Darunia: Disclaimer! Selphie Louise does not own the Legend of Zelda or any of its characters. They are the property of Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo.

Tingle: The characters she does own are Selphie, Iggy, and Jiji. The characters of Kage, Yugi, Mable, and Raven belong to Kearra. The character Ravick is the property of Selphie's friend, Patrick.

Chapter 4

'Useless…'

'Failure…'

'You'll never amount to anything…'

'GET UP, IGNATIUS!'

"Wha-!" Iggy's eyes shot open. His body was half-submerged in shallow water, his head face down in the mud. He slowly pushed himself up, wincing at the pain in his head. The wound was still bleeding slightly, but luckily the hit had not struck home. The tyro had been aiming for the temple but missed, succeeding only in knocking Iggy out.

'The tyro!' Iggy remembered with a start. "Show yourself, you bastard! I'm not done with you yet!" he shouted as he leapt to his feet. "Whoa!" he exclaimed as he slipped in the mud and landed on his rear. This gave him a chance to see his surroundings. It was twilight; the sun would rise any minute. He wasn't even in Ikana anymore. The river had carried him all the way to the swamp, depositing him in the pool surrounding the witch's potion shop. Now he remembered using the river to get here a long time ago. He and Jiji had been instructed to steal ghost tears from the old hags. Man, were the witches pissed!

Iggy would have laughed at the memory had he not noticed the conspicuous absence of the roaring of the waterfall that would have deposited him there. He turned to where the cataract should have been and saw just a bit of trickling water. Following it to the top, Iggy's eyes widened as he saw what was obstructing the flow of water.

"Jiji!" he exclaimed. 'She's going to drown if she's stuck up there much longer!' Thinking quickly, Iggy took his bow, which thankfully hadn't been washed away or lost, and powered up an ice arrow. He fired several of them up the wall next to the waterfall, creating handholds for him to climb up. Without another moment's hesitation he scaled the wall, ignoring the new pain in his hands: the water on them was not reacting well with the ice.

Iggy reached the top faster than he ever did in any of his training. Carefully, he extricated Jiji from the water and held her with one arm as he dropped to the water below, thankfully actually keeping his hold on her. The waterfall began flowing again, dropping gallons of water on them. Iggy carried Jiji out of it and laid her down on dry ground.

"Jij! Jiji, wake up! Come on, Jiji, get up!" Iggy said shaking her slightly. He felt her wrist and would have sighed in relief for the pulse he felt if it hadn't been so weak. She was incredibly pale, likely having to do with blood loss as he noticed the wounds on her leg and stomach: holding his hand over her nose and mouth he didn't feel much, if any, breathing. "Dammit!" he cursed looking around, as though hoping someone would appear to help him. Iggy looked down again and pressed his hands to her chest, trying to get her heart pumping.

"Dammit! Why'd you come here anyway, huh! You were right all along! I shouldn't have come back here! Why'd you have to come too!" he rambled as he tried to revive her. "You're supposed to be the smart one, and the strong one, and, dammit, if it had to be one of us that died and one of us that lived then you should have been the live one too!" He gave a few extra hard presses and finally pounded on her chest in frustration. "Don't you die on me!"

Suddenly Jiji started coughing, water forced from her lungs. Iggy's heart skipped a beat as he turned her onto her side. She continued coughing for a few more seconds before water finally spilled from her lips. Finally she began gasping for air and rolled back onto her back. After taking a few deep breaths, her eyes opened a bit and focused on Iggy. "Iggy…?" she whispered.

"Jiji!" he breathed in relief. "Gods, you had me worried there! I thought you were going to…" He trailed off, holding his hand to his forehead. Iggy looked down at her again and realized she still wasn't in great shape. "Your stomach…"

"I… I'm fine," Jiji said tiredly, trying to sit up, but crying out in pain as her hand reflexively went to her midsection.

"You're not…" Iggy replied as Jiji laid back again. He looked up at the waterfall. "But we can't stay here… it's too close to Ikana… and the Garo."

"Anywhere in Termina is too close to the Garo…" she agreed, nodding her head slowly, her lids half closed. "We gotta get out of here… back to Hyrule."

"Except that you can't go anywhere like that…" A cucco crowed in the distance and Iggy realized the sun had finally risen. Iggy looked around. His eyes fixed upon the teapot shaped house above them and an idea formed in his head. He glanced around and spotted some tall plants nearby. Standing up, he moved behind Jiji, taking her beneath the arms.

"Whoa… what're you doing…?" she asked wearily, almost incoherently.

"Just hold on," he answered as he pulled her to said plants, hiding her amongst them. She nodded slightly and began to drift to sleep again. Iggy let her do so and sloshed through the water to the potion shop. He quietly climbed the ladder and peered through the window. His eyes widened and he darted around the side of the house as Koume shot out the front door on her broom.

"I can't believe Kotake let me oversleep!" she screeched in anger. "There's no call for it! Just because I singed the end of her broom… it was an accident!" She circled the house once and flew off in the direction of the tourist center. Iggy watched to make sure she was gone before moving inside the house.

Once inside, he went to the back and began rummaging through potions, vaguely remembering where everything had been last time he was there. "Crap… they rearranged everything…" he muttered to himself, running his eyes over the many shelves. "Nothing…" he muttered.

"Dammit, Koume! I may have let you oversleep, but going out of the way to bring your boat tour through my aquatic garden is just taking things too far!" Iggy's eyes widened as he heard Kotake approaching the house. He glanced around and dove through a nearby door just as Kotake burst into the potion shop.

Iggy heard her stomp around the shop and begin rummaging through cabinets and shelves. He turned around and realized he was in their bedroom. There were more shelves of potions and ingredients lining the walls. His eyes lit up when he spotted it: a large carafe of red potion. "Yes-!" he nearly exclaimed but threw his hand to his mouth staring at the door.

A jar broke in the next room and Kotake cursed loudly. "Damn that brat! None of this would have happened if she could have kept her fire powers away from my broom!" Iggy quickly grabbed a ladle and a bottle from the counter nearby and lifted the lid from the red potion. He dipped the ladle in and spooned some potion into the bottle.

Suddenly, however, when it was about a quarter of the way full, he dropped the spoon, creating a loud clanging sound. "Shit!" he exclaimed, reaching down as he tried to silence it, but only succeeding in knocking over about five more vials and the red potion, all of which crashed to the floor noisily. "No!"

"What was that?" he heard Kotake say in the next room. His eyes widened as he listened. Footsteps. And they were coming toward the bedroom! Iggy grabbed the bottle and a cork and ran across the room.

"Who's there!" Kotake demanded as she slammed open the door, her wand ready and charged with an ice spell. She skimmed over the room with her eyes, looking for the source of the noise. A series of broken glass on the floor next to the counter, but nothing that could have knocked it over. "Now what could have caused this mess?" Kotake asked.

Iggy's breathing was rapid as he hid beneath the window. "Ooh… I'll bet it was Koume's doing!" he heard the witch say. "She never puts things away properly!" She muttered a spell, causing the broken glass to disappear and then left the room, slamming the door shut behind her. Iggy heard her gather a few things in the shop and then the fwoosh as she took off for Southern Swamp.

Iggy sighed in relief before he looked at the pitiful sample of red potion he'd managed to bottle. "Urg… this isn't nearly enough to heal Jiji…" he said to himself. He glanced in the window again and groaned at the fact there was no more red potion. Dropping to the pool below, Iggy sloshed back to where he'd left Jiji.