No beautiful field this time. In fact, there were no signs of life at all. He stood amongst bricks and cement, toppled to the floor, the constructions they might once have been part of blown to smithereens. A cold breeze blew and made him clutch his raggedy tunic about him, but apart from the sound of the wind everything was silent. No birdsong, no car noises, no crickets chirping. No life at all.
He was alone in the world. But he had been prepared for this.
"It's a fake," he shouted out towards the orange sun, low on the horizon. "You're not real. You're just a hallucination, created because I'm afraid of being lonely. Very convincing, yes, but not real."
"Denial will do you no good."
Wario spun on his heel, but it was an unnecessary movement. He knew the cultured gentle voice. It was something else he had considered as a contender for his greatest fear, but it had been edged out in the home stretch by loneliness. Of course, the two combined were more frightening than either on its own.
"I thought I was the only one left," said Ganondorf, smiling. "How did you survive the holocaust, Wario?"
He was a foot or two taller than Wario remembered him being. That had to be part of the hallucination, designed to terrify. Wario coughed and prepared to shout. It was harder to deny Ganondorf's existence to his face than that of an apocalyptic landscape.
"You're a fake!" he squeaked.
Ganondorf laughed. "Oh am I? And I suppose the magic-based destruction of the entire planet of Nintendo is a fake as well, is it?"
"Yes!" said Wario, still not able to get his voice lower than an octave above middle C. "It's all just a trick you – well, not you, the real non-hallucinified version of you – are playing on my brain."
"Oh really?" said fake Ganondorf with a smirk. "Well, I must say, I am loving being this hallucination. I'll tell you, the destruction of Princess Zelda was especially satisfying. Big beam of purple energy right through the stomach. The look on her face!" He laughed unpleasantly.
There's got to be something wrong here, thought Wario. This is an illusion. I just have to find the error.
"But you wouldn't have nuked the entire world!" he said, his voice approaching a more reasonable pitch. "You're Ganondorf. You spent your whole life living in the desert, wishing you could live in central Hyrule where it was green and the wind was fresh. You wouldn't destroy all that."
Ganondorf frowned. "It's true, I do miss the verdure of pre-apocalypse Nintendo," he admitted. "But it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. And I still have the breeze!"
A cold gust blew through to highlight his point.
"Oh for the Hands' sake!" yelled Wario. "This is a hallucination. I need to get through here and find the key. There's a door somewhere. I know there is. I just need to find it!"
"Time's a-wastin', Wario," said Ganondorf. "True, I don't need to hurry for anything any more, but I'm slightly eager to devise a humorous way of dealing with you, and all this 'hallucination' rot is getting on my nerves."
"Wait wait WAIT!"
He had it. He thought.
"This is stupid," said Wario. "You're not even my greatest fear."
Ganondorf raised a red eyebrow. "Wario, I'm capable of annihilating you from where I stand by lifting my pinkie, so I'm quite curious to know what you could fear more than me."
"I got it," said Wario, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and wearing what was not yet a smile but might turn into one if things went well. "My biggest fear – and it's already happened several times before – is being looked down on, trampled on, treated like shit."
"I can easily do that," said Ganondorf.
"Not you! The people I care about. The people who actually matter to me."
Ganondorf opened his mouth and let the lower jaw hang. The pre-smile matured into a fully-grown satisfied grin.
"Your system is crap, Big G!" Wario said. "If I think something's my greatest fear, it assumes it is. It doesn't even check! And fuck you to you and the whole of this acopalypse! Haha!"
"Big G" continued to stare at Wario briefly, before the entirety of his body disappeared in a whirl of colour and sound. In an instant, he was replaced by Princess Peach, her angelic face a picture of disgust. She looked down at Wario as if he was an expendable insect. Zelda stepped out from behind her, her face equally contemptuous and her mouth open to deal some serious damage to Wario's ego.
"Too late!" said Wario, opening the door.
o o o
When Wario stepped through the door into the little room beyond, he was absolutely positive that his greatest fear was being treated like excrement by the people he cared about. Fifteen minutes of worried pacing later, his stomach starting to forget its gas-withholding training as he became more nervous, and Wario was 100% sure that his greatest fear was that something had happened to Zelda.
He was not quite sure how realistic Ganondorf's mind games were. The ring was still there, solid and sparkly in his trouser pocket, but could they hurt you? Could they kill you? More to the point, could they kill Zelda? The next door had nothing on it, and Zelda had said that the SubSpace Key would be just beyond, but could he go on without Zelda? No. No he could not.
But what could he do? Zelda was trapped in a world of her own fears and mental anguishes. He could not just go in there and drag her out. No, there was no way he could use some blatant flaw in the system to go into her fear room and save her from whatever was in there.
None whatsoever.
o o o
Back through the apocalyptic world he ran; only now it was no longer an apocalyptic world but a multiplex cinema, with screens as far as the eye could see showing off 101 imaginative ways in which Zelda could have died. He did not hesitate, however. He was a man on a mission, and not even the bloody skeleton that he nearly tripped over could deter him. The door was in plain view, and Wario rushed through it and back into the small room beyond.
His plan was this: the thing he now wanted most of all was to find Zelda, so if he went back into his desire room he should end up in Zelda's fear room, ready to stop whatever was preventing her from proceeding. There was a fair chance it would not work. He might end up in a fake version of Zelda's fear room, or in Hyrule Field with a fake Zelda. Then again, he thought to himself as he opened the door into room "Heart's Desire", he might not.
"Please Goddesses no!"
Wario stopped in his tracks. He was astonished. There were numerous reasons for this. The first was that it was unmistakably Zelda's voice, and she was blaspheming. Zelda never blasphemed.
The second was the sight of Link, Hero of Time, out and about. From the long blonde hair to the green tunic and hat to the tight tights, he was unmistakable. Had his eyes been bright blue and sparkling, this might have been a reasonable explanation, but they were no more blue than usual.
The third was Ganondorf, Prince of Darkness, his body covered in a swirling black cape. Seeing his hideous green face and receding red hair twice in one day was enough to do bad things to any man's constitution.
And the fourth was Zelda, dressed up in Sheik costume – only not quite, because someone had torn the blue outfit asunder down the middle and exposed a few of the things Wario had hoped to see, but not like this. The culprit was unlikely to have been Link, not because he was showing any kindness towards the woman he usually tried to protect but because he was holding her from behind, restraining her arms. It was more likely to be Ganondorf, who was leaning over her with sword in hand.
It took Wario a while to figure out the situation. Fortunately it seemed to take Ganondorf and Link the same amount of time.
"Wario?" said Ganondorf, his face contorted in confusion. "What are you doing here?"
He received his answer in fist form. In his training, Wario had learnt a few lessons about a chivalry – namely, that one did not go around shredding women's clothing, and one hit those people who did in the face. Had he thought for a moment about the sword Ganondorf held he might have stayed his punch, but he acted out of anger and without foresight. Luckily the punch knocked the green man out stone cold. Wario tried not to look at the crotch area, but he could not help catching a glimpse of the green man's phallus, so covered with ink it might have been a graffiti-ed column outside a Hylian temple. At last, Wario was able to put a name to the large green hallucination that had shocked Zelda so in Eagleland.
Turning his eyes quickly away from the repulsive man and his repulsive object, Wario saw Link stepping over Zelda's body grim-faced and drawing his sword from behind his back. Now anger gave way to rational thought and fear: the sword was massive and Link was pointing it directly at Wario's mouth, and that was not even an innuendo.
"Now, Zelda!" shouted Wario.
Link glanced over his shoulder to see Zelda lying in a pathetic heap on the floor, not trying to do anything except discern some glimmer of sympathy in his eyes and cover herself ineffectually with her hands. Then he saw stars, and as he toppled to the floor he saw black.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO HIM?"
I for one forgive Wario for being confused. He had just saved Zelda from being raped by the hallucinatory Prince of Darkness and aide, and now Zelda was staring at him with still red eyes that resembled nothing so much as cold unbridled fury. Furthermore, the yell that had erupted from her still open mouth was deafening in volume, and seemed to have come from someone with a much larger lung capacity.
"He's not really Link!" Wario said, backing away slightly. "He's just an illusion!"
Zelda stared at him incomprehensibly for a moment, before recollection hit her and she looked at the floor, nodding mutely. Then she caught sight of her own body, squeaked and, in a flash of light, was back in a dirty but intact dress. Her eyes were still red, but that was just from crying.
"Some fear, huh," said Wario, looking at the downed Hylians.
"How did you find me?" asked Zelda softly, not looking up.
"Ah, just abused a glitch in the system. I'm a leet hackzor."
There was a moment of silence. Then Zelda looked up and smiled weakly.
"Thank you, Wario," she said. "Sorry I shouted at you like that. I just…"
"Fugedaboudit. We just gotta get out of here before they wake up. Let's go."
He extended his arm and pulled Zelda's outstretched hand upwards. The princess looked unsteady on her legs, but managed to stay standing.
"You know," she said, "for some reason I don't want to leave. Can't we stay here for a bit?"
Wario shook his head. "That's because you're in my desire room. You're meant to keep me trapped here. Come on, let's go."
"Your desire room?" said Zelda, brow furrowed. "But this is my fear room. I'm puzzled."
"Okay," said Wario, sighing. "I'll explain it in simple terms."
Zelda cocked a pointed ear.
"LET'S GO."
o o o
It was a short jaunt back through his own fear room. The screens and skeletons had gone, replaced once more by a scorn-pouring Peach and Zelda, now with Midna joining in on the insults; but Wario was not fooled. Having seen Zelda nearly in tears but a minute ago, this Zelda that looked down her sharp nose at him seemed unreal, as indeed she was. He went back through the door.
When he returned to the small room beyond, there was a heap of rags in the corner, shaking gently. Closer inspection revealed that it was Zelda. For the first time, Wario noticed how dirty she was, how much thinner the journeying and running and fighting had made her. He stood aghast, looking at the girl as her crumpled form heaved with every barely repressed sob.
"Teacher?" he said slowly. "I don't think we covered how to comfort a crying woman in conversational training one-oh-one."
For a moment, the sobs stopped. Zelda turned her face towards Wario, the grime punctuated by tear trails. She even managed another faltering smile.
"If you know her well, you put an arm around her and a hand on her knee," she whispered. "Then you ask if anything's wrong, even though it's obvious it is, and whether she wants to talk about it. Usually she'll say 'no'."
The sobs came back, and she hid her face in her hands. Wario sat down on the hard earth and stretched a tentative arm around the princess' back, placing his free hand lightly on her knee.
"Is anything wrong?" he asked. "And, er, d'you wanna talk about it?"
Zelda coughed dryly and swallowed a sob, in an attempt to regain some composure.
"Please," she said.
Wario had a distinct feeling that this situation was not going as per his instructions.
"Hang about…" he began.
"Yes, I know, it's a variation from procedure. Will you please listen to me?
"So, as you know, Ganondorf took over Hyrule a bit more than a year ago. I just showed up at breakfast one morning and there he was, sitting in my chair, feet on the table and helping himself to some roast Cucco, while dead men lay all around. I drew my sword, of course, and prepared to fight, but Ganondorf snapped his fingers and two of his cronies brought in Link, bound by three rings of purple magic, and pushed him to the floor.
"I'm sure you know Link, Wario. When… Sorry, forgive my tears. When he's not one of Ganondorf's hallucinations, he's very kind and considerate, but very brave too. He's a little naïve at times, almost childlike: he's a gentle giant. But he believes in the Goddesses as firmly as I do, and… um… should one by influenced by the shallow appeal of the physical form, then… Well you've just seen him, you tell me. He's not perfect, mind you – he was brought up on a farm, and brings all the roughness of his humble beginnings to the royal court. And he doesn't speak much. He's the strong silent type…
"…I love him, Wario. I love him fully and unconditionally. I confess that, may the Goddesses forgive me, I love him enough to have… to have sinned with him, although we are not married. Does that shock you? …You remain speechless. Yes, I know it is a great crime, but that is how much I love the man. Now I suppose you understand why I shouted at you back in the fear room. So when Ganondorf demanded that I surrender or he would die I dropped my sword as if it were burning with the flames of Din herself!
"Thus began my life in captivity. The first week followed a pattern to an extent. I was woken up at eight by a guard projecting my simple breakfast under a hatch in my door; I would call through the hatch asking how Link was, but never received a reply. Ganondorf had thoughtfully placed one of your tell-e-vision things in my room, powered by a small solar device, and removed the power switch. It was turned on and off by a spell, so every morning I would have to watch or listen to either the panicked news reports of takeovers of other countries or the smug tones of the new LOVE-run broadcasting channels. That, and the few books left in my room, were my entertainment. I was served lunch and dinner in the same way, posing the same question and getting the same response, and after ten the magic torches would extinguish and the Tee Vee would switch off, allowing me to lie awake worrying until morning.
"It was a hard life, but I could bear it. I'd been captured by Ganondorf many times in the past. The time before, he used to take me out, attach me to what he called a "magic amplifier" and drain the magic out of my body. It was excruciatingly painful, and he did it every day. So compared to that, this was almost relaxing. At least at first...
"Then on the eighth day, when my breakfast was due to arrive… I'm fine, just give me a minute… No, honestly, I'm okay. Anyway, I received a knock at the door, and who should be there but Ganondorf. I'm fine, just… something in my eye. So he came in, all smiles and charm, and put my breakfast down on the table. And he just stood there while I ate it, smiling.
"'I hear you've been asking about Link,' he said after I finished. 'Would you…' That's my pause, not his, he didn't pause. He said… Forgive me, it's hard for me to… He said, 'Would you like to see him?'
"More than anything in the world, but there was something in his manner that made me suspicious; so I asked him what he'd done to Link.
"'Nothing!' he replied, all smiles. 'Link's fine. A bit upset from being in captivity, but fine.'
"So I let him take me down to the d-d-dungeons. And there's my beloved Link, stuck in a grimy cell, staring at the wall. I tried to run over to him, but Ganondorf… H-he… He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and p-p-pushed me to the floor in front of Link's cell. Then he makes me face Link, who's looking at me, and he s-s-s-says-s-s-s…
"…'H-here's your princess, L-link!' And h-h-he… H-h-h-he… Right there, on the stone, with Link looking!... Oh Wario, you have no idea of the shame… In front of Link… Rather the amplifier every day, every hour, than this... Oh dear…
"All he could do was watch and listen. Eventually he turned away, and stuffed his fingers in his ears, but I knew he could still hear everything – my screams, and the disgusting grunting noises. I tried to keep quiet, but it just hurt too much. It must have torn him apart inside, as it did me.
"…I didn't see Link again for a long time after that. But I saw that... that monster far too often; sometimes twice a day, he'd come up to my room, and… Oh, Wario, you have no idea, some of the things he made me do… It hurt so much, both spiritually and physically. Sometimes he made me bleed… No, not that sort of blood! I'm twenty-seven, Wario, I think I know what… that process looks like, and it wasn't that!... That's sweet of you to say, but the moon affects me just like any other woman. Except when it didn't…
"It was horrible. I mean, more horrible than usual. They just stopped happening, and I knew that I was carrying inside me a small Ganondorf. Even now it makes me shudder. The only saving grace was that Ganondorf seemed equally horrified. He blasted me with some dark lightning, and it just slipped out, half formed and hideous. After that, he got me to cast Nayru's Love on him beforehand, or he… just used other orifices.
"It was an ordeal, but as long as I thought my dear Link was safe I could bear it. Until one day… One terrible day… Oh goodness me… One day the door opened in the morning, and who should be there but Link himself? But when I ran to him, he… he dodged out of the way! I was lying on the floor, looking up at him, and he b-b-bent d-d-down and s-s-s-said… He said he didn't love me! He said he c-c-couldn't after seeing Ganondorf do that to me! He c-c-called m-me a… a… h-h-he c-c-called me a p-p-p-p…"
She dissolved into heaving sobs and salty tears before the final word could burst from her. Wario stroked her hair and felt his shoulder getting damp.
"Were this new Link's eyes blue and sparkling?" he asked.
"H-h-he h-h-has blue eyes, y-yes," Zelda replied, "and he d-d-didn't look that unhappy."
"No, I mean, were they really light blue and shiny? You know, like you said that clone of Marth had? And the Ness clone after that?"
"I g-guess his eyes were quite bright." You could almost see the realisation hitting her like a club to the back of the head. "Oh…"
"C'mon Zelda," said Wario, rising and holding out a hand. "If Link's as good a guy as you say he is, he's not going to chuck you out in the cold just 'cause Ganondorf raped you."
Zelda took it and wiped her face. "I managed to get all the way through that without using the 'r' word. Then you go and spoil it."
o o o
"Congratulations. You made it past all the horrors of your minds. Now you will die here."
Didn't mince his words, did he? Wario thought, looking at the recognisable back. If the muscular physique and blonde rock star hair had not given him away, the green clothes and hat, plus the fact that he managed to look straight in tights, said "Hero of Time" all over. The fact that the man's large blade and shield were not slung over his back only meant they were held in his leather gloves.
He turned slowly to face them, his blue eyes sparkling in the half-light from the flaming torches. His nose and ears were as pointed as Zelda's, and his small smug grin no less so.
"Ah, Zelda," he cooed softly. "How nice to see you again. It's been so long since..."
A multicoloured comet blazed past Wario and clashed against Link's sword. There was an ear-splitting din of metal on metal, and the form of an enraged Zelda was visible, yelling in old Hylian and slashing at Link repeatedly with a flaming red blade.
"You wretched, worthless piece of dung!" she screeched. "For half a year you had me believing that my beloved had forsaken me! For half a year I cried myself to sleep each night because of your tricks and deceit!"
"Are you so sure I deceived you?" Link said from beneath the storm of metal.
Zelda howled and redoubled her assault. Wario took a minute to wonder where the sword had come from. Then he rushed towards Link, reasoning that the offence against chivalry he was committing by attacking Link two-on-one was mitigated by the fact that Link had attacked a lady, an unforgivable crime. (He swept under the rug the fact that actually the lady had attacked him.)
A hard object thudded into the side of his head. With a stunned cry, he rolled over onto the floor.
Looking up, he focused with horror on the three men who stared at him with shining cyan eyes. The one in red was juggling an unlit bomb in one hand, flourishing his sword in the other; the one in navy was peering at him down the sights of a bow; and the one in lilac caught the boomerang that had toppled him deftly in one hand. Other than that, they all looked identical to each other and Zelda's combatant.
"How much cloning work has Ganondorf been up to?" thought Wario.
The red Link lit his bomb.
What followed was not so much a fight as an extended and rather farcical chase scene around the cave. Dodging around the clashing steel that marked Zelda's fight with Green Link, Wario put his newfound speed and stamina to the test dodging the three other colours. He discovered quickly that his improvements had not been sufficient to enable him to run faster than an arrow; he was therefore intensely grateful that the shafts came slowly and irregularly, giving him time to dodge-tumble out of the way of the boomerang which whistled through the gaps in the arrows. All the while he was forced to hop, skip and jump over bombs that would keep getting right under his feet and toasting his bottom with explosions. And should the slow-moving Links ever come close to cornering him, he would glimpse the cold steel of their blades reflecting the torchlight.
Five days of exercise had not sufficed to give him stamina enough to conduct an extended game of tag, all the while having to dodge projectile after projectile and with those swords ever looming. He felt his boots become leaden and his back starting to ooze sweat. The fat seemed to hang heavy off his arms and legs. Panting, he drew to a stop.
He stood for a moment and watched Link and Zelda exchange blows in the background, while closer by the blue eyes of the coloured Links hardened in triumph. They walked slowly towards him, savouring the moment. Cocky shits. The world seemed to swim in front of his eyes, and his stomach was churning.
All of a sudden, he recalled how he had not farted in four days.
It was one of the first things the brutality of The Chain had taught him: every time his bowels voided gas in a loud or smelly manner, he could expect to be lashed across the face. This had resulted in the fat man quickly learning how to hold in his flatulence, although he realised while doing this that eventually, at some point, it would have to come out.
Now, after all this running and a few projectiles to the stomach, he could feel a large amount of gas moving around inside him: angry gas, gas with one objective and one objective only, to escape Wario's colon via the most obvious exit. While all this was going on inside him, he saw the Links draw their swords above him.
No more waiting. It was going to come out, all of it. He could no longer hold it in. If he did, it might come out through his ears or something. It had to go, and it had to go now. Apologising to Zelda in his head, he turned his back on the blades, bent over and put his fingers in his ears.
THRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP.
The noise was overpowering; the smell was overwhelming; the recoil sent Wario skidding halfway across the cavern; but this was nothing compared to the force that the Links. First came the sound, a deafening foghorn blast; then it hit, a blow with many times the force of Wario's fist and infinitely worse smelling that thundered into their chests like a battering ram, lifting them off their feet and sent them flying into the rock wall, upon which there were three sickening cracks, a small avalanche and then a cloud of purple mist slowly rising.
Wario surveyed the aftermath with grim satisfaction. The sight was pleasing, even if the smell was not. He sniffed the air; in the enclosed space, the gases would take a while to diffuse. Then he instinctively covered his face with his hands. When the hard metal did not come, he dared to peek out.
The prim, proper, flatulence-allergic Zelda had not even noticed. She was still engaged in duelling with the green Link clone. Gone was the aggression of her initial assault, though: now she seemed to almost dance about him. Granted, his sword swipes still pinged off a navy Nayru's Love shield, or missed altogether after a Farore's Wind whisked her away, but the princess seemed to be reluctant to capitalise on the opportunities she created. In fact, craning in a pointed ear Wario could hear snippets of conversation passing between the fighters.
"…lying to me," he heard Zelda say. "You've tricked me before. Why should I trust you now?"
"Zelda, Link's a child inside," came the response, along with a swipe. "He's nothing more than a small naïve boy at heart."
"What?"
"He just had to grow up too fast in order to save the world. Do you honestly think he'll be able to just forget that he saw you screwed into submission before his eyes?"
"Stop tormenting me!" Zelda set her blade alight before making the slash, but her heart was not in it and the strike was easily parried.
"Face it, Zelda," said Link softly, "Link can't forgive you. It's not that he doesn't want to – it's that he can't. Even though he knows it's not your fault, that image of you with Ganondorf's penis inside you will eat away at him. That's something you can't change."
His sparkling blue eyes locked with those of the princess, welling with tears, beyond the two swords. Then Zelda's blade fell from the deadlock and dangled limply by her side.
"I know I'm not Link," said his clone, "but I may be the closest thing to him that will hug you again. Do you still want to kill me?"
Zelda did not answer, choosing instead to shut her eyes to try and keep in the drops. She stayed like this as Link put his strong arms around her, still grasping his sword. Wario stood on, his mouth dropped open in amazement. How could she be so blind as to fall for this?
"He's a LOVE clone, Zelda!" he shouted. "He only wants to kill you!"
No response from Zelda. Link barely gave him a shimmering glance from over the princess' shuddering shoulder.
"I'm all that's left for you now," he said. "Embrace me."
Her slim arms slowly wound themselves around his body and grasped it tightly.
"He's still holding the sword!" yelled Wario.
One of Link's arms detached itself from Zelda. It was the arm holding the sword.
"Zelda, listen to me! What would Link say if he could see you like this?"
There was a sudden burst of flame. Link staggered back, trying to pat out his tunic. When the crimson blaze subsided, Zelda was standing there, her face contorted in anger and flames dancing in her eyes.
"You wretch!" she cried. "Trying to make me betray my beloved Link. You will never be anywhere near the man he is!"
That worked, thought Wario.
"Now, Zelda…" the burning clone protested.
"DON'T YOU 'NOW ZELDA' ME!"
There was a hand gesture, a yell of "DIN'S FYRE!" and then a jet of flame had engulfed Link's face. When the burning subsided, not only was the victim lacking a face – he had no head at all. Wario had a brief glance of the clone sans tête before the clone vanished in purple mist.
"Remind me not to get on your bad side," said Wario.
Zelda was too busy staring at the spot where Link had been to reply.
As the mist slowly separated, it revealed a small figure. It was a young boy, no older than twelve, with a large round head and even bigger eyes, moist and frightened that stared anxiously at the still fuming princess. Aside from these differences, he looked an awful lot like the older Link. He was dressed in green, with white tights and brown boots; he had a little sword and shield on his back; he even had blonde floppy hair drooping over sparkling blue eyes. Zelda marched over, grabbed the boy by his tunic and shook him roughly.
"Where's the SubSpace Key?" she yelled in his face. "Where is it?"
The boy said nothing. He took the shaking with no ill effects apart from a continual flow of silent tears. Eventually Zelda put him down, her own eyes growing and her mouth open.
"'A child inside'" she murmured. "No..."
"I don't get it," said Wario, scratching his head.
"Ganondorf has hidden the SubSpace Key inside the boy." Zelda turned her face to the sky/cavern roof and yelled: "That's just like him, isn't it? Forcing us to rip apart an innocent child! Curse you, Ganondorf!"
"He's just another clone," pointed out Wario. "He probably doesn't even have feelings..."
"All right – you do it."
The Linkchild's large blue gaze turned on Wario, his lip trembling slightly. Wario felt his hands quiver. After all the lives he had destroyed during his time in the LOVE, surely ripping apart a single child clone, who was after all not cloned from any real human but developed from some experiment with Link's subconscious, would be easy? By try as he might, he could not find the strength to put his fist through those two large blue orbs, desperately hoping for another chance and so large, it seemed to Wario, that they were bulging out of the head they were in…
It was an odd sound, somewhere between a muffled explosion and a sci-fi whoomph, that accompanied the explosion of Chibi-Link. The eyes did indeed pop out first, shortly followed by the rest of the vital organs, which seem to react on contact with the air and become purple gas. All that remained of the clone of Link's consciousness was a single golden key, which pinged violently off the rock wall and then lay still, glowing slightly.
"You're welcome."
Wario and Zelda span around.
"Midna?" asked Wario. "How did you get in here?"
"Same way as you did," said the dwarf with a cocky half-smile. "I already knew what each of the chambers would contain, so…"
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM!"
This shout seemed to take everything out of Zelda, who then slumped onto the floor and looked into the darkness with glassy eyes.
"It was just a clone…" began Wario.
"Oh, don't mind her," said Midna, floating over to the prone form. "Poor woman, driven half mad by love. Can you blame her for going a bit overboard at the destruction of her champion before her eyes?"
Wario did not know. He had never had a champion.
"Come on," said Midna, her hat's orange hand picking Zelda up like a rag doll. "Let's get you out of here."
She extended an amphibious little paw, which Wario took. Then he felt an odd lightness throughout his body, and looking at Zelda and Midna noticed that they were separating into black pixels.
"Phew!" said the dispersing Midna. "What's that stink?"
Wario was very glad that he whooshed upwards the next second.
o o o
"…like Farore's Wind. I can only teleport to places I've already seen."
"Aha."
Zelda woke to the sound of voices. There were a lot of Links still buzzing around in her head – Hallucination Link who had restrained her while Ganondorf cut her blue costume down the middle, Clone Link who had almost stabbed her in the back (again), Clone Link's Inner Self who had exploded into purple and gold, and most of all the real Link, probably holed up in that Dark Prison thing being manipulated to produce clones of him, and possibly unable to forgive her for something she had not done. Clone Link's words continued to ring in her brain, and the more she tried to expel them the louder they reverberated. "Link can't forgive you, Link can't forgive you, Link can't Hey Moustache Face, your teacher's awake!"
Wait. That wasn't her brain.
She opened her eyes to what she thought was Pit, but then realised that Midna's hat covered her left eye. The other, bright and yellow, glinted at her above a small smile.
"Hey sleepy," said the smile. "How you doing?"
Zelda sat up slowly. She was still feeling emotionally drained, but there was no physical pain. Looking around told her that the sun was just rising, and that she was in a ramshackle shack with sand on the floor.
"Not bad," she said, managing to smile back.
"I teleported you to this old house in Kakariko and poured some blue healing potion down your throat," said Midna. "You're all healed up. Oh, and you have some visitors."
Rotating her head slowly, Zelda's eyes passed the smiling Wario and alighted upon a brawny man with blue hair. He had a girl clinging onto his arm with hair of green.
"Princess Zelda," said Ike, bowing slightly. "Good to see you're recovered."
"Nice to see you too, Ike," replied Zelda. "And you, Lyn. When did you get here?"
"Just after you went into the cave. Midna told us where you'd gone before she went in after you. I must confess," said Ike, looking over his shoulder at the dwarf, "I didn't expect our 'M' to look like… like this…"
Midna sniffed haughtily.
"Anyway, Princess, I regret to tell you that Archanea has fallen."
"I'm sorry," said Zelda, bowing her head.
"It was after we had delivered you to the ship. We returned to camp and found but a handful of survivors. They said that a vanguard consisting of Ganondorf's army and a man in green with a big sword…"
Zelda and Wario exchanged nervous glances. Another Link? Just how far advanced was Project Z?
"…smashed through our forces. With us missing, as well as fighters such as Lucas and Diddy, and still weakened from the last attack, we had no chance."
Lyn coughed gently.
"And Roy," added Ike. "It's just like what happened to my best friend Soren. Senselessly slaughtered by the LOVE…"
"Darling, not now," said Lyn. "So we returned to the mainland, the few of us who were left, to assist in any way possible. We may have been too late for this, but if in the future we can help at all…"
"You are very kind," said Zelda. "If ever we should require aid, we shall find a way of calling you, or ask Midna to do the same."
The two bowed and withdrew, looking at Wario with an odd expression as they left. Wario thought he saw a different light in Lyn's eyes. He realised suddenly that they did not recognise his new form, and smiled to himself. No more "enough food stored beneath your skin" jibes now, eh?
"We must be going," said Zelda, sitting up slowly, all her former serenity returned. "Wario, we need to return to Hyrule Field by midday."
Wario nodded, with something of a sad expression on his face. Midna looked at him with a similar expression. As she did so, Zelda noticed for the first time that the orange hand on Midna's hat had something dark and green around its fourth finger.
"Zelda," said Midna slowly, "do you mind if I teleport Wario to Hyrule Field later? I have some stuff to discuss with him."
"I suppose not," said Zelda, a bit confused. "No later than twelve, though. Wario, a word in your ear, please."
Wario, a look of wonder on his face, craned in to listen, while Midna respectfully turned her back.
"What has happened?" Zelda whispered.
"I'm… not quite sure," said Wario. "You going to be okay returning to Hyrule on your own?"
"Oh yes," said Zelda with a little smile. "I've born this burden for long enough already and I feel much better having told it to someone. I'll be fine. Will you?"
"I… I think so…"
"Good." Zelda stood up. "Midna, take care of my pupil. He represents a lot of hard work."
Midna grinned toothily. "Oh I will. Don't you worry, Princess. Wazza'll be fine in my hands." The orange one waved.
Zelda nodded. "And thank you, for helping us earlier. When I return to power, I shall rescind your banishment."
"Please," said Midna. "Why would I want to live in your stupid kingdom? I've got one of my own."
Zelda shook one of the smaller hands, bestowed a smile upon Wario and vanished in a green flash. Wario and Midna were alone in the candlelit room, and Wario was sweating a bit despite himself.
"So," he asked with a gulp, "what was in each of your rooms?"
"That would be telling," said Midna, wagging a finger. "Anyway, I didn't keep you behind to talk about that. I wanted to thank you for your wonderful gift."
She took the ring off and fiddled with it for a while, in paws too small to hold it. Then there was a flash of blinding light, and Wario had to cover his eyes. He could hear Midna's voice slowly becoming more melodious on the other side of his hands.
"I prefer to travel as a dwarf-frog-thing," it said. "Draws less attention to myself. But, well, there are times when I want somebody to see me for who I really am – a royal princess, every bit as regal and beautiful as Zelda."
The light was fading, and Wario could just about open his eyes.
"Only I have a sense of humour."
Midna was gone. The hat remained, lying on the ground, but Midna had definitely vanished. In her place, a woman with grey skin and bright blue tattoos stood. She had red hair that rippled like fire in the wind, bright red eyes that seemed to sear the soul, and a black dress that was really more like a shawl: the bits added on at the front to preserve decency looked like an afterthought. She was also absolutely gorgeous, with an hourglass figure and a sly beauty about her face.
It was only when Wario spotted the emerald ring about her slender grey finger that he recognised her.
"So, Wario," said Midna in a voice that gurgled like molten sugar, "would you have me banished for indecent exposure?"
"No," was the firm reply.
6
1 And it came to pass that the Master Hand did approach the Crazy Hand, and it seemed peculiarly agitated. And this was contrary to the normal state of affairs. 2 And before the Crazy Hand could make any strange noises, the Master Hand did intone: "Lo, it seems that the SubSpace I created is not inert as I at first thought."
3 And it did drag the Crazy Hand unto the area just before the Gate of Souls, where a purple platform was suspended. And there was standing there a villain of the world of SubSpace, and he was powerful beyond belief. 4 And the Crazy Hand did ask, "What in the name of bibble has happened unto him?" 5 And the Master Hand responded thus: "He entered the Gate of Souls clumsily, and did take a massive blast of SubSpace to the face; but he absorbed the power and has become mighty. That was not meant to happen." 6 And so did the Crazy Hand say: "Well, shit."
7 And did the Hands in their predicament call unto a hero to save them, but the hero instead of absorbing the SubSpace power was frozen in time. And he did resemble nought but a figurine. 8 But they did create a space of Space rather than SubSpace over the platform, that the hero might move. 9 And in time and with much difficulty did the hero overcome the villain, and the villain was evicted from the Gate of Souls, and his memory wiped. 10 And then too was the hero evicted, and his memory wiped; and there was much rejoicing.