Something had to be done about the moon. That much, all three of the weird little crew knew. If they didn't manage to stop the moon from falling, they'd all be smashed flat, along with the rest of Termina.
As such, it was soon after their reentry into Clock Town that Tatl, Willen, and Nicky commenced what they called "Operation: Attack the Moon".
Step 1: Observe Clock Tower and search for entry points.
The tower was pretty high and falling from it would mean certain death, so climbing to the top was out of the question. It didn't have any windows from where they could enter, either. There was only one entrance that didn't lead to the clockworks, and it was still unreachable, because it was several meters up from the ground.
"What kind of fool puts an entrance up so high that people can't reach it?" Nicky wondered, looking up at it and putting a hand to his chin contemplatively.
One of the carpenters who was working in the square overheard Nicky's query, and took it upon himself to explain.
"That's Old Door, boy," said the carpenter as he hammered a board into place, completing another part of the odd construction being built. "It only opens at midnight on the night o' the Carnival of Time."
"That doesn't answer why it's set so far away from the ground," complained Nicky.
"Well, people are only supposed to enter on Carnival, which is why we build this Festival Tower for to reach it," the carpenter answered, laying a second board. "Don't seem like it'll happen for this one, though."
Willen looked peeved. "Well, what all is going to come of this, then? We need to get up there when Carnival comes, or else that moon is going to crush us all like flies."
The carpenter guffawed at the Deku's brash statement. "Gwahaha! Ain't no way moon could fall. It just looks closer than usual, like it always does this time o' year."
"Just... closer than usual?" Willen looked up at the scowling, gargantuan moon. "You can see the moon, at giant size, in broad daylight! That's not normal!" he yelled.
Nicky soon found himself being dragged away from the town square by the irate sapient plant, who was muttering curses while Tatl laughed her head off at the portly boy being yanked along by the tiny Deku. "Closer than usual, my wooden butt," Willen growled. "C'mon, Nicky, we're gonna find a way to get up there or die trying."
Literally, was the final word of that sentence, which went unspoken.
Step 2: Figure out a way up that doesn't involve going up the tower.
Idea A: They could climb another building of the town and try to reach the top of the tower from there.
The Problem: In all of Clock Town, the clock tower was the biggest building by far. Not even the walls of the city were nearly as high.
"AAAAAAAAAAA-"
THUD.
Result: Miserable failure. Willen and Nicky had just fallen off the roof of the Stock Pot Inn after a disastrous attempt at parkour in an attempt to reach the top of the tower. Both were now nursing sore behinds and the insult of Tatl laughing at them.
"Did you see the looks on your faces?!" she spluttered, flipping around in midair in a way that reminded the boys disturbingly of the Skull Kid. "You had these big old eyes and wiiiide open mouths! Aahahahaha!"
"Save it, Tatl!" Willen snapped.
Nicky sighed. "Oy vey..."
"You really thought that would work?" Tatl asked, recovering from her burst of laughter.
"Well, can you think of anything, you oversized firefly?" Willen retorted.
Tatl sobered up immediately, and glared at Willen. "Firefly, am I? I oughta hex you into a slug, you little creep!" she threatened, her yellow aura sparking and flaring up.
"I'd like to see you try!"
Nicky sighed and buried his face in his hands. "I can tell this is going to be a recurring theme." he thought gloomily as Tatl and Willen squabbled.
"Anyway," the pink-haired boy said loudly, interrupting the two, "didn't we arrive at Clock Town from inside the clock tower?"
"Yeah, but that was another entrance, and there wasn't any staircase leading upwards," pointed out Willen.
"Bummer." Nicky sighed... then had an idea. "Hey, remember those Deku Flowers from that weird wherever-it-was on the way to Clock Town? Do you think there are any here? We could try using those!"
"Hmm..." Tatl thought about it, bringing up a mental map in her head. "I... think there was one near the tower," was her cautious answer. "But... do you really think a simple Deku Flower will be enough to fly all the way up?"
"It's our only chance." Nicky cast a gaze at the clock tower, and shivered, knowing the Skull Kid was atop it.
Step 3: Attempt to use Deku Flower.
Willen honestly didn't think that the yellow Deku Flower by the clock tower had enough launch power to propel the trio high enough into the air. He stared at the goldenrod plant forlornly. By now, it was close to noon, and while there were still two days to go before the Old Door opened, all three knew that a plan of action needed to be put into place, fast.
A loud noise from somewhere far away distracted Willen from his thoughts. The little Deku looked up in confusion, as he heard the sound of someone shouting.
"You! Get away from my flower!"
Looking up, the trio saw another Deku flying in their direction from the north, carrying several big, heavy-looking bags. Unlike Willen, he was rather big- his body was almost shaped like an egg, which made Nicky chuckle slightly..
The big Deku alighted on the golden Flower, drilling himself inside of it for a moment, before coming back to the surface without the bags he'd been carrying.
"And just what are you ruffians doing with my flower?!" the Deku demanded in a deep, gruff voice.
"We didn't know it was your flower," Willen pointed out. "Is there even something like that? Can you own a Deku Flower?"
"I daresay I can, seeing as I have the title deed," sniffed the Deku. He burrowed back inside, and resurfaced holding a certificate that marked him as the property owner.
Willen blinked. "...I stand corrected."
"Well, isn't there anything we can do for you? We kinda need to use that flower..." Nicky said.
"Absolutely not! This is my property, and I ought to call the guards on you for disturbing the peace and attempting to steal my flower!" The Deku took a deep breath, puffing out his wooden chest, and began to holler. "Guards! Guaaards!"
Needless to say, the trio beat a hasty retreat away from the Deku Flower, running/flying as fast as their legs/wings could carry them before any annoyed guards showed up.
"Well, that was a disaster," muttered Nicky, kicking the floor of the Stock Pot's Blade Chamber. After the fiasco with the Deku Scrub, he, Tatl, and Willen had made their way back to the Inn, where they were now reposing and eating lunch.
"We can't climb the tower, we can't reach the top of it from outside, the Deku Flower near the tower is basically off-limits to us... What are we going to do?" Willen lamented.
"I dunno, ask the Four Giants to help us?" groused Tatl, who was nibbling on a finger-size sandwich and looking thoroughly annoyed.
Nicky paused in his demolishment of an apple to look at Tatl with a raised eyebrow. "Four Giants?" he asked warily.
"Yeah. You guys never heard of them?" The yellow faerie's eyebrows raised as well.
Willen shook his head, trying to somehow eat a lettuce leaf with his long snout. "In our defense, we're not from here, so no, never," he mumbled through a mouthful of lettuce.
"Huh. How 'bout that." Tatl polished off her sandwich and cleared her throat. "Ahem. The Four Guardian Giants are this old myth here in Termina. Basically, they're sort of our gods, who promised to protect us from calamity and then disappeared..." She snorted, waving a hand dismissively. "It's all a bunch of hokum, don't put any stock into it."
"Ehh, it's not something we ought to worry about, is it?" Willen muttered. "We still need to find a way up there..." He lapsed into a moody silence, kicking his feet as he sat on the bed and cramming salad leaves into his snout.
The rest of the day went by with relatively little incident, aside from an occurrence in which Tatl got trapped in a jar by an elderly patron of the Stock Pot Inn and had to be rescued by Anju.
That night, neither Willen nor Nicky could sleep, though Tatl had zonked out almost immediately after the jar incident and hadn't awoken. From the window of the Blade Chamber, they could see the moon hovering outside, silent but still hideous.
"Willen? Are you awake?" asked Nicky, lying awake in bed.
"Yeah, I am," the Deku answered in a low voice. "Are you also having trouble sleeping?"
"Uh-huh." Nicky nodded. "I just... I can't sleep. Not with the moon overhead. It's too scary."
"Same thing here," Willen replied. "...staying awake won't help though. We should at least keep trying."
"A-alright." The chubby boy hugged the Deku. "I'm so scared, bro... It's so big... How can we possibly stop something so huge?" He looked out the window, and shuddered. "Why... Why would the Skull Kid do this? How can we stop him? I... I don't know what to do..." Tears came to his green eyes, and he wiped them on his sleeve.
"I wish I knew the answers to those questions..." Willen sighed, burying his face in Nicky's chest. "But we can't just give up and see what happens. And... even if it's hopeless, we might as well try to do something, right?"
Nicky nodded. "...You're right, Willen. Plus, we have to get the ocarina back, at the very least. Remember what Mom told us?"
"Yeah..." Willen half-closed his eyes. Both of them remembered it, at that time.
. . .
"This ocarina... It's an important family heirloom. With the notes of this instrument and your own voices, you can harness power that can move the mountains themselves. As long as you two are together, you can create a duet that can change the world. Never forget that. Now... Here is a song for this ocarina. It is called the Song of Time. Play it, sing it, and the Goddess of Time herself will come to your aid."
. . .
Out of nowhere, Nicky began to hum, a slow, soft, simple melody. It was the same Song of Time: firm without being heavy, somber without being sepulchral.
"The Song of Time... Play it and the Goddess of Time will come to your aid... maybe we can try that, when we recover the ocarina..." Willen mused.
"Yeah... But Mom said we have to do it as a duet..."
"I know... I wonder how I'm going to play that song with a Deku snout," Willen joked. "Anyway, we should try to sleep again. Staying awake all night won't do any good."
"Okay." Nicky nodded, and began to hum again. The soft, almost sweet tune of the Song of Time lulled both human and Deku to sleep, while the angry moon hung in the sky overhead.
- DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY: 48 HOURS LEFT -
It was a cold, cloudy grey morning, and rain was worryingly imminent. After waking, eating a small breakfast, and wondering for a while, the trio could only think of one way to enter the Clock Tower: the golden Deku Flower. The problem would be convincing the Deku who owned the flower to allow them to use it.
"Should we sell him our souls?" Tatl contemplated, sitting on the windowsill of the Blade Chamber and kicking her feet.
"You're joking, right?" Willen stared at Tatl with abject disbelief.
"I dunno." The faerie shrugged. "Seems like he won't take anything worth less than a priceless jewel... for... it..." She was suddenly staring at Nicky's pockets.
In less than a second, Tatl was doing cartwheels through the air, zipping this way and that with excitement. "Nicky! The thing from the observatory! What was it?"
"Moon's Tear?" The chubby boy produced the shining blue stone from his pocket. "Yeah, it's right here..."
"Perfect!" Tatl snatched it up and flew in a bright circle around Nicky's head, the stone weighing her down a bit and making her bob up and down. "We can trade this to that guy so we can use the flower! It's perfect!"
"Do you really think he'll accept it?" Willen asked. "I mean, he didn't look like he would accept anything from us. We even asked if there's anything we could do for him and we actually had to run away before he got the guards on us."
"Did you see those bags he was holding, though?" pointed out Nicky. "They were jingling as he went along with them... They're probably full of money or trinkets. If that's the case, he might appreciate something as valuable as this thing." He took the Tear back from Tatl and held it up for emphasis.
"Well, what are we waiting for?! Let's go!" said Tatl, before flying out of the room at top speed, Willen and Nicky clumsily following behind.
The boy, Deku and faerie arrived at South Clock Tower in a matter of minute, heading to the yellow Deku Flower. The merchant was still there, fat and scowling in his plant, and his luminous eyes narrowed when he caught sight of the trio.
"What do you want now, you thieves?!" the Deku merchant said snappishly upon seeing them, hunching over as if to protect his flower from the ruffians who wanted to "steal" it. "Didn't I tell you to stay away from my flower?!"
"We, uh, just want to borrow it so we can get up to the... y'know, the Old Door tomorrow," said Nicky. "For the Carnival."
"Well, you already know my answer to that request," the merchant retorted. "I really doubt you have anything valuable enough to change my mind!"
"Is that so...?" Willen smirked, or at least he would have if his snout permitted. He fumbled in Nicky's pocket, and pulled out the Moon's Tear. "How about this?"
The merchant froze in place for a second upon seeing the glimmering blue stone in Willen's wooden palm. "Is.. Is that... a Moon's Tear?" If his snout were a human jaw, it would have dropped.
"The genuine article," confirmed Willen. He tossed it from one hand to the other, looking slightly smug
"Well... you proved me wrong..." The Deku merchant started saying, his voice lacking the same aggressive tone from before. "I... Here." He delved into his flower and came back up holding a piece of paper- the title deed to the Deku Flower. "Take this. You can have the whole Deku Flower."
"Alright, here it is!" Willen chirped, offering the Moon's Tear to the merchant and taking the title deed.
Tatl looked triumphant as the Deku merchant traded ownership of his flower for the gem. "Ooh, my wife will love this!" the wooden creature exulted, hugging it close, before popping into his flower, then rocketing out, carrying his money bags with him and flying off south.
"Well, that's one problem out of our way," said Nicky with a relieved grin, waving the merchant off until he was nothing but a dark speck against the southern sky.
"Now we wait," Willen added. He sounded happy for a moment, but one look up to the sky was enough to change that into fear. "...The moon will fall in three days, right? Not… any sooner?"
Tatl looked up at the moon, shuddered, ran through a set of equations in her head, and nodded. "Judging by its vector and speed of descent, we have until six AM on the night of the Carnival," she confirmed, averting her eyes as fast as she could, and when next the little yellow faerie spoke it was in subdued tones. "Let's make the most of it while we can, before we have to confront Skull Kid."
"Well, what do we do until then?" Willen asked, crossing his arms. "This town is almost empty, and for a good reason."
Tatl shrugged. "We could hide out in the sewers… steal food… play some pranks… Dunno. At least, that's what Tael and I used to do with Skull Kid."
Willen and Nicky shared a glance.