The day has come, the moment when Marianne, Lotte, Sucy, Constanze and Jasminka will begin the rescue and escape of Akko from Appleton at once, which could be the great mission, a single great chance to bring back the hope that the heroine of Hyrule will be able to defeat Lord Andrew Hanbridge with the spirit of Ganondorf who is extremely powerful and very dangerous, with the ability to easily defeat anyone at the moment he is, which will have to be done as quietly and without cause as possible.
The girls are already preparing the disguises they're going to wear, so they have everything ready. Back at the house they rented, they've already put the things in the cart where they're going to take almost everything hidden, such as tents and other items to set up when they leave, as well as spending a lot of Rupees on resources, it was all or nothing to get Atsuko out of there.
With everything organised and ready that morning, it was the exact perfect time for them to go to the castle, since the lord of Appleton was visiting the girl in her cell at the moment, the five of them shake hands and look at each other with the hope that maybe the mission will work out.
"Let's go, everything is ready, clothes on, magic well up, now we just have to do as we planned, Jasminka will pretend to be a noblewoman and she's already dressed, so am I, while Sucy will pretend to be another noblewoman until we enter the castle, then it's time to change clothes, I'll go as a normal soldier and Sucy will change to the elite soldier, we'll walk until we reach the tower, where I'll use the metamorphosis to become Andrew, as for the rest of you out here, just watch, Lotte and Constanze will stay with the wagon outside watching the castle and you'll notice at our signal that it's time to leave" Leclerc explains.
"We've memorised it so much we've had to do the same plan over and over again" said Manbavaran.
"So let's go" said the dark-haired girl with the red streaks.
The group of girls, with everything already packed, set off with the cart through the city until they reach the vicinity of the castle, where the three of them go into an alleyway, where they pick up their clothes and put on noblewomen's dresses, which are very specific to the noblewomen who have access to the castle, so they walk towards the place and soon the guards give them easy access to the inside.
"Great, we're in" whispers the pink-haired girl
"Jas, you follow us a certain part of the way, then Sucy and I will take off these robes and go undercover until we get close" whispers the brown-eyed woman, to which Antonenko nods.
The trio of girls go on without arousing any suspicion, walking as if there was nothing much going on, without attracting any attention. When they get very close to their goal, the girls split up, pretending to be talking about something, and the two who split up go to a blind spot in the castle where they take off their dresses and start walking around the castle like two guards, wearing new disguises, already looking like some soldiers they have around the castle.
"Now just follow the path to the entrance of the tower, no one has noticed us so far" Marianne whispers.
"And it's not that the plan really worked, not bad Marianne, but we still have to get to Akko, you were right about the castle having a different feel to the city, it even feels like there's a bit of life here" Sucy whispers.
The pair make their way through the corridors of the castle, Manbavaran pretending to be an elite soldier while Leclerc pretends to be a soldier from the royal guard. They make their way towards the eastern tower, walking very close to it, where they begin to look at the entrance. Just behind a pillar, the dark-haired girl uses her magical metamorphosis and becomes the lord of Appleton.
Following the path to the entrance of the tower, the guards even stop to approach the pair, which already makes the girls tense up, but they remain calm.
"My lord, you've come here again, how ironic, have you forgotten something?" The guard asks.
"Evidently, I forgot something important with the prisoner, open the passage straight away, I'm going with this guard accompanying me, I need to have a word with the prisoner" said the brown-eyed woman already getting into character.
"Excuse me my lord, the passage is all yours, I didn't want to cause anything, so the access is all yours" said the guard who opened the access to the pair.
With that, they headed for the stairwell, where the girl from Wedinburgh was already very familiar with and where she passed with her disguise and practically all the guards were bowing to Andrew's presence, which in fact was a disguise all along, so the pair went up the stairs with tremendous tranquillity, without being
disturbed.
Luckily, none of the guards were exactly the ones Sucy was disguising herself as, so they made their way to the very top of the tower at that door, where there was only one guard. When they got there together, Manbavaran hid in a blind spot, while her friend approached the man.
"Open up for me Talian!" Marianne said.
"Oh my lord, how strange of you to come back here, have you forgotten something?" asks the soldier.
"What do you think? Don't delay with that" he said to Leclerc, already displaying the tyrant's typical rudeness.
"I'm already opening it, my lord" said the elite guard and immediately unlocked the lock, but he felt something hit the back of his head, so he looked back and the signal was given.
The elite soldier feels drowsy and soon falls asleep, which is Sucy's cue to stand guard at the door, so they open the door and Akko's back is turned to the entrance, staring at the wall and the guard's body is taken inside, with the Manbavaran holding the key in her hands, so the door is closed and the relieved brown-eyed girl takes off the metamorphosis spell.
"You've come to disturb me again Andrew, I've already told you that I won't give in to..." said Atsuko, who soon felt a hug from behind, which confused her.
"Akko! You're finally here, you're okay, you're alive! You're yourself! You've grown up! You look beautiful like this!" Marianne said, crying as she hugged her friend, who immediately turned round.
"What's that? That voice... Marianne? Is that you?" Said the confused Kagari, who turned round and realised it was the girl disguised as a soldier.
The two looked at each other with emotion, hope returned to the crimson-eyed girl, tears fell and another tight hug came to both of them, letting out their emotions. It was the signal they needed to leave that castle once and for all. It was something quite unexpected for the girl trapped in the castle, but it finally happened to her.
"How did you get here? How are you alive Mari, how did you get here?" asks the brownish girl.
"I arrived here five days ago, I've been spying on the whole castle, but anyway, we need to get out of here, I'll explain better on the way as these walls may have ears, I'm glad you're well and alive, Andrew really does keep you as a trophy" said the dark-haired girl with reddish locks.
"He even leaves my weapons here, which he thinks I won't have the slightest chance of, but now is my chance to escape from here, where do we go from here? The soldiers here are pretty weak, I've already tried to escape like this, but I didn't make it to the outside, since the guards have a kind of emergency warning and wow, you even immobilised one of them" said the impressed Hyllian from Luna Nova.
"Put on your soldier's clothes, I'll turn you into an elite soldier later and we'll get out of here with Sucy, she's at the door, we'll dress this soldier here in his clothes and even put a wig on him, then we'll leave him lying down and tied to the bed, which can buy us time when Andrew comes" said Marianne.
"He's only going to come round later now, in the middle of the afternoon to deliver my lunch, so we've got about four hours to run away, how are we going to do it?" Akko asks.
Marianne soon uses her metamorphosis magic to become the lord of Appleton himself, which impresses Atsuko, who also looks in the mirror and realises that she is becoming an ordinary soldier, even though she has the same physique and body, as well as the same features. The pair then begin the process, disguising the guard, tying him up with ropes, laying him on the bed with a wig on his head, he would be lying facing the wall, even bitten, which would be the perfect moment.
With the disguise already in place and the things left inside the hero's bag, the pair are already facing each other and with a big smile on their faces, already metamorphised to leave the castle.
"Ready, Akko?" Asks Leclerc.
"I've been waiting for this for six years" said Kagari.
The door was slammed and Sucy was the one who opened it. The dark-haired girl with red locks pretending to be Andrew and the other two girls pretending to be elite guards, who were precisely the two off-duty,
walked down the staircase, the three of them going down together without anyone doing anything.
They even made the men bow, which impressed the brown-haired girl who had never seen such a reaction from soldiers to the presence of a false lord of Appleton, and they reached the exit door of the tower.
The trio walked up to one of the pillars that they saw as a blind spot, and with that the metamorphosis spell worked and the three of them were disguised as Appleton soldiers, hiding their feminine features well, since just changing their faces doesn't use much magic.
"Woah, this is as far as I got in trying to escape, further on I never managed it without alerting the guards and Andrew himself" whispers the crimson-eyed girl.
"There's still a long way to go, we won't rest until we reach the gates of Appleton" whispered the brown-eyed woman.
With that, they followed Marianne along the path she indicated was the plan, just like Manbavaran, the faces were well hidden and Akko always walked close to Leclerc since she didn't know about magic and for it to work well she had to be close, which soon they managed to get to the point of going to Jasminka who was waiting there.
Continuing inside the castle, they walked to the exit door where the guards simply opened the way for the four of them without a moment's hesitation, passing outside until Kagari felt relieved that she had never got that far before. They followed the path all the way to the cart where Antonenko climbed into it and the girls pretending to be soldiers followed along the streets of the city as if it were a royal entourage.
(I can't believe Marianne came to rescue me, I was expecting Diana and Hellene to come, this is really unexpected, but I'm still tense, I don't know if we're really going to make it out completely, Andrew isn't one to be so dumb, unless they really were smarter, Anyway, I feel better now that I'm outside, finally feeling the cold breeze, how many years has it been since I've seen the sun, since I've seen the sky, not even that tower had a window, just air intakes that barely allowed you to see the sun, just little streaks of light when dawn came).
The city acts as if it were nothing, just a royal entourage of a local noblewoman with some escort, until they reach the exit gates of the Appleton city walls, where the guards approach the six girls who were well disguised as guards and even use magic to make themselves more noticeable.
"Okay, where are you going?" The soldier asks.
"We're in a royal entourage bringing the Countess of Hanbridgeland back home on a trip" said Marianne, pretending to be a member of that place's guard.
"Oh, so we'll keep an eye on your cargo and then we'll let you through" said the guard.
They were searched, noticing that there was nothing but food, camping tents and even some weapons for the guards' self-defence, which was the basics. Akko was even in the middle of the guards, who immediately gave the thumbs-up sign and so the passage out of the city gates was cleared.
As they passed through, they all took a few more steps until they were out of sight of the guards and sat down on the wagon to rest and touch their hands, no longer having to use magic to hide their faces. They made their way to a nearby copse of trees where it would be perfect to disguise
"Marvellous! Perfect! You did it, I'm free!" Said Akko, all smiles and hugging everyone who keeps hugging in groups.
"Now all we have to do is pretend to be ordinary girls, for this I've taken several wigs from Edo, just for this route, we can even dress up like ordinary people travelling, no one will notice us, a little make-up and that's it, our disguise is ready for us to go to Luna Nova" said the smiling Marianne.
"I can't believe it... I've finally been released, thank you all, you're real friends, now I'm going to change too, I'm finally going to be free, you don't know what happened all these years, it was a real horror and how did you escape, I want to know everything?" Kagari asks, curious.
"We'll tell you on the way" she said to Leclerc, who was taking off her Appleton soldier clothes.
They all took off their soldier disguises and put on more peasant clothes so that they could go out quietly without being noticed, as well as wigs and make-up, which helps a lot to hide facial features that are quite striking. Since magic is important, they even warn them to use it when a wagon passes by because that way they'll see another eye colour, especially around Sucy and Atsuko, who have more unique and peculiar colours.
With everything ready, they start to leave their soldier disguises in the middle of the woods and head off along the road with their disguises on, so that they won't be identified as the wanted ones, after which they start chatting for most of the journey, for a few hours.
[...]
But there was someone who wasn't happy about it. A few hours later, Andrew simply went to visit the room in the tower at the top of the castle. He walked through the corridors, arrived at the gates and was surprised that the guard had such a reaction.
"You've come round again, my lord, haven't you found what you wanted to look for?" asks the soldier.
"Find what? Just open it" said the suspicious Hanbridge.
The door is opened, and Andrew walks down the castle steps alone, already suspecting that something might be different, that Akko is up to something, but he follows the path, walking to where the door is. When he got there, he tried to open it, but the guard said he simply didn't have the key, which was strange enough, since the guard at the entrance was the only one with the key to that cell.
"What's that? You incompetent, I'll punish you after this, a guard like you must have the key, what do you mean you tell me it's not in your hand?" Said the furious lord as he began to open the door with the key he had.
"Excuse me, sir, but the Talian guard simply hasn't turned up, it's strange, he was the one with the key, he seems to have disappeared" said the soldier.
"I don't want to hear any excuses, either you have the key or you don't, that was irresponsible of you and Talian"
The boy soon enters the cell where Kagari had been staying until then and notices that there is simply a long-haired person lying there. He immediately starts to laugh, realising that it's just a wig disguise, but he soon sees the person moving, which doesn't seem to be such a disguise.
"Oh Akko, do you really think you can run off like that and play the funny girl, what's next? You've taken Talian hostage, you know he's going to pay for your attempt to do something" said Andrew as he walked closer to the person.
When he gets to the bed, he turns round and notices that it's simply the Talian soldier lying on the bed with a gag in his mouth, so he quickly takes the T-shirt off the soldier's mouth and then unties the rope, and he's already got a very comical expression on his face, realising that the disguise he'd made was simply too obvious.
"Oh Akko, it looks like she wanted to play with you Talian, it's a shame that her incompetence will cost her dearly, where did she go? Where the hell did she go Talian, help me or your punishment won't be that much worse" said the furious lord who began his search.
"My lord, you came here earlier and I went to open the door and suddenly I fainted, it wasn't Akko, it was you who did it, don't you remember?" Said the guard and that opened a question around the boy.
"What? I haven't been here before and this has never happened, what are you talking about Talian? Someone pretended to be me and came in here" said Hanbridge, who was furious.
"But that's what I saw, you were here and I fainted while opening the door, then I woke up tied to the bed where the prisoner is, that must be something" said the soldier.
"We'll start the search for Akko, I'll ask other men, I don't want this incompetence in my elite guard, you've done the dirtiest job I've seen, for the Triforce" said the furious lord.
And he tried to search the whole room, but nothing, he noticed that Akko's clothes and weapons had been taken, so he asked the other guards and the answer he got was exactly the same as always "You were here sir, with a guard and you came down here accompanied by two guards", this made him already raise several questions and wonder about something which generated a whole meeting in the throne room for all the elite guards to appear precisely in that place.
"Very well, you're explaining the situation very badly and I've understood what's happened here" said the serious Andrew.
"What happened, my lord? I've already explained to you that we saw you turn up here with one guard and then leave with two, it's too strange, but it's the truth" said the soldier.
"There's only one question about this, my dear men, we have a traitor here and as long as he doesn't reveal himself I'm going to have one of you executed, I'm going to try to get the truth out and you'd better speak up or else I'm going to make you pay dearly, because of one traitor's mistake everyone will pay" said the tyrant looking at the soldiers who were starting to get down on their knees begging the lord.
"Believe us, my lord, she escaped somehow, there's no way that could have worked" said the guard.
"Unless one of you put a costume on her that made her pretend to be a soldier and I'll find out who it is, I'll find out what happened, but that's not the focus yet, all of you in my elite guard will be investigated and arrested until I find out who the traitor was, in the meantime I'll have my soldiers start searching for the wanted woman, I'll have to have wanted posters scattered all over Hyrule again, do you have any idea that she may have been on the run all along?" Hanbridge says and everyone nods.
"My lord, she wouldn't get beyond the walls, she could end up being searched, we can search all the houses in the city" said the soldier.
"Negative, take the soldiers to prison, while the rest, tell all my soldiers to search house by house here in Appleton for the presence of that damned woman, she can't escape my hands, she can't, I can't allow it, you are to blame for such incompetence, you will pay dearly for letting me be without my great treasure!" The lord of Appleton shouted and wailed in rage.
"We'll start the search, my lord, we can..." said the soldier.
"No! Bring her back alive, I want you to search everything, really aggressively, if anyone tries to resist, don't hesitate to attack, this is extremely important for us" said the dark-haired man.
And he was still thinking about other things regarding the search, starting to try to get the soldiers to find some evidence around the city. The soldiers were aggressively going into houses, breaking furniture, doors, anything to find a hiding place, but the few hiding places they had were Rupees that were hidden to avoid paying taxes, which was already resulting in a wave of arrests that day.
Andrew was in a pure rage just waiting for the search to end, unaware that at that moment Akko and her friends were a few hours away on horseback, making for a practically perfect and well-realised escape.
Far, far away from Appleton, on the roads the girls were making their way in a south-westerly direction, where the forest of Arcturus is located, already quite relieved and able to talk to each other, creating distance from Appleton, where they were already disguising the colour of their eyes as they passed wagons and even a little of the features of their faces thanks to magic, at which point they were already talking a lot.
"And how did you survive, Mari?" asks the curious Atsuko.
"That cut wasn't fatal, I was healed by Lotte and Sucy through potions, on the way we were still under the queen's rule, without knowing that she had died, which unfortunately must have been a horrible scene for you to witness, but anyway? They took me from town to town, we healed, I recovered, I fainted a lot on the way in the wagon and all we heard were people afraid of the war, which we were already feeling could have been defeated, we fled beyond Luna Nova, we decided to go to their island of origin, there we made friends with a girl called Ryuko, she took us there and taught us the language and even how to write, which led us to learn their bizarre techniques, I perfected metamorphosis, I can become completely another person as a camouflage technique, we even received news from outside, so I focused on that already thinking about their rescue, Constanze has become even better at building bizarre things, Sucy makes the best potions, Lotte can control spirits in a way that simply protects in any dungeon, Jasminka has become an excellent mutant in terms of transforming into various creatures, which is also very useful, I know that we have dungeons ahead of us and I want to make it possible for us to have the power to defeat the lord, I was blessed to arrive in this land, the people there are very friendly, by the way we are going to Luna Nova for the first dungeon, it is on the outskirts of the Arcturus forest, in a half underground entrance, there we will release the seal of Woodward" Marianne said.
"Ohhhhh, so that was it, how incredible, I even remember a piece of paper that the old woman from Luna Nova gave me that was in the Edo language, can you read it then?" Kagari asks, and sees her friend nodding in agreement as she takes the letter out of the hero's bag.
"With the power of the Master Sword, take it to the stone of the rising sun at the top of Mount Fuji and you'll get the power of a magic that will enable you to become the most powerful warrior of Edo, the legendary Samurai Kagari, the Master Sword... It ends here and it's torn, it looks like we'll have to go to the island of Edo for a while, I know there's a dungeon there too, what can we do to open one more of the seals of the nine witches" Leclerc reads the whole letter and also notices a tear.
"Woah, so we've already got one more stop to go, we'll have to show that we'll reach the power of all to defeat Andrew, I'm really looking forward to being able to get rid of all this and take revenge for what the bastard did to the queens... By the way, where are the princesses?" Said the crimson-eyed one.
"The princesses we never found, but they may have fled far away, I hope we can find them, this will be useful for our journey, they must have trained a lot I don't doubt it, from what I realised in Appleton they are not imprisoned so it's a good sign" said the brown-eyed one.
"That's because Andrew wanted to marry them to become the definitive king of Hyrule, he never managed to find them, he told me he was going to start searching the sea, but I hope they aren't discovered, I hope they manage to be safe, I miss them too, I was always thinking about all of you, now it's a relief to think that we're going to be free and safe - said the brown one.
"So now we have to think here, the first dungeon will be in Arcturus, but there are still eight more ahead, the one I mentioned in Edo is already two, there are still seven to go, we have to focus on finding all nine" said the dark-haired woman.
"This is a service so that we can find the princesses, I don't know where they are but it must be one of these various islands, well there are two more dungeons that I know where they are, Rastavan is the third of them, underwater, we are safe with Alan accompanying us and the fourth is the Appleton dungeon, it's very close to the city, at the top of Bradford Mountain, the highest in all of Hyrule, we won't be able to get there without going through the city of Appleton first, there's only one road that leads to the outskirts, the dungeon itself is completely hidden with the entrance at the top unless we find a way" explains Akko adding.
"This one we'll go to last, I'm sure the princesses know about five others, I don't doubt that there must be another one hidden in Wedinburgh, since it's precisely the centre of the kingdom when we were still in the queens' dominions, I remember there's a half-sealed entrance there that I've never been able to cross, that's from exploring the city so much" said Marianne, and this is already enlightening the girls, who are showing a map.
The points where they will go in the dungeons are already being marked, according to their surroundings, since the journey ahead will still be very hard, what was supposed to start six years ago was delayed because of events that were not very expected and quite sad for the entire population of Hyrule, so the five dungeons that they had an idea of where they could be were noted on the map and that way they already had a smile on their face waiting for this exploration.
"When you find all the Akko words, and all the dungeons, you'll be the legendary warrior of all Hyrule who will have enough to defeat Andrew Hanbridge once and for all, maybe even find the next part of the Triforce" Lerclerc said.
"I hope so, but I don't know if a triforce will be enough against him... Andrew has two pieces, only if the power of the nine witches really gives me something that goes beyond that, I hope so, anyway... I'm happy to be free at last, I won't be stuck in that place any more, what's the point of all the luxury if I can't see it? Look at the beauty of Hyrule's skies, it's been a long time since I've seen them, even though the roads look a bit dead and abandoned, it still gives me a good feeling to see nature at last" said Atsuko.
"EnjoyAkko, it's all your freedom, we haven't forgotten about you, that's how real friends are, you can be sure that I would do it again to save you and get you out of there, not because you're the hope of saving Hyrule, but because you were such a marvellous friend in all that short time we spent at home... I'm glad to see you back" said the dark-haired girl with a big smile on her face.
The six friends continue along the road as normal, undisturbed, chatting and talking about the six years they spent apart, Kagari telling us about all the luxury and imprisonment she experienced, the girls who stayed in Edo showing us the culture of the place and the differences they found there, which is really quite peculiar.
Akko has finally been freed from her prison and captivity in Appleton Castle from Andrew's clutches, where she spent six long years as a prisoner treated like a trophy, but it's not over yet for the girl's journey, which is back to where it was when she left Luna Nova with the master sword, This time she has another great goal,
which will be to defeat the spirit of Ganondorf, through the legendary power of the nine witches and the remaining piece of the Triforce, but it won't be an easy journey as the whole of Hyrule will try to track her down at the behest of the dangerous lord of Appleton.
See you, free witches...