Author's Note: Not a lot to Say today. Read, Review, Favourite, STAY INDOORS!

Chapter 42: The Shield Heroes of the Past

The guard posted here had come to learn to fear this pinkish light. Whenever it appears in this exact spot it means that little she devil is going to appear again and this time looked to be no different as a group emerged from the light.

"Good to see you again Sir Hero." The dry and exhausted tone that the guard used implied it was anything but.

"Have I seen you before?" Kuro asked though she knew the answer was rhetorical with her perfect memory.

"Unfortunately." This was punishment, he came to understand. "I was working for the late Jaralis at the time." Which is to say that he was one of the hapless souls commanded to break into her room, made to ejaculate until he passed out for his trouble and then woke up with the equivalent of Pedophile written across his body.

"Ah that's it." Kuro leaned over to Maple's side and whispered into her ear in a tone just loud enough for the guard to hear her. "Careful with this one he has grabby hands."

"I do not recognise the new members of your party Sir Hero." Lady Atla and Lord Fohl was there but the other child dressed in dragon's scales and the girl in a squirrel costume were new.

"Oh. I'm Maple." The girl in question gave a bow. "I'm the Hero of the Shield."

Oh lovely. This day just went from bad to worst.

Steaming hot liquid was pored from the tea pot into cups for the members of the group.

"It's a pleasure to see you again Sir Hero." Oroko stated as he put the pot down.

"You're the turtle grandpa from Mr. Reichnott's mansion right?" Maple asked as she drank the tea.

"Nice to know I made a impression. Is there something we can help you with Sir Hero?"

"Um..." Maple looked to Kuro who nodded her head in the positive. "We came to add the army to our party to help with the wave in Cal Mira." The old turtle cocked his brow in confusion.

"The wave in Cal Mira?" The turtle asked looking between them confusedly for confirmation.

"Five tiny little islands." Kuro stated pinching her fingers together indicating some microscopic mass before spreading her arms out as if trying to wrap them around a barrel. "Big ocean." If one hour glass was meant to cover a area as large as Melromarc...

"Yes I think I understand now." Oroko stated nodding his head. "I'll go alert the army."

"There's more." Maple stated and Oroko cocked a brow in interest. "We met with two of the Seven Stars already: The Whip and The Cane." The Turtle frowned. He was aware that Faubrey had fallen but he didn't know that the King had gone so far as to reclaim the weapon that he hated so much.

"The Whip can increase other's powers by augmenting stats in exchange for levels while the Cane can increase magic spells potency by using energy gained by levelling." Maple explained all of this before the most relevant piece of information was thrown in as if a after thought. "I can do the same thing now."

"So in order to rally support for the incoming defensive battle at Cal Mira you intend to power up the army and then turn them loose to fight the wave." Oroko the crafty old Turtle that he was was quick to figure things out.

"Well that and this is a pretty serious situation so they should be getting some kind of payment for all the work that we're going to get them to do." Maple looked genuinely guilty about asking the people here to do this, so the Old turtle opted not to point out that for a shockingly large number of his people just getting to fight alongside the shield Hero would be payment enough, even if they narrowed that number down to the aquatic and airborne. Instead he chose to be greedy, with the next matter he brought to the fore.

"While we have you here Sir Hero we have some matters we would like you to have a look at."

A few short minutes later Maple was slowly walking to her guest room, with a unsteady stack that was several times her height swaying back and forth as she attempted to get back to her room without making a massive mess.

"Marriage interviews?" Maple asked still wracked with disbelief. "How did I end up with this giant pile of Marriage interviews!? I'm not even old enough to be a bride!"

"You say that..." Aside from opening the door for her Kuro made no move to help Maple. "But the Queen should be about 30 and her oldest daughter 20, in the mean time we have a country of people who less often age into adults and more often level up into one relatively quickly." Speaking of the royal family, they haven't seen the princess since Faubrey's fall which annoyed them to no end and gave them cause for concern. Maple eventually sat the stack down in the room, why she didn't just stuff them into the shield Kuro didn't know, and looked around the room locking eyes onto the shield mounted on the wall.

"That looks familiar." Maple stated as she looked up at the original shield of the Beast King that Kuro had copied and then given to her. "Come to think of it I haven't seen you using any of the other shields that I got from this joint either." Kuro stated watching Maple as she climbed onto the bed and put her hand on the shield.

"Well I haven't had time to look through them all." Maple stated defensively.

"What about now?" Kuro asked brow in the air.

It was a familiar shield, to any video game fans with a basic knowledge of pop culture. A silver Badge Shield, painted blue with a red bird painted on the front along with three golden triangles that were organised into a bigger triangle.

"Looks familiar, can't put my finger on where though." Maple stated as she looked the thing over. Maple clearly didn't have a basic knowledge of video game pop culture. "What do you make of it?"

"Gimme a minute." Kuro stated as she crossed her arms and dived into the history within the shield.

Link just stared awkwardly ahead, fresh off of Ganondorf's defeat and putting the Master Sword back into it's pedestal in the temple he felt like he had fallen through a trap door of some kind to land in another world and asked to defend it's people from a invasion. For a Shield Hero like himself there was also suppose to be a Sword, a Bow and a Spear Hero as well. And now he was greeted by three other Hylians who looked almost exactly like him. All three of them had blonde hair and blue eyes but the similarities ended there: The Sword Hero was short and childish with a large great sword strapped to his back. The Spear Hero was tall, with heavy chain-mail underneath the green tunic they all wore. The Bow Hero was hard to tell at first but female, small single handed cross bows in hand as she stared every bit as awkwardly as he was.

Kuro blinked dumbly in surprise with what she had seen, she was pretty certain that the same guy wasn't meant to be summoned to play all four heroes.

"I think some of my class mates played a video game featuring that guy." Kuro stated causing Maple to tilt her head to the side. "Long and pointy ears, like a elf, and he already had the shield strapped to his back when he got here."

"So he's not Japanese?" Maple asked prompting Kuro to shake her head.

"I don't even think he was human." Kuro stated prompting Maple to look down at the shield she just changed her weapon into.

"That might explain why this thing is called the Hylian shield." Maple stated as she started looking for equip bonuses. "Hmm. It looks like it's designed to link together my Air Strike Shields." Maple stated reading off the description.

"Don't you already have one that does that?" Kuro asked brow cocked in the air suspiciously.

"Yes Chain Shields, which puts up a chain in-between them." Which has it's uses if she wants to immobilise her enemies but not the point. "That one only needs two shields to work but this one combines together three shields."

"'Combines them?'" Kuro asked looking suspicious.

"That's what it says." Maple replied nodding her head.

"What do you make of this?" Kuro asked turning her attention to Rishia who had started to organise the mess Maple had made.

"Um. There was a group of Heroes who were summoned from a place called Hylia a hundred years ago." Rishia stretched her arms out and flapped them as indicating a pair of birds wings. "The skill should turn the three shields into something resembling bird's wings, if you've already turned them into different shields their effects should combine together." Rishia explained prompting Maple to nod her head.

"So instead of a group of shields I can create a barricade, and I can say for instance stack together the Soul Eater with the Cerberus." Maple asked and Rishia nodded her head in response.

"But wouldn't that take a while to set up?" Kuro asked brow cocked in the air. "I mean like: Air Strike Shield. Change Shield: Cerberus Shield. Second Shield. Third Shield. Change Shield: Soul Eater Shield. Wings Shield!" Kuro proceeded to shout off Maple's skills while doing her best impression of her, which prompting applause from Atla who was already on the bed. "Thank you! But not the point. That little skit took me eleven seconds to all put together, and assumes that you don't want to add any magic on top of that." And in that same amount of time Kuro could have killed every member of Maple's party while she was trying to set up some ridiculously over the top combo.

"Good point. Is there anything my shield can do to help?" Maple asked and was soon answered. 'The Legendary Shield cannot cast Skills or Magic for the Hero.' "So that's a no then." Maple concluded as she went over to the next shield.

Round, edge painted red, then a ring of white and another red, centre blue and a large white star that spanned the middle of the shield.

"'American Shield.'" Maple stated while she looked back at Kuro and shrugged. "I didn't even know America could be made into a shield." Kuro opted to ignore Maple while she dived into the history of the copy in her own arsenal.

"This canyon is a choke zone." Steven Rogers stated his finger on a map while Demi-humans were to either side of him. "If we can bait the enemy army over then we can collapse the pass here, here, and here." A dog type Demi-human was making note of everything the other man stated with a sheet of parchment and quill. "That will leave them isolated for several days and we can rescue your people." Then the blonde haired man whose armour matched his shield levelled a glare at the leaders of Siltvelt present. "To clarify this is a rescue operation not a slave raid."

Steve didn't appreciate the idea of people being made to work to their graves in the Nazi's concentration camps, he didn't appreciate the idea of it happening here either. So he could indignantly protest their at times psychopathic behaviour or he could take advantage of their willingness to treat his word as gospel and have them work to correct their behaviour somewhat, given the choice he went with the latter.

"He fought against the Nazi's apparently." Kuro stated as she looked at the Shield. "Though I have to wonder about his world if they had something like this available." Kuro stated as she looked down at the shield. "It's made out of the same stuff as the Meteor weapons, with a touch of steel mixed in."

"That might explain it." Maple stated looking over the weapon in question.

"What you mean?" Kuro asked in reply.

"It's defensive power is crazy high. I've observed that weapons that would unlock the same equip bonus as another instead gets a boost in defence. If this thing is a Meteor Shield then that means it should unlock Meteor Barrier. On top of that it also looks like my Frisbee shield so I should get Throw too." Maple stated and Kuro nodded her head.

"That thing's seen a lot of abuse too and the paint's barely scratched on it." Kuro stated following up.

"That might explain it's skill: Impact Nullification." Maple stated prompting Kuro raised a interested brow. "Impact nullification?"

"It's not as handy as it sounds. We tried to test it once and the sonic boom ruptured all of our ear drums." Maple stated poking at her ears as she was stabbing her ear canals with her fingers.

"So it's absurdly high defensive power is nullified by the fact that it hurts you?" Kuro asked looking at Maple seriously.

"It would probably be better if she's wearing ear protection." Rishia pointed out. "And it's probably better than getting hit by a slightly-less than absurd attack." The two heroes nodded their heads in admittance.

"What's this one? Looks kind of scary." That would be the form of a large kite shield that looked like it had been recycled from some oversized foggy red framed mirror with a symbol on it resembling a white circle with what could be a face or a wrench with two nuts in between.

"What does it do?" Kuro asked as Maple read through the description.

"It can absorb magic attacks, and when it absorbs three of the same kind in a row it can spit them back out." Maple stated prompting Kuro to cock a suspicious brow.

"That sounds extremely useful." Kuro stated sounding suspicious.

"You say that but we did some tests already. If some other element than the one you started out with is thrown at it then the thing will explosively eject the magic, with me caught in the blast range." Less useful then. "What do you know about it?"

Link stared ahead at the three people who could be, if not his elder siblings than his distant relatives, while awkwardly holding onto the magic shield that had strapped itself to him.

"This joke has gotten old already!" Kuro snapped not pleased to see this scene of deja vu, it wasn't even the same group as before: Does everyone from Hylia wear green?

"What is it what did you see?" Maple asked looking at Kuro concern.

"Proof that Hylia has a truly atrocious fashion scene." Kuro stated in a tone of voice that implied the conversation had ended.

"Anything else you got from this castle? That's everything my level is high enough right now for." As Maple said that Kuro produced a mechanical contraption that was made out of octagon plates, she wasn't even sure she could copy something this complex.

"You can't just keep yourself locked up in here day and night Hajime!" Mamoro snapped glaring at the other Legendary Hero.

"I occasionally go out and collect supplies for my work as well." The one eyed man replied a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"The waves..."

"Are a symptom not the disease." Hajime replied staring down the other Hero even though he was seated. "I warned you not to harm the directional beasts and you didn't listen, now we have no other choice in how we move forward."

"There's still Ouryou..."

"Ouryou hasn't even been born yet." Hajime snapped back his patience running thin. "And may not yet, considering that someone keeps killing off dragon emperors." Hajime stated making it clear just who he thought was the one responsible for that. "The world's are going to be merged together, not maybe, are. And we've got you to thank for that."

"Innocent people are dying..."

"Two thirds of the world is going to have to die to save the last third: Innocence is dead." Hajime handed Mamoru the same contraption that Kuro had been holding onto back in the present. "Here. I'd hate to think you came all the way over here for nothing."

Kuro popped back into the present wide eyed.

"Well that might be relevant." Kuro stated as she tried to process the present information. Kuro highlighted the details about the conversation she saw between the two heroes of the past, one who fought against the waves while the other one looked for the one behind them and the arguments that stemmed from that. Directional Beasts, Ouryou, Dragon Emperors and sacrifice, two thirds of the world to be precise. These were the keys to the waves, now if only they knew what any of it means.

"Pardon us Heroes." After knocking a maid with bird like features peered in and looked around suspiciously, the look on her face suggested she genuinely expected the room to have been totalled by now, before bowing to them. "The public is ready for the power boosting ceremony now."

Maple was soon sat down in the courtyard of the palace dressed in a ceremonial garb. For the rest of the day flying type and aquatic type Demi-humans lined up in front of Maple and got the 'Legendary weapon power up' ceremony, after that were the ones who were part of the navy and air force anyway through the use of Kigurumi's. The number was simply staggering, and contrary to the whining of the Three Heroes Church there was no presence of Demi-human children waiting to receive the blessings of XP falling from the sky, only hard men and women ready to kill. Course that wasn't Maple's only enhancement method but the other one didn't need to be quite so intimate.

"Relationship Meter is a real beast." Maple stated as she looked down at the results of adding the army to her party, with exception of attack all of her stats had crossed four digits. "Well, I'm not sure how I should feel about this." Maple had no idea who any of these people were or what they're like, the fact that most of these meters were over halfway filled spoke to the fanatical trust these people had for her.

"You're a naturally trusting person Maple." Kuro stated as she smirked knowingly before stretching out languidly. "The fact that they have received your blessing probably boosts the effect." Which made sense in any case. "While we're here though." Kuro snapped her fingers and conjured a familiar object, a map of the world with seven points highlighted on it, and one of them was nearby.

"You wanna scout the dungeon?" Maple asked and Kuro nodded in the affirmative.

"If possible I'd like to find whatever goodies are hidden inside, but failing that I would at least like an idea of what we're dealing with." Kuro stated and Maple nodded her head.

At the two girl's preference they brought the map to Oroko who led them to the location described on it, a somewhat familiar forest. Kuro distinctly recalled drowning this place, which made it all the more confusing that it was back in one piece again.

"I'm aware of what you're thinking Sir Hero, and I am just as confused about it as you are." The man made no attempt to hide his blatant confusion. "But we don't go in there, people don't come back out."

"And you brought me here last time anyway?" Kuro asked looking at the turtle with blatant disbelief.

"With the intention of having you snip away at the ones on the border, not drown half the forest." The turtle stated as he made no move to stop them. "Given that experience I am reasonably certain that you shouldn't have much trouble." Kuro turned to Maple and gestured to the dragon costume she was wearing.

"Oh right."

It never gets old, seeing people's first reaction to Maple turning into a giant monster with the likeness of a heavily mutated dragon wearing heavy plate-mail armour. In this state Maple, the hero who was suppose to have the lowest attack power, could kill monsters just trampling over them. Which was basically useless because there was two heroes here and they were both so far off the ground they couldn't tell what was going on.

"Where are all these monsters coming from any way?" Maple asked looking at one of her foot prints, which had been filled to the brim with the puree of random monsters.

"What does the weapons say?"

Maple sucked the contents of her own footprint into the shield and was a little bit surprised by one of the drops that was produced in the process.

"A magic crystal?" Maple pulled the drop out of her shield and looked at it confused. "Monsters haven't dropped this before, why now?"

"Something to do with why monsters seem to appear with no end maybe?" Kuro asked and Maple shrugged her shoulders.

Eventually they started to look around, surprisingly the monster that seemed to be fewest in number around here was the slimes, which was confusing given what Maple knows about them they usually reproduce like crazy. So they followed one around until it basically tripped over a magic symbol in the forest and under the influence of it's light suddenly transformed into a white tiger monster.

"...Maple, what shield did that monster puree unlock?" Kuro asked stunned for a moment by the implications.

'Conditions Met. Transforming Slime Shield Unlocked. Equip Bonus: Third Shield 4 Hours.' "The Transforming Slime shield." Not satisfied with that answer Maple took it a step further. 'Transforming Slime: A slime monster that has been altered by one of the Seven Divine magics, Metamorphosis, to acquire a Demi-Human's ability to assume a monster form.'

"This is definitely one of the dungeons." Maple stated as she explained the contents of the monster book entry, and also the equip bonus that prompted Kuro to go down and upgrade her Thousand Swords skill into Ten Thousand Swords, which while great for their current purposes doesn't really do a lot for them for figuring out a way of getting to whatever goodies this dungeon was meant to offer up. The pair of them reported back to Oroko on what they found, he proposed combing the dungeon forest for spawn points for stronger monsters, as those areas are logically meant to guard the most valuable of the magics that could be offered up by the area, which given the combat power of demi-humans meant that they were looking for the territory held by white tigers.

"This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to come with you guys." Rishia stated leaning over the hole in the ground they found.

"What do you think we'll find down there?" Maple asked as she scratched the side of her head.

"Hey Maple do you hear that?" Kuro asked, enhanced hearing being the first to catch onto the mystery rumbling coming from below.

Atla's mind made several calculations at once before she grabbed Kuro and Rishia, Maple was wondering why when like some kind of demonic gooey geyser of slime popped out of the ground and smacked her in the face, carrying her off as the singularly largest slime they've ever seen lifted her into the air. Maple was about to eat the thing with her shield before it suddenly spat her out and sent her flying through the air.

"Well." Kuro cringed as Maple face planted on the ground from ten feet in the air. "That's new."

Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: Oh I guarantee there are things worst than Medea out there.

Captain Imaginat: Yet another theme of characters who received life lasting scars and trauma and it never comes up again. Also I have to point out that there was nothing domestic about Rishia's abuse. She was kidnapped from her family, mounted to a flat surface, drugged to the teeth to keep her compliant, and used as a sex toy and a sand bag by a deranged psychopath.

Nightshadegirl: To be fair I just skipped over the parts that didn't have sex in it, and it was still not satisfying. Seriously there was nothing satisfying about that series to watch.

Kisame Hoshigaki: Funny isn't the first thing that comes up from the idea of traumatised ex-sex slave.