Creative Dabbler

Mask: The Link from Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, and one-half of the Hero(es) of Time with Ocarina. He’s the older half despite being in the body of a twelve-year-old, and since he’s technically got the mind of an eighteen-year-old at the very least it looks verystrange from the outside. He’s snarky, sarcastic, and takes great joy in messing with other people, most specifically his younger self by refusing to give away future hints and claiming ~Spoilers~ every time it comes up. He carries his transformation masks and uses then whenever the situation calls for it. He can usually be found next to his younger self because he’s secretly worried about shattering his own personal timeline, and he puts a lot of effort into making sure Ocarina survives whatever mess they’ve gotten into this time. He also puts an equal amount of effort into making sure Ocarina doesn’t notice this

Dusk: The Link from Twilight Princess. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio and is the quote-unquote 'ego’ - or, in othher words, he’s usually the mediating force. If it’s pointed out to him though, he will steadfastly deny that he’s in any suited for a leadership position - which is in blatant contradiction to the fact that he’s probably the most effective member of the Leader Trio. He carries the Curse Stone from Zant around his neck in a pouch and usles it to transform whenever the situation calls for it. He’s also the regular soul-host for Midna, Shadow, or both, depending on the day. He’s by far the most level-headed Link, taking almost everything in stride, and it takes a lot to make him lose his cool. The one surefire way to do it is to threaten someone he cares about, at which point he will waste no time completely destroying whoever was stupid enough to make said threat

RGBV: Red, Green, Blue, and Vio are the Link(s) from Four Swords Adventures, and like the Four they’re the result of one Link being split into four bodies. Unlike the Four, they’ve retained their individuality and have four very different personalities as a result. Green is the established leader of their quad-cell, and is the most level-headed one. He’s not the most patient one, but he is the one who’s not afraid to do what needs to be done. Red is the most emotional one, easily excitable and absolutely willing to give hugs to anyone who asks (and a few who don’t). Blue is the most aggressive one, although he mostly directs it towards his enemies. He doeshave a on-again-off-again rivalry of sorts with Vio, but it’s never gotten beyond particularly invested sibling bickering. Vio meanwhile is the book-smarts one, or at least the one with the most strategic intelligence. He’s also the best ranged fighter they have

Lore: The Link from A Link to the Past, Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, and Link’s Awakening. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio, finishing off the dynamic as the 'id’. He’s by far the most unique personality, being a hyperactive chaos entity who delights in confusing people and making them question reality. He’s also a polyglot, knows at least ten languages, and is constantly hunting for new ones to learn. He’s easily the most experienced Link and as a result has Seen Some Stuff, but instead of being traumatized by the weirdness he decided to go in the other direction and embrace it instead. He’s an absolutely terrible shot in spite of his numerous adventures, but the sheer amount of stuff he has tends to make up for it. He hasn’t met a situation yet that he doesn’t have an item for and he’s not about to start now - although this is mostly due to his conviction that bombs are the answer to every situation

Realm: The Link from the original Legend of Zelda. He is constantly, hopelessly, chronically lost, and has absolutely no concept of where he is in relation to where everything else is. He also has a somewhat tenuous relationship with the concept of physical space, which tends to result in him getting lost in places he really should not have been able to get lost in (for example, a volcano). Regrettably this also extends to his items, which he frequently loses. In spite of this, he’s one of the most cheerful and optimistic Links in the group. It takes a lot to get him into a bad mood, and given what he already goes through while maintaining a good mood, the entire Chain has yet to see him in a bad one. A side effect of getting lost so much is that his stamina is absolutely ridiculous, which makes him very good at drawing out a fight - in fact, that’s more or less his specialty

Sketch: The Link from A Link Between Worlds. He has the ability to turn his body into paint and move along the walls like a living hieroglyph. Unfortunately, due to being made of watercolors when he does this, he also has a severe phobia of water as a result of the fact that he might actually die a horrifically painful death if his paint runs too much. Outside of that, he’s relatively level-headed and very crafty, in the literal sense that he likes to make things. He used to be a blacksmith’s apprentice before this whole Hero business got started (his specialty is metalwork). He likes things to make sense and gets a bit snarky when the universe decides to spite him by making no sense at all. He’s one of the best Links at stealth, because for some reason very few people will notice the artwork on the wall and as long as he has a surface to fuse with, he can get just about anywhere

Wind: The Link from Wind Waker. He carries said Wind Waker as part of his inventory, and it lets him control the weather. He’s a certified Weather Master in everything but the official certification, because he hasn’t had the chance to go back and take the test yet, but the ability to throw literal tornadoes at his enemies makes him arguably one of the most dangerous Links in the group. He does prefer to hang back in a fight and hit from a distance as opposed to getting up close and personal, but that’s very typical for a mage. He has an overabundance of patience, stored up from sailing for days back on his home ocean, and he’ll take just about anything in stride - unless you’re threatening his family, then all bets are off. He’s one of the quieter Links, being more content to wait and see the results of something rather than actively participating, but this in no way means that he’s not paying attention. He knows what he’s capable of, is fully willing and ready to do it if necessary, and makes no excuses to the contrary

Steam: The Link from Spirit Tracks. He has the ability to see hidden things, which extends beyond his own disembodied Princess Zelda and into things like mask spirits or just plain invisible opponents. He also has a summons in the form of the Spirit Train, which he takes great pleasure in slamming into whichever villain has annoyed him. He’s got a dry sort of sarcasm and he’s definitely not afraid to say what he thinks. As a result of spending most of his adventure on a Train, he’s easily the least physically fit of the Links and therefore tends to hang back in a fight, relying more on his summons for heavy hits or his sight ability to provide support. His previous career choice was a locomotive engineer, and as a result he and Sketch get along very well. They have regularly scheduled brainstorm sessions about what sort of gadget they should try and make this time, usually with Steam providing the math and schematics and Sketch providing the real-world experience to make it real

Shadow: The Link from a variety of games, since whenever a Shadow or Dark Link appears, that was him. He’s bitingly sarcastic, could not possibly care less about the opinions of other people, and takes great joy in finding the best way to insult someone as possible. Being formed from the darker emotions of other Links, he’s understandably in a poor-to-terrible mood almost all the time, although he can usually be convinced to take it out on other people. A side effect of being made of dark magic is that he can’t be out in the sunlight too long - it’ll start to burn him in the same way a match burns paper. As a perk though, he can manipulate his body into any shape he wants, mostly ignoring physics as he does. This makes him easily one of the most powerful Links in the group, since he doesn’t take battle damage the way a physically-bodied person would and is all but immune to being stabbed. He makes for an excellent aggro target, partly because he can take anything the opponent could give, but also because he’ll give it all back and then some

Oni: The Link from before Skyward Sword. Also known as the Fierce Deity. Saying that he’s overpowered is a bit of an understatement, as he can take out the likes of Majora in three hits or less, but he’s very unlikely to actually use his power like that. As a result of being put into a mask, he has no actual autonomy unless someone is wearing him, at which point he takes control of the body of the wearer to manifest in the real world. This lasts with no repercussions until his mask is removed, at which point Oni returns to his bindings. He has not deigned to explain how he ended up in a mask or who managed to put him there, but the loose implication points to the aftermath of the Demon War as the cause. Further information is pending. He’s stoic and composed, and has yet to be truly riled up by anything that’s happened. He also refuses, as a rule, to get involved with the rest of the Chain’s adventures unless his presence is truly required. As the First Link Ever, and the one from whom the entire rest of the lineage has descended, Oni feels somewhat responsible for guiding the rest of the Links through their journeys - but guiding and coddling are two different things and as far as Oni is concerned, his legacies need to be able to fight their own battles

THE SEQUEL LINKS Rune: The Link from Breath of the Wild. He has the Champion Abilities, as well as his own Quicktime specialty, and is of course concerningly amnesiac. He’s quiet to the point of almost being forgettable, which is a side effect of a) spending nearly all his time in the wilderness alone with nobody to talk to, and b) having to constantly be on the alert for Guardians because nothing alerts a Guardian like a loud hylian. His inventory is nearly bottomless, and he therefore immediately becomes the group pack mule. He’s also hands-down the best chef (something which makes Gen only slightly jealous)

Lux: The Link from Hyrule Warriors. He is the quietest Link, but not because of his personality - it’s because he can’t talk. The most vocalization he’s ever going to manage is incoherent yells of effort, because anything beyond that is locked behind a psychosomatic speech block. He has not deigned to share why he has a psychosomatic speech block and at the moment it’s highly doubtful he ever will. He’s second only to Shadow in his sarcasm and general displeasure with the world, and the rest of the group is lucky that hylian sign only has loosely defined curse words, otherwise he’d be going off

RSE: Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are the Link(s) from Triforce Heroes. Emerald is the leader of the trio, more or less, while Ruby handles anything that might need a good smacking and Sapphire embodies the emotional core. They have a strange dynamic where they bicker with each other to hide the fact that they care, which is a direct result of them still settling into their own dynamics. They have their Totem formation, of course, and share an incredibly specific set of opinions about fashion. The fact that they also have their entire wardrobe on hand is complete coincidence, yep

Lyric: The Link from Cadence of Hyrule. He can hear the Universe Music better than any other Link (with the possible exception of Wind) and he will do whatever he can to follow its lead. He’s constantly moving to the beat in almost everything he does, and it makes him unexpectedly deadly in a fight. It turns out that following the Universe Music gives very good buffs and Lyric is a master at following the music. Ironically enough for all his sense of rhythm, he cannot sing to save his life and is in fact instrumentally challenged, which annoys him to no end Tacet: The Link from Echoes of Wisdom. He doesn't speak much, partly because he spent years being physically unable to and forgets that he can, and partly because it's just... a lot. Despite this, he takes up a lot of space with loud gestures, loud body language, and loud fashion choices. He may be quiet but he will not be ignored. He's in a matching set with Echo (his Zelda) and they're more of less inseparable. He's persistent and determined and fluent in Sign, which unfortunately makes him an immediate target for Lux (translation) and Lore (TEACH HIM)

THE OC LINKS Codex: The Link from the Evil Overlord List, a story I write that somehow developed its own protagonist. He’s snarky, sarcastic, runs on caffeine and spite, and will probably take over the world someday if he ever gets around to it. He’s currently just a college student writing his thesis paper (The List), but once he graduates the world had better brace itself

Wraith: The Link that was made as a result of a random conversation one day, in which someone asked me what would happen if Demise won permanently. Five minutes with my angst-stunted brain later, I had a cheerful sunshine child who had the ability to see spirits and was getting mentored by all eighteen dead Heroes as the backup plan to deal with Demise. He’s way too pure for the world and probably shouldn’t be as big an optimist as he is for someone surrounded by dead people

THE BACKSTORY LINKS Archive: The Link who came before Breath of the Wild, the one from the 10,000-years-ago legend that we learn about in the game, who came about after somebody asked me my opinions on the Links that we know about but don't know about. He's the one who originally designed the Divine Beasts, Guardians, Towers, etc. alongside the Sheikah and the Princess Zelda of the time. He's a mechanic with the ability to bestow vague semi-sentience into whatever he builds, if he chooses to, hence the Divine Beasts and their possibly-sentient actions. He wears pants with an uncountable number of pockets, can and will do the thinking-out-loud Rubber Duck thing at anyone or anything sitting still long enough, and sees absolutely nothing wrong with bestowing semi-sentience on an explosive. What could possibly go wrong, it's a great idea

Mini: The Link who came before Minish Cap, the one we learn about in the prologue of the game who fought in the demon war that resulted in the Picori Blade being forged. He is very short, very salty about it, takes absolutely no nonsense and could probably be voted Most Likely To Stab As An Instinct. Not to say that he's violent, but he has active war trauma and will probably attack first, ask questions after. He's not too sure how he feels about the successors to his sword being as cheerful and easygoing as they are, but also he's adopting them all, immediately, no further deliberation necessary

…………………………………………………………………………………

 Link, the Hero of Trains, was being fired at by laser cannons.

Well, technically his Train was being fired at by laser cannons. Link, unfortunately, happened to be on the Train.

Behind him, a spirit was clinging to the train wall for dear life and trying not to be sick. Link wondered how Zelda could feel sick without a stomach, then wondered how she could have motion sickness now of all times after spending months traveling by Train with him.

Then again, none of the rides before this one had been quite this violent.

After dealing with Malladus for months on end, things had finally come to a head with the duel Link was currently in; racing his Train against Malladus'. It was a distinctly unfair fight, in Link's opinion, mostly due to the previously mentioned laser cannons on the Demon Train that Malladus was driving. Link, on the other hand, had regular cannons that shot regular cannonballs.

Totally fair and even odds, those were.

But that wasn't even the only problem Link was dealing with. Malladus had a completely warped sense of proper steering, and would randomly switch tracks at the most awkward and inconvenient times, usually right in front of Link's Spirit Train making the Hero pull some jarring and often straight-up illegal maneuvers to avoid a collision.

Abruptly, Malladus decided to do exactly that and the Demon Train jumped rails, making Link slam the brake lever to avoid a head-on crash with the back of the demonic locomotive which was now mere feet in front of him. The sudden movement threw Link onto the dashboard and Zelda to the floor, and Link threw a hurriedly worried glance at her.

“I'm fine!” she yelled over the noise in response, though she looked a bit paler than usual – and that was saying something, considering that she was transparent. “Keep going, we can't lose him now!”

Link nodded and returned his attention to the race – and just in time, because the Malladus had fired up the Demon Train's lasers again and was about to shoot him with them. Link yelped and switched rails as fast as he could manage, and the lasers carved a furrow in the rapidly passing ground instead.

“Just once,” Link growled, “I would like to drive my Train without another Train trying to kill me. Why is that too much to ask?”

Probably because you're the Hero, his subconscious answered. Link scowled and jerked the accelerator to move his Train up alongside the Demon Train again. He wouldn't mind being the Hero as much if the title didn't get him into so much trouble. Then again, the fact that he did tend to get into some questionable situations made for an excellent excuse to use the Spirit Train's cannons.

In fact, Link decided, that sounded like a fantastic idea.

“Zelda, watch the accelerator!” he yelled, sprinting to the cannon controls. Zelda shouted something about intangibility in reply, but Malladus had chosen that exact moment to fire more lasers and thus Link didn't hear her. He did, however, hear the screech of damaged metal as the lasers raked over the body of the Spirit Train and snarled incoherently.

Nobody messed with his Train. This had just gotten personal. And Link capitalized on that fact by slamming cannonballs into every inch of the Demon Train he could reach.

“Link!” Zelda yelled, materializing next to him. “Aim for the laser ports!”

...Yeah, that was probably a much better idea, Link admitted to himself, and reoriented his cannon. His next shot smashed one of the turrets into splinters, and Link grinned in fierce vengeance for his Train. Zelda let out a relieved sigh in tandem, then glanced ahead at the rails because she was smart like that.

“Link, there's a rail switch coming!” she said, pointing at the rapidly approaching mechanism. “We should probably use it!”

“Right, thanks!”

He really didn't know what he'd do without Zelda's second pair of eyes watching everything he couldn't. She'd saved his life at least four times on this adventure so far, and if he was being honest with himself basically every idea the two of them had was actually Zelda's that she gracefully let Link take half the credit for, exactly like the rail switch just now.

Link sprinted back to the Train controls and threw the rail switch just in the nick of time. The Spirit Train abruptly swerved onto a different track, a good twenty feet further away from the Demon Train. This, in Link's opinion, was a very good thing, because the farther he was from that monstrosity the better.

But then a different laser turret swiveled, locked, and shot the Spirit Train's siding right where the engine would be. Link yelled in surprise and slammed the brake lever to get out of range, which threw Link onto the dashboard and Zelda, despite being incorporeal, sliding across the floor and straight through Link and the dashboard.

“Sorry!” Link yelled as she pulled herself back out of the machinery, looking slightly annoyed.

“A little warning next time would be nice,” she chided. Neither of them mentioned the part where she'd slid through Link, because that part was considerably awkward and they were far too busy to bother with something as trivial as awkwardness anyways, not to mention that the noise of the lasers, cannonballs, brakes, Train engines, and just about everything else was incredibly loud and made it hard to even think about bothering with feeling awkward.

Put simply, neither of them cared.

Link stuck his head out the window to make sure they were out of firing range of the lasers, and seeing that they were, ran back to the cannon to fire some shots of his own. Unfortunately, he'd left the brakes on and thus spent the next few seconds with absolutely terrible aim before he figured out what was going on and sheepishly ran back to the controls.

That problem fixed, he ran back to the cannon and started firing again, this time hitting the laser he was aiming for with relative ease and demolishing it too. Then he scrambled back to the controls, because the Demon Train had just switched lanes to close the distance between the two of them and was using the proximity to cause some significant damage with its two remaining laser guns.

Why the heck did a Train even have laser guns in the first place!?

Lost in his annoyance, Link missed the Demon Train switching rails again until Zelda pointed and shrieked, “LOOK OUT!”

Link obediently looked, and promptly freaked.

“HOLY DIN!” he yelled in a panic, and once again sprinted for the Train controls, because the Demon Train was right in front of them and they were about to collide with it. He jerked the brake lever just in time to prevent a nasty crash and quickly threw the upcoming rail switch to get as far from the Demon Train as he could.

“Oh, that was way too close,” he gasped. “Thanks, Zel.”

“Well, we wouldn't want you turning into a ghost too, now would we?” Zelda replied. Link tilted his head, confused.

“...I thought you were a temporarily disembodied spirit.”

“Link, drive the Train.”

“Oh! Right.”

With his attention back on the steering, Link had a clear view of what was in front of him. Thus, he essentially had front row seats when the Demon Train missed a rail switch and plowed headlong into a rock wall.

Lin's mouth dropped. So did Zelda's.

“...Did the Demon Train just crash?” Link asked slowly.

“Looks like it....”

“Even though Malladus has never made a driving mistake before this, ever?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You're coming with me when I investigate, aren't you.”

“Pretty much.”

Link sighed. “Just give me a minute to stop.” As a general rule, he did not approve of the Princess following him into possibly dangerous situations, regardless of the fact that whatever the danger was probably couldn't touch her. Call him protective, or whatever, but it freaked him out when the life of the future ruler of his country was solely in his thirteen-year-old hands.

Unfortunately, Zelda was stubborn enough that she would follow him anyway, and he couldn't exactly order her back to safety because, one, she outranked him by a lot, and two, he couldn't move her even if he tried. He'd just go straight through.

The Spirit Train, which he'd been steadily braking the whole time, slowly chugged to a halt in a cloud of white smoke a few hundred feet away from the Demon Train, which suited Link just fine. The face on that thing creeped him out. He threw a few more levers to lock the Train in place, then hopped out of the engine car and began slowly approaching the Demon Train, with Zelda floating close behind.

As a result of smashing straight into a mountain, the entire front of the Demon Train was a complete chaotic mess. Metal was twisted, paint was scraped, wheels were bent, and that face which had been creeping Link out for months was so mangled that it was unrecognizable. Link made a little fist-pump when he noticed that.

Luckily, the door wasn't nearly as damaged as the rest of the locomotive, and Link was able to climb in with relatively little difficulty. Zelda, on the other hand, just floated through the wall and feigned impatience with a little smile on her face as she watched Link come in.

“That's not nearly as funny as you think it is,” Link informed her once he was through. Zelda just shrugged, smile still firmly visible, and Link rolled his eyes good-naturedly before starting off down the hallway.

After a few steps, the hall opened up into the engine room, which was much larger than the one Link had in the Spirit Train. But this was hardly worth noting, because there were three other things in the room that most definitely were worth noting.

One was Zelda's body, laying 'lifeless' and unoccupied on the floor. The second was 'Chancellor' Cole, who was also on the floor but seemed to be regaining consciousness.

The third was a middling-sized utterly black hole over by the Train's controls, which was slowly growing as Link watched and making the machinery rattle as the void pulled on it.

“Link...” Zelda said, with a little catch in her voice as she stared at her body.

“Just hang on a sec,” Link replied, narrowing his eyes at the scene. Months of narrowly escaping getting killed had taught him to never, ever, take a seemingly harmless room at face value unless you wanted to die a very painful death. With this thought in mind, he slowly advanced into the middle of the floor with his sword drawn and his shield ready to be used at a moment's notice.

Thirty seconds crawled by. Nothing attempted to kill him.

“...Okay,” Link decided. “We're good.”

Zelda rocketed past him the instant the words left his mouth, so fast that she actually created a wind in her wake that buffeted Link's hair. Link decided to give her and her body a few moments to get reacquainted and used the fact that Cole was groggily blinking at him as his excuse. He grabbed Cole by his collar and hoisted him to his feet – which wasn't very hard considering that Cole was actually slightly shorter than Link himself, which was a real novelty to the Hero because he was a naturally short and stocky boy.

“You've put me through a whole lot of garbage, you know that?” Link growled into Cole's face.

“Cheese unicorns,” Cole wheezed, excellently demonstrating the concussion he had from the crash. Link blinked, then dropped the little demon man unceremoniously to the ground again. Clearly, he wasn't going to be much use.

A little gasp to his left caught his attention, and he turned to see Zelda back in her body and taking her first real breath of oxygen in months. She inhaled, slowly, then exhaled just as slowly. A beaming grin spread across her face.

“We did it,” she said, euphoric. “I've got my body back!”

“Awesome,” Link told her. She beamed again and caught him in a quick hug.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Link had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation, and it showed in the fact that he couldn't figure out where to put his hands. He settled for flailing them awkwardly. “Anybody else would have done the same thing,” he managed.

“Shut up and accept the gratitude,” Zelda said, releasing him and rolling her eyes.

“Sure thing, Your Highness.”

“Avocado chutney,” Cole warbled from the floor, completely breaking the mood. Zelda's face darkened like a thunderstorm, and she veritably stalked over to the man who had posed in her court for months.

“Link,” she said coldly, “could you stand him up, please?”

Normally, Link would have said something about how violence was unbecoming for the future Queen, how revenge was almost never the answer, and a lot of other cliched but true stuff about taking out your feelings on people. However, the look on Zelda's face scared the living daylights out of him.

So he did the smart thing and stood Cole up instead.

“You,” Zelda hissed, “have betrayed me, plotted against me, tried to destroy Hyrule, ripped me from my body, gave my body to someone else, tried to kill me and Link more times than I can count, and broken almost every single traffic law we have. I can think of only one punishment good enough for the likes of you.”

So saying, she wound up and SLAPPED Chancellor Cole across the face so hard that he impacted the far wall.

“That,” Zelda said in tones of supreme satisfaction, “felt amazing.”

Link was too busy watching Cole burst into smoke and blow away in the fashion of all defeated monsters to respond. He suddenly felt both very proud, and very terrified, of the girl standing next to him.

“...Did you just vaporize Cole by slapping him?” he asked, just to be sure of what was happening.

“And I'd do it again in a heartbeat,” Zelda nodded firmly. “Now, let's finish the job. Where's Malladus?”

That, Link realized, was an excellent question. Malladus was supposed to be driving the Train, although if he was gone and Cole had been driving, that explained why he'd crashed. Still, demonic overlords generally didn't just vanish into thin air.

“...He ought to be here somewhere,” Link said. “I mean, Cole was here, and your body was here, and we know Malladus wouldn't have left your body lying around like that.”

“Except that he apparently did,” Zelda frowned. “I wonder... Link, what do you make of that hole?”

Link turned and gave said hole an appraising glance. “It freaks me out a little, not gonna lie. I've never seen anything like it.”

Zelda frowned more and took a few steps closer to the void, examining it closely. It had grown a little bigger since Link had looked at it last, and was now in the process of eating through the accelerator.

“...Ah,” Zelda said. “That's bad. That's very, very bad.”

“Why?”

“That's a hole,” she replied. Link nodded slowly.

“...I knew that,” he said. “I can see it's a hole. Now why is it bad?”

“Because that's a hole in the world.”

Link took that in for a moment.

“Okay, yeah, that's bad,” he decided. “But I'm still not seeing how this tells us where Malladus went.”

“Well...” Zelda started hesitantly. “I think... that he might have been... absorbed.”

Link blinked and gave the hole a more thorough once-over. Still black, still growing, still eating the accelerator... wait.

The accelerator... which the engineer would have been standing in front of. The engineer, who would have been Malladus.

“...So, do we panic, or celebrate, or what?”

“Bit of both,” Zelda decided. “We can't leave this here. We need to take care of it.”

Link's eyes narrowed as his instinct to protect kicked in again. “Oh no. I can take care of it. You can head back to the castle where it's safe and reassure your probably sick with worry father that you're alright.”

Zelda's eyer narrowed to match Link's, and she crossed her arms authoritatively. “And what makes you think that I'm going to leave you alone with a world-threatening crisis to deal with? We only made it this far because we worked together, and I am not going anywhere while Hyrule is still in danger.”

“Oh yes you are,” Link retorted, “because I am not going to let anything happen to you now that we've finally got your body back. I understand you're worried about Hyrule, which is perfectly understandable, but you are the freaking Princess! What happens if you get absorbed just like Malladus? What am I supposed to do then? Heck, what's Hyrule supposed to do then?”

To her horror, Zelda found that she couldn't actually argue with that logic. So she settled for scowling in Link's general direction instead. Link himself breathed a silent sigh of relief. Zelda could be monumentally stubborn if she wanted to be, and the argument could have easily gone on for hours. Luckily, her country came before almost anything else, otherwise Link probably would've never found a way to make her go.

“Now,” Link said, “how are we gonna get you back?”

“...Maybe they'll be willing to escort me,” Zelda offered, pointing behind him. Link turned to see Anjean and Byrne materializing out of thin air, the instrument at Anjean's mouth showing how they were doing it.

“Yeah, that'll work,” Link agreed.

…………………………………………………………………………………

 Link waved as the Spirit Train chugged away without him, although it felt really strange to not be driving the machine himself. In fact, he was having a hard time reminding himself that nobody was stealing it, that he'd agreed to this, and he'd get his Train back as soon as Zelda was safe.

...He missed it already.

Link shook his head rapidly and flicked himself in the temples in an effort to get his mind back on track. He needed to do something about the hole, which by now had grown large enough that it was starting to be visible from the outside of the Train.

“...What am I going to do with you?” he asked the hole rhetorically. The hole didn't answer, which was a good thing. In Link's opinion, talking to inanimate objects was perfectly normal, but if they talked back, that was when you needed to be worried.

But since the hole hadn't said anything, it was all good.

Link pursed his mouth thoughtfully, then upturned his Adventure Bag on the ground and began sifting through the contents. Bombs, boomerang, arrows, Sand Wand, Whirlwind, whip, Spirit Flute... none of this seemed like it would do much. Still, Link decided, wouldn't hurt to try.

The bombs exploded, but did absolutely nothing as the hole then ate the explosion while it was happening. Arrows just vanished upon contact, the sandstorm summoned by the Sand Wand did squat, the Whirlwind was equally useless – and somewhat puzzling, because Link couldn't tell if the hole had eaten the wind or not. The boomerang just seemed like a bad idea, the whip seemed like an even worse idea, and the only thing he achieved playing the Spirit Flute was a snappy dance tune once he determined that every other song he knew did exactly what his other items had done – nothing.

Now he kinda wished Zelda was still around. He was out of ideas.

…………………………………………………………………………………

 “Unbelievable,” Farore said, throwing up her hands. “I even went to all the effort of keeping the hole moving with the Train so he'd run into it! What does it take with these boys!?”

“Shame we can't actually close them ourselves,” Nayru mourned.

“I know, I honestly thought we had a chance when Farore managed to move that one, but I guess moving them around is all we can do,” Din agreed ruefully. “Better than nothing, I guess, but still...”

“Right, that's it,” Farore decided, having ignored the conversation her sisters were having. “It's time to get serious with this. If they won't investigate themselves, then I'll make them investigate!”

“Or we could try tact?” Nayru suggested. “So Courage doesn't freak out at feeling his body moving on it's own and we don't break the Interference Laws?”

“Okay, I'll make them investigate subtly.”

“Have we considered just sending them a message? You know, have the local Great Fairy turn up and say, 'Hero, thou must goeth into yonder hole'?” Din said.

Farore gave her a flat look. “Nobody talks like that.”

“It was more subtle than your suggestions, though,” Nayru pointed out.

Farore opened her mouth to retort – then paused, as something occurred to her.

“...that could work...” she said softly.

“...What could work?” Din asked.

“You'll see, if it works,” Farore replied, suddenly in a better mood than she'd been all week. “Nayru, where's the Four Sword aspect right now?”

“...On their way back to the mountain, actually,” Nayru replied after a moment of concentration. “Looks like they're done with the Library, for now.”

“Excellent,” Farore grinned. “Now, let's see how this works.”

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