Stuff That's Happened: Lets see...how can I wrap this up quickly: some fictional characters from a fantasy video game have embarked on a hazardous trek through the innumerable dimensions of alternate reality against their will, and at the behest of a psychotic,obsessed teenager from the future who has dragged them tothe particulardimension of Cleveland, Ohio-land in order that they might attend an obscure concert of the Indian-rock variety. Now, if we translate the Stuff That's Happenedpassage (the sentence you just read) into actual English we get a much more concise message, namely, "Nothing important." Get my drift? You do? Well, then, can you explain it to me, cause I have no idea what I'm talking about.
"So…Drake. I'm curious –" Malon was briefly cut off when Drake rounded the right turn of a crossroad at 80 miles an hour and Darunia and Ganondorf both crushed her against the left door of the minivan in which they had undoubtedly broken 30 traffic laws already. "OW! Get off me you oafs!" She roughly shoved the two large men to the opposite side of the row of seats.
"Hey, I didn't invent centrifugal force!" Protested Ganondorf. Malon ignored him.
"Anyway… Drake…" She tried to continue, "How did you – OW!" She yelped as they hit a curb and her cranium connected with the ceiling. "WOULD YOU SLOW DOWN, YOU IDIOT? YOU'RE GONNA GET US ALL KILLED!" She watched as Drake veered off the road into another concrete plaza, and crowds of pedestrians parted in panicked waves before the path of the renegade vehicle. Though Drake seemed to have gotten off unpunished so far, she felt sure that police would be inclined to stop any and all automobiles that happened to be traveling down a sidewalk. It was a wonder they hadn't hit anyone yet. No one wanted to admit it, but they were all subconsciously impressed with Drake's driving, if not by his blatant disregard for traffic laws.
"No whining. Must NOT MISS CONCERT!" Drake declared determinedly.
Fine. Thought Malon. I WAS going to ask you how you survived that fall…I WAS going to show a little concern for your well-being, but since you don't CARE…
"So, Drake, you said you're actually corporeal now?" Darunia managed to ask the question without any interruption, as if they weren't in the middle of a crazy death-ride.
"Yes – OW!"
Drake rubbed the welt on the back of his head where Darunia had struck him with his monster of a hand. In the process, he narrowly avoided careening into a newspaper stand.
"Sorry." Said Darunia with an evil grin. "Just checking."
"So…how did you survive your fall? If you're all…mortal now." Saria asked with that uncanny placidity, oblivious to the chaotic bouncing of the minivan.
"Oh THAT! Hah! Let's not get into THAT! Hahahaha!" Drake laughed cryptically, as he dodged a street lamp. "Whoo! That's not a story for the younguns… Hee!"
Bewildered and unable, perhaps even afraid, to fathom whatever it was that he might be talking about, the van's occupants left it at that. Perhaps they were also preoccupied with the fact that Drake had just barely evaded three other vehicles as he had charged off the plaza and back onto a street that seemed to be leading into something closely resembling slums.
"But thanks for asking at least. You must really CARE about me!" Drake crooned sweetly.
Saria smiled back at him. She didn't really mind Drake as much as the others. Sure he had made their lives a living hell, but he seemed to have a good heart, underneath all his… eccentricity.
Malon bristled. She wanted to scream at the idiot for some reason.
Drake dodged an old lady pushing a car full of scavenged garbage, squeezed between two trucks, did a screeching turn to the left and careened down a narrow alleyway between two dilapidated warehouses.
"35.3 SECONDS LEFT UNTIL CONCERT STARTS!" Screamed Drake.
"YOU DO REALIZE THAT YOU CAN'T ENJOY A CONCERT IF YOU'RE DEAD!" Ganondorf shouted angrily as his broad hands clutched desperately at the handle above the minivan's sliding door.
"BAH!" Drake replied succinctly.
"AND WHY THE HELL ARE YOU DRIVING DOWN AN ALLEY!" The wizard added.
Drake wasn't listening, however, as he charged into an open space hidden in some godforsaken corner of the urban maze that they had entered. An ugly, dangerous, mass of metal framework and outdated music equipment had been erected in the center of the clearing, that looked like the bastard child of some horrible hybrid between a piece of tasteless modern art and something approaching a construction site. On this "stage," or perhaps in it, stood four friendly-looking Indian rockers who glanced up from their sound check (though they seemed to be checking whether or not their equipment was capable of producing sound at all) at the minivan lurching towards them.
To no one's surprise, there were a total of ten people present, which might not have been so pathetic if not for the fact that the count included the five Hylians, the four Indian rockers, and the one fan.
The car screeched to a halt a few feet before the stage. With terror in their eyes, the Hindu musicians began wailing in was presumably their native language and fled the stage (which took some time, considering all the horribly erected metal framing they had to disentangle themselves from). Apparently, they were unaccustomed to actually having an audience.
A look of horror crossed Drake's face as he realized what was happening and he leapt from out the car and took chase, hollering hysterically to his musical heroes.
"NO, Mumbai! BUBBHA! I'm a FAN! YOU'RE BIGGEST FAN!"
"You're only fan, more like it." Whispered Ganondorf, and Link and Darunia sniggered from inside the car, which no one but Drake had left.
"PLEASE! Don't GO! I BEG YOU! I saw your flyer in a public restroom at gas station we passed! It was next to the toilet paper!"
"You mean it was the toilet paper." Darunia joked, drawing another round of chuckles from inside the car, and even Saria smiled.
"WE WISH ONLY TO BASK IN YOUR MUSICAL GLORY! PLEASE, DO YOUR CONCERT!" Al Han and his band mates hesitated, peering tentatively out from a row of garbage cans behind which they had hidden themselves rather pathetically. They glanced cautiously at one another and then had a brief discussion in whispered Indian, during which the word "Immigration" was frequently discernible.
Slowly, they stood, trembling visibly, their hands held up to show they were unarmed.
Al Han spoke in heavily accented English, his voice wavering uncertainly, "Please! We want only to play a concert! We are not 'gangsters', 'homeys', or 'gee-dogs.' And we have visas! Visas!"
"YEAH! Go Mumbai! Get up on that stage and kick ass!" Drake bellowed triumphantly.
The four musicians seemed to interpret Drake's request as a threat, for they jumped noticeably and tripped over each other in their hurry back to the stage. Al Han Mumbai scrambled up to his microphone and whispered pleadingly.
"Please! We come to America just two days ago! We have no money, no property but cheap, outdated music equipment. Do not hurt us! Take our things, our clothes, our tour van," he pointed to the left of the "stage" where a grimy, rickety caravan about the size of a go-kart, was parked a distance away, "take our bassist (he is horrible), but do not arrest or kill us, I beg you!"
"Whoo! Yeah! You ROCK Mumbai! I LOVE YOU!" Drake screamed back at the Indian musician, who responded by quivering in terror. No one seemed to notice the mutinous stare Bubba the Bassist was directing at the back of Al Han's head. Drake turned to his "friends", still stubbornly inert within the car.
"Isn't he great?" It was more of a statement than a question. "Malon, you're going to have to take off your shirt. You'll need to get your chest signed by the whole band. You'll also have to preserve the signatures, at least until I get a camera to take those full-frontal nude photos of you, which means no showering for at least two weeks."
Malon was caught so off guard she didn't know how to answer. For a moment at least: "Are you out of your FUCKING MIND? Get your own damn chest signed, you pervert!"
"I wanted to, but was impeded by the fact that I lack breasts. Besides, it would raise your collector's-value exponentially! Naturally, you're the only alternative out of the present company – no offense to you, Saria – so you've earned the honor."
Saria stiffened. Unintentionally she glanced down at her rather flat ten-year-old's chest. Perhaps she didn't like Drake as much as she thought.
"I'm going to say this once, and ONLY ONCE!" Malon grated, "NO ONE holding a permanent marker is coming within a 50 foot radius of me and my bosom!"
"What about someone holding a camera?" Drake teased, as he climbed onto the hood of the minivan, over the windshield and sat himself on its roof.
"Not funny!" Malon shouted at him, the edge to her voice razor-sharp. Drake saw that perhaps he was going a bit too far. He turned back to Al Han and his band mates, who were still trembling like pansies on the stage.
"Go for it guys! ROCK OUT! Give us a killer performance."
Al Han shrieked and quickly snatched up his instrument.
"You heard him! We must rock out or he will kill us!"
And with that they launched, rather shakily, into their program, running through such classic Indian pop numbers as Curry, Curry, Curry, All I Want is Krishna, Take Off Your Sari, and Have You Ever Been Bitch-Slapped By A Six-Armed Goddess?
Their sound was…weird, to say the least, making use of exotic modal runs, oriental harmonies, quarter-tone scales, and foreign instruments such as to create that style of music that was so profoundly effective at making Ionian-grounded westerners turn their heads and say: "what the hell?" and "shut the fuck up!"
The rest of the Z-gang, who had extricated themselves from the cramped and muggy minivan were either standing disinterestedly around the vehicle, or lying disinterestedly on the van's hood, or languishing disinterestedly on the ground, or disinterestedly contemplating death. They found the whole thing to be an incomprehensible cacophony. A few of them, namely Link, Darunia, and Ganon, could at least vaguely appreciate how much more interesting the music might sound if they were stoned out of their minds, but other than that, little desire to continue living had been expressed amongst the five Hylians.
Only Drake, his eyes riveted on the unenthusiastic and nervous musicians who were half-heartedly belting out Phrygian harmonic minor scale runs, seemed to be enjoying himself. His voice screamed the lyrics (foreign or otherwise) back at the band out of sheer rote-memorization. And though it was probably safe to say he was singing out of tune, the harmonies involved were already so far into the freaky, fucked-up, impossible-to-get-your-head-around region that there was no way in hell to know whether he wasn't in fact, doing a perfect dual-harmony voice accompaniment.
Just when Link was on the verge of shoving the Master Sword through his skull, and as the group was halfway through a cover of Stairway to Bovinity, the rocking movement of the band's caravan caught his eye.
What the hell? He thought, for the second time since he'd been here. He found himself unable to take his eyes off the vehicle as the side-to-side motion increased in intensity and then abruptly ceased. There was a pause and then the door on the side of the caravan opened, out of which a blond girl stepped. Link noticed a few oddities about her, not the least of which was that she was as naked as a baboon's ass. A small tiara was laced through her hair, only adding to the peculiarity. But this did not stop her from hollering at the top of her lungs, in a voice so screeching it could've made your teeth itch: "CUT THAT GOD DAMN RACKET OUT! I'M TRYING TO FUCK SOMEONE BACK HERE! SHEESH!"
Every single person present heard her, even over the blasting of the mindless "music", and the veins of each of them ran ice-cold at the sound of her voice. No one, NO ONE, could mistake that ear-wrenching, brain-cell-decimating, insanity-invoking valley-girl whine. They were all filled with a sudden, overwhelming desire to throttle something (most preferably, the person speaking) or else, to stick a red-hot iron poker down their ear canals to alleviate some of the pain.
The "music" stopped instantly.
Mumbai spoke nervously into the microphone. "I am sorry, my little jasmine flower, but we are having no choice. The corrupt immigration official…he kills us if we do not continue!"
"ZELDA? Sweet mother of the almighty God, say IT ISN'T SO!" Drake's agony was palpable, "You should be ground meat! GROUND MEAT, I TELL YOU!"
Zelda stepped free of the caravan door, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that she was stark naked, and stared vapidly at her fellow Hylians and company. "HEY GUYS! ITS YOU! I've been wondering when you were going to show up! Miss me?"
"Yeah. By two inches. With a throwing knife." Malon said sourly.
Zelda scowled at her, but brightened as she caught sight of Link. "Oh Link, sweetie! I'm sure you were SO worried about me, but its okay. I'm safe now. Of course…I am a little emotionally upset…. You could probably make me feel better if you joined me and my friend in the caravan…. Just consider it your duty to your Queen. In fact, all of you are invited."
"I would rather be sodomized with barbed wire, you sick freak." Link spat back.
Zelda stroked her chin thoughtfully. "Hmmm…now isn't that an interesting idea?"
"DON'T SAY ANOTHER WORD YOU PSYCHOTIC BITCH! And for the LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, PUT SOME DAMN CLOTHES ON!" Link roared from behind Malon, whose figure he was taking refuge behind.
At that instant, the only something in the universe that could've made the situation worse stepped out of the caravan behind the unclad Zelda. It was a blue, slimy, flipper-sporting, also-naked, princess that reeked of rotting fish.
"Zeldy!" It whined, "They're out of fish food!"
"Shut up, whore! Get back inside where I left you!" Snapped the one princess at the other, without glancing back.
The amphibious freak-of-nature turned sulkily, back into the caravan.
"My god! Ruto as well. Its like the some sadistic bastard perverted my greatest fantasy into my darkest nightmare. The only thing that could possibly make this worse would be if –"
"Mumbai, you useless bastard! Get over here right now, or you'll never sleep with either of us again!" Zelda snapped.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Drake screamed, his fingers clawing at his scalp. He turned desperately towards his musical hero. "How COULD you Mumbai! I mean…ZELDA! AND RUTO, TOO! I've seen some vile things in my time…but this…this is just SICK!"
He crouched in tears on the ground, and Saria sighed tiredly as she moved over to pat him on the back in a gesture of comfort. As much as they disliked Drake, everyone involved could feel some pity for him.
Mumbai had crept guiltily from the stage. "Zelda, my flower, you are supposed to be…how you say…a groupie?. The groupie does not command their rock star, correct?"
"Shut up, get inside, and get naked. I'm horny, and I plan on fixing that. And take your friends, too!" Zelda barked at him. She turned back to the Z-Gang and grinned sickeningly. "The more the merrier. Sure you guys don't want join in? Malon? I know we never really got off on the right foot, but I have to admit I always found you really –"
"Zelda, you finish that sentence and it'll be the last one that ever comes out of your mouth." Malon grated.
"Oooh. Feisty! I like that."
"Okay, I really have to get out of here, before I spew my lunch all over the floor." Darunia was clutching his large bowels queasily.
"For once I agree with you." Ganondorf replied. "Why anyone would want to fuck a girl, I can't imagine." He seemed to shudder for a moment, as if remembering something unpleasant….
"YOU! You destroyer of worlds! You evil little slut! What is it with you and fucking every person, animal, or inanimate object that you get your hands on?" Drake's accusation was filled with loathing.
Zelda smiled wickedly. "Well, you know foreign immigrants and starving musicians…so easy to take advantage of. Getting in their pants is like getting into a community college."
"Okay, that's just sick." Saria narrowed her eyes in disgust.
"Poor bastards. They didn't stand a chance." Malon shook her head regretfully.
The caravan, now newly occupied with a naked fish-creature and four Indian musicians, resumed its rocking motions. Zelda glanced back at it briefly and smiled. Drake emptied his stomach noisily and conspicuously before coming up gasping for air.
"HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE! GOT TO GO! NOW!" He staggered unsteadily back to his minivan, each creak from the vibrating caravan like a stab in the heart.
The others watched him go, nonplussed as to what to do next. Saria sighed again, and went after him.
"I better stop him from doing something stupid, like suicide."
"How would that be bad, again?" Darunia asked out loud, oblivious to Saria's scowl.
There was a brief pause and then Link spoke.
"Oh, what the hell. Anyplace is better than this one, right now. I swear I'm gonna have images of Zelda burned on in the inside of my eyelids for the rest of my miserable life."
"You're not the only one," An angry Ganondorf spat. Zelda seemed to take this as a compliment, for she smiled as Link and Gandondorf scrambled back to minivan. Darunia and Malon weren't far behind them.
Zelda stared after them awhile, then shrugged and turned back into the caravan. She paused at the door, turned round, and hollered back at the still-open minivan.
"Well, I guess I'll catch up with you guys later, when I'm finished."
"NOT IF I CAN HELP IT, FREAK!" Drake roared out the window at her, and with that, he slammed the door shut and sped off down another alleyway, chucking his CD The Hindu Way: Greatest Hits of the Orient, out the window.
Author's Notes: In case you haven't observed it already, I'm not particularly fond of either of Ocarina's of Time's esteemed "princesses," particurlarly not the one after whom the series is named. Perhaps its because I find Zelda to be a useless, prissy, ditz who does nothing but get her helpless ass inevitably captured in a relentlessly repetitive fashion so that Link, the hero, must be forced to rescue her, for no apparent reason other than that she may be the onesupplying his pay check. If you disagree with this statement, feel free to argue the matterwith me in a manner as irrational, groundless, andfanatic as you like. Don't worry. I don't expect sanity or logicfrom any of my opposition, since it quite literally contradicts the laws of the physical world to like the character Zelda and be a rational individual. I'm willing to wait out whatever idioticcontentions anyone has for me before promptly ignoring them.This is a democracy, after all, and ina democracy, we pretend to listen civilly to our opponent's positions with an open mind beforeintelligently responding with the fact that he/she is a big fat idiot, in-his/her-face, nah-nah-nah-nah--nah, and other similarly civilized observations.
On a another note, long dangled prospects of Hylian rock bands will be realized insoon-to-arrive chapters, which will continue previous chapters' traditions of burying tiny nuggets of Lucky-Charm-Marshmellow-sized-entertainment amidst a sea of taste-less papery, whole-grain-bits of empty, nonsensical, gibbersih writing. In the immortal world of Apu: "Thank you, come again."
