While writing the potential pilot of "Goodbye Moonman", the Legend of Zelda story with an alternate timeline because why not, I had a couple of ideas that got removed from the cutting room floor, but I couldn't bear to completely let them go to waste. To recap what this story is about, Link is a Navy pilot who flew the first ship equipped with a FTL drive and on the return trip something went horribly wrong and he arrived in Hyrule a few years before the events in Breath of the Wild and ends up in possession of the Master Sword, making him defacto Champion.

The first scene is Zelda seeing more of a potential future Earth through the visual showings and narration of Sarah the AI. The second is where Zelda has her first drug trip on NZT, the neuro-enhancing drug which allows the taker to utilize every synapse of their brain at will instead of by instinct to hopefully get the answer she seeks in unlocking her power.

As mentioned previously with that pilot, it will be a T rated story unless stated otherwise.

Disclaimer: I only own my copy of MS Word and my desktop. The Legend of Zelda belongs to Nintendo, the only thing that's original about this is this idea. See the foreword for the full disclaimer.

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Scene 1: Getting to know your Champion's history.

To say that Zelda was annoyed with her newly appointed knight would be an understatement. She knew only the bare basics about him. She knew he was a pilot of some kind that controlled extremely advanced machines. Not unlike the ancient Sheikah, if she were completely honest with herself. The cover story that had been devised with her trusted aide (and shadow) Impa, was that he was a warrior from a far-off land who was providing valuable knowledge to the royalty of Hyrule. And the man himself was a warrior-scholar. He knew things that many scholars in Hyrule only had an inkling of knowledge on. Not only that but most of it he wrote off as being common knowledge where he came from. Advanced mathematics, scientific tidbits, metallurgy, and so on. What an advanced society where things like that were groundbreaking to the royal scholars was little more than an afterthought to him. But the man himself, she knew nothing about him. How could she trust him?

She had to admit, he was well versed in the sword and was able to duel with the best of her father's knights to either a standstill or defeating them. He was chosen by the Deku Tree and the Master Sword itself, so the goddesses must have seen something in him that she could not. The magic's woven into the Bane of Darkness wouldn't have let him remove it from its ancient pedestal if he were malicious.

She looked down towards the Sheikah Slate, the ancient piece of technology that baffled most of the scholars, Shiekah elders, and herself; but to Link, her knight attendant, he looked at it like he had seen it before. Well, not it exactly, but the technology itself. That was apparent when he had 'upgraded' it with his ship's AI, Sarah.

"Sarah," she called out. 'What can you tell me about Link?"

"Lieutenant Lincoln Carson, age eighteen," Sarah chimed, "of the United States Navy. Occupation: pilot."

"That much I knew, what else?"

There was a pause, it was if Sarah was trying to figure something out. "He has a spotless record, no disciplinary action. In terms of piloting ability, he's in the ninetieth percentile and was recommended for the flight that brought both of us hereby his commanding officer."

"He's not the best of the best?"

"In terms of raw skill, he is very good, but in terms of experience, there were others that were better equipped."

"So, why was he recommended?"

"His commanding officer saw this as an opportunity to rise through the ranks to eventually become a nominee for the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

"Politics then," Zelda concluded. The way her father treated her sometimes appeared to be completely motivated by court politics. With that, she sympathized with him. "What about his personal life?"

"He was orphaned and was raised in an orphanage until the age of two. He was adopted by a family who originally thought they couldn't have children. Later that turned out to be false as his parents proceeded to have four biological children. He applied to a military academy for his secondary school and proceeded to apply to the Navy as soon as he graduated and turned eighteen. The only disciplinary action before his enlistment was for getting into a fight in his grade school while defending his younger adoptive siblings."

"What kind of machines did he pilot?"

"He was primarily trained for fighter jets and upper atmospheric bombers. He only flew an F-70 fast attack fighter/bomber for a few months before being recruited for the Alpha Centauri project."

"The F-70?" Zelda asked.

On the Shiekah Slate displayed a 'plane' as Zelda had been shown, but this was different. The wings were inverted so it looked similar to how a Gerudo spear may have looked. The model displayed allowed the wings to fold into the front of the fuselage. "The F-70 is a stealth fighter/bomber capable of achieving Mach 5 speeds without being detected on radar. It is considered to be the peak of air superiority war machines."

"Mach 5?" Zelda asked for clarification.

"Five times faster than the speed of sound. That being seven hundred sixty-seven miles per hour at twenty degrees centigrade," Sarah answered.

She knew that things could fly extremely fast. In fact, she knew that the planet rotated at a high speed and what they saw as fast was only subjective. But being able to cross the continent that Hyrule sat on along with some of the neighbor states in less than an hour baffled her. It wasn't that it wasn't possible, the footage she was watching as the jet shot across a continent, it was that it seemed so far off that it didn't seem like Hyrule would ever achieve something like that.

End scene.

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Scene 2: Gaining another perspective.

Zelda sat in the royal library sighing in exasperation. Was there nothing more that she could do? Was she just another failure?

It had been a year and a half since the 'Moonman' had entered her service as a knight. Link had been knighted and had been given a small chunk of land (see: a home in Castle Town) to solidify this to the public. Since then she and her knight had gone on expeditions. He, being the epitome of professionalism, remained silent unless called upon. Most of her father's court saw Link as a mercenary, which he was, and looked down on him because of it. She speculated because many of the members of her father's court had sons themselves that were knights or on their way to becoming knights that wished for them to become close to her through becoming her personal knight. Some kind of odd power grab, she speculated. Even if she couldn't unlock her powers as a princess, she would still be valuable for forging an alliance for the future of Hyrule.

But that wasn't what she wanted. No, ever since Link saved her from that Yiga assault on their most recent excursion to the Gerudo desert her attitude towards him had changed. Before she had been cold, distant towards him. Even resentful because of how 'easy things came to him'. She knew that the more she came to know about him, his life was far from easy, this year and a half especially. She had discovered more about his family and how he felt about them. Even though he had no blood relations with them, they treated each other as if they were. It looked like he knew that he would never return home. The repairs and construction that would be needed to perform his trip home were well outside Hyrule's current industrial production capabilities. It would be outside anything that any country on the globe would be able to perform. He was marooned here. He wouldn't see his friends, family, or colleagues outside of his memories.

But sympathy wasn't the only thing she felt towards her knight, but it was something more. Maybe even…

"I think I have an idea," Link said as he sat at the table Zelda was seated at. He placed the orange pill bottle that he had carried since day one of his arrival in Hyrule. She could tell from the pill on plastic sound that two pills were remaining. "Twelve hours of absolute clarity."

"But you have so little left," Zelda protested.

"I was bound to run out eventually," Link said with finality. "I had around fifty pills to start and I had two the first day I was here. I managed to ration these out over the last year and a half, but now I think you need another perspective."

"Why now?"

"Do you remember Daruk's statement when we were on Death Mountain? That the mountain had been erupting more lately?" Zelda nodded. "I'm about six hours into my third to last pill, and I did some light reading. I read through every available tome possible in the library that mentions a Hero facing any iteration of Demise's Curse."

"Every tome?!" Zelda asked in complete shock. Those tomes had taken her weeks to read when her mother was still alive. A time when her father was much more kind.

"NZT has ways to allow you to utilize all of your senses and all of your memory to its fullest potential. Perfect recall at the tip of a hat." He shook his head to get back on topic. "Point being every time that the entity called Ganon has come into power, or is about to, Death Mountain starts to act up which causes it to become more hazardous to travelers and Goron alike." He saw the realization in her eyes. "Ganon is coming sooner rather than later. The Sword's removal from the Sacred Grove, increased and bolder monster attacks, the push from your father to unlock your powers sooner, and the general peasantry's more worried attitude? Animals have an instinct that allows them to sense danger and then move away from it before it happens. Humans are more evolved, well developed, or raised up by other beings, but at our core, we still have survival instincts like animals. We can feel disaster coming." He then changed the subject. "Your birthday is two weeks away, right?"

"Yes. In two weeks, I will be eighteen. I will be allowed to approach the Spring of Wisdom atop Mount Lanayru and will be eligible for rule when my father passes the throne to me."

"I think that's when he's going to strike."

"What makes you say that? Why specifically on my birthday?"

"In every medium that I've read about Ganon, he's had a specific hate-boner towards anyone named Zelda. Each of your ancestors has been used by him in some way, shape, or form. Use the Hero of Time as an example. Ganondorf used your ancestor to set up that era's Hero to seal him away for seven years, seven years that allowed him to gain control of the kingdom."

"Where was that recorded?"

"Memoirs of the Hero of Time. Bookcase fifteen, row ten, fifth book from the right. It's similar with the Hero of Twilight and the then Queen Zelda as well but to a lesser extent. He always goes to hit the era's Zelda where it hurts most. For the one during the Hero of Twilight's time, it was her people. He's a conniving bastard and as a tactician, I'd be dishonest if I didn't give him props for psychological warfare. But he has a particular hatred for any Zelda that exists. And that would extend to you. He'll attack when you're at your most vulnerable and at a moment that is important to you."

"Ok, you've made your point. But what about the pills?"

"You've been trying to unlock the powers that were passed onto you from your mother for years. Maybe you're still looking at it wrong."

"Urbosa said something like that the night you appeared."

"NZT can make you see many things, one being different perspectives and different approaches to a problem. You can even see your entire memory from a hindsight perspective and reflect on why you haven't been able to unlock it yet. There's a reason I've rationed this out. I've saved it for extremely complex issues where I see no other solution than blowing it up with plastique or shooting it." He pushed the bottle towards her and she stared at it.

"You can guarantee that I'll find the answer for unlocking my powers?"

"No. But I can at least give you answers for why you haven't unlocked it." She reached for it but paused mid-reach. "What do you have left to lose? You've exhausted all of your options outside of just blind faith. If this doesn't give you clarity or some kind of another viewpoint, then you've really lost nothing. You've only got things to gain."

She picked up the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and tapped it against her hand until one unnaturally clear pill landed in her hand. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Zelda said as she proceeded to dry swallow the pill. She sat there for a few minutes before asking, "How long does this usually take to-." And then it hit her. It was like metaphorical scales fell from her eyes. One moment she was looking at a room she had looked at for years, the next, she was picking out minute details that she would have passed over. She saw phantoms of her mother and a younger her, or at least what she perceived as a younger her, picking up and reading all of the stories of Heroes and Princesses past.

"It finally hit you, didn't it?" Link asked. But they both knew the answer. "I knew the moment your eyes started taking in every little detail of the room." He gained her attention once more. "But right now, you need to focus."

"On what?" she asked feeling drunken but yet sober at the same time.

"Focus on every story you ever heard, whether it be from a book or from your parents. Focus on the tale itself and look at it from adult hindsight. What hidden meanings were you told? What things were left out of the official tales told to the public? What privileged information did your mother have that no one else would know?"

The moment that she started to focus on it, Zelda saw in her mind's eye one night when her mother tucked her into bed. She held no book, but she spoke sweetly to her daughter. "And the powers of Hylia burst forth inside of the Skyward Princess blessing the Hero's sword allowing it to strike down the Demon King," her mother regaled. "With the Demon King dispatched, the Princess and her Hero formed the first dynasty of Hyrule and lived happily ever after."

"Mother?" the younger Zelda asked. "Why did the Princess let loose Hylia's powers?"

"Well, little bird, if she didn't then the Hero wouldn't have won," her mother answered. She then pulled her daughter into her side and whispered in the voice that could only be described by men as the 'female plotting voice'. "Some say that she had a crush on her Hero."

"Eww," the young Zelda spat. "Boys are yucky, they like to get all dirty and roughhouse with each other."

Her mother brushed a tendril of hair away from her daughter's face and giggled. "I was the same way once, but if I didn't come around, I would have never met your father and you would be our little princess."

"So, the secret is a boy?" the much older Zelda asked herself.

"Or perhaps it is the emotion behind it?" another her asked in turn.

Zelda turned to look to see herself leaning against the wall in the memory they shared. "I'm confused."

"I'm you. Or, well, our brain's way of figuring out a complex question."

"Complex?"

"You know when you have all the information but for some reason, you just can't get the answer you're looking for?" The actual Zelda nodded. She happened to notice that this Zelda appeared to be wearing the white gown that she wore the day of the ceremony that she inducted Link as a Champion. "Well, I'm a metaphysical manifestation, like the memory of mother, to help get that answer without actually bouncing it past someone to get their opinion."

"So, I'm getting my own opinion by asking myself?"

"Don't think about it too hard. Point is, mother may have given us the answer we've been searching for."

"A boy," she stated flatly. "How cliché is that? It's every storybook plot hook. It's a deus ex machina."

"Maybe so, but think about it and think about every story we've heard about every instance of a Princess-."

"Or Queen."

"-or Queen Zelda predecessor of ours. Skylofian Zelda? Love. Zelda during the Ganondorf conflict? Duty and love of her people. Queen Zelda during the Zant Insurrection? The same. The pirate queen Zelda-."

"Tetra."

"No one really knows exactly as it was speculated by the Hero of Winds in his memoir and wasn't specified in Tetra's journals. Zelda during the Lorule invasion? Duty and a wish for peace with the Lorule princess Hilda."

"So, duty is the answer," Zelda deadpanned. "Something that I've already attempted and failed."

"Maybe. But perhaps there is more to it. We've already attempted it for duty, but our predecessors did the same."

"What are we missing?"

"Ok. Let's start from what Urbosa told us a few years ago, that we regard it as a weapon."

"Yes, and it is a weapon."

"Yes, against the Calamity, otherwise known as Ganon, otherwise known as Demise's Curse. But it's not meant to be a weapon against those we're sworn to protect."

"I don't quite see where you're going with this," Zelda stated, she genuinely didn't see where her other self was going with this.

"Ok, we have many enemies. The Yiga, the dissenting clans, our neighbors across the Great Sea as well as our neighbors to the north. Many weapons can be used and said weapons are forged with no real wielder in mind other than that they can either swing or stab with it. Hylia's gift, the sealing power, is something else. It's something that only the firstborn daughters have and us alone. Maybe we need to stop thinking of it and attempting to use it as a weapon. The power blessed things that Heroes in the past used as weapons. Maybe that's what we're missing."

"But those were always when the Hero was in dire need of a boon from the Goddesses to finish off the risen-up incarnation of Demise's Curse," Zelda interjected.

"The Bow of Light has been seen numerous times in each tale, whether it was wielded directly by the Hero or by our predecessor is a bit fuzzy."

"So, you're saying that we could use the sealing power, but maybe not as expected?"

"Add in the condition that it may be in a dire situation as well."

"Any luck?" Link asked. Her entire world she had envisioned in her mind fell away and she was back in the library, Link was still sitting across from her.

Zelda shook her head. "No, nothing definitive at least," she answered.

"Well, you still have eleven and a half hours left of pure mental clarity left. What's something that you've always found the most difficult but have just lacked the time to really dig into the meat of it?" Link changed the subject.

"Advanced sciences."

"Well, we just so happen to have an AI in a certain tablet that may be able to give you lessons on exactly that," Link replied with a knowing grin.

End scene.

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Alright, that's all I have for these two bonus scenes. Nothing really important to note other than this is a continuation of that Legend of Zelda idea that was posted previously. Once again, I've merged all of the timelines as is the current theory and made mention of all timelines. I don't have any other notes to add either. Just some interesting scenes that I wanted to add but never really got the chance to implement.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get to bed now. I had my interview for a senior position in my department, so fingers crossed on that. Wish me luck and all that.

See you all in whatever I decide to do next.