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Thanks for reading and please enjoy

The Legend of Zelda: Unbound Paradox

-Chapter 4-

-Last Time-

"In my experience, most forget to look up," Impa stated, crouching for a moment before leaping into the void towards the flying building. As she floated weightlessly through the empty space, she glanced back at the still stunned teen and gestured for him to follow. "Are you gonna just stand there or are you coming?"

That did the trick as Naruto snapped from his thoughts with a frown and launched his chain, hooking it around one of the porch's railings.

'Hopefully this doesn't end up like the last time I tagged along with someone named Impa.' He swore he could still feel the bruises from that hellish impromptu training…

-And Now-

"Click! Snap! Ready to go!" A young woman with white hair and red highlights and wearing a pair of golden mechanical goggles atop her head said with a cheery pose, holding up two fingers to the sides of her eyes with each hand. Giggling to herself when she was done, the lady made her way across a modest looking laboratory full of gadgets to grab a backpack that was absolutely stuffed to the brim and then some. Shouldering it with surprising ease, she tilted her head back and smirked again excitedly. "Come on princess, those Divine Beasts aren't going to research themselves."

"Naruto?"

"Ugh… can't quite… reach!" The same woman, now a young girl, groused as she tried and failed to reach a tool resting on a shelf above her. Eventually she gave up and stomped across her lab in order to get a stool so she could boost herself up… and still couldn't reach. "Stupid shortness, and of course it's the tool I need to fix the jetpack that I can't reach without it…"

"Do you need a hand Purah?"

"If you wouldn't mind." The whitette said, albeit with a huff, as a slender hand grabbed the tool and handed it to her.

"Naruto?!"

"And this is the Purah Pad," Purah, now adult again but still different, said as she held up a strange blocky device with a glowing face. "I made it using what I'd learned from the Sheikah Slate before it went inert. Works exactly the same for the most part, though I'm still working on replicating the runes for it."

"Still having trouble? Or have you been too focused on your aging one to bother?"

"Hey, in my defense being short really REALLY sucked." The whitette said defiantly with her arms crossed.

"I bet it-"

"NARUTO!?"

A ragged gasp tore from Naruto's lips as reality slammed back into him like a wrecking ball and he found himself on his hands and knees. His whole body trembled like crazy, sweat all but poured from his brow, and his head… don't even get him started. It felt like it was being ripped apart and stitched back together with rusty nails in leu of actual sewing needles.

"Naruto?!" A panicked-looking Elia demanded as she flew into his sight, cupping his cheek while staring into his eyes. "Can you hear me?!"

"W-what? Elia… what…?" The whiskered teen wheezed out, getting the little green fairy to sigh in relief.

"Oh thank the goddesses you snapped out of it, I was starting to think-nevermind I'm just glad you snapped out of it."

"Snapped out of it?" Naruto parroted in confusion with his breathing evening out once the initial shock wore off. Shaking his head, he slowly pushed himself back up onto his own two legs, stumbling a little before he got his bearings. "What are you talking about? What happened?"

"I do believe we should be asking you that." Impa chipped in, getting the blonde's head to reflexively snap to the side to see her leaning against the wall. While the mysterious lady's posture appeared relaxed, arms crossed and head cocked slightly to the side, her expression was anything but calm as she looked Naruto over thoroughly. The teen couldn't help but shiver a little under her piercing gaze which felt like it was burning through to his very soul.

However, his attention swiftly turned to the wall she was leaning on and in turn his surroundings as he finally noticed that he was inside a house. More specifically he was inside the mish-mashed house that Impa had been leading him and Elia too earlier.

The inside was much like the outside, with one half of the structure being completely different from the other half. However, whereas the outside had looked literally slapped together, the interior showed far more thorough attempts towards properly melding the two halves together. Cracks in the walls and floor were filled with mortar then reinforced by thick wooden planks and greenish stone/metal slabs.

Although that was nothing compared to what was in the house itself.

Most of the place was taken up by what looked like an impromptu laboratory of some kind, stuffed full of gadgets of every size and shape. Some looked familiar, like a little half dismantled drone bot that looked like the ones he'd fought in the shadow temple, whilst the rest… yeah he wasn't even gonna pretend he knew what it was.

Then there was what appeared to be a control station at the front of the house, with a series of cobbled together devices facing a large window with a retractable cover.

"Hey, I'm still talking to you," Elia said as she landed on Naruto's shoulder. "Are you alright? That was a pretty nasty seizure…"

"I… think so?" The blonde said unsurely, more to himself than her as he rubbed his head. "What happened though? The last thing I remember was following Impa here and then…"

"You just started freaking out like a zapped Lizalfos when you saw me."

"GAH!?" Naruto jumped back when the upside-down face of a young girl with white hair done up in a bun and wearing fancy golden goggles popped into his view. Stumbling back, the teen tripped on a tool laying on the ground and fell on his ass, making the girl giggle as she stood on the ceiling.

"Yeah, that's more what I'd normally expect," She said before hopping, flipping in the air as she dropped to the floor and landing nimbly with a cute pose. "Check it, nailed it, once you get used to the weird gravity of this place it sure is fun."

"You…" Naruto winced as flashed filled his mind again, those visions from before popping to the forefront of his thoughts for a brief moment. 'Purah of the Calamity Era' "Purah?"

"Oh hey, you already know my name? Rude," That last part was directed towards Impa as the now named Purah pouted at her while crossing her arms. "You ruined my introduction."

"I didn't need to tell him," Impa stated, her gaze boring into the blonde intently as she spoke. "It appears he has an uncanny ability to know things he shouldn't, as if wisdom not his is somehow being bestowed upon him."

"Oh, is that so? Interesting," In the blink of an eye the girl was right up in Naruto's face again, pulling her goggles over her eyes while looking at him very closely. A soft hum escaped her lips as she grabbed one of his ears and gave it a light tug before feeling his hair. "Can't be a Hylian with these ears, wrong eye and hair color for a Sheikah, you're a male so definitely not Gerudo. Where are you from?"

"Uh, a little place called none of your business," Naruto said dryly once he regained his wits, idly swatting the girl's hand away when she started rubbing his whiskers. The blonde quickly hopped back to his feet, again, and straightened out his outfit before crossing his arms with a frown. "Look, I didn't come here to get studied, I just want to know where I am and preferable how the hell I get out of it."

"Oh no you don't, you're not just gonna ignore the whole 'you had a seizure' part," Elia said, tapping her foot impatiently with a deep frown marring her lips. "You've been hiding something from me since we got here and I'm done with it. You know who these people that we just met by name, you can identify monsters I've never even heard of, and now you're having seizures."

"It's no-"

"Do NOT tell me it's nothing!" The fairy cut Naruto off while slapping his cheek hard enough to make his head snap to the side and leave a bright red speck on his cheek. At the same time Elia's emerald glow exploded in intensity, nearly blinding everyone in the room as the normally gentle light flared with her anger and frustration. "I was fine waiting earlier because at least you were fine but no more! You tell me what's going on with you right now or so help me the next slap will be on your Deku nuts!"

…

"I'm not bluffing Naruto." Elia said in a deadly serious tone while cracking her knuckles.

"Alright, alright, fine," The blonde said quickly, reflexively covering his groin protectively. Thankfully that got the angry fairy to settle down, if just enough for her glow to die down to a more tolerable level. "Every time I look at something new, I get a headache and all this information suddenly floods in my brain. I don't know why or how, but it's been happening since we got here, mainly when we ran into those monsters. Happy now?"

"Of course I'm not, why didn't you tell me this before?" Elia demanded, causing Naruto to deadpan at her.

"Oh I don't know, maybe it had something to do with the fact we were under attack from monsters at the time and then we met these two," He said while jabbing a thumb at Impa then Purah before crossing his arms. "I was waiting till we were done with them first because I really didn't want to talk about having problems with my head around people we just met. Or at least until we knew for sure whether they were friends we could trust or enemies looking for weaknesses to exploit."

…

"…Oh, uh right, that… actually makes sense…" And like that all of Elia's righteous indignation sputtered out like a dying candle, the guardian fairy shrinking into herself awkwardly upon realizing Naruto's point. Especially when she looked around and finally noticed both ladies watching the two of them with intrigue and awkwardness. "I… sorry."

"We can talk about this later." Was all Naruto said before grabbing Elia and moving her atop his head, where she promptly buried herself in his hair in embarrassment.

"So if you're all done with that little drama show, why don't you introduce yourself Whiskers?" Purah asked, getting the blonde's attention as she hopped onto a stool to be closer to his eye-level. "After all, you know our names so it's only fair."

"…Naruto Uzumaki, my friend is Elia," Naruto stated bluntly before taking a deep breath and relaxing. "Now I'm sorry if this is rude but can we just skip all the getting to know each-other crap and get to business? Impa said you might be able to help us find a way out of whatever this place is, so, can you or can't you?"

"Now that is a good question," The goggled girl said with a nod before beckoning him over as she spun around to face a table covered in various rolls of parchment. Once the blonde was beside her she grabbed the largest and unfurled it to show a rough yet detailed chart of what he assumed was where they were. "While I unfortunately don't have a definitive answer of getting out yet, I do have a few theories of where we are. The most likely of which I believe is that this place is a sort of void between time and space, like a gap between dimensions, which would explain why everything here is wonkier than Linky's eating habits."

'That… why does that sound so familiar?' Naruto's brow furrowed as he felt an inkling tickle at the back of his mind that wasn't related to the scratching he'd been troubled with recently. This one was something he was quite familiar with, that annoying itch where he knew something but couldn't quite remember what it was.

He'd never admit it out loud, but it happened a lot for him…

"And I believe I have an idea on how to confirm this theory, could you tell me the last thing you remember doing before ending up here?" Naruto was broken from his thoughts by Purah's question, the girl looking at him with her head cocked cutely to the side as she waited for an answer.

Frowning, the blonde didn't answer right away, his gaze shifting to the floor as he silently debated what to say. On one hand these were strangers, possibly even agents of Kotake and Koume meant to deceive him. But on the other hand Naruto wasn't getting any bad vibes from Purah or Impa, a few weird ones but not bad, and he'd always trusted his gut when it came to people.

"…We were attempting to go back in time, to seven years in the past so we could try to get into a temple as children that we couldn't as adults. I know that sounds-"

"Exactly like what I suspected." The goggled girl cut him off abruptly, making the whiskered teen blink in surprise while Elia popped out of his hair with a similarly baffled expression.

""Say what?""

"I was right in the middle of an experiment to reverse the effects of a de-aging rune I invented when I found myself in this place and Impa told me she was traveling forward in time a thousand years when she arrived here. And now you're saying you were attempting to go back in time as well," Purah elaborated as she shoved the chart aside and grabbed a blank scroll which she started scribbling notes on with a makeshift charcoal pencil. "It seems each of us has a commonality in that we were all experiencing some form of temporal distortion just before being sent to this place."

"So what, you're thinking we're here because we attempted to mess with time?" Elia asked, slowly floating out from her hiding spot and hovering beside the goggled girl's head curiously.

"It's incredibly unlikely to be just a coincidence at the very least."

"Okay then, so how do we get out of this… Void?" Naruto asked, getting the whitette beside him to stop writing and scratch her chin with a thoughtful hum.

"I'd say the most likely way would be to somehow create another time distortion, to reopen the barriers so we can traverse back to where we belong," Purah said after a moment before frowning as she looked at the makeshift laboratory. "Problem is I don't have a means to actually do that, not anytime soon anyway. It'd probably take years to rebuild my experiment from scratch and that's assuming I can find all the necessary components for it in the first place."

"Not to mention dealing with your condition." Impa added in, causing Elia and Naruto to look at her in confusion while Purah pouted but nodded in agreement.

"Thanks for reminding me…"

"Wait, what con-" Elia stated to ask, only to be abruptly cut off by Naruto covering her mouth with a finger while he gave her a pointed look. However, when he opened his mouth to say something he was cut off as well by a vibrant blue glow coming off Purah.

"Oh speak of the devil." The girl said as she looked down at the source to see a literal crack forming on her chest that rapidly spread across the rest of her body. Rather than freaking out or being alarmed, she just shrugged before sitting down on the stool and crossing her arms just before being completely enveloped in a bright flash of blue.

Once it faded Naruto and Elia were left gob smacked when instead of a girl they were met to the sight of a gorgeous young woman. She was tall with flawlessly smooth skin and wearing a form fitting outfit that showed her perfect hourglass figure.

"Ah, that's better," Purah said, her voice now mature and silky, as she stretched her arms over her head until her back popped. Slumping in her stool, she rolled her shoulders a bit with a sigh before turning to the pair with a giggle. "I'm guessing you'd like an explanation for that too."

"…I'm guessing it's long, complicated, and tied into a bunch of other explanations," Naruto said in a dull tone after a moment, shaking his head as the last vestiges of surprise wore off whilst he spoke. Sighing when Purah just made a 'so-so' motion with her hand, the whiskered blonde grabbed a stool and flopped down onto it. "Fuck it, I was hoping to avoid this but this'll probably go quicker if we all just explain ourselves and get it over with. Anyone want to go first?"

"Well, since you asked so nicely," Purah said somewhat sarcastically while spinning in her seat. "You already know my name but I am Purah of the Sheikah, chief researcher of Sheikah and Zonai technology, and my story starts a hundred years ago when…"

-Several Days (?) Later-

Naruto sighed as he laid on his back atop the split house, mulling on things as the building flew along thanks to booster rockets strategically strapped across it. So many thoughts bounced around in his head like the many debris that drifted along through the now dubbed Void. After he had exchanged stories with Impa and Purah the blonde felt only more confused about his current situation.

Purah was apparently a hundred and twenty-four years old who survived a disaster caused by a monster known as Calamity Ganon, which destroyed nearly all of Hyrule and left the land in turmoil for a hundred years. She spoke of ancient technology called guardians and giant machines called Divine Beasts that were meant to defeat the demon only to be corrupted and turned against them. Apparently it was only thanks to a Princess Zelda, not the one he knew but another Zelda, holding Calamity Ganon down with her magic until a young man Purah affectionally called Linky recovered from near death.

He then went and freed these Divine Beasts from the demon's control before turning them back on it for a climatic final battle of which good emerged triumphant. All in all it sounded much like what Naruto had been doing with Saria in their attempts to awaken the sages to defeat Ganondorf, minus the fact they'd already won and such. Anyway, with peace restored most of the Sheikah tech simply vanished so Purah had to rebuild much of it from scratch, during which she also went about fixing a mishap where she'd turned herself into a child in a botched experiment.

And that's how she ended up in this place along with why she sporadically changed between an adult and child form.

Impa on the other hand had a story… that Naruto already knew. Of a place ravaged by a demon called Demise and how a goddess had sent the survivors into the sky on floating islands.

All he had to do was ask one question to confirm his suspicions.

"You know Fi?"

"The spirit of the Mastersword." Impa stated, revealing herself to be perched nearby on the chimney, using a glowing spyglass to observe their surroundings carefully.

"So you are the lady that she mentioned, the one from the past." Fi had never given him a name but she'd told him all about a mysterious Sheikah warrior that'd helped her and Link in their journey. How she'd come from a thousand years in the past to lead the Zelda of her time to three springs to reawaken her memories of the goddess Hylia.

He would've asked earlier but decided to wait until he got to know Impa and Purah more before prodding further. Although that was easier said than done seeing as the former was just as if not more cryptic than the Impa he was used to. The only straight answers about anything out of her was orders while looting islands for supplies or clearing monsters out of their path.

Meanwhile, the latter spent most of her time either building stuff, studying stuff, or navigating the building through the void. And when she did talk Naruto was lucky if he understood even a fraction of the complicated gibberish that tended to fly from her lips. Although she did fix him up with a new weapon, which was good seeing as his last one had been reduced to a smoldering pole.

"And to know that would make you truly the chosen Hero of your time," Impa stated as she dropped from her perch by his side. "And yet you are not. You carry the mantle, you have the heart, and you most definitely possess the courage, but I sense you lack the spirit."

"…I'm not gonna even ask what that means," The blonde muttered as he flipped back to his feet and stretched. He already had enough things giving him a headache, he didn't need another of the Sheikah's infamously confusing cryptic messages adding onto it. Instead, he looked down at his necklace when it started to glow again before shooting a bolt of light off into the Void in the direction they were going. "How's the minish guy doing? Any sign of him?"

"Elia finally found him hiding in the cupboard and is trying to coax him out, though by the sound of it not very successfully." Impa said with a shrug before going back to looking through her spyglass, looking for any signs of trouble.

"Ah, figures." Sometime during their exchanging of stories, the little minish they had found woke up without any of them noticing and scurried off. Since then, he'd been hiding around the mobile house, keeping out of sight for the most part and fleeing the moment someone saw him. Elia had taken it upon herself to find him but due to his small size there was no shortage of hidey holes for the little guy to lay low in.

On the plus side, it gave her something to do that got her mind off their current situation for a while.

Speaking of which…

"You see any good islands to salvage from? I could do with a little action." The blonde muttered as he formed a chain around one arm and grabbed a strange looking sword handle that dangled from his hip with the other. The handle in question seemed pointless at first glance, at least until he pressed a small button on the top of the grip, causing a translucent runic blade of energy to crackle into existence.

"Not yet," Impa stated, sweeping her gaze across the presumed horizon… before abruptly stopping as her brow rose. "Correction, I think I found something."

"Really? Let me see." Catching the telescope when the Sheikah tossed it to him, Naruto quickly focused it onto the spot she'd been looking at.

…

"Holy shit," The blonde muttered with wide eyes, before shaking his head with a serious look. "We gotta tell the others, now."

"Agreed."

-Later-

"Well damn, that's certainly a sight to see." Purah muttered as she in her child form, Naruto, and Impa all stood on the porch of their mobile house base, all staring off at the same spot in the distance.

"Hey guys, guess what, I finally got this little guy to come out, everyone meet Pocky," Elia said proudly as she floated out with the Minish riding on her back, the small little guy shyly peeking out over her shoulder as she spoke. However, both of them became confused when none of the trio reacted to their arrival/ introduction and instead kept staring off into the Void. Following their gaze, both fairy and minish's jaws dropped straight to the floor upon laying their eyes on… "Is that a Temple?"

"Definitely looks like one."

Sure enough the group found themselves above a giant city sized floating fortress situated on an equally large landmass, easily a hundred times larger than the largest island collections they'd come across so far. Made mostly of a pale blue bricks with purple roofs and completely surrounded by a massive engraved stone wall, the whole thing gave off an ominous aura that for lack of a better term felt… forbidden. It was as if just setting eyes on this place was something that nobody was ever supposed to do and their minds were screaming at them not to.

What was more surprising though was the fact the entire place was completely intact unlike everything else in the Void, no signs of destruction, wear, or any kind of damage to be seen. Not only that but any debris that drifted nearby seemed to just change direction the instant it got close, as if they were bouncing off of something.

Seeing a familiar glow forming in the bottom of his eye, Naruto watched the beam of light shoot from his necklace and zoom straight to a large gate set in the outer wall, which briefly lit up with an identical glow.

"Well now we know where this thing was leading us, should we go check it out?" The whiskered blonde asked as he glanced at the others… only to grunt in surprise when Purah clambered up his back.

"You bet we're gonna check it out, this whole place is practically begging to be investigated," The age changing Sheikah said as she perched herself on the boy's shoulders and held up a strange device, a Purah Pad if he recalled correctly. It wasn't much at first glance, a rectangular device with simple handles on either side, a small screen which projected various things on one side and a robotic eye on the other. "But before we do I wanna try something real quick and this is the perfect opportunity, just hold still."

As she spoke Purah plugged a cord she got from somewhere into the bottom of her self named invention before pointing the eye side towards the Temple as it emitted a glowing blue light that took the form of a translucent grid. She then swept the Pad from side to side, shining that grid all over the place as pulses of energy traveled down the cord and into her lab through the window. After a few moments the lights all stopped before pulses went up the cord and back into the pad, causing it to give off a musical chime as Purah cheered.

"Alright! It worked! Check it!" She said as she held the device right in front of Naruto's face, showing him a perfect top view map of the fortress laid out on the screen.

"Okay, that's pretty cool," The blonde admitted with a nod, getting the young looking whitette to smile more before going back to fiddling with her invention. "…Are you gonna get down anytime soon?"

"Nah, I'm comfy and got a great view point up here," Purah said while resting her elbows atop the blonde's head as she continued to fiddle with the Purah Pad. Her brow furrowed though as she held the device up closer to her face and squinted her eyes with a low hum. "I don't think we can just fly in like usual, the sensor is picking up a barrier around the whole place"

"I don't think we needed a sensor to figure that out." Naruto stated dryly as he grabbed a rock that floated by and flung it towards the Temple, before stepping to the side when it bounced off nothing and flew right back at him.

"But now we know for sure, Impa, can you-"

"She's already at the controls," Elia cut Purah off, pointing to the window where they could see the warrior in question grabbing the steering stick. A second later they were on the move again, heading towards the gate in the wall that Naruto's necklace was leading too. "And we're just gonna go into this blindly again, aren't we?"

"Just like I have to keep asking if we have any better options?" Naruto asked back, to which the fairy sighed in defeat and landed on his shoulder next to Purah's thigh. Glancing at her, the blonde's gaze locked onto the minish still riding on her back, causing the mouse like critter to duck out of sight shyly. "I see you finally got that little guy to come out."

"Wha…? Oh right, yeah, his name is Pocky, Pocky these are my friends Naruto and Purah," As she spoke Elia looked over her shoulder and gave the now named Pocky a supportive smile that got him to peek back out again. His eyes darted between the two giants (by his perspective at least) as they gazed down at him and gave a small wave while chittering out something so soft that neither of them could hear. Fortunately Elia could as she murmured something back before turning her attention back to the duo herself. "He doesn't know how or why he was in that flower thing, all he remembers is riding in someone's pocket like he likes too and then waking up here… from me screaming at you."

That last part was muttered under her breath as she rubbed her arm with an awkward blush on her cheeks.

"Yeah, sounds about right," Naruto said with a nod before grabbing onto the wall reflexively as the house flipped around, becoming parallel to the Temple as they came to a stop. A loud grinding crunch rang out as their base connected to the ground outside the wall, right in front of the gate which lit up once more in sync with the gemstone around his neck. "How about you go help him get settled in while we check this out? I've got a feeling this'll take a while."

"Alright… but for the love of the Goddesses, at least TRY to stay out of trouble." The emerald fairy stated before flying back inside, leaving the whiskered teen grumbling under his breath.

"I'm not that bad…"

"Yes you are and you know it!"

-End Chapter-