THREE

The ride across town had been quiet, with neither Link nor Zelda offering to speak. Link had wanted to, had so many questions to ask the woman. It hadn't seemed an appropriate time though, so he had kept quiet. There was a brief moment when he had considered bailing from the car when Zelda drove through downtown, right past the Dragmire Industries building. The woman had laughed at him for his behavior, a hit to Link's ego that he still hadn't recovered from by the time they arrived at their destination in the south side of Hyrule City. Zelda pulled the car into an alley behind an old brick building and parked it out of sight of the road.

"Alright Hero, this is us. Come inside and meet the team." Link rolled his eyes at the woman, stepping out of the car. Her flippant attitude annoyed him to no end and he had half a notion to walk away.

"I agreed to come with you so can you please cut the shit? I have a name, use it." Zelda grinned as she walked around the car. She sorted through her keys and upon finding the right one, she slid it into the lock on the large metal door in front of her.

"You really need to lighten up dude, I'm just trying ease the tension here. But hey, if it makes you feel better I'll say your name." Zelda glanced back at Link over her shoulder, giving him a playful wink before pushing her way through the door. Link sighed audibly and followed her inside. The two entered a small, dark foyer. Zelda shooed Link out of the way before closing the door behind him and turning the large bolt lock into place. They stood in darkness for what seemed like an eternity before the door on the opposite side of the foyer opened, flooding the small room with bright fluorescent light. A woman stood at the entrance whom Link assumed was about he and Zelda's age. She had close cropped white hair and eyes so dark they almost seemed black. More prominent than her natural features though was the large black eye symbol tattooed on the woman's neck.

"This is the guy?" The white-haired woman looked Link over, and he couldn't immediately tell if she was satisfied with him or disappointed. Link subconsciously stood a little straighter, unsure why he even cared what this stranger thought about him.

"Yep, this is the guy," Zelda said, making her way past the woman into the well lit room beyond. Link hesitated for a moment before following her inside. The room wasn't as big as Link had initially thought it was. They were standing in a living room of sorts, with a ratty looking sofa and two mismatched easy chairs surrounding an old coffee table in one corner. The opposite corner was a small kitchen, if you could even call it a kitchen proper with its half sized fridge and two-burner stove. Directly to the left of the door was a small room which Link assumed was a bathroom and to the right was a bed. Link had been in some small studio apartments in his years, but this one definitely set a new low for square footage.

"Oh uh, Link, this is Impa. Impa, Link," Zelda said, waving her hand between the two of them. Link nodded at the white-haired woman, Impa, before turning his attention back to Zelda. She walked across the small apartment and sat down on the sofa, picking up one of the laptops sitting on the coffee table.

"Okay, so you said you could tell me about this," Link said, holding up his left hand to show the golden triangle. "What the hell is it then?" Zelda glanced back at him before turning her attention back to her computer.

"That there is the Triforce of Courage, my friend. Though with the way you're dressed and the fact that you almost shit your pants when I drove through downtown I'm surprised you didn't end up with Wisdom instead." Zelda and Impa both laughed at this, though Link had no idea what the joke was. He walked over to the sitting area and took a chair opposite Zelda.

"That tells me nothing, dude. Why do I have this and how do I get rid of it? Seriously, this shit is fucking up my life." Link's tone was serious and Zelda finally looked up at him from her computer screen. "I was assaulted by armed guards at my job over this, they didn't look like police either. I just want to know how to get rid of it." Zelda raised an eyebrow at Link's claim, sitting her computer down.

"Wearing all black, I'm assuming? How did you get away from them?" Zelda's tone was also serious now, and she sat forward on the sofa. Impa joined them, leaning against the back of the couch behind Zelda.

"Well uh... I fought them. It's kinda hard to explain. That's not the point though, how do I get rid of this thing?" Zelda shook her head, looking down at her own hand. She was slightly surprised at the idea of the man in front of her fighting off one of Dragmire's hit squads, but she decided she would ask him about it later. He had the Trifore of Courage after all, so she supposed it wasn't too hard to believe.

"You don't get rid of it dude, that's not how it works. I know you're probably gonna think this is a load of bullshit, but that mark means you were chosen by the Goddesses. Its happened before, thousands and thousands of years ago. Someone unworthy tries to take the Triforce, to keep it safe the Goddesses split it into three pieces with the unworthy person keeping the piece that most closely matches what they're after. It's power, it's always power oddly enough. Bad guys never seem to want the other two." Zelda held up her hand, showing her piece to Link. "I ended up with Wisdom, that leaves you with Courage."

"You... You don't honestly expect me to believe that, right?" Link's expression was blank, his gaze locked on Zelda's. "I mean come on, Triforces and Goddesses? That's the kind of shit you hear in fairy tales when you're a kid..." Zelda shrugged her shoulders, giving Link a blank look of her own.

"What else do you want me to say dude? You asked what the golden triangle was, I told you. I mean is it really that hard to believe? A golden triangle shows up on your hand out of nowhere and you expect a logical explanation for it? It's pretty illogical in itself right?" Link sat back in his seat, trying to massage away an encroaching headache from his temples.

"Okay, so hypothetically speaking, the Goddesses chose me for whatever reason. Any idea who has the third piece?"

"Actually yea, we're almost certain that it's your boss," Zelda said, her tone not changing despite the severity of her accusation. Link gave her a doubtful look before shaking his head.

"You think my boss, Janet Goldsmith, has the... Triforce of Power, was it? Now I know you're fucking with me." Zelda rolled her eyes, turning her laptop so that Link could see it.

"Not Janet Goldsmith, you idiot. Him, Ganondorf Dragmire the Eighth, owner and CEO of Dragmire Industries." Link sat forward in his chair, taking a look at the photo on the screen. In his years with the company, Link had never so much as seen the CEO of Dragmire Industries in person. Though he was doubtful, he turned his gaze back to Zelda.

"And what makes you think that the owner of my company is the guy? Do you have any kind of proof?" Impa pointed at the screen, both eyebrows raised.

"Do you see the guy? How can you not think he's evil? Dude looks scary as fuck." Zelda grinned before shooing Impa away.

"I mean we don't have pictures of the guy in the Sacred Realm touching the thing, but we're pretty sure it's him." Zelda grabbed a folder from the table and offered it to Link. It was full of copies of pages from old books, many of which were in languages that Link couldn't read.

"A lot of that stuff is written in ancient Hylian or Geruda, there's even a copy of a scroll in there that's in ancient Kokiri, the one on the end with the weird glyphs. They're passages from books and scrolls, some of them thousands of years old. It took Impa's grandma and great-grandma like a hundred years to get all of that stuff together. They're all about old legends and myths of past heroes. Even though that stuff spans thousands of years and more than one dead language, do you know what they all have in common?" Link shook his head, not looking up from the pages in the folder.

"Three names," Zelda said, this time catching Link's attention. "All the old myths and legends have three names, no matter when it was written or what country it came from. There's always a princess named Zelda, a hero named Link and an evil dude named Ganondorf, or Ganon for short sometimes. Now Impa hacked into the census database for the entire country and there are only two people in Hyrule named Ganondorf or Ganon. I think it's safe to assume that a twelve-year-old boy living in Kakariko didn't saunter into the Sacred Realm to steal an artifact as old as time itself. And that, good sir, leaves only one possible person. He's in his forties, he's got like a billion rupees in the bank and yea, what Impa said, dude just looks fucking evil."

"Okay, that's a cool story and all but there are a few holes in your theory," Link said, sitting the folder back on the coffee table. "First and foremost, you're about as far from being a princess as this apartment is from being a castle." Zelda held up her left hand, showing Link her Triforce piece and giving him the finger at the same time.

"And secondly, a hunch isn't nearly enough to accuse someone of... doing whatever that evil shit was you were just talking about, stealing Triforces or whatever. Look, I'll admit that there's some weird shit going on with the golden triangles, maybe I even was chosen by the Goddesses or whatever. But your story just doesn't add up." Zelda dug around on the coffee table again, looking through a stack of folders until she found the one she was looking for. She offered it to Link.

"Well to address your first point, I actually am a princess. Sort of. My mom worked at the Royal Residence years ago. Turns out the King isn't the most faithful person. The Queen was understandably pissy when my mom got pregnant and they made her sign an NDA. She doesn't disclose the King's dirty secret or try and challenge the Line of Succession and in return me and my mom are set for life. She died when I was twelve and I ended up in a foster home. That was the end of it." Link looked through the folder, at the photos of Zelda's mom at the Royal Residence, the bank statements from First Hyrule Bank with regular deposits from someone with the initials RNH XII, it was all enough to convince Link.

"Fucking hell," Link said, dropping the folder on the table before sitting back in his chair. "Okay, so let's say it's all true. We're chosen by the Goddesses, my boss is evil as fuck, so on. What the hell are we supposed to about it?" Zelda shrugged her shoulders again, giving Link a somewhat serious look.

"We have to kill him. Bit of an understatement of course, but true nonetheless." Link scoffed, initially taking Zelda's comment and nonchalant attitude as a joke.

"Come on, you can't be serious. Kill him? We don't even know if he's actually evil or not." Zelda smiled at Link before grabbing her laptop from the coffee table.

"True enough I guess. We kill him, if he's actually evil.

()()()()()()()()()()

Ganondorf Dragmire leaned against the thick mahogany desk in his penthouse office, the sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up to his elbows and his red tie was tossed over one shoulder. The dark skin of his hands and forearms were covered in a sheen of blood, the deep crimson in sharp contrast with his olive tone. A body lay in the floor in front of him, a sheet of plastic protecting the lush carpeting from ruin. Ganondorf used a towel to mostly clean the blood from himself before tossing the soiled cloth onto the plastic next to the dead man.

"James Potter from accounting, shared a desk with your target. Unfortunately he wasn't able to provide any solid leads on Link Shepherd's location, but I was able to learn that he definitely has the Triforce of Courage." Ganondorf's voice was deep and commanding, a perfect fit considering the man's size. At just over seven feet tall he was large even by Geruda standards. Ganondorf grabbed a manila envelope from his desk and handed it over the dead body to the women standing across from him.

"All the information I have on both of your targets is in the envelope. Search for Zelda Smith first, Link Shepherd will almost certainly be with her. I would suggest starting on the south side. To my understanding Smith is a bit of a gutter rat so you'll likely find her in a ghetto somewhere. I've transferred half a million rupees to your encrypted account, you'll get the other half million once you've provided proof that both of them are dead." Ganondorf retrieved a leather wallet from the inside pocket of his suit jacket that hung on the back of his chair. He removed a sizable stack of notes and offered them to the two women.

"Here's an extra twenty thousand, all you have to do is get this mess out of my office." Ganondorf nudged at the plastic covered body with his shoe. One of the women pocketed the money and without a word the two grabbed each end of the dead man. Ganondorf turned away from them, rounding his desk to stare out the floor to ceiling windows on Hyrule City.

"Use the freight elevator, and do try to make it look like an accident. Mr. Potter's car keys are in the pocket of his slacks," Ganondorf called back to the two women, not bothering to look back. A wicked grin spread across his hard face, a grin that could only be described in one word. Evil.