Chapter Six: The Farewell: Deny Love, or Embrace It?

It had been a month passing since Tiger arrived, and the couple went around the island like there wasn't a care in the world. Everyone expected it since the day Tiger's sorry carcass washed up on their island, so it wasn't a surprise what had unfolded. They days became redundant, finally, but it didn't seem to bother the two. As long as they were together,nothing could go wrong.

Or at least, they thought...

Tiger and Marin awoke one morning to a huge roaring outside. They quickly ran out to see what it was, and saw it was the Wind Fish, returning to Koholint Island in which it swore never to return to. Everyone flocked around to see the great Wind Fish, but it came back for only one person. That's right: Tiger.

"May the one known as 'Tiger' step forth!" the Wind Fish commanded.

Tiger stepped forth. "I am he."

"Tiger, I am honored to meet the descendant of the Hero of Time, Link of Hyrule. I can sense within you a heart full of life, passion, and benevolence. You seemed to have brought life back into the life of a young woman, and with that feat alone I can see you truly are worthy of carrying the Triforces given to you by your friends. Sadly, you have overstayed your welcome, despite your victory over the Nightmare Demon. Truly, you are the most respected man in the past, and in your time.

"Nevertheless, I am commanding you to make a choice, since you obviously can never return if you do leave. The ultimatum is as follows: You can either give up your one, true love and fight for your world, or continue to live here with your beautiful lover. The choice, now, is up to you..."

Tiger thought long and hard about it, Marin's eyes looking fearfully into his, wondering what his decision would be. If he left, Marin would practically kill herself, it had been so long a wait before Tiger, and who knows what would happen if he ended up staying. Meanwhile, Tiger was struggling with the same problem. He looked up to the Wind Fish, ready to make his decision.

"What is it you wish, young one?" The Wind Fish bellowed. Tiger sent a visual of what he wanted telepathically to the Wind Fish. It kept silent for a long time, which made everyone nervous for the longest time. Five minutes passed, ten minutes, up to fifteen minutes passed by, still no answer. This made everyone severely worried. Would Tiger get flamed down like a dog? Would his wish even come true? Was Tony Danza straight or gay? Except for the last one, all the questions were about to be answered. A bright flash of light covered Tiger and Marin, and everything turned pitch black...

"Six units...ma stat...on...cle...heartbeat stabilized." same a strange voice from the darkness as Tiger regained consciousness. Tiger struggled to open his eyes, but when he finally did, all he could see us unadulterated blur. He closed them again, but immediately felt them reopen by what sounded like a female doctor.

"Tiger," said the doctor, "where are you at right now?"

Tiger replied in a very groggy tone of voice, "Well, despite my vision being completely obscured, I'm either in Hell frozen over, or in the emergency room..."

"Close, you're in I.C.U. Some hurricane spotters saw you in an inflatable raft while checking some malfunctioning time instruments. They mentioned something about time speeding up? Anyways, they picked you up on the otherwise routine flight. It's truly a blessing that you're still alive after spending two days at sea, and a week in a catatonic state."

Tiger's vision cleared in an instant, he sat up in bed, despite all the needles, tubes, wires, and sensors in and on him, and looked at the doctor. "Where's Marin!"

"Marin?" the doctor asked with a very confused look on her face. "My first name is Marin, but it seems you're a little bit delusional..."

Tiger sighed, seeing the doctor was in no way, shape, or form the one whom he had spent time with on Koholint Island...but did he really go there, or was it all in his head? He laid back down, and closed his eyes, one single tear rolling down his face, seeing that, once again, he's left all alone after a huge adventure in another far-away place.

"Well, I guess it's true what that say..." Tiger said to himself as the doctor left the room, "...some things just never will change."

Epilogue

Upon leaving the hospital in North Carolina three days after waking up from what appeared to be a week-long coma, Tiger immediately drove back to Oklahoma to reflect on what he had been through. When he told Mitchell, a member of what was the Trio of Time, Mitchell told him that he must have been dreaming, because he had been picked up five miles from the crash site when the Coast Guard finally got to him. The plane had crashed nearly fifty miles off shore, but because a hurricane was barreling through, they had to wait until conditions calmed before going out. With that piece of information, Tiger ended up disappearing for about a month, where in which no one saw him during that period, in that time or in Hyrule.

When he came out of hiatus, it was obvious he was in a better state of mind than he was upon return, although the pain obviously remained. Many people speculated about why he was so hurt. But no one knew what was going on with him, not even his closest of friends and family.

Tiger contenued on with his duties of his generation's Hero, but when the smoke cleared and the sun began to set, Tiger always watched it go down, occasionally shedding a tear, but otherwise coming to terms with what had happened.

As far as the plane crash, the black box was never recovered. And the fact that Tiger spent so much time in Koholint within roughly one week: it may have some connection with the time intruments speeding up. Tiger didn't do any research on it, lest he open old wounds.

No one knows exactly what happened to make the plane crash, but what is known is that according to spotters, something that looked like a flying whale and an owl was seen in the eye of the hurricane directly above the crash site in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle...

Sidenotes:

Yeah, you thought you had the story figured out...THREW A CURVE AT YOU, DIDN'T I!

Forgive my abuse of the caps...

Anywho, this is only the second of a three part series. This one was longer than the first, The Hero of Time, but a whole lot less action packed. In my opinion, it was more of a deeper look of the main character, Tiger, from the mental and emotional stand points. Of course, I had to throw in the sad ending, but otherwise it's the same strange crap-style of writing from the last story.

By the way, in case you didn't read my first story (in which you'd better have), the characters of Mitchell and April are loosely based off of two of my friends of the same name. The character of Tiger is loosely based off of...me. It isn't a direct cut-and-pase copy of me, just a rough interpretation (this is what you get when you're bored one night, write a fanfic with yourself in it, and decide out of the blue to make a sequel to it.)

Otherwise all specific towns, people, etc. portrayed in this fanfic that describes in any way/shape/form a real town, person, etc. is strictly coincidental and unintentional.

Time for copyright stuff (joy...):

All Legend of Zelda characters are copyrighted by Nintendo.

The Konami Code is copyrighted (?) and used by Konami.

If you wish to use this fanfic on your website, give credit where credit is due, make no changes to the story (even spelling and grammatical that I may have missed) except with my consent.

By the way, the final installment should be finished by All Hollow's Eve (Halloween for the rest of y'all),

The End