not ever seen you around here. We've been looking for unusual people lately, and Link said that there was an unusual person in here. We've got some questions for you."
"LINK sent you in here?"
The Goron and Hyllian exchanged confused glances. "Yes," said the Goron. "His exact words were, 'I did see someone a little strange. He was buying bombs in the shop. He had a white coat on.' That describes you pretty well, if you ask me."
"You're telling me that....are you saying that the Link, the Hero of Time, was out there?"
"Oh, no. No, Link is my son. I named him after the Hero of Time due to Link's victorious endeavors in the Dodongo Caves. My son just left with some bombs for a mining operation."
"Oh! Oh, I see. Yes, that makes sense. Anyway, I should really be going-"
"Speaking of the Hero of Time," said the Hyllian, "we were wondering if you happened to know anything about his recent disappearance."
"Oh, no. Nothing at all." Dr. Kidnastoff confirmed in his mind that these had to be Darunia the Sage and one other, probably Impa (unless he was sorely mistaken about what the sages Rauru, Zelda or Ruto looked like). "I heard that he was missing in a village just before nightfall, but beyond that I don't know a thing."
"You heard that in a village?" Impa's arched eyebrow was certainly gaining more of a suspicious edge to it. "The only path from a village to this mountain was locked for the time. Darunia and myself both authorized it."
"Ah, yes. Well, you see....I really, really needed some bombs, so I found a shortcut up here. I wasn't aware that the road was blocked, I figured that the shortcut would be the best (and most rapid) way to go. Sorry, I'll take care to watch for official transportation halts in the future."
"You do that," Darunia responded. "All right, you're free to go. Just don't go further down than the path leading to the village."
Dr. Kidnastoff nodded and quickly walked out of the shop.
"Think he knew anything, Darunia?"
"Hard to tell. I wouldn't suspect him quite as much as some of the people that we've talked to in taverns, but he's certainly an odd one."
"Listen! Follow him, follow him! He knows where Link is!"
Nabooru and Impa turned towards the shop's entrance and saw Navi floating in.
"He knows where Link is?"
"Yes! I've been hiding in one of his pockets for almost a day now! I almost didn't get out without him seeing me! Anyway, you have to hurry! He can move really quickly, and before he started to climb the stairs to the village he said that he had something waiting to pick him up here at this city! You've got to hurry!"
Before a second could pass, Impa and Darunia had jumped out of the shop and looked to the top floor from their vantage point on the bottom, just in time to see Dr. Kidnastoff quickly walk through Goron City's exit.
"We'll never catch him on foot now," Impa muttered.
"Well, not on foot," Darunia sighed as he sat on the ground and curled into a ball. "But as long as he doesn't brake into a run, I should be able to catch up with him before he goes too far. Here's hoping that I can make the corners...."
So saying, Darunia began to quickly roll onto and up the stairs towards the exit of the Goron City, hoping that Dr. Kidnastoff had a ways to walk before reaching his next destination while a determined Navi skipped the stairs entirely and zipped out of Goron City just moments after the doctor, making a beeline for one of his pockets.
*****
"Nabooru! Up there!"
Saria pointed up the steep mountain trail to where the figure of Dr. Kidnastoff could clearly be seen in the light of the rising sun. He was standing just at the bend in the path where the road began to slope downwards to Goron City. He didn't see them, he seemed to be staring at the sun as it began to rise.
"I can catch him," Nabooru said. Without waiting for any response from Saria, Nabooru ran as fast as her feet would allow while still remaining silent, hoping that Dr. Kidnastoff would just keep looking at that sun for a few more moments.
She didn't see the rapidly approaching Darunia, rolling faster than many birds could fly, approaching from the opposite direction, seemingly intent on tackling the doctor.
Due to the sloping nature of the trail, neither of the Sages saw the other until they were within ten yards of each other, and by then their momentum was too great to prevent them from crashing into each other.
The crash never came, however. Just seconds before their collision, a large door-shaped rectangle of light appeared just in front of the doctor and pulled itself back to envelope himself, Darunia and Nabooru. In the blink of an eye, the rectangle vanished without leaving a trace of the three.
Saria managed to catch up shortly afterwards, as did Impa.
"That was a rectangle of light," Saria said. "That must have been the type of thing that Navi told us about."
Saria knelt on the spot where the three had been, frantically scanning the ground. Other than a few faint traces of footprints, one couldn't tell that anyone had been there recently. She felt a small pang of guilt for not calling back Nabooru. After all, this Dr. Kidnastoff had been able to out maneuver her back in the Forest when he was distracted, who knows what he could accomplish when someone wasn't talking to him?
"That makes Link and Nabooru, and judging by your presence I'd say that the Goron was Darunia."
Impa nodded.
"Three. This guy's got three of us."
"Four."
Saria looked up at Impa who was staring at the rising sun, as if trying to see where their comrades had vanished to. "Navi was with Darunia and myself. She managed to fly into one of that man's pockets just before he left the city."
Saria looked to the ground again. "Four. He's got four of us, and he didn't even plan to kidnap the last three. We need to speak with the others."