Prince Izzy X- Take another look at the end of chapter one. I think you (and others) will be happy to see that the horrid "long paragraph" is no more, having been mostly deleted and replaced with something much more satisfactory. Thank you for the honest feedback that prompted said revision, and for your enthusiastic review of chapter two. Always nice to know that someone other than me is getting a laugh out of this crap.
Tweedle Dumbass- Balloon has more than one L in it. As for my pen name, it all started when I was fourteen. The TempleMaster part came from the fact that I've played through Ocarina of Time so often that I know the temples by heart, and the number was my age because I thought my pen name should have a number and nothing better came to mind. If you read through some of my older stuff when I thought it was cool to put myself in the action, you'll see that the number changes (this is most pronounced in Sages of Stupidity as it was my first fanfic has been my long-term project). However, as I like 17 more than pretty much any other number, I decided to stick with it after I left that age behind. Boring story, but you asked.
Before I begin, a lot of credit goes to my sister for giving me the idea that sparked this whole, long mess.
And now, on with the "show," which even involves some alliteration and, I believe, some parallel structure at some points, which as everyone knows is pretty sweet. I guess. Enjoy.
-Disclaimer nugget: I do not own Zelda. I may own your soul, though. You never know.-
Chapter Three: (WARNING: THE NEXT FIVE WORDS CONTAIN A SPOILER!) The Fall of Kokiri Forest
Mido's eyes snapped open as the morning light crept under his door. He jumped briskly out of his bed and strode purposefully toward his dresser. After struggling rather more comically than he would have liked with his new imperial robes (for it was only after he had changed out of them that he noticed he had worn them all night and rather bitterly put them back on), he was ready to bend every ounce of his intelligence on the task ahead. Today, he thought, is the beginning of the beginning of the end of the Kokiri Forest!
"Today," Mido said dramatically to Domi, "is the beginning of the beginning of the end of the Kokiri Forest!"
"Oh?" she asked, still drowsy.
"Yes," he replied, then stroked his chin and added, for clarification and further dramatic effect, "yes."
Domi rolled her eyes. "You should really cut that out, you know."
Mido's eyes flashed. "Cut what out?"
"The chin-stroking routine. It's really very silly."
"But it's so archetypally indicative of maturity and sinister intent!" Mido protested.
"It only works if you have a beard, and even then only some of the time." Seeing the blank, and-your-point-is? expression on Mido's face she added, "You don't have a beard."
"Don't I?" he asked, taken aback.
"No."
He looked in the mirror and noted with dismay that his chin was, in fact, totally bereft of anything that might resemble hair.
Seeing the tears beginning to well up in Mido's eyes, Domi thought quickly. "There are other ways of looking sinister, you know."
Mido's grief fled as quickly as it had come. "Such as?"
"Can you raise your eyebrows?"
Mido raised his eyebrows.
"Okay, put them down. Now, can you raise just one of them?"
Mido raised an eyebrow.
"Good. That's excellent. But that kind of thing is mainly for threatening your subordinates who are getting close to being insubordinate. There's another thing you can do, and it looks really good in meetings and such. Sit at the head of your table, then lean back in your chair and drum your fingertips against each other...no, no, more slowly than that. Much better. Now, if you were to get a dark Hylian suit, some dark sunglasses, and a black leather briefcase to go with it there'd be no one in all of Hyrule to match your...er...sinister-ness."
"It's interesting you should suggest that, Domi, because a deliciously sinister idea came to me in a dream last night that had a lot to do with Hylian clothing." Mido leaned back in his chair and began drumming his fingertips together.
"And just how are Hylian clothes going to help us take over the Forest?" Domi demanded deprecatingly.
Mido raised an eyebrow at her, causing the fairy to direct a silent but shocking string of insults at herself.
"Trend setting," he replied, "but first we have a market to corner."
"That sounds like fun," Domi said, brightening. "Just what exactly does this plan of yours involve?"
Mido located some paper and a crayon- a very sinister pink crayon- and began outlining the plan to an increasingly impressed Domi Natrix.
---Several hours later---
"It's so crazy and...and...well, crazy that it just might work!" the fairy squealed with relish after Mido had explained his idea to her.
Mido smiled triumphantly. "Now," he prompted, "your job for the moment is to...?"
"Put in the orders for your hooded robe, the silver-lined robes for trading with, and the silver coins with your seal. After that I go and make contact with the Hylian tailors."
"Right," Mido approved. "And in the meantime I'll mingle with the rest of the Kokiri, planting the right kind of ideas in their heads. We wouldn't want them to resist our lovely new fad, after all."
"Indeed not," Domi agreed. And grinning an invisible but savage grin, she flew off to sew the unlikely seeds of discord.
With a maniacal laugh, Mido changed into his green Kokiri garb.
---Several more hours later---
Exhausted but pleased with himself, the nefarious Mido stepped back into his house, shut the door, and leaned against it with the dual purpose of resting and congratulating himself. He also noted with satisfaction that Domi was waiting for him.
"I assume by the look on your face that things went well?" she asked him excitedly.
Mido closed his eyes and indulged in a blissful smile. "I have them in the palm of my hand," he replied in the calm tone of a maniac who is totally at peace with himself. "How receptive were the Hylians?"
"Very receptive. As we suspected, their readiness to make a profit outweighed by far their reluctance to take a fairy seriously. They'll be ready to sign the contract as soon as they see the silver for themselves."
"Most excellent. In no more than a fortnight the forest will belong to me!"
And with that, Mido crossed the room to his bed, blowing out the candles as he did so, and promptly fell asleep. Domi sat on the windowsill, staring blankly at the full moon as delusions of grandeur filled her head.
But were they really delusions...?
Mido's eyes snapped open even before the morning light crept under his door. He jumped briskly out of his bed and strode purposefully to the door. He opened it and hurriedly brought in the large amount of packages that were sitting on his doorstep. Today, he thought, is the middle of the beginning of the end of the Kokiri Forest!
Going to his table, he once again located his sinister pink crayon and penned...er...crayoned...a note, which said:
Attention all visitors. I am extremely ill at the moment and intend to remain so for the next several days. Please do not attempt to enter my house, as it is most definitely a biohazardous zone thingy and you will probably die a horrible horrible death within seconds. No, don't worry about me, I'll be more than fine in a little while. Ta ta. Mido.
He donned his brand new, very sinister, highly menacing black robe with an enormous black hood that completely obscured his face. While he found it more than a little difficult to maneuver in this get-up, he preferred the level of anonymity it provided him with over a full range of movement. Plus, he felt it made him look...badass. Gently waking Domi, who had fallen asleep at the window, he crept like a shadow into the pre-dawn gloom.
Deciding that some music was in order to honor the start of his journey, Mido hesitated not at all in beginning to hum something that sounded uncannily similar to Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries." Unfortunately, he got a bit too enthusiastic about it and because of this accidentally woke up Ben, the Kokiri boy in charge of making sure no one ever left the forest when only death awaited him (or her).
"HALT!" yelled Ben. Ben took his job quite seriously.
"Stand aside, scum," Mido muttered in his best guess at a rugged-sounding growl.
"Er..." replied Ben, who stayed where he was.
Mido felt Domi creeping slowly to the front of his hood and smiled in expectation. "I told you," he hissed coldly, "to stand aside!" And with these words Domi lit herself up a bright and very evil-looking red.
The effect this had on Ben was better than Mido had ever dreamed. Throwing his good intentions to the wind, Ben fled screaming up the path toward anywhere that wasn't near what he later described to his buddies at the bar as Satan.
Mido, who was not, in fact, Satan, smiled to himself and resumed his humming as he crossed the bridge through the Lost Woods and emerged into Hyrule Field.
Five days later, the door to room 113 of the Market Square Inn swung slowly inward. It did this of its own accord- or at least it would have seemed that way to anyone who had not noticed a small, dark-robed figure pushing on it. After the door was open, the figure stepped into the room, closing the newly opened door behind him. He peeled back his hood, crossed the room to the small bed, sat, and sighed.
"Well, Mido," said Domi, "we finally made it. It would be much easier if you were to grow wings, you know."
Mido shot the fairy a withering glance. Figuring prominently in that glance was a raised eyebrow, which irritated the winged ball of light to no end.
"Anyway," she continued huffily, "the important thing is that we made it, I suppose. You should get some rest. The tailors aren't expecting us until after dark."
"Yes," Mido yawned, flopping down on the pillow. "Pull the curtains shut, will you?"
Domi did this, but not without grumbling profanely at great length to herself.
Mido awoke at dusk feeling much refreshed. He stood up, stretched, then lost his balance and fell back onto the bed.
"Where is this meeting supposed to be again?" he inquired as he got back to his feet.
"In the back room of the Bazaar. You can't miss it. It's the one with the owner's ugly mug painted onto the front of the building."
"Oh, that place. Yes, I do seem to recall that it was rather...bazaar...looking! Get it? Bazaar, bizarre!"
Domi watched in disgust as Mido cackled over his feeble pun. "Oh, I get it all right," she muttered. "A real knee-slapper, that one."
"Isn't it?" Mido crooned, and dissolved once again into peals of laughter. This was fortunate, because the steady stream of cursing emitted from his fairy would have caught him more than a little off guard.
Finally calming down, Mido pulled up his hood and beckoned Domi inside. As soon as she was situated he pulled open the door, stepped through it, turned around, and locked it. This done, he stalked down the hall, through the lobby, and out of the inn.
The square was large, but well lit by the newly emerged moon. It was easy for Mido to spot the grotesque likeness of the Bazaar owner on the pasty white brick that comprised, surprisingly enough, the Bazaar. It was even easier for him to walk across the square to it, as walking was something he had had quite a lot of practice at over the years. Upon reaching the shop, he took the next logical course of action and entered. The main area of the bazaar was dimly lit by way of another doorway in the back wall, which Mido soon discovered led to a well-lit back room.
In the center of this back room was a very nice, very rectangular cherry wood table. On each of the long sides of the table were seated three men. There was a seventh chair at the head of the table that had been empty, but presently Mido filled it.
"Gentlemen," he greeted them. They nodded in reply.
"I understand," he went on, "that you had expressed to my associate the desire to see the promised silver before signing the contract." He pulled his black leather briefcase that he had purchased upon entering town out from his robe, set it on the table, and proceeded to open it. Slowly. He then turned the briefcase so that the six Hylian tailors could see the pile of silver coins it contained. "Does this satisfy your curiosity?" he asked, smirking at the varying degrees of awe displayed on their faces.
They nodded.
"Good. As it turns out, each of these coins is worth approximately one hundred rupees. There are ninety coins in this briefcase. That comes out to fifteen hundred rupees apiece, I believe. Is that a satisfactory signing bonus?"
They nodded.
"Excellent." At this point Mido leaned back in his chair and began drumming his fingers together. "Now. My associate, who is standing quite invisibly at the other end of this table, will produce the contract."
As the six tailors turned their startled eyes toward the back of the room, Domi swiftly darted out from Mido's robe, pulled the contract out of its place in a pocket of the briefcase, set it on the table, and fled back up Mido's sleeve. As the confused and somewhat fearful men turned their attention back toward Mido, they were surprised to see the contract sitting beside the briefcase on the table. The contract was fairly simple, and read as follows:
We the six tailors of Hylian clothes hereby swear to sell our goods to no Kokiri other than the Great Mido, nor to any fairy other than his associate, the honorable Domi Natrix. In return, we will be paid large amounts of silver, the origin of which we will never question, and all become obscenely rich men.
"Your signatures, if you please, gentlemen," Mido commanded softly. After passing the contract to the tailor sitting to his right, the insidious Kokiri boy idly began to stack the silver coins into piles of fifteen.
When the contract had come full circle, Mido placed it carefully back in the pocket of his briefcase, which he then closed and locked. "A pleasure doing business with you," he murmured as he rose to his feet. He then made his exit, leaving behind the six confused but happy tailors. Before he left the Bazaar, however, he paused to pin a small note to the inside of the door:
Gentlemen. I shall expect my first delivery from you at noon on the morrow. Have it brought to room 113 of the Market Square Inn. My associate has already delivered the specifications to you. Ta ta. The Great Mido.
This notice caused a small amount of shock among the tailors when they found it. At exactly the same time that one of them said, "What a freak," Mido was in his room at the inn removing his hood.
"Well," he said to Domi in a hushed but very excited voice, "that was easy!"
"Yes," she agreed enthusiastically. "So, tomorrow morning we rent a horse and wagon, hire a driver, load up at noon, then head back to the forest."
"Right. And then the real fun begins."
Two days later, at the very blackest hour of the night, a dark shape stole silently across the bridge through the Lost Woods and into Kokiri Forest. Five minutes later it went back the other way, but soon hurried into the forest again. The keen-eyed wolfos that stood below in the forest to one side of the bridge could see that each time the dark shape went into the forest it was carrying something, and each time it flitted back out it was empty-handed. After an hour of watching this strange behavior, the wolfos left to ponder what he had seen. For the rest ofhis life, however, he could never attach any meaning to the spectacle.
Half an hour after the wolfos had given up watching him, Mido had unloaded the last of the boxes, paid the driver and returned to his home. He went to bed, went back to bed, changed out of his hooded robe into his pajamas, and took the note off of his door- not necessarily in that order.
When the knock came on his door in the morning, Mido was ready. Today, he thought, is the end of the beginning of the end of the Kokiri Forest!
"Enter," he barked.
The door swung open. It was Saria. Perfect, thought Mido.
"I saw that your note was gone," she said tentatively.
"Indeed."
"Um...were you very sick then?"
"Very."
"So you're...you're better now, right?"
"That's right."
"And your house isn't...?"
"A biohazardous zone thingy anymore?" he finished for her.
"Yes."
"No."
"That's good."
He smiled. "Yes," he agreed. "Yes it is. Please, sit down."
Saria sat at the opposite end of the table from Mido. "I like your suit," she told him.
"Do you now? It's Hylian, you know."
Her eyes instantly shone with envy, and Mido's smile widened. "Hylian, huh?"
"Yes. Very Hylian. So is this." He slid a box across the table to her.
"A Hylian box?"
"Well, yes, but that's not the point. Open the Hylian box."
She did, and nearly fainted dead away as she pulled out a green Hylian dress and a pair of green Hylian pumps. "Where?" she breathed. "How? Wha...?"
"You seem to have something of a penchant for Hylian clothes," Mido noted in mock surprise.
"Well...oh, I suppose you wouldn't know, since you've been sick for the last week, but the whole forest is obsessed with Hylian clothing."
Mido raised his eyebrows. "Really?" he asked. "Whatever for?"
"I'm not sure, to be honest, but I do know that any one of us would kill for a dress like this...or a suit like that."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, but..."
"But?"
"But where could you have gotten these?"
"That," Mido chuckled, "is a secret. But I have a lot more where these came from."
"If you had enough," Saria laughed back, "and you played your cards right, you could buy the loyalty of every Kokiri in the forest."
"What an interesting idea," Mido replied.
As Saria turned to leave, Mido leaned back in his chair at the head of the table and began to drum his fingertips together. "What an interesting idea," he repeated as the door closed softly.
Well, there it is. Finally a chapter with some decent length to it. Some of you may have noticed that there are a couple parts that sound a great deal like they could have been written by Douglas Adams. This is because I am in the middle of The Hitchhiker's Guide series and have a tendency to occasionally slip into the style of any author I'm currently reading.
So anyway. Not so skeptical now, are you, all you doubters of Mido? Yeah, that's what I thought. Reviews would be pretty darn sweet, especially since I worked all freaking day on this. Show me your appreciation/skepticism/unbridled anger/etc for/about/directed at/etc (respectively) this chapter, and you will make me a happy person. Additionally, anyone who made any sense out of that last sentence not only knows that it is saying the same thing as the one before it, but is also in my good graces. If there is some silly spelling or grammatical error, which there shouldn't be as I proofread this quite carefully, please notify me by e-mail rather than review as the problem will be speedily fixed, thus rendering your review telling me that I was wrong quite obsolete. Until next time...